From Truth Out: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12632-next-steps-for-the-movement-the-tenderloin-today-project
By Richard Kreidler
Saturday, 10 November 2012
Picking up from Occupy San Francisco, the Tenderloin Today Project aspires to revive a neighborhood with food, services, jobs and housing developed with, and through, community-based organizations.
By creating space for like-minded individuals to come together to identify their collective power, the Occupy movement shifted the parameters of activism and opened new ways of creating mutual aid. The physical camps of the Occupy movement were the birthplaces for this new thinking. Now, after its first birthday, we’re starting to see Occupy as its own entity and how it is going to interact with the world.
As a successful entrepreneur, I had the privilege and opportunity to jump in with both feet when the movement came to San Francisco. While many in the wealthy elite of this city saw the movement as a threat and something to be feared, I saw in it the seeds of the revolution we must create in order to ensure the survival of our planet and our species.
The next stage of the movement is about realigning our interests and our actions to build a culture that takes responsibility at an individual level for the well being of everyone in our communities. With this in mind, I’ve been working to create a model for rebuilding communities from the street level, starting in San Francisco’s deeply troubled Tenderloin district.
After the peak activity of Occupy San Francisco began to subside, community members saw a need to create substantial impact at the ground level. The Tenderloin Today Project was launched to address some of the major challenges faced by the people in the Tenderloin. The project is currently functioning as a multi-level campaign to feed the less fortunate, improve their living conditions and help them create jobs that they themselves will own.
To accomplish these goals, the Tenderloin Today Project provides healthy, organic, locally grown, hot, prepared food to nonprofit organizations, homeless shelters and residential hotels in the Tenderloin area. This part of the project was implemented over the past four months, providing food to the YMCA, Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club, Coalition on Homelessness, Hospitality House homeless shelter and several other organizations. Food also has been delivered to the Tenderloin single-room occupancy hotels, residential communities which are often in need of support. The bulk of the prepared food comes from the kitchen of a large software company in the Bay Area and the quality is beyond exceptional.
Continue reading at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12632-next-steps-for-the-movement-the-tenderloin-today-project
