Loaves vs. Lofts Gourmet catering company objects to being relocated by high priced live work/lofts. (Part two in an ongoing series of special reports from "the inside" on gentrification) by Giovonna Willis-Barela staff writer, POOR Magazine
Ohlone peoples and Bay View activists demand their legal and sovereign right to be involved in the Bayview planning process.
Tiny aka Lisa Gray-Garcia/PNN Indigenous Peoples Media Project
Friday, January 15, 2010;
"If we cannot agree today to preserve our lifes' ways, our history, our culture, then there is the court system and we will go to that," Rosemary Cambra, Mawakma Ohlone, spoke at a press conference last Tuesday on the intentions of Bay Area 1st peoples, in regards to land use of the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood development.
Rosemary continued to explain how there are 16 sacred sites in the Bayview and that the Ohlone peoples were not consulted at all in the proposed development of the Bayview/Hunters Point parcels.
This multi-generational and inter-tribal press conference which opened with indigenous youth scholar, Anthony Sul, performing a traditional song of prayer, featured many indigenous elders, youth and leaders from POWER, United Native Americans, GreenAction, Aim-West and POOR Magazine's Indigenous Peoples Media Project.
"How do you get rid of an entire group of people," Mark Anque from Aim-West addressed the crowd gathered at San Francisco's City Hall," he continued, "In these times, when we are surrounded by Europeans, it is through mundane bureacracy."
Bureacracies such as the EIR reports, and endless, project area committes(PAC's) that the planning commission is always thrilled to administer.
"My teachers in school told me the Ohlone people were dead, I raised my hand and said , that's funny, im Ohlone and I'm not dead," Anthony Sul described his direct encounter with the genocide of dis-information.
As he spoke i was reminded of my own indigenous peoples, the Taina peoples of the Caribbean. Through history,and anthropology we are constantly told we are not alive, we were all killed by kkkolonization. To which i always counter whoever owns the access to the media and history, defines the "truth" with impunity.
"The press conference was a raging success, " Ann Marie Sayers, Ohlone chairwoman, told me in a follow-up interview, that after the press conference she was contacted by the SF planning commission who formerly requested the consultation of Native peoples in the planning process of the Bayview.
