November 1996 Newsletter November 1996 Newsletter
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Our Own Election
Nominations are now in order for members of the
Board of Directors of the S.F. Network of the Gray
Panthers. Our by-laws specify a Board of up to
twenty-six members. Each Board member is elected
for a two-year term, and may serve for two consecutive
terms-a total of four years before going off the
Board for at least one year.
Mitzi, Vi and Agnes are completing their second two-year term and are not eligible for nomination. We thank them for their services.
Rebecca, Astrid, Miriam B., Ilse, Celia, Kay and Lillian K. are on-going members of the Board in the second year of their second term. Fanny and Karen are on-going members in the second year of their first term.
Deetje, Clarissa, Mary Frances, Carl, Janet, Steve and Eleanor are finishing their first second-year term.
To be on the Board of Directors one must be a
paid-up member of the S.F. Network of the GP. Any
member may nominate any other member or
her/himself. Nominations can be made at a Board
meeting, a membership meeting or by calling the of-
fice. Elections will be held at the December holiday
party.
Youth Summit
The San Francisco mayor's office has been holding a
series of city-wide meetings on specific local problems
and possible solutions.
Last month we reported to you on the health summit meeting and plans for a city-wide, "single- card" health plan for participants. This month we are talking about the youth summit.
The two-day youth summit was held the first weekend in October. It had been preceded by seven mini-summits held in different parts of the city. Fea- tured speakers were Marian Wright Edelman of the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund and Dr. Sandra Hernandez, director of the city's Department of Public Health. Emphasis was on developing and implementing programs most needed and most de- sired by our city's young people. Perhaps unfortu- nately local press coverage concentrated on the dis- content of young participants who felt under- represented-on, and talked-down-to-by, the mainly adult panel. Not headlined were the programs de- manded by the young people such as more local youth jobs, longer hours at recreation centers, greater access to computers in the schools, youth representa- tion on all city commissions handling youth problems.
Other needed programs stressed at the meetings included child care and health care.
We have for a long time cooperated with Coleman Advocates for Youth which is one of the moving forces behind this accelerating drive for representation of young people by young people and for effective programs to answer the needs of children and teens.
The Youth Commission may speak well for teens but it needs adult support. Children's programs need parenting and monitoring.
This is important. This is our city and these are
our children. Make your presence felt and your voices
heard.
November Meeting
You are invited to join the Gray Panthers and everyone
who is still hopeful for a single-payer health plan to be
implemented in California and the nation to come to
our meeting, Tuesday, November 19 at the First
Unitarian Church.
Our speaker will be Judy Pope, a well-known spokesperson for the Single-Payer Health Plan. She will tell us how physicians, nurses and health workers are organizing their groups to put the health plan on the California ballot in 1998.
We will have the advantage at the November
meeting to judge how successful our work has been in
educating the public when we learn the results of
health care reform props 214 and 216. These health
care reforms are only modest steps toward a system
that puts health before profits.
October Meeting
We owe a vote of thanks to Mitzi Raas for her excellent
report on the stand we have taken on the various ballot
propositions.
State Propositions 208 Campaign Contributions Yes 209 Civil Rights (Wrongs) No 210 Minimum Wage Yes 211 Securities Fraud Yes 212 Campaign Contributions Yes 214 Health Care Yes 215 Medical Marijuana Yes 216 Health Care Yes 217 Restoring Income Tax on Rich Yes 218 Grandchild of Prop 13 No Local Propositions A Housing Yes
It will be interesting to compare the results of the
actual vote with the above list.
U.S., A Leader in WHAT???
Child poverty is greater in the United States than in
other leading industrial countries and the government
does less to protect youngsters from hunger, a private
study says.
Twenty-two percent of Americans under age 18
live in poverty and more than one in four of those un-
der age 12-about 13 million-are hungry or at risk
of hunger, according to a survey by the Bread for
World Institute, which lobbies for larger antipoverty
programs.
Help for Sore Eyes
Help and information for individuals afflicted with age-
related macular degeneration are available from
several organizations.
For information, send a stamped, self-addressed business-size envelope to: AMD 210 East 64th St. New York City, NY 10021.
A newsletter about the availability of services for
low-vision individuals can be obtained by sending a
self-addressed, stamped business-sized envelope to:
The Center for the Partially Sighted
7120 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 200
Santa Monica, CA 90401-1713.
Library Petition
At the October board meeting, the following petition
was signed by all present. If you would like to
circulate it yourself you can get a copy by calling the
office and one will be sent to you immediately:
TO: Mayor Willie Brown and the S.F. Board of Supervisors
WHEREAS, due to the uncontrolled discarding of untold thousands upon thousands of titles from the S.F. Public Library's collection which has been built up over the past four generations of librarians for our shared use and enjoyment, the citizens of San Fran- cisco are losing their precious public heritage of books:
THEREFORE, we the undersigned request that an
immediate moratorium be placed on any further dis-
carding of S.F. Public Library books until such time
as a responsible weeding policy is adopted and the
books to be discarded conform to it, with complete re-
cords kept of all books discarded.
_____________________________________
Please return completed petitions to:
GRAY PANTHERS OF SAN FRANCISCO
1182 Market St., #203, S.F., CA 94102
(Tel.: 552-8800)
New Yorker Notes SF Library Brouhaha From the New Yorker article by Nicholson Baker, Oct. 14, 1996, "The Author vs. the Library."
"... under [City Librarian] Dowlin and his A-team (as he calls his administrative team, a cadre of chiefs and special assistants), the S.F. Public Library has, by a conservative estimate, sent more than 200,000 books to landfills-many of them old, hard to find, out of print, and valuable.
"The worst period of book-dumping happened late last year, in the months before the library's move to the New Main. ... On most Tuesdays, until this past January, a Department of Public Works truck ... drove down to [the discard] room, and two, sometimes three men threw the books, which were often tied with string in bundles of eight or ten, into the back. ... When it was loaded (and it could hold perhaps 2500 bundled volumes), the truck drove to a transfer station, where the books were shifted to big rigs, along with the rest of the day's garbage, and then taken to a landfill. ... Although the weeding continues, the good news is that since this past January no more books have been dumped. On January 29th, the Chronicle's Andrew Ross and Phillip Matier published a story headlined `S.F. Library Tossing Thousands of Books' and a picture of the Discard Room. ... Since then, no book, to my knowledge, has been thrown away. Instead, nonprofit and community groups are invited to take what they can use. ... They have gone to other librar- ies, here and abroad, and to schools, prisons, villages in Madagascar and Armenia.
"... Representatives of ... the Gray Panthers left
this summer with about 20 boxes of books: works on
labor history and birds; books by McPhee, Malamud,
Herb Caen, and a first-edition Elizabeth Bishop. (They
are holding them in trust, waiting for the library to
come to its senses.) At least we can be thankful that the
newer rejects will continue their legible lives some-
where, and not make up a semi-sentient layer in the
ultimate closed stack-the sanitary landfill."
Two Very Useful Books-Free!
Clean It!, Safer House-Cleaning Methods that Really
Work!; and The Less-Toxic Garden-two colorfully
illustrated books are available free from the San Fran-
cisco Water Pollution Prevention Program. A phone
call to 695-7375 on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
from 8:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m., only, will bring them to
you by the next mail.
The Newsletter of the San Francisco Gray Panthers is published each month, and distributed free of charge to members and friends of this nonprofit organization.