A recently created community coalition of San Francisco youth advocacy groups dubbed Common Cents rallied in front of the Bank of America building on California St. last Friday, calling for the payment of $4.6 million in property taxes the building’s owners are currently trying to escape. Protestors want the city to spend the tax revenue on youth programs such as summer jobs and college scholarships, programs they believe will help solve the current crisis in San Francisco’s African-American community involving the recent spate of deaths among black youth.
Organizers chose Friday afternoon to hold the protest to coincide with a scheduled visit to the Bank of America building by its owners and by the city’s Assessment Appeals Board. According to Common Cents, the Board planned on checking out a claim made by the building’s owner, Shorenstein Co., that the city’s estimate of the building’s worth was $414 million too high. This claim, if proven true, would significantly reduce the company’s property taxes.
However, the involved parties inexplicably canceled the meeting Wednesday evening, a cancellation NTanya Lee, a Common Cents member and director of youth policy at the Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, called “very suspicious.”
“This is a process [assessing property taxes for corporations] that usually takes place behind closed doors, with no community involvement,” said Lee. “All of a sudden they see the community and young people trying to hold the city and corporations accountable, get involved, and I think they’re afraid.”
The City Assessor’s office did not return calls to Beyond Chron requesting an explanation for the cancellation.
The lively protest drew about 40 people, at least under the age of 20, and integrated chanting, bright signs, and street theatre. A short play performed at the protest presented a costumed “Mr. Bank of America” standing upon an actor representing the city’s youth, while the “Judge of the People” lambasted the corporate giant for refusing to pay taxes.
Eleven-year-old Abdul Basit Mohamath, who attended the protest, said he was marching “so we can get summer jobs and earn money so our families don’t starve.”
Well-known homeless rights advocate Rev. Glenda Hope also attended the event. “I think what the Bank of America is doing is immoral,” she said. “It’s a sin. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t come up with their fair share to help the people of this city.”
Activists organized Common Cents in part to address the recent deaths, primarily those of African-Americans under the age of 30, in San Francisco. The organization hopes to tie underlying trends in the city’s business, economic, and labor sectors to the deaths. They cite, for example, the evaporation of well-paying jobs available to the African American community, leading to the migration of over 30,000 blacks out of San Francisco in the past 30 years, as a central cause for the problems among African-American youth.
Common Cents also hopes to prioritize city spending on youth organizations. While they want to highlight the problems and consequent need for funding in the black community, they advocate increased spending towards all of the city’s youth. The organization is currently focusing on revenue gained from corporate property taxes as the means to fund youth programs.
In addition to Shorenstein Co., which Lee calls the most egregious example of a corporation refusing to pay their fair share in taxes, eight other major corporations that own property in San Francisco are currently attempting to significantly lower their property taxes. Should they succeed, the city stands to lose over $13 million in income. To Lee and Common Cents, this figure represents money that could be going toward programs like childcare for working families and after school programs for troubled youth.
According to Lee, Common Cents’ battle has just begun. “We are all paying our fair share in terms of our taxes and working to support young people,” she said. “We’re asking large corporations who own most of the wealth to do their fair share. This action today is just one of what will be many.”
