Image: Mashable Patrick Kulp
Spurred by a viral YouTube video showing a tense confrontation between a group of tech workers and local kids playing pick-up soccer, residents and community groups rallied on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall Thursday - fighting a policy that allows people to rent out city parks.
The video features a group of adults, some of whom are Dropbox employees, trying to take over a soccer field in San Francisco's Mission District where some local kids are playing. The kids refuse to leave and offer to start a joint game, but the techies insist that they reserved the field on the city's website.
The kids scoff when one of the newcomers says he has lived in the neighborhood for 'over a year.' At one point, an off-camera adult says, 'Who cares about the neighborhood?' The video has 420,000 views and counting.
The video resonated with many San Francisco residents, who saw it as a neat encapsulation of the city's tech-fueled gentrification, which has driven up housing prices and transformed neighborhoods.
At the rally, speakers included kids who frequent the park and members of the SF Latino Democratic Club. A crowd of 40 to 50 demonstrators chanted 'Mission Playground is not for sale.' Attendees then marched inside City Hall to speak at the public comment session of a San Francisco Recreation and Park Department meeting.
'What happened at Mission Playground was something that struck a raw nerve,' said Edwin Lindo, a longtime resident and club member. 'It's a literal interpretation of what our city is facing right now.'
The policy in question was a feature on the park department's website that allowed the field to be reserved for a price of $27 per hour for residents.
The protestors could already chalk up one victory: the department director, Phil Ginsburg, announced Thursday that the reservation system for the park was being scrapped after a meeting with a group of soccer-playing kids and advocates Wednesday night.
'The most compelling suggestions came from the kids who said, 'This is a safe place we can come and play and we feel like we need more time,'' Ginsburg told SFGate.
'Our first priority is kids. We are always striving to balance different types of play,' he said.
The city department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mashable.Local high school student Hugo Vargas teared up while addressing the crowd about the importance of the park remaining free. Some of the kids referred to the park as a 'second home' - and said the incident on the video was not the first run-in they had with adults over the field, just the first to be caught on camera.
'This experience has changed my point of view - thinking that the parks were safe and that the parks were ours,' Vargas said. 'That they are selling our parks is not fair,' Vargas said.
While many speakers said the tech employees who reserved the field acted insensitively, they agreed that the real blame lay with the park department's policy.
'You know I have been talking about 'a tale of two cities,' and that's what we have in San Francisco,' David Campos, a San Francisco County supervisor and state assembly candidate, told the crowd. 'But I think we also have an obligation and an opportunity to make those into one city, because San Francisco has to come together.'
'This divide has been fueled by bad choices by our Rec and Parks Department. In many respects, they created different expectations for some folks in the community and different expectations for some folks who thought that they could go and reserve these fields online.'
Last weekend, Dropbox apologized for its employees' part in the incident. Dropbox employee Jean Denis-Greze apologized on Twitter. Still, some of the local soccer players said they hope to meet with the Dropbox employees in a face-to-face meeting to iron things out between the two groups.
'We love San Francisco and are grateful to call it home. That's why we were disappointed to learn that a couple of our employees weren't respectful to this community. The employees involved are embarrassed and have apologized. We're sorry, and we promise to do better.'
Deeply sorry about the Mission Playground incident. I do care about my community.
- Jean-Denis Greze (@jgreze) October 12, 2014
What I said was insensitive and embarrassing to both Dropbox and me. In case it helps, we worked it out that day so everyone got to play.
- Jean-Denis Greze (@jgreze) October 12, 2014
In addition to nixing the reservation policy, the club outlined a list of demands they would like to see the park department meet including more safety measures, bilingual signage in all parks and the creation of a council made up of representatives from different communities across the city to advise policymakers.
Bianca Gutierrez, a Mission District resident and mother of two young children, said the problem started when the park's old cement soccer field was retrofitted with astroturf, making it attractive for the first time and opening up a new revenue opportunity for the city.
'I'm so happy that someone pulled out a camera and filmed it,' Gutierrez said. 'The power of social media is huge, and you know what? We have to just pull out that camera because this has been happening to them for a long time.'
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