Director, ABCDpac

Our children are dying, our community is being pulled apart, and it seems that there is no help in sight. Is there more to it than we know? Isn't it time we made our move to gain control of the situation?

Just last week I sat down to talk with three mothers whose sons have been beaten by police. One who has not only been beaten but shot a number of times by other young men was left in a place by the police where he would surely have been shot again if not for the quick thinking of family and a friend. 

These mothers want it all to stop. And they don't want to be made to feel that the only way is to move their family out of the community. 

As of this week, two more of our young people have died at the hands of another. Everyone stands in fear and no one can come up with a real reason why. Could it be that there is a "Third Hand" at work here? 

Nelson Mandela used to talk about a Third Hand during the days of apartheid in South Africa. What he meant was the strategy of white supremacists to keep Blacks fighting each other while whites took everything.

Let's step back and look at the whole picture. And no, before you ask, all of this shooting is not about rap music, and it's not all about Big Block or Westmob. If you follow the dotted line, then you will start to see that Big Block and Westmob are symptoms of a greater evil. These two groups are being used and they don't even know it. 

Can you follow the dots back to when any one of these young men made a deal with a recording studio? When has any one of them even left the 'hood long enough to enter into a Colombia or a Mexico? How many of them could have come through customs with enough drugs or guns to, say, finance their own company, to try buying something as simple as a house, how 'bout just to own the unit they live in?

Now think along these lines: There once were resident councils that were run by public housing tenants in the very same Hunters Point public housing developments where the young people now called Big Block and Westmob live. They had a vision of providing residents with the means to take care of their families, of stopping outsiders from bringing in drugs, of making education a top priority, of giving the young men and women a real say in what direction their lives would go. And until the Housing Authority stopped them, they were making that vision reality.

When the Hunters Point Shipyard closed, 10,000 Hunters Point residents lost their jobs, and the Navy took no interest in retraining - nor in cleaning up the toxics they left behind. Our children were left to make a way on their own, and those in public housing were hit the hardest.

Now add the fact that in the past few years, San Francisco has become the most valuable land on earth - and Hunters Point, with the best weather and the best views in the City, is no exception. There's no question: if you live in Hunters Point, rich people want to live where you live.

If you live in public housing and have no real means of sustaining yourself, not to mention a family, and someone else wants the land that you call home, you know you're in jeopardy. But does that mean you just give up and leave behind family and friends and the support system that keeps you going? You haven't let the toxic threat run you off.

Here's where you must step outside of yourself for a moment and start thinking as if you were this Third Hand. You would say to yourself, "I want Black folks out of Hunters Point, so what can I do? I can slow down the toxic cleanup at the Shipyard and keep them sick a while longer; I can put the ones who have businesses out of business and put their workers out of work; I can put their young people in jail and evict their families for dealing my drugs; I can shut down their resident councils and kill any hope they have of controlling their lives and owning their homes."

If you were the Third Hand, you would say, "I need to make them turn on each other. I want to make the mothers and fathers think the only thing left that will save them and their children is to leave. Now I can't do this alone, so I will use whoever and whatever I can. Enter the police - not all of them, I only need those who think they are above the law. I'll set them up to run over any person, wrong or right, who gets in their way. I'll call them the gang task force, and their job will be to ID would-be gang members, and to get the ball rolling I'll make sure the police always say that whatever they do is for the people's own good or the good of the community."e;

In reality, over the past few weeks these officers have beaten and arrested at least three young men for things like running from them, then dropped all charges. One of these young men ended up in the hospital bleeding inside; another had 12 stitches on one side of his head and six on the other. The excuse for beating one who could not fight back was that he supposedly had a gun, but that excuse didn't come up until after the beating.

How big is your fear now? How easy is it to think that if you want to save your child, you'll have to move out and give up possession of Hunters Point? Before you do, I want you to ask yourself, who's ready to move in when we move out?

Can we step back again and think, what if our children had not lost all hope, what if they had not started taking out their anger on each other, what if they were to stop the war that is pulling our community apart? Step back and see that the media is telling us that our children are gunning down each other over rap music, though they know as we know that that's not the reason.

Something else is at work here and it's not good. Without making any excuses, just follow the dotted line. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to see there's a Third Hand - white supremacists, big developers, who want Blacks out so they can build their mansions on Hunters Point - turning us against each other while they get ready to take possession of the Hill away from us.

True, we have not done our part in prevention yet, and until we do nothing is going to work. Our children must learn that a gun only brings pain and death. We must take back our streets and our children and stop the madness. We must recognize how we are being used, for as long as the Third Hand is setting our direction, our way will never be clear.

Let's also recognize the big change that's just occurred. The cards are restacked; the old game is over. We have done something that was never done before: we elected a new group of people to the Board of Supervisors who will hear us and work with us and for us, not for someone else. We've taken down the "For Sale" sign that was hanging over our City. Now, with the help of the new Supervisors, we can stop the Third Hand, stop the takeover.

This will mean seeing to it that San Francisco loses no more young lives; it means putting back the hope that was taken away. It means saving what low-income housing is left and adding to it so that everyone can live.

It means putting San Franciscans back to work and making them owners of more than just a job but of the company. It means putting back the "protect and serve" in the Police Department. It means making welfare to work really work, removing those time lines and ensuring everyone a livable wage. It means accountable training programs that lead to good jobs. It means giving Ujamaa Resident Council all they need to put their people back to work making Hunters Point bloom and getting the Housing Authority out of the business of standing in the way.

When the Housing Authority closed down Ujamaa, they took away hope, leaving nothing but despair in its place. When we let them close down Ujamaa, we allowed the one thing to stop that would have given our folks on the Hill the final tenth they need to become full owners of their homeland.

What do I mean by the "final tenth"? Keep in mind the old saying that possession is nine tenths of the law, and that we already have possession of the Hill. All we need to take control forever, for our children and their children, is ownership. Ownership is the final tenth.

There may be many things we don't have, but what we do have is possession of some of the most valuable land in this valuable city. Think of the economic advantage we will have as owners of this land - and as the ones in control of its development.

Never having known that kind of economic freedom, most of us coming from a life of poverty, we haven't seen the possibilities. Now that we see what we can have if we stay here, we know we must stop the Third Hand from taking it away. We must not let our young men do the Third Hand's dirty work.

Can the shootings and the police beatings stop? Can we expect any better than we are getting? I say sure we can, but first we must take a stakehold in our community by owning as much of it as we can. Then WE make the decisions on who, what and how. And we reclaim our children from the streets by making them a partner and reviving their hope.

Call Marie at (415) 822-8126.

For more information, call (415) 671-2862 and visit www.sfbayview.com and
www.electmarie.freeservers.com

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