User:Adrianfeinberg/Gentrification of San Francisco

Article Draft
In the broadest strokes of the matter, anti-development groups all find themselves more or less opposed to the Bay Area’s ‘mainstream liberal establishment.’ In the eyes of anti-gentrification leaders, San Francisco city officials exert the “collective belief… that gentrification, despite all of its potential drawbacks, was a positive… byproduct of growing Bay Area prosperity.”

While most of today’s local organizing came into being during the early successes of the dot-com boom, several of today’s most prominent anti-gentrification dissenters only began to gain currency in the wake of the Occupy movement. In many ways, this generational divide has come to define a core divide in the Bay Area's anti-gentrification politics.

The Bay Area’s mainstream anti-gentrification tent includes several large direct action collectives--- each themselves composed of neighborhood associations and small businesses. While groups such United to Save the Mission and Eviction Free San Francisco broadly oppose the aforementioned establishment trends, their organizational structures still very much engage with the establishment. The backbone of Eviction Free San Francisco, for instance, are “professional organizers” with participation that extends into local political campaigns, peer groups, and adjacent local advocacies.

This traditionally progressive faction has monopolized the most visible levels of anti-gentrification discourse— showing up at city council meetings, maintaining large Twitter followings, and organizing frequent street protests. Still, more extremist anti-gentrification groups-- such as GAY SHAME and The Lucy Parsons Project-- have also had a large impact on the public art and street protests which have colored the Bay Area's anti-gentrification movement in recent years.