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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