Barack Obama

Project Censored 2014

Erica Hanna
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Project Censored 2014

joe@sfbg.com

Our oceans are acidifying — even if the nightly news hasn’t told you yet.

As humanity continues to fill the atmosphere with harmful gases, the planet is becoming less hospitable to life as we know it. The vast oceans absorb much of the carbon dioxide we have produced, from the industrial revolution through the rise of global capitalism. Earth’s self-sacrifice spared the atmosphere nearly 25 percent of humanity’s CO2 emissions, slowing the onslaught of many severe weather consequences.

Although the news media have increasingly covered the climate weirding of global warming — hurricane superstorms, fierce tornado clusters, overwhelming snowstorms, and record-setting global high temperatures — our ocean’s peril has largely stayed submerged below the biggest news stories.

The rising carbon dioxide in our oceans burns up and deforms the smallest, most abundant food at the bottom of the deep blue food chain. One vulnerable population is the tiny shelled swimmers known as the sea butterfly. In only a few short decades, the death and deformation of this fragile and translucent species could endanger predators all along the oceanic food web, scientists warn.

This “butterfly effect,” once unleashed, potentially threatens fisheries that feed over 1 billion people worldwide.

Since ancient times, humans fished the oceans for food. Now, we’re frying ocean life before we even catch it, starving future generations in the process. Largely left out of national news coverage, this dire report was brought to light by a handful of independent-minded journalists: Craig Welch from the Seattle Times, Julia Whitty of Mother Jones, and Eli Kintisch of ScienceNOW.

It is also the top story of Project Censored, an annual book and reporting project that features the year’s most underreported news stories, striving to unmask censorship, self-censorship, and propaganda in corporate-controlled media outlets. The book is set for release in late October.

“Information is the currency of democracy,” Ralph Nader, the prominent consumer advocate and many-time presidential candidate, wrote in his foreword to this year’s Project Censored 2015. But with most mass media owned by narrow corporate interests, “the general public remains uninformed.”

Whereas the mainstream media poke and peck at noteworthy events at single points in time, often devoid of historical context or analysis, Project Censored seeks to clarify understanding of real world issues and focus on what’s important. Context is key, and many of its “top censored” stories highlight deeply entrenched policy issues that require more explanation than a simple sound bite can provide.

Campus and faculty from over two dozen colleges and universities join in this ongoing effort, headquartered at Sonoma State University. Some 260 students and 49 faculty vet thousands of news stories on select criteria: importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and the level of corporate news coverage.

The top 25 finalists are sent to Project Censored’s panel of judges, who then rank the entries, with ocean acidification topping this year’s list.

“There are outlets, regular daily papers, who are independent and they’re out there,” Andy Lee Roth, associate director of Project Censored, told us. Too many news outlets are beholden to corporate interests, but Welch of the Seattle Times bucked the trend, Roth said, by writing some of the deepest coverage yet on ocean acidification.

“There are reporters doing the highest quality of work, as evidenced by being included in our list,” Roth said. “But the challenge is reaching as big an audience as [the story] should.”

Indeed, though Welch’s story was reported in the Seattle Times, a mid-sized daily newspaper, this warning is relevant to the entire world. To understand the impact of ocean acidification, Welch asks readers to “imagine every person on earth tossing a hunk of CO2 as heavy as a bowling ball into the sea. That’s what we do to the oceans every day.”

Computer modeler Isaac Kaplan, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in Seattle, told Welch that his early work predicts significant declines in sharks, skates and rays, some types of flounder and sole, and Pacific whiting, the most frequently caught commercial fish off the coast of Washington, Oregon, and California.

Acidification may also harm fisheries in the farthest corners of the earth: A study by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme outlines acidification’s threat to the arctic food chain.

“Decreases in seawater pH of about 0.02 per decade have been observed since the late 1960s in the Iceland and Barents Seas,” the study’s authors wrote in the executive summary. And destroying fisheries means wiping out the livelihoods of the native peoples of the Antarctic.

Acidification can even rewire the brains of fish, Welch’s story demonstrated. Studies found rising CO2 levels cause clown fish to gain athleticism, but have their sense of smell redirected. This transforms them into “dumb jocks,” scientists said, swimming faster and more vigorously straight into the mouths of their predators.

These Frankenstein fish were found to be five times more likely to die in the natural world. What a fitting metaphor for humanity, as our outsized consumption propels us towards an equally dangerous fate.

“It’s not as dramatic as say, an asteroid is hitting us from outer space,” Roth said of this slowly unfolding disaster, which is likely why such a looming threat to our food chain escapes much mainstream news coverage.

Journalism tends to be more “action focused,” Roth said, looking to define conflict in everything it sees. A recently top-featured story on CNN focused on President Barack Obama’s “awkward coffee cup salute” to a Marine, which ranks only slightly below around-the-clock coverage of the president’s ugly tan suit as a low point in mainstream media’s focus on the trivial.

As Nader noted, “‘important stories’ are often viewed as dull by reporters and therefore unworthy of coverage.” But mainstream media do cover some serious topics with weight, as it did in the wake of the police officer shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. So what’s the deciding factor?

As Roth tells it, corporate news focuses on “drama, and the most dramatic action is of course violence.”

But the changes caused by ocean acidification are gradual. Sea butterflies are among the most abundant creatures in our oceans, and are increasingly born with shells that look like cauliflower or sandpaper, making this and similar species more susceptible to infection and predators.

“Ocean acidification is changing the chemistry of the world’s water faster than ever before, and faster than the world’s leading scientists predicted,” Welch said, but it’s not getting the attention is deserves. “Combined nationwide spending on acidification research for eight federal agencies, including grants to university scientists by the National Science Foundation, totals about $30 million a year — less than the annual budget for the coastal Washington city of Hoquiam, population 10,000.”

Our oceans may slowly cook our food chain into new forms with potentially catastrophic consequences. Certainly 20 years from now, when communities around the world lose their main source of sustenance, the news will catch on. But will the problem make the front page tomorrow, while there’s still time to act?

Probably not, and that’s why we have Project Censored and its annual list:

 

2. TOP 10 US AID RECIPIENTS PRACTICE TORTURE

Sexual abuse, children kept in cages, extra-judicial murder. While these sound like horrors the United States would stand against, the reverse is true: This country is funding these practices.

The US is a signatory of the United Nations’ Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, but the top 10 international recipients of US foreign assistance in 2014 all practice torture, according to human rights groups, as reported by Daniel Wickham of online outlet Left Foot Forward.

Israel received over $3 billion in US aid for fiscal year 2013-14, according to a Congressional Research Service report. Israel was criticized by the country’s own Public Defender’s Office for torturing children suspected of minor crimes.

“During our visit, held during a fierce storm that hit the state, attorneys met detainees who described to them a shocking picture: in the middle of the night dozens of detainees were transferred to the external iron cages built outside the IPS transition facility in Ramla,” the PDO wrote, according to The Independent.

The next top recipients of US foreign aid were Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Iraq, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. All countries were accused of torture by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Kenyan police in Nairobi tortured, raped, or otherwise abused more than 1,000 refugees from 2012 to 2013, Human Rights Watch found. The Kenyan government received $564 million from the United States in 2013-14.

When the US funds a highway or other project that it’s proud of, it plants a huge sign proclaiming “your tax dollars at work.” When the US funds torturers, the corporate media bury the story, or worse, don’t report it at all.

 

3. TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP, A SECRET DEAL TO HELP CORPORATIONS

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is like the Stop Online Piracy Act on steroids, yet few have heard of it, let alone enough people to start an Internet campaign to topple it. Despite details revealed by Wikileaks, the nascent agreement has been largely ignored by the corporate media.

Even the world’s elite are out of the loop: Only three officials in each of the 12 signatory countries have access to this developing trade agreement that potentially impacts over 800 million people.

The agreement touches on intellectual property rights and the regulation of private enterprise between nations, and is open to negotiation and viewing by 600 “corporate advisors” from big oil, pharmaceutical, to entertainment companies.

Meanwhile, more than 150 House Democrats signed a letter urging President Obama to halt his efforts to fast-track negotiations, and to allow Congress the ability to weigh in now on an agreement only the White House has seen.

Many criticized the secrecy surrounding the TPP, arguing the real world consequences may be grave. Doctors Without Borders wrote, “If harmful provisions in the US proposals for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement are not removed before it is finalized, this trade deal will have a real cost in human lives.”

 

4. CORPORATE INTERNET PROVIDERS THREATEN NET NEUTRALITY

This entry demonstrates the nuance in Project Censored’s media critique. Verizon v. FCC may weaken Internet regulation, which Electronic Frontier Foundation and other digital freedom advocates allege would create a two-tiered Internet system. Under the FCC’s proposed new rules, corporate behemoths such as Comcast or Verizon could charge entities to use faster bandwidth, which advocates say would create financial barriers to free speech and encourage censorship.

Project Censored alleges corporate outlets such as The New York Times and Forbes “tend to highlight the business aspects of the case, skimming over vital particulars affecting the public and the Internet’s future.”

Yet this is a case where corporate media were circumvented by power of the viral web. John Oliver, comedian and host of Last Week Tonight on HBO, recently gave a stirring 13-minute treatise on the importance of stopping the FCC’s new rules, resulting in a flood of comments to the FCC defending a more open Internet. The particulars of net neutrality have since been thoroughly reported in the corporate media.

But, as Project Censored notes, mass media coverage only came after the FCC’s rule change was proposed, giving activists little time to right any wrongs. It’s a subtle but important distinction.

 

5. BANKERS REMAIN ON WALL STREET DESPITE MAJOR CRIMES

Bankers responsible for rigging municipal bonds and bilking billions of dollars from American cities have largely escaped criminal charges. Every day in the US, low-level drug dealers get more prison time than these scheming bankers who, while working for GE Capital, allegedly skimmed money from public schools, hospitals, libraries, and nursing homes, according to Rolling Stone.

Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg, and Peter Grimm were dubbed a part of the “modern American mafia,” by the magazine’s Matt Taibbi, one of the few journalists to consistently cover their trial. Meanwhile, disturbingly uninformed cable media “journalists” defended the bankers, saying they shouldn’t be prosecuted for “failure,” as if cheating vulnerable Americans were a bad business deal.

“Had the US authorities decided to press criminal charges,” Assistant US Attorney General Lanny Breuer told Taibbi. “HSBC (a British bank) would almost certainly have lost its banking license in the US, the future of the institution would have been under threat, and the entire banking system would have been destabilized.”

Over the course of decades, the nation’s bankers transformed into the modern mafioso. Unfortunately, our modern media changed as well, and are no longer equipped to tackle systemic, complex stories.

 

6. THE “DEEP STATE” OF PLUTOCRATIC CONTROL

What’s frightening about the puppeteers who pull the strings of our national government is not how hidden they are, but how hidden they are not.

From defense contractors to multinational corporations, a wealthy elite using an estimated $32 trillion in tax-exempt offshore havens are the masters of our publicly elected officials. In an essay written for Moyer and Company by Mike Lofgren, a congressional staffer of 28 years focused on national security, this cabal of wealthy interests comprise our nation’s “Deep State.”

As Lofgren writes for Moyers, “The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction.”

This is a story that truly challenges the mass media, which do report on the power of wealth, in bits and pieces. But although the cabal’s disparate threads are occasionally pulled, the spider’s web of corruption largely escapes corporate media’s larger narrative.

The myopic view censors the full story as surely as outright silence would. The problem deepens every year.

“There are now 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances — a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government,” Lofgren wrote, of a group that together would “occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons — about 17 million square feet.”

 

7. FBI DISMISSES PLOT AGAINST OCCUPY AS NSA CRACKS DOWN ON DISSENT

Nationally, law enforcement worked in the background to monitor and suppress the Occupy Wall Street movement, a story the mainstream press has shown little interest in covering.

A document obtained in FOIA request by David Lindorff of Who, What WHY from the FBI office in Houston,, Texas revealed an alleged assassination plot targeting a Occupy group, which the FBI allegedly did not warn the movement about.

From the redacted document: “An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.”

Lindorff confirmed the document’s veracity with the FBI. When contacted by Lindorff, Houston Police were uninterested, and seemingly (according to Lindorff), uninformed.

In Arizona, law enforcement exchanged information of possible Occupy efforts with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, according to a report by the Center for Media and Democracy titled Dissent on Terror. The CEO meant to evade possible protests, and local law enforcement was happy to help.

Law enforcement’s all-seeing eyes broadened through the national rise of “fusion centers” over the past decade, hubs through which state agencies exchange tracking data on groups exercising free speech. And as we share, “like,” and “check-in” online with ever-more frequency, that data becomes more robust by the day.

 

8. IGNORING EXTREME WEATHER CONNECTION TO GLOBAL WARMING

In what can only be responded to with a resounding “duh,” news analyses have found mainstream media frequently report on severe weather changes without referring to global warming as the context or cause, even as a question.

As Project Censored notes, a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found extreme weather events in 2013 spurred 450 broadcast news segments, only 16 of which even mentioned climate change. National news outlets have fallen on the job as well, as The New York Times recently shuttered its environmental desk and its Green blog, reducing the number of reporters exclusively chasing down climate change stories.

Unlike many journalists, ordinary people often recognize the threat of our warming planet. Just as this story on Project Censored went to press, over 400,000 protested in the People’s Climate March in New York City alone, while simultaneous protests erupted across the globe, calling for government, corporate, and media leaders to address the problem.

“There is a huge mismatch between the magnitude of the challenge and the response we heard here today,” Graca Machel, the widow of former South African President Nelson Mandela, told the United Nations conference on climate change. “The scale is much more than we have achieved.”

 

9. US MEDIA HYPOCRISY IN COVERING UKRAINE CRISIS

The US battle with Russia over Ukraine’s independence is actually an energy pipeline squabble, a narrative lost by mainstream media coverage, Project Censored alleges.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn fire from the media as a tyrant, without complex analyses of his country’s socio-economic interests, according to Project Censored. As the media often do, they have turned the conflict into a cult of personality, talking up Putin’s shirtless horseback riding and his hard-line style with deftness missing from their political analysis.

As The Guardian UK’s Nafeez Ahmed reported, a recent US State Department-sponsored report noted “Ukraine’s strategic location between the main energy producers (Russia and the Caspian Sea area) and consumers in the Eurasian region, its large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities,” highlighting its economic importance to the US and its allies.

 

10. WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION SUPPRESSES REPORT ON IRAQ IMPACTS

The United States’ legacy in Iraq possibly goes beyond death to a living nightmare of cancer and birth defects, due to the military’s use of depleted uranium weapons, a World Health Organization study found. Iraq is poisoned. Much of the report’s contents were leaked to the BBC during its creation. But the release of the report, completed in 2012 by WHO, has stalled. Critics allege the US is deliberately blocking its release, masking a damning Middle East legacy rivaling the horrors of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But Iraq will never forget the US intervention, as mothers cradle babies bearing scars obtained in the womb, the continuing gifts of our invasion.

SF school board votes to aid Central American child refugees, hopes to spark national movement

Erica Hanna
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14
SF school board votes to aid Central American child refugees, hopes to spark national movement

Waves of Central American child refugees are landing in San Francisco, fleeing violence in their home countries. A growing number of supporters are lending aid, and now the San Francisco Unified School District is the newest group to join the cause. 

Last night [Tues/12], the SFUSD Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution to bolster services in city public schools for child refugees fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

“We are a nation of immigrants, which is often forgotten when we talk about ‘those kids,'” SFUSD Superintendent Richard Carranza said to the board. “These are our children.”

To help them, he said, “we will move heaven and earth.” Carranza then pledged to forward the text of the resolution far and wide, saying he hoped the SFUSD’s efforts would cross the desk of President Barack Obama, and set an example for the rest of the country.

Child refugees coming to San Francisco face language barriers, inadequate city services, and major gaps in their education. The resolution, authored by board member Matt Haney, will beef up teaching resources for child refuegees, connect these children with counseling services, and enroll them in specific classes geared towards new English learners. The district will also soon hire an administrator to coordinate these new and existing services for refugees. This new administrator will need the qualifications of a social worker, the district said, and it’s easy to see why. 

One counselor put the kids’ needs this way: normal teenagers have it hard enough, but adjusting to school with the trauma of near-death behind you can be almost impossible.

“These kids have a set of needs which are at a higher level than any set of kids we deal with,” Haney said. 

Most of these new services will wrap into SFUSD’s Newcomer Pathways program, an already existing framework which bolsters the success of new immigrant children in San Francisco, who often face steep language and cultural barriers.The effort joins a rising tide of SF officials pledging to aid these refugees, including Supervisor David Campos, Mayor Ed Lee, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and USF School of Law Dean John Trasvina.

The US Department of Health and Human Services reported 175 unaccompanied minors were released into custody of San Franciscans, though federal data shows many hundreds more wait in the wings for aid. Some of these refugee children will join school in the new year, which starts Monday, but many are already in attendance.

Dawn Woehl, a counselor with the Newcomer Pathways program at Mission High School, told the board during public comment she started noticing more child immigrants who spent time in detention centers in New York and Texas. 

“We may not know much about each individual family, but we know enough about the trauma they’re facing,” she said. After she spoke to the board, she told the Guardian that wraparound services for mental health are most needed. 

“We take care of the basic needs first,” she said, “but counseling is where we get stretched.”

These children and teenagers often come from towns where gangs recruit new members through high schools. Those that refuse to join up meet violent fates: rape, dismemberment, and death. With those challenges, it’s no wonder that many of these kids show up in San Francisco with gaps in their learning, and significant need of counseling.

“The need for Spanish-speaking therapists is high,” Woehl told us. 

The Newcomer Pathways program is a successful one, and alumni of the program came to the board to laud the proposal to aid the refugees.

“I was born and raised in Guatemala, I emigrated here when I was 14 years old,” Anna Avalos Tizol, now 21, told the Board of Education. “I had to learn the language, the culture, and work to help my family back in Guatemala. It was a culture shock.”

But in the end, the young student found success at Mission High School. She’s now a senior at UC Santa Cruz, and interned in Washington DC, where she witnessed child refugees testifying before Congress, telling them of the cold hard floors and thin sheets of their detention centers.

“When we come here, we give up everything. Our home and our loved ones,” she said. “Remember: all children are sacred.”

Refugee crisis hits home

Michael Redmond
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joe@sfbg.com

In the small, colorful Precita Valley Community Center, a woman clutches a black ceramic goblet, circling a teenage girl with wisps of incense, and repeats the act with the 60 or so attendees. The spiritual cleansing ritual is much needed. Afterward, the San Franciscans will set their minds to saving the lives of children.

Nearly 50,000 Central American children crossed the Mexican border since October, according to federal data, fleeing targeted violence in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. This recent surge has hit home, as hundreds of those young refugees, often unaccompanied, seek asylum through immigration courts in San Francisco.

The courts often decide between life and death: Do the children stay in the safety of our sanctuary city, or return to countries from which they fled violence and chaos?

Jose Artiga, executive director of the Salvadoran Humanitarian Aid, Research and Education Foundation, told the crowd a story of life in El Salvador.

“A boy of only 11 years old waited for his grandfather one day,” he said, in Spanish. “A gang captured him, and the community organized to search for the boy. They found the child, but in six parts. The grandfather said, ‘How can I bring my grandchild back to his mother in six parts?’ This was a child. The gang showed up at the funeral, and would not let the community bury him.”

Some say the rising power of gangs sparked this surge in immigration. As President Barack Obama struggles with a bitterly partisan and gridlocked Congress to find a solution, US cities are dealing with the impacts of the overburdened immigration court system.

Now politicians of all partisan stripes, activists, and families are coming together to help the child refugees. Just last week, Sup. David Campos’ resolution to find additional aid for overburdened immigration services unanimously passed the Board of Supervisors. The next step, he told the Guardian, is to determine how best to use funds to help these children.

At the Precita Valley Community Center and beyond, activists call for that funding to reach attorneys, without which these kids will almost certainly be sent home into harm’s way.

 

OVERBURDENED

The refugees travel far. Children fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala trek through Mexico to cross the US border, and some die in the attempt. Those who live and are discovered by Border Patrol officers along the Southwest border are held temporarily in crowded, cold detention centers in McAllen, Texas, or Nogales, Ariz.

Images of these detention centers show groups of children lying on hard floors in thin blankets, and some advocates for the refugees reported feces and urine soaking the floors. The young refugees tell officials where they have family connections, and are flown to immigration courts across the country.

One such court is in San Francisco.

In 2005, San Francisco had 227 new active deportation proceedings for unaccompanied children, according to federal data obtained by Syracuse University’s TRAC Immigration project. That number was stable until 2012 when it jumped to 450 new cases. In 2013, the number jumped again, to 820.

San Francisco now has over 1,900 pending juvenile immigration cases, according to TRAC. Most of those children are Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan. The surge is pushing organizations that help these children to the breaking point.

Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, knows one thing for sure: “Things have been crazy.”

CARECEN is one of many organizations providing legal representation to Central American child refugees in San Francisco. Two attorneys and two paralegals handle the bulk of cases, which jumped from 20 children a month to 60.

“All a child is given is a court date,” Dugan-Cuadra told the Guardian. “While the US guarantees the right to court, it does not guarantee the right to representation.”

While US citizens have a constitutional right to representation by an attorney, noncitizens in Immigration Court do not. And when organizations like CARECEN can’t provide an attorney, the child loses.

“We’ve heard cases where a 6-year-old will go before a judge having to represent themselves,” she said. “The judges are throwing their hands up saying ‘Are you serious!?'”

Data obtained by TRAC Immigration backs up her claim.

Nationwide, only 52 percent of unaccompanied children are represented by an attorney in deportation court proceedings.

With an attorney, judges rule in a juvenile’s favor to stay about half the time, TRAC’s research found. Without an attorney? Only one in 10 children are granted asylum.

No legal representation means no hope. The ACLU filed a class-action suit against the United States earlier this month on behalf of unrepresented child immigrants, alleging just that.

“The onus has been hard on nonprofit providers and pro-bono attorneys,” Dugan-Cuadra said, because they know the stakes. Legal Services for Children, Catholic Charities, and the Asian Law Caucus are among the organizations calling for more aid.

Many of the attorneys are experiencing burnout. One we talked to was on a vacation for her mental health. Studies by the American Bar Association show judges are burning out too, and things are only getting worse: California has 77,000 pending immigration cases backlogged in its courts.

But locally, the children bear the worst of this: TRAC Immigration’s data shows only 71 of the new 830 unaccompanied children in San Francisco were represented by an attorney as of June 2014.

And without representation, many will be sent home to violence.

 

REFUGEES OR IMMIGRANTS?

The United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR, said the children fleeing Central American countries should officially be considered refugees in need of asylum, a claim with legal ramifications President Obama so far has hesitated to make.

“We’re witnessing a complex situation in which children are leaving home for a variety of reasons, including poverty, the desire to join family, and the growing influence of trafficking networks,” Shelly Pitterman, UNHCR’s regional representative in the United States, said in a press statement. “Within this movement there are also children who are fleeing situations of violence at the hands of transnational organized criminal groups and powerful local gangs.”

Those fleeing violence and persecution, said Pitterman, will require access to asylum determination procedures and will need long-term protection. Others should be sent home, she said, and assisted with reintegration.

But some can’t find refuge anywhere at home, no matter where they go.

“My brother’s son was kidnapped eight years ago by extortionists,” one Salvadoran woman at the Precita center told the Guardian, declining to give her name out of fear for her family’s safety. Her brother moved to other cities, but the gangs continued to harass him and his family in provinces throughout El Salvador.

“He got letters threatening to kidnap his child. ‘We know where you live, we know where your child goes to school,'” she said. Her nephew is now 14. The last time she visited him she saw something that chilled her.

“He was approached by gangs to be recruited. I witnessed that. One day after when we were in the car, my nephew saw the gangs in another car. He hid on the floor and started to shake.”

The woman turned her head away and held back tears.

“My brother said ‘I have to take you out of here.'”

Now her nephew is somewhere safe in the United States, she said, though she would not say where. But the reason he left is clear.

“These kids don’t want to be the next dead body on the street,” Clarisa Sanchez, a Board of Immigration’s representative from Catholic Charities CYO told the Guardian.

Nationally, Republicans are calling for the mass deportation of these children. “I won’t stand idly by while our citizens are under assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said this week, as he announced deployment of 1,000 National Guard troops along the Texas border.

But many pin the origins of the crisis squarely on the United States.

 

DRUG LEGACY

Salvadorans are familiar with violence and cruelty. In 1932, more than 30,000 Salvadorans were slaughtered in a peasant revolt called la matanza: the slaughter. Nearly 75,000 civilians died in El Salvador’s bloody civil war, from 1980-1992.

The US government intervened in that war, sending government aid to the Salvadoran government. Now the US has a hand in today’s violence in Central America, some say, as our country’s drug habits fuel cartels throughout the region. Those cartels are arming Central American gangs, whichObama admitted in a press conference last year.

“The United States recognizes that we’ve got responsibilities; that much of the violence in the region is fueled by demand for illegal drugs, including in the United States,” the president said.

Obama requested $3.7 billion emergency funding that would bring at least $64 million to immigration courts, but also at least $1.5 billion to border security and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a troubling addition to needed funding.

Back at the Precita Valley Community Center, Jose Cartagena pled for legal aid at the border. Cartagena is intimately familiar with the need: He fled El Salvador’s civil war over 30 years ago. As he crossed the Tucson desert, 13 of his fellow border-crossers died in the blazing southwestern heat. Only Cartagena survived. Now he’s a representative for the National Network of Salvadorans in the Exterior in San Francisco.

He called for justice.

“We have to help these kids find their families or sponsors,” he said. “If we don’t provide legal support now, the Obama administration may deport all of them. We can’t wait until it’s too late.”

If you’d like to help the efforts around the Central American child refugees, you can contact CARECEN, Catholic Charities, or Superivsor David Campos’ office.

More funding promised to Central American child refugees, Lee warns of new influx

Erica Hanna
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43
More funding promised to Central American child refugees, Lee warns of new influx

Thousands of Central American children fleeing drug wars and poverty are overwhelming the San Francisco nonprofits who care for them, but new information from the mayor shows this may just be the beginning.

Yesterday, just hours before Supervisor David Campos’ resolution to bolster funding to aid the incoming refugees passed, Mayor Ed Lee warned the Guardian and other journalists that San Francisco is bracing for another influx of even more children in need.

“I met with the federal Health Service System to prepare our city for the possibility of a higher influx [of refugees],” he said. “The numbers seem to be coming in, though they haven’t reached us yet.”

Campos’ measure to focus funding on the needs of Central American child refugees passed by unanimous vote, likely because its sorely needed. Nonprofits in San Francisco like the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) and other sounded the alarm: there are too many refugees, and not enough caregivers and legal aid to help them. More than 36,000 Central American children (often unaccompanied) entered the US illegally between Oct. 2013 and May this year, according to widely reported federal data. The number of Mexican children entering the US dropped to about 17,000. 

But why are they coming here? Many reasons, but mostly they’re fleeing violence. Honduras, for instance, was the murder capital of the world, with 79 people murdered in every 100,000, according to Reuters. Neighboring El Salvador didn’t do much better, with the second highest murder rate per capita in the world. 

“I am from Honduras and I just turned 16-years-old,” a teenager named Juan said, in a statement from CARECEN, “I came after my father was murdered and I feared for my life that I was next. If I go back I’m not sure that I can go back and live a good life. I want to go to school and live so I can grow up to do something good.”

False rumors in Central America that the US is offering permisos, meaning, permanent status, also spurred an influx of refugees. 

CARECEN’s Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco locations are advocating for President Barack Obama to declare a state of emergency and aid these refugees. But as the federal government grasps at possible solutions, local government is stepping in to help those reaching the city. 

“There’s a long history on this board on calling out against injustices we’ve seen in different parts of the world,” Campos said at the board yesterday as he introduced his measure, adding “They’re escaping not just political turmoil but violence in their lives.”

“These are children,” he said. 

Lee said one of the biggest challenges in helping these children may be a cultural one.

“I’m trying to wrap my arms around the fact that many of these kids don’t speak Spanish,” Lee told the Guardian yesterday. “They speak Mayan and different languages. This will test our cultural competency.”

Campos is planning a hearing on how best to focus funding to aid the child refugees, but hasn’t yet settled on a date for said hearing. 

Wax on: a journey into the new Madame Tussauds San Francisco

Sue Vaughan
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0

You probably won’t win any staring contests inside the new Madame Tussauds that opened June 26 at Fisherman’s Wharf. (Besides, I wouldn’t recommend holding prolonged eye contact with any of the wax figures, especially the Nicolas Cage one.) Like the youngest sibling in the shadow of brothers and sisters who have already established themselves, the SF branch — the fifth North American branch — tries to make a name for itself by flaunting its individuality whenever it’s convenient. Its attempt showcases eerily lifelike figures of well-known San Franciscans in themed rooms.

The museum’s main selling point is the Harvey Milk figure, which successfully presents itself as a thoughtful tribute. His nephew Stuart Milk had the privilege of unveiling his uncle’s wax figure to press less than an hour before the museum’s opening. The moment the red curtain fell — days before this year’s Pride Weekend — we stepped into a scene from 1978’s SF Pride, where Harvey parks himself on the roof of a car, clutching a handmade sign proclaiming “I’m from Woodmere, N.Y.” Stuart himself lauded the authenticity of the wax figure down to the shabby state of the shoes, as he said Harvey was quite frugal then. 

Later during the tour, I learned that Madame Tussauds’ team painstakingly pays attention to every possible detail. Apparently, the artists place the wax figures’ hair in place one strand at a time (!) and strive for complete accuracy — I was assured that if someone had a wrinkle on their face, it’d reappear in the exact same spot on their doppelgänger’s face. After examining the stubble on a baseball player’s face (even though it seemed to give him a slightly ashen complexion), I was convinced of the employee’s claims.

Madame Tussauds stresses how visitors can get up close and personal with the figures. Even the wallpaper of Harvey Milk’s room underscores this point, as it depicts a crowd of participants banding together with Harvey in his fight for gay rights. Props sit on the sidelines so you don’t have to. Grab a bullhorn or a sign that reads “Free to be” in big block letters and join Harvey.

Admittedly, it’s clear the museum tries to capitalize on its location — isn’t that how you stay in business at Fisherman’s Wharf? Yes, there’s a room to commemorate 1967’s Summer of Love, complete with Janis Joplin beside a psychedelic Volkswagen van and Jerry Garcia. But it quickly gets cramped. The room also includes a replication of the famous Haight Street fishnet stocking legs (just if you forgot you were in the middle of tourist territory), and interestingly enough, a Chinese New Year parade commemoration that feels out of place. Here, it begins to get a little gimmicky. The Spirit of San Francisco room slightly redeems itself by featuring the Golden Gate Bridge at two moments in its history — its current likeness and the construction process (complete with engineer Joseph Strauss).

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t quite make the cut for the Spirit of San Francisco room. He’s relegated to the same floor, however. In his trademark hoodie, he sits cross-legged and barefoot in a chair, enjoying some downtime even though he’s almost rubbing elbows with wax figure Barack Obama and his Oval Office reproduction. The iconic Apple logo is noticeably absent from what must be Zuck’s Macbook Pro. (Curiously enough, his sandals still sport the Adidas logo. Go figure.) 

“He’s been very popular with selfies,” said Adrea Gibbs, general manager of Madame Tussauds San Francisco. Our press preview ran a little overtime and members of the public had already entered by the middle of our tour, getting cozy with the wax figures. And to accommodate visitors who have qualms about awkwardly-angled photos taken at arm’s length, employees are quick to offer assistance. I saw only one visitor attempt to take a selfie, but it wasn’t too crowded yet. Give it some time.

The appeal of the remainder of the museum, however, quickly dwindled for me. Madame Tussauds San Francisco — the youngest sibling again — falls short of differentiating itself. It’s likely that most of the wax figures, including Lady Gaga, George Clooney, Audrey Hepburn, and E.T., will feel right at home in another branch somewhere across the world from San Francisco. (Although it did feel like I was supposed to be in Lincoln Park when the Golden Gate Bridge, as part of the wallpaper behind Tiger Woods, caught my eye.)

Apart from the Spirit of San Francisco room, there’s nothing that feels quite as put together elsewhere in the museum. Sure, Madame Tussauds does a fine job of creating interactive props to accompany the other wax figures and to entertain visitors. And marketing-wise, I suppose it only makes sense to include a variety of figures to appeal to a broad audience. Adult admission stands at a somewhat steep price and in this economy, attendees want to get enough bang for their buck. A visit to the new Madame Tussauds, however, is best saved for those who don’t think twice about wearing shorts to Fisherman’s Wharf in the middle of a San Franciscan summer.

Madame Tussauds San Francisco

Open daily at 10am, $16-$26

145 Jefferson, SF

www.madametussauds.com/SanFrancisco/

Pride and prejudice

Michael Redmond
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7
Pride and prejudice

joe@sfbg.com

As Pride celebrations across the country unfurl their rainbow flags this month, teacher tenure in California suffered a stunning blow from a Los Angeles Superior Court, undermining protections that have shielded the LGBT community from discrimination.

Although the decision will likely be appealed, Judge Rolf M. Treu’s ruling galvanized teachers unions and evoked memories of conservative attacks on gay teachers in the 1970s, including the unsuccessful Briggs Initiative that was a rallying point for then-Sup. Harvey Milk and a new generation of LGBT political leaders.

“To jeopardize any of the protections we have now, it’s a thinly veiled attempt to demoralize teachers, and it’s an attack on public education,” Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, the San Francisco Democrat who began his political career as an openly gay teacher campaigning against the Briggs Initiative, told the Guardian.

LGBT rights and teacher tenure may seem to have little in common, but a peek at the movers and shakers in the LGBT and teachers’ rights movements show an interconnected relationship of protections and the players who fight for them. Loss of tenure can threaten the protection of minority groups, academic freedom, and unpopular political speech, despite employment rights gained in recent years.

“We’ve beaten back that thinking,” Ammiano said, “but it’s still lurking.”

In California, K-12 teachers are shielded by legal protections often referred to commonly as tenure. Permanent status is the backbone of these protections, offering an arbitration process for teachers who administrators intend to fire. Also struck down by the judge was the First In, First Out law, which protects veteran teachers from layoffs by letting go of recent hires first.

In his ruling, Treu said these policies created an environment where students were burdened by ineffective teachers who were difficult to fire, disproportionately detracting from minority students’ education quality in the most troubled schools.

“The evidence is compelling,” the judge wrote in his ruling, “indeed, it shocks the conscience.”

Many education advocates vehemently disagreed with that ruling, and the veracity of the evidence will be further weighed in upcoming appeals. But along the way to pursuing equality for students, the equality of teachers may find itself eroded by an unlikely new hero of the LGBT movement: A conservative attorney who fought against marriage discrimination, but also litigated against the legacy of an LGBT legend.

 

HERO OF MARRIAGE EQUALITY

The morning last year when the US Supreme Court ruled to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, San Franciscans gathered inside City Hall by the grand staircase. Men held men, women held women, and families held the their children tight.

When the court’s decision finally hit the news, the outcry of happiness and surprise at City Hall was deafening. The expressions on the faces of those there was that of joy with many understandably streaked by tears. Attorney Theodore Olson helped litigate against Prop. 8 and won, and as he fought for gay rights, his face was often streaked with tears as well, LGBT rights activist Cleve Jones told us.

“There was a part of that trial when the plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier described their love for each other,” Jones said. “I was sitting with their family in [US District Court Judge] Vaughn Walker’s court. When we broke, Ted Olson went to embrace them and there were tears on his face.”

But Olson is not a poster child for most politics considered the realm of liberals and Democrats. Olson and fellow Prop. 8 litigator Attorney David Boies were on opposing sides of the Bush v. Gore case that Olson won, handing George W. Bush the presidency in 2000. Olson was then appointed solicitor general of the United States, often leading conservative causes.

 

Olson and Boies will talk about their new book Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality at the LGBT center on June 25 (joined by Supervisor Scott Wiener), but Olson gave us a glimmer of those motivations.

Olson, a Los Altos native who attended UC Berkeley School of Law, told the Guardian in a phone interview that his stand on gay rights was based on conservative principles: “I think of conservatives as including people who are libertarians and respect individual liberty.”

 

A trailer for “The Case Against 8,” which features Ted Olson heavily.

He said the right to marry the person of one’s choosing should be an individual right that government has no business banning. That belief in individual liberty is at the core of his political principles. “It affects me in absolutely the deepest personal way,” he told us.

Whatever his ideological motivations, Olson became a hero in the LGBT community. But this year, he was one of the attorneys who convinced Judge Treu of the evils of teacher tenure. In the trial, Olson claimed one Oakland teacher was harming elementary students’ educational outcomes: “The principal couldn’t remove that teacher. These stories are so awful, sometimes you feel people are exaggerating.”

Yet the problems afflicting Oakland schools and its children, the unions argued, are not due to teacher tenure. In a city with high violence rates, students’ broken homes, low teacher pay, and difficult working conditions, critics say Olson oversimplified and misrepresented a complex problem.

“We all know there are problems in our schools,” Jones, who works with unions, told us. “But there’s never of course discussion about poverty, or students growing up in single families, or class sizes.”

These were all arguments the union made against Olson, unsuccessfully. The decision to remove protections for teachers may send ripples into other states and spur increased attacks on teacher protections.

And unlike California, which has strong anti-discrimination protections, that campaign may allow teachers of other states to be fired or dismissed for coming out of the closet, an issue that helped elevate Harvey Milk into such an iconic leader.

 

ECHOES OF BRIGGS

Jones and Ammiano fought alongside Milk against Proposition 6 in 1978, known as the Briggs Initiative, which would have made it illegal for openly gay people to teach. Then-Sen. John Briggs and his allies associated gay teachers with child molesters and frequently said they may influence children to become gay.

“I was born of heterosexual parents, taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society,” Milk said in a speech at the time. “Then why am I homosexual if I’m affected by role models? I should’ve been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there’d be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.”

This fight may be history, but Ammiano said such biases are still with us today, such as with how some see the transgender community. “We’re holding people at bay around LGB issues, but the T part now is the crossroads for the right wing [activists] who are rolling back protections,” he said.

Only 30 US states offer employment protections for sexual orientation, and some of those only cover government employees, according to a study by Center for American Progress. Only 23 states protect against firing for gender identity.

Vulnerable teachers lacking protections granted by tenure or equal employment laws are still being fired in California and across the country. In April, a transgender Texas substitute teacher was fired for making children “uncomfortable,” according to news reports. In Glendora, California, a teacher was fired from a religious private school after a photo of he and his husband kissing on their wedding day made the local newspaper.

This month, President Barack Obama announced an Executive Order mandating federal contractors enact policies protecting workers from dismissal due to sexual orientation or gender identity. Many speculate this was announced to press Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect private employees from discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation.

briggs

“This is only round one,” stated Senator John Briggs to the press about the defeat of Proposition 6, Nov. 7, 1978, at a Costa Mesa hotel. Proposition 6, called the Briggs Initiative, prohibits gay teachers from working in California public schools. AP file photo by Doug Pizac

But ENDA has stalled for years, despite the best efforts of advocacy groups nationwide. And as the country awaits equality, many teachers’ last hope against unlawful dismissal is tenure. In fact, tenure laws were first drafted after the Red Scare and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt for communists, California Federation of Teachers spokesperson Fred Glass told us.

Yet Olson recoils at linking LGBT rights to teacher protections. “I support wholly protections for people for who they are, for heaven’s sakes,” he told us, mentioning that Milk “was very much an inspiration and very important to us.”

And Jones still thinks of Olson as a hero, saying that life and politics are complex.

“Irony abounds,” Jones said. “I don’t square it. You can’t square it. It’s there. But my respect for Ted Olson is based on his very genuine support for our community on the issue of marriage. For LGBT people to win equalit,y it’s important there’s a national consensus, it can’t just be from the left. Ted Olson was incredibly important with that effort and will be remembered generations for now. You don’t have to like everything about Ted Olson or President Obama to acknowledge they had a profound effect.”

Doo-wop (that thing): talking with the cast of ‘Jersey Boys’

Sue Vaughan
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0
Doo-wop (that thing): talking with the cast of ‘Jersey Boys’

The backstage musical that turned the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — known for 1960s doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen Fri/20 thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. 

Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). 

Still, the cast — including 2006 Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. I spoke with Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits) when the trio made a recent visit to San Francisco to promote the movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tC1yOUvvMo

SF Bay Guardian This must be a crazy time for you guys.

John Lloyd Young It’s a very exciting time for all three of us, and including our fourth colleague Vincent Piazza [who plays Four Season co-founder Tommy DeVito]. This is our first major studio feature film, and we got to be directed by Clint Eastwood. 

SFBG Did he ever break into song on the set?

Michael Lomenda [Laughs.] It was very interesting, actually, to see him between takes trying to capture that Frankie Valli falsetto. I think it was an ongoing challenge for him the whole 38 days that we shot, to try and figure out how to manipulate his voice in that way.

JLY It was a tongue-in-cheek challenge, because it was all playful. He knew he wasn’t gonna sing like Frankie!

SFBG Few can! Though, you’ve been able to do it for several years. How do you keep your voice in shape to hit those notes?

JLY Well, you either have a falsetto or you don’t. If you have it, you just keep it in shape the same way any singer does. Obviously, singers, there’s certain things we can’t do. We can’t go out and yell all night in a bar. We shouldn’t smoke, we shouldn’t drink. The voice is very delicate. Those are very delicate muscles. Anything you do that’s not good for your body in general won’t be good for your voice. But, basically, just living a clean life. And Frankie Valli himself will tell you the same thing.

SFBG It’s interesting that you bring up clean living. I hadn’t seen the stage show, and I didn’t know much about the group before I saw the movie. But in every show-biz biopic, there’s always some kind of vice (usually drugs or booze, as in Walk the Line) that threatens to ruin the performer’s success. Here, it’s the mobster subplot — mobsters are not the typical vice.

Erich Bergen I think that’s one of the things that’s very interesting is that Frankie didn’t get into [drugs or alcohol]. That’s sort of the reason why he’s still around and he’s still on the road, because he’s been able to preserve not only his gift, but his life. Of course, he went through some harsh things in life. He went through a couple of marriages and divorces, and obviously he lost a daughter. Actually, and we don’t go into this in the movie, but he’s lost two daughters. He’s lived a very hard life. He didn’t need drugs or alcohol; that hard life came to him naturally. 

I think that’s what makes this story so interesting: we’re watching someone whose life is hitting him in the face. And we sort of identify with that. I don’t know about you, but for me personally, when I watch a lot of biopics and they start to get into the drugs and all that type of stuff — that’s where I sort of lose them a little bit, because that’s just sort of the generic story at this point. What makes Jersey Boys work is that we really connect with these guys because we identify with them. It’s written in a way that even when they’re not at their highest point, when they’re doing things that aren’t so great — especially the character of Tommy DeVito — we still root for them, and we still want them to succeed. 

SFBG The movie really shows how hard they had to work to be successful. It’s a stark contrast to the music business of today, where someone can become famous overnight thanks to a YouTube video.

EB That’s exactly what we talk about when we’re asked the question, “What makes this story so interesting?” If you look at the groups of today, whether it’s a One Direction or a Justin Bieber, before we actually know their songs, we know what they had for breakfast. But [the Four Seasons] really came at a time when you were trying to hide your real story and project out a shiny, clean image, because that’s what everyone wanted. That’s why Jersey Boys can exist today, because the story was never known. 

JLY I have a thought about that, too, which is that nowadays — without naming anyone by name — a lot of successful music acts are created as an idea in a marketing boardroom first, and then they find someone to fit that image. You know what I’m saying? It seems like the marketers are the stars nowadays. The more you can get an audience to feel there’s something really exciting there, and then get them there, then you’ve won. But when they get there and they don’t have a great experience, well, you already got their money, so who cares?

But I think at the time of Jersey Boys, to succeed you had to work really hard. There were only three networks, and there were very few print outlets. If you actually got on the cover of a magazine, or you got on a network, you made it. But you had to have something to show for it. You had to have talent, and especially that generation of Baby Boomers — the biggest generation we’ve ever had in American history. That’s a lot of people competing for which of the talented ones among them would become known. And the Four Seasons had the talent, but they also had that special, very distinctly East Coast, riveting-to-an-audience kind of thing, with that Mob connection that makes their story unique among that era of bands.

SFBG The movie makes it clear that they had to succeed, because they didn’t have anything to go back to.

ML It’s true. These guys are from the wrong side of the tracks. You have some choices. You can go in the army, you can get mobbed up, or you can become famous, as they say in the film. We also sort of say that they did two out of the three. But I think their music spoke for itself. They broke when their music had to speak for them, and that’s what made them successful.

EB The proof of that is that everyone knows these songs, but not the band. There are so many songs we don’t even get to in this movie, because we’d run out of time! That tells you how much talent they really had as performers, writers, producers — all of those things. Their catalog is endless, and yet nobody knew they were all by the same group.

JL I just saw Clint Eastwood on the Today show, and when they introduced him, they said the Four Seasons had 71 chart-topping hits. 71! I think that’s incredible for that band, coming out of that decade.

SFBG They were also commercially savvy. The songs were so catchy. No wonder people liked them.

ML I think that’s they key to why their music has stood the test of time. Maybe it’s commercially viable, and it is good pop music. But if you did a little deeper into some of the lyrics — for example, “Dawn” is one of my favorite songs, and they’re singing, “Dawn, go away, I’m no good for you, think about what the future would be with a poor guy like me…” It’s that kind of lyric that brings depth so what initially could be perceived as just pop, bubblegum music. It spoke to an audience that I think was sort of the fabric of America.

JLY Their early attempts at marketing are sort of outlined in the movie. You got [producer] Bob Crewe giving them advice on how to get their songs out there. You have Bob Gaudio figuring out how to get his songs out there. I know, and am friends with, the real Bob Gaudio, and it’s funny, he’s a hugely successful songwriter, but he almost seems more proud of his business successes than he does of his songwriting. He gets pumped by being smart in business as he gets pumped by writing a good song.

SFBG As actors, does it present a particular challenge to play a real person, a famous person, particularly if that person is still living? Or were you able to put your own stamp on the characters?

EB I think John had the most pressure out of all of us, because he’s playing someone that’s so well-known, and John can tell you about that experience. But for the rest of us, we really did invent these characters. Even though they were real people, and while we wanted to pay respect to these people, and their families, we did have the luxury of not having to play John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They’re not well-known to the public. So we did get to use our skills as actors and create characters from the ground up.

JLY One of the benefits as an actor approaching the role of Frankie, even in the beginning in the original cast, is that he is known. People know what he looks like and they know what he sounds like. He did some talk show stuff, so they kind of know how he moves. So I knew that I needed to get his physical attributes down. I needed to evoke his sound, look like him, talk like him. But outside of those physical things, the internal life of Frankie Valli, we don’t really know. We didn’t know. 

When I was researching the original Broadway show, all I could find were maybe 12 minutes of footage of him at the Museum of Television and Radio. That was, like, the year before YouTube broke, so now there’s footage of him everywhere, but I didn’t have the benefit of that. But now I have seen a lot of YouTube and everything. So I thought, as long as I get those physical characteristics down, the story of the Four Seasons, the story of Frankie Valli, is still largely unknown to audiences. So I had free reign to kind of build the psychological reality of the character using my own imagination, and the cues that I had from the script. And knowing Bob Gaudio, Frankie Valli’s real-life best friend, and the things he told me about Frankie, and knowing, of course, the man himself. 

But I didn’t feel pressure so much. The pressure I felt was to honor the people who put this movie together, which was Frankie and Bob, and to portray the character in a way that was compelling and riveting to an audience so that we’d have as successful a show as we could have. And now, I think that I feel very proud of what we’ve accomplished with this movie, and I think it’s an enhancement, actually, of what has been out there all these years, with the successful stage musical across the world. 

SFBG How true is the movie to the stage production?

ML It’s actually very similar. We were lucky to work with [screenwriters and musical authors] Marshall [Brickman] and Rick [Elice] on the film, which I think we were all very grateful for, because it meant that we didn’t have to learn too many new lines. [Laughs.] But it was great. I think when I first found out that the movie was being done, I was really concerned that the final product would be true to the stage, because the script is so fantastic. But beauty of film is that you get to flesh out certain relationships, and certain storylines. I think fans of Jersey Boys are going to love a lot of the scenes that they loved from the stage version, but they’re also going to go crazy over the other stuff, the extra stuff that is put into the film.

The stage production is directed in a very slick fashion, but logistics dictate that you have to move from scene to scene very quickly to keep up the energy going in the two-and-a-half hour show. But what Mr. Eastwood does so beautifully with this movie, and with all of his movies, is create a real environment that’s rich and tangible, that you can really sense in the theater. I think Jersey Boys fans are going to love that as well.

JYL If people love the stage show of Jersey Boys, the movie is going to give then a much deeper, more thorough, and much more detailed experience.

SFBG I did not realize, until I was reading up on the movie, that there were Jersey Boys superfans who have seen the show hundreds of times.

EB Michael and I opened the national tour of Jersey Boys in San Francisco, and six years later Michael closed that tour in the same theater. This was my first discovery with anything remotely like that. I remember seeing these fans come in over and over again. At first I thought, “What are they doing?” and “Where are they getting the money that they’re buying such great seats three times a week?” I remember I got a letter one time, we all got these letters, from a fan who said, “I know you probably think it’s crazy that I’m here all the time, but this is the first time I’ve felt happy in 10 years.”

When we get things like that, we don’t really know what to make of that. But we are so thrilled that it’s had an impact. I don’t know if it can be explained. People often ask us, “What is it about Jersey Boys that keeps people coming back?” I don’t know if I know. I don’t know if anyone knows. I know that when people come to see the show, they’re affected by it for whatever reason. It moves them, it changes them. They are really passionate about it, and we’re just sort of lucky that we got to be a part of that somehow. I don’t really know what else to say about it!

JYL I have something else to say about it, and that is: if a person has seen the stage play of Jersey Boys 100 times, let them know, please, on our behalf, that for the price of one Broadway ticket, they can see this movie 10 times! [All three laugh.] So we hope that they decide to make their investment in 10 tickets for the movie. 

SFBG What’s up next for you guys? More musicals?

ML I think we’ve all been bitten by the movie bug. To start on a Clint Eastwood set, we’ve been a bit blessed and totally spoiled. So, I think certainly, we would all like to dive further into this genre and explore it.

EB I agree. My album comes out next week, some new music that I just recorded down in Nashville, and I’m in a new series on CBS this fall called Madame Secretary. I will also be hosting lots of Jersey Boys viewing parties once the DVD comes out. [Laughs.]

JLY I have a new album that I just released, My Turn — it’s R&B hits from the 60s in my voice, not Frankie’s, and it’s on iTunes and Amazon. I’m also a recent appointee by Barack Obama to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. So I’ll be working with kids in the lowest-performing schools, re-inserting arts into their curriculum to increase their school performance and their school culture. The actor Kal Penn and I will be sharing a school district in Des Moines, Iowa. I’m really looking forward to it.

JERSEY BOYS opens Fri/20 in Bay Area theaters.

Guardian Intelligence: April 30 – May 6, 2014

Michael Redmond
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0

ONE FOR THE BOOKS

Polish your reading glasses: Sat/3 marks this first ever California Bookstore Day, a party featuring readings, author and artist appearances, and one-day-only, limited-edition book releases, taking place simultaneously at some 90 bookstores up and down the state. It’s modeled on the mega-successful Record Store Day, natch. A dozen bookstores in San Francisco have signed on, including Green Apple, City Lights, Booksmith, Books Inc., and Borderlands. Check www.cabookstoreday.com to find the celebration closest to you. Because hey, what kind of party has Amazon thrown for you lately?

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

The Attic, the dank 24th Street dive bar known for its decrepit vinyl booths, a pervasive questionable smell, and, somehow, boatloads of charm, closed its doors for good last week. Those in the know say owner Roger Howell (a former owner of Mad Dog in the Fog) will be using his liquor license at the schmancy new Gashead Tavern on Mission. No word yet on whether there will be DJs at that establishment who play nothing but the Clash if you ask them, or bartenders who give you endless bowls of Goldfish crackers, or a welcoming gang of hard-drinking regulars who cheer when you find your phone still at the bar after leaving it there the night before. RIP.

AIRBNB REG SHIT SHOW

Last year, when we at the Guardian were the only ones shouting about Airbnb‘s tax evasion and illegal short-term rentals, is was a lonely struggle. Then other journalists caught onto the story, Sup. David Chiu introduced his regulatory legislation a couple weeks ago, and the issue began to heat up. This week it all became a full-blown shit show, with rival rallies at City Hall on April 29. Opponents of the legislation are threatening a fall ballot measure that would reinforce the short-term rental ban in residential areas and give rewards to people who rat out their Airbnb-using neighbors. Perhaps we should be careful what we wish for.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS

It’s alive! The UC Theatre — the 1,460-seat Berkeley landmark, once beloved for its killer repertory film programming, but closed since 2001 — will undergo an eight-month renovation starting this summer and re-open as a nonprofit live music venue in 2015. According to a press release sent out by its new directors, Berkeley Music Group, the venue will present “approximately 75 to 100 shows a year, featuring a culturally diverse range of local, national, and international artists performing music genres ranging from Americana to zydeco and everything in between.” Located just two blocks from the Downtown Berkeley BART station, it will feature both touring and local bands and musicians, as well as comedy shows, a speaker series, and (yesss!) film screenings. Bonus: a full-service restaurant and bar, too. Bookmark www.theuctheatre.org to stay posted on the latest.

GLOBAL ECO-ACTIVISTS HONORED

Six winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize were awarded this week in San Francisco. The prestigious awards were given to Desmond D’Sa of South Africa, who organized a campaign to shut down a toxic waste dump; Ramesh Agrawal of India, who led disenfranchised communities in a successful effort to seek information on industrial activities and shut down a proposed coal mine; Suren Gazaryan of Russia, who helped expose the illegal use of federally protected forestland; Rudi Putra of Indonesia, who is targeting palm oil plantations that have triggered massive deforestation; Helen Slottje of New York, who provided pro-bono legal assistance to help pass bans on fracking; and Ruth Buendía Mestoquiari who led indigenous people of Peru in a fight against large-scale dams that would have displaced them.

WESTERN HIPNESS

Missionites and other east-side San Franciscans are always bashing the Outer Richmond and the Outer Sunset. Dubbed the Outerlands, its too foggy, too far, too quiet, or too-blah to make the visit worthwhile. You know what? The Outerlands doesn’t need you anymore, Mission! They’ve got a brand new parklet at Simple Pleasures Cafe on 35th avenue. Soon they’ll have overpriced coffee, Google buses, and white-washed ethnic food too! Avenues, represent.

TECH HEAD GOES FREE

San Francisco-based RaidumOne CEO Gurbaksh Chalal allegedly beat his girlfriend 117 times, but the man will not go to jail. A jury found Chalal guilty of misdemeanor violence and battery charges, and will serve three years probation, spend 52 weeks in a domestic violence program and perform 25 hours of community service. The court through out video evidence of the incident that police had seized from Chalal’s home as inadmissible. Chalal wrote on his blog, “This was all overblown drama because it generates huge volumes of page views for the media given what I have accomplished in the valley.” He then invoked the “American Dream” and lamented the cost to his soon-to-go-public company. Silicon Valley doesn’t have an entitlement problem. Nope.

FLAPPING FANCY

The Guardian’s Roaring ’20s-themed “Feathers and Fedoras” party last Friday at the de Young Museum drew a huge crowd of vintage-lovers. Zincalo Trio performed old-time favorites and gypsy jazz, the flapper-attired Decobelles dance troupe did a mean Charleston, and the de Young’s dazzling “Georgia O’Keefe and Lake George” exhibit provided a perfect artistic backdrop.

NOW READ THESE

The 2014 Northern California Independent Book Awards were announced last week, and must-read winners include Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (fiction), George Albon’s Fire Break (poetry), Mary Roach’s Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (nonfiction), Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist (food writing) and Al Capone Does My Homework by Gennifer Choldenko (middle-grade readers). The NCIBA winners were determined by a coalition of independent bookstores, see more at www.nciba.com

CLIPPERS OWNER RACISM

How did people react to the racist comments allegedly made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Don Sterling? Clippers players: Removed their warmup shirts in a silent protest so that Clippers team logos would not be displayed. Magic Johnson: “He shouldn’t own a team any more. And he should stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to own a team any more.'”

President Barack Obama: “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let ’em talk.”

Snoop Dogg (in an online video addressing Sterling directly): “Fuck you, your mama, and everything connected to you, you racist piece of shit.”

 

Youth immigration activists cross the border to protest deportations

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Youth immigration activists cross the border to protest deportations

Last November, the Guardian profiled Alex Aldana, a queer immigration activist who was born in Mexico but came to Pomona, California with his mother and sister on a visa at the age of 16.

Yesterday [Tue/18], Aldana joined a group of undocumented immigrants in a protest at the U.S. border crossing at Otay Mesa in San Diego.

Chanting together as a group, they marched over the border and presented themselves to U.S. Immigration and Customs and Border protection agents, whom they asked for asylum.

Among the immigrants who surrendered to immigration agents were women, children, and teens. Some are separated from their husbands, children, and families in the US and, like my own mother, wish to be reunited.

The youth protesters were brought to the U.S. earlier in childhood, but deported to Mexico after being taken into custody and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some would have qualified for the Dream Act, but were forced to leave the country before it was signed into law.

The protesters marched toward the turnstiles that separate Mexico and the U.S., chanting “Yes we can,” and “No human is illegal.”

A few feet from the gates, the group paused to listen to a final pep talk from Aldana.

The action was captured and recorded in real time on U-Stream. About 16 minutes into the video, he can be seen addressing the crowd, fist raised. “We have nothing to lose but our chains,” Aldana told the group. Then, in Spanish, he said, “Without papers [documents],” to which his fellow protesters responded, “without fear.”

They made their way to the turnstiles and one by one they walked through, straight into custody of U.S. border protection agents. As they crossed the border, they told a cameraperson where they hoped to go. They named cities, such as Phoenix and Tucson, and states, such as Alabama, Oregon, and North Carolina. But each one said, in English or Spanish, “we’re going home.”

It was part of a series of organized border crossings, organized by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, to highlight the experiences of young people who lived for years in the United States but were deported due to their immigration status.

In Aldana’s case, he traveled to Mexico voluntarily, due to a family emergency.

“After ten years in California, Alex traveled to Mexico three months ago to care for his ill grandmother,” notes an online petition addressed to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, circulated by the Dream Activist network in support of allowing Aldana to return.

The Gay-Straight Alliance network has also voiced support, saying LGBT deportees are in especially precarious situations because they are more likely to be targeted with violence.

“Over these past few months, [Aldana] has been shocked to discover how crime and corruption make life particularly difficult for the LGBTQ community in Mexico,” the Dream Activist petition notes. “In Guadalajara alone, 128 gay and lesbian people have been killed, and none were reported as hate crimes. Now he wants to return to La Quinta because his mother and siblings need him.”

Activist Yordy Cancino Mendez, who also participated in an organized border crossing, become a target of violence in Mexico due to his sexual orientation. “He has been followed from the metro to his house trying to be kidnapped. He fears daily for his life,” according to the petition written in his support.

Here’s a video of him speaking about what life has been like in Mexico, uploaded by the National Immigrant Youth Alliance.

As a teenager in the U.S., Aldana and his family faced severe domestic violence at home at the hands of their father, who harassed him for being gay and tried to stop him from going to school. For a time, he lived in shelters to escape that abusive situation.

Now Aldana wishes to return to the U.S., to continue his education and support his sister, who qualifies for the California Dream Act. As an activist, he’s widely admired as a “courageous and visionary leader in both the LGBT and immigrant rights communities,” said Jon Rodney of the California Immigrant Policy Center.

A birds’ eye view of the Otay Detention Facility, from Google maps.

Media representatives from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security could not be reached for comment. Officials at the Otay Detention Facility, where Aldana was reportedly being held as of Tue/18, declined to comment.  

Feinstein, Pelosi, and NSA/CIA spying

Michael Redmond
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EDITORIAL

Two of the most powerful members of Congress — Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi — are from San Francisco. They’ve each spent much of their long tenures in Congress serving on the Intelligence Committees in their respective houses, overseeing the increasingly overreaching surveillance state. And they’re now in positions to do something significant to rein in the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, if they can move from statements of outrage to actions of courage.

Feinstein is at the center of the latest national security controversy, criticizing the CIA for spying on her Senate Intelligence Committee staffers as they researched legislation to expose and rein in the CIA’s interrogation and torture policies. Apparently, Feinstein doesn’t like being subjected to the same kind of blanket NSA surveillance that she’s been defending, so perhaps this is a welcome lesson for her.

Pelosi was also in a key oversight position when this illegal wiretapping by the federal government began under then-President George W. Bush, something we and others called her out for at the time (see “Pelosi knew about warrantless spying,” 1/25/06).

Pelosi’s defense then was “I objected in writing” when she was briefed on the federal government’s overreaching surveillance operation, something that falls far short of what we would expect from someone who regularly get vilified by conservatives as epitomizing San Francisco’s liberal values.

Now is the time for San Francisco’s most powerful congressional representatives to represent our values, and those of the rest of civilized world that has condemned US surveillance programs that violate international law and cultivate backdoors and other weaknesses in this country’s critical cybersecurity infrastructure.

Feinstein should introduce bipartisan legislation, possibly co-sponsored with Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican who also has expressed concerns about the security state, to repeal the USA Patriot Act, the post-9/11 bill that gave vague license to many of the current excesses.

Pelosi and Feinstein should also pressure President Barack Obama to accept all or most of the 46 important reforms recommended by his commission on government surveillance, even if starts a fight that costs party unity in the short term.

“In our view, the current storage by the government of bulk metadata creates potential risks to public trust, personal privacy, and civil liberty,” the commission wrote in its report to Obama, which was released in mid-December.

Obama has already expressed concerns about the Democratic Party losing ground in this year’s mid-term election because of apathy among Democratic voters, but a bold break from the imperial presidency of the Bush era could be exactly what the party needs to fire up the base.

Yet more important than such political considerations, it’s simply the right thing to do, and something that Feinstein, Pelosi, and the Bay Area’s other congressional representatives should be vigorously pushing.

SF bans water bottles

Michael Redmond
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San Francisco continues to lead the way in the nation’s environmental policy, with the Board of Supervisors on March 4 voting unanimously to bar the city from buying plastic water bottles and to ban distribution of plastic water bottles smaller than 21 ounces on city property starting Oct. 1. The ban excludes city marathons and other sporting events.

"We all know with climate change, and the importance of combating climate change, San Francisco has been leading the way to fight for our environment," Board President David Chiu, who authored the legislation, said at the hearing. "That’s why I ask you to support this ordinance to reduce and discourage single-use, single-serving plastic water bottles in San Francisco."

Chiu held up a water bottle at the board meeting, a quarter of the way full with oil, to illustrate how much oil is used in the production and transport of plastic water bottles. He also reminded San Franciscans that the current fad of buying bottled water only started in the 1990s when the bottled water industry mounted a huge ad campaign that got Americans buying bottled water.

Somehow, Chiu noted, "for centuries, everybody managed to stay hydrated." (Francisco Alvarado)

Mass action against Keystone XL

Nine environmental activists were arrested in San Francisco for marching through the financial district and entering One Spear Tower on March 3, the building that houses local offices of the State Department, to express opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

A day earlier, a mass protest against the oil pipeline was staged outside the White House in Washington, D.C. Roughly 200 protesters were arrested after using plastic zip ties to lock themselves to the White House fence.

Meanwhile, thousands more have made a vow — at least in the sense of clicking to add their name to a petition — to engage in peaceful civil disobedience if President Barack Obama grants ultimate approval for the oil infrastructure project, which would transport 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Nonprofit Credo Action has created an online petition urging people to get ready to respond with peaceful civil disobedience if the pipeline wins final approval. (Rebecca Bowe)

City weighs lawsuit over Airbnb

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is finally preparing to take action against the illegal short-term housing rentals facilitated by Airbnb, something we’ve been hearing that the Examiner also reported on March 6 ("SF landlords could face legal fight over rentals on Airbnb, other services"), an action that would address the company’s apparent stall tactics.

Despite a business model that violates a variety of San Francisco laws — most notably zoning, planning, and tenant regulations — and Airbnb’s flagrant flouting of a two-year-old city ruling that it should be collecting and paying the city’s transient occupancy tax (see "Into thin air," Aug. 6), the City has appeared unwilling or unable to enforce its laws or address these issues.

"We’re aware of multiple housing allegations, including some that community leaders have brought to us," City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Matt Dorsey told the Guardian, confirming that the office is considering taking legal action to enforce local laws governing short-term housing rentals but refusing to provide details.

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu took on the problem over a year ago, working with the company and its critics to develop compromise legislation that would legalize and tax the activities of Airbnb and its hosts, but the multi-layered legal and logistical challenges in doing so have so far proven too much for the otherwise effective legislator.

"My staff has held meetings with Planning staff and its enforcement team to discuss enforcement and related challenges. We’ve also been in touch with the City Attorney’s Office on these issues," Chiu told the Guardian, saying he and his staff have recently been focused on other tenants and secondary unit legislation, but they "plan to refocus on our shareable housing efforts soon." (Steven T. Jones)

Blaming pedestrians

ABC7 News Investigative Team’s new "investigative report" on pedestrian safety stirred controversy last week as street safety advocates called out the video for its insensitivity towards pedestrian deaths and lax attitude towards unsafe drivers.

Streetsblog SF and others in San Francisco said the report engaged in "victim blaming."

ABC7’s pedestrian safety coverage comes on the heels of a number of high-profile traffic collision deaths, including that of 6-year-old Sofia Liu, killed on New Year’s Eve. Since then, the Walk First program to create safer streets has garnered more attention, culminating in Mayor Ed Lee’s announcement today to partially fund safety improvements to the city’s most dangerous intersections, to the tune of $17 million — improvements that languished due to funding gaps since the program was announced in April.

But making all the needed improvements though would cost $240 million, according to city estimates, and that funding has yet to be identified. Suffice to say, the traffic enforcement debate still rages in San Francisco, with emphasis on the word ‘rage.’

"We’ve seen ‘blame the pedestrians’ from police and in the media," Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition, said at a pedestrian safety hearing in January. Police Chief Greg Suhr that night apologized for his officers’ lax enforcement of drivers, and focus on pedestrians, and pledged to change policies to focus on drivers going forward.

It’s too bad ABC 7’s I-Team didn’t get that memo.

"In San Francisco, simply stepping off the curb can be deadly," ABC reporter Dan Noyes narrates in their video report. The word ‘deadly’ is capped off with a Hollywood-style musical flourish, like a horror movie moments before the big scare.

"Pedestrians are making mistakes over and over again," Noyes narrates. The video cuts to pedestrian after pedestrian looking at cell phones, jaywalking, or otherwise engaging in unsafe behavior. It’s fair to say the piece, headlined "I-Team investigates what’s causing pedestrian deaths," places responsibility of pedestrian safety squarely on the shoulders of pedestrians. (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez)

High-speed challenges

The California High Speed rail project has been facing resistance that threatens to derail the project. Not only has public support for the $68 billion project wavered in recent years, now the project faces a legal battle that could delay the project before the first rail is laid.

On March 4, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled that a lawsuit brought on by King County can go to trial. The lawsuit raises questions about the legality of using 2008’s voter-approved Prop 1A funding, $9.95 billion worth of bonds, to upgrade and electrify Caltrain’s tracks and incorporate them into the high speed system.
Another concern was that the proposed high-speed system would not be able to pull through with its promise of a 2 hour 40 minute nonstop ride from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles’ Union Station if the high speed system had to share tracks with Caltrain.

The lawsuit also threatens to leave San Francisco’s new $4.5 billion Transbay Terminal without its planned underground high speed rail station, which could be disastrous for that project as well.

None of this seems to faze Rod Diridon, executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute based out of San Jose State University and former founding board member of the California High-Speed Rail Authority Board. He told the Guardian: "I think that [the project] will happen now. I think that our wonderful governor and our legislative leaders are going make it happen now…. If it was delayed it would only be a matter of time before it came back." (Francisco Alvarado)

More than 86,000 say they’d risk arrest over oil pipeline

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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More than 86,000 say they’d risk arrest over oil pipeline

On Mon/3, nine environmental activists were arrested in San Francisco for marching through the financial district and entering One Spear Tower, the building that houses local offices of the State Department, to express opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

A day earlier, a mass protest against the oil pipeline was staged outside the White House in Washington, D.C. Roughly 200 protesters were arrested after using plastic zip ties to lock themselves to the White House fence.

Meanwhile, thousands more have made a vow – at least in the sense of clicking to add their name to a petition – to engage in peaceful civil disobedience if President Barack Obama grants ultimate approval for the oil infrastructure project, which would transport 830,000 barrels of crude oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Nonprofit Credo Action has created an online petition urging people to get ready to respond with peaceful civil disobedience if the pipeline wins final approval.

The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the project was released by the State Department on Jan. 31, setting in motion a process that will likely conclude in early May, when Secretary of State John Kerry is to submit a formal recommendation to Obama regarding whether the pipeline is aligned with our “national interest.”

If Kerry recommends approval, Credo and a host of participating organizations including the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network and 350.org will ask everyone who has signed the petition to make good on their “pledge of resistance.” 

At last check, 86,442 had signed the pledge. (It’s unknown how many checked the box stating “I am not comfortable with the risk of being arrested, but would volunteer to support those able to do so.”)

Here’s the statement “signed” by the critical mass of digital activists:

“I pledge, if necessary, to join others in my community, and engage in acts of dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could result in my arrest in order to send the message to President Obama and his administration that they must reject the Keystone XL pipeline.”

Norman Solomon: The problem with Obama denouncing a breach of international law in Ukraine

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International law is suddenly very popular in Washington. President Obama responded to Russian military intervention in the Crimea by accusing Russia of a “breach of international law.” Secretary of State John Kerry followed up by declaring that Russia is “in direct, overt violation of international law.”

Unfortunately, during the last five years, no world leader has done more to undermine international law than Barack Obama. He treats it with rhetorical adulation and behavioral contempt, helping to further normalize a might-makes-right approach to global affairs that is the antithesis of international law.

Fifty years ago, another former law professor, Senator Wayne Morse, condemned such arrogance of power. “I don’t know why we think, just because we’re mighty, that we have the right to try to substitute might for right,” Morse said on national TV in 1964. “And that’s the American policy in Southeast Asia — just as unsound when we do it as when Russia does it.”

Today, Uncle Sam continues to preen as the globe’s big sheriff on the side of international law even while functioning as the world’s biggest outlaw.

Rather than striving for an evenhanded assessment of how “international law” has become so much coin of the hypocrisy realm, mainline U.S. media are now transfixed with Kremlin villainy.

On Sunday night, the top of the New York Times home page reported: “Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has pursued his strategy with subterfuge, propaganda and brazen military threat, taking aim as much at the United States and Europe as Ukraine itself.” That was news coverage.

Following close behind, a Times editorial appeared in print Monday morning, headlined “Russia’s Aggression,” condemning “Putin’s cynical and outrageous exploitation of the Ukrainian crisis to seize control of Crimea.” The liberal newspaper’s editorial board said that the United States and the European Union “must make clear to him that he has stepped far outside the bounds of civilized behavior.”

Such demands are righteous — but lack integrity and credibility when the same standards are not applied to President Obama, whose continuation of the Bush “war on terror” under revamped rhetoric has bypassed international law as well as “civilized behavior.”

In these circumstances, major U.S. media coverage rarely extends to delving into deviational irony or spotlighting White House hypocrisy. Yet it’s not as if large media outlets have entirely excluded key information and tough criticism.

For instance, last October the McClatchy news service reported that “the Obama administration violated international law with top-secret targeted-killing operations that claimed dozens of civilian lives in Yemen and Pakistan,” according to reports released by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Last week, just before Obama leapt to high dudgeon with condemnation of Putin for his “breach of international law,” the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed piecethat provided illuminating context for such presidential righteousness.

“Despite the president’s insistence on placing limits on war, and on the defense budget, his brand of warfare has helped lay the basis for a permanent state of global warfare via ‘low footprint’ drone campaigns and special forces operations aimed at an ever-morphing enemy usually identified as some form of Al Qaeda,” wrote Karen J. Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s law school.

Greenberg went on to indicate the scope of the U.S. government’s ongoing contempt for international law: “According to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Obama administration has killed 4,700 individuals in numerous countries, including Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Obama has successfully embedded the process of drone killings into the executive branch in such a way that any future president will inherit it, along with the White House ‘kill list’ and its ‘terror Tuesday’ meetings. Unbounded global war is now part of what it means to be president.”

But especially in times of crisis, as with the current Ukraine situation, such inconvenient contradictions go out the mass-media window. What remains is an Orwellian baseline, melding conformist ideology and nationalism into red-white-and-blue doublethink.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” Information about the documentary based on the book is at www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugnann, editor at large of the Bay Guardian.  He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012. B3) 

I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.  Pete Seeger, folksinger, 1919-2014

Is Newsom on the wrong side of high-speed rail history?

Sasha Cuttler
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Is Newsom on the wrong side of high-speed rail history?

As California struggles to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and meet the long-term transportation needs of a growing population, officials from Gov. Jerry Brown to Mayor Ed Lee have steadfastly supported the embattled California High-Speed Rail Project, which Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently withdrew his support from. California now has until July 1 to find funds to match the federal grants.

It’s not exactly surprised that this calculating and politically ambitious centrist would cave in to conservatives like this, particularly as Newsom tries to set himself up to succeed Brown in four years. But it’s a sharp contrast to more principled politicians like Brown, and to those trying to create the transportation system future generations will need, as President Barack Obama took a step toward doing today by announcing new federal transportation funding.

US Transportation Secretary Anthony Fox is also taking part in the three-day High Speed Rail Summit, sponsored by the United State High-Speed Rail Association, that began yesterday in Washington DC. Its theme is Full Speed Ahead.

“Secretary Foxx’s experience at the local level as mayor of Charlotte is extremely valuable for shaping national transportation policy. We look forward to working with the Secretary to advance high speed rail in America across party lines,” USHSRA President and CEO Andy Kunz said in a press release. 

While Newsom’s new tact may play well with myopic, penny-pinching, car-dependent moderate and conservative voters, many of his allies and constituents were furious with his about-face on a project that promises to get riders from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles in less than three hours. 

Among those unhappy is San Francisco resident Peter Nasatir, who forwarded the Guardian a well-written letter that he has sent to Newsom’s office:

Dear Lt. Gov. Newsom,

I am a long time San Francisco resident, and although I have criticized many of your policies, I’ve always respected your commitment to be at the forefront of controversial issues.  Even if the issue could have wrecked your political career, you still had the guts to take the lumps for a righteous cause.

That is why I’m so shocked you would publically decry the High-Speed Rail project.  Yes there are cost overruns.  Yes the public is sour to it today, but what would you propose as an alternative:  more freeways, more runways?  Every expert in the field has already signed off that runways and freeways have expanded as far as they can.  Are you not a leading voice in demanding technical innovation in all levels of government? 

In your book, Citizenville, did you not put forth the clarion call for citizens to embrace technological change?  Did you not say that San Francisco was behind the likes of Estonia and South Korea in terms of digital governance?  Is it not fair to say that California is behind Europe and Asia when it comes to high speed rail?

Could you have said something along the lines that the trajectory the project is going is troubling, but Californians for generations to come will benefit from it.  This project must be saved, because to do otherwise will send California back 60 years.

You are a political maverick who had put his career on the line many times with such controversial positions as same-sex marriage, and walking the picket line with hotel workers on Union Square.  High-speed rail is coming.  The economy demands it, the environment demands it, and Central Valley population growth demands it.  You may get some votes from moderates in the short run, but in the long run, you have positioned yourself as the most prominent person in the state to be on the wrong side of history.

 

Peter Nasatir

 

 

 

Obama speech interrupted by Bay Area immigration activists

Erica Hanna
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Obama speech interrupted by Bay Area immigration activists

Ju Hong just wants to see his family for Thanksgiving, and that may be why he shouted down the president of the United States.  

Hong interrupted President Barack Obama’s nationally televised speech in Chinatown today, shouting for justice at the tail end of the president’s call for immigration reform. 

San Franciscans and politicos gathered in the Betty Ong Recreation Center to hear the president call on congress to pass new laws regulating immigration, something sorely needed, as Obama is widely known for deporting record numbers of immigrants. The Pew Research Center shows he’s deported more per year than George Bush ever did, with over 392,000 deported in 2011 alone, 80,000 more than Bush’s highest year. 

Obama called for a greater focus on the plight of Asian immigrants, as most of the country’s discussion around deportations focuses on the southern border. 

“It’s fitting we’re here in Chinatown just a few miles away from Angel Island,” Obama said. “In the early `1900’s about 300,000 people, maybe some of your ancestors, passed through on their way to a new life in America. For many it represented the end of a long and arduous journey.”

“Maybe I started out washing dishes, but my son can become mayor of San Francisco,” Obama said, to laughter. “If we stay true to this history, if we can cross that finish line, and go ahead and do what needs to be done, were going to grow that economy,” Obama said, and then was interrupted by Hong, shouting across the room. 

“My family is separated for Thanksgiving. Our families are separated,” Hong shouted. “I need your help. There are thousands of deported immigrants. Mr. President please use your executive order to halt deportations for all 11.5 undocumented immigrants in this country right now. When you have the power to stop deportations for all.”  

Obama turned around and replied, “Actually I don’t.”

“Stop deportations!” Hong and his friends started to chant. 

Likely to the Secret Service, Obama said “No no, don’t worry about it guys. These guys don’t need to go.” Then he spoke to Hong. “Let me finish. You can stay there. It won’t be as easy as just shouting, it requires lobbying and getting it done,” he said.

Outside the rec center, Hong said he felt that Obama’s speech had lots of flash but no substance. 

juhong

Ju Hong interviewed by reporters outside of the Betty Ong Recreation Center.

“Families are still being torn apart,” he said. “I’m not satisfied at all. He said he didn’t want to violate the law, but he has the power to stop deportations.” 

Hong, 24, is an Alameda resident from Korea who came to the United States when he was 11 years old. When his grandfather died back home, he was unable to pay his final respects. Now he wants to fly back to South Korea to see his family, but can’t risk not being able to return.

The fear of deportation has touched him in many ways. In 2010 his home was burglarized, he said, but his mother said not to call the police. She feared they would discover they were undocumented.

“I was a strong support of Obama in 2008,” he said. But now, he’s lost hope. 

Hong was one of the students protesting Janet Napolitano’s appointment to head the University of California system, which we covered a few weeks ago (Undocumented and Unafraid, 11/12). 

Alerts: November 20 – 26, 2013

Michael Redmond
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WEDNESDAY 20

Photographic journey through modern-day slavery The Commonwealth Club, 595 Market, SF. 5:30-7pm, $20. Photographer Lisa Kristine will share photographs from her travels to over a hundred countries on six different continents. The photographs document the daily lives of some of the millions of people who live in slavery around the world today. Kristine’s presentation will be preceded by a reception where attendees can connect with one another. The reception will be followed by a book signing.

Thu/21.  

Forum on America’s workers First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco, 1187 Franklin, SF. tinyurl.com/WorkersFighting4Dignity. 7-9pm, free. Californian domestic workers recently won a landmark Domestic Bill of Rights after a long and trying struggle. This result, coupled with the nationwide fast-food strike in August, has launched the fight for livable wages into the realm of public debate. Join activists Katie Joaquin and Andrew Dadko as they discuss what’s next for some of our nation’s most exploited, lowest-paid workers. For more information, please email Dolores Priem at doloresmp@gmail.com.

 

SATURDAY 23

 

History of Market Street walking tour Plaza across from Ferry Building near southern Millennium Tower, SF. shaping@foundsf.org. 1-3pm, $5-10. RSVP required. Market Street has long been San Francisco’s most prominent boulevard. It’s where residents congregate in public, and has been the site of countless protests, celebrations, riots, festivals, and more. Uncover the hidden histories during this two-hour walk through the heart of the city. Tour ends at UN Plaza, Seventh and Market streets.

SUNDAY 24

Film Screening: The House I Live In Russian Center of San Francisco, 2450 Sutter, SF. 7-9:30pm, free. City Hope is screening the Sundance award-winning documentary on the War on Drugs. The film examines the forty-year war that our country has waged against narcotics and the results it has produced: 45 million arrests, making the U.S. the world’s largest jailer, and damaging poor, minority communities at home and abroad. Meanwhile, drugs have only become cheaper, stronger, and easier to obtain. By demonstrating how this war has been fueled by political and economic corruption and showcasing the individual lives that it affects, from the street dealer to the narcotics officer to the prison inmate, the film makes the case for the total failure of the War on Drugs. Refreshments will accompany the screening.

Subversive film screening on drones outside the San Francisco Jazz Center, 201 Franklin, SF. 6pm, free. CODEPINK, World Can’t Wait and others plan to host a film screening on drone strikes, projecting one or two films about drones outside the SF Jazz Center. It’s part of a protest against President Barack Obama, who is scheduled to visit the city and attend a luncheon at the Jazz Center on Nov. 25. Protesters plan to march to the Jazz Center at 11:30am on Mon/25 to protest drone strikes.

On the line

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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31
On the line

rebecca@sfbg.com

Nobody knew exactly when the bus would leave. It was the afternoon of Oct. 17, and a group of about 60 immigrant rights activists were gathered in the shade of some tall trees in a park by the TransAmerica Pyramid in downtown San Francisco.

Many were young, Latino or Asian Pacific Islander, dressed in hooded sweatshirts, baseball caps, and slim-fitting jeans. They chatted and milled about, perhaps trying to ease a gnawing sense of anticipation over what was about to happen.

Half a block away and out of view, federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were leading passengers onto a white bus, parked at the ICE building at 630 Sansome St., with a “Homeland Security” label inscribed on the front. All the passengers were ICE detainees; some were about to embark on long deportation journeys, while others were being sent to detention centers where they would remain in limbo until either being deported or exonerated.

Back at the park, organizer Jen Low was peering at her phone every 10 minutes. “They’re locking the bus!” she exclaimed after reading a text sent by someone on the lookout. That meant it was almost time to go. The activists started organizing themselves into two groups: Those willing to risk arrest, and those planning to rally in support.

The ones facing arrest were planning to engage in peaceful civil disobedience, by placing their bodies in front of the bus to prevent it from going anywhere. “About half of the people who will be blocking the bus are undocumented,” Low told the Guardian as they prepared to exit the park. “That’s why some of us are so on edge right now.”

They headed toward the ICE building en masse, slowly at first and then quickening their pace, some hastily peeling off top layers to reveal handmade T-shirts underneath proclaiming, “Not one more.” Others were already stationed at the bus, and as 10 protesters linked arms and settled onto the street in front of it, someone had already started up a chorus of “We Shall Not Be Moved.”

 

INTO ICE CUSTODY

They’d been inspired by a recent ICE bus blockade carried out by Arizona activists, organizer Jon Rodney said, and the civil disobedience was meant to send a message to President Barack Obama that it’s unfair to continue deporting undocumented people as long as a resolution on federal immigration reform remains stalled in Congress. Rodney’s organization, the California Immigrant Policy Center, has emphasized family unity as a guiding principle that should inform immigration reform efforts.

A variety of organizations had been involved in planning the action, including the California Immigrant Policy Center, Causa Justa/Just Cause, POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), ASPIRE (Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights through Education), and the Asian Law Caucus.

Among the protesters was Dean Santos, a 23-year-old originally from the Philippines who had been brought to the US when he was 12. Not so long ago, he’d been transported out of San Francisco on a white deportation bus leaving from that very building. Faced with a trumped-up felony that was later downgraded to a misdemeanor, Santos was taken into federal custody in late 2010 because the initial serious charge triggered ICE involvement.

He was given the choice of voluntary deportation or indefinite detention while he fought his case. Santos chose the latter. He called his mother in San Bruno, where they lived, and apologized for what had happened.

Locked in a cramped cell in the San Francisco ICE building, he started to feel overcome with fear, but an elder man he was detained with offered comforting words. “He told me he had also decided to stay and fight, and he said he was doing it for the sake of his daughters,” Santos recalled.

That’s when it hit him that he wasn’t the only one whose life was potentially about to be upended due to deportation. The realization eventually fueled his activism, he said. He was inspired to participate in the undocumented youth movement to call for just and inclusive immigration reform, and he’d joined the ICE blockade as a member of ASPIRE and the Asian Pacific Islanders Undocumented Youth Group.

 

TWO MILLION DEPORTATIONS

In just a short time, the scene outside the ICE building had become zoo-like. Television news crews appeared, police cars raced up with lights flashing, and a few young ICE guards, sporting thick black vests and belts with holstered weapons, stood by the bus in wide defensive stances.

More than 100 supporters formed a procession and encircled the vehicle, waving signs and chanting as they went round and round. “Down, down with deportation! Up, up with liberation!” Some chants were in Spanish: “Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha!” (Obama, listen, we’re in the struggle.)

Obama delivered comments that very day, as the federal government was reopening after being shut down by Congress, signaling that immigration reform was the next major agenda item.

“We should finish the job of fixing our broken immigration system,” the president said in a televised address from the Rose Garden. “There’s already a broad coalition across America that’s behind this effort — from business leaders to faith leaders to law enforcement. The Senate has already passed a bill with strong bipartisan support. Now the House should, too. It can and should get done by the end of this year.”

California has the largest immigrant population of any other state, with an estimated 2.8 million undocumented Californians. Advocates are calling for the creation of a path to citizenship that isn’t overly burdensome, and for immigration policy that doesn’t rely on detention and deportation as cornerstones of immigration enforcement.

“We were really hoping immigration reform would pass and reduce deportations,” Asian Law Caucus staff attorney Anoop Prasad told the Bay Guardian just before the protest got underway. Instead, “Obama is closing in on his two millionth deportation since becoming president,” he said, a higher number than those carried out under President George H.W. Bush when he’d been in office for the same duration.

Much of that steep increase has to do with technological capability and information sharing under Secure Communities (S-Comm), which has resulted in an estimated 90,000 deportations of undocumented people in California alone.

Prasad said he had reviewed the roster of detainees loaded onto the bus earlier that day. They’d been taken into ICE custody in various Northern California cities, including San Francisco, and they had origins in Russia, Mexico, Ethiopia, Vietnam, El Salvador, India, and other countries. Some had children, and a few were minors themselves.

“One guy has been here since he was 11 months old,” Prasad said. “Now he’s in his 40s.”

There are three immigration courts inside 630 Sansome. Undocumented detainees are transported there from ICE facilities in Richmond, Bakersfield, Sacramento, and Yuba County, often roused around 3am. They aren’t allowed any books or personal property when they’re locked up awaiting court appearances, Prasad said/

“In court,” he said, “a lot of times people have their legs and hands shackled.”

Sometimes the early-morning departures and daytime detentions can disrupt medication routines, he added. That’s a problem for people taking medication to combat mental illness — especially when they’re headed for anxiety-inducing appearances in court.

 

FALSE IMPRISONMENT, REAL CONSEQUENCES

Around 5:30pm at the ICE bus blockade, the SFPD closed off the intersection and told activists they would risk arrest if they didn’t move out of the way. The larger group of supporters squeezed onto the sidewalk, but those who had set out to perform civil disobedience stayed planted where they were.

It seemed the SFPD would arrest them at any time. A police officer crouched down and spoke with them in a conversational tone as they sat with their hands clasped. “I know what you guys are trying to do,” he said, adding that he wasn’t trying to stop them from speaking out about their cause. But he asked them to stand up and let the bus get on its way. They refused.

San Francisco has been a Sanctuary City since 1989, which means city employees are prohibited from helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with immigration investigations or arrests except in cases where it’s required by federal or state law, or a warrant.

If they were taken into custody by the SFPD and charged with misdemeanors, the activists had reason to believe they would be spared from deportation. Added protection for undocumented San Francisco residents will soon take effect under legislation recently approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Authored by Sup. John Avalos, it prohibits local law enforcement from honoring ICE requests to hold detainees for an additional 48 hours, except in very narrow circumstances. Federal authorities issue those requests to allow enough time to take those undocumented individuals into custody — even if they lack probable cause showing that the person was involved in criminal activity. Their status is detected via S-Comm, an information-sharing program between federal agencies that links fingerprint databases.

But a debate had apparently started between the two agencies over whether the protesters were under SFPD’s jurisdiction, or ICE’s. Prasad said federal agents threatened the activists with charges of felony false imprisonment if they did not end their protest immediately. That charge essentially means holding someone against his or her will, but “they’re not blocking the door,” he pointed out. (Some armed ICE agents, meanwhile, did happen to be standing in front of the bus door.)

The prospect of facing federal felony charges carried potentially grave consequences. Just before the start of the protest, Santos described what his own ICE bus trip had been like. He’d boarded it with about 35 other passengers, mostly men. As they crossed the Bay Bridge, he felt a pit in his stomach as he looked back at the Ferry Building, wondering if he was going to be separated from his family for good.

Santos and the other detainees were transported to Oakland International Airport, brought through a special security area, and led onto a plane. The flight stopped in Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino, picking up more detainees at each location. Then the flight touched down in San Diego, where some were taken off the plane and sent across the border to Tijuana.

Santos’ journey ended at an ICE detention center in Florence, Ariz. He said there were 14 bunks in a room with a single toilet, which was not well maintained. He had no idea how long he was going to remain there, but it ultimately turned out to be two weeks.

Extended family on the East Coast helped his parents locate a lawyer in Arizona, and the lawyer helped him qualify for bail, which his parents posted. He was released, and finally returned to San Francisco after 16 hours on a Greyhound bus.

Eventually, the whole matter was dropped because he benefitted from prosecutorial discretion under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, federal policy enacted in June 2012 directing ICE to give special consideration to individuals who immigrated illegally to the US as children.

 

STILL UNAFRAID

Protesters at the blockade were having an intense consultation with Prasad, the Asian Law Caucus attorney, as he explained what was potentially at stake. Heads together and eyes wide as they talked it out, they ultimately opted to hold firm.

“We will do whatever is necessary for our community!” Alex Aldana bellowed into a megaphone while the supporters cheered. The group erupted into wild chanting: “Undocumented, unafraid!”

Not long after that, all were brought to their feet and led away from the bus by men in uniforms — it was federal ICE officers who escorted them away, not SFPD officers.

They brought them past the crime tape and around the corner from where the bus was parked. Then they lined them up, wrote out tickets, and let them go. Prasad said he guessed that the agency was worried about the backlash it might receive had it gone through with taking them into custody and pressing charges. Energy was high as it dawned on the activists that they were getting Certificates of Release instead of handcuffs. Still in the line police had arranged them, they jumped up and down on the sidewalk, still chanting, while a federal officer filled out the forms and placed them into their hands. As evening fell, the bus passengers remained shackled in their seats, invisible to all but the driver. Once the activists had been cleared from the scene and the authorities regained control of the situation, the bus backed up and left.

Undocumented immigrant activists block deportation bus

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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109
Undocumented immigrant activists block deportation bus

A group of young, undocumented immigrant activists temporarily halted a deportation bus from leaving downtown San Francisco on Oct. 17. The bus was parked outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices at 630 Sansome Street, where detainees are held during the day while they await court hearings.

They said they were inspired by recent actions in Arizona, and were putting themselves at risk to send a message to President Barack Obama that all deportations should be halted until federal immigration reform is in place.

Even though federal immigration police threatened them with felony charges if they did not allow the bus to pass, activists decided after an intense discussion to stay seated on the street where they were and continue their protest. 

“We will do whatever is necessary for our community,” protester Alex Aldana said into a megaphone after the group huddled to discuss how to respond to the threat, adding that they would risk arrest.

They chanted “undocumented, unafraid,” and at one point even taped a hot pink sign to the front of the bus that read, “Shut Down ICE.” Supporters circled the bus in a procession, waving signs and chanting, until authorities set up a police line and told them that they would risk arrest if they did not move to the sidewalk. There were federal immigration officials as well as San Francisco police officers on the scene. 

At one point, ICE officials told the activists that the protesters could be charged with felony false imprisonment if they did not get up and move. But in the end, federal officers merely escorted them away from the bus and released them on the sidewalk around the corner.

Organizations involved included the California Immigrant Policy Center, POWER, Causa Justa / Just Cause, the Asian Law Caucus, ASPIRE and others who are part of a coalition that has been focused on immigration reform.

“When they talked to me, they said they were going to arrest me,” said Emmanuel Valenciano, one of the activists who blocked the bus, after being released. He added that he had expected the San Francisco Police Department to take them into custody.

The passengers on the bus were not visible to protesters and bystanders, but Asian Law Caucus Staff Attorney Anoop Prasad had met with some of them earlier that day. They were from Russia, El Salvador, Ethiopia and other countries. Many had been swept into ICE custody after being identified via Secure Communities (S-Comm), an information-sharing program that links local law enforcement information with federal databases.

Some of the bus passengers were bound for the airport, where they would begin long deportation journeys. Others were headed back to ICE detention facilities throughout California, where they would remain while fighting their cases.  All of the detainees had their hands and waists in shackles, Prasad said.

Once the protesters were escorted off the scene and released, the bus backed up and continued on its way.

Spotlight shone on gentrification in West Oakland and SF

Michael Redmond
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0

Two stories on the theme of gentrification and displacement — a topic we at the Bay Guardian have expended plenty of ink on — ran in major news outlets recently, showing how intense the Bay Area housing market pressure has become as it continues to be fueled by a rapid growth in high-salaried jobs in big tech.

Zeroing in on San Francisco, the Los Angeles Times turned an eye toward Mission District gentrification (“San Francisco split by Silicon Valley’s wealth,” Aug. 14) illustrating the growing divide with a succinct comment overheard on a Muni bus: “I don’t know why old people ride Muni. If I were old, I’d just take Uber.”

And a Wall Street Journal article (“Companies spruce up neighborhoods, putting gentrification in overdrive,” Aug. 13) provides an eye-opening account of how REO Homes LLC is seeking to accelerate the gentrification process by “beautifying” West Oakland, an historically African American neighborhood that is home to predominantly low-income and working-class residents.

Minutes from downtown San Francisco via BART, West Oakland is dotted with Victorians and was hit with a wave of foreclosure during the economic crash, destabilizing the lives of many families who lost their homes.

REO is an investment firm helped along by San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, a well-connected venture capitalist (he even hosted a Democratic Party fundraiser with President Barack Obama at his Pacific Heights mansion earlier this year).

As the Journal’s Robbie Whelan reports, REO has been shelling out top dollar to spruce up not just its holdings, but residences nearby its West Oakland properties. In a rarely seen form of hyper-gentrification, the company has been planting trees, sprucing up homes (for free) of neighbors who aren’t in the market to sell or rent, mending fences, and making other improvements — all in an effort to lure higher-income residents to the neighborhood.

Since 2008, the height of the real-estate market crash, REO has acquired more than 200 homes in Oakland, Whelan reports, mostly in West Oakland. “Most houses cost around $200,000,” he writes, “and [founder Neill Sullivan] said he invests as much $100,000 to fix each one up.”

Real-estate agents have been marketing the sometimes-rough neighborhood to house-hunters as an affordable, nearby alternative to astronomically expensive San Francisco. Now that many people who weren’t able to keep up with mortgage payments have been forced out by foreclosure, things are changing swiftly, as if by magic. Armed with cash, bankers are chasing away the blight and rolling out the welcome mat for up-and-comers who can’t swing that $3,000 one-bedroom in The City. All of which will likely result in further displacement of Oakland residents who are barely holding on as it is. As Oakland City Council member Desley Brooks told the Journal: “I’m not interested in finding housing for San Franciscans who can no longer afford San Francisco. I’m interested in helping people here in Oakland.”

West Oakland hyper gentrification in the WSJ

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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81

Two stories on the theme of gentrification and displacement – a topic we at the Guardian have expended plenty of ink on – ran in major news outlets recently, showing how intense the Bay Area housing market pressure has become as it continues to be fueled by a rapid growth in high-salaried jobs in big tech.

Zeroing in on San Francisco, the LA Times turned an eye toward Mission District gentrification, illustrating the growing divide with a succinct comment overheard on a Muni bus: “I don’t know why old people ride Muni. If I were old, I’d just take Uber.”

And a Wall Street Journal article provides an eye-opening account of how REO Homes LLC is literally seeking to accelerate the gentrification process by “beautifying” West Oakland, an historic Black neighborhood that is home to predominantly low-income and working-class residents. (Note: The article may be behind a paywall.)

Minutes from downtown San Francisco via BART, West Oakland is dotted with Victorians and was hit with a wave of foreclosure during the economic crash, destabilizing the lives of many families who lost their homes.

REO is an investment firm helped along by San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, a well-connected venture capitalist (he even hosted a Democratic Party fundraiser with President Barack Obama at his Pacific Heights mansion earlier this year).

As the Journal’s Robbie Whelan reports, REO has been shelling out top dollar to spruce up not just its holdings, but residences nearby its West Oakland properties. In a rarely seen form of hyper-gentrification, the company has been planting trees, sprucing up homes (for free) of neighbors who aren’t in the market to sell or rent, mending fences, and making other improvements – all in an effort to lure higher-income residents to the neighborhood.

Since 2008, the height of the real-estate market crash, REO has acquired more than 200 homes in Oakland, Whelan reports, mostly in West Oakland. “Most houses cost around $200,000,” he writes, “and [founder Neill Sullivan] said he invests as much $100,000 to fix each one up.”

Real-estate agents have been marketing the neighborhood – which is no stranger to violent crime – to house-hunters as an affordable, nearby alternative to astronomically expensive San Francisco. Now that many people who weren’t able to keep up with mortgage payments have been forced out by foreclosure (see: robocalls, bungled loan modifications, foreclosure abuses), things are changing swiftly, as if by magic. Armed with cash, bankers are chasing away the blight and rolling out the welcome mat for up-and-comers who can’t swing it for that $3,000 one-bedroom in the city.

All of which will likely result in further displacement of Oakland residents who are barely holding on as it is. As Oakland councilwoman Desley Brooks told the Journal: “I’m not interested in finding housing for San Franciscans who can no longer afford San Francisco. I’m interested in helping people here in Oakland.”

After Oscar, after Trayvon…

Michael Redmond
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49

rebecca@sfbg.com

Even before Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson picked up the phone on Feb. 27, 2012, he wasn’t having an easy day. His nephew, Oscar Grant, would have celebrated his 26th birthday on that date if he had not been killed by a gunshot wound on Jan. 1, 2009.

Grant was shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle while lying face down on a train platform, an incident that was caught on film, prompted riots in Oakland, drew international scrutiny, and became the subject of the award-winning film Fruitvale Station by Oakland filmmaker Ryan Coogler.

In the years since Grant’s death, Johnson and his wife, Beatrice X, founded the Oscar Grant Foundation to develop a support network for families who’ve lost loved ones due to police violence. It was his involvement in this work that led Johnson to be contacted that day, and informed that a 17-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin had been gunned down in Florida one day earlier.

It wasn’t a police shooting but nevertheless, “We knew at this point that we had to go to Florida,” Johnson recalled. “What we’ve decided is that whenever a family experienced that, we would definitely try and get to them.”

Fast forward to July 13, almost exactly three years after violent protests erupted in Oakland following the news that Mehserle, who was charged with second degree murder, had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter instead. A new wave of demonstrations flared up as word spread that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed Martin, had been acquitted.

“We weren’t surprised,” Johnson, who returned to Florida last month to observe the jury selection process for Zimmerman’s trial, told the Guardian. “But it was still painful.”

The verdict in this high-profile case has brought discussions about racial profiling and unequal treatment in the criminal justice system to the forefront. Even President Barack Obama touched on the theme in comments to White House reporters on July 19, saying, “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

At the national level, new findings on “implicit bias” — unconscious prejudices that research in psychology has shown can persist in individuals (including poorly trained police officers), even if they consciously reject racial stereotypes — has started to inform policy debates around racial profiling.

“Policy needs to recognize that implicit bias exists,” Maya Wiley, founder and president of the New York City-based Center for Social Inclusion, told us. “Rep. John Conyers introduced a bill last year to prohibit racial profiling in law enforcement. That bill, if made law, would collect data on stops by race, as well as provide resources for training. That is a step in the right direction.”

But things get complicated, Wiley says, because “research shows that people of color, women, the elderly, may all experience discrimination as a result of implicit bias. There is no remedy in the law for this. … I think what is important now is to fight Stand Your Ground Laws which empower people to act on their implicit biases.”

At a July 16 rally held on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, Rev. Malcolm Byrd, pastor of San Francisco’s First A.M.E. Zion Church, illustrated his point about racial profiling by donning a hoodie and sneakers at the rally.

“I wanted to come looking suspicious,” he explained. “I wanted to give you an image that America has of young black men. I look suspicious. This is my country. I love my country. Yet, I look suspicious.”

Last year, Mayor Ed Lee’s proposal to introduce a stop-and-frisk policy, which would have allowed police officers to randomly stop individuals who appeared to be suspicious in an effort to get weapons off the streets, was abandoned in the face of widespread community concern.

Officers who undergo training at the San Francisco Police Department Academy must complete 52 hours of “cultural diversity” training, according to SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Dennis Toomer, which includes a mandatory four-hour intensive geared toward preventing racial profiling. State law mandates just 16 hours for such training for law enforcement agencies, Toomer told us.

But despite supplemental police training and the efforts of grassroots organizations that carefully monitor police activity, the Bay Area has witnessed a number of fatal shootings at the hands of police since Grant’s death, and many draw a link between these cases and the broader issue of racial profiling.

When asked about the outreach efforts of the Oscar Grant Foundation, Johnson began to rattle off a long list of names — mostly young black men, from places ranging from Oakland to Vallejo to Stockton to San Leandro — who were killed by police, and whose families his organization has reached out to.

They have also been in touch with several families in New York City who lost loved ones in similar situations, Johnson said. In many cases, the individuals were killed despite being unarmed, and officers later explained their actions by saying they’d mistakenly believed the shooting victims had firearms.

After several years of taking an up-close look at the investigative and legal proceedings that unfold in the aftermath of officer-involved shootings, Johnson has reached the conclusion that from case to case, “The playbook is pretty much the same. The officer first alleges he felt threatened — it’s all about the thought process of the officer. It’s always found to be justifiable because the officer feared for his life.”

One long-term goal of the Oscar Grant Foundation is to build up a coalition that can mount a meaningful challenge to the California Peace Officers Bill of Rights, a law enacted some 30 years ago that affords special protections for law enforcement officers facing misconduct charges. Johnson and others are critical of provisions such as officers’ rights to keep confidential information out of their personnel files, which can prevent significant information from being disclosed during a criminal trial. Meanwhile, others throughout the Bay Area seem primed to push for change in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict. “On Sunday, every black church in the nation was talking about what? Trayvon Martin, and what we need to do,” Andrea Shorter, a member of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, said during the July 16 rally. “Two weeks ago, and we were all standing here as San Franciscans to rejoice … because we knew that LGBT people could be treated as first class citizens. The job is not done.” San Francisco NAACP President Rev. Amos Brown, who organized the rally, vowed that his organization “will push for a civil suit to bring this Zimmerman gentlemen to justice.” The national NAACP is petitioning U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to open a civil rights case against Zimmerman. Sups. London Breed, Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, and David Campos also delivered speeches at the rally. “For the first time in my life, after growing up and going to funeral after funeral after funeral after funeral, of all boys and black men throughout my life, I see people in this audience who are not African American, who are just as hurt as I am, who are just as sick of this as I am,” Breed said. “And we are all in this together. We have got to work together if we want to change it.”

On pins and needles

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3
On pins and needles

steve@sfbg.com

[UPDATE: The Supreme Court has overturned DOMA and dismissed the Prop 8 case. Read our full coverage here.]

As San Francisco’s LGBT community and its supporters prepared for Pride Weekend, the whole city was anxiously awaiting the imminent US Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage. That case began here more than nine years ago when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to let gay men and lesbians marry and the City Attorney’s Office launched a long and torturous legal battle.

The synchronous timing of the two events couldn’t be better. (Well, it could have been better for the Bay Guardian‘s deadline if the ruling has come out June 25, instead of when this issue will be hitting the streets on June 26, but you can read our full, live coverage here at sfbg.com tomorrow.)

LGBT activists are planning a massive rally at Castro and Market streets starting at 6:30pm on June 26, along with another performance stage at Market and 19th streets featuring Donna Sachet emceeing performances ranging from DJs to drag and other live performances, like an early start to an already packed Pride Weekend. (For more info, see www.dayofdecision.org.)

Of course, at press time it was still unclear whether we’ll see a joyous springboard for a raucous Pride that many are hoping for, with total victory and marriage equality becoming the law of the land; a bitter repudiation of LGBT rights reminiscent of Nov. 4, 2008, when the street celebrations over President Barack Obama’s election victory were tempered by frustration over voters approving Prop. 8 and banning same-sex marriage; or something in between.

The ruling will cap a see-sawing legal and political battle for which the City Attorney’s Office calculates it has written more than a half-million pages of legal briefings for more than 50 judges at various levels, including four trips before the California Supreme Court in four separate but related cases before making arguments to the US Supreme Court in March.

If the ruling doesn’t legalize same-sex marriage in California, activists say they’ll immediately return the struggle back into the political arena and use the momentum of the ruling (and the three states that legalized same-sex marriage this year, bringing the total to 12) to win at the ballot box (it would take a popular vote to undo Prop. 8).

If that happens, look for our own Sen. Mark Leno — who got the California Legislature to approve his legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, twice, only to have it vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — to play a lead role.

“The only option is to re-amend the constitution to eliminate the discriminatory Prop. 8,” Leno told us. That measure could be placed on the 2014 ballot by either the Legislature or an initiative, which Leno said will be decision for the coalition of same-sex marriage supporters.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both options. Gathering signatures for an initiative is expensive, but that effort would also help launch the campaign to win over California voters. In the Legislature, four supportive Democrats will likely move to other offices this year, including a Senator and Assemblymember who are each joining the Los Angeles City Council, but Leno is still confident.

“We stand prepared with legislation already drafted to move forward with a bill if that’s what the coalition decides,” Leno said. “And we are confident we have the 27 votes we need [in the Senate], maybe even 28.”

City Attorney’s Office Press Secretary Matt Dorsey has been doing regular email briefings for journalists who are here from around the world, ready to report from the place where it all began as soon as the ruling comes down.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart, and their team are prepared to analyze the ruling as soon as it is released just after 7am (Pacific time) and to deliver the first press briefing on the steps of City Hall at 7:30-8am. Mayor Ed Lee, Newsom, and other officials will host a live viewing of the ruling at 7am in City Hall, following by their own press conference.

Dissecting the ruling could be a tricky task given that there at least four major scenarios that the ruling could trigger, each of those with lots of sub-scenarios that depend on the scope and details of the ruling. Everything for legalizing same-sex marriage across the country to a technical ruling that kicks it all back to a lower court are possible.

“In 10 years [working for the City Attorney’s Office], I’m never seen an outcome that could go in so many different directions,” Dorsey told us.

If the ruling invalidates Prop. 8, that decision would be formalized in about a month, then returning jurisdiction over the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, which will then issue a formal notice of decision that gives it the force of law, according to a June 11 memo the City Attorney’s Office wrote for other city officials.

It notes, “Depending on how the Supreme Court decides the case, marriages could resume as soon as mid-to-late July.”

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