Newcomers Are Not the Enemy
San Francisco literally wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for economic immigrants. Prior to 1848, the area’s population was in the hundreds at best. Before Spanish and Mexican colonization, most Bay Area Native Americans steered clear of the space filled with sand and fog. San Francisco became an insta-city when thousands flocked here for the chance to strike it rich in the Gold Rush.
People come here from every corner of the planet in search for a better life. It’s the story of our city.
Today, San Francisco rightly strives to pride itself as a refuge for people fleeing oppressive regimes abroad and suffocating conservative social mores at home. These refugees deeply enriched the city’s vibrant cultural fabric. Jews came here escaping wars, pogroms, the Holocaust and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Central Americans fled civil wars and oppressive regimes. And LGBT trailblazers from around the world built a mecca in the Castro that has inspired movements for equality the world over.
We revel in our reputation as an “anything goes” kind of place. From Pride to Carnival to Bay to Breakers, we have something for everyone. When right-wing politicians slap “San Francisco Values” on political opponents, we wear these words with a badge of pride.
But there is a tendency to forget the financial incentives that bring people here. At times it seems that we feel guilty for acknowledging or even merely suggesting that people might have come as much for opportunity as for freedom. This denial of reality fuels misconceptions about our history and inspires activists and politicians to turn to tribal — or dare I even say nativist — rhetoric.
Change is happening. For longtime San Franciscans, there’s a foreboding sense of displacement and fear of this change. Artists, teachers, and police, the backbone of the middle and creative classes, have been priced out. Evictions have become an epidemic as unfathomable housing costs soar out of control. Commutes, meanwhile, turn horrific as the suburbs sprawl into the Central Valley.
San Francisco is in a state of paralysis. We need to create the (at times literal housing) space for people to work towards real solutions. But we won’t get there if we aren’t honest with ourselves about who we are and where we came from.
There are so many communities who enriched San Francisco’s culture who originally came here for largely economic reasons. Think about the Chinese immigrants who came here starting in the 19th century to build the railroad, to many more recent arrivals after Hong Kong’s transfer from the UK to China and those who continue to arrive for better opportunities. Think about African Americans who came en masse to work in our shipyards in the 1930s-1960s. Think about the Irish and Italians who fled famines and economic collapse at home for jobs in our fisheries and factories here. Think about Levi Strauss, a Jewish man from Bavaria, who invented our beloved blue jeans to sell to miners in need of sturdy clothes.
Newcomers are the very people who made San Francisco a better place for all of us. Most of the people who live here weren’t born here. Just take one look at the politicians who are the most likely to cast blame on newcomers and you’ll find that most aren’t from here, either. Even our beloved Harvey Milk moved here from New York!
We need to understand our own narrative. San Francisco can’t be a refuge for the downtrodden escaping political and social persecution if it’s not also an economic power. We can’t keep reinventing ourselves without economic dynamism. Contrary to popular belief, the city has always changed with each generation. It has to if it wants to maintain, let alone flourish, as the beautiful city that it is.
There is no question that the second dot-com boom has radically gentrified San Francisco. We can see it with more high-end shops, restaurants, and services catering to the new tech elite and their employees. And yet as fast as this industry has grown, so has the yearning by some who desire for the bubble to burst. People are so quick to place the blame on the newcomers, instead of the politicians and public policies that make the cost of living so expensive here that working and middle-class people are priced out beyond our city’s borders.
Everyone living in San Francisco has heard the demonization of the techies. Last week I wrote about the “Queers Hate Techies” graffiti one can find on sidewalks throughout the Mission and Castro. The divisive rhetoric has tainted our politics as the housing crisis worsens. There was even a proposal to single the industry out for a special tax (it failed)!
Dreaming of economic recession is no way to fix our crises.
Instead, let’s start being honest with ourselves about what makes San Francisco the success story that it is and stop demonizing change. We need to keep the pressure on our politicians to improve schools, reform policing and put housing first. We need to make sure developers are making room for long-time residents and lower-income workers in addition to all the luxurious lofts for well-off techies. And most of all we need to renew our inclusive mentality with an understanding that it is empowered, not hampered, by economic dynamism.
