File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9906, message 364


Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 10:27:10 -0400
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca>
Subject: Kevin Keating letter to editor


This letter was published today in the San Francisco Chronicle:

GENTRIFICATION FIGHT 

Editor -- In response to the June 8 editorial, ``A Bad
Element in the Mission,'' I must point out that the
SFPD has accused me of scratching the paint on only
one automobile, not many automobiles. I deny all
police accusations, but I've read the
anti-gentrification wall posters and nowhere do they
call for harm to people. 

The posters of the Mission Yuppie Eradication
Project have drawn attention to the gentrification of
the Mission like nothing else has. This angers
business interests and their media servants. The
invective against my alleged role contains a note of
sour grapes. Muddled thinkers are jealous of what
the cops claim I've written. Their weak command of
language will never stir a public uproar, or give the
police an excuse to confiscate everything they've
written, filmed or photographed. 

It's criminal when longtime residents are displaced
for profit by real estate speculators. It's a crime that
most of us waste 40-plus hours a week toiling for
corporate America so we can use 60 percent of our
pay to feed landlords. You're describing a puckish
poster campaign as a ``reign of terror'' is asinine.
This country leads the industrialized world in police
violence against civilians. In this context, for
wealthy invaders of the Mission to feel persecuted
when their Mercedes gets scratched tells more about
the vacuousness and narcissism of the upper- middle
class than it does about the ``bad element'' in the
Mission. 

KEVIN KEATING 
San Francisco

   

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