Tag: Tessie Ester

On Jan. 10, I did a reading of my novel, “White Knight,” at the Hunters View housing complex in Hunters Point. One of the characters in my novel was based on Tessie Ester (Cali Robinson in the book), a woman I met back in the ‘70s when she enrolled her two boys, Henry and Terrell, in Geneva Towers Children’s Center, where I was a teacher. The novel is about how she and I organized the Towers to keep the center open when the school district tried to close it after Prop. 13 – among other things.

“The police say to us all the time that they can’t do their jobs because we won’t talk and tell on someone. Well, we ARE telling on PG&E … so now we tell them it’s your turn. Do your job! Do it now!”