Amnesty for Victims of SF Anti-Homeless Laws

Amnesty for the Victims of S.F. Anti-Homeless Laws
_{An editorial by Terry Messman}

In response to a direct appeal by Religious Witness with Homeless People, S.F. District Attorney Terence Hallinan has, in effect, granted an unconditional amnesty to thousands of homeless people who were issued bench warrants for \"quality of life\" violations issued by San Francisco police between January, 1996 and June, 2000.

Sister Bernie Galvin, director of Religious Witness, said, \"Tens of thousands of poor and homeless people have been burdened with arrest warrants hanging over their heads all these years for unpaid fines or not showing up in court. They are now free of that burden.\"

As the result of a series of face-to-face meetings between the leaders of Religious Witness and D.A. Hallinan and Deputy D.A. Paul Cummins, the district attorney\'s office filed a motion in San Francisco Superior Court on June 5 asking for a dismissal of all warrants issued for quality of life misdemeanors and infractions. On June 7, Superior Court Ronald Quidachay granted the motion and dismissed warrants issued against people cited under virtually the entire spectrum of anti-homeless laws.

This judicial order amounts to a sweeping amnesty for all warrants over one year old issued against homeless people for obstructing a public way, loitering, trespassing, camping in the park, sleeping in a park, disobeying park rules, begging/aggressive soliciting, illegal peddling and drinking in public.

For nearly a decade, under mayors Frank Jordan and Willie Brown, San Francisco police have aggressivley criminalized homeless people for acts that are essential to their survival, such as sleeping outside, camping in parks, sitting on sidewalks, covering up with blankets, or loitering in doorways in a city with fewer than 2,000 shelter beds for more than 14,000 homeless people.

During this period, San Francisco has been cited repeatedly as being among the five meanest cities in the country for its anti-homeless laws in the nationwide surveys conducted by the National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness.

Hallinan\'s de factor amnesty lifts a serious legal burden from the backs of thousands of homeless people caught in the trap of zealous, anti-homeless enforcement. In the court papers filed on June 7 by Hallinan in support of the dismissal of thousands of outstanding warrants, the district attorney wrote: \"Many of the cited citizens are homeless, have limited resources, and virtually no means to obtain relief. They would be subject indefinitely to the ignominy of arrest if this request is not granted.\"

Sister Galvin sent Hallinan a letter on behalf of the steering committee of Religious Witness on January 31, 2001, asking for amnesty for those criminalized by the 80,775 citations and citation-related arrests of homeless people from January, 1996, to June, 2000. Galvin asked Hallinan to \"reverse, at least to some degree, some of the injustices that have been perpetrated upon homeless people through the Matrix policy of San Francisco.\"

The letter triggered a series of meetings between Religious Witness and the D.A.\'s office. In the first meeting with Hallinan in early February, 2001. Galvin proposed a complete amnesty for homeless people burdened with bench warrants. \"Hallinan was immediately open and immediately said yes,\" Galvin stated.

Galvin, Danielle Radford of Religious Witness, and Rev. Keenan Kelsey of Noe Valley Ministry then met with Deputy D.A. Cummins in May to go over the 80,000-plus quality of life citations that turned into bench warrants. By June 7, Hallinan had drafted the official dismissal of all warrants for quality of life offense, and had it signed by the judge. The sweeping amnesty went into effect that day.

Galvin said, \"Many people have lived for a year or longer under the threat of arrest under these citations. This relieves homeless people of the burden of fear -- fear of being arrested under the warrants. Many poor and homeless people feel that Hallinan is a person who cares and who seeks alternative solutions to actually arresting people for being poor.\"

This amnesty was the second time that Hallinan responded positively to an urgent moral request from the clergy on behalf of homeless people. In January of 1996, Religious Witness met with him and gained amnesty for thousands of homeless people caught up in bench warrants as a result of 39,000 citations issued since then-Mayor Jordan launched the Matrix program in August, 1993.

Hallinan has been nearly the only political leader in the Bay Area to stick his neck out in favor of more humane treatment for homeless people. But for the progressive district attorney, apparently no good dead goes unpunished.

A sneering column in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26 by Ken Garcia denounced Hallinan for not being willing to use his powers as district attorney to attack the homeless. Headlined, \"D.A. builds a pro-filth platform,\" the Chronicle column mocked Hallinan for reportedly considering a run for mayor in 2003, saying that every other candidate will be running on an anti-homeless platform.

All other mayoral contenders will be calling for \"less refuse and fewer human toll booths,\" as the Chronicle cynically put it, implicitly equating homeless people with garbage. The Chronicle columnist goes on to make that vicious equation explicit, writing: \"But guess woh stands alone, champion of the downtrodden, the anti-quality of life crusader? Some people talk trash. Terence Hallinan delivers it. A vote for Terence will mean filthier streets, more homeless, more pungent sidewalks.\"

Only in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, which has championed anti-homeless policies for years, would a \"champion of the downtrodden\" be ridiculed and denounced for the crime of having a social conscience. In other times, in other places, journalists themselves would consider it a badge of honor to be called a \"champion of the downtrodden.\" But in the Chronicle, a columnist scores points by snidely deriding a public official for standing up against the systematic persecution of a hated minority.

By some bizarre twist of logic, the Chronicle warns that, if Hallinan acts to moderate the anti-homeless laws and police repression that have earned San Francisco a repeated place on the list of the \"Five Meanest Cities\" in the entire country, then he must be accused of causing increased homelessness.

More fair-minded observers might say that San Francisco\'s severe affordable housing shortage and skyrocketing housing prices, coupled with the disastrous fallout from welfare reform and rising poverty rates nationwide, are to blame for increasing homelessness. The Chronicle, however, distorts the truth by attempting to blame in advance any future increase in homelessness on a district attorney who simply prefers to find a decent alternative to prosecuting poverty-stricken people for living on the streets.

When San Francisco\'s major newspaper irresponsibly equates Hallinan\'s compassionate approach towards homeless people with delivering \"trash\" and running on a \"pro-filth\" platform, it has stooped to a dangerous level of intolerance, bordering on incitement to hate an unwanted minority group. In the analysis of this Chronicle column, homeless people are not fellow humans caught in a cycle of poverty in the most overpriced housing market in the country. They are not human beings at all, in fact, but trash.

The Chronicle article goes on to ridicule Hallinan as \"the crafty statesman of the shopping-cart brigade\" and says, \"Hallinan will stand alone as the protector of lawless urchins everywhere.\" Such anti-homeless bigotry may make for a colorful column. But look at it in another light for a moment -- the light of history.

In the Deep South of the 1950s, public sentiment often ran high against another unwanted minority banished from \"respectable\" society by the laws of segregation. Many public officials and newspapers always supported the prosecution of members of that minority for the \"crime\" of causing discomfort by their very presence in the neighborhoods of the \"good, law-abiding\" citizens in the majority.

A handful of courageous officials and journalists stood up against the weight of public opinion, and resisted those who passed laws against this despised minority. But how many district attorneys ever stood up against the laws of segregation? How many columnists for Mississippi newspapers denounced the prevailing prejudice of their society? How many took the other road, and vilified the minorities of their day in print? How do they look now through the lens of history?

In the history of American journalism, we have seen shining examples of newspapers that champion the downtrodden, and stand up for the rights of the scorned and insulted. How different a legacy the Chronicle is leaving.

Originally published in Street Spirit, 65 Ninth St, SF, CA, 94103. (415) 565-0201. spirit@afsc.org