The prophet Jeremiah stood at the Temple in Jerusalem and preached to the people, imploring them to join those in need — the widows and orphans. That is how you serve God, he said.
Rabbi Burt Jacobson of Berkeley’s Kehillah Community Congregation calls upon this image in discussing his civil disobedience and subsequent arrest in San Francisco’s Presidio last weekend.
More than 30 people — including Jacobson; Rabbi Zari Weiss of Kehillah; and Rabbi Alan Lew of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, who also is president of the Northern California Board of Rabbis — were arrested Sunday by National Park police after entering a vacant residential unit at the Presidio and refusing to leave.
The action, cited by police as trespassing and staging of an illegal rally, was in protest of the scheduled demolition of 466 former military homes at the Wherry Housing Project. Demonstrators want to turn the vacant structures into interim housing and rehabilitation for San Francisco’s homeless.
“From a prophetic point of view, this [destruction] is not OK,” Jacobson said. “As we discovered when we entered on Sunday, these homes are in perfectly fine shape. These are three-bedroom homes with hardwood floors. And there are thousands and thousands on the streets of San Francisco who could be living there.”
Religious Witness with Homeless People, an interfaith coalition working with and lobbying for San Francisco’s homeless population, organized the demonstration and an interfaith service at Beth Sholom. More than 100 people attended.
“When I got to the Presidio and saw the housing which was going to be demolished to a tune of $11 million, it became so apparent what an immoral act it is to demolish such fine housing while people die on the streets,” Weiss said.
To date, the efforts of Religious Witness — an interfaith coalition that protested against former Mayor Frank Jordan’s Matrix police program and sweeps of homeless people off city streets and from Golden Gate Park — has garnered written support from more than 1,000 individuals and 175 organizations, including the American Jewish Congress.
“People really see the wisdom of this. It’s like a light bulb. They realize we have a much greater need for housing than another park,” Lew said. “And it’s really not an either-or proposition. There’s so much land out there. The housing occupies such a little space.
“There’s no villains in this [battle]. The only evil is the inherent evil of an unconscious bureaucracy — grinding housing down out of sheer lumpen stupidity. “
Since taking control of the former military base, the National Park Service has torn down 58 of its residential buildings at a cost of nearly $1.4 million. The remaining units are slated for demolition at a cost to taxpayers of $11 million.
Congress recently passed Presidio Trust legislation, setting up a public-private partnership for determining future use of the land. Its board will be appointed by President Clinton.
Meanwhile, more than 12,000 homeless people compete for 1,400 shelter beds in San Francisco each evening.
Jacobson fears politics rather than human need will prevail.
“There’s a lot of political jockeying going on. We’re afraid in the desire for all kinds of cultural as well as commercial uses [for the space], where lots of money is changing hands, that the homeless will once again be neglected,” he said. “We could use this $11 million it will cost to destroy housing and create a model program for other cities to imitate. But these are not the priorities of the city.
“My sense is that what’s being done is immoral and sacrilegious.”