How the Super Bowl Protests Might Spark a New Homeless Advocacy Movement
Super Bowl City, with its Bud Light sculpture, gun-toting officers and snipers lining the high-rises along the Embarcadero, has been cleared. But the wake up call it inadvertently became to address homeless in San Francisco has only begun to echo.
“For every shelter bed that exists in the city, there are six homeless people,” said homeless veteran Michael Kirby. “So they’ve got the 311 Shelter Waitlist, which I’m on, but you’ll never get a bed. I had a dermoid cyst rupture in my brain. I got dumped out of the hospital and I have spent since Oct. 8 waiting to try to get a bed.”
There are a staggering 6,686 homeless San Franciscans, according to the 2015 San Francisco Homeless Count Report. Walking through the city at night, it is common to see rows of tents under freeway on-ramps, old men shivering in parks and even families huddled together under building awnings.
A demonstration on Feb. 3 brought hundreds of San Franciscans to the streets to cry out against frivolous spending on the game while public services languish in neglect. This protest was covered by international media, reminding us that if seeing other people suffering makes us uncomfortable we must act and not just turn away.
The first thing this movement calls for is the repeal of the Sit & Lie Ordinance of 2010, which prohibits sitting and lying on public sidewalks.
“Everyday you get roused. You get jacked by the police. ‘Go on, get out of here’,” says Kirby. “They show up right in your face. You can’t legally sit, if you’re homeless, on a public bench. They will target you.”
“You can’t even brush your teeth in a public sink. You have to go into the porto-potty to brush your teeth,” he continues. “It’s literally a criminal offense in the city of SF to perform basic hygiene in a public sink.”
This criminalization needs to end. This city is all of ours, not just those with a big enough paycheck.
“Unpaid tickets lead to warrants, making us ineligible for city assistance, programs, and preventing us from leaving town and meant that we would remain homeless,” Shira Noel of the Homeless Youth Alliance said.
“As more money, time and resources pour into these ineffective criminalization policies, people continue to struggle, people continue to hurt. People are dying.”
Thanks to The Coalition Against Homelessness, there are many opportunities to support a compassionate San Francisco.
On Feb. 9, the coalition organized a silent vigil and public comment at City Hall demanding “$5 million to go immediately to house homeless people, a moratorium on criminalization of homeless people, and sustained commitment from the city to end homelessness, which includes identifying progressive revenue source.”
More events are planned to stop evictions, support street artists and provide social services.
The movement has garnered support from within the government as well. David Campos, the District 9 representative on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, told the hundreds gathered at the Feb. 3 protest that they had an ally in City Hall.
“I think this demonstration is one of the most important things that have happened in San Francisco this new year,” he said. “This is an opportunity for us to show the world that the San Francisco we see everyday is not necessarily the San Francisco that Mayor Lee and his administration want you to see.
“I think it’s important for the world to know that the homeless are not only not leaving SF but the people we are talking about are human beings who deserve respect and should be treated with dignity.”
Doubters of the power of community organizing must only look to the success of the coalition’s last project protesting the building of a new jail in San Francisco. Despite Mayor Ed Lee’s support, after witnessing two years of protest, San Francisco Supervisors refused to allocate the funds the city had acquired for it.
“We stopped the new jail. We made the city turn the money back to the state and say, ‘This is not our values, this is not what we want in our city’,” Laura Thomas of the Drug Policy Alliance said.
“But now we gotta do the next part, which is making the city invest in housing.”
