Mutual Respect and Understanding

SAN FRANCISCO- 2014 Our social and economic landscape is changing fast, "gentrification" has been pushing out working class people of all races for almost 15 years and now it's getting to the point where we can no longer ignore the fact that SF, is becoming a hub for the "New Tech Millionaire," due to our move into the Internet Age, it's  here, just like the Industrial Revolution changed the quality of life and social morals of it's time, this new "Internet Revolution" is doing the same.

San Francisco as been at the forefront of many social movements through out development of American History and now this generation is faced with it's own task to up hold our basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I grew up in this city, and like many urbanites I've come up against issues that big cities has to offer, violence, drugs, single parent homes, lack of supervision due to a parent that needs to work long hours to provide economically, a system that promotes elitist behavior leaving people of all classes feeling inadequate or that they are striving to materially one up the next person, we have a law enforcement system that contributes cycles of hate and violence within a community (whether intentionally or unintentionally it's still F'd up) , a generation of young people that are apathetic in engaging with a system that feels unchangeable, a government body that keeps dicking it's constituents by raising and adding fees and taxes while lowering the services that it provides and makes it difficult for small businesses to flourish and a government body that caters to big business, I can go on… but I list these things not to vent or add negativity to the conversation, but to state that there is soooooo much work that is still needing to be done if we are truly trying to work towards an equitable system.  Many of these issues are not specific to SF but are a short list of issues that humans are challenged with living together in complex systems of public service and private business.  

The education I received here in San Francisco taught me that WE ARE THE PEOPLE, and we as the people have the power to advocate and organize for the quality of life that we feel is just. The challenge is that we have to get there together. The responsibility for our quality of life cannot be passed on to the next person, it has to come from within ourselves, and in order for us to achieve a state of shared and collective responsibility for a just quality of life we must first establish an ability to communicate clearly with each other and in order to sit at the table to communicate with each other clearly and honestly there needs to be a foundation of respect.

I asked the core organizers in the "Taking a Stand for SF Project" how they define mutual respect, so we could get on the same page and begin to organize for a greater SF.  This is what they said.

I want to be very transparent in saying that one of the purposes of these discussions and this growing movement to take a stand is to address the issue of the abuse of power by the SFPD, there has been too many incidence of excessive force by body of people that are given lethal weapons and "permission" to use force when dealing with citizens. SF is a world class city that can pride itself on being leaders of innovation of all kinds and I would like to see this city become leaders in modeling "Community Policing" or better yet creating a true culture around "Shared Accountability." 

Please help us change our city for the better by contributing to this conversation.

What does Mutual Respect look like and sound like to you. Leave a comment below or better yet take a photo and post it online.