But police vio­lence ­wasn’t the only source of strife in Hunters Point—toxicity due to contaminants from the nearby shipyard began wreaking havoc. Upon relocation, Marie first obtained a job in the neighborhood’s shipyard, unaware that the “­little white stuff ” from ship sandblasting drums scattered on her clothes, hair, and community was carcinogenic asbestos. As she describes, “A lot of ­people, upon the hill, have died from one ­thing or another. From asthma, cancers, you name it. Our asthma rates, our cancer rates, our heart disease rates, the premature babies—­there’s something ­going on that’s not right. . . . ​On my block alone, on Quesada . . . ​before my husband died, ­there had been eight men who died from two types of cancer.”62 Marie soon after became one of Bayview-­Hunters Point’s fiercest environmental justice advocates, ­organizing with groups like Greenaction against environmental racism before passing away due to the carcinogenic particles she began breathing at the age of seventeen.

In what is often portrayed as one of the most progressive, technologically advanced, and environmentally friendly US cities, health is only afforded to ­those who can purchase or rent from some of the country’s most expensive properties. This is in part why Savannah Shange describes San Francisco as a “progressive dystopia” or “a city where industry and state development schemes collided to produce a racialized, uneven distribution of life and death.”63 Cold War visions of pro­gress and renewal posit technology as a remedy for spatial improvement, but only for ­those already privileged through the ongoing proj­ect of enclosing the commons for ­those worthy of private “non-nuisance” space.