ORGANIZING
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Origin Story
At the height of the pandemic, when communities were overwhelmed by eviction threats and lack of access to food and medical care, San Francisco's Planning Department continued with business as usual. [people. power. media] decided that it was time to challenge the City’s planners to be responsive to critical community needs, rather than continuing to rubber-stamp approvals for luxury developments. In June 2020, [people. power. media] published an article, “Post-Coronavirus We Need A New Way To Plan Cities,” to show how San Francisco’s Planning Department can pivot to focus on racial, social and economic equity. In July 2020, we released a second article, “Achieving Equity in City Planning,” which lays out [people. power. media]’s revolutionary Equity in Land Use framework and its core elements: desegregation, affordability, culture and arts, stability and sustainability.
Shortly after we published the Equity in Land Use framework, the community’s positive reception to the framework prompted [people. power. media] to convene a small group of grassroots organizations to discuss how the framework could be applied for actionable change in San Francisco. This small group of grassroots organizations began to grow quickly, and in August 2020, we decided to form the Race & Equity in all Planning Coalition (REP-SF).
Building Collective Power
REP-SF has expanded to include nearly 40 grassroots and community based organizations, cultural districts, neighborhood groups and affordable housing developers throughout San Francisco. REP-SF’s mission is to ensure a future with diverse communities, stable, affordable housing, and equitable access to resources and opportunities. The organizations in REP-SF do direct organizing with Black, Indigenous and people of color communities, immigrant communities, low-income and no-income residents, seniors, and people with disabilities. REP-SF builds solidarity among communities that have been historically siloed or pitted against each other to instead build collective power.
Using Equity in Land Use as its foundational framework, [people. power. media] provides staffing to administer and facilitate REP-SF. Our efforts keep this large coalition consistently moving toward proactive, large scale systemic change. We coordinate with folks through regular meetings and varied communication, as well as train new leaders, all to ensure that the coalition works together as an engaged, complete whole. The critical role that [people. power. media] plays in REP-SF reflects these communities' trust in our work, motivations and values.
The Vision of REP-SF
REP-SF’s proactive vision for structural change in city planning includes:
Redistributing power and decision-making over land use and housing to our communities by putting their expertise at the forefront to solve issues of displacement, unaffordability and inequality.
Reclaiming the narrative about land use to focus on racial, social and economic equity.
Building REP-SF’s organizing and community voice by building and empowering our base to fight for systems that prioritize the dignity, health, stability and aspirations of our communities, and place the needs of the people over profit.
REP-SF is a space for visionary thinking and developing multi-pronged strategies to achieve racial, social and economic equity in land use. We deploy a range of strategies including legislation, direct action, base building, popular and political education, media, and when necessary, litigation. REP-SF achieves its proactive objectives through organizing, educating and engaging deeply with communities to build power towards ensuring an equitable San Francisco, for our communities now and for generations to come.
The Citywide People’s Plan
In 2022, [people. power. media] led a months-long collaborative effort with REP-SF groups to publish San Francisco’s first ever Citywide People’s Plan. We were guided by the existing community development plans that REP-SF organizations have produced over decades– plans that are rooted in community, in people, in identity and culture, in principles of inclusive and holistic planning.