Henry George School of San Francisco
of San Francisco
189 Ellsworth St,
San Francisco, CA 94110
ph: 415-948-4265
info
Events
anti-Abandon All Hope for San Francisco Housing Justice
walking tour
Saturday, August 9
American Youth Hostel
312 Mason Street (at O'Farrell)
San Francisco
Your momma, your papa, your teachers, your best friends, and certainly all the policy wonks, politicians and housing rights activists will tell you that you can't change property tax law.
They're wrong. They're depressed. And they're short on obstinate commitment to principle because they listened to their mommas, papas, teachers, etc. who made one exception to the adjuration, "Think high. Never doubt that one person can change the world." That exception is "changing property tax policy."
The high cost of housing in San Francisco is the high price of land. And barring a catastrophe, that high price is not going away. The principle to bear in mind is that land is a gift of nature to all and land value belongs to community because it arises with community.
This walking tour of social movement history in SF illuminates that all social movements are fundamentally about equality of access to geography, most especially and necessarily to land itself.
This walking tour is FREE, but it elucidates the price necessary to resolve a myriad of social issues. That price is the resolve to reform property tax law so that the rent of land eliminates land speculation, fully funds social infrastructure, and raises wages for the bottom tier workers. Raises wages? Yes, but you've got to come along to learn how.
Community Town Hall
on
San Francisco
real estate
Monday, October 28
w/ Supervisor David Campos
Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center
6-7:30 pm 515 Cortland Ave.
Dear Commoneer,
Come join other Commoneers in advocating for a "Benefit Assessment" district version of Land Value Tax for San Francisco!
It’s all about who owns the value of land. Builders deserve full compensation for their labor. The building materials sellers deserve full compensation for their materials. So if real estate prices are too high in San Francisco, who should take the rap? Should we blame the builders? Blame the lumber yards?
How about the high price of land in San Francisco? Where did that come from? Did the maker of land (!!!???) make it? Did the owner of land cause the bump-up in the price of “location, location, location?”
Think about it. The price of land is the result of the growth of population and the income of that population. In short, the price of San Francisco land is the result of the growth of community.
The logical, ethical, economically sound thing to do is RETURN LAND VALUE TO THE COMMUNITY.
9TH District Supervisor David Campos is going to be present at the Monday, October 28 Town Hall meeting on San Francisco real estate
sponsored by SF Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center and San Francisco Tenants Union. For more info, call 415-335-7033 or email sfacce@calorganize.org
But we're The Commons SF, San Francisco’s grassroots organization committed to returning land values to the community, and though we will listen to true stories of banksterism, and listen to models for cross-subsidizing the poor or unlucky, we're advocates of fundamentally putting things right, in ways that pre-empt poverty and neutralize being unlucky.
Pressure Supervisor Campos to implement a land use fee equivalent to the annual rent of “location, location, location.” This will kill land speculation, fully fund the city, and enable the elimination of the Sales Tax, the Property Tax on buildings, Business Taxes, and the SF residents ‘State Income Taxes. It will also reduce future mortgages by half.
OR
You can call for cross subsidies that cost builders full compensation, lumber yards full compensation, and which only slightly dampen land values, which are the actual cause of San Francisco’s high real estate prices. Subsidize or end land speculation.
Check out http://www.TheCommonsSF.org
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Sat., Sept. 28
9:30 am
312 Mason Street
San Francisco
Occupy Land Values Walking tour
No fee benefit for Indybay! $15 donated to Indybay for every attendee mentioning this offer and coming along on this free walking tour!
Occupy.
Occupy what?
How about claiming the value of "Location, location, location" as the community's? How would occupying land values address Debt, Housing, Wages, Public Transportation, Election Financing?
Come along on this free-to-you walking tour of downtown San Francisco that explores the dramatic effects of collecting the annual value of urban land as community revenue . . . while untaxing buildings!
The context of the walk is a short history of San Francisco social movements. But make no mistake, the subject is the nature of social relationships.
Public media can and should be paid for out of land values. This walk-talk will illustrate how.
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Sunday, August 25
1-5 pm
189 Ellsworth St.
San Francisco 94110
Game Day
get your game on
Othello, checkers, chess, Catal, Puerto Rico, etc.
but also Taboo, Truth or Dare, Pictionary, etc.
We'll have these games and more on hand,
but bring your own!
And while you play, we'll be serving up
Texas bayou gumbo, southern greens, Mama's bisquits, and some black bottom pie. BYOB!
Why all the fuss? Cuz Daddy wants some fun.
And also because embedded in every board game is a salient Commons lesson:
Some land is real valuable, and equity (as compared with merely winning) means not driving others off the face of the board game's board.
It's free as always, but a hoot on the phone, or a reply by e-mail will tell us how big a pot of gumbo to fill!
Shore hope to see yew here!
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Wednesday, August 7
7 pm
Liberal-Conservative
Film Series
Dr. Strangelove
near the calendar date of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bomb drops
join us for a free screening, nachos estupendo, and a post screening discussion of the georgist take on this tale of fear, mistaken justice, and nasty consequences
Notable House meeting hall
189 Ellsworth St.
San Francisco's Bernal Heights
In this classic comic tragedy ridiculing life ruled by ideological fear-mongering, Peter Sellers portrays the monstrously evil Dr. Stranglove (and other roles, too) who maliciously and moronically denies sharing Nature as a universal birthright.
Thursday, July 18
Land and Wages
seminar
Thursday evening seminar illuminating
Henry George's profound understanding of the wage question:
Why are wages low and unemployment high for so many?
And what to do about it.
Thursday, June 6
7-9 pm
189 Ellsworth St. San Francisco
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Saturday, April 6
Poetry Feed!
It's Pilates! It's Yoga! It's StairMastery!
It's pita bread sandwiches!
It's four poets humming, hummus-ing, human-ing the too often merely rhetorical phrase
The Earth is the Birthright of All People.
Walk the Greenwich Street steps from Kearny to the crown of Telegraph Hill
1-3 pm Saturday, April 6
feasting on the sonic sense of poets
John Curl, Virginia Barrett,
Dee Allen and Karen Magoon;
chomping through tahini, hummus, and salad sandwiches;
auditing fowl and birdsong;
and gleaning the green, clean air of San Francisco's first pilot house promontory
hosted by the conviction that the social matrix of humanity reifies in the social revenue potential of location, location, location
Telegraph Hill Stairs
How much of the light is yours?
How much, how much?
How much of Treasure Island?
And across the bay,
How much of the Mormon Temple, and north,
How much of Sproul Plaza and the carillon?
How much of those Oakland hills and Berkeley hills?
How much of these steps is yours?
How much, how much?
Now look at the eastern span of the bay bridge,
Which, like a cocoon in progress,
Or like a daring spider's grand opus spun from the tower,
How much, how much?
And the water and land,
The air, the green,
The stuff of which the cities in view are built,
How much is yours?
How much, how much?
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Thursday, March 14
Shannon Biggs
of Global Exchange
talks
Community Rights and The Commons
7-9 pm, with complimentary supper
189 Ellsworth St.
Shannon Biggs is the director of the Community Rights program at Global Exchange. She recently co-authored two books, Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grass Roots (PoliPoint Press), and The Rights of Nature: The Case for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, a project of Council of Canadians, Global Exchange, and Fundacion Pachamama.
Her current work focuses on assisting communities confronted by corporate harms to enact binding laws that place the rights of communities and nature above the claimed legal "rights" of corporations. Over 140 communities across the US have used this new understanding to stop working defensively against corporations and take courageous action to assert their rights to make governing decisions where they live. This very different organizing model stems from a new understanding about the origins of corporate power, developed by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). She teaches this new framework, known as "rights-based" organizing at weekend long Democracy Schools, taught in San Francisco and in 23 states around the country. She also teaches shorter trainings on both Community Rights and Rights of Nature.
Previously, she was a senior staffer at International Forum on Globalization (IFG), where she organized large international teach-ins and wrote and edited for IFG publications. She also was a Lecturer in International Relations at San Francisco State University.
Shannon holds a Masters in Economics/Politics of Empire the London School of Economics (LSE), and has a BS in International Relations from San Francisco State University (SFSU).
Shannon speaks to the following topics through her base at Global Exchange:
Community Rights
Rights of Nature
Democracy School
Food sovereignty, climate justice, water rights and other issues in the context of community rights.
Rights-based organizing as a model for subordinating corporations to local, democratic self-governance by communities.
Saturday,
February 23
7 pm
Liberal-Conservative
Film Series
Sierra Baron
join us for a free screening, nachos estupendo, and a post screening discussion of the georgist take on this tale of forty acres and a mule
Notable House
189 Ellsworth St. SF 94110
A Spaniard owns a ranch in California in 1848. A sleezy real estate agent wants to sell off lots on his land to settlers. The realtor hires a gunslinger to kill the Spaniard, but the gun for hire ends up working for the Spaniard instead. The story is about gringos trying to steal the land of the Spaniard, who is the only honorable man in the bunch. He allows the settlers to use the land on his ranch to start their farms, so they ultimately have no conflict with him. The only one who is not satisfied is the land speculator.
There are also several romances and some gunfights, for those who like that sort of thing.
Plot
In this western set in the California territory in the mid-19th century, a rancher tries to protect his Spanish land grant from greedy American landgrabbers. Unfortunately the eastern interlopers bring in a Texas gunfighter to frighten the man. The gunfighter ends up falling in love with the rancher's sister, and decides to spare them. In the end, the gunman is killed during the climactic shoot out. The girl who loved him is devastated. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
Cast
Brian Keith - Jack McCracken
Rick Jason - Miguel Delmonte
Rita Gam - Felicia Delmonte
Mala Powers - Sue Russell
Steve Brodie - Rufus Bynum
Carlos Muzquiz - Andrews; Lee Morgan - Frank Goheen; Alan Lewis - Hank Moe; Pedro Galvan - Judson Jeffers; Fernando Wagner - Grandall; Enrique Lucero - Anselmo; Alberto Mariscal - Lopez; Reed Howes - Sheriff; Stillman Segar - Butcher; Alicia del Lago - Juanita; Jose Chavez Trowe - Majordomo; Armando Saenz - Eduardo; Ricardo Adalid - 1st Playboy; Jose Angel "Ferrusquilla" Espinosa - Felipe
Credit
John Mansbridge - Art Director, Georgette Somohano - Costume Designer, James B. Clark - Director, Frank Baldridge - Editor, Paul Sawtell - Composer (Music Score), Bert Shefter - Composer (Music Score), Alex Phillips - Cinematographer, Plato A. Skouras - Producer, Houston Branch - Screenwriter, Tom Blackburn - Book Author
Saturday,
February 9
Drown the Drones!
Spreckles Lake
Golden Gate Park
12:30-2 pm
While military applications of remote-controlled devices spin out of control,
there's a wholesome way to exercise your digits as you maneuver craft through this bio-dise called Earth.
Join the Henry George community as we sail a daunty two-foot sailboat across and forth on Spreckles Lake in Golden Gate Park.
We'll be quick to hand over the controls to this radio-controlled craft to you so we can picnic and chat about the surest way to end standing armies . . . by drowning them in the fun of sharing Mother Earth as a universal birthright . . . the georgist way!
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Saturday,
November 18
7 pm
Liberal-Conservative
Film Series
The Red-headed Stranger
join us for a free screening, ginger-spiced popcorn, and a post screening discussion of the georgist take on this tale of want and woe
Notable House
189 Ellsworth St. SF 94110
A bible-totin' preacher from out East arrives in wild Montana to spread the Good Word to all. When his wife takes off with another man, he straps on the pistol and extracts his vengeance. Then he must struggle to find his way back to the hallowed life. Willie Nelson plays the preacher and Morgan Fairchild is his inconstant wife. ~ Rovi
R, 1 hr. 48 min.
Western, Drama, Action & Adventure
Directed By: William D. Wittliff , Bill Wittliff
In Theaters: Jun 1, 1987 Wide
Nelson Entertainment
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Wednesday,
Oct. 10
10 am
Benefit walking tour
for IndyBay
IndyBay is the Bay Area's frontline on-line resistance news service
Come along on our walking tour of San Francisco social movement history, and make a $20 contribution to independent media.
For details click HERE
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Saturday,
Sept. 29
Benefit walking tour
for KPFA radio's
Up Front
morning program
KPFA is in the middle of it's Fall Pledge Drive
and we'd like to help keep the voice of independent media up and broadcasting.
Come along on our walking tour of San Francisco social movement history, and make a $20 contribution to free speech radio.
For details click HERE
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Occupy Bernal presents:
CJ Holmes & Foreclosures
Our popular “Get real with a realtor” series illuminating the different sorts of real estate debt and speculation that drove the foreclosure fiasco . . . and what we can do about it continues.
Join Occupy Bernal for an evening with one of Northern California’s feistiest, winningest combatants of predatory banking
CJ Holmes hosts a KPFA anti-foreclosure program and runs http://www.Hofj.org as a first and second line of defense information channel in the fight against unethical foreclosures.
This program is part of Occupy Bernal strategy to build a profound understanding of the foreclosure debacle, leading to City and State-wide policy change.
Tuesday, Sept. 4
King Kong
& Foreclosures
7-8:30
515 Cortland Avenue
Our popular “comedy and a realtor” series illuminating
the different sorts of real estate debt and speculation that drove the foreclosure fiasco continues
Join Occupy Bernal for a short film, a live performance
(metaphorical) interpretation of the 500 lb. gorilla in the foreclosure room,
and a serious discussion of real estate debt
Jake Person, another Real Estate agent,
will guide us through a post screening/performance discussion
of the nature of real estate debt, addressing the issue of
speculation
This program is part of Occupy Bernal strategy to build a profound understanding of the foreclosure debacle, leading to City and State-wide policy change.
Tuesday, September 4 7 - 8:30 pm
Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center
515 Cortland Avenue
Your neighbors, our neighborhood!
Contact: David 415-948-4265 OccupyBernal.org
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Wednesday, August 8
Red Hill
Jumps!
Though the bumper stickers and road signs say something different,
Please Mix with Texas!
This Wednesday evening,
August 8, 7-10 pm, a Texas duo of musician-nephews are in town to celebrate CommonsUnity. The Austin City limits extend all the way to 189 Ellsworth in SF's Bernal Heights neighborhood, and these goad-ropin' bucks will sing and strum in-between bouts of poetry, card and board games (and other hijinks), and a short (very short) paean to The Commons advocacy in Texas that keeps college tuition hikes there to a minimum (California has something to learn!). Challenge the privatization of everything by your presence Wednesday evening
at 189 Ellsworth Street
which is where we hope to see you for some veggie barbecue, southern greens, East Texas chili beans, and cornbread like the Texas Populists used to make.
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Friday, July 27
Foreclosure and Monopoly
The history of a game and its war on oppression
Occupy Bernal hosts an evening of thought-provoking fun at
Notable House
189 Ellsworth St.
7-8:45 pm
The game of Monopoly has its roots in a 1904 game called
The Landlord's Game.
It's inventor, Lizzie Magee, intended the game to illustrate why there are cyclically so many foreclosures and related housing hard times.
The evening begins with a short made-for-TV film about the origins of Monopoly, followed by a demonstration of Magee's original rules, demonstrating the relevance of Monopoly to today's efforts to preserve community in the face of foreclosures.
And then we'll play a quick round of Monopoly using the original game's anti-foreclosure alternate rules!
visit
http://www.OccupyBernal.org
for the full calendar
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Saturday, July 28
Routing Ba'al Ze Mitt
Walking Tour
Come along on this FREE walking tour of San Francisco social movement history, which concludes with two swift and devastating to the Republican/Romney agenda arguments for your use in private and public discourse.
One of the stories we present is the history of the Mormon diaspora to San Francisco before the Gold Rush. Did you know that Mormons believe that when righteous men die they become gods and CREATE their own planet? Mormons believe that Jesus Christ created this planet and begot Adam and Eve. Wow!
Now, for the sake of engaging Romney in a conversation let's agree to accept at face value that belief. What kind of a planet would Mitt Romney create, and with what social expectations? What would be his Sermon on the Mount?
And, by the by, what kind of a planet would you make, and with what social expectations?
Come along on a walk which makes the case, using San Francisco history, for treating land as THE COMMONS.
For more, jump to our
Walking Tour page
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Saturday, June 23
Red Hill Jumps!
Saturday, June 23, is an afternoon poetry read in Bernal Heights.
Red Hill Jumps! is an occasional spoken word gathering sponsored by The Commons SF.
This time around we're featuring Bernal resident poets. Open mic, $1 a poem. That is, poets are paid $1 a poem. Must live between Bayshore and Mission, Crescent and Cesar Chavez to read.
But the rest of San Francisco is welcome.
Food and drink provided.
RSVP would be nice.
Notable House
189 Ellsworth St.
SF 94110
We had a major website meltdown, but will be restoring the viewable record of past events over the next week,
189 Ellsworth St,
San Francisco, CA 94110
ph: 415-948-4265
info