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By Christin Evans, Calvin Welch, and David Woo, HANC Board
This month at HANC we will present a panel on policing in our neighborhood and citywide. The panel will include Police Commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone, Legislative Aide to the District 5 Office Melissa Hernandez, and Park Station Police Captain Jack Hart.
To offer some context for the meeting it is important to remember that in the 1970's the Haight- Ashbury, now among the most wealthy neighborhoods in the City, with the City's largest number of Airbnb's catering to upscale tourists and visitors, was considered the "hell hole" of San Francisco and far more disparaged in the media than the Tenderloin is today. In story after story in the City's THREE daily newspapers and six or seven TV stations, public nudity and moral depravity, dope smoking and acid consumption in plain view, and the brisk sale of both on every street corner on Haight Street was reported. Sixty Minutes and the New York Times sent reporters to walk Haight Street to report that our neighborhood was the precursor, not simply of the fall of San Francisco, but of the entire western world as we knew it. Didn't happen, the media was wrong (again).
But what did happen and was rarely reported was the community response: the Diggers, the Free Medical Clinic, Westside Community Mental Health, The Haight Ashbury Community Alcohol Treatment Program (yes alcohol!), The Haight-Ashbury Community Development Corporation, the Food Conspiracy and the community based battle to keep Park Police Station open and local.