When we previously learned the details of the 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference (APEC) currently kicking off in San Francisco, I asked what seemed like an obvious question. San Francisco is a complete mess these days, with boarded-up buildings and homeless drug addicts littering the sidewalks. Graffiti abounds. Did anyone plan to clean the downtown area up before thousands of foreign dignitaries began arriving? It turns out that they did have some plans in place. They started clearing the paths that the visitors would travel, bringing in additional law enforcement, and “sweeping” the homeless camps away. This has some of the locals upset, particularly the aforementioned homeless people. (LA Times)
Fresh paint. Street cleanings. Homeless sweeps. Colorful art. Workers like Jacobs beautified the city, days before politicians, executives and journalists from around the world descend on San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference. From Saturday to Nov. 17, the international event is expected to bring more than 20,000 people to the city and attract thousands of protesters…
“They’re clearing out the homeless people because they don’t want them to see this,” she said.
Grappling with family issues, drug addiction and mental health problems, Palominos said she’s been hopping among San Francisco homeless shelters for more than a year. It’s not easy for homeless people to find a spot in a shelter.
“Usually I stay as long as I can, but it’s kind of hard because there are certain people who pick on you. They think they’re better than you,” said Palominos, who has a bruise under her eye and a bandage wrapped around a bloody finger.
The woman quoted in the excerpt above is a homeless person who is also a meth addict. She claims she has now been “clean” for five days and has been accepted into a shelter with a drug rehab program. Many of her friends are not so lucky. Another woman claimed she had been booted from where she was sleeping by the police five times this week. They didn’t offer her anywhere else to go. They just told her to clear out of the area.
They’ve been watching as city workers showed up and began slapping fresh coats of paint on the exteriors of many buildings. Trash has been picked up after accumulating on the streets for months. Plywood boards covering street-facing windows are being torn down. And, of course, the homeless are being herded out of the downtown area like cattle. Everything is being made to look as “normal” as possible before Xi Jinping and his friends show up.
But it’s all just a show and the homeless people know it. The local residents who are still hanging on somehow know it too. Once the circus rolls out of town, things will go back to the way they’ve looked for the past couple of years. This massive effort is strictly for the tourists and the international press.
The director of the Coalition for Homelessness told the Times that they’re just trying to “clean up the city’s image” and use the conference to attract tourists. But she insisted that it’s not going to work because homeless people “don’t have disappearing power.” But that’s exactly what city officials want the homeless and the drug addicts to do this week. Just disappear so the global elite can have their parties and dinners without having to look at anything unsightly.
Where is all of the compassion that supposedly rules the streets of San Francisco? The rules that were put in place leading to this fiasco were supposedly intended to help the poor and the helpless and stop the police from “harassing” them. But that all ended as the date for APEC drew near. There are no more shelters available than there were six months ago and all of those homeless addicts will be back as soon as the last private jets fly out of town. Nothing in San Francisco will be any different. And they should just admit that they aren’t fooling anyone.
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