2019-La Raza Park
The fourth 415 Day in 2019 marked a turning point. In the years prior, 415 Day had centered on resilience — a celebration of the fact that native San Franciscans had survived the wave of gentrification rapidly changing the landscape of their city. But in 2019, the (S)olidarity (F)orever (C)ollective shifted the focus toward resistance and restitution, and chose La Raza Park to make that statement.
As always, the location for 2019’s 415 Day was released the night before. This flyer was posted on the 415 Day Instagram.
Known today as Potrero del Sol, La Raza Park is a place whose history runs as deep as the Mission District itself, AND it didn't come from city planning or government benevolence.
It was won through struggle.
Back in the 1970s, after a milk factory was demolished, leaving an empty lot at Potrero Avenue and 25th Street, Mission lowriders approached the property owner and obtained permission to hold car shows on the land. They called it "The Lot," and because it was private property, the police couldn't touch them. But on the streets, the harassment was relentless, citations, arrests, and Mission Street shutdowns targeting Latino lowriders, while white kids raced for pink slips on the other side of the city without a word from law enforcement. Roberto Hernandez, founder of the San Francisco Lowrider Council, was arrested 113 times before he and fellow lowriders filed a lawsuit against then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein and the SFPD for civil rights violations. They refused a cash payout. Instead, they won the right to cruise, got a gym built, saw offending officers pushed off the force
…and got La Raza Park.
The community originally wanted a lowrider park; the city wouldn't go for it, so they negotiated for an amphitheater and held concerts and car shows alongside it.
For generations of Mission kids, Raza Park was the backyard. Conga players on weekends, barbecues, a clean pool, and a real sense of community. It was a place that represented everything good and joyful about growing up in the Mission, alongside all the pain and loss that comes with being in a neighborhood the city has long neglected and underserved.
Choosing La Raza Park for the fourth 415 Day was deeply intentional; a nod to the long tradition of resistance that had shaped that very ground, and a declaration that the generations of Black and Brown San Franciscans who built this city deserve restitution for all that has been taken from them.
