People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights

PUEBLO coming soon...

Transforming Underutilized Public Lots Into Public Benefits

@ 17th & Folsom & Balboa BART Station

A Future Home for Working Families To Live, Work & Play
After nearly ten years of community planning and neighborhood organizing the City's Planning Department recently adopted the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan (2009). The plan contains policies and codes on how the Mission and the surrounding neighborhoods of East SOMA, Central Waterfront, and Showplace Square/Potrero Hill will be developed over the next 20 years. PODER, as part of the Mission Anti-displacement Coalition, led hundreds of neighborhood Latino/a immigrant families in community-based research, planning workshops, hearings before City officials, and face-to-face meetings with elected Supervisors in an effort to prioritize community issues and needs. These top priorities included affordable housing, parks and green space, localized economic development, job opportunities, safe and welcoming streets.

Most recently, community leaders convinced the City's Planning Department, Recreation & Parks Department and Mayors Office of Housing to identify a new park and affordable housing site in an under served area of the Mission District at 17th & Folsom Streets. The site is owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and operated as a surface parking lot. The Planning Department, Recreation & Park Department and the Mayor’s Office of Housing have partnered to explore acquisition of the site from the PUC to build a neighborhood serving park and affordable family housing development.

Community Involvement & Creating a Vision:
PODER is partnering with the above mentioned City agencies on a Prop 84 grant application to the State to get funding for the acquisition and construction of the 17th & Folsom open space. PODER, along with our City partners are committed to reach out and engage the surrounding community in order to develop a conceptual design for the park by next February (the application is due March 1st). We are working on a plan that will allow us to have 10-12 community meetings over the next few months in order to generate community input for the site design. We are currently moving forward in holding visioning sessions with the following constituent-based groups: La Raza Community Resource Center, Marshall Elementary School, PODER membership, Mission Community Council, Mission Neighborhood Health Center, CARECEN, St. Peter's Housing Committee, Valencia Gardens residents, 7 Tepees, and door-to-door canvassing in the surrounding neighborhood.

Join us for Upcoming Community-Wide Visioning Events:
Saturday, January 23rd, 11am @ Marshall Elementary School (15th/Capp)
Saturday, February 6th, 11am @ 17th & Folsom Lot

United States Social Forum

PODER sent a 22-person delegation to the United States Social Forum in 2007.   At the forum, PODER organized four workshops and participated as panelists in four others.  The Common Roots youth presented a workshop on the Systems of Oppression and the ORCAT youth presented their FOCUS project.  Additionally, several youth participated in a panel on multi-racial youth organizing for environmental justice.   

PODER also held a learning session on statewide strategies for achieving environmental justice with representatives from California, New Mexico and Massachusetts as well as participating in workshops on land use planning and in the track for the Right To The City Alliance on leadership development.   Read more about PODER's trip to the USSF in our 2007 Report.

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

Grassroots Global Justice is an alliance of U.S.-based grassroots groups who are organizing to build an agenda for power for working and poor people. We understand that there are important connections between the local issues we work on and the global context, and we see ourselves as part of an international movement for global justice.

Right To The City Alliance

Right to the City (RTTC) is a newly formed alliance of base building organizations from cities across the country as well as researchers, academics, lawyers, and other allies.  We came together in January of 2007 to build a united response to gentrification and the drastic changes imposed on our cities. We stand together under the notion of a Right to the City for all.

Right to the City offers a framework for resistance and a vision for a city that meets the needs of working class people. It connects our fights against gentrification and displacement to other local and international struggles for human rights, land, and democracy.

We are coming together under a common framework to increase the strength of our community organizations and our collective power. Our goal is to build a national urban movement for housing, education, health, racial justice and democracy.