From: mim@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Date: 26 Dec 92 12:08 PST
Subject: San Fran:Suicide or Revolution?
Nf-ID: #N:cmNewB1w165w@nyxfer.uucp:601201518:000:6561
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!mim    Dec 26 12:08:00 1992


Subject: San Fran:Suicide or Revolution?
From: nyxfer!mim (Maoist Intl'ist Mvmnt)

 
Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
 
MIM Notes, Issue 71: December, 1992


Suicide or revolution?

by a comrade

On the night of October 9, Mr. and Mrs. David Groves, two white
truckers from Seattle, created a violent incident at 26th & Treat
Streets near Bernal Dwellings housing project in San Francisco.
The Groves drove their huge tractor-trailor into the narrow
intersection and side-swiped several parked cars belonging to
residents of the neighborhood. People gathered as David Groves,
who had been riding shotgun, stepped out of the truck and directed
his wife in backing up. Several more parked vehicles were hit by
the truck.

When the people asked him to stop destroying their cars, David
Groves reached into the truck cab, grabbed a baseball bat and
said, "I'm gonna kill you niggers!" The people defended themselves
as they disarmed and beat up David Groves. Several crates of his
cargo of fish were put on the sidewalk as collateral for damage
done to the vehicles.

Latonia Murdock, President of the Bernal Dwellings Tenant's
Association, called an ambulance to the scene. Murdock witnessed a
man break up the punishment of Groves and saw the man pick up and
give Mrs. Groves a wedding ring she had dropped.

When the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) arrived Groves was
taken away and treated for minor injuries. His truck was towed for
safe keeping. SFPD officers told bystanders they could take the
cartons of fish home since, otherwise, the fish would spoil. Rich
and poor alike carted off the fish.

But on October 10, the SFPD swooped down on Bernal Dwellings and
forcibly entered apartments without search warrants. The contents
of many apartments were ripped apart and anybody with fish in
their refrigerator was held for interrogation. A number of men
were arrested and later released without charges. Police also
towed tenants' cars from legal parking spaces.

Over the next several days the project was repeatedly attacked by
police motorcycle and tac squads in riot gear.  A 13-year-old girl
playing "Hide The Belt" in the courtyard was handcuffed and patted
down by male police who accused her of hiding drugs in the
sandbox. A young boy was thrown to the ground and handcuffed with
police guns aimed at his head. Both were later released.

The San Francisco Public Housing Authority then commenced an
illegal campaign to evict a women and her two infants as a show of
administrative power and as a warning to the people to keep their
mouths shut about the real deal at Bernal Dwellings. As if having
her belongings destroyed by police was not enough, Housing has
also illegally tampered with the woman's AFDC payments.

Television and print media from all over Northern California
descended on Bernal Dwellings like hungry vultures. The media
claimed that the Groves were only trying to turn their truck
around when a "gang" of Black men pulled them from the truck, beat
them, took Mrs. Grove's wedding ring and stole boxes of crab,
lobster and fish. Actually, there were no crabs or lobsters --
only frozen fish.

Truckers following the Grove's route have any number of
turn-arounds available to them without threading their way into a
narrow intersection next to the only housing project in the area.
But truckers ITAL have END been known to visit the intersection
attempting to buy contraband.

The November elections

Reporters and the City government used this pre-election incident
to divide the residents of Bernal Dwellings from their more
affluent neighbors and to set white against Black. The racist
media claimed that a doll and a pair of tennis shoes that some
kids tossed up on a project telephone wire several years ago are a
"warning to whites" not to enter the area.

The City rewarded the Groves with a large sum of money, and the
truckers were allowed to leave San Francisco immediately without
being charged for reckless driving or assault. The police gave the
abandoned fish to the people and then used possession of the fish
as an excuse to terrorize and arrest the people -- and their
children -- in their homes. During another recent election, the
SFPD landed a helicopter on the roof of a building at Bernal
Dwellings to raid the project from the sky.

A powerful publicity campaign was mounted to duplicate the lies
and hysteria manufactured around the punishment of trucker
Reginald Denny during the May rebellion in Los Angeles. On
November 3, San Francisco voters approved a reactionary
ballot-measure outlawing "aggressive panhandling." The City is
also creating public opinion to tear down the project's basketball
court in retaliation for Groves and to further demoralize the
residents.

Bernal Dwellings is a tiny place completely surrounded by
single-family homes and market-rate apartments. Its buildings and
grounds have been allowed to fall into unspeakable disrepair by
the Housing Authority because the Authority wants the residents to
vacate their homes. A multi-million dollar "rehabilitation" of
Bernal Dwellings is planned and the tenants stand in the way of
neighborhood gentrification and profit-taking for the band of
thieves, grifters, land speculators and criminal bureaucrats
calling themselves San Francisco City Hall.

Similar scenes are being played out all across Clinton's Amerika
as the Department of Housing and Urban Development continues to
turn "subsidized" land-banked properties over to the control of
private capitalists -- such as Catholic Charities and an army of
"non-profit community development corporations."

In San Francisco, Black people have been burned out, "relocated"
and driven from the neighborhoods as the rich seize and "gentrify"
land that belongs to the Black Nation. The Black population of San
Francisco has been dropping at a rate of 2.5% every five years
since 1975.(1)

Notes:

1. "San Francisco Master Plan," SF Dept. of City Planning and
Association of Bay Area Governments 1989.

                              -30- 

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