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PROTEST AGAINST GOVERNMENT HARRASSMENT OF SAN FRANCISCO FOOD NOT BOMBS
MONDAY JULY 11, 1994
The San Francisco Police Department and San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordon
have implemented the Matrix Program, which calls for arresting and
pressuring the homeless to force them to leave the city.
Homelessness in San Francisco has become a crime given a high priority
by the police and the mayor.
Homeless activists across the city have been organizing a
continued effort to expose the contradictions and hipocrisy that are
being promoted by the mayor. SFPD has targeted Food Not Bombs activists
(who serve free hot meals to the homeless 13 times a week) for arrest
and continued harrassment. The mayor, and the Police consider feeding
the homeless a crime that must be stopped at any cost.
There have been over 350 arrests against Food Not Bombs since the
implementation of Mayor Frank Jordan's Matrix program in August, 1993.
Food servers and supporters have been beaten, tortured, harrassed and
sexually assauilted by the police. In custody, hot soup was dumped on
one man and a woman was forced to go to the bathroom in front of an
entire group of male officers. Arrests have been extremely brutal and
violent, all for the simple act of serving food to the hungry. Many of
these incidents have been well documented and the video tapes bear
witness to the violence perpetratred on Food Not Bombs by the City of
San Francisco.
The city has stepped up its repression and is now taking a man to
court on five felony charges. The man, Keith McHenry, has been singled
out by City Hall as the leade of Food Not Bombs. Keith McHenry is a
lifelong pacifist yet he is being charged with two counts of felony
assault. On Janueary 4th he was attacked and injured by Mayor Jordon's
Film Commissioner Nick Roomel and then charged with assaulting Roomel.
Bail was set at $1000. Then on May 13, McHenry and a cowerker were
delivering literature to San Francisco Supervisor Barbara Kaufman when
an aide started screaming at them and then slammed the door in their
faces. Extending his hand to protect his partner from the door, the
glasss shattered and cut an artery in his wrist. For this, too, he was
charged with felony assault., bail was set this time at $25,000. After
making bail in both cases, Judge Cantelli arbitrarily raised Keith's
bail in the Roomel case to 75,000
In a statement from jail, Keith McHenry summed it up this way:
"This level of attack indicates the City of San Francisco is worreid
about the degree of resistance that groups such as Food Not Bombs can
generate. Thes attacks clarify just how immoral, greedy, and corrupt
the government of San Francisco is. To jail someone repeated on trumped
up felony and misdemeanor charges because they feed the homeless and
hand out flyers suppoering the civil rights of the poor clearly exposes
he corrupting infulence of corporate power on civil rights and
liberteis in this country. It is becoming increasingly clear that the
ideals and vision of San Francisco Food Not Bombs and its 50 sister
groups across North America are spreading rapidly and gainsing world
wide support and recognistion... We will not be stopped from exerting
and expressing our fundamental right to resist political repression and
oour demand for an equitable distriubution of wealth and resources."