S.F. should mark its mistakes as well

I’m pleased to see San Francisco reconsider the names of some of our most important public spaces.

The Board of Supervisors is considering renaming a terminal at San Francisco International Airport after Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay public office holder, who was assassinated in his office in 1978.

There’s also a resolution to remove the name of Justin Herman from the plaza at the foot of Market Street. Herman oversaw a redevelopment plan that decimated the African American and Japanese American neighborhoods in the Western Addition in the 1950s and 1960s. That plan is now rightfully seen as a disaster.

Every city should regularly ask itself whether the people it’s chosen to honor publicly continue to deserve that privilege. If the answer is no, then it should consider who might be more deserving of that honor.

What would make San Francisco’s process even better, however, would be if city leaders were willing to consider naming a few places for the very first time.

San Francisco is great at noting our tourist attractions and our happy history. But every city does that. San Francisco would be far more remarkable if we noted where our difficult chapters happened, too.

When a city commemorates the more difficult chapters of its past, it’s a sign to residents that everyone’s experience is important. It’s also a reminder to every member of the community that we’re all responsible for avoiding the mistakes of the past.

Here are two sites where I’d love to see public recognition of San Francisco history. As always, feel free to write me with your suggestions.

Peoples Temple/Victims and Survivors of Jonestown

The victims of Jonestown were disproportionately San Francisco’s least politically empowered demographic — low-income African American women. Many of the San Francisco leaders who behaved badly during the Jonestown crisis still have far too much power here today. So I don’t anticipate any official commemoration to happen anytime soon.

But Jonestown tells us every bit as much about San Francisco as the Summer of Love does.

“Jim Jones stepped into the vacuum of post-civil-rights-era San Francisco, and he took advantage of a group that was already considered throwaway people,” said James Taylor, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and author of the forthcoming book “Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, and California Black Politics.”

“There was local disdain for these populations. And because Jones was put in charge of the San Francisco Housing Authority, there should be public responsibility for Jones.”

The ultimate responsibility for Jones’ horrific actions, which included guiding more than 900 to mass suicide via cyanidespiked punch, lies with Jones.

But San Francisco does bear some responsibility for the fact that his destructive cult was not only allowed, but encouraged, in our midst.

We should absolutely erect a plaque at the former site of the Peoples Temple at 1859 Geary Blvd.

We should do it to honor the victims, but we should also do it to remind ourselves. It may be uncomfortable, but it may also prevent us from making the same mistakes again.

Yerba Buena/Manilatown

Next week is the 40th anniversary of the International Hotel eviction, and San Francisco’s Filipino community has lots of events planned to commemorate the historic struggle of elderly Filipino Americans to save their home from (yet another) development scheme.

I’m happy to see this event finally starting to get the attention it deserves from the larger city’s community. But it’s worth pointing out that while the IHotel battle eventually resulted in the development of affordable senior housing on that site, the eviction of thousands of Filipinos in the Yerba Buena Center area resulted in no such positive outcome — and no such positive commemoration, either.

“We’ve been in South of Market for 100 years, and we’d love to work with the Yerba Buena Gardens to publicly educate the city about that history,” said Raquel Redondiez, project manager of SOMA Pilipinas, the Filipino Cultural Heritage District.

I’d like that, too. And as San Francisco wrestles with yet another housing crisis, yet another historic displacement of the people of color who have made up its communities, there’s no better time than now.

We should do it to honor the victims, but we should also do it to remind ourselves.