About Us

Statement of Purpose

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United to Save the Mission (USM) is a coalition of community groups and individuals that protects vulnerable communities against gentrifying forces and narratives and fighting for the Mission neighborhood by leveraging our intersectionality and honoring our interdependence to one another. 

 

We support  and celebrate the livelihoods of American Indian and Latinx cultures, LGBTQ+, working class and immigrant residents, artists, organizing spaces, community-serving businesses, nonprofits, industrial spaces, and unhoused neighbors struggling through the trauma of houselessness.

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Land Acknowledgement

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We acknowledge that most people who live here now, are transplants from other places and countries. We give recognition that San Francisco was first known as Yelamu, home to the Ramaytush Ohlone, the original peoples of this land. We also recognize that identifying the area that is represented by United to Save the Mission; is an area where the Colonizers and Missionaries at the site of Mission Dolores (built on the village site of Chutchui) enslaved many Ohlone and California Native American people where many died as the result of disease and starvation. While Chutchui and other cultural sites throughout the Mission area may not be intact today, these sites are still sacred to the original stewards of this land and to the American Indian Cultural District and it’s community members. No other community group may represent the interest of the Ramaytush Ohlone or the American Indian community.

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USM therefore adopts, supports and protects  the following Land Acknowledgement: “We, as members of the “United to Save the Mission” coalition, acknowledge that we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramaytush Ohlone have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as the caretakers of this place, as well as for all the peoples who reside in their traditional territory. As guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional Homeland. We wish to pay respects by acknowledging the Ancestors, Elders and Relatives of the Ramaytush Community by affirming their Sovereign Rights as First Peoples.”

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Read more about MissionWord here (en español).

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