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Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh. Mhm. Yeah. For me up a little bit of headphones, listen, I came up it's time I switched the game up, call my own lane. Now it's time I speed it up when you and you cut you hear me man. I hope you're

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speaking moving to the music I made when I was stationed in the city. What makes Bayview different is the people, it gives you something to like about your community. Like man, it's a legendary neighborhood neighborhood community. You feel me on this point is one of the

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cornerstones of the community in her. This part we're not only trying to build good houses but we're also trying to build a better image when you love something, you care about something that it makes you want to be a part of it and you care about

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what's going on in that area. Bayview is the struggle, it is the fight and it's the last stronghold in san Francisco. For black baby hunts Point community is on the southeast section of san Francisco. It's a beautiful neighborhood. It has some of the best views of

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anywhere in the city. Bayview Hunters Point has been largely off the radar of everybody who doesn't live there. It's an under utilized underpopulated, often ignored neighborhood. In the southeast corner of san Francisco where most of the cities, factories, warehouses and junk yards are a stubby finger

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of land pokes out into the bay at the end of it, a hill rises like an abscess from the stink and the noise and on the hill lives some of the most disadvantaged citizens of this or any other american city. The place is called Hunter's Point.

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It's hard to think that in a city as sophisticated as san Francisco with its record that you had this little village, I'll call it out on a peak on a point isolated. That was treated differently from the rest of the city. I was quite young and

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I had come from college and the civil rights movement and marched around protesting the war in Vietnam and protested for women's rights and against racism and against homophobia. And we were very naive. We thought all that stuff would be over in about five years. But when

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I came to bay view, it was my first experience of really seeing what it was like to live in a poor community. When there are navy ship er I came in and a lot of people from the south came to work and make sure that brought

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them more african american influence to this community. Maybe Hunter's Point has such a rich history. What it meant for black people leaving the south to come to California for opportunity and it represented, you know, a beacon for a new way forward that my grandparents participated in.

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My grandfather worked the shipyard uh way back in the day and he was in the Navy. So they came out here, they got homes. This is where he built the skills to go on the have a trade Mayor, John F Shelly has asked the city supervisors

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for $350,000 to rehabilitate the wartime housing at Hunter's point. Most of the housing in the early days is housing left over from the government they've been built so that those people working at the Hunters Point shipyard would have a place to live near work. But many

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years after the war that was in the forties was over. People were still living in those houses. The buildings are a hangover from the Second World War barracks built by the Navy to house shipyard workers Instead of tearing them down. 20 years ago, the Navy gave

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the structures to the city. Most are rat infested, structurally unsound and generally unfit for people to live in. And what happened to your son? My son called in for tiger from a lights that was on the the red where how does that affect him on his?

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He has a bad skin rash which bumps, it caused the bumps and if he gets one bite he scratches and it spreads all over his body. The families that lived in Bayview had come from somewhere in the south where of course they had very little right

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to complain to people in authority, especially if they were white. And they had to learn that here it was different and that they could do it. But that took some time. Baby hunters point epitomizes problems of racism, Classism and and discrimination of characterized this great country

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since its founding SAn Francisco has always been a racist place. Their history is racist, but they didn't worry about it too much until World War Two when all those black people came out here, The high stared back in there was, it was four or 5000 people.

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There was no political pressure coming from four or 5000 people. San Francisco. Oh man, I'm gonna tell you about SAn Francisco. The white man. He's not, he's not taking advantage of you out in public like they're doing down in Birmingham, but he's killing you with that

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pencil and paper brother, inevitably, there is an atmosphere of fear and tension on the hill. Some spectacular acts of violence have occurred here, giving the neighborhood a more sinister reputation than it deserves. The youth feel that the police are occupying this community, that they are being

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oppressed by the police and that the police uh, in while enforcing the law. Oftentimes break the law. Most of the officers don't understand the black community. Most of the officers don't understand black people living here. And uh, there's a degree of fear on both parts. There

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were two fellas in the car and I jumped out one from each side and they started running and I buy this time, stopped my car and I jumped out and I yelled him to stop, stop, I want to talk to you, Matthew peanut johnson. It was

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a very uh well liked and beloved member of the community, but you don't expect to lose your life for stealing a car. Old car. He ran, he was on unarmed and he was shot in the back. I pulled out the gun and I said, no listen,

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fellas stop or I'm gonna shoot. And the boy was running down the hill and I put the gun in the air and I shot three times in the air and then the boy was out. 225 250 ft, I guess, way out. And I shot one shot

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in his direction and he was on top of a hill and he didn't come back up from the other side of the hill and I figured, well, I guess he's hiding down there. And I quickly ran down and expected to find the boy kind of scared

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down there. And I ran down there and I saw the boy lying flat on his face and blood out of his mouth. And it wasn't very much you could do. It was all, I don't feel so good. That was basically the views, if you will. The

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shooting was defused that lit a powder keg that led to the uprising in the community. Mhm. Governor Pat Brown brought out 500 National Guards and had another 1500 on the way, we cannot have a revolution in this country. And I can assure the people of my

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state that I will do everything within my power to see that law and order is observed and that the rights of persons and property are carefully protected. And I'll tell you this, we're going to meet force with fourth. They come down with National Guard trucks and

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police and lying to both sides the streets with rifles and point them up at the windows when people had their families and kids looking out the window, then they was saying get in and and it had guns and things and rifles and things outpointed but the

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people in the windows, you know, and I don't think that was necessary. It wasn't just the shooting alone that sparked the uprising in Bayview Hunters point, It was the living conditions being so harsh and lack of access. We don't want to accept all this off the

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wild propaganda. What you all have been giving us for the past nine and 10 years. We want some kind of creek, we don't want it next week. We want to know the issues around surrounding black americans. Back then, had to do with the signing of the

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 which finally codified, you know, our wholeness to the degree that we had access to transportation. We had laws that barred people from stopping us from drinking at fountains and eating in restaurants. That was a liberating time from their people based upon

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the law that now say I have civil rights began to realize they didn't have to take all of the stuff that was being thrown their way in Hunter's point as in most black communities, the burden of public responsibility has been shouldered largely by black women. The

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current leader of the local matriarchy is mrs Eloise Westbrook. Miss Westbrook, to me, was the epitome of leadership and baby harness points. She is chairman of the Joint Housing Committee, a remarkable grassroots organization that has demanded and gotten real decision making power over urban renewal. On

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the hill. Eloise Westbrook was had a big presence. I want you to know that I am a black woman, She was tall, she had a big voice. I'm a mother and she did not hesitate to say what was on her mind. I don't have one life

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to give Children when I die, I'm dead. You better believe it, but I'm dying for the right our people. She was herself at all times and people knew that what they heard from her. They could believe, even though we have built these homes and even though

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they are very beautiful and we're trying to get people into them. One of the long range plans in the indian Basin era, whether we can have the industrial, that the people who lives in this era might have jobs that they might obtain and live here forever

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and ever and ever. And she found other women who are willing to stand up For their Children and their grandchildren in that community. There's this group that was called the Big five Eloise Westbrook. Oh, so the Washington. I'm sorry to say no. These young men have

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grew up in this situation, uh, police brutality. Uh, post schools, poor education kick outs. Mostly they call them dropouts, but they kick out in Hunter's Point, Russell Friedman. But I think it's a great honor for these people that they can say I have it myself and

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I don't have to wait for a handout ruth Williams. And I'm here to say I'm from the ghetto community. All right now, I'm from the ghetto community at the sound of my voice. When I rise up just about the masters of hardest point rises up to

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and Rosalie Williams. Those who consider the Big Five, they decided that uh the blight in the need for new housing was so compelling that these five women who were considered powerhouses at the time had various types of gifts and control in their respective areas of influence.

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I feel very upset because for so long we have been appealing to uh other funding agencies for monies. And it always seems as though there's something wrong with this particular organization or agency. And I think it's just because we are poor people trying and the funding

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agencies like ford and the United crusade and all, they never give us anything. I actually think that they surprised themselves and what they could do by just articulating the problems and talk about the broken promises. They went to Washington D. C. And met with the senator

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Philip Burton and they lobbied and advocated for him to get some money into san Francisco this baby community so that we can tear down those old public housing and get some new structures built. And they would not leave Washington D. C. Until they brought back tens

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of millions of dollars to start what we see in Hunter's Point today. It was their dream. There was a lot of pushback on uh whether they were going to release those funds back to Bayview Hunters Point. And I recall vividly Miss Westbrook saying that this belongs

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to the community. And if you're not careful, you may lose it. I don't know how to describe these women because you wonder where they got their ideas about what was possible. I said I wasn't gonna cry, but I've been crying ever since. I sit up and

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stood on this here stage because I know and you know that this is what we have dreamed for for many years. What the city is particularly concerned about is that all their efforts to rehabilitate the housing in the Hunter's Point area will be for naught unless

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they can have jobs. And the logical place for jobs is here at the Hunter's Point Naval shipyard. While in post for eyewitness news san Francisco. We have to let the people know what closure of Hundreds Point Naval shipyard is doing. It's not just finding other people's

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jobs. These men here uh, like this gentleman here is a, is a disabled vet. He's doing the job well done here on the yard and uh, they got to look out for them too. And I think that they ought to be closing down some of those

00:14:46.210 - 00:14:58.680

overseas spaces before they close down shipyards here at home, which can do the job much more efficiently. I think it's gonna hurt everybody just like he says something, nobody wants to hear anywhere in the world. As far as that goes, it's gonna be kind of hot.

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But the people, you know, standing here before you, I cannot tell you that in my pocket. I have 320 jobs for Monday morning. But I am willing together with others and together with yourselves to put pressure on those agencies where we feel the the money is

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and where jobs perhaps can come. What happened is people left the baby because of the high murder rates and the high crime rate. But the high crime rate and high murder rate was all come from the issue of unemployment and no jobs here. There haven't been

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any jobs here since they closed the shipyard. It wasn't good because we couldn't get employment. Uh nobody wanted to hire people from this particular neighborhood, you know, for some reason, because most people they figured was bad in this particular neighborhood because everybody gotta eat and support

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their family. You know, when you have kids and family, you know, you can't just go home every day and tell your girlfriend or your wife like, oh I don't have no milk or anything like that. A lot of unemployment and people just feeling discouraged that they

00:16:04.710 - 00:16:20.510

couldn't get work. You know, your man, so you go do anything necessary to provide and put that food on the table. Even necessarily if it's not honest, drugs were a big problem, not just people smoking weed, but a lot of people using heroin. And it was

00:16:20.510 - 00:16:38.680

kind of like an epidemic. There has been no consistent effort in the past to try and get persons who are on methadone to lose the addiction that they have or give up the addiction they have to methadone itself. So you will attempt to get those people

00:16:38.680 - 00:16:55.140

who are addicted to drugs off of all kinds of drugs including methadone. That's correct. Exactly. In the late 80s, the drug was crack and you know, you thought heroin destroyed families, wait till you see what happened with crack. If you had to live here And you

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couldn't get a job and you could make the sun come up every day for $10 you'd use it to. There was a lot of money in drug trade. It really was and and it helped a lot of families, folks were buying things they needed and buying

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things they wanted to um and experience in the world in a different way because of the drug trade. But as far as the incarceration and death that came with it, I don't think if we look back that's something we would want to trade. The drug epidemic

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of the crack epidemic of the 80s. Watch all the oldies out. It had a devastating effect on families on generations to come. What we know about babe you now is that as the neighborhood trying to rebuild and remake itself. I don't see the developers who have

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bought up a lot of the land in san Francisco really following through on promises to offer jobs to community residents. I see new cafes being put up, I see restaurants being put up and uh the community is not involved as far as unemployment and they want

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to they want to have us after the ground stages of the development, but when it comes to staff and the whole thing were left out the same issues that we was having then of young black folks not have an opportunity to get jobs into work and

00:18:15.950 - 00:18:32.510

better themselves legally, they still left out. You know, it's like uh everything is building up around them but they're not involved and they don't have an idea how to get involved because nobody want to go out there and reach out to them, you know what I

00:18:32.510 - 00:18:47.430

mean? San Francisco as far as history or whatever black people or low income people have them and you are going to work, I mean it's time for you guys to stop living off our back and give something back. What is misrepresented about? Maybe? Was that everybody

00:18:47.430 - 00:19:07.150

here is a criminal or involved in crime? Some of us are just hardworking teachers, parents, and productive citizen. I am a native to debut. I grew up in baby, was born and raised in Bayview, Hunters point or HP. It was tough at times. I mean, what

00:19:07.150 - 00:19:20.270

neighborhood doesn't have some type of toughness, but it made me who I am today. My most difficult memories growing up in Bayview was losing a lot of like the young man that I used to go to school with. That was a dramatic blow for all of

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us being so young and experienced losing our friends, you know by the hands of violence. Yes. Up here in Hunter's Point, it was like you had to either be a wolf and if you use the sheep, you couldn't be here. So practically everybody here was wolves

00:19:38.210 - 00:19:53.820

and fighters because I lost my big brother when I was two years old. Um, to that gang stuff that tore down my mom. Like that's what really made my mom started going like losing it and I don't want to see my mom like that no more

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ever like ever. I don't want to smoke crack and none of that. No more. So that's what I'm like, I can't get killed out here. I gotta, I gotta succeed in my life. So I just changed my life like mom, you ain't got to worry about

00:20:07.300 - 00:20:28.890

me. I'm gonna handle this for sure. So you ain't got to worry about me, mom. I'm gonna do this for me and you for my whole family. My brother, I'm here today. My brother to speak to you the truth and ignorance. Do you do what you

00:20:28.900 - 00:20:53.520

do? Well not another brother knows just how you must feel. This is wrong, but it's so very, very real. Don't take it upon yourself to enter this jungle along without a leader. You can't last very long. I think the message has been said by generation after

00:20:53.520 - 00:21:09.450

generation that people are beginning to get it. That these are people who don't want to have these things happened to them to know that you know all the fighting and all the suffering and all the struggle for the benefit of the people that were still not

00:21:09.450 - 00:21:23.310

where we should be our where we could be. But there's people that are living to this day that have streets named after them. You know that we know nothing about. We're on these streets and don't even know the history. The only way that the community is

00:21:23.310 - 00:21:38.400

going to hell is through the expression of the history as a person who didn't really know my own grandparents. I definitely took a liking to when I started to learn those stories as a younger person and they really inspired me and motivated me to do a

00:21:38.400 - 00:21:55.130

lot of the community work that I did. The people who live in homes point who have lived there for numerous of years at one time had lost all hope, all fake. But we do feel like hope. It began to come back up again. The role of

00:21:55.130 - 00:22:11.390

hope is just to keep waking up every day. You know, struggling surviving, do whatever it is that people do in their day to day lives and just being hopeful that things will change. It has been a challenge, but I've been succeeding because like my family, they're

00:22:11.390 - 00:22:24.910

seeing me like I started from the bottom now I'm driving myself up, it seemed like he can do it. I know I can do it. So we just need a a little caring and a little help, you know what I mean? If we get that help,

00:22:24.920 - 00:22:42.470

I know there's no big deal. We really bring that positivity that the community is really thriving for, and I think with the efforts that we've done within the past, um I want to say two years working along with san Francisco, our commission, we've brought a lot

00:22:42.470 - 00:22:56.830

of great events and just brought out a lot of great people. Well, you know, we have a program uh called Old Skool Cafe where I'm the chef instructor at and we, we were taking that risk and teach them how to run a restaurant. We also give

00:22:56.830 - 00:23:09.410

them life skills and uh a lot, a lot of things to help them keep focused and and stay off the streets. I've definitely seen a lot of change and I feel like if there was one thing that I could change for the better it would be

00:23:09.410 - 00:23:25.120

the people that are moving in if they got involved in their community. I mean this is a beautiful place and as positive as I am about it um it's not gonna, it's not gonna be better for everyone unless we can all share those resources unless we

00:23:25.120 - 00:23:41.480

can all enjoy this neighborhood. I like that. We have a mixed community with Latinos, white, japanese, all races. I love it because when I was raised up here there was only black, you know what I mean? And I think uh it takes everybody to make a

00:23:41.490 - 00:23:56.010

difference. Not only blacks and chinese just take everybody, you know what I mean? And so I love it. You know I love to see different people walking down the streets that don't look like me as they said come as one because we all came from the

00:23:56.010 - 00:24:12.780

same area, same background. So if we change that we can be untouchable unstoppable. So we got power but we got to put it together and use it. But I believe with years to come it will be a better Bayview on the side of the say better

00:24:12.780 - 00:24:30.330

Bayview Hunters Point the festival here in Gilman park in Hunter's Point brought together the old and the young the militant and the passive for relaxed afternoon of socializing and dancing under a warm pleasant san Francisco son. The relaxed atmosphere here was symbolic of the theme of

00:24:30.330 - 00:25:04.590

this. Get together a celebration of a summer of racial peace in san Francisco. What were the Yeah I just Yeah yeah baby you got everything on offer in the world you know you ain't gotta leave baby. That's that's that's my, my outlook of my definitional

00:25:04.590 - 00:25:27.380

baby, you wanna party, you wanna do something positive, gonna do some negative, everything is here everything. Bayview Hunters point is involving the baby is the flavor of san Francisco. Bayview hunters point is my home babe you is my home baby is my hood, I've been negro

00:25:27.380 - 00:25:45.230

president in this country and there will be any represent this country. What do you say that you get jobs, How are we going to be president? Got me. But I what you talking about this? There will be a new president of this country. There will not

00:25:45.240 - 00:26:01.420

be the country that we have seen it now. But if you say to yourself there never will be a negro president of this country. They want you doing. He's agreeing the white people who say you are inferior. It's important, really. No. With his negro president. I

00:26:01.420 - 00:26:24.360

mean, in that way, what's important is that you should realize that you can you can become the president. There's nothing anybody anybody do. You can't do. Yeah. Mhm. Get it.