Tag: Sen. Mark Leno

Yolanda’s Construction Administration and Traffic Control, Inc., was given a proclamation honoring YCAT-C as “Small Business of the Year” at a special ceremony, Thursday, Oct. 27, at YCAT-C’s Bayview Hunters Point headquarters in San Francisco’s Industrial Park. Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, honored YCAT-C’s CEO Yolanda Jones with a special proclamation, in recognition of her achievements and commitment to hiring locally.

The news was expected to be bad. San Franciscans for Police Accountability (SFPA), a civilian watch group, held a public forum in the Koret Auditorium of San Francisco’s Public Library. It was Saturday, Sept. 24, and featured D.A. George Gascón’s specially appointed Blue Ribbon Panel – the forum appropriately titled, “Making SFPD Accountable: A Community Conversation.” And what a conversation this was – one I could not miss!

A 20-year vision became reality when Bayview Senior Services invited the people of Bayview Hunters Point to the grand opening of the Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center and Residence on Saturday, June 25. The celebration marked the victory of a dream over despair. As we all gain inspiration from his memory, his wife, Cathy Davis, has captained the project to a successful completion with last Saturday’s unforgettable grand opening.

I celebrated my 100th birthday on June 11, 2016, with family members, friends and community members at the brand new Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center. On June 12, my church, Jones Memorial United Methodist Church, honored me with a wonderful birthday celebration after the church service. And at our June meeting of the Network for Elders in the Bayview, Network members had a very special birthday party for me!

In an effort to improve transparency, accountability and trust between law enforcement and the public, Sen. Mark Leno has introduced SB 1286, a bill allowing greater public access to peace officer records related to serious uses of force and sustained charges of misconduct. “California is behind the times when it comes to providing transparency in law enforcement records,” said Sen. Leno, D-San Francisco.

Providence Baptist Church was packed for the second homegoing service for Dr. Espanola Jackson, a legendary icon to the people of Bayview Hunters Point and citywide. Her family and friends and city and state officials who have felt her pressure to do the right thing came to honor her so as to make sure, despite her transition, that justice prevails like a mighty stream – pure, powerful and calm.

Bayview Hunters Point Foundation for Community Improvement Executive Director Jacob Moody recently accepted this year’s Community Boards Leadership Peacemaker Award on behalf of the over 40-year-old organization, which provides tailored, comprehensive support for at-risk youth in Bayview Hunters Point. The award was presented by Community Boards Executive Director Darlene Weide at the fourth annual Peacemaker Awards luncheon.

More and more political leaders are speaking out as dozens of California prisoners complete six weeks of a hunger strike and others are working behind the scenes to urge Gov. Brown to negotiate before more men die. It shouldn’t take a hunger strike to bring an end to the current over-reliance on the use of solitary confinement in California prisons.

A sea of overwhelming opposition in cities from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles has risen against San Mateo Assemblymember Jerry Hill and his anti-local hiring measure, Assembly Bill 356, which threatens state funding for any California city with a local hiring policy.

A crowd of over 200 community advocates, elected officials, labor leaders, community contractors and City department heads came together on Feb. 23 to celebrate the passage of the historic local hiring ordinance.

Assemblymember Hill today unveiled legislation that attacks local hiring by banning state-funded construction in any city with a local hiring law, even shutting down Bay Area projects that residents of his own district work on.

At the close of 2008 and throughout 2009, Americans watched our federal government reward the reckless multinational financial sector with trillions of dollars for causing the worst hardship since the Great Depression. San Franciscans and Californians joined in the agony but few understood that both San Francisco and California have come up with their own bailout for one of the major players in the meltdown, the South Florida based Lennar Corp.

As San Francisco grapples with a looming budget crisis, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is seeking $2 million in state reimbursement to the City for its defense of eight men charged in a 1971 homicide case involving a police officer. The city’s right to reimbursement is based on the fact that the California Attorney General took on the 36-year-old case after the San Francisco District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute.

Outraged Bayview residents armed with signs that read “Bayview Not for Sale,” “Parks for the People,” and “Governor, Veto SB 792 – Save Candlestick Park” entered Sen. Mark Leno’s San Francisco district office on Friday, Oct. 9, and erected a cardboard condominium tower topped with a sign that read “Leno: Do you miss your office? We’ll sure miss our park.”

On Thursday, Sept. 3, at their weekly town hall meeting, the leaders of SLAM (Stop Lennar Action Movement) reminded the audience of the kind of power they have in the battle to save Bayview Hunters Point. Minister Christopher Muhammad, Archbishop Franzo King and Francisco Da Costa shared the latest news of SLAM’s progress and urged the audience to understand that by staying focused and vigilant and not letting anything turn them around, they will win the war.

In their fight against the push to privatize their state park, Bayview Hunters Point activists are fighting the privatization of California as hard as anyone I know. They’re fighting for all of us, so I hope that other Californians who don’t want to see the whole state on the auction block will contact their Assembly representatives and ask them to vote against Senate Bill 792.

Sen. Mark Leno's Senate Bill 792 would give clean parkland at Candlestick Point to Lennar and replace it with toxic land. Lennar, the "toxic dust developer," plans to build 10,000 luxury condos at the Hunters Point Shipyard. This toxic trade bill is now in the California Assembly, so calls opposing SB 792 should be made immediately to Fiona Ma, (916) 319-2012, and Tom Ammiano, (916) 319-2013.