Ethel Newlin carves out a role in the Mission as a trusted squeaky wheel and activist

By Beth Renneisen

Community activist Ethel Newlin sits at a picnic table in Kid Power Park on Hoff and 16th Streets, San Francisco. This is a neighborhood playground and garden she helped create with the volunteer help of Mission District residents over a 10-year period.

photo by Beth Renneisen

Long-time community activist Ethel Newlin may have moved her place of employment to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and her residence to Pacifica, but clearly her home is still the Mission District. During the short period of time that it took to sip coffee and take a stroll down 16th street, she was greeted continually by friends and passers-by. It may be an exaggeration to say that everyone in the Mission knows her, but it certainly seemed that way.
Formerly the community liaison for the non-profit youth development agency St. John’s Educational Thresholds Center (now Mission Graduates), Newlin has been a community safety activist and well-known squeaky wheel for quality of life issues for decades. In her current role as a fraud investigator in the Consumer Protection Unit of the D.A.’s office, she again represents the interests of the underrepresented or victimized.
“Ethel is a trusted member of the community whose advice I can rely on,” said Kamala Harris, San Francisco District Attorney. I’ve known Ethel for years as the go-to person in the Mission, and, when I became District Attorney, I swooped her up.”
A Sephardic Jew with roots in Spain and Venezuela, Newlin is an expressive woman with a ready smile and a love of words. She attributes her successes in the Mission community — and now citywide at the DA’s office — to networking. “The many contacts I’ve made over the years in the Mission translate into referrals in other parts of the city,” she said. “San Francisco is really a group of small towns working together.”
What has changed in her neighborhood since her arrival in the 1980s? Not much, … and everything.
“The Mission has always been a multi-cultural community,” Newlin said, “the different groups have just moved around.” Services that were once tailored to English and Mexican Spanish speakers now must serve a multitude of nationalities, however, and must learn what’s culturally appropriate for the newer groups. Newlin admits that economic pressures and “condo-ization” have made it difficult for many to continue to live in the area. “This small town [the Mission] needs to accept change to survive,” she said.
Musing on the merits of her “small town,” Newlin admits she loves the diversity, the ethnic food, the “edgy character,” and even the shopping. “I can spend a lot of time in here,” she laughed as we poked around in the belly dancing outfits, studded wrist bands, piles of fedoras and about a billion other knick knacks that fill every inch of Multikulti, a novelty shop on Valencia Street.
Newlin’s two now-grown children are products of area schools and children’s programs. Her 25-year-old daughter volunteers at the Boys and Girls club where she was a member growing up. Children’s issues, especially those of immigrant children, have always been Newlin’s primary concern. In her work with St. John’s, Newlin was the architect of the Children’s Garden project that produced Kid Power Park on Hoff and 16th streets, where, over a 10-year period, an all-volunteer labor force constructed a modern, beautifully landscaped park on the site of a formerly trash-filled vacant lot.
Ario Salazar, Director of the Tutoring Center at Mission Graduates, remembers working with Newlin on the project. “Ethel put a lot of programs together to do this,“ he said, “she knows the key people in the community.”
At the park on a recent sunny morning, parents watched their children frolic on the brightly colored playground equipment while we admired the handmade decorative ironwork that encloses the park and gardens. Newlin pointed with pride to some of the less obvious features that had required community intervention, such as an adjacent building where crumbling lead paint had to be removed, and a huge tile mural that was installed on a flanking wall with a friendly neighbor’s permission.
Adding to her many awards for public service, Newlin was named a “Mission & Sixteenth Street Community Hero” by the Mission Community Council when the park was completed in 2005. She claims that helping children in difficult situations has been her greatest achievement. “When I see the kids grow up and do something good, I see my work pay off,” she said with her big smile. “It feels good to be the Kid Power person.”
In her new job protecting consumers, Newlin finds that immigrants are frequent victims of confidence scams, often perpetrated by fellow immigrants. Most common are versions of the decades old get-rich-quick ruse known as Nigerian (or Canadian) advance-fee fraud, originating on the Internet or from personal contact with strangers. The elderly are especially vulnerable because they tend to trust polite young people who speak their language. Perpetrators offer the victim a cut of their lottery winnings or some other cash windfall if the person gives them a portion of the money in advance to “handle expenses,” and then vanishes with the down payment.
Another scam common in the neighborhood, according to Newlin, is moving van fraud, in which the victim hires an unlicensed person to move their belongings, car or both to another country at a bargain rate. The victim not only loses their money, but their belongings as well. Unfortunately, many cases are never prosecuted because the victim is unaware of how to alert the authorities. “People don’t understand the process,” Newlin said, “and they balk at all the documents and court appearances they need to make to get justice.”
In tough times, D.A. Harris feels that it is especially important to have Newlin — who speaks fluent Spanish and is well respected in the community — in her office. “She gives a voice to the people,” Harris said.
Much small-time crime goes unreported, Newlin admitted, simply because the victim could be viewed as a criminal, too. “You can get anything you want at the 16th Street BART station,” she pointed out. “Drugs, work papers, fake IDs, … anything. But who’s going to call my office and report they were ripped off by a street dealer?”
Long an advocate of increased police presence in the Mission, Newlin sees the principle role of police as a deterrent for basic street crime. The police need to continue to break up crowds and disperse vagrants blocking storefronts, she asserted, “just so people know that they don’t have permission to be bad.”
Newlin especially cares that children aren’t sent a message that just hanging out and harassing people is acceptable. “Communicating with the community is the key to success for the police, she said, “like it is with everything.”