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Sunday, December 30, 2018

Leftist group blames "Zionists" for gentrifying San Francisco. Now, what can that mean?



From The Forward:
Manny’s, a new business in San Francisco’s Mission District, is part cafe, part bookstore, part political event hall. Owner Manny Yekutiel, a 29-year-old rising star in the world of liberal political organizing, calls it a “civic social gathering space.”

It’s hosted incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, activists with Black Lives Matter — and on the sidewalk outside, protesters upset because Yekutiel is a “Zionist gentrifer.”

“Zionists out of the Mission!” one marcher yelled on Wednesday, Dec. 26, as about 20 members of the Lucy Parsons Project and allied groups gathered outside Manny’s.

The self-described “radical black queer direction action group,” named for an early 20th century Latina anarcho-communist labor organizer, has protested at Manny’s every Wednesday this month, and says it will continue protesting every Wednesday until Manny’s is “shut down.” The Project only has about 300 Twitter followers, but among the protest’s supporters is a local rapper, Equipto, with 14,500 followers.

This reporter tweeted at the Lucy Parsons Project on Thursday asking for an interview and was promptly blocked. (The group tweeted on Dec. 21, “We Proudly Block all Zionists.”)

None of the events at Manny’s have concerned the Middle East. Instead, the protesters are targeting Yekutiel for his personal support for the existence of the Jewish state.

The Lucy Parsons Project claims that Yekutiel is furthering gentrification in their neighborhood and criticized him for posting things like “Happy 70th Birthday Israel!” and “I am so proud of Israel and its people” on his personal Facebook page. They also wrote that he is “pinkwashing and blackfacing his gentrification and Zionism” by bringing in minority and LGBT guest speakers. (Yekutiel is also gay.)

Yekutiel is renting his space from the Mission Housing Development Corporation, a local not-for-profit affordable housing development company that owns the 28-unit family apartment building that the ground-floor commercial space is attached to. “100% of [Manny’s] rent goes back into the building, and pays for residential and community services,” Mission Housing executive director Sam Moss told the Forward.

The 5,000 residents across the Mission Housing system also get to go to Manny’s events for free and get discounts on food. Moss said the neighborhood is safer now that Manny’s has replaced the failing restaurant that used to occupy the space.

The protesters have claimed that “no one in the poor/working class brown community asked him to open this gentrifier space.” But according to Moss, that’s not true. More than a dozen neighborhood community leaders came to him gushing about Yekutiel before Moss met him for the first time, he said.
Here is the first tweet from the Lucy Parsons Project laying out their reasons for protesting Manny's:




There have been other more recent tweets about "gentrifier Zionists" and "Zionist gentrifiers:"




The emphasis on "Zionist gentrifiers" shows that this isn't about Zionism or gentrification - but about Manny being a Jew. (Other tweets call Manny's a "settler outpost" in San Francisco.)

The Lucy Parsons Project also consistently refers to white people as "mayonnaise."

While prominent liberals are embracing Manny's and ignoring the protests, one wonders if they will call out the protesters for what they are: black racists and antisemites. 

Or are they too afraid to do that given that the only bigots here happen to be gay and black, and it is too frightening to attack those who win on "oppression" points?




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