SF RISING: Time for New Majority in San Francisco

San Francisco is a global city, famous for progressive values. Some even consider it a "bubble," a wonderland beyond the reach of corporate and right wing forces. But the dirty secret under the city's progressive image is an economy that creates and exacerbates racial disparity, propels gentrification and displaces whole communities.

And while gentrification has pushed rents higher, wages and opportunities for working class jobs have not kept up. A huge proportion of families in our community are unemployed, under-employed, or so poorly paid that they can barely make the rent each month.

Those who have managed to stay tell stories of bravery and ingenuity, like a 2-year letter-writing war with a relentless landlord; like creating a bunk-bed out of wood scraps to fit a second child into a studio apartment; or an energy-drink-fueled routine of a night shift on top of a day shift on top of an on-call job. These are the stories you can hear.

But these stories are only part of the picture.

On the other end of Mission Street the towering Financial District is home to the headquarters of multi-national corporations, and not far from there are pristine neighborhoods where the owners and managers of these corporations live. According to Forbes magazine, San Francisco has the highest number of billionaires per capital. And California, more billionaires than any state in the country -- almost half of whom live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The gap between these billionaires and people working three jobs to survive has everything to do with race, and has reached new and national heights.

In July, the Pew Research Center reported that median wealth in white households is 20 times that of Black households, and 18 times that of Latino households, and that from 2005 to 2009, wealth fell by 66 percent among Latino households, and by 53 percent among Black households, compared with just 16 percent among white households. Most of this wealth was lost in the housing market, as people defaulted on predatory loans or lost their entry-level jobs, and as a result lost their homes.

The real estate speculators who profited from the housing market crash have managed to avoid both taxation and regulation, while our communities struggle to survive the effects of the crisis caused by the very speculators themselves.

All too often, elected officials in our city and our state echo the stale many times disproven Regan-era idea that wealth will "trickle down" and that tax breaks for the rich benefit working class people. Come budget time, the politicians tell us there's simply not enough money for needed services for low-income communities of color, and offer patronizing advice that we should "tighten our belts."

We need to tax the wealthy, and change local plus state laws that are getting in the way of solving this revenue problem. The problem is not the lack of resources in SF, or California. The problem is that the resources are not equitably distributed.

Finance capitalists, tech developers, and green capitalists compete with each other to control land and resources in the city, knowing that SF serves as their gateway to the rest of the world. Why not hold them to the progressive standards that our city is known for? Why not require them to re-invest in our communities, and be responsible neighbors?

Community groups are often strapped for resources and end up in competition over the scarce resources that trickle down, without the time or infrastructure to weigh in on the political decisions that are creating the conditions they find themselves in. Come election time, this often means entire neighborhoods are easily ignored, and downtown interests call the shots.