San Francisco, CA
San Francisco supervisor to introduce resolution calling for Gaza cease-fire
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco Supervisor confirmed he will introduce a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza during Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting.
It comes just one week after Oakland city council approved a similar resolution, and it’s expected to bring just as much if not more reaction from the public.
“We’re thrilled that it’s happening. It’s frankly overdue, and I mean, it’s been an absolute horror for basically everyone I know to have been watching what’s been happening for the past two months,” said Samer Araabi with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center
Samer Araabi, with the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, said he’s happy to see San Francisco officials taking up the discussion of a resolution calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
“We’re talking about 20,000 people dead now and over 6,000 or 7,000 of them children. There’s absolutely no justification for something like that. It’s a moral stain on the collective conscious of everybody so everything we can do to make that end sooner I think is a victory for humankind in general,” said Araabi.
Supervisor Dean Preston authored the resolution.
In a draft copy sent to KPIX, the resolution calls for “a sustained ceasefire in Gaza, humanitarian aid, release of hostages, and condemning antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic rhetoric and attacks.”
But not everyone is supportive of the resolution. Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said resolutions like this don’t help solve the problem but instead can make things worse.
“I don’t think that the Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, San Francisco councils really have much of a role at all to play in retiring the hostages, ending the war or anything like that. So, it gives a platform to all this inflammatory rhetoric and does nothing to help Israelis and Palestinians on the ground,” said Gregory.
Tyler said the board of supervisors should spend its time focusing on policy and programs that directly support the local Jewish and Palestinian communities.
Samer said he believes this resolution does that.
“We’ve had resolutions in support of Armenians, we’ve had resolutions condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those things matter, they reflect the will of the people, and I would say they matter more in this case because we didn’t finance Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but we are financing and providing an ideological justification for the killing of civilians in Gaza,” said Araabi.
It is unclear the amount of support this resolution has on the Board of Supervisors. Samer said he is confident the resolution will pass, while Tyler said he is confident it will fail.
The Board of Supervisor’s meeting begins at 2 on Tuesday afternoon.
Those with the JCRC said they won’t be attending the meeting in person due to safety concerns, instead they will be hosting a vigil in front of city hall at 1 p.m. for the hostages that are still being held by Hamas.
San Francisco, CA
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San Francisco, CA
Excitement and expectations as preparations are underway for the inauguration of SF Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie
Preparations are underway for the inauguration of San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie at Civic Center Plaza and the festivities to follow in Chinatown. Community leaders talk about their support and hope for the future.
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San Francisco, CA
San Francisco supervisor presses city departments to clean up Sixth Street
Over the last few months, San Francisco has been cracking down on open-air drug markets that have taken root on several street corners in the city’s South of Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods.
Some progress has been made, but Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who represents South of Market, is fed up with what’s happening on one particular street in his district: Sixth Street.
On Sixth Street on any given day, one can see some of the city’s issues with drug use, drug dealing and mental health all out in the open.
Dorsey is pressing city departments to take swift action.
“Just on the Sixth Street corridor, if we were to affect 100 arrests per night with an eye toward making those life-saving, medically-appropriate interventions, getting people into detox and drug treatment,” he said.
Dorsey has sent a formal letter of inquiry to all city departments that are responsible for law enforcement, public safety and public health to ask what they would need to make his 100-arrests-per-night proposal a reality.
He acknowledges there has been improvement on drug use and sales on several street corners in SoMa and the neighboring Tenderloin, but not on Sixth Street.
He said the issues on Sixth Street have not just remained the same. He said they’ve gotten worse
“This is not COVID-19 or something that we can expect to get better once we get over the hump,” he said. “The reality is that we are now in the era of synthetic drugs.”
For that reason, he believes mandated treatment after an arrest is needed.
But not everyone agrees, in part, because right now there is a lack of treatment available in the city.
“We have very little treatment for women, for example,” Coalition on Homelessness Executive Director Jennifer Friedenbach said. “We have very little for the Spanish-speaking population. We have literally no free trauma therapy that’s extensive. These are the places that have been identified as what we really need to do to address the crisis. Criminalization isn’t even on the list.”
Freidenbach said the city also needs some kind of detox facility.
She and Dorsey seldom agree on many issues, but they both said they have high hopes for Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie. Dorsey said he’s on the same page as a lot of Lurie’s public safety proposals, and Friedenbach said Lurie has a long history of funding projects aimed as solving the root causes of problems in the city.
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