Organized Labor

In Detroit in May for a conference, I stopped at a downtown bar for barbecue and a beer. Leaving the bar, I met Greg Doxey coming in. I turned and went back in with him.

Mr. Doxey is with the Osiris Coalition in San Francisco. A Detroit native, he was back for a conference related to mine. The Osiris Coalition and I clashed over the Avalos “local hire” ordinance. Some of its members criticized me then. In talking with them, though, I found them to be serious, thoughtful, genuinely concerned for the African American community, not out for personal power or gain. I was happy for the chance to have a beer in Detroit with one of them.

Mr. Doxey and I found there was much on which we agreed. We agreed we needed more opportunities for African Americans in the Trades. We agreed access to apprenticeship was key to this. He lamented the decreasing proportion of African Americans in the City’s population. He argued that African American culture should be as central a part of the City’s life as any other, the City would be the poorer for its loss, and a critical mass of African American working-class population was necessary to sustain this culture. I agreed.

I recalled this conversation when representatives of the Booker T. Washington Center, which perches at Presidio and Sutter above the Western Addition, asked me to support a project to rebuild the center and put housing atop it.

In 2007 the Center proposed the project for 110 units of housing and six stories. Neighbors objected. The Center and the Planning Department reduced it to 50 units and five stories. Of the 50 units, 24 were for low-income residents, 24 for “emancipated” youths – young adults who have just “aged out” of foster care – and two for building managers. Through financing quirks and loss of rents, to make the project smaller would mean it would need a continual operating subsidy from the City.

Even though the project’s housing had been reduced by more than one half and the height by a story, some neighbors still objected. Recently elected Supervisor Mark Farrell, whose district includes the Center, responded. He gained neighbors’ acceptance of a project reduced an additional 10 feet and nine units. He proposed this to the Board of Supervisors.

According to Center representatives, he did not consult with them about this new reduction; nor did he discuss the reduction in our work with this Council.

San Francisco has too few homes for youths in foster care. The City sends many of these youths to homes in other counties. These are predominantly children of the working class and the poor. We know too well how easily unemployment, illness or a death splits our families and throws our children into the care of the state. To provide homes in the City for youths emancipated from foster care is to bring our children home. The housing projected to be available for this purpose falls well shy of City goals. We should use every opportunity to increase it. The Center’s project does this.

And the Center has long been important to the Western Addition’s African American community. Much of that community has been pushed from the Western Addition; much remains. The Center and many individuals I respect felt strongly that the return home of emancipated foster youths is a step toward the resurgence of a vibrant African American working class population that Greg Doxey and I discussed in Detroit.

Supervisor Farrell has said – I believe him – that he hoped to remove the issue of race from the discussion. That was not possible on either side. One of the neighbors was quoted in the Chronicle as saying that the City is “catering to a community that has long since left the neighborhood.”

I testified for the project at 55 feet and 50 units before a Board of Supervisors committee. I asked that Labor Council representatives meeting with a committee member on other topics convey my support. I wrote a last-minute email to a Center representative at his request to read before the full Board of Supervisors, as I couldn’t be present. He printed it out and distributed it instead. Having misremembered City testimony at the committee hearing on the level of subsidy necessitated by Supervisor Farrell’s proposal, I overstated it in the email. The board had the correct number, however; my overstatement was inconsequential.

Supervisor Farrell was angered by this support, and particularly by my not having discussed it with him before declaring it publicly. I have apologized to him for this. As I have noted above, though, communication was not good in either direction.

Supervisor Farrell serves a district with probably the lowest proportion of working class and poor residents of any. His constituency is not mine. We will often agree on economic development issues. We will often disagree on others.

He told the Supervisors, “I am not afraid to stand here on my two feet and say I will fight for my neighbors.”

And I am not afraid to stand for the working class, of whatever stripe.

If we will fight, it is best if we do so with respect. I offer mine. I ask his.