De-fencing United Nations Plaza.

When the fences went up around the grassy area at United Nations Plaza in San Francisco, volunteers from Food Not Bombs--San Francisco had a pretty good idea what they were for. A call to the city's Department of Public Works confirmed their suspicions: the fences, said the DPW, were put up to keep homeless people off the grass.

FNB is a secular, economic human rights group that responds with direct action to such efforts to limit access to open space. In front of a banner that proclaimed "Visibility is a human right," the group staged an afternoon protest with food, music, and speakers in a call for solutions to the homeless problem, "not more prosecution."

Johnna Bossuot addressed the fact that access to most of San Francisco's parks is limited. "We know why these fences are going up," she said, "because certain people's rights and well-being are recognized, respected, and protected, and other's rights are not. This is not equality, and there can be no equality while these fences are up."

And then the fences came down. They were the type of barricades used by the police for crowd control--held together with plastic handcuffs and hose clamps. Some folks cut through the fences; others just used determination and strength. Within minutes, the grassy area nearest to where FNB customarily shares free food was dotted with people sitting and rolling in the grass and celebrating.

Midway through the dismantling, the police arrived. They asked one protester, "What's going on here?" When told that public space was being reclaimed, the officer appeared relieved and said, "Oh, we thought it was a fight." When the police tried to put the fences back up, demonstrators sat on the fences and chanted, "Food not bombs, homes not jails" and "Your fences are offensive."

At the end of the day, some thirty folks had been arrested and charged with refusing to leave the scene of a riot and resisting arrest. The postscript to this event is that, one week later, on July 22, 1998, the fences around the grassy areas of the U.N. Plaza were taken down.

"The green areas are for people to look at, not necessarily to lay on," said the DPW's Jorge Alfaro. "But we're going to see how people use the space." When asked if there was any connection between the demonstration and the fences coming down, Alfaro responded, "Of course, there was a connection. The demonstrators brought it to everyone's attention."

Sadie Sabot is a volunteer and an organizer with Food Not Bombs--San Francisco.