To protest propositions Q and R, San Francisco LGBT groups, organizations like GLIDE, and advocates for homeless people will come together in the Castro at Harvey Milk Plaza today, Thursday, at 5:30 p.m. KRON 4 got wind of the demonstration against the two measures, which a Facebook event indicates will involve building a literal house of cards in an act of symbolism.
TODAY 5:30pm, Harvey Milk Plaza, gather to say NO on Props Q&R! https://t.co/hSypnY4vXa @JaneKim @TNDC @stanthonysf pic.twitter.com/bRNumQNHLa
— GLIDE (@GLIDEsf) October 13, 2016
Prop R, put forward by Supervisor Scott Wiener, would create a special Neighborhood Crime Unit to respond to 911 and 311 calls. "We have remarkably little traffic enforcement and very few walking beats anymore,” Wiener told the Chronicle. “We see the impacts of the latter every day with the explosion in auto break-ins and auto robberies and bike thefts and burglaries and vandalism.”
However, critics like John Crew, a former ACLU attorney, take issue with the plan. The whole theory of community policing is you place the decision-making as close to the neighborhood as possible,” Crew told the Chron. “He’s calling it a neighborhood unit, but he’s taking resources from the district stations and putting it under the control of people on Third Street. That makes no sense.”
Prop Q, a so-called wedge issue which would ban tent encampments from sidewalks, was proposed by Supervisor Mark Farrell and has the backing of local tech money-havers Ron Conway and Michael Moritz.
“Prop Q and R do not create additional housing or beds—they simply continue the status quo, by shuffling people from block to block after the meager offer of one night in shelter,” the Coalition on Homelessness's Jennifer Friedenbach told KRON 4. "San Francisco currently has multiple year waits for public housing, and over 800 people are languishing on the shelter waitlist today alone.”
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