By Michael McCutcheon
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Forty-five various civil rights, faith, and community groups signed a letter addressed to the leaders of San Francisco, urging them to maintain the city’s sanctuary status.
“We unequivocally reject disingenuous, dangerous attempts to attack San Francisco’s cherished Sanctuary ordinance, the first and oldest in the country. We call upon you to immediately withdraw all such proposals,” the letter reads.
“[Sanctuary] helps protect our immigrant family, friends, and neighbors from racial profiling and abuse at the hands of ICE,” stated FreeSF, the organization that published the letter.
The letter continues, “[W]e cannot allow the bedrock principle of equality under the law to be whittled away…We will not allow our city’s cherished ordinance, which is a model for the rest of the country, to be dragged back in time by failed approaches of the past. Both Trump-era fear mongering and Reagan-era ‘war on drugs’ approaches do nothing to build safe communities, and are in fact rooted in systematic racism.”
While the letter reasserted the seriousness of the drug overdose crisis in San Francisco, it noted that “weakening Due Process protections is a false solution rooted in xenophobia and racism that will harm community members who are victims of human trafficking and worsen, not improve, community safety.”
“We urge you to immediately withdraw the harmful proposals introduced this month. History will not remember kindly those who scapegoat immigrants,” concludes the letter.
On Twitter, FreeSF added that “any attempt to attack sanctuary and scapegoat immigrants is racist & anti-immigrant. We will continue to show up in force to defend sanctuary because we believe in building strong and safe communities.”
There has yet to be a response from Mayor London Breed, Supervisor Matt Dorsey, or District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, to all of whom the letter is addressed.
