We can't lay down any longer

Town Hall Meeting demands an end to police brutality, toxic poisoning and racism.

Gretchen Hildebran with PNN Media interns Gay Montgomery and Joseph Bolden
Tuesday, March 5, 2002;

The two young women on the stage would have probably liked to have been somewhere else. Driving up into the Bayview on this hot and blue Saturday morning, I was lulled by the light breezes and wide vistas on top of the hills, serenaded by distant radios and kids playing on sidewalks while parents and neighbors chatted and kept an eye out. Surely Tenisha Bishop and Susie McCallister would have rather been at home or in the park with their kids, but on this past Martin Luther King Day--a blue and hot day--their children were terrorized in front of their homes by eight uniformed police officers. They came to the Hunter's Point Town Hall Meeting last Saturday to let us know, in Susie McCallister's words, "We have to speak up. We can't lay down any longer." Theirvoices boomed around the wood and cement walls of the gymnasium, and the affirmation that they received from the crowd made each mother sit up taller and speak up a little louder.

The Town Hall, which was hosted by Kiilu Nyasha and Wendell Harper and broadcast live on KPFA, was called to give voice to those most recently terrorized by the police in this neighborhood, and to link police brutality to the environmental racism of the Navy and the Hunter's Point Power Plant that has poisoned the air, water and soil of this residential community. As panelist Maurice Campbell put it, "We are talking about basic human rights."

I have intense respect for all mothers, starting with my own. The fight that all parents in this part of the city face to create a safe environment for their children is against increasingly severe factors. Willie Ratliff of the San Francisco Bay View explained how worsening conditions are forcing this community to flee the city. Rather than experiencing the economic good times of the last decade. Ratliff said, "San Francisco in the last seven or eight years is regressing for African-Americans." Quality of life in Bayview Hunter's Point has been so endangered by police brutality, pollution and economic decline that 23% of the African-American community has been displaced in the last ten years. 20,000 people have left. The parents, neighbors, educators, doctors, artists and activists that came out to this meeting addressed the root causes of these multiple injustices that jeopardize the health and future of their community.

"A Rose That Stings"
Environmental pollution that this community faces is severe. In her introductory comments, Marie Harrison of the SF Bay View and the Restoration Advisory Board insisted, "This is environmental racism. By any other name it is a rose that stings." Children are the most vulnerable victims, and have outrageous rates of asthma, Attention Deficit Disorder and cancer: The environment we live in is so tainted, so toxic, that a three-year-old can't go outside or breathe the air, a 12-year-old can't stay in school because he can't concentrate. Another parent described her child's symptoms of feeling crushing weight on his chest. Mesha Irizarry, mother of Idriss Stelley, the young man who was killed by police this past June, told of how her son had had to filter the air in his room to sleep at night as well as the water he would use to shower.

Panelist Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai explained many of the most deadly toxins in the area originate from the Naval Shipyard. The Navy, while acknowledging that the poisons, which include lead, radium, asbestos and radioactive cesium, originated from their activities, has not taken responsibility for the effects on the residents of this community. A case in point is the fire that broke out on Parcel B of the shipyard. Ray Tompkins, a Bay View resident who has been trying to track the levels and effects of Shipyard pollution, described that it took the Navy 16 days to even report that fire to the SF Department of Public Health. Not only did residents go on breathing contaminated air without warning during those days, but physicians who treated people suffering from the fire had no knowledge of what to test or treat their patients for. Tompkins explained that when the Navy was eventually confronted with the medical effects of the fire, they claimed that people's symptoms were psychosomatic. They wanted to tell us, "You're all just crazy!"

The powers are adept at ignoring reckless endangerment of people of color's health rather than protecting them. Tompkins explained, "Part of the fallacy of the racism in science is that "normal" means a 35-year-old white man." The testing that is supposed to be done often doesn't get done at all or doesn't represent the community. One government group who was supposed to test air quality levels mistakenly did their tests in Visatacion Valley rather than the Bayview. Other tests don't allow for the fact that children are more vulnerable to toxins. Tompkins own tests, done with the help of professionals and at standards higher than the EPA, showed toxins at levels 100 times over a safe measure for cancer risk. He said he had taken at least one sample from where neighborhood kids hang out and play basketball.

Tompkins is working to urge Mitchell Katz, the head of the SF Health Department, to release hospital intake records from 6 weeks before the Shipyard fire broke out and 6 weeks after. A comparison of these records would be a crucial step towards building proof of the health problems of the community due to the fire. Until this proof emerges the Navy is unlikely to take any responsibility for the disaster.

"The tentacles reach deep," said panelist Don Paul, as to why the Navy and the city are willing to ignore this situation. High-financed developers all want a piece of the Bayview, if they don't own it already. An Enron executive apparently sits on the the board of directors of Bayview housing developers. Artist Lani Asher from the Shipyard studios described how the Bernard Corporation wants to build an "artist mall" on contaminated parts of the Shipyard. All too often corporations and government are in agreement about the value of property over people.

In a chilling example of this, Dr. Sumchai gave details of a conveyance agreement which Mayor Brown plans to sign on April 1st which would transfer contaminated Parcels A& B from the Navy's property and open them for quick development. "Never in the history of conveyance agreements has a developer been named in the agreement. There always is a bid," Dr. Sumchai stated. The agreement is illegal and grounds for a lawsuit, she said, and is not in the interest of the health of the community. The agreement must first be approved by the Board of Supervisors and she encouraged the audience to contact Supervisor Sophie Maxwell to tell her to reject the measure.

Slavery All Over Again.
While environmental pollution poisons the natural elements of the community, police brutality isolates and terrorizes its people so they can't clean up or hold onto their neighborhoods. Tenisha Bishop described her experience on Martin Luther King Day as "Slavery all over again." Her neighbor Susie McAllister described how their children were subjected to the very treatment that we warn them from.

Theirs and other neighbors' children were pulled from a car in front of their house, pushed to the ground, and held at gunpoint. Some of the five kids, ages 12 to 14, were physically assaulted and arrested. The girls were inappropriately fondled and molested by male officers, and others had police hold them down with their boots. A child who has grown up feeling the weight of asthma on his lungs had then the pressure of the police's boots in his back. McAllister described her feelings at seeing her young daughter brutalized by the police, "I felt helpless, I was being ignored, treated less than a piece of meat."

Beyond the shock and fear that the audience reflected upon hearing these descriptions laid the outrage and anger at the targeting of communities of color by the police. Bishop herself said, "I've work in Laurel Valley, I've never heard of anything of this kind happening there." Other audience members echoed this sentiment, one rising to comment, "If white children were treated in this manner, the whole country would be plastered with the news!"

Basic Human Rights Should Apply
Samantha Liappes of the local advocacy group Bay Area Policewatch made the simple comment about these events, "Basic human rights should apply." This is the demand of the community against the racist system which ignores pollution where people of color live while downplaying the brutal actions of police towards those same people.

These were the rights that were missing on MLK day, that were missing when Idriss Stelley called for help during a psychiatric crisis and was shot down by police, and countless other instances when police practice brutal and illegal racial targeting, and the rights that are ignored by the Navy and the city government when it allows contaminated land to continue to poison an entire community.

The next steps to be taken will be against the police department, which has placed the events of MLK day "under investigation." One speaker from the community reminded us, "Civil Rights is about love. We shouldn't hate the officers that did this as much as we should hate the system which allows them to do this." "Policewatch and other groups are working to create community control over the police," said Liappes. "The community should have power and oversight over the police department and we have the resources to make it happen right here."

Harrison expressed the desire that accountability will also come with reparations for the damage done. When she declared, "My intent is to see this police department pay dearly for what they've done to these children and this community." Her sentiment was affirmed throughout the audience. The mothers spoke of needing grief counselors, a greatly lacking resource in this neighborhood, to help their children deal with the trauma. A woman in the audience offered her services. Maurice Campbell of the SF Bay View stated, "We need to be with each other on this." Along environmental justice and police reparations, many people spoke out about the economic injustices in their neighborhoods which need to stop. Campbell spoke out on the practice of "redlining" neighborhoods of people of color. "Banks have vacated our community," he stated, while pointing out that fraud was a common way of diverting city and other government contracts away from local businesses. Beyond a clean and safe environment, as Willie Ratliff put it, "We all need the opportunity to get a job and feed our families." Neighborhood activist Theresa Johnson poised the question "How did we get involved with criminal politics?" When our government signs away protection, lands, lives, and children's futures, she said, "I don't find that to be freedom."

Hopefully the mothers whose children suffered will find hope in the community that rose up to support them last Saturday. Samantha Liappes of Policewatch mentioned in closing the recent racial targeting of Laurie McElroy, a Poor Magazine writer who was unjustly arrested for walking home with her son in a neighborhood that the cops didn't find appropriate. Liappes pointed out that "simply existing in our own communities is now a criminal act."

The only protection that these parents and their children now have is from the community, whether that is by calling city officials to demand a stop to environmental racism, or by demonstrating against the police, or by joining a lawsuit against the Navy and other racist institutions. What is crucial is that the larger community of San Francisco become educated and involved in the struggle. Even if this wouldn't happen "in my neighborhood." Because Tenisha Johnson doesn't have to read the paper to know about what is going down. As she said, "I just have to look out the window, I see the power plant, I see children being brutalized by cops. We have an amazing view but once you get down to flat ground reality kicks in."

To express your outrage over the policies' racist attacks:
Contact the Police Chief Lau at (415) 553-1551
Police commissioners: Sidney Chan (415) 397-1985,
Victor Makras (415) 992-1990, Connir Perry (415) 538-4146, Wayne Friday (415) 431-1702, Angelo Quaranta (415) 885-1557.

Or to get involved contact Bay Area Police Watch: (415) 951-4844 Ext. 224

To tell the SF Board of Supervisors to reject the illegal conveyance deal on Shipyard Parcels A and B call your district supervisor and call: Supervisor Sophie Maxwell (415) 554-7670.

To demand that the SF Department of Public Health immediately release the records of hospital intakes before and after the shipyard fire, call Dr. Mitchell Katz (415) 554-2600.