If they get enough valid signatures, the redevelopment plan will land back before the Board of Supervisors with what will probably sound like a sickening thud. Then the supervisors will have to either rescind the plan — the product of nine years of planning and collaboration — or put it before the voters in a special election.
Should it get to the city's voters, many observers think there's a good chance the unruly San Francisco electorate could reject the plan. Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic is himself a redevelopment detractor, but he explains that it's not just progressives like him who have a problem with the city's redevelopment-happy ways. "Progressives oppose it because it deprives low-income people, usually people of color, of democracy that other people take for granted," he said. "It takes away power from elected officials and transfers it to unelected officials and bureaucrats. And conservatives really oppose it because if you live in the Richmond or the Sunset, that's general fund money that's being diverted from your schools, police, libraries, and everything else."
James Sanders
From his apartment above Third Street, Willie Ratcliff watches over his Bayview neighborhood.
Courtesy of the Redevelopement Agency
The Redevelopment Agency's map shows the 1,300-acre project area.
Related Content
More About
Ratcliff's campaign can also ride the tide of sentiment against eminent domain. One year ago, an extraordinarily unpopular Supreme Court decision gave government agencies the right to use eminent domain to take private property for a privately funded development, on the premise that the development could be in the public interest. This November, a statewide ballot initiative will ask California voters if they want more restrictions on eminent domain.
When you talk about the government taking private property, everybody gets incensed, Ratcliff says. "It's Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, everybody! Nobody wants you messing with their castle!" he says. "Your castle is what you fight over. To me, that's Annie-go-get-your-gun when you come and try to take my house."
Ratcliff's castle is the two-story building he owns on Third Street — his apartment is on the second floor, and he rents out the stores below. He's proud of the property, which he bought in 1998, and declares fiercely that he won't let anyone drive him out. Yet he's willing to put it on the line for the cause. Because the Ratcliffs are having trouble paying the printing bills for the Bay View, they're thinking of asking the printing company to accept a lien on the building as collateral.
Ratcliff's bid to stop the redevelopment plan is, in a way, also a fight to keep the newspaper alive. It's hard to imagine the San Francisco Bay View, in its current form, existing in the mixed-race, prosperous Bayview that developers optimistically believe will come into being, because it speaks to the disenfranchised, the powerless, and the pissed-off.
But these are possibilities that never cross Ratcliff's mind. The paper will keep on — "the Lord is with us," he says — and the referendum will be the turning point that leads to a black renaissance in the Bayview. Once the people have stopped the city from forcing its will on the neighborhood, Ratcliff says, they will feel so empowered that they'll be able to accomplish anything they put their minds to.
Ratcliff cannot be persuaded, he will not compromise, and he will fight to the last. His wife Mary says it more succinctly: "We're old folks. We want to change the world before we die."
