A buzzing office on 16th Street hosted organizers with Faith In Action Bay Area, a nonprofit that focuses on civic engagement. The group, which endorsed San Francisco propositions B and I, and recommended no on D, mustered volunteers to get out the vote.
Community organizer Brenda Cordova said Proposition I, a boost of about $120 million for affordable housing and service, would help establish housing relief for many of the organization’s constituents. She said Proposition B, a measure to establish a new municipal finance institution, would create opportunities that Cordova described as “by and for the community.” Proposition D, the measure to make it harder for propositions to qualify for future ballots, Cordova said, risked “taking the vote away” from community members and adding barriers to organizing.
“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, always,” Cordova said in Spanish. “The big guy always wants to devour the little guy.”
The organization has been phone banking since Monday. Many volunteers are working class, and some are not eligible to vote because of immigration status, but they still make the effort. One organizer dropped off home-made food to fuel the volunteers’ effort.
Phone banking typically uses scripts, but today volunteers spoke from the heart, connecting the local propositions to effects on their own lives. “That gives me the hope that I feel, the community raising its voice,” Cordova said.
