[Sustain] MEDIA RELEASE: Groups Condemn CA Senator Leno For Pimping State Parkland

[Eric Brooks]

For Release:
Thursday, September 17, 2009

Contact:
Eric Brooks (SF Green Party) 415-756-8844
Jaron Browne (POWER) 415-377-2822

Groups Condemn California State Senator Mark Leno
For Betraying San Francisco, Environment, & Social Justice

Today, 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 Corporation.

Groups releasing the condemnation included POWER, Greenaction for Health
and Environmental Justice, Stop Lennar Action Movement, The San
Francisco Green Party, Our City and many others.

The condemnation followed Senator Leno’s authoring, and passage on
Thursday, September 10, of Senate Bill 792, which will privatize and
destroy portions of San Francisco’s Candlestick Point State Recreation
Area, California’s only urban state park wetland and wildlife habitat.
Lennar will build luxury condominiums and a yacht harbor development on
the parkland. Candlestick is the only significant open space and hiking
area for residents in the San Francisco 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.

“Senator Leno’s behavior has been unconscionable.” said POWER leader and
Bayview resident Esselene Stancil, “Without holding a single public
hearing with the community, Leno has condemned precious parkland to
destruction, and paved the way for the Bayview Hunters Point to be
further gentrified by the out-of-state, 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 the San Francisco Green Party, “Leno has
repeatedly and blatantly deceived the public and his fellow public
officials in order to maneuver the passage of this noxious bill for
wealthy developer interests. Over and over again, he implied that groups
like 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 Franciscans.”

Leno’s Bill is now on its way to the desk of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Organizations Opposing SB-792

POWER, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, Stop Lennar
Action Movement, Harvey Milk Democratic Club, San Francisco Green Party,
Bayview Hunters Point Mothers and Fathers Committee for Health and
Environmental Justice, Hunters View Mothers Against Crime, San Francisco
Bay View newspaper, Our City, Caravan For Justice (California), Potrero
Hill Democratic Club, Chinese Progressive Association, Labor/Community
Strategy Center (L.A.), PODER, SF Tomorrow, St Peters Housing Committee,
La Raza Centro Legal, Institute for Social and 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 and Resource Center, Chinatown Community Development
Center, EastSide Arts Alliance, SF 4 Democracy, The School of Unity and
Liberation, San Francisco Community Land Trust, and over 1000 Bayview
residents who signed as individuals.

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