Given my circumstances, I wanted to remark on what is happening to San Franciscan Terry Williams and his family in their Alamo Square neighborhood. Mr. Williams is a Black man who is being threatened with demands that he leave his neighborhood or else (https://abc7news.com/black-san-francisco-alamo-square-man-terry-williams-who-found-doll-with-noose-around-its-neck-is-targeted-again/14771953/). Neighbors have created a GoFundMe drive to help Mr. Williams install added security cameras and move his elderly parents into a temporary home.
Those who attempt to turn over houses by mobbing appear to use both crime and hatred in the predatory acquisition of property. In my case, some of those involved in attempting to harass me out of my childhood home accused me of saying something racist to them when I videotaped their teardown of a fence my family built decades back. That’s documented in an earlier blog on this site.
Some people are certainly harassed out of their homes by racists, and some may be harassed out of their homes by the threat of being labeled a racist. In either case, racism is used. In some cases, however, the racist expression is not the end itself–it may be the means to an end that is unspoken. The fact that racism is in play does not mean it is the sole motivation for threatening a man whose family apparently owns a home in a highly desirable area of San Francisco.
I’ve said before that it’s safer to live next door to a drug house than to mobbers. This is because those who use mobbing to acquire property are not only predatory–they are dishonest to the point of incomprehensibility. Mobbers use hidden motives and hidden methods to turn over housing. They create confusion to indemnify themselves from prosecution. In a much earlier post on this blog, you can read about a mobber telling me that they were trying to find my “friction point,” something I understood to be some trigger they wanted to access and leverage to get me to leave my home. They were willing to say anything to find it.
What is happening to Mr. Williams and his family is certainly racist and should be deemed hate crime. For criminals who mob, however, racism and hate crime may be useful tools in the acquisition of property. For mobbers, elderly parents may be little more than friction points. If Mr. Williams concludes the area is unsafe for his parents, the dwelling might be put on the market. Good liberals will decry the fact that a family of color was forced to leave their longtime home. Realtors and those with ready cash offers will rejoice at the inventory.
Everyone has to make their own choices about whether to sell property and whose offer to accept. As someone who has decided to make sure that my childhood home in Albany goes to a land trust, I have given up a great deal. My case shows how much these criminals can get away with when they tell police their female victims are delusional. If Mr. Williams and his elderly parents decide to sell property they might own in Alamo Square, I hope it stays in Black hands.
On being Mobbed 