With the holiday festivities swiftly approaching in a year marked by global protests over economic inequality, people in the Bay Area are turning to alternate, community-based means of exchanging goods and skills. Collectives like the Timebank help people circumvent buying gifts with money during the holidays. “The systemic way in which the economy works undermines every good that we try to do,” said Mira Luna, co-founder of the local nonprofit Bay Area Community Exchange, an organization that has been facilitating trades of talents and commodities using time rather than money as the currency. “There’s a lot of underutilized resources and a lot of needs out of there.”
Category: Social Justice
Posted inCommunity, Economy & Business, Social Justice
California legislature may expand lending limit
LEGISLATION: Lawmaker wants to raise payday loan limit to $500; others want restrictions
“Fast Easy Cash when you want it!” That’s the promise on the cover of an application for a “cash ’til payday” loan from DFC Global Corp. The company operates eight Money Mart stores in San Francisco, more than any other payday lender. But fast money comes at a high price —an annual percentage rate up to 459 percent. Currently, California has a $300 limit on each payday loan. But legislation pending in Sacramento would raise the maximum amount to $500. While supporters of the bill say the loans benefit working people, consumer advocates worry that borrowing at high interest rates can sink poor people further into debt. That was the concern of the San Francisco city attorney’s office, which this fall settled a suit with a payday lender accused of exceeding the legal limit.
Posted inCommunity, Economy & Business, Social Justice
Big banks help payday lenders offer quick cash at steep prices
BUSINESS: Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse among biggest backers of profitable low-finance firms
Even as the Occupy San Francisco encampment at the base of Market Street expressed outrage at big banks and high finance, it remained business as usual at some of the city’s less glamorous financial establishments. San Franciso-based Wells Fargo, as well as other banks, are investing big money in firms that lend money at rates they are prohibited from offering. High-interest, unsecured “payday” loans are readily available at 32 establishments along Market Street and in low-income communities around the city. The banks’ names and brands are nowhere to be seen, but they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in businesses that charge an annual percentage rate of 400 percent or more, a practice once considered by the state of California to be “usury.”
Posted inEducation, Media, Social Justice
Bucking a punitive trend, San Francisco lets students own up to misdeeds instead of getting kicked out of school
How one big-city district cut suspensions and expulsions — and why they may rise again
These articles were produced through a reporting collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity.
Instead of being kicked out for fighting, stealing, talking back or other disruptive behavior, public school students in San Francisco are being asked to listen to each other, write letters of apology, work out solutions with the help of parents and educators or engage in community service. All these practices fall under the umbrella of “restorative justice” — asking wrongdoers to make amends before resorting to punishment. The program launched in 2009 when the Board of Education asked schools to find alternatives to suspension and expulsion. In the previous seven years, suspensions in San Francisco spiked by 152 percent, to a total of 4,341 — mostly African Americans, who despite being one-tenth of the district made up half of suspensions and more than half of expulsions. But the data — along with interviews with parents, students and educators — reveal that progress so far is halting and uneven. Critics say that’s because the transition from punitive to restorative justice is underfunded and haphazardly evaluated. The resulting picture is a school-by-school patchwork, at best an unfinished project to reform the traditional juvenile discipline paradigm.
Posted inBay Area, Education, Health, Media, Social Justice
Across San Francisco region, expulsion rates and attitudes toward punishment vary widely
While there are many aspects of culture and politics that unite the nine counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of more than 7 million people, attitudes toward school discipline do not seem to be among them. What happens to students when they disrupt the classroom or commit crimes depends largely on where they live. That is because approaches to expulsion and suspension vary widely across school districts and across the region. While reforms such as restorative justice appear to coincide with decreases in expulsion rates across the region in the last year or two, school administrators at the county and local level have a wide range of views on the best ways to preserve order in schools after a student has misbehaved.
Posted inCity Hall, Homelessness, Law & Justice, News, Social Justice
Legal advocates give San Francisco low marks for penalizing homeless people
A national homeless advocacy organization says San Francisco continues to make criminals out its homeless population. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty reported recently that the city and several other communities across the country penalize homeless people for behaviors related to their lack of housing. The Washington, D.C.-based group studied 234 U.S. jurisdictions, finding that San Francisco places prohibitions on 10 of 14 behaviors. Another local advocacy group recently graded San Francisco with a “D” for its policing efforts, but city representatives say alternative justice experiments are working.
Posted inAging, Food Systems, Social Justice
Seniors selling what they get from food banks
Visit the farmers market in downtown San Francisco on Sundays, and you may see, past the stands of organic lettuce and fresh flowers, a few elderly women hunched over a random assortment of condiments and canned goods. As security approaches, they quickly scatter, only to set up shop on the opposite corner a few moments later. According to several food pantries, elderly recipients of free food disbursements are turning around and selling the donations at various locations throughout San Francisco.
Posted inCity Hall, Elections, Social Justice
Effort to recall Oakland mayor faces uphill battle
Mayor Jean Quan is facing the toughest fight in her tenure as CEO of Oakland – a recall effort. But whether the recall movement will gain traction and usher Quan out of office is far from clear. Although the recall effort has received extensive media coverage, and there were plenty of folks marching with “Recall Quan” signs at the city’s hugely popular general strike Nov. 2, the quest to replace the mayor will be a long process that could carry on well into mid-2012.
Posted inEconomy & Business, Social Justice
Activists say ditch banks, go to credit unions on Nov. 5
Did you know that this Saturday, Nov. 5, is Bank Transfer Day? If you’ve seen the Facebook event, which has more that 58,000 RSVPs, or the Twitter page, then you’ve seen the red, white and blue mask, and have probably read the following: “Together we can ensure that these banking institutions will ALWAYS remember the 5th of November!! If the 99% removes our funds from the major banking institutions to non-profit credit unions on or by this date, we will send a clear message to the 1% that conscious consumers won’t support companies with unethical business practices.”
Posted inPublic Safety, Social Justice
Occupy Oakland protesters push for general strike
The day after a tumultuous confrontation between police and the protesters of the Occupy Oakland movement, more than 2,000 people gathered Wednesday at the civic center to vent their outrage at the heavy-handed eviction tactics, which included launching teargas into the crowd. Thousands of protesters convened in the early evening in an amphitheater in what they were calling Oscar Grant Plaza — officially Frank Ogawa plaza at City Hall, renamed after the victim of a police shooting on BART last year — to discuss the events of the previous 48 hours.