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Graphic by Diallo Mclinn

"Who are You PEOPLE???"

Calworks Moms protest new fingerprinting program in State Welfare System.

By Scott Clark, PNN staff writer

"You have no right to be here, who are you people?", said Will Lightbourne, director of San Francisco Department of Human Services. This statement was his first attempt to dislodge a small group of protesting mothers and their advocates from his office.

The recent passing of Mother's Day seemed to add considerable weight to an action against the Department of Human Services (DHS). On May 15, 2000, at 1:30pm, a group of about twenty demonstrators met in the small office of POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), 126 Hyde St. in San Francisco. The protestors consisted of Mothers on TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), working poor Mothers, former TANF recipients, Foodstamps recipients, and family welfare advocates.

The reason for the meeting was to plan an action in response to the implementation of a rigorous fingerprinting system for recipients of CalWorks (TANF) and Foodstamps, which was announced by DHS to be taking place this very same day. The main concern with the new fingerprinting system is that DHS will share fingerprint data with other government agencies, such as the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and CPS (Child Protective Services).

The meeting proceeded with a roundtable of introductions in English and Spanish, followed by a few minutes of strategizing and answering questions in the same bilingual fashion. By 2:15pm the group had split into two factions. The groups were about equally sized, one headed off to the office of Will Lightbourne at 170 Otis St., the other to sit in on the regular Monday 2pm Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall.

The conference with Will Lightbourne was brought about with some argument from Will himself. To his understanding, he had done the right thing in an expedient fashion, putting his new fingerprint system to work as quickly and substantially as possible, justifying the departmental outlay of the money it took to purchase the system. In doing this, he was in accordance with state law, which allows counties to implement fingerprinting and share the information with other counties in order to prevent fraud. So, when this collection of families and advocates showed up without an appointment and demanded to meet with him, he did his best to shoo them back out of his personal offices.

They, however, refused to leave. It was unlikely that Mr. Lightbourne would have showed up for an appointment....... even if they had had one. He had a reputation for not showing up when anyone had any complaint at all. And they had come to do some serious complaining.

The mere process of getting to his offices and then getting him to acknowledge their presence had caused the group to expend considerable creative effort. They had bypassed the front desk security by coming in through the parking lot elevators. Up to the eighth floor went the bulk of the procession; the drivers of the three cars they had come in were still parking. By the time that the last two members of the group, Steve Williams and another member of POWER, had arrived upstairs, Mr. Lightbourne had made the escape from his own front office, and was attempting to hide (or maybe just take a deep breath) in the hall bathroom. He might better have picked one with a lock on the door, because Steve found him soon enough. Steve calmly told him "Look, we're here because we need to talk to you, and we're not going away."

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So the two of them headed back to the front office. Once there, Will totally ignored the group, and again attempted avoidance via the connected employees’ offices. The group followed him, asking what the problem was, and why wouldn’t he talk to them. He mumbled something about not having an appointment and having to get back to work. They came back around full circle again to the front area, which included his personal office. He slipped in there and attempted to close the door on them, but instead encountered someone's foot, which kept the door from closing.

Rebecca Vilkommerson of the Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP) responded; "We have every right to be here, and you need to find time right now to talk to us, because we’re not leaving until you do." The group had brought signs denouncing Mr. Lightbourne’s methods in respect to making changes in DHS, not only as regards fingerprinting. They were there to argue with his self-will; he had paid no attention thus far to requests by this same group of people to apply for a waiver from the state. This waiver would allow for delaying fingerprint requirements for up to two years. He had also ignored the waivers that had been granted or were being requested by a number of surrounding counties in Northern California.

These failings were pointed out to him again after he had led his opponents into the building auditorium to proceed with their griefs. They hung their signs on the walls and took to the front of the room, while he took a front and center seat, a wary or weary-looking audience of one. He listened to them mostly in silence. At one point in the discourse he started to try to respond to some things being said by a mother with her toddler-aged daughter; he got as far as "But, but, but...", before the mom resumed speaking; then she was cut off by her baby repeating, "buh, buh, buh". Everybody but Will thought this was pretty funny.

To follow up on the action at 170 Otis St., this group was to rendezvous with its other half, the complainants who were to present these same problems to City Hall. The Supervisors meeting had been dragging along on some land use issues, and had not yet come to the portion of the agenda allowing for public comment. This situation turned the day’s momentum to an advantage.

The protestors who had just arrived from Otis St., when they got to the City Hall building, went first to the office of Tom Ammiano, who has been the City’s #1 responsive ally when it comes to issues of family and immigrant rights. There, they found Brad Benson, Tom’s assistant. They explained their situation, and what had happened at DHS. Brad agreed to work with them to write up a resolution for presentation to the Board of Supervisors. They gathered the rest of their consort from the Board conference room, and Brad seated everybody comfortably in Tom’s spacious office. He addressed the group briefly, letting them know he was out to help them get this situation dealt with today in an agreeable fashion. There were two lawyers present within the group; Julia Greenfield from the Lawyer’s Committee, and Eve Stotland from Bay Area Legal Aid. They, together with a CalWorks mom (and member of POWER) and Brad, collaborated to get the resolution typed in legal language for presentation to the Board. When it was typed and printed, the group in Tom’s office listened to it read, and voted, approving it unanimously. The resolution was for the Board to order the DHS to delay fingerprinting, and to apply for a waiver from the state until such a time as controls could be implemented, disallowing the DHS from sharing such information with other unapproved agencies, either Federal or State.

The lateness of the afternoon, however, did not allow for it to be brought before the Board on that day so a promise was garnered from Brad, and in Tom Ammiano’s name, to present it to the Board at the next regular meeting of the board. The group left the scene happily, looking as if Mother's Day had been extended an extra day.

For more information call POWER at (415)776-9379 or HPP at 546-6756.

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