HANC’s January meeting was in three parts. The first two segments were part of our 60th anniversary celebration. We started with a video from 1972, “A report from the Neighborhood.” The neighborhood was, of course, the Haight-Ashbury, and the video included a HANC meeting, and some recognizable individuals. It can be seen at https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/218071.
The video was followed with a presentation by David Wills, former Haight Ashbury resident and local artist. David first visited the Haight-Ashbury in 1969, where he bought a sketchbook at Mendel’s and overalls at Cal Surplus. He moved to the Haight-Ashbury in 1975 and lived on Ashbury Street from 1976 until 2008, and in the neighborhood until 2013. David provided tables full of his art, which he showed at the meeting. Examples included the first poster for the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, 1978 “Shop the Haight” bus ads (very few of the stores advertised still exist), and a 1982 poster showing the Haight-Ashbury surrounded by rising waters due to climate change (David gave away copies of this poster at the meeting). There was barely time to mention David’s work with Rolling Stone, the Whole Earth Catalog, the Hookers’ Ball, Shady Grove, and Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver.
The third part of the meeting featured Jackie Fielder from the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition. The mission of the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition is to establish a municipal owned bank in San Francisco rooted in the principles of racial, social, economic and environmental justice. The Coalition began in 2017 as the SF Defund DAPL Coalition, with a goal of divesting from Dakota Access Pipeline related investments. In April, 2017, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution to identify and pursue opportunities to identify and pursue opportunities to create a municipal bank. The Municipal Bank Feasibility Task Force was formed, and met from February through November, 2018. In October, 2019, California passed AB 857, which will allow cities to have their own public banks. Legislation was introduced at the Board of Supervisors in November, 2019 to create a Public Bank Planning Task Force, which will be required to submit plans by June 30, 2020 to the Board and to LAFCO (Local Agency Formation Committee) for a lending corporation wholly owned by the City, and by December 31, 2020, plans for the lending corporation to become a Public Bank. More information about Public Banks can be found at the Public Banking Institute’s Website, www.publicbankinginstitute.org.