Longtime San Francisco residents and community members joined together in a mock “evict the evictors” demonstration against Bornstein & Bornstein, a law practice that has helped landlords to evict and displace many Bay Area tenants for the past 20 years.
“We’re here to make sure that San Francisco is for everyone,” said A. Jacquie Taliaferro of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) & the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “They’re here helping Wells Fargo and other big banks gentrify this city. So right now, we the people are standing up and saying we’ve had enough of this bullying.”
The action took place on March 21, in front of the Bornstein & Bornstein law offices on Polk Street in San Francisco. Over 15 organizations rallied together in support of the event, including the ACCE, Gay Shame, and Project Lawyer Connect. Gay Shame, a radical, anti-capitalist queer organization based in San Francisco, hosted the action.
Since 1997, hundreds of San Francisco residents have been displaced from their homes predominantly in the Castro, Mission, and Marina districts. With a recent surge of evictions happening due to the tech boom, community members are pushing back and speaking up.
“It’s a battle where you know they’re fighting it with the law on their side. It’s like going into a battle where they have the cannons, machine guns and bombs, and we have squirt guns,” said Tony Robles, co-editor of POOR Magazine. “But what we do have is we have the power of the people. We’re pushing back. We’ve got people from a lot of different organizations that are doing the work that needs to be done.”
After community members spoke in front of the B&B law offices, folks marched and chanted down Polk Street to San Francisco’s City Hall holding up signs and banners where they made speeches about the recent evictions happening in the San Francisco area. People also spoke out and gave testimonies about their own experiences in getting evicted and losing their homes.
“What Bornstein & Bornstein is doing is immoral and hateful,” said Mira Ingram, who underwent an Ellis Act eviction “I hope the tide changes, that people stop getting evicted and that there’s protections for long-time San Francisco residents and working class people.”