{"id":4851,"date":"2017-05-02T20:24:36","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T03:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=4851"},"modified":"2017-05-02T20:27:11","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T03:27:11","slug":"time-rename-justin-herman-plaza-chelsea-manning-plaza-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/05\/02\/time-rename-justin-herman-plaza-chelsea-manning-plaza-anyone\/","title":{"rendered":"“Time to rename Justin Herman Plaza” \u2026 Chelsea Manning Plaza anyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Talbot<\/a>\u00a0May 2, 2017<\/span>\u00a0(sfchronicle.com)<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n

Photo: Michael Macor, <\/span>The Chronicle. \u00a0<\/span>The Vaillancourt Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lots going on these summery spring days. (Who turned up the heat?) So today\u2019s column will have to do some multitasking.<\/p>\n

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Item No. 1: After watching \u201cCitizen Jane\u201d \u2014 the excellent new documentary about writer-activist Jane Jacobs and her titanic struggles with New York urban planning czar Robert Moses, who preferred high-rises and highways to human beings \u2014 I got to thinking about San Francisco\u2019s own Moses, Justin Herman.<\/p>\n

Back in the late 1950s and \u201960s, when Herman ruled over the city as executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, he was responsible for razing much of the Fillmore district and disappearing thousands of its black residents in the name of urban renewal \u2014 or \u201cNegro removal,\u201d as James Baldwin mordantly put it.<\/p>\n

Once known as the Harlem of the West, with its vibrant nightlife and street scene, the Fillmore became a bleak moonscape of vacant lots and dreary street corners after Herman\u2019s wrecking balls began their destructive work. Herman became so loathed in San Francisco\u2019s eviscerated African American community that one irate citizen lunged at him during a heated Redevelopment Agency meeting and nearly throttled him. The powerful bureaucrat died shortly after of a heart attack in summer 1971.<\/p>\n

Tom Fleming, editor of the Sun-Reporter, an African American newspaper, summed up Herman\u2019s sorry legacy this way: \u201cNegroes and the other victims of a low income (fate) generally regard him as the arch villain in the black depopulation of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

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So why was this man honored by having his name attached to the Embarcadero plaza that is the gateway to San Francisco?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As cities across America re-evaluate their histories, taking down monuments and renaming streets that celebrate dishonorable men, it\u2019s time for San Francisco to do the same. We need to rename Justin Herman Plaza.<\/p>\n

There have been earlier efforts to do this, but they went nowhere. In 2001, Supervisor Chris Daly introduced a resolution to strip Herman\u2019s name from the plaza, but it never even got a board hearing. In 2015, Brett Harris-Anderson, who grew up in the Western Addition, and his wife, Michelle, started a petition to rename the plaza after the late poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, who was San Francisco\u2019s first black female streetcar operator and began her performing career here. Unfortunately, their campaign didn\u2019t catch fire, but it\u2019s time to reignite it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would welcome a public conversation about changing the name of Justin Herman Plaza,\u201d Supervisor Aaron Peskin told me. The plaza is located in his district, so he\u2019s the right one to start that conversation. \u201cHerman\u2019s name evokes memories of a dark time in San Francisco history that we\u2019re still grappling with today. It\u2019s a legacy of displacement, of removing people of color and low-income people. That\u2019s not something we should be honoring.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Talbot\u00a0May 2, 2017\u00a0(sfchronicle.com) Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle. \u00a0The Vaillancourt Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza. Lots going on these summery spring days. (Who turned up the heat?) So today\u2019s column will have to do some multitasking. Item No. 1: After watching \u201cCitizen Jane\u201d \u2014 the excellent new documentary… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4851"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4854,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851\/revisions\/4854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}