https://foundsf.org/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Libby&feedformat=atomFoundSF - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T13:22:56ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.39.1https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=George_Gordon&diff=21006George Gordon2013-10-23T14:54:51Z<p>Libby: a minor tweak</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Libby Ingalls''<br />
<br />
George Gordon (1818-1869) was a flamboyant speculator and entrepreneur of the early [[GOLD RUSH 1848|Gold Rush]] days. Astute businessman and relentless schemer, he had an eye for opportunities and a knack for profitmaking, while always seeking the greater good for San Francisco. In an era of lawlessness and greed, he was remarkably honest, civic-minded and public-spirited. Upon his death, the many eulogies praised him for his major contributions to the look and economy of San Francisco. <br />
<br />
Born in London, Gordon was already a free-spirited entrepreneur by his mid-twenties, listed in registries as a broker of tea and guano. In 1847, he emigrated to New York, changed his name from George Cummings to George Gordon, and listed himself as an engineer, real estate broker, chemist, geologist, and contractor, with no mention of tea. One of many mysteries surrounding Gordon is why he emigrated and changed his name. Perhaps, it is thought, he had been smuggling tea in London. <br />
<br />
On Dec. 5, 1848 President Polk confirmed rumors of the discovery of gold in California. Within two weeks, Gordon had founded "Gordon’s California Association," one of 47 such companies organized in New York to take people to the gold fields, providing passage, provisions and mining machinery. Most such companies, Gordon’s included, had no idea what they were getting into. Consequently they packed inadequate provisions and useless equipment, and broke up before or upon arrival in San Francisco. <br />
<br />
Gordon sent two ships, the first by Cape Horn, the second to Nicaragua, crossing by land and picking up another ship on the Pacific coast. Both ran out of provisions, were delayed by many weeks, and came near mutiny. Gordon, with his wife Elizabeth and young daughter Nellie, went on the second ship via Nicaragua. Taking eight months under atrocious conditions, instead of the advertised comfortable 60 days, it is remarkable he wasn’t thrown overboard. Quite the contrary, four years later he held a reunion and 100 people came. The reunions continued for the next 34 years. <br />
<br />
This voyage was also the start of his fortune in California, for while stuck in Nicaragua Gordon purchased as much wood as he could, suspecting there would be great demand for building material in San Francisco. His risk paid off, and upon arriving in San Francisco he made several thousand dollars to start his new life. With his unrelenting energy and risk-taking speculation, he viewed the bustling tent city in the San Francisco sand dunes as his gold field, and settled in.<br />
<br />
Gordon continued to deal in lumber, began wharf building, and then started selling prefabricated buildings, including a church that would seat 1,100 people and a 32-room hotel. In 1850, Gordon built Harrison Wharf, extending over 1,000 feet into the Bay through the shallow Yerba Buena Cove so ships could be unloaded directly.<br />
<br />
As the city of wood grew, so did the incidence of fire, with six devastating ones from December 1849 to June 1851. While these kept up the demand for lumber, they also got Gordon thinking about a new enterprise: fireproof buildings. He began importing pre-fabricated iron houses from London and the East Coast, and in 1851 just after the 6th fire, he built “George Gordon’s Block of Iron Stores,” a city block of 2-story iron buildings, fireproof, complete with water tank and watchman. Seeing iron as the way of the future, he sold his lumber business, and in 1852 with Edward Steen, engineer and inventor, incorporated the Vulcan Iron Works, grandiose and staggering in its range of activities and ambition. They offered, or built, iron doors, shutters, mill and farm machinery, steam engines, bridges, bank vaults, and more, seemingly anything needed. <br />
<br />
At the same time the city topography was changing by leveling hills and filling wetlands. New streets were constructed, with the result that people wanted to move their houses. This time, Gordon’s partner Edward Steen answered the call and developed the first patent for raising houses using a hydraulic press, advertised as capable of lifting 4,000 -5,000 tons.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Soma1$south-park-1865-east.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''South Park, 1865: looking northeast from 3rd Street (up Rincon Hill)'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library (AAA-7039)'' <br />
<br />
Early in 1852 George Gordon started buying property south of Market, outside the business district, an investment that would lead to the development of [[SOUTH PARK|South Park]]. By 1854 he had acquired 12 acres on the south side of Rincon Hill, enough for his vision of an elegant residential development of 68 building lots. He printed an 8-page prospectus of his plan for “ornamental grounds and building lots on the plan of the London Squares, Ovals and Crescents, or of St. John’s Park or Union Square in New York.” Houses would be of brick or stone, designed by Gordon H. Goddard, Esq., architect of the Holland Park Estate in the West End of London. The development was to be two crescents divided by Center Street, most houses having two stories on a British design with English-style basements for a dining room, kitchen, servant’s quarters and pantries. Stables and coachman’s quarters were in separate buildings in the rear, and an oval ornamental garden in the center surrounded by an elegant iron fence.<br />
<br />
By the end of 1854, 17 stately residences were completed, praised in a ''San Francisco Herald'' editorial for their handsome improvement to the city. Gordon continued to sell lots in spite of an economic depression from decreasing yields of gold. Throughout the later1850s and 1860s Rincon Hill and South Park were the stylish area of the city, center of fashion and address of the social elite, as well as the scions of business, banking, politics, mining, and railway and steamships companies. <br />
<br />
The particular appeal of South Park was that it was strictly residential, free of saloons and gambling halls, the houses were fire proof, and it provided an attractive neighborly community. <br />
<br />
All changed in 1869 when [[2nd St. Cut|Second Street]] was cut, making the area more accessible to less affluent people and altering the character. The invention of the cable car in 1873 allowed easy access to Nob Hill, and the fashionable South Park dwellers began moving north.<br />
<br />
[[Image:8th-and-Harrison-1850s.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''The "Hewes Steam Paddy Works" at left side of photo shows how the sand dunes that once dominated the South of Market were leveled, filling in the once ubiquitous [[Botanical Reminiscences, 1891|fresh water ponds]]. 'Paddy' refers derogatorily to the Irish laborers who were replaced by the steam shovel. The building is Gordon's Sugar Works at 8th and Harrison.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Private Collection, San Francisco, CA''<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Gordon had already started losing interest, perhaps realizing it was not going to bring great wealth, and began thinking about his next great venture. San Francisco of the 1850s was the perfect place for a dreamer such as Gordon, itself a place of grandiose vision. So in 1856 Gordon decided to establish the first sugar refinery in California, one capable of supplying all the needs of the Pacific Coast. With capital obtained from New York, he built a factory of brick, five stories high, on the NW corner of Harrison and Price (now Eighth St.). The machinery was sent from the East Coast, and the raw sugar from Manila and Batavia (Java). By February 1857 the refinery was in full operation providing high quality sugar. Soon he was importing raw sugar from Siam, China, Formosa, and Mexico to meet the demand. By 1860 the San Francisco Sugar Refinery was one of the city’s most important businesses. <br />
<br />
With the refinery flourishing, the early 1860s was a period of affluence for Gordon. On trips to New York for refinery business he purchased fine clothing, jewelry and glassware. Receipts from San Francisco show purchases of furniture, carpets, fine wine, saddles and books, among other luxury items. While obviously enjoying the high life, he still rose above it, as both a civic and philanthropic leader, with memberships in the YMCA, Chamber of Commerce, and St. Andrew’s Society, as well as leadership roles on numerous committees for balls and benefits for social causes. <br />
<br />
In 1861 Congress enacted an income tax, openly revealing Gordon’s place among the wealthy elite. As such, he set out to create an elaborate country estate, selecting Santa Clara for its convenience to the railway line from San Francisco. He purchased 572 acres, designed the house himself, and assumed a new persona of English gentleman farmer. He named the estate Mayfield Grange, and moved there permanently in 1864. His sumptuous house parties were the talk of San Francisco. <br />
<br />
In addition to his domestic, entrepreneurial and civic activities, Gordon was also an inveterate writer of pamphlets and letters-to-the-editor. Subjects included safety at sea, value of immigration, advantages of an overland mail route, the inequality of taxation, the validity of titles to mining rights, and pleas for peace before the Civil War. Two particularly controversial issues he wrote strongly against were the [[Vigilante Committees|Second Vigilance Committee]], and the Bulkhead Project, in which a private company proposed building a sea wall in exchange for exclusive rights of wharf usage and anchorage. In his stance against the Second Vigilance Committee in 1856, he was not afraid to publicize his position, distinctly unpopular at the time, writing a long, well balanced letter to the ''Chronicle'', focusing on the sacredness of the Constitution and importance of rule by law. His patriotism and belief in the US government were steadfast; yet he never became a US citizen. <br />
<br />
Gordon’s health began to fail during a trip to Europe in 1865-1867 while trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain secretive information on European methods of sugar refining. He had a short-lived recovery back in San Francisco. But then in February 1869, his beloved daughter Nellie eloped with a man Gordon despised, and three months later he died, of a broken heart, they said. <br />
<br />
The obituaries and eulogies for George Gordon were prodigious, and the praise overwhelming. They extolled his wisdom, business acumen, civic leadership, and public spirit. He was an exceptional person at a time of single-minded moneymaking, in his commitment to the public good and highest civic ideals. <br />
<br />
Gordon’s death marked the beginning of the rapid downfall of his family and empire. Nellie separated from her husband in 1872, then died of typhoid fever two years later. His wife Elizabeth died soon thereafter at age 49. The estate became embroiled in lawsuits and vague codicils, but most went to Elizabeth’s brother John Clark, who himself died five years later. Clark’s widow sold Mayfield Grange to Gov. Leland Stanford, who renamed it Palo Alto. He increased the size of the estate, and went on to construct the University, opened in 1891, in memory of his deceased son. The house was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1906, was repaired, and later served as the Stanford Children’s Convalescent Hospital. It was finally demolished in disrepair in 1965. The sugar refinery continued for a few years, gradually declining until 1874 when Claus Spreckels’ California Sugar Refinery gained the monopoly of the market. South Park became a working class neighborhood as apartment buildings replaced the mansions and townhouses. It burned in the 1906 fire, was rebuilt around the central oval park, and is today once again thriving as the home to design and technology companies.<br />
<br />
Based on source: ''A San Francisco Scandal: The California of George Gordon, Forty-niner, Pioneer, and builder of South Park in San Francisco'', by Albert Shumate<br />
<br />
[[Category:1840s]] [[Category:1850s]] [[Category:1860s]] [[Category:1870s]] [[category:Early SF]] [[category:Famous characters]] [[category:Gold Rush]] [[category:Neighborhood/Geography]] [[category:Power and Money]] [[category:Shoreline]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=SOUTH_PARK&diff=21002SOUTH PARK2013-10-22T23:57:19Z<p>Libby: I added three paragraphs to fill in details of the 1850s and 1860s.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = arial light> <font color = maroon> <font size = 3>Unfinished History</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''courtesy Northern California Coalition on Immigrant Rights''<br />
<br />
[[Image:soma1$south-park-1865-east.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''South Park, 1865: looking northeast from 3rd Street (up Rincon Hill)''' <br />
<br />
''Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library''<br />
<br />
South Park was created by British immigrant [[George Gordon|George Gordon]]. Upon his arrival in San Francisco, Gordon became a lumber dealer and began to build wharves. He established one of San Francisco's first iron foundries and built California's first successful sugar refinery. Gordon designed South Park in four sections according to the English crescent formation. The area was intended exclusively for private dwellings and, along with Rincon Hill, was one of San Francisco's first elite areas.<br />
<br />
Gordon chose this area a mile south of the business district because it was relatively flat and free of sand dunes. He began purchasing lots in 1852 with the intent of creating an elegant residential area on the plan of one of London’s stylish squares or crescents. It would be free of saloons, gambling halls, stores and warehouses, all noisy and undesirable intrusions. Noted British architect George H. Goddard, Esq. was selected for the job. Construction began in 1854, with the first quarter completed by the end of that year. The houses were of brick, covered in stucco to look like stone. Most had two stories for the parlors and five bedrooms, with a large English-style basement below for the kitchen, dining room, pantries, and servants’ quarters. The stables and coachman’s quarters were in a separate building in the rear<br />
<br />
A main feature of the development was the large oval private garden in the center, 550 ft. by 75 ft., elaborately landscaped with hundreds of young trees and shrubs, accented with colorful flowers, and all enclosed by an ornamental iron fence. <br />
<br />
Advertisements of the time show Goddard sold unbuilt lots, as well as partially and fully completed houses. Sales slowed during the economic depression of 1855-1857, due to the diminishing returns from the gold fields, and Gordon never did make the large profits he had initially expected. Nevertheless, wealthy and prominent San Franciscans continued to move to South Park throughout the 1850s and 1860s, making it home to the city’s powerful elite. Business owners, company presidents, politicians, fashionable society, all enjoyed the attractive neighborly community, removed from the noisy and fire-prone downtown. Regular transport service on a horse-drawn omnibus, along with the convenience of a line of stores nearby on Third Street added to its appeal.<br />
<br />
[[Image:soma1$south-park-1865-east-2.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Horse Drawn Trolley at South Park, 1865; 3rd Street in foreground.''' <br />
<br />
''Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library''<br />
<br />
This neighborhood, however, became surrounded by industrial buildings and lost its upper-class character as warehouses and hospitals blocked the prized view. The [[2nd St. Cut| cut]] made by the creation of Second Street in 1868 was another major factor in reducing land values. By the 1870s, the well-to-do had abandoned South Park and moved to Nob Hill, where access was limited and the views spectacular. As the wealthy and middle classes left South Park, working-class people began to move in, to live closer to the shipping docks and warehouses where they worked. Japanese immigrants in the late 1800s also settled in this area. Rebuilding after the earthquake and fire in 1906 definitively sealed its future as a working class neighborhood.<br />
<br />
Other communities who lived in this neighborhood were the Japanese, Greeks, and the Irish, many of whom were displaced after the 1906 earthquake/fire. African Americans also lived in the area during the 1950s and 60s after coming to find work in San Francisco during World War II. Most African Americans were [[RESIDENTIAL vs. TOURIST HOTELS | renters]] and were forced out in the 1980s when South Park started to become a trendy, artsy neighborhood. South Park has since become, once again, a ''chic'' neighborhood for middle and upper-class San Franciscans, often referred to as the heart of "Multimedia Gulch."<br />
<br />
<br />
[[South Park 1929 and 1955|South Park and Rincon Hill continues]]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[South Park reference |Prev. Document]] [[South Park 1929 and 1955 |Next Document]]<br />
<br />
[[category:SOMA]] [[category:1860s]] [[category:1870s]] [[category:1890s]] [[category:1900s]] [[category:earthquakes]] [[category:Japanese]] [[category:African-American]] [[category:English]] [[category:Greek]] [[category:Irish]] [[category:1950s]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:1990s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=George_Gordon&diff=20966George Gordon2013-10-21T15:28:58Z<p>Libby: Solved the red-highlighted link problem!</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Libby Ingalls''<br />
<br />
George Gordon (1818-1869) was a flamboyant speculator and entrepreneur of the early [[GOLD RUSH 1848|Gold Rush]] days. Astute businessman and relentless schemer, he had an eye for opportunities and a knack for profitmaking, while always seeking the greater good for San Francisco. In an era of lawlessness and greed, he was remarkably honest, civic-minded and public-spirited. Upon his death, the many eulogies praised him for his major contributions to the look and economy of San Francisco. <br />
<br />
Born in London, Gordon was already a free-spirited entrepreneur by his mid-twenties, listed in registries as a broker of tea and guano. In 1847, he emigrated to New York, changed his name from George Cummings to George Gordon, and listed himself as an engineer, real estate broker, chemist, geologist, and contractor, with no mention of tea. One of many mysteries surrounding Gordon is why he emigrated and changed his name. Perhaps, it is thought, he had been smuggling tea in London. <br />
<br />
On Dec. 5, 1848 President Polk confirmed rumors of the discovery of gold in California. Within two weeks, Gordon had founded "Gordon’s California Association," one of 47 such companies organized in New York to take people to the gold fields, providing passage, provisions and mining machinery. Most such companies, Gordon’s included, had no idea what they were getting into. Consequently they packed inadequate provisions and useless equipment, and broke up before or upon arrival in San Francisco. <br />
<br />
Gordon sent two ships, the first by Cape Horn, the second to Nicaragua, crossing by land and picking up another ship on the Pacific coast. Both ran out of provisions, were delayed by many weeks, and came near mutiny. Gordon, with his wife Elizabeth and young daughter Nellie, went on the second ship via Nicaragua. Taking eight months under atrocious conditions, instead of the advertised comfortable 60 days, it is remarkable he wasn’t thrown overboard. Quite the contrary, four years later he held a reunion and 100 people came. The reunions continued for the next 34 years. <br />
<br />
This voyage was also the start of his fortune in California, for while stuck in Nicaragua Gordon purchased as much wood as he could, suspecting there would be great demand for building material in San Francisco. His risk paid off, and upon arriving in San Francisco he made several thousand dollars to start his new life. With his unrelenting energy and risk-taking speculation, he viewed the bustling tent city in the San Francisco sand dunes as his gold field, and settled in.<br />
<br />
Gordon continued to deal in lumber, began wharf building, and then started selling prefabricated buildings, including a church that would seat 1,100 people and a 32-room hotel. In 1850, Gordon built Harrison Wharf, extending over 1,000 feet into the Bay through the shallow Yerba Buena Cove so ships could be unloaded directly.<br />
<br />
As the city of wood grew, so did the incidence of fire, with six devastating ones from December 1849 to June 1851. While these kept up the demand for lumber, they also got Gordon thinking about a new enterprise: fireproof buildings. He began importing pre-fabricated iron houses from London and the East Coast, and in 1851 just after the 6th fire, he built “George Gordon’s Block of Iron Stores,” a city block of 2-story iron buildings, fireproof, complete with water tank and watchman. Seeing iron as the way of the future, he sold his lumber business, and in 1852 with Edward Steen, engineer and inventor, incorporated the Vulcan Iron Works, grandiose and staggering in its range of activities and ambition. They offered, or built, iron doors, shutters, mill and farm machinery, steam engines, bridges, bank vaults, and more, seemingly anything needed. <br />
<br />
At the same time the city topography was changing by leveling hills and filling wetlands. New streets were constructed, with the result that people wanted to move their houses. This time, Gordon’s partner Edward Steen answered the call and developed the first patent for raising houses using a hydraulic press, advertised as capable of lifting 4,000 -5,000 tons.<br />
<br />
Early in 1852 George Gordon started buying property south of Market, outside the business district, an investment that would lead to the development of [[SOUTH PARK|South Park]]. By 1854 he had acquired 12 acres on the south side of Rincon Hill, enough for his vision of an elegant residential development of 68 building lots. He printed an 8-page prospectus of his plan for “ornamental grounds and building lots on the plan of the London Squares, Ovals and Crescents, or of St. John’s Park or Union Square in New York.” Houses would be of brick or stone, designed by Gordon H. Goddard, Esq., architect of the Holland Park Estate in the West End of London. The development was to be two crescents divided by Center Street, most houses having two stories on a British design with English-style basements for a dining room, kitchen, servant’s quarters and pantries. Stables and coachman’s quarters were in separate buildings in the rear, an oval ornamental garden in the center, and all surrounded by an elegant iron fence.<br />
<br />
By the end of 1854, 17 stately residences were completed, praised in a ''San Francisco Herald'' editorial for their handsome improvement to the city. Gordon continued to sell lots in spite of an economic depression from decreasing yields of gold. Throughout the later1850s and 1860s Rincon Hill and South Park were the stylish area of the city, center of fashion and address of the social elite, as well as the scions of business, banking, politics, mining, and railway and steamships companies. <br />
<br />
The particular appeal of South Park was that it was strictly residential, free of saloons and gambling halls, the houses were fire proof, and it provided an attractive neighborly community. <br />
<br />
All changed in 1869 when [[2nd St. Cut|Second Street]] was cut, making the area more accessible to less affluent people and altering the character. The invention of the cable car in 1873 allowed easy access to Nob Hill, and the fashionable South Park dwellers began moving north.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Gordon had already started losing interest, perhaps realizing it was not going to bring great wealth, and began thinking about his next great venture. San Francisco of the 1850s was the perfect place for a dreamer such as Gordon, itself a place of grandiose vision. So in 1856 Gordon decided to establish the first sugar refinery in California, one capable of supplying all the needs of the Pacific Coast. With capital obtained from New York, he built a factory of brick, five stories high, on the NW corner of Harrison and Price (now Eighth St.). The machinery was sent from the East Coast, and the raw sugar from Manila and Batavia (Java). By February 1857 the refinery was in full operation providing high quality sugar. Soon he was importing raw sugar from Siam, China, Formosa, and Mexico to meet the demand. By 1860 the San Francisco Sugar Refinery was one of the city’s most important businesses. <br />
<br />
With the refinery flourishing, the early 1860s was a period of affluence for Gordon. On trips to New York for refinery business he purchased fine clothing, jewelry and glassware. Receipts from San Francisco show purchases of furniture, carpets, fine wine, saddles and books, among other luxury items. While obviously enjoying the high life, he still rose above it, as both a civic and philanthropic leader, with memberships in the YMCA, Chamber of Commerce, and St. Andrew’s Society, as well as leadership roles on numerous committees for balls and benefits for social causes. <br />
<br />
In 1861 Congress enacted an income tax, openly revealing Gordon’s place among the wealthy elite. As such, he set out to create an elaborate country estate, selecting Santa Clara for its convenience to the railway line from San Francisco. He purchased 572 acres, designed the house himself, and assumed a new persona of English gentleman farmer. He named the estate Mayfield Grange, and moved there permanently in 1864. His sumptuous house parties were the talk of San Francisco. <br />
<br />
In addition to his domestic, entrepreneurial and civic activities, Gordon was also an inveterate writer of pamphlets and letters-to-the-editor. Subjects included safety at sea, value of immigration, advantages of an overland mail route, the inequality of taxation, the validity of titles to mining rights, and pleas for peace before the Civil War. Two particularly controversial issues he wrote strongly against were the [[Vigilante Committees|Second Vigilance Committee]], and the Bulkhead Project, in which a private company proposed building a sea wall in exchange for exclusive rights of wharf usage and anchorage. In his stance against the Second Vigilance Committee in 1856, he was not afraid to publicize his position, distinctly unpopular at the time, writing a long, well balanced letter to the ''Chronicle'', focusing on the sacredness of the Constitution and importance of rule by law. His patriotism and belief in the US government were steadfast; yet he never became a US citizen. <br />
<br />
Gordon’s health began to fail during a trip to Europe in 1865-1867 while trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain secretive information on European methods of sugar refining. He had a short-lived recovery back in San Francisco. But then in February 1869, his beloved daughter Nellie eloped with a man Gordon despised, and three months later he died, of a broken heart, they said. <br />
<br />
The obituaries and eulogies for George Gordon were prodigious, and the praise overwhelming. They extolled his wisdom, business acumen, civic leadership, and public spirit. He was an exceptional person at a time of single-minded moneymaking, in his commitment to the public good and highest civic ideals. <br />
<br />
Gordon’s death marked the beginning of the rapid downfall of his family and empire. Nellie separated from her husband in 1872, then died of typhoid fever two years later. His wife Elizabeth died soon thereafter at age 49. The estate became embroiled in lawsuits and vague codicils, but most went to Elizabeth’s brother John Clark, who himself died five years later. Clark’s widow sold Mayfield Grange to Gov. Leland Stanford, who renamed it Palo Alto. He increased the size of the estate, and went on to construct the University, opened in 1891, in memory of his deceased son. The house was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1906, was repaired, and later served as the Stanford Children’s Convalescent Hospital. It was finally demolished in disrepair in 1965. The sugar refinery continued for a few years, gradually declining until 1874 when Claus Spreckels’ California Sugar Refinery gained the monopoly of the market. South Park became a working class neighborhood as apartment buildings replaced the mansions and townhouses. It burned in the 1906 fire, was rebuilt around the central oval park, and is today once again thriving as the home to design and technology companies.<br />
<br />
Source: ''A San Francisco Scandal: The California of George Gordon, Forty-niner, Pioneer, and builder of South Park in San Francisco'', by Albert Shumate<br />
<br />
[[Category:1840s]] [[Category:1850s]] [[Category:1860s]] [[Category:1870s]] [[category:Early SF]] [[category:Famous characters]] [[category:Fire]] [[category:Gold Rush]] [[category:Neighborhood/Geography]] [[category:Power and Money]] [[category:Shoreline]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=George_Gordon&diff=20965George Gordon2013-10-20T00:32:15Z<p>Libby: I'm not sure why some links are red and some blue, but am thinking I had this question before. You had mentioned a possible supplementary essay on South Park, but I see there is already one.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Libby Ingalls''<br />
<br />
George Gordon (1818-1869) was a flamboyant speculator and entrepreneur of the early [[Gold Rush 1848|gold rush]] days. Astute businessman and relentless schemer, he had an eye for opportunities and a knack for profitmaking, while always seeking the greater good for San Francisco. In an era of lawlessness and greed, he was remarkably honest, civic-minded and public-spirited. Upon his death, the many eulogies praised him for his major contributions to the look and economy of San Francisco. <br />
<br />
Born in London, Gordon was already a free-spirited entrepreneur by his mid-twenties, listed in registries as a broker of tea and guano. In 1847, he emigrated to New York, changed his name from George Cummings to George Gordon, and listed himself as an engineer, real estate broker, chemist, geologist, and contractor, with no mention of tea. One of many mysteries surrounding Gordon is why he emigrated and changed his name. Perhaps, it is thought, he had been smuggling tea in London. <br />
<br />
On Dec. 5, 1848 President Polk confirmed rumors of the discovery of gold in California. Within two weeks, Gordon had founded "Gordon’s California Association," one of 47 such companies organized in New York to take people to the gold fields, providing passage, provisions and mining machinery. Most such companies, Gordon’s included, had no idea what they were getting into. Consequently they packed inadequate provisions and useless equipment, and broke up before or upon arrival in San Francisco. <br />
<br />
Gordon sent two ships, the first by Cape Horn, the second to Nicaragua, crossing by land and picking up another ship on the Pacific coast. Both ran out of provisions, were delayed by many weeks, and came near mutiny. Gordon, with his wife Elizabeth and young daughter Nellie, went on the second ship via Nicaragua. Taking eight months under atrocious conditions, instead of the advertised comfortable 60 days, it is remarkable he wasn’t thrown overboard. Quite the contrary, four years later he held a reunion and 100 people came. The reunions continued for the next 34 years. <br />
<br />
This voyage was also the start of his fortune in California, for while stuck in Nicaragua Gordon purchased as much wood as he could, suspecting there would be great demand for building material in San Francisco. His risk paid off, and upon arriving in San Francisco he made several thousand dollars to start his new life. With his unrelenting energy and risk-taking speculation, he viewed the bustling tent city in the San Francisco sand dunes as his gold field, and settled in.<br />
<br />
Gordon continued to deal in lumber, began wharf building, and then started selling prefabricated buildings, including a church that would seat 1,100 people and a 32-room hotel. In 1850, Gordon built Harrison Wharf, extending over 1,000 feet into the Bay through the shallow Yerba Buena Cove so ships could be unloaded directly.<br />
<br />
As the city of wood grew, so did the incidence of fire, with six devastating ones from December 1849 to June 1851. While these kept up the demand for lumber, they also got Gordon thinking about a new enterprise: fireproof buildings. He began importing pre-fabricated iron houses from London and the East Coast, and in 1851 just after the 6th fire, he built “George Gordon’s Block of Iron Stores,” a city block of 2-story iron buildings, fireproof, complete with water tank and watchman. Seeing iron as the way of the future, he sold his lumber business, and in 1852 with Edward Steen, engineer and inventor, incorporated the Vulcan Iron Works, grandiose and staggering in its range of activities and ambition. They offered, or built, iron doors, shutters, mill and farm machinery, steam engines, bridges, bank vaults, and more, seemingly anything needed. <br />
<br />
At the same time the city topography was changing by leveling hills and filling wetlands. New streets were constructed, with the result that people wanted to move their houses. This time, Gordon’s partner Edward Steen answered the call and developed the first patent for raising houses using a hydraulic press, advertised as capable of lifting 4,000 -5,000 tons.<br />
<br />
Early in 1852 George Gordon started buying property south of Market, outside the business district, an investment that would lead to the development of [[South Park|South Park]]. By 1854 he had acquired 12 acres on the south side of Rincon Hill, enough for his vision of an elegant residential development of 68 building lots. He printed an 8-page prospectus of his plan for “ornamental grounds and building lots on the plan of the London Squares, Ovals and Crescents, or of St. John’s Park or Union Square in New York.” Houses would be of brick or stone, designed by Gordon H. Goddard, Esq., architect of the Holland Park Estate in the West End of London. The development was to be two crescents divided by Center Street, most houses having two stories on a British design with English-style basements for a dining room, kitchen, servant’s quarters and pantries. Stables and coachman’s quarters were in separate buildings in the rear, an oval ornamental garden in the center, and all surrounded by an elegant iron fence.<br />
<br />
By the end of 1854, 17 stately residences were completed, praised in a ''San Francisco Herald'' editorial for their handsome improvement to the city. Gordon continued to sell lots in spite of an economic depression from decreasing yields of gold. Throughout the later1850s and 1860s Rincon Hill and South Park were the stylish area of the city, center of fashion and address of the social elite, as well as the scions of business, banking, politics, mining, and railway and steamships companies. <br />
<br />
The particular appeal of South Park was that it was strictly residential, free of saloons and gambling halls, the houses were fire proof, and it provided an attractive neighborly community. <br />
<br />
All changed in 1869 when [[2nd St. Cut|Second Street]] was cut, making the area more accessible to less affluent people and altering the character. The invention of the cable car in 1873 allowed easy access to Nob Hill, and the fashionable South Park dwellers began moving north.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Gordon had already started losing interest, perhaps realizing it was not going to bring great wealth, and began thinking about his next great venture. San Francisco of the 1850s was the perfect place for a dreamer such as Gordon, itself a place of grandiose vision. So in 1856 Gordon decided to establish the first sugar refinery in California, one capable of supplying all the needs of the Pacific Coast. With capital obtained from New York, he built a factory of brick, five stories high, on the NW corner of Harrison and Price (now Eighth St.). The machinery was sent from the East Coast, and the raw sugar from Manila and Batavia (Java). By February 1857 the refinery was in full operation providing high quality sugar. Soon he was importing raw sugar from Siam, China, Formosa, and Mexico to meet the demand. By 1860 the San Francisco Sugar Refinery was one of the city’s most important businesses. <br />
<br />
With the refinery flourishing, the early 1860s was a period of affluence for Gordon. On trips to New York for refinery business he purchased fine clothing, jewelry and glassware. Receipts from San Francisco show purchases of furniture, carpets, fine wine, saddles and books, among other luxury items. While obviously enjoying the high life, he still rose above it, as both a civic and philanthropic leader, with memberships in the YMCA, Chamber of Commerce, and St. Andrew’s Society, as well as leadership roles on numerous committees for balls and benefits for social causes. <br />
<br />
In 1861 Congress enacted an income tax, openly revealing Gordon’s place among the wealthy elite. As such, he set out to create an elaborate country estate, selecting Santa Clara for its convenience to the railway line from San Francisco. He purchased 572 acres, designed the house himself, and assumed a new persona of English gentleman farmer. He named the estate Mayfield Grange, and moved there permanently in 1864. His sumptuous house parties were the talk of San Francisco. <br />
<br />
In addition to his domestic, entrepreneurial and civic activities, Gordon was also an inveterate writer of pamphlets and letters-to-the-editor. Subjects included safety at sea, value of immigration, advantages of an overland mail route, the inequality of taxation, the validity of titles to mining rights, and pleas for peace before the Civil War. Two particularly controversial issues he wrote strongly against were the [[Vigilante Committees|Second Vigilance Committee]], and the Bulkhead Project, in which a private company proposed building a sea wall in exchange for exclusive rights of wharf usage and anchorage. In his stance against the Second Vigilance Committee in 1856, he was not afraid to publicize his position, distinctly unpopular at the time, writing a long, well balanced letter to the ''Chronicle'', focusing on the sacredness of the Constitution and importance of rule by law. His patriotism and belief in the US government were steadfast; yet he never became a US citizen. <br />
<br />
Gordon’s health began to fail during a trip to Europe in 1865-1867 while trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain secretive information on European methods of sugar refining. He had a short-lived recovery back in San Francisco. But then in February 1869, his beloved daughter Nellie eloped with a man Gordon despised, and three months later he died, of a broken heart, they said. <br />
<br />
The obituaries and eulogies for George Gordon were prodigious, and the praise overwhelming. They extolled his wisdom, business acumen, civic leadership, and public spirit. He was an exceptional person at a time of single-minded moneymaking, in his commitment to the public good and highest civic ideals. <br />
<br />
Gordon’s death marked the beginning of the rapid downfall of his family and empire. Nellie separated from her husband in 1872, then died of typhoid fever two years later. His wife Elizabeth died soon thereafter at age 49. The estate became embroiled in lawsuits and vague codicils, but most went to Elizabeth’s brother John Clark, who himself died five years later. Clark’s widow sold Mayfield Grange to Gov. Leland Stanford, who renamed it Palo Alto. He increased the size of the estate, and went on to construct the University, opened in 1891, in memory of his deceased son. The house was badly damaged in the earthquake of 1906, was repaired, and later served as the Stanford Children’s Convalescent Hospital. It was finally demolished in disrepair in 1965. The sugar refinery continued for a few years, gradually declining until 1874 when Claus Spreckels’ California Sugar Refinery gained the monopoly of the market. South Park became a working class neighborhood as apartment buildings replaced the mansions and townhouses. It burned in the 1906 fire, was rebuilt around the central oval park, and is today once again thriving as the home to design and technology companies.<br />
<br />
Source: ''A San Francisco Scandal: The California of George Gordon, Forty-niner, Pioneer, and builder of South Park in San Francisco'', by Albert Shumate<br />
<br />
[[Category:1840s]] [[Category:1850s]] [[Category:1860s]] [[Category:1870s]] [[category:Early SF]] [[category:Famous characters]] [[category:Fire]] [[category:Gold Rush]] [[category:Neighborhood/Geography]] [[category:Power and Money]] [[category:Shoreline]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Women_in_Printing&diff=19782Women in Printing2013-03-12T03:53:00Z<p>Libby: I cross referenced a few, but not sure why one is in blue and the others red?</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''By Libby Ingalls, March 2013''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Womenprinting grayscale.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''Image in [[The Sixth Star|The Sixth Star]] from ''West Coast Journal, May 18, 1870'' sourced at Bancroft Library''<br />
<br />
In the 1860s, typesetting was the most prestigious job for women in San Francisco. The job required skill in spelling and grammar, along with manual dexterity, so typesetters tended to be better-educated and fast learners. But opportunities were extremely limited. The strong prejudice against women in the workplace locked them out of higher paid jobs. Men did not want to work side by side with women, unions banned them, their salaries were lower, and they were not permitted apprenticeships or technical training. Though the women’s movement had come west with the migration, the male stranglehold on jobs remained until the 1870s.<br />
<br />
Printers were in great demand from the early days of the gold rush for newspapers, magazines, books, billheads, announcements, legal briefs, and ephemera of all sorts. The Typographical Union, however, established their dominance in 1850, controlling printing jobs and excluding women. So though the West was less tradition-bound than the East, women’s jobs in the 1850s were mainly limited to needle trades, domestic service, waitressing, and nursing. The first record of a woman working in typesetting was 1857. <br />
<br />
Women’s rights advocates existed, but had few means of spreading the word on job inequality besides letters to the editor. In 1858 they got their voice in San Francisco with a new woman’s literary magazine, ''The Hesperian''. The editor Mrs. A.M. Schultz resigned after three issues, but her assistant, Mrs. Hermione Day, continued publishing a paper twice a month, taking on labor, addressing inequality, lack of opportunity and lower wages for women. In 1860 she expanded her business to include job, book, and fancy printing, and hiring more women. <br />
<br />
New opportunities for women continued to open throughout the 1860s but printing jobs remained limited to typesetting in male-run businesses due to opposition of male workers and the Union. The number of female typesetters accelerated from 1860, then more rapidly from 1870. By 1882, 11% of the typesetters in the City were female (200 of 1,816).<br />
<br />
The feisty, colorful Lisle Lester took over editorship of ''The Hesperian'' in 1863, changing the name to the ''Pacific Monthly''. What she lacked in organizational skills she made up for in her fiery rhetoric and strong opinions. She attempted to form a woman’s typographical union in 1865 but lacked the solid foundation beneath her lofty ideals. When Lester closed the bankrupt ''Pacific Monthly'' in 1868 the number of female typesetters declined to early 1860s numbers. A turning point came with an influx of female typesetters from the east coast, skilled, in search of work, and outraged that the Typographical Union prohibited any business from hiring them even if that business needed more workers. <br />
<br />
Mrs. Agnes B Peterson was one such woman who arrived in 1868. Upon being rebuffed by the Union, she raised the capital to open her own printing office and establish the [[Woman’s Co-operative Printing Union|Woman’s Co-operative Printing Union]] (WCPU), the first permanent foothold for woman printers in San Francisco. The times had already started changing with women becoming a significant part of San Francisco life. Other organizations helping women had been established that same year: the confusingly similar sounding Women’s Co-operative Union to provide employment for women in various fields, and the California Labor Exchange to help both men and women find work. <br />
<br />
Other businesses came and went, but the WCPU became ever stronger, successfully producing large quantities of ephemera, billheads, legal briefs and books over the next 18 years. The success was due at first to the leadership of [[Emily Pitts Stevens|Mrs. Emily A. Pitts]], editor of the ''Saturday Evening Mercury'' (later, ''The Pioneer''). Emily Pitts lived at 420 Montgomery Street, where she published her newspaper and guided the WCPU. The ''Saturday Evening Mercury'' had started out as a “journal of Romance and Literature,” but upon purchasing it in 1869, Emily Pitts soon changed its name and turned it into a journal for woman suffrage, the first one in the West. Putting ever more of her energies into the suffrage cause and ''The Pioneer'', she turned leadership of the WCPU over to Lizzie G. Richmond, who arrived in San Francisco from Rhode Island in 1869. Lizzie Richmond built a thriving organization and is responsible for its great success. <br />
<br />
Over the years, the WCPU printed every variety of book, including fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and cookbooks, along with Spiritualist and feminist journals. In the long run, though, it was the legal briefs, annual reports, constitutions and bylaws, billheads, flyers and other utility printing that made the shop profitable. Its significance in advancing women in printing cannot be overemphasized.<br />
<br />
An economic slowdown in 1869 put 150 typesetters out of work. Despite this, the male Typographical Union went on strike for higher wages the following year. The publishers of the major newspaper of the time, [[The Call Building: San Francisco's Forgotten Skyscraper| ''The Call'']], refused to accede to the Union, so the newspaper opened up the lucrative typesetting jobs to women for the first time. The strike was the beginning of the end of the Typographical Union dominance at the better paying newspapers and the prohibition against hiring women. Little changed over the next two decades, though, and only the woman controlled, non-Union offices consistently had a higher percentage of woman workers.<br />
<br />
Emily Pitts played a major role advancing woman printers. After giving up leadership of the WCPU, she became an outspoken advocate for women’s suffrage, speaking publicly and starting another printing company, The Woman’s Pacific Coast Publishing Company. In addition to publishing books, magazine, and newspapers, and offering other printing services, she started the company to provide training and employment to women. As such, she epitomized the intertwining of woman printers and the women’s movement.<br />
<br />
The women’s movement was largely identified with suffrage and equality in the workplace, but was linked to many other causes in the West, including Spiritualism, dress reform, mind healing, cremation, and law reform. Spiritualism deserves being singled out for its significance in individual rights and the woman’s vote. Spiritualism was a new religious movement that believed in immortality of the soul, proven by establishing communication with the spirits of the dead. At the time, it was the only religious sect that recognized equality of women. It was unstructured, the séance’s being intensely individual, and used a language of common sense. Accordingly Spiritualism became a major vehicle for the spread of woman’s rights, gave self-confidence to women, and thus benefited the suffrage movement. The spiritual emancipation led also to dress reform, getting women out of confining clothes that “kept them in their place” and restricted movement.<br />
<br />
The number of women in printing grew steadily throughout the last decades of the 19th century, not only brought in as strike breakers, but they were also skilled, and could do the same work as men but for lower wages. More women established their own journals and printing companies, and hired women printers. Two outstanding such women were Amanda M. Slocum and Marietta Lois Stowe. <br />
<br />
Amanda Slocum was a Spiritualist, suffragist, editor and master printer. She and her husband William Slocum published ''Common Sense'' in 1874, a journal of Spiritualism, suffrage, temperance and other women’s issues. Hiring women and paying them equal wages as men was her plan, but ''Common Sense'' failed financially after just one year. The revolutionary William Slocum blamed its demise on the liberal groups they were addressing, saying the Spiritualists, atheists, suffragists, and social reformers were so intolerant of each other they would not support the same newspaper. In the meantime, the Slocums had acquired the Woman’s Publishing Company (started by Emily Pitts Stevens), a large steam-printing establishment that expanded their printing empire and proved extremely profitable. The Slocums soon divorced, however, and Amanda went on to become a successful master printer with her own imprint. <br />
<br />
Marietta Lois Stowe was another exceptional woman arriving in San Francisco ready to change society and advance the rights of women. Outspoken on humanitarian issues and women’s rights, she organized political rallies, was the second president of the California Woman’s Suffrage Association, ran for Governor of California in1882, and helped form the Equal Rights Party in 1884, becoming its vice presidential candidate. She started a newspaper in 1881, ''Woman’s Herald of Industry and Social Science Coöperator''. Disgusted with her incompetent male printer, she started her own printing company, and then a school for typesetters. Hiring mostly women, she soon boasted that hers was the only newspaper in the country entirely edited and printed by women, except for the presswork. <br />
<br />
As much as women were advancing in the workplace in the 19th century, the Typographical Union was still slow to accept them. In 1876, the International Typographical Union revised its rules giving the local organizations full discretion in the admission of women. San Francisco Local #21 still refused. The optional plan led to too many inconsistencies, and finally, after seven years, the ITU opened membership to women in all Locals in 1883. Once admitted, women received the same pay and protection as the men. Their numbers remained pitifully low, however, in the newspapers and other highly desirable jobs, perhaps due to the low turnover in such places. That same year, the Union called a strike against the two big newspapers, ''The Call'' and ''The Bulletin''. The newspapers enlisted women to break it, and ironically, in so doing, pitted women against women, freelance against Union, a situation that would have been unthinkable just a year earlier. <br />
<br />
Women were steadily becoming more empowered, and by 1888 they were working in over 300 different occupations. This was due in no small measure to the woman printers who gave voice to women locked out of a male world, publicizing the inequality and speaking out for greater opportunities for women along with equal pay. Printing also gave women an opportunity to work in a skilled job when little else was available. It is noteworthy that in 1888 the state conducted a survey of prostitutes to discover their previous occupations. The range was enormous, including teachers, translators and telegraphers, but none had been typesetters.<br />
<br />
<br />
''Source: ''Women in Printing: Northern California, 1857-1890'', by Roger Levenson (Capra Press, 1994)''<br />
<br />
[[category:1850s]][[category:1860s]][[category:1870s]][[category:1880s]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Labor]][[category:Newspapers]][[category:Women]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Women_in_Printing&diff=19776Women in Printing2013-03-11T18:26:44Z<p>Libby: I haven't connected this with other sites but shall get to it later today or tomorrow. There is still more to do with photos and perhaps a list of printers.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
<br />
By Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
<br />
In the 1860s, typesetting was the most prestigious job for women in San Francisco. The job required skill in spelling and grammar, along with manual dexterity, so typesetters tended to be better-educated and fast learners. But opportunities were extremely limited. The strong prejudice against women in the workplace locked them out of higher paid jobs. Men did not want to work side by side with women, unions banned them, their salaries were lower, and they were not permitted apprenticeships or technical training. Though the women’s movement had come west with the migration, the male stranglehold on jobs remained until the 1870s.<br />
<br />
Printers were in great demand from the early days of the gold rush for newspapers, magazines, books, billheads, announcements, legal briefs, and ephemera of all sorts. The Typographical Union, however, established their dominance in 1850, controlling printing jobs and excluding women. So though the West was less tradition-bound than the East, women’s jobs in the 1850s were mainly limited to needle trades, domestic service, waitressing, and nursing. The first record of a woman working in typesetting was 1857. <br />
<br />
Women’s rights advocates existed, but had few means of spreading the word on job inequality besides letters to the editor. In 1858 they got their voice in San Francisco with a new woman’s literary magazine, ''The Hesperian''. The editor Mrs. A.M. Schultz resigned after three issues, but her assistant, Mrs. Hermione Day, continued publishing a paper twice a month, taking on labor, addressing inequality, lack of opportunity and lower wages for women. In 1860 she expanded her business to include job, book, and fancy printing, and hiring more women. <br />
<br />
New opportunities for women continued to open throughout the 1860s but printing jobs remained limited to typesetting in male-run businesses due to opposition of male workers and the Union. The number of female typesetters accelerated from 1860, then more rapidly from 1870. By 1882, 11% of the typesetters in the City were female (200 of 1,816).<br />
<br />
The feisty, colorful Lisle Lester took over editorship of ''The Hesperian'' in 1863, changing the name to the ''Pacific Monthly''. What she lacked in organizational skills she made up for in her fiery rhetoric and strong opinions. She attempted to form a woman’s typographical union in 1865 but lacked the solid foundation beneath her lofty ideals. When Lester closed the bankrupt ''Pacific Monthly'' in 1868 the number of female typesetters declined to early 1860s numbers. A turning point came with an influx of female typesetters from the east coast, skilled, in search of work, and outraged that the Typographical Union prohibited any business from hiring them even if that business needed more workers. <br />
<br />
Mrs. Agnes B Peterson was one such woman who arrived in 1868. Upon being rebuffed by the Union, she raised the capital to open her own printing office and establish the Woman’s Cooperative Printing Union (WCPU), the first permanent foothold for woman printers in San Francisco. The times had already started changing with women becoming a significant part of San Francisco life. Other organizations helping women had been established that same year: the confusingly similar sounding Women’s Co-operative Union to provide employment for women in various fields, and the California Labor Exchange to help both men and women find work. <br />
<br />
Other businesses came and went, but the WCPU became ever stronger, successfully producing large quantities of ephemera, billheads, legal briefs and books over the next 18 years. The success was due at first to the leadership of Mrs. Emily A. Pitts, editor of the ''Saturday Evening Mercury'' (later, ''The Pioneer''). Emily Pitts lived at 420 Montgomery Street, where she published her newspaper and guided the WCPU. The ''Saturday Evening Mercury'' had started out as a “journal of Romance and Literature,” but upon purchasing it in 1869, Emily Pitts soon changed its name and turned it into a journal for woman suffrage, the first one in the West. Putting ever more of her energies into the suffrage cause and ''The Pioneer'', she turned leadership of the WCPU over to Lizzie G. Richmond, who arrived in San Francisco from Rhode Island in 1869. Lizzie Richmond built a thriving organization and is responsible for its great success. <br />
<br />
Over the years, the WCPU printed every variety of book, including fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and cookbooks, along with Spiritualist and feminist journals. In the long run, though, it was the legal briefs, annual reports, constitutions and bylaws, billheads, flyers and other utility printing that made the shop profitable. Its significance in advancing women in printing cannot be overemphasized.<br />
<br />
An economic slowdown in 1869 put 150 typesetters out of work. Despite this, the male Typographical Union went on strike for higher wages the following year. The publishers of the major newspaper of the time, ''The Call'', refused to accede to the Union, so the newspaper opened up the lucrative typesetting jobs to women for the first time. The strike was the beginning of the end of the Typographical Union dominance at the better paying newspapers and the prohibition against hiring women. Little changed over the next two decades, though, and only the woman controlled, non-Union offices consistently had a higher percentage of woman workers.<br />
<br />
Emily Pitts played a major role advancing woman printers. After giving up leadership of the WCPU, she became an outspoken advocate for women’s suffrage, speaking publicly and starting another printing company, The Woman’s Pacific Coast Publishing Company. In addition to publishing books, magazine, and newspapers, and offering other printing services, she started the company to provide training and employment to women. As such, she epitomized the intertwining of woman printers and the women’s movement.<br />
<br />
The women’s movement was largely identified with suffrage and equality in the workplace, but was linked to many other causes in the West, including Spiritualism, dress reform, mind healing, cremation, and law reform. Spiritualism deserves being singled out for its significance in individual rights and the woman’s vote. Spiritualism was a new religious movement that believed in immortality of the soul, proven by establishing communication with the spirits of the dead. At the time, it was the only religious sect that recognized equality of women. It was unstructured, the séance’s being intensely individual, and used a language of common sense. Accordingly Spiritualism became a major vehicle for the spread of woman’s rights, gave self-confidence to women, and thus benefited the suffrage movement. The spiritual emancipation led also to dress reform, getting women out of confining clothes that “kept them in their place” and restricted movement.<br />
<br />
The number of women in printing grew steadily throughout the last decades of the 19th century, not only brought in as strike breakers, but they were also skilled, and could do the same work as men but for lower wages. More women established their own journals and printing companies, and hired women printers. Two outstanding such women were Amanda M. Slocum and Marietta Lois Stowe. <br />
<br />
Amanda Slocum was a Spiritualist, suffragist, editor and master printer. She and her husband William Slocum published ''Common Sense'' in 1874, a journal of Spiritualism, suffrage, temperance and other women’s issues. Hiring women and paying them equal wages as men was her plan, but ''Common Sense'' failed financially after just one year. The revolutionary William Slocum blamed its demise on the liberal groups they were addressing, saying the Spiritualists, atheists, suffragists, and social reformers were so intolerant of each other they would not support the same newspaper. In the meantime, the Slocums had acquired the Woman’s Publishing Company (started by Emily Pitts Stevens), a large steam-printing establishment that expanded their printing empire and proved extremely profitable. The Slocums soon divorced, however, and Amanda went on to become a successful master printer with her own imprint. <br />
<br />
Marietta Lois Stowe was another exceptional woman arriving in San Francisco ready to change society and advance the rights of women. Outspoken on humanitarian issues and women’s rights, she organized political rallies, was the second president of the California Woman’s Suffrage Association, ran for Governor of California in1882, and helped form the Equal Rights Party in 1884, becoming its vice presidential candidate. She started a newspaper in 1881, ''Woman’s Herald of Industry and Social Science Coöperator''. Disgusted with her incompetent male printer, she started her own printing company, and then a school for typesetters. Hiring mostly women, she soon boasted that hers was the only newspaper in the country entirely edited and printed by women, except for the presswork. <br />
<br />
As much as women were advancing in the workplace in the 19th century, the Typographical Union was still slow to accept them. In 1876, the International Typographical Union revised its rules giving the local organizations full discretion in the admission of women. San Francisco Local #21 still refused. The optional plan led to too many inconsistencies, and finally, after seven years, the ITU opened membership to women in all Locals in 1883. Once admitted, women received the same pay and protection as the men. Their numbers remained pitifully low, however, in the newspapers and other highly desirable jobs, perhaps due to the low turnover in such places. That same year, the Union called a strike against the two big newspapers, ''The Call'' and ''The Bulletin''. The newspapers enlisted women to break it, and ironically, in so doing, pitted women against women, freelance against Union, a situation that would have been unthinkable just a year earlier. <br />
<br />
Women were steadily becoming more empowered, and by 1888 they were working in over 300 different occupations. This was due in no small measure to the woman printers who gave voice to women locked out of a male world, publicizing the inequality and speaking out for greater opportunities for women along with equal pay. Printing also gave women an opportunity to work in a skilled job when little else was available. It is noteworthy that in 1888 the state conducted a survey of prostitutes to discover their previous occupations. The range was enormous, including teachers, translators and telegraphers, but none had been typesetters.<br />
<br />
<br />
Source: ''Women in Printing: Northern California, 1857-1890'', by Roger Levenson (Capra Press, 1994)<br />
<br />
[[category:1850s]][[category:1860s]][[category:1870s]][[category:1880s]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Labor]][[category:Newspapers]][[category:Women]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=AIDS/ARC_Vigil_1985-1995&diff=19183AIDS/ARC Vigil 1985-19952012-09-08T17:41:24Z<p>Libby: a second little edit</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''By Libby Ingalls''<br />
<br />
''Adapted from "Frank Bert and Steven Russell 1985 Start ARC/AIDS Vigil at U.N. Plaza"'' <br />
<br />
''"Backtracking" 199485 #9 of 9''<br />
<br />
The AIDS/ARC Vigil of 1985-1995 remains the longest running act of civil disobedience in San Francisco. It began on a small scale when two men, Steven Russell and Frank Bert, chained themselves to the door of the Federal Building in UN Plaza to protest the government’s inaction in the face of the devastating AIDS virus that had already infected half the gay male population in San Francisco. A group of supporters gathered, and thus began the 24-hour a day vigil that lasted ten years. Over the decade it evolved into a full-service encampment, providing information, counseling, food, and emergency housing to the sick and disenfranchised, touching the lives of hundreds, providing a supportive community, empowering folks who had given up, and inspiring HIV/AIDS activism.<br />
<br />
The Vigil had four demands: a government appropriation of $500 million in direct AIDS research; benefits for people with AIDS Related Conditions (ARC); FDA approval for American physicians to prescribe medicines and treatments of ARC and AIDS that were available in other countries; and (a demand included later) for President Reagan and government officials to publicly condemn discrimination against AIDS and ARC, to repudiate the fear and hatred causing hysteria, and to provide accurate information.<br />
<br />
The dedicated group of men and women, though mostly of homeless and nearly homeless gay men, slept in tents, cooked in a well-equipped kitchen, and staffed a table that provided educational information, 24-hour a day services, and support to the community. <br />
<br />
The challenges were many. That first winter was bitterly cold and rainy, particularly hard for people with a compromised immune system. Tents were flattened and the ground turned to mud. There was constant homophobic harassment and name calling by passers-by, and one cold night city cleaners hosed them.<br />
<br />
Kindness and generosity prevailed, though. Bars, restaurants, theatres, and hotels offered food, blankets, clothing, showers and facilities. Individuals donated money, food, tents, and clothing. The Guardian Angels provided security. And doctors visited the site daily to provide free medical care. <br />
<br />
The Vigil grew and gradually developed an outreach program to the people in the plaza and a reputation within the community as a place where a person could come to talk about AIDS or ARC issues in a safe, unstructured environment. Within four months there were 100 people coming and going. Though not achieving their four goals, the Vigil had raised consciousness of the plight of people suffering from AIDS and gained many supporters. The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution endorsing the action, fairly radical as the Board was sanctioning an act of civil disobedience in violation of federal law. The Board also made it city policy to offer proper treatment and financial assistance for people with ARC. Members of the Vigil were invited to testify before agencies and committees of San Francisco, then the State of California, and finally the federal government. The response was gratifying on the local level, less successful with the state, and a failure on the federal level. <br />
<br />
With growth came other challenges: money was stolen, there was political infighting, and freeloaders and street people moved in to take advance of free food and shelter. Vigil participants began lobbying for their own causes, and then accusing each other of taking advantage of the Vigil for personal and political purposes. The loose gathering of Vigil participants realized they needed an organized structure and leadership to get back on track.<br />
<br />
They started by labeling themselves the Family and vowed to return to the original spirit of the group, one of love. Anyone who supported the Vigil was welcome, but Vigil Family membership was restricted to those who gave ten hours a week of work to the group, such as in security, community service, desk duty, cleanup, or cooking. They opened a bank account, formed committees to take care of daily tasks, and continued to spread the word on the plight of individuals with AIDS/ARC and on the political and medical issues. Outreach to the community, disseminating information and helping people take charge of their lives began to spread ever wider. <br />
<br />
The Vigil continued, but so did the storms, internal fighting, demoralizing times, gay bashing, and the ubiquitous illness and death. The spirit of the Vigil kept bounding back, though, ever stronger with each crisis. As their sign read, ”We rely on love,” a constant reminder. The only time federal officials attempted to have the Vigil removed from federal property, a thousand supporters showed up, and the feds backed off.<br />
<br />
The central location of the Vigil, round-the-clock operation, and experience organizing on the street level proved valuable in collaborating with other groups to fight anti-gay issues, staff booths, and participate in direct actions. But throughout, their own focus remained on social responsibility and empowering people to take charge of their lives. They distributed information pamphlets on AIDS, drug use, women and AIDS, and political issues. They provided survival sheets and referrals to different community centers, guidance and understanding. And not least, they invited the involvement of community people. Their philosophy was “Get up off your death bed,” and with that they assigned folks different jobs within the Vigil, showing each he had something to contribute, giving them a sense of worth and purpose.<br />
<br />
In 1990 the Vigil contracted with the City to provide street-based outreach to the community, saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Vigil received no public money but relied solely on private donations. Their main clients were the disenfranchised sick and prostitutes, and their success was largely a result of the safe setting and feeling of trust they gave clients, with no fear of judgment.<br />
<br />
By 1995 the inhabitants of the Vigil had shrunk from 20 to three, and after the multitude of challenges they had faced, it was a December storm that destroyed the tents and closed the encampment. So what effect did the Vigil have over those ten years? The most tangible contribution was on the local level, the help and support it gave to countless individuals, be it medical, psychological, emotional, or social. The Vigil provided a way forward, a sense of purpose, and a support community for those previously struggling alone. <br />
<br />
On the wider political front, their voice was one of many pressuring the federal government to take action. Significant federal recognition came in 1987: AZT came on the market: the federal government announced an approval of $30 million to purchase AZT f or the uninsured; and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease formed the AIDS Clinical Trial Group. Laws against discrimination followed, along with the approval of improved anti-HIV drugs. The National Commission on AIDS was established in 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan. In the years to follow nearly every state created a gubernatorial-level task force or commission on AIDs. The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 assured funding for treatment for the uninsured and underinsured, and continues today.<br />
<br />
The form of direct action that was called for in 1985 was no longer relevant in 1995, but for ten years, the Vigil was part of a movement that brought the City closer to the day the Vigil inhabitants could all go home. <br />
<br />
[[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Civic Center]][[category:Gay and Lesbian]][[category:Homeless]][[category:Public Health]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=AIDS/ARC_Vigil_1985-1995&diff=19182AIDS/ARC Vigil 1985-19952012-09-08T17:39:44Z<p>Libby: I am going to add photos, failed yesterday! so am getting the page up anyway for a start. The wording of the title of the booklet is a little awkward, but that is how it reads.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''By Libby Ingalls''<br />
<br />
''Adapted from "Frank Bert and Steven Russell 1985 Start ARC/AIDS Vigil at U.N. Plaza"'' <br />
''"Backtracking" 199485 #9 of 9''<br />
<br />
The AIDS/ARC Vigil of 1985-1995 remains the longest running act of civil disobedience in San Francisco. It began on a small scale when two men, Steven Russell and Frank Bert, chained themselves to the door of the Federal Building in UN Plaza to protest the government’s inaction in the face of the devastating AIDS virus that had already infected half the gay male population in San Francisco. A group of supporters gathered, and thus began the 24-hour a day vigil that lasted ten years. Over the decade it evolved into a full-service encampment, providing information, counseling, food, and emergency housing to the sick and disenfranchised, touching the lives of hundreds, providing a supportive community, empowering folks who had given up, and inspiring HIV/AIDS activism.<br />
<br />
The Vigil had four demands: a government appropriation of $500 million in direct AIDS research; benefits for people with AIDS Related Conditions (ARC); FDA approval for American physicians to prescribe medicines and treatments of ARC and AIDS that were available in other countries; and (a demand included later) for President Reagan and government officials to publicly condemn discrimination against AIDS and ARC, to repudiate the fear and hatred causing hysteria, and to provide accurate information.<br />
<br />
The dedicated group of men and women, though mostly of homeless and nearly homeless gay men, slept in tents, cooked in a well-equipped kitchen, and staffed a table that provided educational information, 24-hour a day services, and support to the community. <br />
<br />
The challenges were many. That first winter was bitterly cold and rainy, particularly hard for people with a compromised immune system. Tents were flattened and the ground turned to mud. There was constant homophobic harassment and name calling by passers-by, and one cold night city cleaners hosed them.<br />
<br />
Kindness and generosity prevailed, though. Bars, restaurants, theatres, and hotels offered food, blankets, clothing, showers and facilities. Individuals donated money, food, tents, and clothing. The Guardian Angels provided security. And doctors visited the site daily to provide free medical care. <br />
<br />
The Vigil grew and gradually developed an outreach program to the people in the plaza and a reputation within the community as a place where a person could come to talk about AIDS or ARC issues in a safe, unstructured environment. Within four months there were 100 people coming and going. Though not achieving their four goals, the Vigil had raised consciousness of the plight of people suffering from AIDS and gained many supporters. The Board of Supervisors passed a resolution endorsing the action, fairly radical as the Board was sanctioning an act of civil disobedience in violation of federal law. The Board also made it city policy to offer proper treatment and financial assistance for people with ARC. Members of the Vigil were invited to testify before agencies and committees of San Francisco, then the State of California, and finally the federal government. The response was gratifying on the local level, less successful with the state, and a failure on the federal level. <br />
<br />
With growth came other challenges: money was stolen, there was political infighting, and freeloaders and street people moved in to take advance of free food and shelter. Vigil participants began lobbying for their own causes, and then accusing each other of taking advantage of the Vigil for personal and political purposes. The loose gathering of Vigil participants realized they needed an organized structure and leadership to get back on track.<br />
<br />
They started by labeling themselves the Family and vowed to return to the original spirit of the group, one of love. Anyone who supported the Vigil was welcome, but Vigil Family membership was restricted to those who gave ten hours a week of work to the group, such as in security, community service, desk duty, cleanup, or cooking. They opened a bank account, formed committees to take care of daily tasks, and continued to spread the word on the plight of individuals with AIDS/ARC and on the political and medical issues. Outreach to the community, disseminating information and helping people take charge of their lives began to spread ever wider. <br />
<br />
The Vigil continued, but so did the storms, internal fighting, demoralizing times, gay bashing, and the ubiquitous illness and death. The spirit of the Vigil kept bounding back, though, ever stronger with each crisis. As their sign read, ”We rely on love,” a constant reminder. The only time federal officials attempted to have the Vigil removed from federal property, a thousand supporters showed up, and the feds backed off.<br />
<br />
The central location of the Vigil, round-the-clock operation, and experience organizing on the street level proved valuable in collaborating with other groups to fight anti-gay issues, staff booths, and participate in direct actions. But throughout, their own focus remained on social responsibility and empowering people to take charge of their lives. They distributed information pamphlets on AIDS, drug use, women and AIDS, and political issues. They provided survival sheets and referrals to different community centers, guidance and understanding. And not least, they invited the involvement of community people. Their philosophy was “Get up off your death bed,” and with that they assigned folks different jobs within the Vigil, showing each he had something to contribute, giving them a sense of worth and purpose.<br />
<br />
In 1990 the Vigil contracted with the City to provide street-based outreach to the community, saving the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Vigil received no public money but relied solely on private donations. Their main clients were the disenfranchised sick and prostitutes, and their success was largely a result of the safe setting and feeling of trust they gave clients, with no fear of judgment.<br />
<br />
By 1995 the inhabitants of the Vigil had shrunk from 20 to three, and after the multitude of challenges they had faced, it was a December storm that destroyed the tents and closed the encampment. So what effect did the Vigil have over those ten years? The most tangible contribution was on the local level, the help and support it gave to countless individuals, be it medical, psychological, emotional, or social. The Vigil provided a way forward, a sense of purpose, and a support community for those previously struggling alone. <br />
<br />
On the wider political front, their voice was one of many pressuring the federal government to take action. Significant federal recognition came in 1987: AZT came on the market: the federal government announced an approval of $30 million to purchase AZT f or the uninsured; and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease formed the AIDS Clinical Trial Group. Laws against discrimination followed, along with the approval of improved anti-HIV drugs. The National Commission on AIDS was established in 1988, signed by President Ronald Reagan. In the years to follow nearly every state created a gubernatorial-level task force or commission on AIDs. The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 assured funding for treatment for the uninsured and underinsured, and continues today.<br />
<br />
The form of direct action that was called for in 1985 was no longer relevant in 1995, but for ten years, the Vigil was part of a movement that brought the City closer to the day the Vigil inhabitants could all go home. <br />
<br />
[[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Civic Center]][[category:Gay and Lesbian]][[category:Homeless]][[category:Public Health]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Postwar_Sex_District&diff=19133Postwar Sex District2012-08-20T19:54:46Z<p>Libby: i'm open to suggestions and revisions</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''By Libby Ingalls''<br />
<br />
''Adapted from "Excavating the Postwar Sex District in San Francisco," by Josh Sides,''<br />
''Journal of Urban History 2006; 35; 355''<br />
<br />
Commercial sexual entertainment and prostitution have been a fact of life in San Francisco since the first days of the Gold Rush. As the city grew and evolved over the decades, sex for sale has reinvented itself, adapting to changes in attitudes toward sex, legal criteria of obscenity, urban development, and city politics. What began as a bawdy district anchored by brothels appealing to transitory miners, evolved into a more fluid, integral part of San Francisco, ultimately leading to a new phenomenon with the sexual revolution of the 60s and the immense profitability of the sex industry.<br />
<br />
The proper place of sex in the city has been debated since 1849. In those early days, the [[BARBARY COAST|Barbary Coast]] district housed most of the brothels, with [[Gold-Rush Era Prostitutes|prostitution]] being the main business. The district also offered other forms of sexual entertainment, including crude burlesque, belly dancing and other sexually explicit dance forms, saloons with half-clad waitresses, and peep shows.<br />
<br />
The various crusades against sexual entertainment, usually by Christian groups, made little progress when sexual permissiveness and political corruption prevailed. Attempts to crack down on prostitution just caused it to move to another street or neighborhood. The status quo was further maintained by protection money, often paid to police officers, and at least one mayor, Eugene Schmitz (in office 1902-07).<br />
<br />
This was all to change in 1911 with the defeat of the Union Labor Party, and public sentiment turning against San Francisco as a “wide-open town.” At the same time, the city was about to host the [[SAILING TO BYZANTIUM: 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition|Panama-Pacific International Exposition]] of 1915, and the business elite, who had collectively pledged $4 million toward the Expo, feared the notoriety of the Barbary Coast would discourage visitors. They pressured [[Mayor "Sunny Jim" Rolph|Mayor James Rolph]], who personally tolerated prostitution, to effectively shut down the Barbary Coast. Rolph’s new policies outlawed prostitution, dancing in any saloon, the presence of females in saloons, and the issuance of any new licenses for saloons. Newspaper magnate and owner of the SF Examiner, William Randolph Hearst supported the mayor with a series of articles on the evils of the Barbary Coast, encouraging the mayor to replace it with “decent fun.” The new police commissioner, James B. Cook, jumped on the bandwagon with his own campaign to close down the sex district. Then in 1914 the California voters approved the Red-Light Abatement Law, fining property owners where prostitution was taking place, sealing the fate of the Barbary Coast, for the moment anyway.<br />
<br />
As is the nature of prostitution, it doesn’t just go away, it moves on; in this case, to the Tenderloin. The migration of the prostitutes coincided with the shift in the neighborhood’s chief theatrical entertainment, burlesque, from witty, satirical, imaginative performances to exposure of the female body. Sally Rand, the infamous strip tease artist of the 1930s, performed at the San Francisco International Exposition of 1939, then opened a regular stint at the Music Box on O’Farrell. Local imitators followed, and soon burlesque and strip tease performances were supporting a thriving neighborhood commercial sexual economy.<br />
<br />
It wasn’t long before North Beach got in on the action and revived its own thriving nightlife. Three main influences brought this about: the Repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, and the opening of the gay nightclubs, Finnochio’s and Mona’s. This time, however, nightclubs were more timid, advertising themselves as “theatre restaurants” with sophisticated floorshows and musical entertainment. Property owners wanting to increase real estate values emphasized this new respectability and international appeal. Seeking a connection with the 1939 Exposition, they built an archway on Pacific and Kearny reading “International Settlement” announcing their intended transformation of the Barbary Coast. Promoting respectability by property owners, however, could not stop the opening of new clubs, commercial sexual entertainment, and the resurfacing of San Francisco’s reputation as a wide-open town. A new dimension was the growing gay population, fueled by the administrative role of San Francisco in World War II as the point of disembarkation for gay men dishonorably discharged from service in the Pacific.<br />
<br />
But by the mid-1950s, commercial sexual entertainment again came under attack, this time by ideologically driven proponents of McCarthyism. Their charge: sexual perversion could lead to communist sympathy. In the name of national security and patriotism, prostitution was once again targeted. Republican [[Mayor George Christopher|George Christopher]] won a landslide victory in 1955 on an anti-vice, pro-business platform, and thus continued a well-orchestrated campaign of the 1950s to wipe out public and commercial sexuality from North Beach. As part of the cleanup, Pacific Avenue, the former heart of the Barbary Coast, was transformed into a wholesale interior decorating supplier district, Jackson Square.<br />
<br />
Try though political and business interests might to control North Beach, the free and independent spirit was irrepressible. In the mid to late 1950s, North Beach attracted an influx of writers, poets, artists, and free thinkers with the cheap apartments and numerous cafés and bars. The most notorious Beats, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs, stayed only briefly in North Beach, leaving by 1956, but their legacy continued on in the aura, imagination and landscape of North Beach. Nightlife thrived once again.<br />
<br />
A defining moment came in June 1964, when [[Where Topless Dancing Began|Carol Doda]] performed her topless swim dance at the Condor. Dozens of similar acts followed, attracting thousands of tourists, servicemen, conventioneers, and locals, matched only by the original Barbary Coast before 1913. Out on the streets, pedestrians could peer through picture windows and view topless dancers. <br />
<br />
Religious leaders were up in arms, joined by “legitimate” nightclub owners fearing the competition, and the North Beach merchants arguing that the weekend congestion hurt business. Added to this was the controversy over the question: was topless dancing obscene, and, therefore, illegal? [[Mayor Jack Shelley|Mayor Jack Shelley]], the first Democratically elected mayor in 50 years (elected in 1963), ordered a raid to bring the issue to court. Two judges acquitted the dancers and owners of the topless nightclubs, paving the way for the spread of topless and bottomless entertainment. Massage parlors, as fronts for prostitution, were not far behind, followed by a proliferation of pornographic bookstores and pornographic movie houses. In 1966 the city populace rejected Prop 16, a ballot initiative that sought to tighten obscenity laws. The sexual revolution was in full swing. For gays and straights alike, unfettered sexual expression was seen as a right rather than a frivolity. By 1970 there were 47 hardcore pornographic bookstores and 28 pornographic movie houses, in North Beach, the Tenderloin, Polk Street and South of Market, along with dozens of peep shows and strip clubs. <br />
<br />
With obscenity laws crumbling, the sexual revolution on the rise, and public opinion supporting civil liberties, post-war sex districts became a feature of America’s large cities. Enter Hollywood. Here was rich fodder for the gritty films of the 1970s. Narcotics had infiltrated sex districts, but nothing like the seediness Hollywood invented, featuring hustlers, murderers, pimps, and prostitutes. Granted there were arrests for petty theft and prostitution in North Beach, but the highest rate of violent crime remained in other neighborhoods. Nevertheless, inflamed by films, the specter of violence persisted. The city once again took action, this time with [[Mayor Dianne Feinstein|Dianne Feinstein]] leading the charge.<br />
<br />
Dianne Feinstein was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1969, becoming president in 1970-71, 1974-75, and 1978. Her campaign against the sex district started with an ordinance to remove signs, followed by an attempt to prohibit sex businesses from operating within 1,000 feet of another. Downtown business elite concerned with business and real estate values strongly supported Feinstein, who herself had personal ties to downtown development. Opposition to Feinstein came from Harvey Milk, the ACLU, and mothers of Bayview Hunter's Point, as the zoning stipulations left Bayview Hunter's Point as the most obvious place for the sex businesses to move, with its warehouses and open spaces. <br />
<br />
The Board of Supervisors rejected the zoning ordinance, but Feinstein continued to fight for controls of pornography and reduction of commercial sexual entertainment. The controls did come about, but ironically Feinstein had very little to do with it.<br />
<br />
Outside factors were far more effective than Feinstein’s efforts. First, there was the introduction of the VCR that allowed potential customers to stay home for their entertainment. Secondly, the AIDS epidemic led to the closing of gay bathhouses, sex clubs and other venues of sexual activity. And third, the rapid rise in the value of downtown commercial real estate brought an influx of young, affluent residents seeking food and entertainment in North Beach, and property values there began to soar. The old haunts of North Beach were getting priced out of the market. By the early 1990s only four of the original 28 strip clubs of North Beach remained.<br />
<br />
Times again changed, and today there are at least 10 strip clubs drawing thousands of tourists. The nightlife is once again thriving, offering all sorts of adult entertainment: nightclubs, tours of North Beach Gentlemen’s Clubs, peep shows, massage parlors, and escort services of all sorts. The sex industry has taken on a life of its own, establishing itself as an integral part of the landscape and contributing so significantly to the economy of San Francisco that no one wants to disturb it, for now.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:1840s]][[category:1900s]][[category:1910s]][[category:1930s]][[category:1940s]][[category:1950s]][[category:1960s]][[category:1970s]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]][[category:2000s]][[category:2010s]][[category:Gold Rush]][[category:North Beach]][[category:Dance]][[category:Gay and Lesbian]][[category:Bayview/Hunter's Point]][[category:Tourism]][[category:Mayors]][[category:Gentrification]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Sailors%27_Union_of_the_Pacific_Building&diff=18697Sailors' Union of the Pacific Building2012-03-07T23:30:40Z<p>Libby: Created page with ''''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>''' by Libby Ingalls The Sailors' Union of the Pacific building was construc...'</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
by Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
The Sailors' Union of the Pacific building was constructed in 1950, providing a permanent home for the maritime union founded in 1885. Designed by San Francisco architect William Gladstone Merchant, the building is an Art Moderne classic, built of white stone and concrete. At four stories tall, it has a soaring central hall, balconies shaped like parts of a ship, and interior porthole-style windows. Two fine large models of square-rigged sailing ships decorate the lobby.<br />
<br />
The Dispatch Hall, or Hiring Hall, is a grand maritime-themed space on the main floor where the union matches sailors with jobs, following a protocol established by the union. Wall cases display proclamations, awards and other memorabilia, while the walls hold photographs, paintings and commemorative prints, along with examples of sailors' folk arts. The building also houses a library, required in all Sailors’ halls by the SUP Constitution, and a 2,000-seat auditorium.<br />
<br />
The building serves also as a landmark of labor history, located near the site of the infamous "Battle of Rincon Hill" where strikers fought San Francisco police during the 1934 waterfront strike. <br />
<br />
Outside are busts of two labor heroes: Andrew Furuseth and Harry Lundeberg. Andrew Furuseth (1854-1938) was a Norwegian sailor who played a major role in strike activities, labor reform, and the legal emancipation of the seaman. In 1886 he was Secretary of the Coast Seaman’s Union, and then Secretary-Treasurer of the Sailors Union of the Pacific from 1891-1936. He was a key figure in the passage of the Seamen’s Act of 1915, along with three other reforms that changed the lives of mariners. <br />
<br />
The other bust is of Harry Lundeberg (1901-1957) who led the SUP from 1936 until his death in 1957. Also born in Norway, he came to prominence as head of the SUP Strike Committee in Seattle during the 1934 Maritime Strike. In 1938 he became the founder and president of the Seafarers’ International Union of North America (SIU).<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]][[category:Landmarks]][[category:1880s]][[category:1890s]][[category:1910s]][[category:1930s]][[category:1934 General Strike]][[category:1950s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Garcia_and_Maggini_Warehouse&diff=18691Garcia and Maggini Warehouse2012-03-01T19:51:37Z<p>Libby: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
by Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
<br />
128 and136 King Street<br />
<br />
The Garcia and Maggini Warehouse, built in 1913, was the site of a violent clash between waterfront unions and anti-union business interests during the Maritime Strike of 1934. The employers and business interests formed the Industrial Association, which subsequently formed a trucking company called Atland Drayage. They then rented space in the Garcia & Maggini Warehouse with the intent of breaking the strikers’ picket line and moving goods from Pier 38 to the Warehouse. On Tuesday, July 3rd, the trucks, under police protection, attempted to break through the picket line. A violent battle ensued lasting five hours. Finally the loaded trucks broke through and entered the Warehouse. Two days later, on what became known as Bloody Thursday, another battle broke out between striking workers and police, in which two men were killed, thus leading to the General Strike of 1934. <br />
<br />
The Warehouse became San Francisco Landmark No. 229 on May 24, 2002.<br />
<br />
The present owners renovated the Warehouse, creating two restaurants and placing a plaque on the building commemorating the clash between the maritime strikers and the business owners.<br />
<br />
<br />
The plaque reads:<br />
<br />
''The Garcia and Maggini Warehouse''<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Landmark No. 229''<br />
<br />
''At this location, on July 3, 1934, a dramatic clash occurred, one that eventually touched the nation. Longshoremen, sailors, teamsters, and other waterfront workers had closed down Pacific coast shipping since May, in what came to be known as "The Big Strike". Business interests and employers, attempting to break the strike, or "open the port", formed the Industrial Association, and created the Atlas Drayage Company, which then rented space in this building, Garcia & Maggini Warehouse. On July 3, trucks under heavy police guard began to move goods from Pier 38 to this entrance. The photo shows the first truck arriving. Although their picket line had been pushed aside at Pier 38, the strikers regrouped here and resisted the movement of trucks during a five-hour pitched battle. Violence continued at the waterfront. On July 5, known as Bloody Thursday, two workers were shot. On July 9, a massive Market Street funeral march honored the martyrs. A three-day general strike followed, leading to a new role for labor.''<br />
<br />
''Fund for Labor Culture & History''<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]][[category:Landmarks]][[category:1930s]][[category:1934 General Strike]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Garcia_and_Maggini_Warehouse&diff=18690Garcia and Maggini Warehouse2012-03-01T19:44:51Z<p>Libby: Created page with ''''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>''' by Libby Ingalls 128 and136 King Street The Garcia and Maggini Wareho...'</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
by Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
<br />
128 and136 King Street<br />
<br />
The Garcia and Maggini Warehouse, built in 1913, was the site of a violent clash between waterfront unions and anti-union business interests during the Maritime Strike of 1934. The employers and business interests formed the Industrial Association, which then formed a trucking company called Atland Drayage and rented space in the Garcia & Maggini Warehouse with the intent of breaking the strikers’ picket line and moving goods from Pier 38 to the Warehouse. On Tuesday, July 3rd, the trucks under police protection attempted to break through the picket line. A violent battle ensued lasting five hours. Finally the loaded trucks broke through and entered the Warehouse. Two days later, on what became known as Bloody Thursday, another battle broke out between striking workers and police, in which two men were killed, thus leading to the General Strike of 1934. <br />
<br />
The Warehouse became San Francisco Landmark No. 229 on May 24, 2002.<br />
<br />
The present owners renovated the Warehouse, creating two restaurants and placing a plaque on the building commemorating the clash between the maritime strikers and the business owners.<br />
<br />
<br />
The plaque reads:<br />
<br />
''The Garcia and Maggini Warehouse''<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Landmark No. 229''<br />
<br />
''At this location, on July 3, 1934, a dramatic clash occurred, one that eventually touched the nation. Longshoremen, sailors, teamsters, and other waterfront workers had closed down Pacific coast shipping since May, in what came to be known as "The Big Strike". Business interests and employers, attempting to break the strike, or "open the port", formed the Industrial Association, and created the Atlas Drayage Company, which then rented space in this building, Garcia & Maggini Warehouse. On July 3, trucks under heavy police guard began to move goods from Pier 38 to this entrance. The photo shows the first truck arriving. Although their picket line had been pushed aside at Pier 38, the strikers regrouped here and resisted the movement of trucks during a five-hour pitched battle. Violence continued at the waterfront. On July 5, known as Bloody Thursday, two workers were shot. On July 9, a massive Market Street funeral march honored the martyrs. A three-day general strike followed, leading to a new role for labor.''<br />
<br />
''Fund for Labor Culture & History''<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]][[category:Landmarks]][[category:1930s]][[category:1934 General Strike]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Robert_W._Carroll_Memorial_Plaque&diff=18688Robert W. Carroll Memorial Plaque2012-02-28T19:46:13Z<p>Libby: short and to the point</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
By Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
<br />
''In Memoriam''<br />
<br />
''Robert W. Carroll''<br />
<br />
''Dedicated to the Beloved Memory of''<br />
<br />
''Petty Officer First Class Bob Carroll''<br />
<br />
''United States Navy''<br />
<br />
''Seabee Reserve Mobile Construction Battalion Two''<br />
<br />
''His Dedication and Leadership on''<br />
<br />
''The Restoration of the North Dutch Windmill''<br />
<br />
''Was an Inspiration to All Those Who Contributed''<br />
<br />
<br />
Plaque on Dutch Windmill<br />
<br />
Golden Gate Park near Great Highway<br />
<br />
<br />
Robert W. Carroll is commemorated on this plaque for the volunteer work he did with the U.S. Naval Reserve Seabees (from C.B., short for Construction Battalion) to restore the long neglected Dutch Windmill located in the northwest corner of Golden Gate Park. Carroll was a full time journeyman electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 551 in Santa Rosa, while also volunteering with the Naval Reserve construction unit to restore the windmill. Tragically he fell from the windmill and died on April 19, 1980.<br />
<br />
The building trades have long played an important role with the Naval Seabees. After the U.S. entered World War I, the Navy created several Construction Battalions to build airstrips and roads in the Pacific Theater. These units were also expected to be prepared for defensive combat, thus their motto, “We build, we fight.” The Navy recruited the men for these units from the building trades, valuing their experience and skill. Restoration of the Dutch Windmill is just one of many peacetime contributions by the Seabees and local union members to preserve our history. <br />
<br />
Adapted from ''The San Francisco Labor Landmarks Guide Book: A Register of Sites and Walking Tours'', edited by Susan P. Sherwood and Catherine Powell<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]][[category:Landmarks]][[category:Military]][[category:Parks]][[category:1940s]][[category:1970s]][[category:1980s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Audiffred_Building&diff=18687Audiffred Building2012-02-27T23:06:05Z<p>Libby: Other sources were various internet sites. As usual it needs links and always can be improved.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
1-21 Mission Street<br />
<br />
by Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
The Audiffred Building is a commercial waterfront building, constructed in 1889 in the Parisian Second Empire style for nostalgic Hippolite D’Audiffret. From the beginning it has played a central role in labor history and life on the waterfront. <br />
<br />
In the 1880s, San Francisco had the busiest waterfront on the west coast, a harbor filled with ships, a waterfront bustling with commerce, and shops serving every maritime need. The initial tenants of the Audiffred Building were the Sailors Union of the Pacific (SUP) upstairs and three saloons and a restaurant on the ground flood. The SUP remained until 1905 when it moved around the corner to East Street, now The Embarcadero. For many years the building provided space for waterfront workers to socialize and organize. Other maritime unions and associations with offices in the building in the early years included the Marine Engineers, the Masters and Pilots, the Pile Drivers, probably the Marine Firemen and Marine Cooks and Stewards, and for a brief period before World War I, the Industrial Workers of the World.<br />
<br />
In 1901 the building served as the headquarters for the City Front Strike, a long and violent strike protesting inhumane conditions of seamen and ship owners’ efforts to break the union. Eventually the union defeated the Employers’ Association, and the Teamsters became firmly established. <br />
<br />
When the 1906 earthquake leveled the city, the Audiffred Building remained standing, by, according to legend, the publican, or a bartender, of the Bulkhead, a ground floor tenant, bribing the firefighters with two quarts of whiskey each and a cart full of wine. <br />
<br />
In 1934 during the longshoremen’s strike organized by Harry Bridges, two strikers were killed by armed National Guardsmen in front of the building on what has become known as “Bloody Thursday,” an event still commemorated annually outside the building.<br />
<br />
As the hub of commercial activity moved to other parts of the City and to Oakland, the area turned into a skid row. Following this trend, in 1946, a club for homeless sailors, the Seven Seas Club, became a tenant in the Audiffred. Soon after, various rebel artists and writers moved into the upper two floors, until those floors were condemned in 1955. The 4-level Embarcadero Freeway built in the 1960s boxed the building into a dark corner, cutting it off from the waterfront and leading the area to further dereliction.<br />
<br />
A fire from a gas main break gutted the building in 1979, leaving it scheduled for demolition. The people of San Francisco spoke out, and joining forces with the Department of the Interior had it declared Landmark Number 7 of the City of San Francisco in 1981, and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was restored over a two-year period, and then in 1991 finally saw the light of day with the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway. Since 1993, the Audiffred Building has been occupied by the restaurant Boulevard. <br />
<br />
Partially adapted from ''The San Francisco Labor Landmarks Guide Book: A Register of Sites and Walking Tours'', edited by Susan P Sherwood and Catherine Powell. <br />
<br />
[[category:Buildings]][[category:Labor]][[category:Landmarks]][[category:Downtown]][[category:1880s]][[category:1890s]][[category:1900s]][[category:1930s]][[category:1940s]][[category:1950s]][[category:1960s]][[category:1970s]][[category:1980s]][[category:1990s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Spring_Valley_Water_Company&diff=18587Spring Valley Water Company2012-02-03T03:05:56Z<p>Libby: I have edited this down! but it is a complicated story which I didn't feel could be told in just a few paragraphs. Would you like it shorter? I also have not put in the links.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
By Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
Adapted from "Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin'" by Gray Brechin<br />
<br />
The Spring Valley Water Company was a private company that held a monopoly on water rights in San Francisco from 1860 to 1930. Run by land barons, its 70-year history was fraught with corruption, land speculation, favoritism towards the moneyed elite, and widespread ill will from the general populace. <br />
<br />
In 1850 San Francisco was a treeless windswept dunescape, receiving about 22 inches of rain a year, mostly in the winter. The few creeks running through the land could hardly support the instant city rising from the sand. It was clear that water would have to come from outside the city limits, and whoever controlled the water rights and delivery would control the city and its growth, and have unparalleled opportunities for development and great wealth. <br />
<br />
George Ensign rose to the top in a competitive field shrouded in secrecy. The California Legislature had passed an act of eminent domain, permitting the taking of privately held land and water rights for the common good of cities. Thus empowered, George Ensign was able to seize rights of way to store and deliver water to San Francisco. In 1860 George Ensign incorporated the Spring Valley Water Works (later changed to Company), soon to become the state’s most powerful monopoly. For decades to come the power of eminent domain gave for the elite owning the water company an opportunity to acquire empires in real estate with land increasing in value as the water flowed in.<br />
<br />
The California legislature had redrawn county lines in 1856, limiting SF County to the city limits, and giving the highest mountains, largest streams and expansive space to San Mateo County. Thus George Ensign had to look towards San Mateo for the water, and hired Col. Alexis Waldemar von Schmidt, a German military engineer, for the job. He redirected Pilarcitas Creek through tunnels and flumes, delivering the first water to San Francisco in 1862. Thus began an era of assured growth, land speculation, private fortunes and corruption.<br />
<br />
In 1865 Col. von Schmidt tried to break the monopoly of the Spring Valley Water Company by incorporating the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works Company to build an aqueduct from Lake Tahoe to foothill mines and San Francisco. It backfired, and Spring Valley Water Company acquired the failed company and firmly established its monopoly for the next seven decades.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile Hermann Schussler, a Swiss engineer, was hired by Spring Valley to replace von Schmidt. He stayed with the Company for fifty years, while also consulting to leading capitalists and mining companies, an example of how deeply interconnected the water and land barons were.<br />
<br />
Armed with the right of eminent domain and backed by San Francisco leading financiers, Schussler drove his conduits, flumes, and tunnel bores deeper into San Mateo County, tapping every major watershed along the Peninsula divide. He acquired 100,000 acres of prime watersheds and rights of way, raised real estate values, and benefited himself handsomely along with the San Francisco plutocracy. <br />
<br />
Enter William Ralston. Ralston established the Bank of California in 1864, invited the most respected financiers and influential business magnates to join the board, and soon created one of the most powerful financial institutions in the West. Ralston had grandiose ideas for the Paris of the Pacific, including a “central park” to invite real estate development in the western sand dunes. He hired William Hammond Hall to carry out his vision of a proper green English-style park in the sandy Out Lands. Under law, the City was obligated to provide the water, thereby destroying a beautiful natural environment outside the City to create an artificial “natural” environment in the Park. Hall was disturbed by the irony but seduced by power and money, and betraying his ideals he designed the 1,000-acre park.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Schussler was barging ahead, building many large-scale water projects in the 1870s, including dams and hydraulic mines, all turning great profits for Spring Valley while leaving behind an expanse of human, animal and industrial waste. By bribing the City Supervisors, those who were supposed to supervise the Company, they could set their own rules and rates. When they announced they would no longer provide water for the growing needs of Golden Gate Park, the Supervisors attempted a corporate take-over to turn Spring Valley Water Company into a public utility. <br />
<br />
As the Supervisors were planning the take-over, Schussler was exploring new sources of water for San Francisco’s continued growth, and decided on Alameda Creek whose watershed covered 700 square miles of tributaries through the Livermore Valley, and incidentally provided water for valuable farmland.<br />
<br />
Before either the Supervisors or Schussler could take action on their plans, Ralston bought the Spring Valley Water Company along with the water rights to Alameda Creek. <br />
<br />
Ralston’s immense fortunes rose and fell with his and the Bank’s pyramid schemes and wild speculation, and at this point Ralston was deeply in debt. So his plan was to sell certificates of indebtedness for Spring Valley stock at a higher price than they were worth, trade them for stocks to acquire control of Spring Valley, sell Spring Valley to the City, then sell his own interest in Alameda Creek water rights for a large profit. The scheme was stopped by public outcry, and the City Supervisors refused to buy the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
Then came “Black Friday,” August 26, 1875, when nervous depositors made a run on the Bank of California draining its assets and leaving Ralston $5 million in debt. The board of the Bank demanded that Ralston sign his personal assets over to William Sharon, his devious partner, and that afternoon during his daily swim, he either had a stroke or chose to take his life, leaving Sharon one of the wealthiest men in California. Sharon now owned the Palace Hotel, palatial estates, mills, mines, railroads, timberlands . . . and a controlling interest in the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
The 1890s saw a rash of development of communities down the Peninsula for the land barons who had made their fortunes in gold, silver, land speculation, railroads, and business ventures, shady and otherwise. Mansions with gardens modeled on British estates and Loire Valley chateaux required prodigious amounts of water, pushing the Spring Valley Water Company to proceed to expand into the Alameda Creek watershed.<br />
<br />
By this time, the Spring Valley Water Company was largely owned and run by the wealthy elite of Hillsborough and nearby estates. Meanwhile there was a growing voice of discontent from San Francisco customers complaining of high rates and poor service, along with the farmers of Alameda County watching their wells and fields go dry. <br />
<br />
The demand for water kept growing, this time from James Duval Phelan, an Irish immigrant, who had inherited an $11.5 million fortune along with substantial properties. A Progressive, he was elected Mayor of San Francisco in 1896 on the Reform ticket. His grandiose visions extended beyond the City to include a world-class metropolis. With water requirements far beyond the Water Company’s capabilities, he became fixated on the Tuolumne River and a Hetch Hetchy Valley reservoir (six years after Yosemite had been designated a National Park). To pay for this he advocated for public financing, public control of water systems, and government sponsored engineering projects.<br />
<br />
Supporting Phelan’s grand ideas was William Hammond Hall, who upon completion of Golden Gate Park in 1878 had become State Engineer. He realized that the dams and aqueducts essential to the massive development of Phelan’s vision required staggering amounts of capital beyond private capabilities, and that only government treasuries could bear such costs. Further potential support came in 1902 from Congress’ passing the National Reclamation Act, thus creating a civilian army of engineers for large-scale projects. Phelan and Federal Agent Lippincott initiated the idea of claiming Hetch Hetchy as a reservoir within Yosemite National Park. <br />
<br />
April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake changed everything. As the city burned to the ground, fire hydrants delivered only a tricky of mud. Many blamed the Spring Valley Water Company for negligence. The disaster gave Phelan’s and Lippincott’s plan the urgency and support they needed. The City was fairly united in believing that they must have a reliable and steady source of water, and Phelan and Lippincott easily convinced them that only the Tuolumne would do that.<br />
<br />
The building of Hetch Hetchy Dam took decades and is another story, but throughout this period the City tried to purchase the Spring Valley Water Company by putting bond measures on the ballot. Five times the measures failed as voters thought the price too high. Finally in 1930 the City purchased the Spring Valley Water Company for $41 million. <br />
<br />
[[category:1850s]][[category:1860s]][[category:1870s]][[category:1880s]][[category:1890s]][[category:1900s]][[category:1906]][[category:1930s]][[category:Water]][[category:Early SF]][[category:Gold Rush]][[category:Power and Money]][[category:San Francisco outside the city]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Spring_Valley_Water_Company&diff=18586Spring Valley Water Company2012-02-03T02:59:22Z<p>Libby: I have edited this down! but it is a complicated story which I didn't feel could be told in just a few paragraphs. Would you like it shorter? I also have not put in the links to other pages.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
By Libby Ingalls<br />
<br />
Adapted from "Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin'" by Gray Brechin<br />
<br />
The Spring Valley Water Company was a private company that held a monopoly on water rights in San Francisco from 1860 to 1930. Run by land barons, its 70-year history was fraught with corruption, land speculation, favoritism towards the moneyed elite, and widespread ill will from the general populace. <br />
<br />
In 1850 San Francisco was a treeless windswept dunescape, receiving about 22 inches of rain a year, mostly in the winter. The few creeks running through the land could hardly support the instant city rising from the sand. It was clear that water would have to come from outside the city limits, and whoever controlled the water rights and delivery would control the city and its growth, and have unparalleled opportunities for development and great wealth. <br />
<br />
George Ensign rose to the top in a competitive field shrouded in secrecy. The California Legislature had passed an act of eminent domain, permitting the taking of privately held land and water rights for the common good of cities. Thus empowered, George Ensign was able to seize rights of way to store and deliver water to San Francisco. In 1860 George Ensign incorporated the Spring Valley Water Works (later changed to Company), soon to become the state’s most powerful monopoly. For decades to come the power of eminent domain gave for the elite owning the water company an opportunity to acquire empires in real estate with land increasing in value as the water flowed in.<br />
<br />
The California legislature had redrawn county lines in 1856, limiting SF County to the city limits, and giving the highest mountains, largest streams and expansive space to San Mateo County. Thus George Ensign had to look towards San Mateo for the water, and hired Col. Alexis Waldemar von Schmidt, a German military engineer, for the job. He redirected Pilarcitas Creek through tunnels and flumes, delivering the first water to San Francisco in 1862. Thus began an era of assured growth, land speculation, private fortunes and corruption.<br />
<br />
In 1865 Col. von Schmidt tried to break the monopoly of the Spring Valley Water Company by incorporating the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works Company to build an aqueduct from Lake Tahoe to foothill mines and San Francisco. It backfired, and Spring Valley Water Company acquired the failed company and firmly established its monopoly for the next seven decades.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile Hermann Schussler, a Swiss engineer, was hired by Spring Valley to replace von Schmidt. He stayed with the Company for fifty years, while also consulting to leading capitalists and mining companies, an example of how deeply interconnected the water and land barons were.<br />
<br />
Armed with the right of eminent domain and backed by San Francisco leading financiers, Schussler drove his conduits, flumes, and tunnel bores deeper into San Mateo County, tapping every major watershed along the Peninsula divide. He acquired 100,000 acres of prime watersheds and rights of way, raised real estate values, and benefited himself handsomely along with the San Francisco plutocracy. <br />
<br />
Enter William Ralston. Ralston established the Bank of California in 1864, invited the most respected financiers and influential business magnates to join the board, and soon created one of the most powerful financial institutions in the West. Ralston had grandiose ideas for the Paris of the Pacific, including a “central park” to invite real estate development in the western sand dunes. He hired William Hammond Hall to carry out his vision of a proper green English-style park in the sandy Out Lands. Under law, the City was obligated to provide the water, thereby destroying a beautiful natural environment outside the City to create an artificial “natural” environment in the Park. Hall was disturbed by the irony but seduced by power and money, and betraying his ideals he designed the 1,000-acre park.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Schussler was barging ahead, building many large-scale water projects in the 1870s, including dams and hydraulic mines, all turning great profits for Spring Valley while leaving behind an expanse of human, animal and industrial waste. By bribing the City Supervisors, those who were supposed to supervise the Company, they could set their own rules and rates. When they announced they would no longer provide water for the growing needs of Golden Gate Park, the Supervisors attempted a corporate take-over to turn Spring Valley Water Company into a public utility. <br />
<br />
As the Supervisors were planning the take-over, Schussler was exploring new sources of water for San Francisco’s continued growth, and decided on Alameda Creek whose watershed covered 700 square miles of tributaries through the Livermore Valley, and incidentally provided water for valuable farmland.<br />
<br />
Before either the Supervisors or Schussler could take action on their plans, Ralston bought the Spring Valley Water Company along with the water rights to Alameda Creek. <br />
<br />
Ralston’s immense fortunes rose and fell with his and the Bank’s pyramid schemes and wild speculation, and at this point Ralston was deeply in debt. So his plan was to sell certificates of indebtedness for Spring Valley stock at a higher price than they were worth, trade them for stocks to acquire control of Spring Valley, sell Spring Valley to the City, then sell his own interest in Alameda Creek water rights for a large profit. The scheme was stopped by public outcry, and the City Supervisors refused to buy the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
Then came “Black Friday,” August 26, 1875, when nervous depositors made a run on the Bank of California draining its assets and leaving Ralston $5 million in debt. The board of the Bank demanded that Ralston sign his personal assets over to William Sharon, his devious partner, and that afternoon during his daily swim, he either had a stroke or chose to take his life, leaving Sharon one of the wealthiest men in California. Sharon now owned the Palace Hotel, palatial estates, mills, mines, railroads, timberlands . . . and a controlling interest in the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
The 1890s saw a rash of development of communities down the Peninsula for the land barons who had made their fortunes in gold, silver, land speculation, railroads, and business ventures, shady and otherwise. Mansions with gardens modeled on British estates and Loire Valley chateaux required prodigious amounts of water, pushing the Spring Valley Water Company to proceed to expand into the Alameda Creek watershed.<br />
<br />
By this time, the Spring Valley Water Company was largely owned and run by the wealthy elite of Hillsborough and nearby estates. Meanwhile there was a growing voice of discontent from San Francisco customers complaining of high rates and poor service, along with the farmers of Alameda County watching their wells and fields go dry. <br />
<br />
The demand for water kept growing, this time from James Duval Phelan, an Irish immigrant, who had inherited an $11.5 million fortune along with substantial properties. A Progressive, he was elected Mayor of San Francisco in 1896 on the Reform ticket. His grandiose visions extended beyond the City to include a world-class metropolis. With water requirements far beyond the Water Company’s capabilities, he became fixated on the Tuolumne River and a Hetch Hetchy Valley reservoir (six years after Yosemite had been designated a National Park). To pay for this he advocated for public financing, public control of water systems, and government sponsored engineering projects.<br />
<br />
Supporting Phelan’s grand ideas was William Hammond Hall, who upon completion of Golden Gate Park in 1878 had become State Engineer. He realized that the dams and aqueducts essential to the massive development of Phelan’s vision required staggering amounts of capital beyond private capabilities, and that only government treasuries could bear such costs. Further potential support came in 1902 from Congress’ passing the National Reclamation Act, thus creating a civilian army of engineers for large-scale projects. Phelan and Federal Agent Lippincott initiated the idea of claiming Hetch Hetchy as a reservoir within Yosemite National Park. <br />
<br />
April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake changed everything. As the city burned to the ground, fire hydrants delivered only a tricky of mud. Many blamed the Spring Valley Water Company for negligence. The disaster gave Phelan’s and Lippincott’s plan the urgency and support they needed. The City was fairly united in believing that they must have a reliable and steady source of water, and Phelan and Lippincott easily convinced them that only the Tuolumne would do that.<br />
<br />
The building of Hetch Hetchy Dam took decades and is another story, but throughout this period the City tried to purchase the Spring Valley Water Company by putting bond measures on the ballot. Five times the measures failed as voters thought the price too high. Finally in 1930 the City purchased the Spring Valley Water Company for $41 million. <br />
<br />
[[category:1850s]][[category:1860s]][[category:1870s]][[category:1880s]][[category:1890s]][[category:1900s]][[category:1906]][[category:1930s]]The Spring Valley Water Company was a private company that held a monopoly on water rights in San Francisco from 1860 to 1930. Run by land barons, its 70-year history was fraught with corruption, land speculation, favoritism towards the moneyed elite, and widespread ill will from the general populace. <br />
<br />
In 1850 San Francisco was a treeless windswept dunescape, receiving about 22 inches of rain a year, mostly in the winter. The few creeks running through the land could hardly support the instant city rising from the sand. It was clear that water would have to come from outside the city limits, and whoever controlled the water rights and delivery would control the city and its growth, and have unparalleled opportunities for development and great wealth. <br />
<br />
George Ensign rose to the top in a competitive field shrouded in secrecy. The California Legislature had passed an act of eminent domain, permitting the taking of privately held land and water rights for the common good of cities. Thus empowered, George Ensign was able to seize rights of way to store and deliver water to San Francisco. In 1860 George Ensign incorporated the Spring Valley Water Works (later changed to Company), soon to become the state’s most powerful monopoly. For decades to come the power of eminent domain gave for the elite owning the water company an opportunity to acquire empires in real estate with land increasing in value as the water flowed in.<br />
<br />
The California legislature had redrawn county lines in 1856, limiting SF County to the city limits, and giving the highest mountains, largest streams and expansive space to San Mateo County. Thus George Ensign had to look towards San Mateo for the water, and hired Col. Alexis Waldemar von Schmidt, a German military engineer, for the job. He redirected Pilarcitas Creek through tunnels and flumes, delivering the first water to San Francisco in 1862. Thus began an era of assured growth, land speculation, private fortunes and corruption,<br />
<br />
In 1865 Col. von Schmidt tried to break the monopoly of the Spring Valley Water Company by incorporating the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works Company to build an aqueduct from Lake Tahoe to foothill mines and San Francisco. It backfired, and Spring Valley Water Company acquired the failed company and firmly established its monopoly for the next seven decades.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile Hermann Schussler, a Swiss engineer, was hired by Spring Valley to replace von Schmidt. He stayed with the Company for fifty years, while also consulting to leading capitalists and mining companies, an example of how deeply interconnected the water and land barons were.<br />
<br />
Armed with the right of eminent domain and backed by San Francisco leading financiers, Schussler drove his conduits, flumes, and tunnel bores deeper into San Mateo County, tapping every major watershed along the Peninsula divide. He acquired 100,000 acres of prime watersheds and rights of way, raised real estate values, and benefited himself handsomely along with the San Francisco plutocracy. <br />
<br />
Enter William Ralston. Ralston established the Bank of California in 1864, invited the most respected financiers and influential business magnates to join the board, and soon created one of the most powerful financial institutions in the West. Ralston had grandiose ideas for the Paris of the Pacific, including a “central park” to invite real estate development in the western sand dunes. He hired William Hammond Hall to carry out his vision of a proper green English-style park in the sandy Out Lands. Under law, the City was obligated to provide the water, thereby destroying a beautiful natural environment outside the City to create an artificial “natural” environment in the Park. Hall was disturbed by the irony; but seduced by power and money, he betrayed his ideals and designed the 1,000-acre park.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Schussler was barging ahead, building many large-scale water projects in the 1870s, including dams and hydraulic mines, all turning great profits for Spring Valley while leaving behind an expanse of human, animal and industrial waste. By bribing the City Supervisors, those who were supposed to supervise the Company, they could set their own rules and rates. When they announced they would no longer provide water for the growing needs of Golden Gate Park, the Supervisors attempted a corporate take-over to turn Spring Valley Water Company into a public utility. <br />
<br />
As the Supervisors were planning the take-over, Schussler was exploring new sources of water for San Francisco’s continued growth, and decided on Alameda Creek whose watershed covered 700 square miles of tributaries through the Livermore Valley, and incidentally provided water for valuable farmland.<br />
<br />
Before either the Supervisors or Schussler could take action on their plans, Ralston bought the Spring Valley Water Company along with the water rights to Alameda Creek. <br />
<br />
Ralston’s immense fortunes rose and fell with his and the Bank’s pyramid schemes and wild speculation, and at this point Ralston was deeply in debt. So his plan was to sell certificates of indebtedness for Spring Valley stock at a higher price than they were worth, trade them for stocks to acquire control of Spring Valley, sell the Water Company to the City, then sell his own interest in Alameda Creek water rights for a large profit. The scheme was stopped by public outcry, and the City Supervisors refused to buy the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
Then came “Black Friday,” August 26, 1875, when nervous depositors made a run on the Bank of California draining its assets and leaving Ralston $5 million in debt. The board of the Bank demanded that Ralston sign his personal assets over to William Sharon, his devious partner, and that afternoon during his daily swim, he either had a stroke or chose to take his life, leaving Sharon one of the wealthiest men in California. Sharon now owned the Palace Hotel, palatial estates, mills, mines, railroads, timberlands . . . and a controlling interest in the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
The 1890s saw a rash of development of communities down the Peninsula for the land barons who had made their fortunes in gold, silver, land speculation, railroads, and business ventures, shady and otherwise. Mansions with gardens modeled on British estates and Loire Valley chateaux required prodigious amounts of water, pushing the Spring Valley Water Company to proceed to expand into the Alameda Creek watershed.<br />
<br />
By this time, the Spring Valley Water Company was largely owned and run by the wealthy elite of Hillsborough and nearby estates. Meanwhile there was a growing voice of discontent from San Francisco customers complaining of high rates and poor service, along with the farmers of Alameda County watching their wells and fields go dry. <br />
<br />
The demand for water kept growing, next from James Duval Phelan, an Irish immigrant, who had inherited an $11.5 million fortune along with substantial properties. A Progressive, he was elected Mayor of San Francisco in 1896 on the Reform ticket. His grandiose visions extended beyond the City to include a world-class metropolis. With water requirements far beyond the Water Company’s capabilities, he became fixated on the Tuolumne River and a Hetch Hetchy Valley reservoir (six years after Yosemite had been designated a National Park). To pay for this he advocated for public financing, public control of water systems, and government sponsored engineering projects.<br />
<br />
Supporting Phelan’s grand ideas was William Hammond Hall, who upon completion of Golden Gate Park in 1878 had become State Engineer. He realized that the dams and aqueducts essential to the massive development of Phelan’s vision required staggering amounts of capital beyond private capabilities, and that only government treasuries could bear such costs. Further potential support came in 1902 from Congress’ passing the National Reclamation Act, thus creating a civilian army of engineers for large-scale projects. Phelan and Federal Agent Lippincott initiated the idea of claiming Hetch Hetchy as a reservoir within Yosemite National Park. <br />
<br />
April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake changed everything. As the city burned to the ground, fire hydrants delivered only a tricky of mud. Many blamed the Spring Valley Water Company for negligence. The disaster gave Phelan’s and Lippincott’s plan the urgency and support they needed. The City was fairy united in believing that they must have a reliable and steady source of water, and Phelan and Lippincott easily convinced them that only the Tuolumne would do that.<br />
<br />
The building of Hetch Hetchy Dam took decades and is another story, but throughout this period the City tried to purchase the Spring Valley Water Company by putting bond measures on the ballot. Five times the measures failed as the voters thought the price too high. Finally in 1930 the City purchased the Spring Valley Water Company for $41 million. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Spring Valley Water Company was a private company that held a monopoly on water rights in San Francisco from 1860 to 1930. Run by land barons, its 70-year history was fraught with corruption, land speculation, favoritism towards the moneyed elite, and widespread ill will from the general populace. <br />
<br />
In 1850 San Francisco was a treeless windswept dunescape, receiving about 22 inches of rain a year, mostly in the winter. The few creeks running through the land could hardly support the instant city rising from the sand. It was clear that water would have to come from outside the city limits, and whoever controlled the water rights and delivery would control the city and its growth, and have unparalleled opportunities for development and great wealth. <br />
<br />
George Ensign rose to the top in a competitive field shrouded in secrecy. The California Legislature had passed an act of eminent domain, permitting the taking of privately held land and water rights for the common good of cities. Thus empowered, George Ensign was able to seize rights of way to store and deliver water to San Francisco. In 1860 George Ensign incorporated the Spring Valley Water Works (later changed to Company), soon to become the state’s most powerful monopoly. For decades to come the power of eminent domain gave for the elite owning the water company an opportunity to acquire empires in real estate with land increasing in value as the water flowed in.<br />
<br />
The California legislature had redrawn county lines in 1856, limiting SF County to the city limits, and giving the highest mountains, largest streams and expansive space to San Mateo County. Thus George Ensign had to look towards San Mateo for the water, and hired Col. Alexis Waldemar von Schmidt, a German military engineer, for the job. He redirected Pilarcitas Creek through tunnels and flumes, delivering the first water to San Francisco in 1862. Thus began an era of assured growth, land speculation, private fortunes and corruption,<br />
<br />
In 1865 Col. von Schmidt tried to break the monopoly of the Spring Valley Water Company by incorporating the Lake Tahoe and San Francisco Water Works Company to build an aqueduct from Lake Tahoe to foothill mines and San Francisco. It backfired, and Spring Valley Water Company acquired the failed company and firmly established its monopoly for the next seven decades.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile Hermann Schussler, a Swiss engineer, was hired by Spring Valley to replace von Schmidt. He stayed with the Company for fifty years, while also consulting to leading capitalists and mining companies, an example of how deeply interconnected the water and land barons were.<br />
<br />
Armed with the right of eminent domain and backed by San Francisco leading financiers, Schussler drove his conduits, flumes, and tunnel bores deeper into San Mateo County, tapping every major watershed along the Peninsula divide. He acquired 100,000 acres of prime watersheds and rights of way, raised real estate values, and benefited himself handsomely along with the San Francisco plutocracy. <br />
<br />
Enter William Ralston. Ralston established the Bank of California in 1864, invited the most respected financiers and influential business magnates to join the board, and soon created one of the most powerful financial institutions in the West. Ralston had grandiose ideas for the Paris of the Pacific, including a “central park” to invite real estate development in the western sand dunes. He hired William Hammond Hall to carry out his vision of a proper green English-style park in the sandy Out Lands. Under law, the City was obligated to provide the water, thereby destroying a beautiful natural environment outside the City to create an artificial “natural” environment in the Park. Hall was disturbed by the irony; but seduced by power and money, he betrayed his ideals and designed the 1,000-acre park.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Schussler was barging ahead, building many large-scale water projects in the 1870s, including dams and hydraulic mines, all turning great profits for Spring Valley while leaving behind an expanse of human, animal and industrial waste. By bribing the City Supervisors, those who were supposed to supervise the Company, they could set their own rules and rates. When they announced they would no longer provide water for the growing needs of Golden Gate Park, the Supervisors attempted a corporate take-over to turn Spring Valley Water Company into a public utility. <br />
<br />
As the Supervisors were planning the take-over, Schussler was exploring new sources of water for San Francisco’s continued growth, and decided on Alameda Creek whose watershed covered 700 square miles of tributaries through the Livermore Valley, and incidentally provided water for valuable farmland.<br />
<br />
Before either the Supervisors or Schussler could take action on their plans, Ralston bought the Spring Valley Water Company along with the water rights to Alameda Creek. <br />
<br />
Ralston’s immense fortunes rose and fell with his and the Bank’s pyramid schemes and wild speculation, and at this point Ralston was deeply in debt. So his plan was to sell certificates of indebtedness for Spring Valley stock at a higher price than they were worth, trade them for stocks to acquire control of Spring Valley, sell the Water Company to the City, then sell his own interest in Alameda Creek water rights for a large profit. The scheme was stopped by public outcry, and the City Supervisors refused to buy the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
Then came “Black Friday,” August 26, 1875, when nervous depositors made a run on the Bank of California draining its assets and leaving Ralston $5 million in debt. The board of the Bank demanded that Ralston sign his personal assets over to William Sharon, his devious partner, and that afternoon during his daily swim, he either had a stroke or chose to take his life, leaving Sharon one of the wealthiest men in California. Sharon now owned the Palace Hotel, palatial estates, mills, mines, railroads, timberlands . . . and a controlling interest in the Spring Valley Water Company. <br />
<br />
The 1890s saw a rash of development of communities down the Peninsula for the land barons who had made their fortunes in gold, silver, land speculation, railroads, and business ventures, shady and otherwise. Mansions with gardens modeled on British estates and Loire Valley chateaux required prodigious amounts of water, pushing the Spring Valley Water Company to proceed to expand into the Alameda Creek watershed.<br />
<br />
By this time, the Spring Valley Water Company was largely owned and run by the wealthy elite of Hillsborough and nearby estates. Meanwhile there was a growing voice of discontent from San Francisco customers complaining of high rates and poor service, along with the farmers of Alameda County watching their wells and fields go dry. <br />
<br />
The demand for water kept growing, next from James Duval Phelan, an Irish immigrant, who had inherited an $11.5 million fortune along with substantial properties. A Progressive, he was elected Mayor of San Francisco in 1896 on the Reform ticket. His grandiose visions extended beyond the City to include a world-class metropolis. With water requirements far beyond the Water Company’s capabilities, he became fixated on the Tuolumne River and a Hetch Hetchy Valley reservoir (six years after Yosemite had been designated a National Park). To pay for this he advocated for public financing, public control of water systems, and government sponsored engineering projects.<br />
<br />
Supporting Phelan’s grand ideas was William Hammond Hall, who upon completion of Golden Gate Park in 1878 had become State Engineer. He realized that the dams and aqueducts essential to the massive development of Phelan’s vision required staggering amounts of capital beyond private capabilities, and that only government treasuries could bear such costs. Further potential support came in 1902 from Congress’ passing the National Reclamation Act, thus creating a civilian army of engineers for large-scale projects. Phelan and Federal Agent Lippincott initiated the idea of claiming Hetch Hetchy as a reservoir within Yosemite National Park. <br />
<br />
April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake changed everything. As the city burned to the ground, fire hydrants delivered only a tricky of mud. Many blamed the Spring Valley Water Company for negligence. The disaster gave Phelan’s and Lippincott’s plan the urgency and support they needed. The City was fairy united in believing that they must have a reliable and steady source of water, and Phelan and Lippincott easily convinced them that only the Tuolumne would do that.<br />
<br />
The building of Hetch Hetchy Dam took decades and is another story, but throughout this period the City tried to purchase the Spring Valley Water Company by putting bond measures on the ballot. Five times the measures failed as the voters thought the price too high. Finally in 1930 the City purchased the Spring Valley Water Company for $41 million. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:1850s]][[category:1860s]][[category:1870s]][[category:1880s]][[category:1890s]][[category:1900s]][[category:1906]][[category:1930s]][[category:Water]][[category:Early SF]][[category:Gold Rush]][[category:Power and Money]][[category:San Francisco outside the city]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=MUNI_Wildcat_Fare_Strike_of_2005&diff=18359MUNI Wildcat Fare Strike of 20052011-11-21T23:44:08Z<p>Libby: the re-titled entry with websites edited and phone number removed</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Stop the fare hike! The day they raise rares...refuse to pay! ==<br />
<br />
<br />
== Fight the service cuts! ==<br />
<br />
<br />
== A 2005 wildcat social strike on San Francisco’s MUNI ==<br />
<br />
''leaflet by Angry Workers''<br />
<br />
<br />
A MUNI fare hike is an attack on every working person in San Francisco, including MUNI employees; a new fare increase will add to the already high stress levels faced on the job by MUNI operators. And after the hike takes effect, MUNI employees’ health and retirement benefits will be under the gun. MUNI management is also planning other schemes aimed against MUNI drivers. ''But large-scale collective action, with MUNI riders and drivers acting together, can stop the fare hike – and derail subsequent schemes by management and their big business backers to attack MUNI workers.''<br />
<br />
<br />
== CORPORATE AMERICA IN DOWNTOWN SF – THE REAL FARE EVADER... ==<br />
<br />
<br />
It sounds impressive when MUNI bureaucrat Michael Burns announces that MUNI has a $57.3 million deficit. But this figure is presented in a vacuum, divorced from its social context, as if salary increases and petty fare evasion were the cause. The real problem is that mass transit is a jumbo-sized free ride for bosses and billion-dollar corporations. San Francisco’s private sector elite refuses to pay for what it squeezes out of MUNI. Running MUNI on the backs of its working class ridership guarantees a permanent fiscal crisis for MUNI – and an endless series of demands from MUNI bureaucrats for fare hikes, service cuts, and contract concessions from MUNI operators. If MUNI riders go along with a fare hike, it will mean that the fare has gone up 50% in two years. A victory for management in this will open the way for a new round of attacks on MUNI employees.<br />
<br />
A permanent fiscal crisis is built into the system. And the erosion of working people’s conditions of work and life will go on and on if it isn’t stopped by mass resistance. Collective action, on the job, outside of and against the control of the union, is the only way to stop MUNI management’s rip-off of riders and drivers. We can all act together against our common enemies, MUNI management, City Hall, and their downtown pals.<br />
<br />
<br />
== WE CAN’T PAY, WE WON’T PAY ==<br />
<br />
<br />
In Italy in the 1970’s, wage earners and poor people fought back against wildly-inflated prices for goods and services in what became known as the “self-reduction” movement. Whole cities saw a mass refusal to pay increased prices. Bus and streetcar operations in many cities staged on the job wildcat strikes, where they kept transit rolling, but “forgot” to collect any fares. The same has been done in Nantes, France; Hanover, Germany; and Montreal, Quebec. Wildcats of this sort have been called “social strikes;” by avoiding hardship for working people, a social strike creates an immediate bond of solidarity between riders and drivers, often forcing management and politicians to beat a hasty retreat.<br />
<br />
A threat of immediate, massive economic damage to the major corporations that own this city will bring attacks on riders and MUNI workers to a screeching halt. In the face of a big action the rich will back down fast.<br />
<br />
Let’s look at what happened recently in Chicago. In July 2004, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) announced plans to impose major service cutbacks, beginning at the start of this year. The CTA was also going to jack up fares from $1.75 to $2.00, after the fare had just been increased in Jan. 2004 from $1.50 to $1.75 (does that sound familiar?) Bureaucrats gave the usual lame excuse – a budget crisis.<br />
<br />
A group called Midwest Unrest began to organize a citywide fare strike, calling on drivers and riders to act together. They said, “''If drivers stopped collecting fares and riders stopped paying them we would have the economic power to pressure the transit agency without disrupting the daily commutes of all of us who depend on transit service.<br />
''<br />
<br />
''“…we started to flyer the eight bus garages in town, and talk to workers more about a fare strike…. the drivers were all pretty pissed and stressed out. They had plenty to tell us about CTA management as well as their union reps…many workers were now telling us we should help them fight the CTA and the union (ATU local 241) at the same time because the union was a part of the company. Of the hundreds of CTA employees we have talked to at bus garages in the six months, not one of them had anything but contempt for the union. When we brought up the idea for a fare strike, the response was usually quite positive....”<br />
''<br />
<br />
from ''Fight or Walk: the Chicago Transit Fare Strike'' on the now-defunct Midwest Unrest website<br />
<br />
On Dec. 15, the day the fare strike was to begin, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a deal had been struck with state legislators, and that any further decisions affecting service cuts and fare hikes would be delayed for six months.<br />
<br />
''The simple threat of a fare strike appears to have played a role in making politicians back off. This is a precedent in San Francisco as well.''<br />
<br />
Recently in Italy, a fare strike has been staged against the rail company Trenitalia:<br />
<br />
''“In Bologna, engineers and conductors have grasped the link between the fare strike and the ongoing labor disputes of the railway workers, speaking about it in assemblies and distributing the flyer...<br />
<br />
“This society runs on two tracks: one for the rich and one for the poor. While the rains are not adequate for commuters, stops are discontinued and discomfort increases...they would like to reduce us to nothing more than voters and consumers, but a great force is in our hands. It is up to us to use it.<br />
<br />
“The fare strike is spreading to various cities. Let’s all participate…the more widespread the strike, the more reasonable the managers will be about the demands and labor disputes of the workers.”<br />
''<br />
<br />
''from a leaflet distributed by participants in the fare strike''<br />
<br />
<br />
== COMMUTE, WORK, COMMUTE, SLEEP... ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Our time on MUNI is part of the time that we are forced to sell to our exploiters. Paying to ride on mass transit is like having a parking meter mounted on the inside of a jail cell. The rich scum who own this city should be paying for MUNI and its problems, not MUNI riders and employees. In the event of a widespread fare strike, city bureaucrats will have no choice but to keep MUNI running; the rich cannot conduct business in San Francisco if their employees don’t have a transit system to get them to and from work and shopping.<br />
<br />
There is a lot of potentially explosive anger in San Francisco over the threat of fare hikes, elimination of transfers and massive service cuts. If riders engage in a mass refusal to pay, and drivers engage in a mass refusal to collect, the only ones who will be hurt will be the rich exploiters and politicians who make things rough for all of us. Bosses’ and politicians’ power to mess up our lives is limited by our willingness to go along with their plans. MUNI operators and riders have all the power in this situation. If we take mass action together against the fare hike, characters like Michael Burns will have to think twice before trying to impose layoffs, or cuts in MUNI workers’ retirement and health benefits.<br />
<br />
Today the capitalist system is out to make all of us work harder for less pay – then work harder still for even less pay, and on and on until we’ll all be sleeping on soggy cardboard mats in doorways somewhere. Life under the dictatorship of the market means an unending downward spiral for working people -- until we make a conscious choice to stop playing the game and act around what we need. The rich want us to pay for the problems of their system. Let’s return the favor. ''It’s not our system – it’s not our problem.''<br />
<br />
[[category:2000s]][[category:Transit]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Labor]][[category:Downtown]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Stop_the_fare_hike!_The_day_they_raise_fares._._.refuse_to_pay!_Fight_the_service_cuts!&diff=18358Stop the fare hike! The day they raise fares. . .refuse to pay! Fight the service cuts!2011-11-21T23:20:17Z<p>Libby: moved Stop the fare hike! The day they raise fares. . .refuse to pay! Fight the service cuts! to MUNI Wildcat Strike of 2005:&#32;makes more sense</p>
<hr />
<div>#REDIRECT [[MUNI Wildcat Strike of 2005]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=MUNI_Wildcat_Fare_Strike_of_2005&diff=18357MUNI Wildcat Fare Strike of 20052011-11-21T23:20:17Z<p>Libby: moved Stop the fare hike! The day they raise fares. . .refuse to pay! Fight the service cuts! to MUNI Wildcat Strike of 2005:&#32;makes more sense</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
<br />
== A 2005 wildcat social strike on San Francisco’s MUNI ==<br />
<br />
<br />
A MUNI fare hike is an attack on every working person in San Francisco, including MUNI employees; a new fare increase will add to the already high stress levels faced on the job by MUNI operators. And after the hike takes effect, MUNI employees’ health and retirement benefits will be under the gun. MUNI management is also planning other schemes aimed against MUNI drivers. ''But large-scale collective action, with MUNI riders and drivers acting together, can stop the fare hike – and derail subsequent schemes by management and their big business backers to attack MUNI workers.''<br />
<br />
<br />
== CORPORATE AMERICA IN DOWNTOWN SF – THE REAL FARE EVADER... ==<br />
<br />
<br />
It sounds impressive when MUNI bureaucrat Michael Burns announces that MUNI has a $57.3 million deficit. But this figure is presented in a vacuum, divorced from its social context, as if salary increases and petty fare evasion were the cause. The real problem is that mass transit is a jumbo-sized free ride for bosses and billion-dollar corporations. San Francisco’s private sector elite refuses to pay for what it squeezes out of MUNI. Running MUNI on the backs of its working class ridership guarantees a permanent fiscal crisis for MUNI – and an endless series of demands from MUNI bureaucrats for fare hikes, service cuts, and contract concessions from MUNI operators. If MUNI riders go along with a fare hike, it will mean that the fare has gone up 50% in two years. A victory for management in this will open the way for a new round of attacks on MUNI employees.<br />
<br />
A permanent fiscal crisis is built into the system. And the erosion of working people’s conditions of work and life will go on and on if it isn’t stopped by mass resistance. Collective action, on the job, outside of and against the control of the union, is the only way to stop MUNI management’s rip-off of riders and drivers. We can all act together against our common enemies, MUNI management, City Hall, and their downtown pals.<br />
<br />
<br />
== WE CAN’T PAY, WE WON’T PAY ==<br />
<br />
<br />
In Italy in the 1970’s, wage earners and poor people fought back against wildly-inflated prices for goods and services in what became known as the “self-reduction” movement. Whole cities saw a mass refusal to pay increased prices. Bus and streetcar operations in many cities staged on the job wildcat strikes, where they kept transit rolling, but “forgot” to collect any fares. The same has been done in Nantes, France; Hanover, Germany; and Montreal, Quebec. Wildcats of this sort have been called “social strikes;” by avoiding hardship for working people, a social strike creates an immediate bond of solidarity between riders and drivers, often forcing management and politicians to beat a hasty retreat.<br />
<br />
A threat of immediate, massive economic damage to the major corporations that own this city will bring attacks on riders and MUNI workers to a screeching halt. In the face of a big action the rich will back down fast.<br />
<br />
Let’s look at what happened recently in Chicago. In July 2004, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) announced plans to impose major service cutbacks, beginning at the start of this year. The CTA was also going to jack up fares from $1.75 to $2.00, after the fare had just been increased in Jan. 2004 from $1.50 to $1.75 (does that sound familiar?) Bureaucrats gave the usual lame excuse – a budget crisis.<br />
<br />
A group called Midwest Unrest began to organize a citywide fare strike, calling on drivers and riders to act together. They said, “''If drivers stopped collecting fares and riders stopped paying them we would have the economic power to pressure the transit agency without disrupting the daily commutes of all of us who depend on transit service.<br />
''<br />
''“…we started to flyer the eight bus garages in town, and talk to workers more about a fare strike…. the drivers were all pretty pissed and stressed out. They had plenty to tell us about CTA management as well as their union reps…many workers were now telling us we should help them fight the CTA and the union (ATU local 241) at the same time because the union was a part of the company. Of the hundreds of CTA employees we have talked to at bus garages in the six months, not one of them had anything but contempt for the union. When we brought up the idea for a fare strike, the response was usually quite positive....”<br />
''<br />
Fight or Walk: the Chicago Transit Fare Strike at [http://www.midwestunrest.net/fightorwalk]<br />
<br />
On Dec. 15, the day the fare strike was to begin, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a deal had been struck with state legislators, and that any further decisions affecting service cuts and fare hikes would be delayed for six months.<br />
<br />
''The simple threat of a fare strike appears to have played a role in making politicians back off. This is a precedent in San Francisco as well.''<br />
<br />
Recently in Italy, a fare strike has been staged against the rail company Trenitalia:<br />
<br />
''“In Bologna, engineers and conductors have grasped the link between the fare strike and the ongoing labor disputes of the railway workers, speaking about it in assemblies and distributing the flyer...<br />
<br />
“This society runs on two tracks: one for the rich and one for the poor. While the rains are not adequate for commuters, stops are discontinued and discomfort increases...they would like to reduce us to nothing more than voters and consumers, but a great force is in our hands. It is up to us to use it.<br />
<br />
“The fare strike is spreading to various cities. Let’s all participate…the more widespread the strike, the more reasonable the managers will be about the demands and labor disputes of the workers.”<br />
''<br />
<br />
''from a leaflet distributed by participants in the fare strike'', at senzabiglietto@libero.it<br />
<br />
<br />
== COMMUTE, WORK, COMMUTE, SLEEP... ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Our time on MUNI is part of the time that we are forced to sell to our exploiters. Paying to ride on mass transit is like having a parking meter mounted on the inside of a jail cell. The rich scum who own this city should be paying for MUNI and its problems, not MUNI riders and employees. In the event of a widespread fare strike, city bureaucrats will have no choice but to keep MUNI running; the rich cannot conduct business in San Francisco if their employees don’t have a transit system to get them to and from work and shopping.<br />
<br />
There is a lot of potentially explosive anger in San Francisco over the threat of fare hikes, elimination of transfers and massive service cuts. If riders engage in a mass refusal to pay, and drivers engage in a mass refusal to collect, the only ones who will be hurt will be the rich exploiters and politicians who make things rough for all of us. Bosses’ and politicians’ power to mess up our lives is limited by our willingness to go along with their plans. MUNI operators and riders have all the power in this situation. If we take mass action together against the fare hike, characters like Michael Burns will have to think twice before trying to impose layoffs, or cuts in MUNI workers’ retirement and health benefits.<br />
<br />
Today the capitalist system is out to make all of us work harder for less pay – then work harder still for even less pay, and on and on until we’ll all be sleeping on soggy cardboard mats in doorways somewhere. Life under the dictatorship of the market means an unending downward spiral for working people -- until we make a conscious choice to stop playing the game and act around what we need. The rich want us to pay for the problems of their system. Let’s return the favor. ''It’s not our system – it’s not our problem.''<br />
<br />
Contact: ''MUNI Social Strike'' at: 415.267.4801 angryworkers@yahoo.com<br />
<br />
[[category:2000s]][[category:Transit]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Labor]][[category:Downtown]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=MUNI_Wildcat_Fare_Strike_of_2005&diff=18324MUNI Wildcat Fare Strike of 20052011-11-21T02:22:09Z<p>Libby: The websites and email addresses are obsolete, but I guess a reader would assume that??? There are a couple amusing illustrations on the original.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
<br />
== A 2005 wildcat social strike on San Francisco’s MUNI ==<br />
<br />
<br />
A MUNI fare hike is an attack on every working person in San Francisco, including MUNI employees; a new fare increase will add to the already high stress levels faced on the job by MUNI operators. And after the hike takes effect, MUNI employees’ health and retirement benefits will be under the gun. MUNI management is also planning other schemes aimed against MUNI drivers. ''But large-scale collective action, with MUNI riders and drivers acting together, can stop the fare hike – and derail subsequent schemes by management and their big business backers to attack MUNI workers.''<br />
<br />
<br />
== CORPORATE AMERICA IN DOWNTOWN SF – THE REAL FARE EVADER... ==<br />
<br />
<br />
It sounds impressive when MUNI bureaucrat Michael Burns announces that MUNI has a $57.3 million deficit. But this figure is presented in a vacuum, divorced from its social context, as if salary increases and petty fare evasion were the cause. The real problem is that mass transit is a jumbo-sized free ride for bosses and billion-dollar corporations. San Francisco’s private sector elite refuses to pay for what it squeezes out of MUNI. Running MUNI on the backs of its working class ridership guarantees a permanent fiscal crisis for MUNI – and an endless series of demands from MUNI bureaucrats for fare hikes, service cuts, and contract concessions from MUNI operators. If MUNI riders go along with a fare hike, it will mean that the fare has gone up 50% in two years. A victory for management in this will open the way for a new round of attacks on MUNI employees.<br />
<br />
A permanent fiscal crisis is built into the system. And the erosion of working people’s conditions of work and life will go on and on if it isn’t stopped by mass resistance. Collective action, on the job, outside of and against the control of the union, is the only way to stop MUNI management’s rip-off of riders and drivers. We can all act together against our common enemies, MUNI management, City Hall, and their downtown pals.<br />
<br />
<br />
== WE CAN’T PAY, WE WON’T PAY ==<br />
<br />
<br />
In Italy in the 1970’s, wage earners and poor people fought back against wildly-inflated prices for goods and services in what became known as the “self-reduction” movement. Whole cities saw a mass refusal to pay increased prices. Bus and streetcar operations in many cities staged on the job wildcat strikes, where they kept transit rolling, but “forgot” to collect any fares. The same has been done in Nantes, France; Hanover, Germany; and Montreal, Quebec. Wildcats of this sort have been called “social strikes;” by avoiding hardship for working people, a social strike creates an immediate bond of solidarity between riders and drivers, often forcing management and politicians to beat a hasty retreat.<br />
<br />
A threat of immediate, massive economic damage to the major corporations that own this city will bring attacks on riders and MUNI workers to a screeching halt. In the face of a big action the rich will back down fast.<br />
<br />
Let’s look at what happened recently in Chicago. In July 2004, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) announced plans to impose major service cutbacks, beginning at the start of this year. The CTA was also going to jack up fares from $1.75 to $2.00, after the fare had just been increased in Jan. 2004 from $1.50 to $1.75 (does that sound familiar?) Bureaucrats gave the usual lame excuse – a budget crisis.<br />
<br />
A group called Midwest Unrest began to organize a citywide fare strike, calling on drivers and riders to act together. They said, “''If drivers stopped collecting fares and riders stopped paying them we would have the economic power to pressure the transit agency without disrupting the daily commutes of all of us who depend on transit service.<br />
''<br />
''“…we started to flyer the eight bus garages in town, and talk to workers more about a fare strike…. the drivers were all pretty pissed and stressed out. They had plenty to tell us about CTA management as well as their union reps…many workers were now telling us we should help them fight the CTA and the union (ATU local 241) at the same time because the union was a part of the company. Of the hundreds of CTA employees we have talked to at bus garages in the six months, not one of them had anything but contempt for the union. When we brought up the idea for a fare strike, the response was usually quite positive....”<br />
''<br />
Fight or Walk: the Chicago Transit Fare Strike at [http://www.midwestunrest.net/fightorwalk]<br />
<br />
On Dec. 15, the day the fare strike was to begin, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a deal had been struck with state legislators, and that any further decisions affecting service cuts and fare hikes would be delayed for six months.<br />
<br />
''The simple threat of a fare strike appears to have played a role in making politicians back off. This is a precedent in San Francisco as well.''<br />
<br />
Recently in Italy, a fare strike has been staged against the rail company Trenitalia:<br />
<br />
''“In Bologna, engineers and conductors have grasped the link between the fare strike and the ongoing labor disputes of the railway workers, speaking about it in assemblies and distributing the flyer...<br />
<br />
“This society runs on two tracks: one for the rich and one for the poor. While the rains are not adequate for commuters, stops are discontinued and discomfort increases...they would like to reduce us to nothing more than voters and consumers, but a great force is in our hands. It is up to us to use it.<br />
<br />
“The fare strike is spreading to various cities. Let’s all participate…the more widespread the strike, the more reasonable the managers will be about the demands and labor disputes of the workers.”<br />
''<br />
<br />
''from a leaflet distributed by participants in the fare strike'', at senzabiglietto@libero.it<br />
<br />
<br />
== COMMUTE, WORK, COMMUTE, SLEEP... ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Our time on MUNI is part of the time that we are forced to sell to our exploiters. Paying to ride on mass transit is like having a parking meter mounted on the inside of a jail cell. The rich scum who own this city should be paying for MUNI and its problems, not MUNI riders and employees. In the event of a widespread fare strike, city bureaucrats will have no choice but to keep MUNI running; the rich cannot conduct business in San Francisco if their employees don’t have a transit system to get them to and from work and shopping.<br />
<br />
There is a lot of potentially explosive anger in San Francisco over the threat of fare hikes, elimination of transfers and massive service cuts. If riders engage in a mass refusal to pay, and drivers engage in a mass refusal to collect, the only ones who will be hurt will be the rich exploiters and politicians who make things rough for all of us. Bosses’ and politicians’ power to mess up our lives is limited by our willingness to go along with their plans. MUNI operators and riders have all the power in this situation. If we take mass action together against the fare hike, characters like Michael Burns will have to think twice before trying to impose layoffs, or cuts in MUNI workers’ retirement and health benefits.<br />
<br />
Today the capitalist system is out to make all of us work harder for less pay – then work harder still for even less pay, and on and on until we’ll all be sleeping on soggy cardboard mats in doorways somewhere. Life under the dictatorship of the market means an unending downward spiral for working people -- until we make a conscious choice to stop playing the game and act around what we need. The rich want us to pay for the problems of their system. Let’s return the favor. ''It’s not our system – it’s not our problem.''<br />
<br />
Contact: ''MUNI Social Strike'' at: 415.267.4801 angryworkers@yahoo.com<br />
<br />
[[category:2000s]][[category:Transit]][[category:Dissent]][[category:Labor]][[category:Downtown]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=PENINSULA_TOUR_FOR_CITY_WHEELMEN&diff=18323PENINSULA TOUR FOR CITY WHEELMEN2011-11-21T01:54:20Z<p>Libby: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
A pleasant one-day tour of which few wheelmen know lies close at hand for the city bicyclers. Trains and ferry-boats are not necessary to this outing, and 50 cents is the actual outlay. Go down Eighth street to Folsom and out the latter to Twenty-fourth, then cross to Mission and go out the latter over the grade past St. Mary’s College to the county line. The lower road is preferable to the upper, which goes by way of the Gum Tree tracts and the House of Correction. The Mission road has been much improved in the last few months and is now in splendid shape. The county line is passed at the top of the grade and then begins a smooth down grade of two miles to Colma, passing Union Coursing Park about midway between. The road is shaded to Colma, where a turn is made to the right in a southwesterly direction. Here the road is slightly rolling, but hard and smooth, though up to a short time ago it was so sandy as to be almost impassable for wheelmen. Two miles farther on an imposing stone gateway marks the new cemetery of the Chinese Six Companies. The road continues upward through a pleasant canyon to Salt Lake flat, so called because of the two lakes of salt water which lie upon either side of the road. This point is at an altitude of about 1000 feet. A little farther on, where the road makes a direct turn oceanward, an excellent view is obtained of the Pacific and of miles upon miles of the coast line. Then comes a steep down grade of nearly two miles, which can be ridden easily and with safety by any cautious rider. There is a level stretch of a mile through a little valley and then the road runs over a knoll into another valley of about the same dimensions and passes within 200 yards of the breakers for some distance, then swinging further inland, crosses another slight rise into San Pedro Valley. The roads in this vicinity are sandy in places, but as they are usually packed hard, they make excellent riding. Another stretch of beach is then encountered, as smooth and as white as the famous beach at Bolinas Bay, and affording equally good bathing. At this point is the famous Tobin adobe house, which was used for a Spanish mission a century ago. For some years it has been used as a hotel, but is now closed, a new hotel a mile above being now the only place where meals and other accommodations can be obtained. This hotel is located on the banks of a stream, where a lake has been formed and fresh water bathing and boating made possible.<br />
<br />
After luncheon here, the return trip is made over a portion of the same route as far as Salt Lake flat. Here turn to the right and walk a half mile, when a splendid stretch of road is found, as smooth and as hard as a billiard table, and slightly down grade for miles. Jersey Farm is passed at the end of the first mile and then the route runs to the San Jose road near Baden, along the bay shore past Sierra point, over Six-mile hill and into the city again by way of the San Bruno road and Folsom street.<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Chronicle'', July 31, 1898<br />
<br />
[[category:1890s]][[category:Cemeteries]][[category:Ecology]][[category:Roads]][[category:San Francisco outside the city]][[category:Shoreline]][[category:Maps]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=PENINSULA_TOUR_FOR_CITY_WHEELMEN&diff=18322PENINSULA TOUR FOR CITY WHEELMEN2011-11-21T01:47:09Z<p>Libby: Needs scanned article, including map. I was stumped on categories, as this is a bicycle tour down the Peninsula.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
A pleasant one-day tour of which few wheelmen know lies close at hand for the city bicyclers. Trains and ferry-boats are not necessary to this outing, and 50 cents is the actual outlay. Go down Eighth street to Folsom and out the latter to Twenty-fourth, then cross to Mission and go out the latter over the grade past St. Mary’s College to the county line. The lower road is preferable to the upper, which goes by way of the Gum Tree tracts and the House of Correction. The Mission road has been much improved in the last few months and is now in splendid shape. The county line is passed at the top of the grade and then begins a smooth down grade of two miles to Colma, passing Union Coursing Park about midway between. The road is shaded to Colma, where a turn is made to the right in a southwesterly direction. Here the road is slightly rolling, but hard and smooth, though up to a short time ago it was so sandy as to be almost impassable for wheelmen. Two miles farther on an imposing stone gateway marks the new cemetery of the Chinese Six Companies. The road continues upward through a pleasant canyon to Salt Lake flat, so called because of the two lakes of salt water which lie upon either side of the road. This point is at an altitude of about 1000 feet. A little farther on, where the road makes a direct turn oceanward, an excellent view is obtained of the Pacific and of miles upon miles of the coast line. Then comes a steep down grade of nearly two miles, which can be ridden easily and with safety by any cautious rider. There is a level stretch of a mile through a little valley and then the road runs over a knoll into another valley of about the same dimensions and passes within 200 yards of the breakers for some distance, then swinging further inland, crosses another slight rise into San Pedro Valley. The roads in this vicinity are sandy in places, but as they are usually packed hard, they make excellent riding. Another stretch of beach is then encountered, as smooth and as white as the famous beach at Bolinas Bay, and affording equally good bathing. At this point is the famous Tobin adobe house, which was used for a Spanish mission a century ago. For some years it has been used as a hotel, but is now closed, a new hotel a mile above being now the only place where meals and other accommodations can be obtained. This hotel is located on the banks of a stream, where a lake has been formed and fresh water bathing and boating made possible.<br />
<br />
After luncheon here, the return trip is made over a portion of the same route as far as Salt Lake flat. Here turn to the right and walk a half mile, when a splendid stretch of road is found, as smooth and as hard as a billiard table, and slightly down grade for miles. Jersey Farm is passed at the end of the first mile and then the route runs to the San Jose road near Baden, along the bay shore past Sierra point, over Six-mile hill and into the city again by way of the San Bruno road and Folsom street.<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Chronicle'', July 31, 1898<br />
<br />
[[category:1890s]][[category:Cemeteries]][[category:Ecology]][[category:Roads]][[category:San Francisco outside the city]][[category:Shoreline]][[category:Maps]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=A_Half_Century_of_Lies&diff=18184A Half Century of Lies2011-10-26T20:52:04Z<p>Libby: George Schulz no longer writes for the Guardian, and I have been unable to contact him for permission. The Guardian has not returned my calls.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
== Thousands of Fillmore residents lost homes and businesses to redevelopment - and were promised a chance to return. 50 years later, Leola King is still waiting ==<br />
<br />
''by G.W. Schultz''<br />
<br />
Leola King has lived your life, the lives of three friends and then some.<br />
<br />
She's traveled to Africa with the legendary entertainer, Josephine Baker. She's featured jazz great Louis Armstrong at a popular Fillmore nightclub she helmed in the 1950s called the Blue Mirror, where she also once convinced a roomful of patrons to drink sweet champagne from the heel of her shoe.<br />
<br />
She's played host to the crusading television journalist Edward R. Murrow.<br />
<br />
Most of all, Leola King has come as close as anyone possibly can to experiencing bureaucratic hell on earth. For half a century, she's been fighting with the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which has taken four pieces of her property, wiped out a restaurant and two nightclubs she owned, and left her with a string of broken promises.<br />
<br />
Her story is evidence that the ugly local chapter of Western Addition redevelopment history still isn't over - and it's a demonstration of why so many African Americans in this town will never trust the Redevelopment Agency.<br />
<br />
Beginning in the 1940s, King - a native of Oklahoma - successfully operated a series of restaurants and nightclubs in the city, remarkable enough in an era that imposed a double-paned glass ceiling on black, female entrepreneurs.<br />
<br />
"Back when I first moved onto Fillmore, it was very popular," King told the ''Guardian''. "Market Street didn't have shit. <br />
<br />
During the height of King's accomplishments, the Redevelopment Agency infamously launched an ambitious project to clear out "blight" in the neighborhood. It was part of a nationwide urban-renewal trend, and while the project here still won't be finished until 2009, it's widely regarded as one of America's worst urban-planning disasters.<br />
<br />
In theory, Western Addition residents who were forced to give up their homes or businesses were given a "certificate of preference," a promise that when the sometimes decaying buildings were turned to kindling and new ones built, the former occupants could return.<br />
<br />
In practice, it didn't work out that way. An estimated 5,500 certificates were issued to families and business owners shortly before the second phase of Western Addition redevelopment began in 1964. Only a fraction of the certificates have benefited anyone. The agency has lost contact information for more than half of the holders, and redevelopment commissioners now openly admit the program is a joke.<br />
<br />
King obtained two certificates, and later attempts to redeem them both devolved into costly legal wrangling with the agency that lasted more than two decades. She has never regained what she lost.<br />
<br />
King insists that she's just 39 years old, but public records put her closer to 84.<br />
She first landed in San Francisco in 1946 and eventually started a barbecue pit at 1601 Geary near Buchanan, building inspection records show. She called it Oklahoma King's, and hungry San Franciscans were lured to the smell of exotic buffalo, deer and quail meat.<br />
<br />
By 1949, however, Congress had made urban renewal federal law with the goal of leveling slums – and cities had the right to seize property by eminent domain if necessary.<br />
<br />
The first Western Addition redevelopment zone was known as A-1 and included Oklahoma King's. King was paid approximately $25,000 for the property, but offered no relocation assistance or other compensation for the revenue she lost as a result of ceasing her day-to-day business.<br />
<br />
Forging ahead, in 1953 she opened the Blue Mirror, at 935 Fillmore Street. Decorated with molded Greek figurines on the walls, a circular bar and velvet festoons, it became a hub of jazz and blues entertainment. King spent a year hopping onto buses full of tourists and begging the driver to drop them by her nightclub for a drink. Before long, her brassy personality had attracted world-class performers, each of them adding electricity to the club's reputation.<br />
<br />
Bobbie Webb backed up B.B. King, Little Willie John, T-Bone Walker and others as a young saxophonist at the Blue Mirror with his band the Rhythm Rockers. <br />
<br />
"[King] didn't only have a personality" said Webb, who now airs a show Tuesdays on 89.5 KPOO, "she was a beautiful lady. Personality just spoke for itself. All she had to do was stand there."<br />
<br />
But like virtually everyone in the neighborhood at that time, King rented the place where the Blue Mirror operated. Redevelopment again reached her business in the early 1960s, and she was kicked out with no compensation.<br />
<br />
Again she pressed on, encouraged by Jewish business owners in the area she'd befriended, including liquor wholesaler Max Sobel and Fairmont Hotel operator Benjamin Swig.<br />
<br />
"Whenever I'd lose something, they'd say, 'Keep on moving. Don't stop, because you'll lose your customers. When you open back up, they won't know who you are.'“<br />
<br />
Two more commercial and residential properties she owned on Post and Webster streets were also eventually taken by redevelopment.<br />
<br />
King opened the Bird Cage Tavern at 1505 Fillmore St. in 1964 near O'Farrell complete with a jukebox, 30-foot mahogany bar, a piano and a gilded birdcage. Then-police chief Thomas J. Cahill tried to block her liquor-license renewal by complaining to the state about "winos" and "prostitutes" in the neighborhood, records show, but regulators dismissed the claims.<br />
<br />
Despite a triumphant resettlement, the redevelopment agency arrived yet again and bought her building before evicting all the tenants in 1974 during the expansion of its A-2 redevelopment phase. This time King stood fast and had to be forced out by the sheriff.<br />
<br />
She spent the next 25 years quarreling with the agency over relocation terms. The Bird Cage's furnishings were destroyed when the agency amazingly chose to store them on an outdoor lot off Third Street during King’s move, a fact later confirmed by an agency employee in an affidavit.<br />
<br />
Her battle, laid out in hundreds of pages of documents reviewed by the ''Guardian'', was frustrating – and ultimately useless. Each step of the transition involved a new round of negotiations, letters, legal threats, and bureaucratic backbiting. By 1997 King had defaulted on several loans and fell behind on her taxes. Except for an apartment building of 12 mostly low-income units where she lives today, she lost all that she owned, including an Edwardian landmark home on Scott Street near Alamo Square and a half-completed bar she called Goldie's.<br />
<br />
“The thing took on a life of its own,” said Gary Cohen, who worked as an attorney for King during the bankruptcy periods and now lives in Washington State. “It as like an onion. Layer and layer after layer . . . it just kept going from bad to worse.”<br />
<br />
With such a sordid history, it's no wonder residents of Bayview-Hunter's Point, many of whom escaped Western Addition "renewal" in the first place, are leery of a pending years-long plan to redevelop nearly 1,500 acres in the southeast neighborhoods.<br />
''San Francisco Bay View'' newspaper publisher Willie Ratcliff led a petition drive last year in an effort to put the plan before voters. Over 20,000 petition signatures were certified by elections officials, but City Attorney Dennis Herrera ruled the petitions were technically invalid because circulators hadn't presented the full text of the redevelopment plan to signers. Redevelopment foes have since sued to have Herrera's decision tossed.<br />
<br />
"The misuse by these people is just unbelievable," King said. "They were fighting me every inch."<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Bay Gardian'', March 21-26, 2007<br />
<br />
For a longer version of this story, see [http://www.sfbg.com/2007/03/21/half-century-lies]<br />
<br />
[[category:Redevelopment]][[category:Western Addition]][[category:African-American]][[category:music]][[category:Bayview/Hunter's Point]][[category:1940s]][[category:1950s]][[category:1960s]][[category:1970s]][[category:1990s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Why_We_Organize_..._Some_Recent_SF_Victories&diff=18182Why We Organize ... Some Recent SF Victories2011-10-25T00:24:45Z<p>Libby: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
'''Housing Victories'''<br />
<br />
'''2006''' - Tenants of the Fong Building (with allies Asian Law Caucus, Chinatown Community Development Corporation and SF Community Land Trust) defeated plans to demolish their homes and are organizing to convert their homes into a permanently affordable, resident controlled cooperative.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition wins moratorium on market-rate housing.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Housing Justice Coalition secures nearly 50 million dollars for new affordable housing from the City’s budget.<br />
<br />
'''2005''' – South Of Market Community Action Network wins package of aniti-displacement guarantees in the campaign to defend the Trinity Plaza from demolition. SOMCAN also wins historic housing stabilization benefits to offset negative effects of luxury housing construction in the neighborhood.<br />
<br />
'''2003''' – A housing takeover led by the Family Rights and Dignity project of the Coalition On Homelessness results in 250 units of family housing (owned by the Housing Authority) being rehabilitated for homeless families.<br />
<br />
'''2003''' – Tenderloin Housing Clinic sponsors AB1217 which exempted SRO hotels from Ellis Act evictions.<br />
<br />
'''2001''' – After over 700 rooms are vacated due to hotel fires, the Mission Agenda and Tenderloin Housing Clinic successfully fight for a law requiring sprinklers in all SRO rooms. Since sprinklers have been installed in individual rooms, no SRO has been closed due to fire.<br />
<br />
'''Racial and Class Justice'''<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – SF labor Council is instrumental in the creation and passage of Universal Health Care for San Francisco.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Greenaction forces PG&E to shut down its power plant, known for causing extreme health problems in the Bayview District.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Young Workers United wins a historic settlement of 4 million dollars back-pay for employees of the Cheesecake Factory who were denied breaks for years.<br />
<br />
'''2005''' – People Organized Winning Employment Rights work with African-American Homeowners in the Bayview District to prevent the pass through of the costs of new electrical lines to the community.<br />
<br />
'''2004''' – Young Workers United, people Organized to Win Employment Rights and ACORN (among others) pass a measure establishing a city-wide minimum wage of $8.72.<br />
<br />
'''2004''' - UNITE/HERE and Chinese Progressive Association prevent layoffs and outsourcing by the Ben Davis clothing company.<br />
<br />
'''Neighborhood Improvements/Community Building'''<br />
<br />
'''2004''' – A group of community members take over a vacant lot of city-owned land and turn it into a community garden to serve the Alemany community.<br />
<br />
[[category:Redevelopment]][[category:SOMA]][[category:Housing]][[category:Labor]][[category:Chinese]][[category:Gardens]][[category:Tenderloin]][[category:2000s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Why_We_Organize_..._Some_Recent_SF_Victories&diff=18181Why We Organize ... Some Recent SF Victories2011-10-25T00:22:52Z<p>Libby: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
'''Housing Victories'''<br />
<br />
'''2006''' - Tenants of the Fong Building (with allies Asian Law Caucus, Chinatown Community Development Corporation and SF Community Land Trust) defeated plans to demolish their homes and are organizing to convert their homes into a permanently affordable, resident controlled cooperative.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition wins moratorium on market-rate housing.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Housing Justice Coalition secures nearly 50 million dollars for new affordable housing from the City’s budget.<br />
<br />
'''2005''' – South Of Market Community Action Network wins package of aniti-displacement guarantees in the campaign to defend the Trinity Plaza from demolition. SOMCAN also wins historic housing stabilization benefits to offset negative effects of luxury housing construction in the neighborhood.<br />
<br />
'''2003''' – A housing takeover led by the Family Rights and Dignity project of the Coalition On Homelessness results in 250 units of family housing (owned by the Housing Authority) being rehabilitated for homeless families.<br />
<br />
'''2003''' – Tenderloin Housing Clinic sponsors AB1217 which exempted SRO hotels from Ellis Act evictions.<br />
<br />
'''2001''' – After over 700 rooms are vacated due to hotel fires, the Mission Agenda and Tenderloin Housing Clinic successfully fight for a law requiring sprinklers in all SRO rooms. Since sprinklers have been installed in individual rooms, no SRO has been closed due to fire.<br />
<br />
'''Racial and Class Justice'''<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – SF labor Council is instrumental in the creation and passage of Universal Health Care for San Francisco.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Greenaction forces PG&E to shut down its power plant, known for causing extreme health problems in the Bayview District.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Young Workers United wins a historic settlement of 4 million dollars back-pay for employees of the Cheesecake Factory who were denied breaks for years.<br />
<br />
'''2005''' – People Organized Winning Employment Rights work with African-American Homeowners in the Bayview District to prevent the pass through of the costs of new electrical lines to the community.<br />
<br />
'''2004''' – Young Workers United, people Organized to Win Employment Rights and ACORN (among others) pass a measure establishing a city-wide minimum wage of $8.72.<br />
<br />
'''2004''' - UNITE/HERE and Chinese Progressive Association prevent layoffs and outsourcing by the Ben Davis clothing company.<br />
<br />
'''Neighborhood Improvements/Community Building'''<br />
<br />
'''2004''' – A group of community members take over a vacant lot of city-owned land and turn it into a community garden to serve the Alemany community.<br />
<br />
[[category:Redevelopment]][[category:SOMA]][[category:Housing]][[category:Labor]][[category:Chinese]][[category:Gardens]][[category:Tenderloin]][[category:2000s]][[Bayview/Hunter's Point]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Yerba_Buena_Center:_Redevelopment_and_a_Working_Class_Community%E2%80%99s_Resistance&diff=18180Yerba Buena Center: Redevelopment and a Working Class Community’s Resistance2011-10-24T20:59:15Z<p>Libby: Do you know if this is public domain?</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''By John Elrick''<br />
<br />
'''Presentation Summary'''<br />
<br />
After the passage of the federal Housing Act of 1949, a sea of urban renewal projects swept across the United States. By the mid-sixties supporters of redevelopment in San Francisco had solidified plans to transform an 87-acred plot of land in the South of Market district into the Yerba Buena Center. Standing in the way of the project were some 3000 residential hotel occupants and over 300 families. In 1969, several hundred project-area residents formed Tenants and Owners in Opposition to Redevelopment (TOOR) in order to resist relocation efforts. During their struggle against the Yerba Buena Center redevelopment project, the members of TOOR expressed their identities as workers and unionists, Democrats and citizens, and as members of an established community.<br />
<br />
An examination of the identity articulated by TOOR in relation to urban redevelopment also helps illuminate themes of continuity and change in San Francisco city politics and urban policy. TOOR’s working class roots and union loyalty stood in contrast to organized labor’s shifting stance on the Yerba Buena Center redevelopment project, highlighting San Francisco labor’s long-running adherence to the notion of business-labor cooperation, in particular since the onset of the Cold War. Likewise, an examination of TOOR’s expressed allegiance to the Democratic Party as the party of the working class, coupled with across-the-board political support of the project, exposes the development and solidification of the city’s pro-growth liberalism. Finally, as TOOR came into direct opposition over the issue of redevelopment with the organizations and political institutions its members had closely identified with as workers, the residents’ shared experiences, goals, and socioeconomic standing reinforced their status as community members and ultimately drove their fight against the Yerba Buena Center project. That TOOR came to oppose relocation primarily as a community group, rather than a class-based political organization, foreshadows the emergence of a new progressive movement in the city.<br />
<br />
'''Selected Quotations'''<br />
<br />
'''The Redevelopment of South of Market'''<br />
<br />
In a 1925 study entitled “The Feasibility of Redevelopment in the South of Market Area,” the Redevelopment Agency expressed concern about “the problems of blight and with ways and means of improving the area through the use of the redevelopment process.”<br />
<br />
“Here in San Francisco,” Justin Herman told a Senate Committee on Aging in 1962, “we have a 90-acre area running roughly from Mission Street to the freeway, and perhaps Third Street to midway between Fourth and Fifth Streets . . . well known to San Franciscans as the skid row.” In regards to the district’s “skid row” residents, the director remarked, “If you leave them where they are they deteriorate some of our most valuable areas in the community.”<br />
<br />
“Yerba Buena Center is a small part – only 87 acres of South of Market’s 1100,” a tentative proposal for the redevelopment of South of Market stated, “when the 87 acres are freed of blighting influences . . . the economic growth will surely spread to the rest of South of Market.” Before the vision could be put into place, however, the Agency indicated, “individuals, families and businesses must be relocated.”<br />
<br />
The Yerba Buena Center’s official citizen participatory organization, the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association, released a study entitles “Prologue for Action” which mused, ‘If San Francisco chooses to emphasize its role of central city, and strengthen its academic-intellectual activities as a part of its program to do so, increased education levels for all citizens will result.”<br />
<br />
'''TOOR Members as Workers and Unionists'''<br />
<br />
Eighty year-old Milner Hotel resident Tom Thomas recounted, “I cam from Greece 59 years ago and have lived in the San Francisco area the whole time. I’ve been in all types of businesses – the railroad, the mills, laundry, and I even ran a wine and beer shop nearby.” The thought of leaving his hotel drove Thomas to write, “I don’t know what the hell I will do when I have t o leave. Things are terrible out there.”<br />
<br />
David Johnson’s description of this career was representational of many TOOR members: “During the years before I retired, I worked primarily as a seaman and visited most of the ports of the world. I worked as a seaman during the First World War and continued in that type of work.”<br />
<br />
In a letter produced by TOOR, the community activists summed up what their collective work history meant: “We have loaded and unloaded cargo on the docks of San Francisco. We have sailed the ships of this country to all the ports of the world. We have driven trucks to Reno, Sal Lake, Chicago, Des Moines, and New York. We have spent our lives keeping this country going.”<br />
<br />
The founder and elected chairman of TOOR, eighty year-old Milner Hotel resident George Woolf, began his court affidavit by stating, “I have been active in the labor movement for over fifty years . . . I am still a member of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union.” Woolf helped organize rank and file longshoremen in 1932 and 1933, “took charge” of the Shipscalers’ and Painters’ Union, helped found and organize the Alaska Cannery Workers Union, and was the “California State Chairman of the successful movement to repeal the state Criminal Syndicalism Act.” “I do no want,” Woolf wrote, “to be pushed around and told where I am to live.”<br />
<br />
While many TOOR members were retired union members, some were still employed and active in the unions. Thomas Nugent lamented, ”I just can’t see this house being torn down as it affords me very close proximity to my work being only 4 blocks from my work. . . . I am with the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union. In an official capacity.”<br />
<br />
'''Organized Labor and the YBC'''<br />
<br />
In an official bulletin of the San Francisco Labor Council, Secretary George Johns remarked, “skid row and broken bottles are presumably the targets [but] two minority groups, Negro families and the Aged, will be the most prominent victims of a massive eviction. It is no secret that unemployment in San Francisco is much too high. The present version of urban renewal and usual tampering with and elimination of industrial sites will only make it higher.”<br />
<br />
''San Francisco Labor'', the council’s official organ, blasted the project in 1965: “Five thousand jobs or more and thousands of homes are doomed if the city’s Redevelopment Agency turns loose its bulldozers on the proposed 87-acre South of Market Yerba Buena project. As projects develop,” the paper stated,” it becomes obvious that the needs of people became secondary to the interests of speculators.”<br />
<br />
When George Johns contested the intent of the original Yerba Buena plan, he also argued, “rehabilitation and conservation programs for Yerba Buena which are compatible with light industrial use would offer employment to workers in both construction and non-construction industries.”<br />
<br />
Rather than seeing the city’s business interests as the enemy, though, organized labor remained “convinced that labor-management committee policy making can contribute an effective approach.”<br />
<br />
With both rising joblessness and rising prices emerging as “issues for the seventies,” organized labor came to the position that “growth, not economic deterioration, is the way to fight unemployment and inflation.”<br />
<br />
A combination of both continuity and change characterized labor’s switch from supporting the Yerba Buena project area residents to referring to the members of TOOR as “skid row residents [who] remain to be moved” in a pamphlet released jointly by the Labor Council, Building Trades Council, and the ILWU.<br />
<br />
'''The Democratic Party and the Liberal Consensus'''<br />
<br />
In a letter addressed to “Fellow Democrats,” TOOR claimed,” We have given our lives in support of our country. We have given you our votes. Will you give us our help?”<br />
<br />
"Ever since F.D.R.’s victory in 1932, you have looked after the little people. You have known that little people – people without money or power or influence – are the source of greatness of our country. You have made democracy work in this country, and the little people have rewarded you with their votes.”<br />
<br />
By the time TOOR demanded to know “Why, Now, Fellow Democrats Have You Sold Us Out?” the liberal consensus had been developing the city for decades.<br />
<br />
During his retirement, George Johns explained, “During Jack Shelley’s time as [Labor Council] secretary, we had reached an understanding with Bill Story of the San Francisco Employers Council. This deal was essentially mutual recognition and a commitment to try to amicably resolve labor-management relations.”<br />
<br />
By 1972, when Mayor Alioto addressed a west coast meeting of the ILWU, city leaders had long been able to cast redevelopment as in the interest of both organized labor and society as a whole. “In San Francisco,” Alioto told the union crowd, “we took the position we were going to push construction. To say you can cure inflation by unemployment is moral and economic bankruptcy.”<br />
<br />
'''The Importance of Community'''<br />
<br />
“The Milner Hotel is my home,” stated one resident, “and I enjoy it here with my friends. The people in the hotel are good to me – I do not want to be forced to leave.”<br />
<br />
A resident name Luther Briggs described to the court what the community meant to him: “I have lived in this South of Market district for 30 years. My whole little world and existence and my only friends are here. To be forced out of here would upset my whole existence.”<br />
<br />
The Milner Hotel manager, Anne Nichols, referred to the hotel dwellers as “our people” and extrapolated, “They don’t just have a room here. This is their home. If they can’t afford a haircut, I see that someone does it for them free and have even shaved them and reminded them to go back and put their teeth in.”<br />
<br />
For project area residents, the battle over the Yerba Buena Center was literally a life or death one, as exemplified by eighty-seven year old George Maurgen’s brief statement to the court: “I would like to die here.”<br />
<br />
A decade after TOOR’s legal battle ended, former Chairman Pete Mendelsohn commented, “I still do the same thing I always did. I go around fighting evil wherever I find it.”<br />
<br />
[[category:Redevelopment]][[category:SOMA]][[category:Housing]][[category:Labor]][[category:1960s]][[category:1970s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Why_We_Organize_..._Some_Recent_SF_Victories&diff=18179Why We Organize ... Some Recent SF Victories2011-10-24T16:54:14Z<p>Libby: original needs to be scanned. Maybe needs more cetegories?</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''Why We Organize . . . Some Recent SF Victories<br />
<br />
'''Housing Victories'''<br />
<br />
'''2006''' - Tenants of the Fong Building (with allies Asian Law Caucus, Chinatown Community Development Corporation and SF Community Land Trust) defeated plans to demolish their homes and are organizing to convert their homes into a permanently affordable, resident controlled cooperative.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition wins moratorium on market-rate housing.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Housing Justice Coalition secures nearly 50 million dollars for new affordable housing from the City’s budget.<br />
<br />
'''2005''' – South Of Market Community Action Network wins package of aniti-displacement guarantees in the campaign to defend the Trinity Plaza from demolition. SOMCAN also wins historic housing stabilization benefits to offset negative effects of luxury housing construction in the neighborhood.<br />
<br />
'''2003''' – A housing takeover led by the Family Rights and Dignity project of the Coalition On Homelessness results in 250 units of family housing (owned by the Housing Authority) being rehabilitated for homeless families.<br />
<br />
'''2003''' – Tenderloin Housing Clinic sponsors AB1217 which exempted SRO hotels from Ellis Act evictions.<br />
<br />
'''2001''' – After over 700 rooms are vacated due to hotel fires, the Mission Agenda and Tenderloin Housing Clinic successfully fight for a law requiring sprinklers in all SRO rooms. Since sprinklers have been installed in individual rooms, no SRO has been closed due to fire.<br />
<br />
'''Racial and Class Justice'''<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – SF labor Council is instrumental in the creation and passage of Universal Health Care for San Francisco.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Greenaction forces PG&E to shut down its power plant, known for causing extreme health problems in the Bayview District.<br />
<br />
'''2006''' – Young Workers United wins a historic settlement of 4 million dollars back-pay for employees of the Cheesecake Factory who were denied breaks for years.<br />
<br />
'''2005''' – People Organized Winning Employment Rights work with African-American Homeowners in the Bayview District to prevent the pass through of the costs of new electrical lines to the community.<br />
<br />
'''2004''' – Young Workers United, people Organized to Win Employment Rights and ACORN (among others) pass a measure establishing a city-wide minimum wage of $8.72.<br />
<br />
'''2004''' - UNITE/HERE and Chinese Progressive Association prevent layoffs and outsourcing by the Ben Davis clothing company.<br />
<br />
'''Neighborhood Improvements/Community Building'''<br />
<br />
'''2004''' – A group of community members take over a vacant lot of city-owned land and turn it into a community garden to serve the Alemany community.<br />
<br />
[[category:Redevelopment]][[category:SOMA]][[category:Housing]][[category:Labor]][[category:2000s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Ethnic_Cleansing_in_San_Francisco&diff=18169Ethnic Cleansing in San Francisco2011-10-20T19:49:57Z<p>Libby: I left out a large section on gangs, as well as a rant against Nancy Pelosi. This needs a footnote on the final plan by Lennar.</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Don Santina''<br />
<br />
Not so long ago, San Francisco was home to about 100,000 Blacks, and the Fillmore district was a thriving Mecca of African American life. Today, the Fillmore is gone, wiped out by "Negro Removal" in the guise of "redevelopment," and the city's Black population has shrunk to 40,000. The last bastion of concentrated Black life, Hunters Point, is slated for ethnic cleansing designed to rob African Americans of not only a spectacular view of the Bay, but of any hope of remaining in the city.<br />
<br />
"They want to kick you out so they can build housing they know you can't afford and allow rich San Franciscans to enjoy it. They don't feel that poor Blacks or other people of color deserve to have a view like that."<br />
--''Appolonia Jordan, San Francisco Bayview'' <br />
<br />
Alan Goodspeed was my next door neighbor in the Ingleside District on the south side of Ocean Avenue in San Francisco. He was a<br />
Black man from Marshall, Texas, who had moved to San Francisco during WWII and<br />
worked as a machinist for twenty five years in the shipyards of Hunters Point.<br />
Within that time, he bought a home and raised a family. <br />
<br />
When Alan passed away a few years ago, working<br />
class Black people had already become an endangered species in San<br />
Francisco. According to a 2005<br />
demographic study, there are probably less than 40,000 Black people left in the<br />
city. Back in the day when Alan and I changed the oil in our cars in adjoining<br />
driveways and jawed about whether Muhammad Ali would regain the title, there<br />
were almost 100,000 black people in San Francisco. <br />
<br />
So, here in 2007, ethnic cleansing of the Black<br />
population in the city "where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars" is<br />
more than halfway to completion.<br />
<br />
'''The Jobs at the Hunter's Point Ship Yards'''<br />
<br />
By 1974, most the 8,500 jobs at the shipyards<br />
created during World War II were gone, and a decade later a petulant Navy<br />
scotched plans to homeport the nuclear-armed USS Missouri when City officials<br />
objected to footing the bill with no job guarantees for locals. The shipyards were closed, and the Navy<br />
pulled out, leaving forty years of highly toxic contaminants behind them, and a<br />
commitment to clean up their mess some time in the future.<br />
<br />
Even as jobs at the shipyards were drying up,<br />
the Hunter's Point-Bayview neighborhood was a majority Black neighborhood, a<br />
vibrant community in southwestern San Francisco which was affordable and had<br />
spectacular views of San Francisco Bay. <br />
The slaughterhouses of "Butchertown" were gone, along with most of the<br />
auto wreckers, and although it was underserved and largely ignored by City<br />
officialdom (except for heavy-handed police presence), the neighborhood was<br />
hearth and home for thousands of Black Americans.<br />
<br />
'''Gentrification Rears its Ugly Head'''<br />
<br />
Fast forward twenty years from the Navy's<br />
retreat. San Francisco's housing dynamic has changed drastically. Home prices and rents have skyrocketed. A<br />
studio rents for $1,800 and a small condo fetches $650,000 to $800,000. The City's light industry has disappeared,<br />
and, while most of the dot commers dot come and dot gone, they were replaced by<br />
a new urban class of middle managers, hedge fund hustlers, fashion designers,<br />
bio-meds, money changers, paper brokers, and techies of all persuasions.<br />
Gentrification has metastasized throughout the City, spilling out of the<br />
central Victorian neighborhoods into the outlying frontiers, like Hunter's<br />
Point/Bayview. <br />
<br />
Consequently, the public lands on which the<br />
shipyards once stood provided both lucrative opportunities for developers and<br />
desirable potential properties for the new yuppie class. <br />
<br />
On the part of the shipyard now known as Parcel<br />
A, the bulldozers, scrapers and graders of the Lennar Corporation are hard at<br />
work, flattening a former hillside for new homes and condos. The original plan approved by the City<br />
included affordable rental units in the mix. <br />
However, those units have now been scrapped. Lennar reneged on the<br />
affordable housing part of the plan, claiming a lack of profitability.<br />
<br />
Very few, if any, of the local residents will be<br />
able to afford the new residences and they will be forced out of this last<br />
corner of the City, as the prices go up around them. And, to add injury to<br />
insult, the asbestos dust being raised during construction is making the<br />
neighbors sick.<br />
<br />
'''Dress Rehearsal in the Fillmore'''<br />
<br />
To understand what's happening today at Hunter's<br />
Point, it is necessary to understand what happened in San Francisco's Fillmore<br />
District in the 1960's and 1970's. The<br />
Fillmore, often called the "Harlem of the West," was a center of Black culture<br />
in the decades following World War II. <br />
Like Tulsa in the early 1920's, the Fillmore was a flourishing home for<br />
thousands of Black people and hundreds of Black-owned markets, auto repair<br />
garages, barber shops, salons, restaurants, shoe repair shops, Laundromats,<br />
night clubs, and apparel stores. Among<br />
those businesses was the legendary Jimbo's Bop City, which featured<br />
performances by jazz immortals like Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles<br />
Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane.<br />
<br />
And then came something called Urban Renewal in<br />
the guise of a heavily-cloaked urban real estate operation called the<br />
Redevelopment Agency. When the RA was<br />
finished, the Fillmore was gone. The bulldozers had smashed and leveled block<br />
after block after block. The fabulous Fillmore looked like a bombed-out city in<br />
an old newsreel. And that's exactly<br />
what it was, displaced residents and all. <br />
The people who lived in the Fillmore were dispersed to the East Bay<br />
cities of Oakland, Richmond, and to Hunter's Point/Bayview. As the Redevelopment Agency smashed homes<br />
and businesses, it issued thousands of certificates of preference to the people<br />
of the Fillmore. These certificates were documents which gave the displaced<br />
businesses and families a promise of preference for renting or buying other<br />
redevelopment property within the City and the right to return to the neighborhood<br />
from which they'd been evicted. <br />
<br />
Of the 883 certificates given to Black-owned<br />
businesses, only 39 resulted in other business locations. Of the 4,719<br />
certificates given to families, only 1,099 certificates put families in other<br />
homes. Somehow, the Redevelopment<br />
Agency lost contact with 3,055 families and 590 businesses which held<br />
certificates of preference.<br />
<br />
Today, the Fillmore is almost completely<br />
gentrified. Much of the neighborhood<br />
has been condo-ized and yuppified, replete with foo-foo restaurants and ersatz<br />
jazz festivals. However, a pocket of Black families remain in the neighborhood<br />
with enough young Black men to be targeted for a gang injunction from the City<br />
Attorney.<br />
<br />
'''Hunter's Point Shipyards'''<br />
<br />
The onslaught to quickly privatize the shipyards property [moved ahead under Mayor Newsom] regardless of the health of the<br />
residents during construction on this toxic site, or the fact that no one in<br />
the neighborhood will ever be able to live in the new housing units. In 2006,<br />
Lennar Corporation was cited multiple times for failing to monitor and control<br />
asbestos dust during the grading phase on Parcel A. Oddly enough, the project<br />
was never shut down to correct any non-compliant operations. Finally, several<br />
local African American neighborhood organizations went to City Hall [in 2007]<br />
to protest this continuing contamination and request that the City red tag the<br />
site until safety measures could be enforced. <br />
Their request fell upon deaf ears. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the AWDG [All White Downtown Gang], not content with securing a<br />
financial stranglehold on future development of public lands, continues to<br />
target existing public housing for privatization.<br />
<br />
'''Hunter's View''' <br />
<br />
The situation at Hunter's View, a public housing<br />
project in the Hunter's Point/Bayview neighborhood with a scenic view of the<br />
Bay Bridge and the Bay, is a classic case of how politicians, developers, and<br />
financial interests work together to achieve their respective ends of power and<br />
profit at the expense of people. In<br />
1997, a grandmother and five children burned to death in Hunter's View because<br />
the smoke detectors didn't work. A recent inspection - ten years later - found<br />
that 64% of the units still had non functioning smoke detectors and pockets of<br />
sewage bubble up in and around these rat-infested homes.<br />
<br />
Do you think City Hall rushed plumbers,<br />
carpenters and electricians out there<br />
to fix things up? Go sit in the corner if you answered in the affirmative.<br />
<br />
Here's how privatization for profit works: first) don't maintain anything, let<br />
everything deteriorate; second) throw up your hands in dismay of ever being<br />
able to repair anything with the meager public funds available; third) call in<br />
private developers and their bankers to "help out"; fourth) evict the residents<br />
because by now everything has to be torn down, and fifth) build units to buy,<br />
not to rent, that the evicted residents can't afford.<br />
<br />
"Do you think that the snail's pace rebuild of the<br />
infrastructure and return of the displaced residents of New Orleans is<br />
accidental?"<br />
<br />
When the Federal government purposely abandoned<br />
the "inner cities" of Urban America almost thirty years ago, the vacuum left in<br />
its wake created vast and lucrative investment opportunities for the<br />
exploitation of public property. <br />
<br />
In response to a Chronicle series about the dire living situation at Hunter's View,<br />
Pelosi, whose nephew Laurence has worked for both Lennar and Newsom, announced<br />
that the Democrats had not only increased funding for public housing, but that<br />
their $1 million allotment for Hunter's View would create "one-for-one replacement<br />
of 267 public housing units" with "new affordable rental units," and "market<br />
rate homes." <br />
<br />
Sounds familiar. Sounds like Lennar's original plan for the shipyards. Sounds like<br />
the Fillmore.<br />
<br />
Excerpted from ''Ethnic Cleansing in San Francsico'', Black Agenda Report, October 3, 2007 [http://blackagendareport.com]<br />
<br />
[[category:Bayview/Hunter's Point]][[category:African-American]][[category:Gentrification]][[category:Redevelopment]][[category:2000s]][[category:1970s]]</div>Libbyhttps://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Howl_on_Trial:_The_Battle_for_Free_Expression&diff=18168Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression2011-10-20T18:16:52Z<p>Libby: this was the piece in the Chron, the whole essay too good to take excerpts; needs links</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
"by Lawrence Ferlinghetti"<br />
<br />
The "Howl" that was heard around the world wasn't seized in San Francisco in 1956 just because it was judged obscene by cops, but because it attacked the bare roots of our dominant culture, the very Moloch heart of our consumer society. At the end of World War II, I came home feeling disconnected from American life, like multitudes of Americans uprooted by military service. And we didn't stay home long. With new larger perspectives of the world, many of us soon took off for parts unknown. And the "white arms of roads" beckoned westward. I didn't know the actual demographics of it, but I had the sense that the continent had tilted up, with the whole population sliding to the west. It was a time of born-again optimism, but there were also new elements in the smelting pot of postwar America. There was a sense of great restlessness, a sense of wanting more of life than that offered by local chambers of commerce or suburban American Legions, a vision of some new wide open, more creative society than had been possible in pre-war America. And -- as an idolizer of James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus -- I even envisioned myself articulating "the uncreated conscience of my race."<br />
<br />
It took until the mid-1950s for this postwar ferment and the visions of new generations to coalesce in a new cultural synthesis. And it happened in San Francisco, then still the last frontier in so many ways, with its "island mentality" that could be defined as a pioneer attitude of being "out there" on your own, without reliance on government. After all, San Francisco had been founded, not by bourgeoisie, but by prospectors, sailors, railroad workers, gold diggers, ladies of good fortune, roustabouts and carney hustlers. When I arrived overland by train in January 1951, it didn't take me long to discover that in Italian, bohemian North Beach, I had fallen into a burning bed of anarchism, pacifism and a wide open, nonacademic poetry scene, provincial but liberating. There were two or three anarchist poetry magazines spasmodically published, but the central literary, political force in all this was the poet and polymath, Kenneth Rexroth, who was active in the Anarchist Circle, waxed wroth regularly on KPFA-FM, and held Friday night soirées in his flat filled with apple-box bookshelves loaded with books he reviewed on every subject from anarchism to xenophobia.<br />
<br />
The Beat poets, joining this San Francisco scene in the 1950s, furthered the postwar cultural synthesis, and "Howl" became the catalyst in a paradigm shift in American poetry and consciousness. The Beats were advance word slingers prefiguring the counterculture of the 1960s, forecasting its main obsessions and ecstasies of liberation, essentially a "youth revolt" against all that our postwar society was doing to us (even as Henry Miller in the 1940s had sensed that "another breed of men has taken over" in an air-conditioned nightmare.) When the Beats -- namely Ginsberg, Gregorio Nunzio Corso, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Peter Orlovsky -- first appeared in San Francisco, they hardly looked like world shakers. When Ginsberg first walked into City Lights and handed me the manuscript of "Howl," I saw him as another of those far-out poets and wandering intellectuals who had started hanging out in our 3-year-old bookstore, which The Chronicle had already started calling the intellectual center of the city. Bespectacled, intense, streetwise, Ginsberg showed me "Howl" with some hesitation, as if wondering whether I would know what to do with it. Later that month, when I heard him read it at the Six Gallery, I knew the world had been waiting for this poem, for this apocalyptic message to be articulated. It was in the air, waiting to be captured in speech. The repressive, conformist, racist, homophobic world of the 1950s cried out for it.<br />
<br />
That night I went home and sent Ginsberg a Western Union telegram (imitating what I thought Emerson had written Whitman upon first reading "Leaves of Grass"): "I greet you at the beginning of a great career," and adding, "When do we get the manuscript?" (Despite Allen's saving every scrap of writing, this telegram is not to be found in his archive.) When City Lights published "Howl and Other Poems" in 1956, the holy unholy voice of the title poem reverberated around the world among poets and intellectuals, in countries free and enslaved, from New York to Amsterdam to Paris to Prague to Belgrade to Calcutta and Kyoto.<br />
<br />
Ginsberg's original title was "Howl for Carl Solomon." Editing the poem, I persuaded him to call it simply "Howl," making "for Carl Solomon" a dedication, and thus implying a more universal significance. Putting the collection together, I talked him into including "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound." And still later, when I asked for more, he sent me "Footnote to Howl." We had already published two books by Rexroth and poetic pacifist Kenneth Patchen, and they'd been printed in England by John Sankey. But the four-letter words (not including "love") in "Howl" would cause censorship to raise its lascivious head. British law held the printer liable for prosecution, and he elided certain words, with Allen's and my reluctant consent. (Later, after the trial, these so-shocking words were restored.) Before sending the manuscript to the press, I showed it to the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, because I suspected we would be busted, not only for four-letter words but also for its frank sexual, especially homosexual, content. And the ACLU promised to defend us. When we were indeed arrested, our little one-room bookstore would have been wiped out without the ACLU.<br />
<br />
As for myself, I thought, well, I could use some time in the clink to do some heavy reading. But for Shigeyoshi Murao, who actually sold the book to the police officers, it was a heavier story. A Nisei whose family had been interned with thousands of other Japanese Americans during the war, he led me to understand that to be arrested for anything, even if innocent, was in the Japanese community of that time, a family disgrace. To me, he was the real hero of this tale of sound and fury, signifying everything.<br />
<br />
In the trial itself we were defended pro bono by the famous criminal lawyer Jake Ehrlich, and Lawrence Speiser and defense counsel Albert Bendich of the ACLU. They were absolutely brilliant -- Ehrlich especially so in his presentation of our case to the court and his devastating cross-examination of the prosecution's witnesses, and Bendich in his expert summation of the decisive Constitutional issues.<br />
<br />
Among our witnesses, professor Mark Schorer of UC Berkeley, coolly defended "Howl" as "an indictment of those elements in modern society that, in the author's view, are destructive of the best qualities in human nature and of the best minds. Those elements are, I would say, predominantly materialism, conformity and mechanization leading toward war." (Schorer also said "the picture which the author is trying to give us [is] of modern life as a state of hell," which reminded me of Bertolt's Brecht defining Los Angeles as a modern hell and Pier Paolo Pasolini saying the same of modern Rome.) Allen himself was never arrested, though he wrote many supportive letters from abroad. We never had a written contract for "Howl, not even a handshake," but his letters more than once confirmed our agreement, assuring me also that he would not "go whoring around New York" for big money, and urging me to publish Kerouac, Corso, Bill Burroughs, so we could "altogether crash over America in a great wave of beauty." When Judge Horn announced that we were innocent, a Chronicle reporter shoved a mike in my face, and I just stood there struck dumb, unable to articulate what I sensed might foreshadow a sea change in American culture. (Later I learned, from Allen himself, how to use such opportunities "to subvert the dominant paradigm.") I couldn't realize what was to happen in the revolution of the '60s, but I suspected that this was just Allen's first strike as the conscience of the nation and a provocateur for peace. Fifty years later, Ginsberg's indictment still rings in our ears, and his insurgent voice is needed more than ever, in this time of rampant nationalism and omnivorous corporate monoculture deadening the soul of the world.<br />
<br />
Introduction to "Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression," (City Lights, 2006).<br />
<br />
Copyright 2006 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books. <br />
<br />
[[category:Literary San Francisco]][[category:1950s[[category:Dissent]][[category:Beats]][[category:North Beach]]</div>Libby