More info: "SF Direct Action to Stop the Cuts" [stopthecutsbayarea@gmail.com][stopthecutsbayarea.wordpress.com]. Press Contact: Kim Rohrbach [415-756-2896]
MARCH AND HOUSING TAKEOVER!
Monday July 19th
5:30 pm
16th and Mission BART Station
Please fwd this invitation to friends and allies!
Greetings friends and allies for Budget Justice, coworkers, community organizers, and student activists!
I hope this letter finds you enjoying your summer :)
* Please join us this Monday July 19th at 5:30pm, when Direct Action to Stop the Cuts will be teaming up with allies in the budget justice, homeless, and housing liberation movements to takeover empty housing in an act of protest and defiance of Mayor Newsom's budget cuts to the poor, and as an act of self-determination against institutionalized poverty and homelessness!
** SF Budget Justice Coalition is also having a rally against Newsom's Budget cuts, Monday July 19th at 2pm in front of City Hall!
Their theme is that the Mayor is holding the budget hostage from the people of San Francisco! At risk are meals for seniors, youth services, and other vital programs. He is trying to force concessions from unions and Community Based Organizations and trying to force the Board of Supervisors to take progressive legislation off the ballot for Fall.
thank you, and see you on Monday!
[signed] SF Direct Action to Stop the Cuts! outreach to get more involved or for solidarity please contact us! when we fight we win!
----------------------For Immediate Release----------------------
Creative Housing Liberation: Rally, March & Takeover of Vacant Property In Defense of Housing & Human Rights: Care, Not Cuts!
Monday, July 19th, 2010, 5:30 p.m.
16th & Mission Bart Station (NE corner), San Francisco
Sponsored by Direct Action to Stop the Cuts
On July 19th, as the Board of Supervisors prepare to vote on San Francisco's budget for the coming year, community members will rally in defense of the city's most vulnerable residents. Following the rally, we will hold a brief march to an empty building and re-appropriate the space for its intended purpose: housing.
In San Francisco, an estimated 6,000 to 15,000 residents live on the streets. Yet, less than a thousand emergency shelter beds are available to those in need. 23,000 or more residents wait for housing to open up at deteriorating public facilities (not including those people turned away: the waiting list for public housing is frequently closed). Yet, some 30,000 housing units sit vacant.
At the beginning of each fiscal year, Gavin Newsom threatens to cut funding for housing, health, legal, and other services vital to the working poor and indigent. Without these services, many who remain housed would quickly end up on the street. Others would not long survive.
Like the governor, Mr. Newsom refuses to consider equitable methods of increasing revenues and reducing spending.
Insensible to, or deliberately ignorant of, the suffering experienced by so many San Franciscans, the mayor prefers to issue ultimatums to the Board of Supervisors and behave like a spoiled brat.
In budgetary parlance, "share the pain" is an oft repeated if hypocritical mantra. Nobody can explain why the disenfranchised should embrace the conditions of their further disenfranchisement -- even as fewer and fewer hands grab more and more for themselves, laying human lives and resources to waste.
The mayor's vision for San Francisco? Million-dollar condos and "affordable housing" that most residents can't afford; gutted schools and public facilities; jail bunks and early graves for those who have no place left
to rest but the sidewalks.
We reject the mayor's vision. In a city with such conspicuous wealth, why should the right of the working poor and indigent to live in dignity and in health remain in controversy? An injury to one is an injury to all!
Direct Action to Stop the Cuts was formed in 2009 in response to the mayor's skewed and inhumane budgetary priorities.
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