Groups Condemn Senator Mark Leno
For Privatizing SF Wilderness Area

On Thursday, September 17, a diverse coalition of environmental and social justice organizations roundly condemned California State Senator Mark Leno for using the power of his office to betray community process and environmental protection, in order to enrich the profits of Miami based Lennar Corp.

Groups releasing the condemnation included People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Our City, Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice, Stop Lennar Action Movement, The San Francisco Green Party and many others.

The condemnation followed Senator Leno’s authoring, and passing on September 10, Senate Bill 792, which will privatize and destroy parts of San Francisco’s Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, California’s only urban state park wetland and wildlife habitat. Lennar will build luxury condos and a yacht harbor on the parkland.

Candlestick is the only significant open space and hiking area for residents in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood which has long been plagued by environmental injustice and toxic emissions from various industries, freeway bypasses, and the contaminated remnants of the U.S. naval shipyard which was once housed there.

The organizations expressed outrage at Leno’s ramming through the bill without first holding even one public hearing with either the Bayview Hunters Point or the greater San Francisco community, and said that Leno has now become a broker of corporate real estate interests.

“Leno’s behavior has been unconscionable.” said POWER leader and Bayview resident Esselene Stancil, “Without holding a single public hearing with the community, he has relegated precious parkland to destruction, and paved the way for the Bayview Hunters Point to be further gentrified by corporate real estate giant Lennar, which is already poisoning the neighborhood with asbestos and other hazardous materials in its existing construction projects.”

Said Eric Brooks with Our City, “Senator Leno has repeatedly and blatantly deceived the public and his fellow elected officials, in order to maneuver passage of this noxious bill for wealthy developer interests. Over and over again, Leno implied that Sierra Club and Arc Ecology supported his bill when in fact they never did. And several times he claimed that the parkland involved is a dirt parking lot, when it is actually grassland on its way to being restored to a wetland wildlife area which is crucial to the health and well being of the Bayview community and all San Francisco.”

Leno’s Bill was recently signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger.

Organizations Opposing SB-792

POWER, Our City, Greenaction for Health & Environmental Justice, Stop Lennar Action Movement, Harvey Milk Democratic Club, San Francisco Green Party, Bayview Hunters Point Mothers and Fathers Committee for Health & Environmental Justice, Hunters View Mothers Against Crime, PODER, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, Caravan For Justice (California), Potrero Hill Democratic Club, Chinese Progressive Association, Labor/Community Strategy Center (L.A.),  SF Tomorrow, Saint Peter's Housing Committee, La Raza Centro Legal, Institute for Social & Environmental Justice Education, Visitacion Valley Greenway Project, Visitacion Valley Planning Alliance, Californians for Justice, Asian Pacific Environment Network, Little Hollywood Home Owners Association, Potrero Hill Boosters, The Greenlining Institute, San Bruno Mountain Watch, Alameda Health Consortium, Movement Generation, Center for Third World Organizing, Just Cause Oakland, Education Not Incarceration, Idriss Stelley Action & Resource Center, Chinatown Community Development Center, EastSide Arts Alliance, SF 4 Democracy, The School of Unity & Liberation, San Francisco Community Land Trust, and over 1000 Bayview residents who signed petitions as individuals.