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I kind of lost my train of thought. Started to think about else that invaded my thoughts for the moment, but we'll leave that out. You know when you do things like this there's so much that has happened and things that you forgot. I told you all I think the other day about the book, if you find it, “My search for Patty Hearst” by Steven Weed, who was her boyfriend. It has a really funny section on, kind of funny to me cause I kind of know the background on what happened with the food give-away. It really illustrates that we were, the organization, even though as we said in the last session that was started by the redevelopment agency to take the thunder and the control and the militancy out of WACO. We took over and it really became that organization again, but as I said, then it was too late.
When we got started it was too late. When they laid down in front of the bulldozers and won the court case, it was already too late. Because it became too late the day they approved going forward. To understand that, to understand the money and the power that played behind what happened to us and our community, you need to see that film. It's called “Redevelopment”. The call it “Redevelopment” now, but the full title is “Redevelopment: a Marxist Analysis”. We made it, it was a collaboration of efforts, by our group the Fillmore Media Center, but over-all coordinating the people who have the film now is San Francisco News Reel. I've got a copy I think. When I run across it, I'll see to it that I get it to you. You all need to see it because, as I said, to make it, we did the session in the black community. A Hispanic media group did the work in their community, and so forth. When they wanted to interview the corporate types, the white people who worked with us, they lied. They got hair cuts, they put on suits and ties and lied about what they were doing, and got in to see like the president of Wells Fargo, Walter Caplan the president of the Redevelopment Agency at that time, who was the former president, CEO, of Capwell, Emporium-Capwell. You guys remember those. You're too young? You never went to the emporium?
No.
It's been closed that long? You guys are so young and I'm so old. It seems like I was just there. I used to park in the back alley and run in and buy shoes because I like to buy nice shoes cheaply. Which I know is more a female thing than male, but that's me. It would be important for you to see it, because you would better understand better what I mean by saying it was too late when we started resisting.
Nothing was going to stop that kind of money. You've got to understand that after forty years of redevelopment what will be interesting is when it comes out over to how many billions of dollars have been spent. We jokingly say, well it's a joke, but it's one of those painful jokes. You know some jokes are funny, but they hurt? That the redevelopment agency, throughout this redevelopment process, we've made hundreds of millionaires and no black ones at all. Throughout the whole redevelopment process one woman has developed new construction from scratch. We just offered a team to the redevelopment agency, that our group, that I chair now, the CAC, the Citizens Advisor Committee, had endorsed a group with women partners, African-American women partners, to the redevelopment agency. And they chose not to select them. They chose a developer who was the only African-American on his team.
They're on the one hand talking about black flight and bringing certificate holders. Certificate holders are the people who got moved they gave you a certificate which gave you the right to move back in. Finding these people is very hard. You have to do outreach and they picked a team that had no outreach program over the team that had a very effective one, and that's already had success with outreach. It's so much for all that we do, redevelopment says as they go into Hunters Point now, that this is not your fathers redevelopment agency. We're really not sure. I see the same kind of duplicitous happenings going on, I see the sub-diffusion line, and most important I see the pitting of group within the community against one another. That's still going on. I see this idea that staff has that we are the professionals, we are the experts and we ought to control the process rather than, "it's your community, you live there, you have to suffer and die with the decisions that are made, so how can we work for you? Since we are the experts and the professionals, and you pay us through your tax dollars, how can we work for you to make this a refurbished and rebuilt community that works for you, the people that already live here?"
Well, what the agency does is they build buildings that will bring in the people that fit those buildings. Rather than building buildings that fit the people that are already in that community. That continue to facilitate community. Case and point, you know, when we talked about kids running up and down the street, playing at night on a warm summer night, and all the old folk are outside. They're kicking it, you know, growing up, you walk down the street and you can hear the baseball game. In my day we didn't have no portable radio, but every house had the game on. So in a four block walk you wouldn't lose an at bat or pitch cause you could hear it all the way down the street. You follow me? Because it was summer and everybody's door was open. Folk were interacting with each other. The old folk would be outside doing stuff and the kids living and running. Well, you can do that when you build a place like Fillmore Center.
If I'm a professional planner, designer or architect with the redevelopment agency that's good for my resume. That I participated in tearing down and rebuilding an entire community. It doesn't look so great on my resume that what I did was I tweaked this and that to keep a community from working. Now we tore down a few buildings because they were just too far-gone, or they really didn't fit. Basically we kept the community intact and we did very little. Now socially and morally that's a wonderful thing, but it won't elevate you into the secretary of HUD or whatever your aspirations or ambitions may be.
What we still have is this fight between what people need and what professionals want to do. It is a fight that exists in most every area that deals with people that has hands-on with people, whether it's the welfare or human services department, or whether it's drug treatment, or for that matter whether it's really in the church, even in the church. I know churches and church situations where people get so carried away with church work, they forget the work of the church, which is meeting the needs of people.
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