Occupy Wall Street

Corporations, people, money, and speech

Andrew Lam
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Corporations, people, money, and speech

tredmond@sfbg.com

On July 24, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors weighed in on a policy debate that’s become a powerful cause on the American left. By a unanimous vote, the supervisors placed on the November ballot a measure calling for a Constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood.

“We’re living in a time of trickle down economics and tax breaks for the rich,” Avalos said, later adding, “Big corporations [are] able to spend vast amounts of money” and have “the greatest influence on the outcome of elections.

“We need to look at our Constitution and have it amended so we aren’t looking at corporations as living, breathing people,” Avalos said.

That’s an immensely popular sentiment in this country, and it’s been stirred up by the US Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a ruling that has come to represent all of the evils of big-money politics rolled into one two-word phrase.

More than 80 percent of Americans say they want the decision overturned. Six states, including California, have passed resolutions calling for a Constitutional amendment. Occupy protesters have made it a big issue. Marge Baker, policy vice president for People for the American Way, wrote a Huffington Post piece calling the campaign “A Movement Moment.”

But while Citizens United is a great rallying point, the challenge here goes way beyond one court decision. Citizens United didn’t create corporate personhood. Repealing the decision won’t end the flow of money in politics — and a lot of First Amendment experts are exceptionally nervous about anything that seeks to mess with this central part of the Bill of Rights.

And for all the denunciation of Citizens United, the solution — drafting the actual language of a new Constitutional amendment — turns out to be more than a little tricky.

MICHAEL MOORE AND HILARY CLINTON

Citizens United v. FEC has a complicated history. In 2002, Congress passed the McCain-Feingold Act, which barred corporations and unions from funding “electioneering” activities in the period right before an election.

The right-wing group Citizens United complained that Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 911 was an attack on George W. Bush and intended to influence the 2004 election, and the courts dismissed that complaint, saying that there was no evidence the independent documentary was an illegal campaign contribution.

Citizens United then started making its own “documentaries,” including one in 2008 that many saw as a campaign commercial against Hillary Clinton. The FEC found that the video was, in fact, “electioneering,” and the case wound up at the Supreme Court.

The legal decision was complicated, but among other things, the court ruled that a ban on independent corporate spending on election campaigns was a violation of the First Amendment rights of those business entities.

That was amplified when Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney uttered his famous line, “corporations are people.”

But in reality, Citizens United alone hasn’t caused the tsunami of big money that’s poured into elections, including the 2012 campaigns. Much of the cash contaminating the presidential coffers this year comes not from corporations effected by the ruling but from individuals and private trusts that have been free to throw money around for decades.

“The flood of money is disgusting and corrupting,” Peter Scheer, director of the California First Amendment Coalition, told us. “But it isn’t coming from public corporations. It’s mostly wealthy people and private trusts, and they didn’t need Citizens United to do this.”

In fact, the groundwork for modern sleaze was set a long time ago, in 1976, when the Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo that, in effect, money was speech — and that any rich individual could spend all he or she wanted running for office.

What the Supreme Court has done, though, is set the modern political tone for campaign finance — among other things, invalidating a Montana law that barred corporate contributions to campaigns. And in the majority ruling and the assenting opinions, the court made clear that it doesn’t think government has any role in leveling the campaign playing field — that it’s not the business of government to decide that the money and speech of rich people and big business is drowning out the opinions and speech of the rest of the populace.

SO NOW WHAT?

So now that every decent-thinking human being in the United States agrees that there’s too much sleazy money in politics and that it’s not a good thing for government to be for sale to the highest bidder, the really interesting — and difficult — question comes up: What do we do about it?

There are a lot of competing answers to that question. And frankly, none of them are perfect.

That may be one reason why the ACLU is mostly on the sidelines. When I contacted the national office to ask if anyone wanted to talk about the efforts to overturn Citizens United, spokesperson Molly Kaplan sent me an email saying “we actually don’t have anyone available for this.”

But on its website, the organization — in a nuanced statement on campaign reform — notes: “Any rule that requires the government to determine what political speech is legitimate and how much political speech is appropriate is difficult to reconcile with the First Amendment.”

In an ACLU blog post, Laura Murphy, director of the group’s Legislative Office in Washington DC, argues that “a Constitutional amendment—specifically an amendment limiting the right to political speech—would fundamentally ‘break’ the Constitution and endanger civil rights and civil liberties for generations.”

But David Cobb, one of the organizers of Move To Amend, which is pushing a Constitutional amendment, told me that “the idea that spending money is sacred is part of the problem, the reason that we don’t have a functioning democracy.”

There are two central parts to the problem: The notion that corporations have the same rights to free speech as people, and the notion that money is speech. Eliminate the first — which is immensely popular — and you still allow the Meg Whitmans and Koch brothers of the world to pour their personal fortunes into seeking political office or promoting other candidates.

Eliminate the second and you open a huge can of worms.

“It would be a disaster, in my view,” Scheer said. “As a general principle, I’m frightened by the concept of tampering with the Constitution.”

Money may not equal free speech, but it’s hard to exercise the right to free speech in a political campaign without money. And there are broader impacts that might be hard to predict.

But Peter Schurman, one of the founders of MoveOn.org and a leader in Free Speech for the People, told me that “it’s a false premise that money equals speech. The point is to get a level playing field.”

THE PROPOSALS

Move to Amend and Free Speech for People are promoting similar approaches, Constitutional amendments that, in fairly simple terms, would radically and forever alter American politics. Several members of Congress have offered Constitutional amendments that include similar language.

The Move to Amend proposal is the broadest and cleanest. It states: “The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only. Artificial entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, and other entities, established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.”

It goes on to say: “Federal, State and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own contributions and expenditures, for the purpose of influencing in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.”

It also includes this statement: “Nothing contained in this amendment shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.”

Free Speech for the People is simpler. It only addresses the corporate speech issue: “People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulations as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.”

Cobb notes that the Move to Amend measure doesn’t say how political speech should be regulated; it just opens the door to that kind of lawmaking. “The question of how to protect the integrity of the electoral process is a political question, not a Constitutional question,” he said. In the end, there’s a huge issue here. The framers of the Constitution, their political consciousness forged in a battle against big and repressive government, feared as much as anything the notion of rulers controlling the rights of the people to speak, write, assemble, publish (oh, and carry firearms) freely. Corporate interests (with the possible exception of the British East India Company, which monopolized the tea trade) weren’t a major concern.

And First Amendment purists still recoil at the idea that government, at any level, could make decisions limiting or regulating political speech. I sympathize. It’s scary. But in 2012, it’s easy to argue that the power of big money and big business has far eclipsed the power of government, that for all practical purposes, the rich and their corporate creations are the government of the United States — and that the people, assembled and exercising the power envisioned under the Constitution, need to make rules to, yes, level the playing field. Not rashly, not in crazy ways, with full cognizance of the risks — but also with the recognition that the current situation is fundamentally unacceptable, and that the potential dangers of messing with the First Amendment have to be balanced with the very real dangers of doing nothing.

Best of the Bay 2012: Local Heroes

Andrew Lam
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2012 Local Heroes

Alex Tom and Shaw San Liu

Alex Tom and Shaw San Liu — the executive director and lead organizer for the Chinese Progressive Association, which celebrates its 40th anniversary on Aug. 4 — have laid the groundwork for a progressive resurgence in San Francisco by organizing Chinese immigrants and actively building close and mutually supportive relationships with working-class allies throughout the city.

The two have been involved in just about every recent effort to counter the pro-corporate neoliberalism that has come to dominate City Hall these days. They have seized space with Occupy San Francisco and they have supported labor unions and helped to create the Progressive Workers Alliance. They have fought foreclosures and pushed for affordable housing reforms, and they have protected vulnerable immigrant workers from wage theft by unscrupulous employers.

“Shaw San and Alex are incredibly talented organizers and movement builders who are managing to do the nearly impossible,” said N’Tanya Lee, who worked closely with the pair as the director of Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. “They have built an authentic base of working-class Chinese immigrants who are interested in fighting for change in their community, and are creating a grassroots organization at the forefront of building multi-racial alliances to combat the divide-and-conquer strategies that are confronting us.”

Liu, who joined CPA six years ago, said she’s always inspired to see the old photographs on the walls of CPA’s office, and to read the history of CPA’s organizing and advocacy on behalf of working people. She said the organization has always understood the need to forge alliances with labor unions and other progressive interests.

“The organization itself has been, since its inception, playing a critical role in bridging the needs of Chinese interests with other communities,” Liu said. “I’ve always seen my role as bridge building.”

Today — with stagnant real wages, a deteriorating social safety net, and growing power by corporations that enjoy unprecedented political clout thanks to Citizens United and other court rulings — the need to organize people across cultural lines is more important than ever, even if that begins by addressing the individual needs of each community.

“Always at our core, it’s about empowering our folks to be able to voice their own struggles and visions,” Liu said.

Working to build that capacity within the Chinese immigrant community is hard and important work, Liu said, but it’s equally important to connect with the struggles of working class people from other communities, uniting to effectively counter the political dominance of employers and property owners.

Lui framed the struggle as: “How do we build unity and not have that be lip service?”

Tom and Liu have demonstrated that they know how to do just that, despite the diversity of sometimes-conflicting interests on the left and in a working class squeezed by recession and feelings of economic uncertainty.

“The issue that will unify people is good jobs that are accessible to everyone,” Liu said.

Yet she also said that working class organizing is needed to counter the simplistic “jobs” rhetoric coming from City Hall, which politicians are using to advocate for tax cuts to big corporations.

“More and more, it exposes itself as a total lie,” Liu said of the argument that the city should be facilitating private sector job creation with business tax cuts. “So much points to the fact that the US economic system doesn’t benefit everyone … When we talk about jobs, we talk about what kinds of jobs we want and for whom.”

 

2012 Local Heroes

Stardust and Ross Rhodes

Ross Rhodes and Stardust, like all of the people involved in Occupy Bernal, are neighbors. But until Stardust helped found the group — a local take on Occupy focused on stopping unjust foreclosures and evictions — they didn’t know each other.

Now they do, and if it wasn’t for Occupy Bernal, Rhodes is sure he would no longer have the house that his parents bought in 1964.

A former college football star, Rhodes injured his knees and back playing. He lives on disability payments, volunteering at the 100 Percent College Prep Club, and bringing home-cooked meals to seniors in his area. He also coached kids in the Junior 49ers program until it became too hard on his injuries.

Stardust, an ESL teacher and oboe player in the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony and the SF Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, has been working for LGBT rights, women’s rights, and online civil rights for years. When Occupy took off, he gravitated toward the neighborhood fights against foreclosures.

Like people all over the US, Rhodes and his wife were fooled several years ago by a pick-a-payment loan plan. At the time, World Savings was peddling the deals through neighborhoods, promising potential borrowers that they could send their kids to college, buy a car, take vacations — and modify their loans after a year.

But when Rhodes started to apply for loan modifications, he was denied. He kept receiving letters asking for more information, often the same information he had already given — a common story that led to part of the Homeowners Bill of Rights that will guarantee a single point of contact from the bank. He was stumped when he was told he needed more income — the bank said it wouldn’t accept payments that were more than 30 percent of a borrower’s income, and Rhodes was getting a fixed disability check.

He found another income source as a homecare provider, but after all the time that the bank wouldn’t accept his payments, Rhodes was marked as someone who wasn’t making payments, and was tracked for foreclosure.

Meanwhile, Occupy Bernal was working on more than 100 similar cases in its neighborhood. The organizers hadn’t quite convinced Mayor Ed Lee to help at that point, but Rep. Pelosi’s staffers were on their side, getting banks to prioritize the cases of those working with Occupy Bernal. They worked with other community groups like Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) to do physical occupations of homes. But for those who had received a notice of default and a notice of sale — two steps in the foreclosure process that precede the auction of a property — Stardust was there with another tactic.

He spearheaded Occupy the Auctions. He shows up at City Hall at 1:30 every day and tries to disrupt foreclosure auctions. He’s been there continuously since April 27, 2012, and has stopped dozens of home sales. When fighting the eviction of a neighbor, he is sometimes backed by more than 100 people. But many days it’s just Stardust.

Now, Rhodes is in a loan modification process. Rather than conflicting and confusing machine-generated paper work, he gets regular calls about the status of his modification from a point person in Wells Fargo’s executive complaint office. He testified in Sacramento in favor of the Homeowners Bill of Rights, which passed July 2. He’s also become an Occupy Bernal organizer on top of his other volunteer pursuits.

Stardust battles mega-banks and the city’s wealthiest in his work. But he says the biggest challenge is helping people to get over the shame they feel when they realize they are facing foreclosure. “It’s not their fault,” he says. “It’s the system.”

Friends of Ethics

In the summer of 2011, at the behest of the Ethics Commission, the Board of Supervisors put on the ballot a measure that would have loosened some of the rules for campaign consultant reporting, and would have allowed further changes in the city’s landmark ethics laws without a vote of the people. It had unanimous support on the board — and frankly, technical changes in campaign laws are not the kind of sexy stuff that gets the public angry.

But a small group, led in part by five former ethics commissioners, took on the task of defeating the measure. The activists also took on the challenge of defeating Prop. E, which would have allowed the supervisors to amend future measures passed by the voters.

Despite being outspent by tens of thousands of dollars, Friends of Ethics — a small grassroots operation — prevailed. Both measures were defeated (32 percent to 67 percent in the case of Prop. E, the worst loss of all the local measures on the ballot).

The group is great at forming coalitions: in the case of the No on E and F campaign, Friends of Ethics reached out to some 30 organizations that formally joined in opposing the measures after hearing presentations.

The members of FOE are a fractious group of organizers and shit-disturbers who don’t always get along or agree on other issues. But they’ve come together to do something nobody else does: make protecting and expanding political reform laws a front-line priority.

And the battle goes on. Not long after the November 2011 election, Supervisor Scott Wiener introduced legislation that would have led to less disclosure of political contributions before an election, and would have made it easier to conceal who was making contributions and paying for campaign mailers. The Wiener bill would weaken campaign contribution limit, giving the wealthiest donors greater power in elections.

When the amendments were heard at a well-attended Rules Committee in June (with plenty of public comment from Friends of Ethics), the supervisors sent the amendments back to the Ethics Commission to be rewritten.

The next step for the Friends of Ethics is to work with interested supervisors to push for changes to the city’s campaign laws that will actually benefit the public, such as increased transparency in election contributions and expanded campaign restrictions for those receiving contracts and other benefits from the city.

In an era defined by the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United case and a nationwide assault on fair elections, it’s critical work.

Friends of Ethics can be reached at sfethicsfriend@gmail.com

2012 Local Heroes

The Occupy movement

When Adbusters magazine called for people to show up on September 17, 2011, in New York City to protest the way Wall Street was holding the country hostage, no one could have predicted what would emerge.

It was the start of a movement, and San Francisco heeded the call. About 100 people gathered in the city’s Financial District. They started camping. And the effort exploded.

In the first few weeks, camps sprung up across the country. In Chicago and Los Angeles, in Bethel, Alaska and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, people were drawn together. But, unlike most protests, they stayed together. Night after night.

Along the way, a certain prevailing narrative from outside observers never quite got it right. First the camps were dismissed as nothing but bratty college students and hippies. Then they were called dirty and filled with homeless people. (Occupy challenged the whole idea of a monolithic homeless population. Once they had a home in the Occupy tent cities, homeless people were just — shocker — people.)

By December, when most of the campers had been kicked out, the narrative shifted. Occupy was resting, hibernating, many declared. Some snickered at the fair-weather activists who would only come out in the sunshine.

But in the Bay Area, at least, that hibernation story was simply false. On December 12, Occupy Oakland brought out thousands for its second port shutdown, in solidarity with port workers. On January 20, downtown banks were forced to close for the day and people in the streets celebrated Occupy San Francisco’s shutdown of the financial district. A week later, 400 were arrested when thousands tried to turn a vacant Oakland building into a community center. This was no hibernation.

Actions in some way inspired or fueled by Occupy have continued into the spring and summer. On March 1, Occupy, with a focus on student debt and accessible education, formed the 99 Mile March. Dozens marched from the Bay Area to Sacramento to join thousands of students and supporters in calling for an end to cuts to education; hundreds then occupied the Capitol building. On April 22, Occupy, with a focus on food justice, formed the Gill Tract Occupy the Farm action. Hundreds took a UC Berkeley-stewarded tract of land slated for a baseball diamond and a Whole Foods and planted it, turning it into a farm with rows of crops, a kids space, and a permaculture garden. On June 15, Occupy formed the Lakeview sit-in and Peoples School for Public Education, which taught day camp to children and refused to leave a beloved Oakland elementary school, one of five slated for closure.

Police eventually won the many-months battle with most Occupy groups in the Bay Area. The camps are mostly gone, though a tenacious group keeps its 24-hour protest in front of the Federal Reserve.

But because of Occupy — and its accompanying burst in resistance, creativity, and the belief that we really can, and must, come together to do something — dozens of Bay Area residents remain in homes that were facing foreclosure. Hundreds of people who felt forgotten and abandoned have found community. Thousands have been inspired to start their own projects and work with others.

When Adbusters called Occupy Wall Street to action, it was under the banner of “democracy not corporatocracy.” That ain’t an easy project. But it has already made the world a better and more hopeful place. 

To be a poster artist during Occupy: Chuck Sperry on psychedelic art, social change, and port shutdowns

Andrew Lam
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To be a poster artist during Occupy: Chuck Sperry on psychedelic art, social change, and port shutdowns

With Occupy’s first anniversary sneaking up on us, has enough time past since its inception to reflect on its urban encampments and frightening conflicts with law enforcement in a rational, reasonable manner? Maybe rational is the wrong word — I’m sure many would agree that the movement’s major contributiont to date was a general firing up of the 99 percent, even of those 99 percenters who would sooner have ridden a bike to work than sit in on GA meeting in Oscar Grant Plaza. Through leaving its agenda undefined, Occupy allowed us all to paint our own hopes and dreams for the world onto it like a piece of drawing paper. 

For some more literally than others. This month, an exhibit opened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that accumulates the work of 25 Bay Area artists who spun their Occupy dreams into poster form. Chuck Sperry is perhaps one of the most well-known name of the bunch. Sperry’s lived in the Bay since 1989, and recently came home early from a camping trip to answer our questions about his relationship with Occupy, the way he distributed his “This Is Our City And We Can Shut It Down” prints on the day of the Oakland port shutdown, and general “what does art mean” token asks. 

SFBG: At what moment did you realize that Occupy was an important event? How did you first hear about it? 

CS: Through the beginning of 2011, I was creating an installation for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curated by Renee de Cossio, with artists Chris Shaw and Ron Donovan. Each artist would install work in one of three artists’ gallery windows on the side of the SFMOMA on Minna Street. The proposal for the installation was to bring the aesthetic of San Francisco’s poster traditions to painting, and to realize these in monumental form. I wanted this piece to reflect San Francisco’s poster history beginning in the freedom of speech movement through the 1960’s, and to also reflect the psychedelic tradition that gave birth to the rock poster.

While I was working on an 11-foot by nine-foot acrylic painting, I was following the progress of the Arab Spring movements, Tahrir Square, and the gathering Occupy Wall Street movement that was spreading across America. I decided to use my reaction to these events as inspiration for an iconographic painting titled, “Saint Everyone.” I wanted to express the opening mind, and spreading enlightened humanism, the decentralization of power — or awakening sense of people power — to the piece. I used vibrating, reactive colors to paint a figure holding an opening lotus (symbol of enlightenment), against a background of op-art circles, which communicate decentralization — that the background has many centers — like the movement which has no leaders.

“Saint Everyone” was installed at the SFMOMA in June 2011. So I was getting with it by then.

As Occupy Oakland was forming by the fall of 2011, my artist friend Jon-Paul Bail of Political Gridlock was printing his iconographic “Hella Occupy Oakland” posters on Frank Ogawa Plaza (re-named Oscar Grant Plaza) from the point when people were first gathering there. When I say printing, Jon-Paul Bail was printing live, right there, with a table set up in the open, printing and handing people freshly-made posters. In a few short weeks he had printed hundreds, if not, thousands of posters which were being handed out to people there. He was joined there on Oscar Grant Plaza by Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza of Dignidad Rebelde, who created more iconographic posters for the Occupy movement.

SFBG: What led to your decision to make art inspired by Occupy? Was it a different process than your other creative projects?

CS: In September I was in an art show, LA VS. WAR, with Bail, Barraza, and Cervantes, (among others) and we discussed making posters for the November 2 Occupy action to close the Port of Oakland. Fellow artist Chris Shaw — who was involved in the SFMOMA Window Gallery Installation — offered to pay for the production of any Occupy posters through the printing account of rock band Moonalice who was in solidarity with Occupy. 

I created “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” I usually work with images and take a lot of time to work my art into a design. In this case, the message was so overriding and important that I felt it was my job as an artist to stay out of the way, and let the words and message do their job. So in this way it was different. I used color theories learned in studying the long San Francisco tradition of psychedelic poster art, the use of hot colors against cold colors to make the words read from a half mile away — haha! I wanted a strong, radical message, used with bold nurturing colors that convey a positive emotion. It would not be a typical political poster.  

SFBG: How do you want your Occupy poster to be used?

CS: Chris Shaw and I discussed printing our posters on heavy paper stock, and printing on both sides to double the exposure we could give people to our message. You could use this poster as a placard, hold it up over your head. It would make quite an impression and be useful to the action. I stood at Oscar Grant Plaza next to the street and passed out nearly 1000 posters in 45 minutes to the front of the march, so when television camares picked up the action at the Port of Oakland, the front of the march was a sea of my poster with the message, “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” No one directed us to make these posters. No one asked. We just did it. And passed them out.

SFBG: What’s been some of your favorite protest art throughout history?

CS: I am very inspired by Emory Douglas‘ art in the Black Panther Party newspaper. I’ve had the honor to work with Mr. Douglas to reprint some of his iconic images. I also am very fond of the French Situationist posters of May 1968, and had the good fortune to print a poster, while I was visiting Paris to make a poster show about five years ago, on the very same press that produced these memorable images. When my artist friend told me that Guy Debord had worked with artists on this very same press, I laughed and dropped to my knees and just could not believe it.

Sperry at Occupy

I invited Jon-Paul Bail to collaborate in teaching a class at the Free University of San Francisco, as I’m organizing the art department of that cooperatively-organized free school. We told the story of making posters for the Occupy movement and created a poster for the Occupy Education action last spring. I think the ideas coming together from the Occupy protests will move through society in a very healthy and transformative way. There’s no way to stop people once they have been awakened to their potential. 

SFBG: What is the role of art in social protest?

CS: Art can reach many people in many walks of life. I was invited by San Francisco’s Varnish fine art gallery to exhibit at SCOPE / Miami in conjunction with Art Basel Miami art fair. Even in the context of the fine art world I felt it was important to express the social revolution that was taking place through the Occupy movement, and created a piece titled, “Mind Spring,” which expressed some of the same ideas I put in my SFMOMA painting and my Occupy poster. In “Mind Spring”, I created an icon of the worldwide Occupy movement and it’s antecedent in the Arab Spring. The figure wreathed in blooming spring flowers is a representation of the surprising enlightened humanism, the opening mind, the broadened socio-political possibilities which has swept the world in 2011.

I’ve had many discussions about the role of political art over the years. Two solutions to this problem constantly come to mind, first, “content over style” — that content is more important than style. Your message is the most important element in creating art of social protest. Second, that “the personal is political”, your own experience is so very often shared by others all over the world. When you make a piece of art in social protest, and just tell your story from your own perspective, and you do not hold back, you will be describing a situation that is shared by others half a world away. It’s uncanny, but our local problems are very similar to everyone else’s globally. So get in there and try to change what you can from where you are. Many hands make light work.  

“Occupy Bay Area”

Through Oct. 14

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

Dick Meister: Labor and the media

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www,dickmeister,com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

The coming of the Internet has had a profound impact on media coverage of working people and their unions. No, the mainstream media have not expanded their generally limited and shallow labor reporting or their generally anti-labor editorial positions. But there now are dozens of non-mainstream websites and blogs, such as the Bay Guardian’s, that provide in-depth labor coverage. The print versions of union newspapers and newsletters could never reach the very much larger audience that’s now available via the Internet.

There are even pro-labor broadcast outlets, such as Pacifica Radio’s KPFT in Houston, that cover labor issues in depth. The broadcasts and labor websites and blogs expose many people to labor activities and issues they may not otherwise have heard of, or understand – including pro-labor views,

Use of the Internet also has made it easier for unions to communicate with their own members.

But there’s still a major problem. Those pro-labor online outlets don’t necessarily reach the general audience that labor needs to reach. They primarily or solely reach only labor supporters and union members who often are in effect talking only to each other.

That may be good for the morale of unions and union supporters and provide them ammunition to use in their struggles. But unions need to reach a broader audience if they are to effectively combat the anti-unionism that’s so commonly voiced in the mainstream media.

How would they do that? That’s not for me to say, but I am confident that it can be done. After all, unions got their message out in the pre-Internet years when the media were at least as ant-labor as they are today, probably even more so.

The pre-Internet newspapers that unions had to rely on to spread their message were at best indifferent to working people and their unions. That basic situation hasn’t much changed. As in those days, it isn’t so much that the mainstream media are anti-union – though they are that – but that their labor coverage is generally limited. In-depth reporting of labor issues is as rare as pro-labor editorials.

As in the pre-Internet days, many of today’s media outlets are not much interested in covering labor except in a clearly anti-labor manner. They devote their closest attention to critics of union actions and especially the attacks on the public employees who have become the vanguard of the labor movement and thus the main target of anti-union forces.

But at least the Internet gives unionized workers and their supporters an option,  and their militant actions, such as those opposing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker,  have forced many in the previously labor-indifferent media to pay close attention to their activities, however much they may disparage them.

But it remains that despite the complexity of labor issues and the importance of labor to many of their readers, very few of today’s newspapers have reporters who are assigned to cover labor exclusively.  mainstream radio and TV stations have never had such reporters.

Some media outlets assign labor coverage to business reporters, who typically cover labor from the generally adversarial approach of their business sources. They’re concerned with the effect of labor on business, and, of course, labor’s role in politics, which is also usually covered from a non-union, if not anti-union point of view.

Internal union matters such as the election of officers are generally ignored unless there’s a scandal involved. Strikes that draw lots of public attention are heavily covered, but with the stress on the strikes’ affect on the general public rather than on the issues involved. Only very rarely does a mainstream media outlet side with a striking union or even explain the union’s position thoroughly.

Part of the reason for this is simply that newspapers and other mainstream outlets generally are themselves in adversarial relationships with unions – those that represent their employees.

During the formative years of American unions long before the Internet, when unions engaged in highly visible and often exciting organizing attempts, newspapers had little choice but to cover their activities in some detail.  Union activity was news, big news, as it has again become just recently with massive pro-worker demonstrations nationwide.

But there is a major difference between then and now. In those pre-Internet years labor was covered extensively and usually by reporters assigned to that specific task. Virtually every newspaper had a labor reporter or two.

But the number of labor reporters has declined steadily ever since organized labor established itself and became merged into the middle class, ever since its activities lost their novelty, and were expanded to encompass complex matters far beyond the easily covered issue of simply seeking union recognition.

The major turning point came just after World War II. At first there was a great deal of newsworthy labor activity, including many strikes and other highly visible actions as union members sought to make up for the compensation they lost under the tight wage and price controls that prevailed during the war years.

But after that surge of postwar strikes, labor turned to less exciting, less visible activities that are not as easily covered  as are strikes and related matters. That takes expert labor reporters and few have been available. That basic situation has not changed over the past half-century.

There have been some important exceptions to the dismal mainstream media coverage of labor in recent years, notably including the country’s major newspaper of record. The New York Times still covers labor fairly and in some detail, and its labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, is among the best U.S. reporters of any kind.

Most media outlets, however, are still concerned primarily with labor’s militant actions and cover even those superficially. Most see no need for coverage that goes beyond the surface excitement, no need for expert reportage, although some recent labor actions, such as those of the Occupy Wall Street movement, have forced the media to look closer at some issues that previously have been only superficially examined – if examined at all.

There are, in any case, too few mainstream reporters who are adequately versed in labor matters. There are too few who have the trust of workers and their unions, which naturally hesitate to provide them much of the information that’s needed to adequately and fairly explain labor’s positions. The result has been labor coverage that’s generally shallow, often uninformed and frequently biased.

Unfortunately, that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www,dickmeister,com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Our Weekly Picks: June 27-July 3

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 27

“Turbulence (a dance about the economy)”

Breaking down the proscenium is one thing. Favoring installations over stage presentation is another. But messing with the distinction of representation and participation is something else entirely. No one I know of so radically questions the very essence of performance as does Keith Hennessy. What do you call it when in the process of creation, the viewer disappears into the action? For Hennessy it’s a political act. “Turbulence, (a dance about the economy),” which he describes as a “collaborative failure,” was already in the making when Occupy Wall Street exploded. Just as in life, during the “Turbulence” presence at CounterPULSE last December, some people stepped up, others left, the majority sat and waited. (Rita Felciano)

8pm, free

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2060

www.counterpulse.org


THURSDAY 28

Andy Rourke of the Smiths (DJ set)

Your inner disco dancer better not be dead, because Smiths bassist Andy Rourke is coming to town, with a crate of records in tow. Ever since he moved to NYC from across the pond, Rourke has become a fixture in the city’s DJ circuit. Instead of aiming for a unified sound with his sets, he jumps impulsively between pop, funk, and electronica, compiling a vibrantly erratic patchwork quilt of his musical influences. Will Rourke tip his hat to the Mozfather with a few beloved Smiths numbers when we least expect it? Only one way to find out, so, clubgoers of the world unite! (Taylor Kaplan)

With Aaron Axelsen and Omar

10pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

Russian Circles

These dudes produce a lot of noise for just three people. The Chicago-based Russian Circles employ heavy use of effects pedals to layer their instrumental, wallowing metal, creating a deep pitß of sound. Their songs seamlessly transition from chugging, mathematical guitar riffs to soft, melodic interludes. In concert, the band is impressively able to replicate and expand upon their complex recorded work, which features enough tempo, time signature, and key shifts to awe anyone with a basic understanding of music theory. It’s metal for the thinking (wo)man, but not to worry, it still shreds. (Haley Zaremba)

With Deafheaven, And So I Watch You From Afar

8pm, $14

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com


FRIDAY 29

“The Official Blues Brothers Revue”

With an all-star musical cast and the comedic genius of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, the beloved 1980 film The Blues Brothers paired one of the best soundtracks of all time with an action packed storyline that continues to thrill. The movie — which screens at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland on Friday night — has also inspired a top notch musical tribute show, “The Official Blues Brothers Revue,” featuring the talents of Wayne Catania and Kieron Lafferty as Jake and Elwood, all with the approval of Belushi’s estate and Aykroyd. So put on your suits, shades, and fedoras and get ready to join the boys this weekend on their “mission from God!” (Sean McCourt)

Fri/29-Sat/30, 8 and 10pm, $25–$35

Yoshi’s

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

 

Pepper 19-Year Anniversary

It’s been 19 years since a gaggle of scruffy dance-and-drink fanatics took over Monday nights at Don’s Different Ducks bar in the Lower Haight, spun some funky house records, and imbibed with abandon, often using the plywood-covered pool table as a dance floor. Pepper, they called it, and although it’s moved around a lot since the Don’s days (it was one of the Guardian’s favorite roving parties of the 1990s), it’s still held strong, retaining its ragtag aura even as its players have become lionized. For this installment, at 222 Hyde in the Tenderloin, DJ Charlotte the Baroness returns from her new home in Chicago to join originator Toph One, fresh out of the hospital after a tragic hit-and-run, on the decks with the Pepper family. Good friends, good fortune, new faces, no-holds-barred dancing. (Marke B.)

9pm, $5

222 Hyde, SF

(415) 345-8222

www.222hyde.com

 

Dent May

She visits from Brooklyn, he attempts to show her a fun time. “You Can’t Force a Dance Party,” from 2009’s The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele, wryly introduced May as an affective personality to rival Jonathan Richman and Jens Lekman. It’s not hard to see the autobiographical elements in his music when he sings of his native state, “For you I’ll try so hard to make you see, it ain’t so bad in Mississippi.” Dropping out of NYU, May returned home to work on music and helped found the Cats Purring arts collective/”infotainment cult.” With his new release, Do Things — a slice of sun that sounds like the product of playing with a drum machine after listening to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” on repeat/acid — May proves that the party is wherever he goes. (Prendiville)

With Quintron and Miss Pussycat

9pm, $9–$12

New Parish

579 18th St., Oakl.

www.thenewparish.com

 

Sat/30 9:30pm, $10–$12

With Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Shannon and the Clams

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF (415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

 

Sandwell District

The SF techno scene blossomed nicely in spring, a kaleidoscope of pixellated textures, live experiments, and visiting representatives of a global scene unburdened from any anti-intellectual strains by the rise of pop EDM. There was also some damn good dancing to be had, no lie. Perhaps auguring a summer full of even deeper, and, perhaps, harder sounds, a showcase from Berlin’s Sandwell District label kicks the season off with some sophisticated boom-boom from Function, Rrose, and Silent Servant at Public Works, presented by the As You Like It party crew. Entrancing UK slow-burn disco king Mark E gives something to swing our skirts to upstairs, and the whole shebang kicks off with the debut of Amélie Ravalec’s documentary Paris/Berlin: 20 Years of Underground Techno. (Marke B.)

9pm, $15–$20

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.ayli-sf.com


SATURDAY 30

The Slow Motion Cowboys

The music of the Slow Motion Cowboys has a subtle summery ease — it makes you want to pick up a banjo and play along, perhaps while sipping some lemonade out on the porch. You’d close your eyes and strum along to the sounds of upright bass, gentle guitar picking, baritone ukulele, and fiddle. The group’s original songwriting style and arrangements capture that wistful feeling of yearning that so characterizes classic folk and bluegrass music. While contemporary enough to strike interest in a city audience, their sound is country enough to provide you with much needed peace of mind on a Saturday night out on the town. (Shauna C. Keddy)

6pm, $8–$10

Amnesia

835 Valencia, SF

(415) 970- 0012

www.amnesiathebar.com

 

Kafana Balkan

Admit it: you could use a lot more woozy oompah-pah in your life, a splash of wheeling fiddle-dee-dee, soaring hurrah, and bouncey bass arpeggio. Forget the automated four-four march of your quotidian existence, and whirl away from the rat race like a romanticized gypsy, a musical nomad free of the cubicle, the log-in, the comments section, the endless update. Kafana Balkan, one of our best Romani-inspired parties, mixes gypsy tunes and strong drink with a wee bit of playa dust to conjure non-stop ecstatic dancing: this blowout with live powerhouses Brass Menazeri and Fishtank Ensemble (and fantastic DJ Zeljko) is just the ticket to chase away any reality blues. (Marke B.)

9pm, $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF.

www.slimspresents.com


SUNDAY 1

Party Hard(ing)

When it comes to the high stakes game of gentrification, the Divisadero Corridor — lovingly dubbed DivCo by the passels of farmers market-minded individuals that have repopulated the once-African American, once-Western Addition — is betting high. The neighborhood has the critical mass of sustainability activists needed to launch high profile wars against big bank incursion, and drive the conversation on what kinds of new businesses belong on their street. The Harding Theater at 616 Divisadero is a new battle site. Neighborhood groups hope to thwart the efforts of condo developers and make it a community space. Today, come party and fundraise to that end with local vendors, barbers, musicians, and chefs in a gorgeous Alamo Square mansion. (Caitlin Donohue)

7-10pm, $20

Westerfield Mansion

1988 Fulton, SF

Facebook: Party Hard(ing)

www.nddivis.org

 

Lower Dens

Ever since Lower Dens made some year-end lists with 2010’s Twin Hand Movement, bandleader Jana Hunter has kept Kraftwerk’s Radio-Activity in heavy rotation. And, it shows. The Baltimore outfit’s breakthrough follow-up record, Nootropics, doubles down on thick, Krautrockabilly grooves, with the Zen-like propulsion of Lou Reed cruising the Autobahn. The production aesthetic is fascinating in its ability to sound both dry and soaked in reverb, and the album’s second half reveals a newfound interest in Musique concrète, giving the material an artier edge. Sure, they’ve upped their studio game, but the question remains: how will the band rock these songs in a live setting? (Kaplan)

With No Joy, Alan Resnick

8pm, $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


MONDAY 2

The Casualties

Punk’s not dead! The Casualties made sure of it when they formed in New York in 1990 with the purpose of bringing punk back to its roots, in the style of the Exploited and pre-Rollins Black Flag. More than 20 years and eight studio albums later, they’re following through on their proclamation “The punx are fucking here/ You know who we are/ We’re here til the end/ Die hards! Die hards!” With over two decades to perfect their stage dives and liberty spikes, the Casualties are guaranteed to deliver a killer show. Expect some brutal circle pits. (Zaremba)

With Nekromantix, Down By Law, Lower Class Brats, the Sheds

7pm, $16

Oakland Metro Opera House

630 Third St, Oakl.

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Guardian voices: Outside the Bay Area Bubble

Zelda Bronstein
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Guardian voices: Outside the Bay Area Bubble

This week I’m back in the midwest, where my roots are strong and my mother is approaching her retirement years. I’m thinking about the vast geographic and cultural distance –both real and imagined — between the San Francisco, California where I now live, and the great state of Iowa, which made me so much of who I am.

Here I am, sweating through a ridiculously muggy midwest summer heatwave, thinking about how it is that I am black, a lifelong social justice activist and organizer, and a married, dyke mama who hails from a small, working-class Iowa town where sweet corn and tomatoes once grew in my own backyard.

When I tell people that I’m from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, there is a kind of shocked silence I’ve become accustomed to. I’m used to people’s confusion about how I – given my politics and identities — could possibly be from such a place. And, while I find it extremely problematic, I’ve also gotten used to a dismissive arrogance about Iowa, a comfortable ignorance about the heartland, and a total failure to comprehend why I long for my Nana’s lilac-lined house at 1339 10th Street and why I have so much hope for middle America.

I work, organize and am raising a family in the “Bay Area bubble” but being from Iowa has developed in me core values that are decidedly anti-bubble, and deeply pro-working America. My ancestors built the wealth of this nation, and I consider the whole place mine – to love and rage over, to listen to and understand, to organize and to challenge. I have not committed my life to social change just for a privileged few on the East and West Coasts. This is, fundamentally about all of us, the 99 percent in San Francisco, through the heartland, down South and all the way to upper tip of Maine.

My four-year-old son was born in San Francisco, and he is a proud Frisco kid through and through. We have a multi-racial community that dances and organizes for justice together, he considers Salvadoran pupusas a special treat, and he loves remembering the day the Giants won the World Series and it seemed like everyone in the city was a member of the same big family.

But today, I’m writing from a cramped apartment in a seven-story public housing building in Michigan where my mother now lives with her scores of books, photography equipment and cute dresses from QVC. She and I are from a clan of Gibsons, black folks from working-class Iowa where my great grandparents worked on the railroads, and where my grandfather slaughtered pigs and went on strike with his white coworkers to defend the gains of their union.

We’re from the Iowa, where my mother attended black churches as a child and found Islam as an adult, and where she, as a struggling single mother, read black feminist poetry and first fought battles with Ronald Reagan’s backwards welfare policies.

We’re from the Iowa that is a center of agribusiness and everything that’s bad about corporate food production in this country. We’re from the Iowa that rallied for Jesse Jackson’s run for president, voted for same-sex marriage, and where Obama won the caucuses back in 2008.

But Iowa has also gone from unionized, inter-racial meatpacking plants to non-union poultry factories that exploit undocumented Latino workers from as far away as El Salvador and Guatemela. We’re from the Iowa that is indeed mostly white, where my first best friend grew up – a sweet white working class red head – and our mothers shared survival stories of single, working-poor motherhood. And I’m from the Cedar Rapids, Iowa that, unlike San Francisco, is actually growing its black population and is home to a thriving center of African American community history.

For most of my adult life, as I’ve been marching against war and racism, I’ve also been defending this Iowa, fighting against the tendency toward self-righteous superiority I’ve found among too many activists in the Bay and on the East Coast. It’s the same arrogance that the Right exploits in its scandalous but effective pseudo-populist campaigns against so-called liberal elitism.

It’s my experience that people on the left think they know what it means to be Iowan. Iowans are used as stand-in for a stereotypical idea of backwards, irrationally racist white America that ‘doesn’t vote its class interests’; Iowa is a convenient marker for everything less cool, hip, cosmopolitan and liberal than, well, San Francisco.

This kind of dismissive arrogance leads to a refusal to develop, in any meaningful, long-term way, an organizing agenda for the majority of the country, and has been one of the errors of progressive politics for a long time.

We can change this. When we are thinking about the politics of immigration policy, Occupy Wall Street, gay marriage, the movement against corporate food policy, or the politics of race, poverty and labor unions, we have to think about Iowa. Think about the white working class Republicans. Think about my mom’s friend in Iowa, raised on an old fashioned farm and now leading an organic farming collective there. Think about the proud struggle for small farms, union work, and participatory democracy there.

And think about what it will really take to make the Bay, Iowa and the whole nation a place where we can all develop our full human potential, have true mutual respect for one another, and are able to struggle through our deep divisions without exclusionary moral superiority, top-down “we know what’s best for you” politics and where all of us who want to live out our old age on a quiet lilac-lined porch in Iowa, can do so in peace and dignity.
As we make our plan to build a new progressive majority, let’s stay open-minded and take our organizing to a whole new level.

Occupy Caravan takes off to the National Gathering

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Occupy Caravan takes off to the National Gathering

This looks familiar!

Jan. 17, we proposed Occupy Nation, an idea that those energized and organized by Occupy come together on July 4, 2012 for a national gathering to get some planning done. We also proposed that the journey across the US be a part of the action, and that people get together in vans for a freedom-ride inspired experience. Well, it’s happening- although, of course, it wasn’t all our idea. But they are using our cover art!

The Occupy Caravan is an ever-expanding crew of people getting together for a two-week journey across the US. There are two starting points, Los Angeles and San Francisco- and the San Francisco caravan is taking off June 11. The caravans will stop at Occupy sites along the way for protests, education and entertainment, before arriving in Philadelphia for the June 30 Occupy National Gathering.

The poster declares, “bring tents!” But according to an Occupy Caravan organizer known as Buddy, sleeping arrangements that won’t risk police meddling are planned at every stop.

“We have a bunch of secure and fun locations- there’s a slumber party at one, a march and then staying at a church at another, a supporter’s camp ground where we can park the RVs,” said Buddy.

“We’re not risking people getting arrested,” he said. “Everything is legal and nonviolent.”

In theory, anyone who wants to can show up, on foot or with a vehicle, and join the caravan. But if you want to secure a spot, according to Buddy, it’s best to sign up online beforehand.

“We’re getting 30 to 50 calls and emails a day about rides,” Buddy told me of the last chaotic week before the trip launches.

The National Gathering isn’t the only nationwide Occupy plan for this summer. It isn’t the only one in Philadelphia either. Or for the July 4 weekend. There’s also the 99 Percent Declaration, billed as a “Continental Congress 2.0”

It looks like these big get-togethers are part of the form Occupy will take this summer. What with a big and chaotic May Day, an even more tumultuous anti-Nato convergence in Chicago, and continuing home defenses, occupations of public spaces, and innumerable local actions across the country, the Occupy movement is in a very different state than it was in the winter when the Gathering and the Caravan were in their beginning planning stages.

“The movement has grown,” Buddy told me. “It’s less than a year old. It was an infant early on, and grew very quickly, but its getting stronger. We’re going back to the simply core message of economic equality and justice.”

After the National Gathering, the caravan will join the Occupy Guitarmy for its “99 Mile March” to New York. The Guitarmy is a travelling group of musicians that bills itself as “the world’s first open source band,” best known for its march on May 1 in New York City, led by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.

As we said in the Occupy America proposal: “The important thing is to let this genie out of the bottle, to move Occupy into the next level of politics, to use a convention, rally, and national event to reassert the power of the people to control our political and economic institutions — and to change or abolish them as we see fit.” One thing is clear: Occupy hasn’t given up yet.

Green presidential candidate seeks to energize the disenfranchised

Sasha Cuttler
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Green presidential candidate seeks to energize the disenfranchised

After participating in last weekend’s Green Party presidential debate against Roseanne Barr in San Francisco, which we cover in this week’s paper, frontrunner candidate Jill Stein stopped by the Bay Guardian office to chat about her hopes for progressive change in this tumultuous political year.

“The political-corporate establishment should not be given a pass in the voting booth,” the Massachusetts physician told us. “Four more years of Wall Street rule is what we get if you give them your vote.”

She ticked off a litany of bipartisan failures from the Democratic and Republican parties, from reforming Wall Street and narrowing the wealth gap to seriously addressing climate change and this country’s wasteful wars, and said people are fed up and want fundamental reforms.

“The rebellion is in full swing, you just don’t hear about it from the press,” she said. “With the exception of the Bay Guardian, we don’t have a press. We have an o-press and a re-press.”

This is Stein’s first run for national office, but she already faced off against presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race, garnering just 3.5 percent of the vote but winning praise in the Boston Globe for her debate performance. She thinks both Romney and Obama are vulnerable this year, although she said, “I’m not holding my breath that we’re going to win, but I’m not running to lose.”

Her plan is to wage an aggressive grassroots and social media campaign to capitalize on the discontent most Americans feel with both major political parties, and to hopefully catch enough fire to reach 15 percent support in national polls, the threshold for getting into the presidential debates. “If we can get into the debates, we can really change things.”

To get there, Stein plans to reach out to a wide variety of groups on the left and across the spectrum, including supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which she toured last year, visiting 25 encampments across the country, most of them populated by people wary of modern electoral politics.

“When I go to Occupy, I go to support them and not ask for their support,” Stein said, saying that she understood their belief that the electoral system is broken, but that it’s important to participate in it as part of a multi-pronged movement for social change that includes presidential politics. “Can we beat back the predator without have an organization? No, we need a party.”

She thinks the Green Party best represents the values of disenfranchised Americans and has the best vision for where this county needs to go, and she said, “We’re finding all kinds of networks are really getting energized and promoting us.”

Love on wheels

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In honor of our annual bike issue, we wanted to highlight a few of the free-wheeling people that polished our spokes this year. Keep on pumpin’!

KAREN WEINER AND BRETT THURBER, NEW WHEEL

On a family-oriented strip of Cortland Avenue perched halfway up the precipitous heights of Bernal Hill, husband-wife team Karen Weiner and Brett Thurber have invested their all in an enterprise some would deem experimental: the first electric bike shop in San Francisco.

Photo by Mirissa Neff

“San Francisco is really the perfect place for these bikes,” said Thurber when we went on a test ride with him and Weiner around the city. Iron-thighed fixie fans notwithstanding, he’s right — there are some neighborhoods in this city where the average bear will only be able to bring a bike if he or she pushes it up the final blocks of incline. For older bikers, the e-bikes (as they are lovingly dubbed by their adherents) make it possible to zip around town, car and fancy-free. Plus, they are disturbingly fun — when else can you cruise up Twin Peaks and still be breathing easy when you reach that panoramic view?

Other stores around town do sell certain models of e-bikes, but Thurber and Weiner’s new New Wheel is the first place to specialize in them. It stocks European and Canadian-made models in addition to retrofitting kits so that normie bikes can be tricked out with motors capable of doubling one’s pedaling power.

Thurber says business has been steadily growing, and that he’s noticed that the electric bike is not a purchase taken lightly by consumers — often times a customer will come by the store six or seven times before taking that heady ride into pedal power (perhaps indicative of the bikes’ spendy pricetags.)

“People are really making this mindful shift instead of listening to us be like ‘just do it,'” says the man who hopes to be SF’s e-bike proselytizer. (Caitlin Donohue)

New Wheel, 420 Cortland, SF. (415) 524-7362, www.newwheel.net

 

PAUL JORDAN’S BIKE CAVALRY

Twenty years ago, Critical Mass began demonstrating the power and potential of mass bike rides to make a political statement by seizing space from cars and confounding the authorities. Almost 10 years ago, anti-war cyclists in San Francisco borrowed Critical Mass tactics to interfere with business as usual on daily Bikes Not Bombs rides that also proved effective and hard to police. Today, as the tides of protest again rise with the Occupy Wall Street and related movements, Paul Jordan and other founders of the new collective SF Bike Cavalry ( sfbikecavalry.org) are reviving and expanding the concept.

Photo by Tim Daw

“It’s all kinda new, definitely more of a buzzword at this point,” Jordan, a 38-year-old painting contractor, said when we caught up with him and his cycling comrades during last week’s May Day marches. “But the idea is to use bicycles for activism.”

As they demonstrated on May Day, even a dozen or so cyclists can send loud messages to passersby or nimbly create opportunities for marchers to safely seize the streets, all while riding more-or-less legally. And they can use whimsy — silly costumes, funny signs, big smiles, blowing bubbles — to defuse any tensions.

“It’s hard to be mad when you’re stuck in traffic if you see bubbles,” Jordan said as he reloaded the bubble machine on the back of his bike. “I see bubbles as a very good activist tool.”

The Cavalry is a fairly new venture, which Jordan first displayed for big Jan. 20 protests, but he sees it as something with enormous potential: “We want to figure out how to grow this bigger.” (Steven T. Jones)

SAM KROYER AND RENITA TAYLOR, ROLL SF

Sometimes it seems like the Mission has as many bike shops as taquerias, but the neighborhoods east of Potrero lacks the same double-wheelin’ bounty. Sam Kroyer and Renita Taylor met in their Bernal Heights neighborhood, where Kroyer used to run a repair shop out of his garage. Taylor is an avid biker, and the two decided to meld their respective strengths — Kroyer’s mechanical prowess and Taylor’s business know-how — and create a service-oriented shop near Potrero Hill for every type of rider.

Photo by Mirissa Neff

“We’re really trying to make it for everybody, from entry-level commuter bikers to bikers with really crazy exotic $20,000+ bikes,” Kroyer says. Kroyer has 25 year of experience as a bike mechanic, and Taylor is a sharp businesswoman who spent several years working in the entertainment industry.

Roll SF seems like an outpost in an area not known, for now, as a cycling nexus, but its atmosphere is friendly and accessible. A long wooden table runs through the center of the shop, welcoming guests to sit down and stay awhile — to use the shop’s free wi-fi while they wait, watch and ask questions, or eat dinner. Kroyer provides you with his utmost attention and quickly diagnoses your bike. If it’s a fast fix, he’ll handle it promptly with the grace cultivated by years spent engaging with a multifaceted machine. “We’re trying to make sure you come away with a great experience — that you feel like you’ve really gotten something taken care of properly,” Kroyer says. (Mia Sullivan)

275 Rhode Island, SF. (415) 701-ROLL, www.rollsanfrancisco.com

 

SONS OF SCIENCE

Are you on a motherfucking bike? Tell me you’re reading this on a motherfucking bike, doing the Tour de Fuck You. Sing with me, “No greenhouse gas! A tiny carbon footprint up your ass!” Then launch into the wickedest bike horn solo ever.

You know what I’m talking about. “Motherfucking Bike” by Sons of Science (sonsofscience.bandcamp.com), the profane viral hymn to SF peddlin’ that’s closing in on a million YouTube views and has been Tweeted liberally by the likes of Russell Crowe and Juliette Lewis. Sure it plays on every fixie hipster stereotype you can image — it’s the “Shit San Franciscans Say” for mutton-chopped, skinny-pantsed, non-fat latte-quaffing riders — but it’s pretty damn funny. (And catchy. It is maniacally catchy. So be warned.)

Sons of Science are a freewheeling trio: Ward Evans and John Benson, who direct for Sausage Films (www.sausagefilms.com), and Hector Perez, a.k.a. Horn Solo. “We’ve known each other for years and just recently decided to collaborate for fun, and it clicked. It was a great excuse to do a video. For this track we were also very lucky to feature Tim Brooks, formerly of the Young Offenders, who plays the ‘Angry Commuter’. He brought a pantsload of energy and genuine cyclist cred,” Evan told me. Also featured: the guys from that delicious new MASH shop (www.mashsf.com) near Duboce Park.

When asked about his own motherfucking bike heroes, Evans replied, “A guy named Joff Summerfield rode a penny farthing around the globe. He’d be right up there.” (Marke B.)

 

Only real change can avert more conflict

Sasha Cuttler
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This week’s May Day events brought together immigrant groups, labor unions, and activists with the Occupy movement to confront gross inequities in our economic and political systems. That’s a healthy democratic exercise, even if it sometimes provokes tense standoffs with police and property interests. But the day was marred by violence that didn’t need to happen, and that’s a dangerous situation that could only get worse.

The Oakland Police Department debuted new crowd control policies to manage marches of several thousand people, and there were some improvements over its previous “military-type responses” that have placed the OPD under the oversight of federal courts. For example, when the decision was made to clear Frank Ogawa Plaza around 8:30 p.m., police allowed escape routes (instead of using dangerous kettle-and-arrest tactics), clearly visible public information officers were available to answer questions, and people were allowed to return shortly thereafter.

“We’re not attempting to permanently clear the plaza, we just want things to settle down,” OPD spokesperson Robyn Clark told me at the scene.

But the OPD continues to provoke conflicts and mistrust with its confrontational tactics, even as it argues that such tactics are actually intended to improve its approach to handling large demonstrations. “Today’s strategy focused on swiftly addressing any criminal behavior that would damage property or jeopardize public or officer safety. Officers were able to identify specific individuals in the crowd committing unlawful acts and quickly arrest them so the demonstration could continue peacefully,” OPD wrote in press release late Tuesday night.

That sounds nice, but it’s only partially true, and the entire situation is a lot more complicated and volatile than that. Clark and witnesses told me at the scene that the dispersal order came after police charged into a crowd of several hundred, perhaps more than 1,000, to arrest someone with a stay-away order and were met with an angry reaction from the crowd.

What did they expect? The city decided to seek stay-away orders against many Occupy Oakland protesters – a barely constitutional act that only fans divisions between the city and protesters – and then to execute them at a time when elements of both sides were itching for a fight anyway. Perceptions become reality in a scene like that, which can quickly escalate out of control (which is what happened – almost all the property damage in Oakland occurred after the plaza was cleared by police).

“These pigs can’t wait to come in here and bust us up,” speaker Robbie Donohoe told the crowd shortly before the sound permit ended at 8 pm, warning people to leave soon is they didn’t want to assume the risk of a violent confrontation with police.

It wasn’t an unreasonable expectation after watching police decked out in riot gear, loaded down with tear gas canisters, and gathered around an armored vehicle with military-style LRAD sound weapon since mid-afternoon. Donohoe wasn’t advocating violence, but an important revolutionary and constitutional principle: the right to assemble and seek redress of our grievances.

“They didn’t have a permit in Egypt, they didn’t have a permit in Tunisia, and we don’t need a permit here! If you want to stay, you stay!” he said.

Many Americans share that viewpoint, and they’re frustrated that political corruption and economic exploitation have continued unabated since the Occupy Wall Street movement began almost eight months ago. And many young people – particularly the Black Bloc kids who show up with shields and weapons, ready to fight – are prepared to take those frustrations out in aggressive ways, as we saw Monday night during their rampage through the Mission District.

Witnesses and victims of that car- and storefront-smashing spree are understandably frustrated both with the perpetrators and the San Francisco Police Department, whose officers watched it happen and did nothing to stop it or apprehend those who did it. SFPD spokesperson Daryl Fong told us it just happened too quickly, with less than 20 officers on hand to deal with more than 150 vandals.

“Obviously, you have people with hammers, crowbars, and pipes engaged in this kind of act, with the number of officers involved, it was challenging and difficult to control,” he told us.

In both Oakland and San Francisco, the reasons for the escalation of violence were the same: police officer safety. That’s why OPD asserts the right to use overwhelming force against even the slightest provocation, and it’s why the SFPD says they could do nothing even when the Mission Police Station came under attack.

Now, I’m not going to second-guess these decisions by police, even though we should theoretically have more control over their actions than any of us do those of angry Black Bloc kids, although I do think both of these sides are looking for trouble and invested in the paradigm of violent conflict.

Rather, I think it’s time for our elected leaders, from Mayor Ed Lee to President Barack Obama, to stop giving lip service to supporting the goals and ideals of the Occupy movement and start taking concrete actions that will benefit the 99 percent and diffuse some of these tensions. This is dangerous game we’re all planning, and we’re teetering on the edge of real chaos that will be difficult to reel back in once it begins.

“We are not criminals. We are workers, we pay rent, we own homes,” Alicia Stanio, an immigrant and labor organizer for the Pacific Steel Casting Company, told a crowd of thousands that had gathered in San Antonio Park in Oakland, where three marches converged on their way to City Hall, carefully monitored by a phalanx of cops.

She and thousands like her didn’t march or speak or risk violence on May Day just because they like being in the streets. They’re desperate for change, real change, and it’s time that our leaders begin to deliver it before things really get out of hand in this country.

 

Shawn Gaynor contributed to this report.

What’s going on for Bay Area May Day?

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UPDATE: The Golden Gate Labor Coalition has announced a change of plans. Instead of Golden Gate Bridge pickets, the coalition will be supporting a strike of ferry workers, who plan to bring all morning ferry service to a standstill. They have announced that the actions at the Golden Gate Bridge are cancelled, and instead workers will be demonstrating in solidarity with ferry workers in Larkspur- specific locations will be announced later today.

May 1, International Workers Day — May Day — used to strike fear into the hearts of bosses. The first May Day in 1867 was a fight for the eight-hour workday in Chicago (see more history at Citizen Radio at the Occupy Oakland Tribune). Since then, May 1 has remained a day when grievances are aired, when students and workers party in the street, when people strike in ways that shows whose really boss (you can’t have that work that keeps everything running without all those workers.) But mostly in other countries.

In the US, the day has diminished in importance, although it has resurged in recent years focused on immigrants rights. But what with Occupy Wall Street, labor and union organizing ramping up, and student strikes, and all these people working more and more closely together, May Day is coming back to the US.

The Bay Area certainly won’t be left out. Here is a list of May Day events, starting tonight and ending–well, who knows when. If you know of others, write them in the comments: it wouldn’t be a decentralized massive attempt at a full-on general strike without you!

THE NIGHT BEFORE (Mon/30)

5:30pm, San Francisco:

City workers from SEIU Local 1021 will gather at City Hall in a continued offensive surrounding their ongoing contract negotiations. The program runs until 7:30 pm, but the protest will go on “until they kick us out!”

8pm, San Francisco:

“The strike starts early” with a gathering at Dolores Park. According to a press release, demonstrators will meet “for a ruckus street party to counter gentrification, capitalism, and the policing of our communities.” www.strikemay1st.com/the-strike-starts-early

MAY DAY (Tue/1)

All day:

National Nurses United/California Nurses United is on strike at Sutter Health locations throughout the Bay Area. According to a press release, “some 4,500 RNs will be affected by the planned walk-out.”

ILWU Local 10, which worked in solidarity with Occupy Oakland in two port shutdowns last fall, is planning another one. They say that a work stoppage will halt the Port of Oakland’s operations all day.

7-10am, San Francisco:

The Golden Gate Bridge labor coalition, representing several unions of workers on the bridge, have been without a contract since April 2011. They originally called for a strike and resulting shut down of the bridge- and had massive support behind them. They’re now saying the protest will involve picketing at the bridge instead. So come join a picket, or if you cross the bridge don’t take the workers for granted- the bridge doesn’t work without them. www.occupythebridge.com

7am, San Francisco:

Meet at 16th st and Mission to be a part of the first SF Bike Cavalry of the day, a critical mass that will ride to the Golden Gate Bridge in solidarity with the picket. www.sfbikecavalry.org

8:30am – 12pm, Oakland:

Occupy Oakland will join others protesting, picketing, and generally striking at three (or four?) “action stations.” Meet at Snow Park for a “flying picket” that will “shut down banks and the Chamber of Commerce.” Meet at First and Broadway to “occupy Child Protective Services” in response to a decision they made to de-grant custody of one woman’s children based in part on her involvement in Occupy Oakland. Meet at 22nd and Telegraph to cause mayhem at uptown and downtown business associations. www.strikemay1st.com/119/

10am, San Francisco:

A rally and march for immigrants rights (the people who have been holding down US May Day for years.) Meet at 24th St Mission Bart for a march to 16th St. 

11am, San Francisco:

Janitors and retail workers at Westfield Mall are engaged in an ongoing labor dispute, and they’ll be picketing in solidarity at 5th and Market. 

11am, San Francisco:

A second SF Bike Cavalry will convene at Justin Herman Plaza to support the janitors strike, the immigrants’ rights march, and the Peoples Street Festival

11:30am, Hayward:

The Amalgameted Transit Union Local 192 will protest “substandard conditions” and “institutionalized racism” (according to a press release) at the operators of AC Transit, A-Para Transit Corporation, 22990 Clawiter Rd in Hayward.

12pm, San Francisco:

All the San Francisco students who walk out of school, workers who call in sick, people who usually do all the housework, who, for the day, say screw it, and other “general strike” participants will converge at Montgomery and Market for the People’s Street Festival. Music, performance, art and fun for the whole family. 

Noon-1pm, Oakland:

A mass rally in Oakland, at 14th and Broadway, with food, speakers, music, activities, and generally a lot to do that you can’t if you’re at work. 

1-3pm, Oakland:

According to Occupy Oakland “After the rally, those in attendance have the opportunity to stay downtown or join one of the autonomous actions that will be departing from 14th & Broadway to continue shutting down various capitalist institutions in the downtown area.”

3pm, Oakland:

Meet at Fruitvale Plaza (next to the Fruitvale Bart station) for likely the biggest action of the day. The March for Dignity and Resistance is being called the Bay Area’s regional protest and supporters will be there from all over the area. mayday2012.blogspot.com

6pm, San Francisco:

Celebrate workers rights at a fundraiser for Young Workers United, a self-described “multi-racial and bilingual membership organization dedicated to improving the quality of jobs for young and immigrant workers.” The party is at El Rio, 3158 Mission. www.occupysf.org

On May Day, local groups who have taken to occupying spaces in ways other than public square-camping will be ramping up their efforts. The occupied farm at Gill Tract will push on, and in a message from Occupy San Francisco: “On May Day, the SF Commune will open it’s doors and conduct another Open Occupation in solidarity with the May 1st General Strike.” So if you’re looking for someone to sleep while protesting a complex web of oppressive forces Tuesday night, you may be in luck.

For more information, see www.strikemay1st.com, a clearinghouse for Bay Area May Day plans.

Also see:

www.occupythebridge.com

www.occupysf.org

mayday2012.blogspot.com

www.decolonizeoakland.org

www.occupyoakland.org

Poll shows tax-the-rich measure hurt by Brown’s merger

Sasha Cuttler
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Poll shows tax-the-rich measure hurt by Brown’s merger

A new poll confirms a fear we’ve raised before – Gov. Jerry Brown’s insistence on coupling the popular tax on millionaires with an unpopular increase in the sales tax could doom the revenue package this November – putting pressure on the governor and his allies to step up their political games and save the schools from disastrous cuts.

The SF Chronicle’s story on the Public Policy Institute of California poll focused on the disconnect voters have between government services they support and their willingness to pay for them, which isn’t exactly news to anyone. A big reason for this state’s dire fiscal situation is that people want something for nothing.

Last year, thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement highlighting how the richest 1 percent have amassed ever-greater wealth at the expense of the rest of us, that dynamic began to change. People started to openly and consistently advocate for increasing taxes on the wealthy, no longer cowed by accusations of “class warfare.”

The PPIC poll found that 65 percent of respondents like the idea of taxing millionaires and putting that money toward education, while 80 percent oppose the $5 billion in trigger cuts to schools that will occur if voters reject the tax measure. But only a slim majority of 54 percent favor the measure that Brown is pushing, mostly because 52 percent say they don’t like the sales tax increase, a regressive tax that will likely be highlighted repeatedly by opponents of the measure.

That’s a big challenge for the broad coalition that supports the measure, but it’s an especially big deal for Brown. He was the one who created this bad combination in the first place, and convinced the California Federation of Teachers to drop its Millionaires Tax – the clean measure that would have 65 percent support right now – in favor of a merged measure that’s a bit more progressive than Brown’s original idea.

Assembly member Tom Ammiano and other progressives we respect have said they like the compromise and worried that competing tax measures could sink them all in this make-or-break election (that’s because under state law, tax measures need a simple majority only during presidential elections, meaning it will be four more years until we have this opportunity again).

Maybe, but the sales tax increase was never a good idea, and these poll numbers show they’ve got a difficult challenge on their hands. In particular, Brown will need to finally prove his repeated campaign statements that he’s the one with the knowledge, skills, and experience to get things done in the dysfunctional, gridlocked state. It’s time to make good on those words, governor.

Happy Tax Day, suckers

Sasha Cuttler
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Happy Tax Day, suckers

It’s Tax Day, the deadline for filing income tax returns, which seems like an appropriate time for Senate Republicans to kill President Barack Obama’s proposed Buffett Rule, which would have required the richest Americans to pay at least a 30 percent tax rate rather than using various tax dodges to pay a lower tax rate than most of us.

Honestly, it’s hard to even summon the outrage or indignation anymore over the latest example of life under plutocracy. Most Americans seem resigned to accept being ruled by the rich in crass, obvious, and incredibly short-sighted ways – even on Tax Day, when our class resentments should be finely tuned.

Sure, California voters will probably get a chance to increase taxes on millionaires this November – a proposal that consistently polls well – but even that has now been tied to a sales tax increase. Whatever happened to good ole economic populism? Why has the Occupy Wall Street movement’s brilliant “We are the 99 percent” paradigm faded so quickly from the national stage?

Despite mountains of evidence that the richest individuals and corporations have written tax codes to their benefit, and that the tax code is fundamentally unfair to most Americans and damaging to this country’s long-term economic prospects, Americans seem to accept their lowly fate and role serving the greedy rich.

The latest examples of solid reporting on our corrupt and inequitable tax system come from the New York Times’ David Kocieniewski, whose year-long series “But Nobody Pays That” just won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting, with the committee calling it a “lucid series that penetrated a legal thicket to explain how the nation’s wealthiest citizens and corporations often exploited loopholes and avoided taxes.”

And yet today, Tax Day, the greedy rich still paid lower tax rates than most of us, and then used their Republican Party enablers to prevent that situation from changing anytime soon. But rather than heeding that simple fact or clicking on my links that explain the problem in more detail, the blog commenters will probably say I’m just jealous. Ugh, I think it’s my nap time.

Burning Man awards art grants and resolves final ticket issues

Sasha Cuttler
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Burning Man awards art grants and resolves final ticket issues

It’s been a tough year for Black Rock City LLC (aka the Borg), the SF-based company that stages Burning Man, particularly with its ticket fiasco, the heaps of criticism that followed, and uneasiness about what this year’s event will look and feel like. As word of its annual art grants has gotten out over these last couple weeks, the grumblings of discontent have returned, this time mixed with early twinges of excitement about the event.

On the positive side, the Borg is giving away more than $700,000 – its most ever and a $100,000 increase over last year – to 47 art projects, many of them to Bay Area artists such as Michael Christian, Zac Carroll, Gregg Fleishman, Krysten Mate/Jon Sarriugarte, Otto Von Danger (whose Burn Wall Street project was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement), Flux Foundation (whose 2010 Temple of Flux we profiled), and David Best (the original Temple-builder who will do this year’s Temple after a three-year break).

Yet with 349 applicants seeking almost $5 million, there are lots of great local projects and artists that didn’t make the cut who will now be forced to aggressively raise money or consider scaling back or abandoning their plans. Among those are longtime artist Charlie Gadeken, Marco Cochrane (who for two years has been trying to complete Truth is Beauty, his follow-up to the spectacular Blissdance, the 40-foot tall nude woman who currently dances on Treasure Island), and the all-hands-on-deck Bottlecap Gazebo project that has been the subject of near-constant work by dedicated teams in San Francisco and Oakland.

The Bottlecap Gazebo crew has already been tapping its communities to collect and process about 100,000 beer bottle caps that are being smashed, stitched, and shaped into an ornate gazebo that incorporates the caps’ colors into its swirling design. Now they also need cash to complete the project, which you can give here.

Same thing with Cochrane, who is offering a unique opportunity tonight for you to help and watch how this amazing artist works. “Art & Politics: A Fundraiser for Truth is Beauty and Alix Rosenthal” will feature Cochrane doing a live sculpture of Rosenthal, with proceeds split between the project and Rosenthal’s DCCC campaign (she’s also a longtime burner, Borg volunteer, and friend of mine). Such sculptures are the first step in making his larger pieces, like Blissdance and his new 60-foot-tall nude woman. The event, which also features some great burner DJs, is 7pm-midnight at Project One.

Bettie June, who runs the Artery program for the Borg, said they had some very hard choices to make this year. “We had a huge jump in the number of people who applied for art grants, and the quality was really high. They were really strong and well thought out proposals,” she told us.

The Borg should be officially announcing its grants anytime now, but the applicants have all heard. My Flux family is hurriedly finishing other projects in its bay at American Steel in Oakland so it can focus on Zoa, which will combine fire-spewing steel seedpods with a wooden exterior that will burn away (in truly colorful and spectacular fashion, I hear) halfway through the week to reveal the inner core, which will go through it own metamorphosis, making it three sculptures in one. Yet, like most of the funded projects, they still have fundraising to do to cover the full project cost, and they currently have a Kickstarter campaign underway.

Bettie June singled out Zoa as one of the pieces she’s most excited about, also mentioning Burn Wall Street, Pier 2 (a bigger version of last year’s Pier by Carnelian Bay artist Matt Schultz, which this year will have a galleon crashed into it, which visitors can explore), Universe Revolves Around You (the latest kinetic project by Zachary Coffin using large boulders), and Circle Of Regional Effigies (35 installations by regional groups, up from 23 last year, that will burn simultaneously on Thursday night).

Some of the projects that got funded this year are updates and modifications of existing artworks, including Carroll’s Front Porch and Serpent Twins by Mate/Sarriugarte, although Bettie June said both have great new features (the latter project, a pair of mythical serpents that travel the playa, will have new lighting and sound systems to better tell the story of their interactions with one another).

“It was a big discussion and we’re pretty pleased with the results,” Borg board member Marian Goodell said of the art grants. “They’re funding a lot of great art.”

As for her other major preoccupation of the year – dealing with the fallout of a new ticketing system that left many veteran burners without tickets – Goodell said they’ve been sorting out that situation as well: distributing the final 10,000 tickets, which were going to be sold generally, through established theme camps.

Some sources have told us that demand from the theme camps had actually been less than anticipated, but Goodell said they still need to get tickets to various performers, volunteers, and art car crews. “We have a lot of people to take care of,” she said.

She also said that she’s been pleasantly surprised by the number of tickets that are being sold through the STEP ticket resale system that the Borg hurriedly established to redistribute tickets, with more than 500 being offered so far. “It’s a trickle, but it’s not stopping,” she said.

Yet there could still be a bit of grumbling to come over the tickets. The final decision for the Borg to make was whether to require ticket holders to register by name to control scalping – a decision it would need to make before tickets are mailed out in June – and sources say the Borg has decided not to do so.

With demand for tickets far exceeding anyone’s expectations this year, tickets selling out for the first time last year, and with a new system that many said could easily be gamed by scalpers, the unknown factor is how many were snapped up by scalpers who are charging exorbitant prices. The Borg has maintained that they think that number is fairly small, but we’ll see this summer.

Nonetheless, it’s good to see the anguish over tickets now starting to give way to excitement about the art projects now getting underway throughout the Bay Area, many of which are still looking for help. So go make some art.

 

Steven T. Jones, aka Scribe, is the author of The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture. He’ll be doing a reading and leading a discussion on the state of Burning Man from 6-7:30 pm on April 25 at the Bay Guardian office, 135 Mississippi St., SF.  

 

Here’s the complete list of this year’s funded art projects:  

Project Name

Artist Name

Hometown

Almost

michael christian

Berkeley, CA

Arc Harps

Jen Lewin

Boulder, CO

bapteme de feu 2.0

Anton Vidtiz-Ward

Telluride, CO

Bicycle Arpeggio

George Rahi

Bellingham, WA

Burn Wall Street

Otto Von Danger

Oakland, CA

Char Wash

Christopher Schardt

Oakland, CA

City of Lights

Gary Long

Los Angeles, CA

Dragon Smelter

Daniel Macchiarini

San Francisco, CA

EGO

Laura Kimpton & Michael Garlington

Vineburg, CA

Front Porch

Zac Carroll

Mill Valley, CA

Fusion Fire

Team What-Dat-Do

Seattle, WA

Harmonic Fire Pendula

Matthew Dockrey

Seattle, WA

Labyrinth of Colorful Cloud

Rob Fischer

Brooklyn, NY

Luminous Passage 2.0

Predock/Frane Architects vs Anderson/Predock

San Francisco, CA

Lune & Tide

Sarah Cockings, Laurence Symonds

London (UK)

Man Pavilion Pistil

Gregg Fleishman

Oakland, CA

MetaMorph

Chelsea Jenkins

Alta Loma, CA

Mooving Sculpture

David Boyer

Reno, NV

Murmuration

Jeff Maguire

Santa Monica, CA

Neverwas Haul

Shannon O’Hare

Vallejo, CA

Otic Oasis 2.0

Gregg Fleishman (Artist) and Melissa Barron (Conceptor)

Oakland, CA

Perception in the Absence of Reality

David Clay (Playa Name: Egg Shen)

Seattle, WA

Pier 2

Matt Schultz/ The Pier Group

Carnelian Bay, CA

Pins

Tom Woodall

Kennewick, WA

Pyropodium

Noah Rosenthal and Nathan Clark

Cleveland Heights, OH

Remembering Cap’n Jim

Dave Power

Pagosa Springs, CO

Reno Star

Mark Szulgit

Sebastopol, CA

Serpent Twins 

Jon Sarriugarte , Kyrsten Mate

Oakland, CA

Singularity Transmissions

Troy Stanley and TEAM RX/TX

Houston, TX

Star Seed

Kate Raudenbush

New York, NY

Starport 2.012 (Cafe Portal)

Carey Thompson

Novato, CA

sub-Sonarium

Benjamin Carpenter / Daniel Yasmin

Oakland, CA

Sun Bugs

Adel Kerpely

Brooklyn, NY

Super Street Fire

Seth Hardy & Site 3 coLaboratory

Toronto (CANADA)

Tesseract

James Reinhardt, Scott Chico Raskey

Seattle, WA

The Temple of Juno

David Best

Petaluma, CA

Third Space at Burning Man

ALEXANDER REHN & GREUTMANN & BOLZERN

San Francisco, CA

Through the Gorilla Glass

GUILD — Spencer Rand, Johnathan Wong, Andrea Ling, Patrick Svilans and Jonah Humphrey

Toronto (CANADA)

Timing is Everything

Charlie Smith

Atlanta, GA

Transcendental Cube

Joseph Quinn

Los Angeles, CA

Tree of Transformation

Dadara

Amsterdam (NETHERLANDS)

Tree of Transmutation

Kevin Christman

Talent, OR

Universe Revolves around You

Zachary Coffin

Atlanta, GA

Yoga Robot

Scott Harris

Telluride, CO

Zoa

Flux Foundation

San Francisco, CA

Zonotopia and the Two Trees

Rob Bell

San Francisco, CA

Black Power, then and now

Andrew Lam
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Black Power, then and now

“We’re not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black Power. That’s a function of people who are advertisers that call themselves reporters.”

That’s how the radical student and civil rights leader Stokely Carmichael opened a speech about Black Power — a term he helped popularize — at UC Berkeley in 1966. But the ideas and concepts behind Black Power proved to be an enduring ones that are enjoying a resurgence today.

Angela Davis epitomized the Black Power movement to many observers. The author, scholar, and professor was a Black Panther Party member who then joined the Communist Party USA and brought a class analysis to issues of race, building on the movement that began in the ’60s for decades to come.

In recent months, as the Occupy Wall Street movement began to focus the country’s attention on economic and social inequities, Davis has spoken out regularly in support of the movement and drawn connections back to her early activism. She has embraced the “99 percent” paradigm, and the connections between various issues that Occupy activists have sought to highlight.

“Our demands for justice lead us toward demands for prison abolition. And our demands for prison abolition lead us to demands for free, quality education. And our demands for free quality healthcare, and housing, and an end to racism, an end to sexism, an end to homophobia,” Davis said March 1 in Oakland at a benefit for Occupy 4 Prisoners, a coalition of Occupy protesters and prison justice advocates.

Consciousness surrounding those connections can be largely attributed to efforts from Black Power organizers.

“When I listen to the way young people so easily talk about the connectedness of race, gender, and sexual issues, and I remember how we groped our way towards an understanding of those connections, it makes me really proud,” Davis said in a January interview with Independent Lens.

And as Davis said at the March 1 event: “One of the most exciting accomplishments of the Occupy movement has been to force us to engage in conversation, explicit conversation about capitalism, for the first time since the 1930s.”

The movement’s economic message also seemed useful to Kiilu Nyasha, a San Francisco-based journalist and former member of the New Haven Black Panther Party.

“Globalization has already happened. It’s not happening, it’s happened. One percent, internationally, owns and controls 80 percent of the world’s resources. People are dying all over the world of every complexion which you can think of” Nyahsa said March 14 at a panel discussion called Reboot the Rainbow.

The original Rainbow Coalition- the topic of the March 14 panel- included the Black Panther Party, the Puerto Rican Young Lords, and the poor white Young Patriots organization, and was committed to a Black Power concept: organize your own, fight together. Building coalition is more important now than ever.

“It’s not Black Power right now,” says Terry Collins, president of KPOO radio, a black-owned station long focused on community empowerment. “It’s people power. It’s power unto the people who are in need: all the people out there who are out of their homes, students who owe so much that they’re like indentured servants.”

Occupy the Hood is a national effort to encourage participation of people of color in Occupy Wall Street. In its mission statement the group writes, “It is imperative that the voice of people of color is heard at this moment!”

The focus of San Francisco’s Occupy the Hood chapter is “three-fold,” according to organizer Mesha Irizarry: “The cop-watching in neighborhoods that are criminalized, especially poor neighborhood of color. It’s freedom fighters against foreclosures. It’s also bank transfers.”

Occupy the Hood showed up March 16, when a group known as the Foreclosure Fighters- organized and supported Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, Homes Not Jails, and related groups—occupied their latest foreclosed home. “We’re liberating this house. We’re taking it out of the hands of the oppressor,” said Archbishop Franzo King of the African Orthodox Church.

“Jesus Christ was an uncompromising revolutionary. He spoke truth to power. Then they killed him for it,” added King in a nod to the radical religious leaders who have influenced liberation movements throughout the years.

Black Power was concerned with self-determination, with organizing within community. That legacy is still strong as San Francisco’s African American communities experience an out-migration and continuing police harassment and violence.

“Black sailors and black army personnel built the shipyard,” said Jameel Patterson, a founder of the Bayview-Hunters Point-based community organization Black Star Liner Incorporated. “Hunters Point, West Point, Harbor Road—they’re all military names. The soldiers stayed there with their families. The area has a rich African American legacy going back to the ’40s. Now it’s fading…we want to make sure that community’s still here 20 years from now.”

Patterson remembers being a child in the ’70s when, on the tail of an era brimming with black liberation efforts. “There were more community events,” he said, but now, “People don’t have connections with each other. That’s what we’re building.”

The group does regular events where they serve free home-cooked meals to residents, reminiscent of the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program. “With every plate, you get information,” often Know Your Rights reminders for encounters with police, said Tracey Bell-Borden of Black Star Liner.

They have also spent countless hours in City Hall meetings advocating for their community and reporting back on city policies that affect it. “We occupy the Police Commission meeting,” said Bell-Borden.

Police are a central and tricky question for the Black Power movement of the ’60s, as well as organizing efforts today. Black Panther Party members spent years serving free breakfast to children, writing and selling newspapers, and even running election campaigns, but they are often remembered for carrying guns and efforts to “police the police.” So many leaders were arrested that energy that could have gone into feeding or education was often channeled into freeing prisoners.

“I was in the second chapter of the Black Panther Party,” Nyasha said at the March 14 event, “which basically existed to get the first chapter out of jail.”

Recent police crackdowns have fed indignation not just about policing protesters, but about the role police play in poor communities of color. “One thing Occupy has done is address the issue of policing in communities of color, to the extent that some aftermath of what we’re seeing at Occupy is shedding light on how police can sometimes treat people,” said Kimberley Thomas Rapp, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the Bay Area.

“In black neighborhoods, police should be community partners, not come in and exert more force than necessary. And at protests, they should be there to ensure safety, not just to arrest people unnecessarily or use excessive force,” Rapp said.

Police crackdowns on Occupy are the first exposure many white protesters of the younger generation have had to excessive police force, an issue that was central to the story of the Black Power. Sadly, for many black and other protesters of color, excessive police force is nothing new.

“It’s absolutely the case that police brutality shown towards many Occupy protesters has brought to the forefront the issue of police violence and led to an awakening among many white folks of the day to day reality of police violence that many people of color have lived with now for many years,” Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, told the Guardian.

Enraged at police beatings (see “OPD spies on and beats protesters,” Feb. 14) both Occupy Oakland and Occupy San Francisco have held “fuck the police” marches. March 18, after a six-month commemoration celebration brought 3,000 to Zuccotti Park in New York City, followed by 200 arrests and rampant police violence, Occupy Wall Street protesters followed suit, holding their first anti-police brutality march.

Occupy Wall Street has reanimated concepts that burned through the ’60s, such as violence vs. nonviolence, the systemic causes of personal economic woes, and the peoples’ relationship to police. With the consciousness created by Black Power activists, today’s organizers have a foundation on which to build their own answers to these questions, across issues and generations.

National Occupy the Hood has called for action concerning Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black 17-year-old who was shot Feb. 26 and whose confessed killer has yet to be arrested. Taking up high-profile cases of injustice and working more closely with organizers to respond to the needs of local African American communities could bring more power and truth to the rage for justice currently galvanizing a new generation.

“It’s about black re-empowerment,” Archbishop King said. “It’s like the torch, the light of freedom and justice, has actually gone out. And we’re trying to relight that. That’s why I’m so excited about the Occupy movement; it ties into the Black Power struggle. And I think it’s waking up some of us old revolutionaries to stand up.”

Black Power and OWS

Andrew Lam
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OPINION Since its inception in September of 2011, The Occupy Wall Street movement has come to mean many things to many people. For some it’s a movement to end skyrocketing tuition at State Colleges and Universities. For others its a platform to stop and bring attention to unfair and illegal foreclosures. Still others see the Occupy as a movement that’s going to bring back unions and level the playing field for workers.

But one of the nagging critiques of OWS has been that it’s a movement for white middle-class youth who were late to the social justice arena — where many who are poorer and darker had been struggling for years. While economic disparities on the surface appear to be universal, the challenge has been recognizing how many who are white and part of the 99 percent have been used strategically by those in power as a sort of buffer to keep black and brown folks at an economic disadvantage. Many have brought into the narrative that underachievement by blacks is the result of individuals not applying themselves hard enough.

The economic downturn in the white communities is now viewed as systemic, with a call to arms and a move to confront the system. What’s been missed is that for decades folks in the hood have been challenging the system, trying to survive and barely holding on. Only now are you starting to see deeper discussions between OWS and black and brown community members about how this economic system has uniquely impacted them.

Because we’ve seen former black panthers and leaders within black liberation struggles like Angela Davis, Elaine Brown, Bobby Seal, Mumia and Dave Hilliard work with or show support address OWS, the question of how OWS relates to the Black Power Movement has emerged.

Like OWS, Black Power means many things to many people, from economic empowerment to political empowerment. If we go back to what Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leaders Stokley Carmichael (Kwame Toure) and Willie Ricks (Mukasa Dada) meant when they first coined the phrase in 1966, it was a call for solidarity and challenging racism and the systems giving it light..

Black Power leaders back then weren’t about trying to reform the system and its institutions, but dismantle it and rebuild. That approach, and the militancy that came along with it, caused a split in the Civil Rights Movement. It was break from Dr. King and the nonviolent approach by the so-called Big 5 civil rights organizations.

Today, many of the aforementioned leaders, along with others, have evolved in their definition and understanding of what it means when we say Black Power. Not to short change or misspeak for anyone (keep in mind entire courses are devoted to the topic), today we see that Black Power has expanded on its critique of capitalism. That, of course, has been echoed in many sectors of OWS. In fact, that’s what’s attracted many from the old guard to it.

Today we see many in the Black Power movements dealing with issues like the Prison Industrial Complex, the mass incarceration of black folks, and tactics like stop and frisk, gang injunctions, war on drugs etc. Any conversation about economic disparity inevitably leads back to discussions on the prison system in the black community.

While we hear within OWS calls to rebuild the system and harsh critiques of capitalism, we haven’t always seen an emphatic call to arms to deal with the PIC and issues related to police terror — even as OWS members are frequent victims themselves.

In places like Occupy Oakland, we see those bridges being built in meaningful ways. We’ve seen the forming of Occupy the Hood, which frequently addresses those issues — but talk to OTH organizers in various cities and they’ll tell you it’s still a struggle to get folks on board and make this an intuitive part of their day to day outlook.

The good news is we see conversations taking place and folks trying to work it out..

And while OWS deals with building bridges into communities of color, in our own ranks we have the challenge of class divisions. We have folks who are black, and have means, who won’t even give lip service to these issues.

But then again, mass movements even during the hey day of Dr. King always had those who spoke out, got in the way and took up space for real change. With spring coming, there’s a lot of hope that things will pick up.

Save our homes

Andrew Lam
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Save our homes

yael@sfbg.com


This story has been edited


Bay Area activists, fueled in part by the Occupy movement, have recently taken stands against police brutality, for the rights of the homeless, against the corporate power of banks, and much more. But, arguably, nowhere has the movement been more successful than in the fight against foreclosures and evictions.


With the support of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and the Bayview Foreclosure Fighters, several Bayview residents whose homes had already been sold continue to occupy them, and in some cases sales have been rescinded. Occupy Bernal has used civil disobedience to postpone six housing auctions, keeping their neighbors in their homes that much longer. They secured a meeting with Diana Stauffer, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage senior vice president, and David Campos, District 9 supervisor, to delay foreclosure proceedings.


But the activists are pushing for a full moratorium on foreclosures and evictions in San Francisco. Such a moratorium is not without precedent. In recent years, sheriffs have stopped evictions and foreclosures in Wayne Country, Michigan; Cook County, Illinois; Butler County, Ohio; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.


When Cook County Sheriff John Dart imposed his moratorium in 2010, he said, “I can’t possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can’t say for sure everything was done properly. I need some kind of assurance that we aren’t evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks.”


San Francisco seems ripe for a similar stance, as Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting recently released a report revealing widespread lawbreaking in foreclosure proceedings. The report found that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud.


Representatives from the District Attorney’s and the City Attorney’s offices told the Guardian that they are concerned about the report. These bodies may be starting the process of further investigating findings. Last week, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whose office carries out the county’s evictions, said he has begun an initiative to collect and analyze the city’s foreclosure data.


But Mirkarimi’s hands may be tied. As he told Ann Garrison of KPFA radio Feb. 25, “I don’t have the latitude or discretion, much as I would like, because there would need to be a change in state law that empowers municipal sheriffs to be able to use that discretion.”


Occupy Bernal formed just a couple months ago, but it has emerged as a powerful advocate for homeowners facing foreclosure. The neighborhood-based branch of the Occupy movement chose to focus specifically on preventing the evictions of Bernal Heights residents, where over 100 homes face foreclosure.


They kept the pressure up Feb. 25, when a group of supporters convened at 1090 Chestnut Street, the residence of John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo. That bank owns the majority of mortgages on Bernal homes facing foreclosure.


The protest wasn’t meant to block the street and no one tried to enter the building where Stumpf owns three of the 14 floors. But police decided that the group of about 150 warranted blocking off the entire block to traffic, to the annoyance of many neighbors.


“You collected $43.7 billion in taxpayer money and have since made record profits at the expense of low-income communities, while repeatedly breaking your legal and moral obligations as a creditor. You have failed to comply with loan modification requirements under your own lending agreements,” said a blown-up “foreclosure notice” outside Stumpf’s home.


In the spirited street theater scene, activists dressed as an auctioneer and a larger-than-life John Stumpf played out a fake auction of Stumpf’s property.


Dexter Cato, a father of four whose wife was recently killed in a car crash in the midst of months-long loan modification proceedings, faces foreclosure from his Bayview home of 40 years.


“Stumpf, we want a new address for you,” said Archbishop Franzo King of the Western Additions’ John Coltrane church, “850 Bryant Street!”


The crowd then proceeded to chant this address: the San Francisco Hall of Jusice and County Jail.


“We understand that some of our customers are going through difficult times during this economic recovery,” said Jim Foley, president of Wells Fargo’s Greater Bay Area region, in a press release responding to the Feb. 25 protest. The company plans to hold “Home Preservation Workshops” in Richmond March 7 and 8 to help homeowners facing foreclosure.


Public officials may be a long way from locking up CEOs for foreclosure fraud, but some have taken notice of complaints against the banks. On Feb. 2, the Berkeley City Council voted not to extend its contract with Wells Fargo to manage $300 million in city assets, citing its foreclosures on city residents.


On a national level, activists have been successful in persuading people to transfer their money to local banks and credit unions in recent months. Javelin Strategy and Research came out with statistics that 5.6 million Americans have switched bank service providers in the past 90 days, three times the normal transfer rate. Bank Transfer Day in early October was specifically cited as the trigger by 610,000 of those people.


The recent $25 billion settlement between the five largest banks and attorneys general in California and other states over mortgage fraud made big headlines, but activists note that it allocates a measly $2,000 to some people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Occupy Bernal’s Buck Bagot said people need more protection from powerful banks. “Banks suckered people into this stuff, and they have made billions,” Bagot said. “We’re not saying people shouldn’t have to pay off the money they borrowed, but it took two to tango.”

Dick Meister: The IWW Legacy

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the other anti-capitalist forces of today could find no greater inspiration than the Industrial Workers of the World – the IWW, one of the most influential organizations in U.S. history, that was founded in Chicago in 1905 by a band of fiercely dedicated idealists.

The Wobblies, as they were called, battled against overwhelming odds. Their only real weapon was an utter refusal to compromise in a single-minded march toward a Utopia that pitted them against the combined forces of government and business.

Their weapon, their goals, the power of their opponents, the imperfect world about them made it inevitable that they would lose. But this is not to say the Wobblies failed because they didn’t reach their goal of creating “One Big Union” to wage a general strike that would put all means of production in the hands of workers and transform the country into a “Cooperative Commonwealth of Workers.”

To say the Wobbles failed would be to misinterpret the history of the Wobbly battle that left the world, as few battles leave it, a little less imperfect.

You need not believe in the simple Marxism and direct action techniques of the Wobblies to appreciate their great contribution to democracy, to union theory and practice, to folk music and literature, to the American idiom.

The IWW was founded by a group of socialists and dissident union organizers as an alternative to the American Federation of Labor, which they saw as an elitist and racist handmaiden of the capitalist class that controlled the economy. They denounced the AFL for ignoring the racially and ethnically mixed mass of unskilled workers in favor of the far fewer skilled and semi-skilled white craftsmen who were organized into separate unions according to their crafts.

The Wobblies would bring all workers, all of them members of the working class, into the “One Big Union” regardless of their race, nationality, craft or work skills.

Wobbly organizers crisscrossed the country on freight trains to spread their message. They mounted street corner soapboxes in many cities, often battling police and vigilantes who tried to silence them. They organized lumberjacks, mine workers, farm workers, factory and mill hands. They led strikes.

The speeches, the written statements and the songs of the Wobblies were powerful, simple, direct and moving. So were the cartoons, posters and other material that filled the IWW’s tremendous outpouring of publications, among them a dozen foreign-language newspapers that were distributed among the many unskilled immigrants from European nations where unions had goals similar to those of the IWW.

Much of what was said and sung and written is still with us, a century later. Probably most important are the brilliant insights of the IWW’s chief leaders, Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and the songs of famed IWW martyr Joe Hill, those simple satirical rhymes set to familiar melodies that focused workers on a common body of ideals.

You’ve probably heard at least one of Hill’s songs. Remember? “You will eat, bye and bye/ In that glorious land above the sky/ Work and pray, live on hay/You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

The IWW legacy goes far beyond words and song. There’s still much of value that we can draw from its history, sadly including what the IWW’s ultimate fate tells us about how excessively undemocratic our government can be if left unchecked.

The Wobblies’ refusal to support U.S. entry into World War I and their refusal to abandon strikes and other organizational activities during the war were used as an excuse by officials at all levels of government to side with employers. They called out troops and police to attack non-violent IWW strikers and raid IWW offices. They encouraged vigilantism and lynchings and generally raised public hysteria against “IWW terror” that allegedly hampered the war effort.

After the war ended in 1918, officials seized on the IWW’s open support for the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia as an excuse to crush Wobbly strikes and organizing efforts by mass arrests and imprisonment of strikers and IWW leaders for engaging in “Bolshevik conspiracies.”

The IWW was all but destroyed. Membership shrank steeply and steadily, to the point that today the organization has only a relative handful of members, most of them employed at coffee shops, bookstores and other small businesses, their message spread primarily via websites.

Make no mistake, though. Employers did make some concessions in response to the IWW, and the very example of the Wobblies, their spirit of protest, their tactics, their history, and their courage continue to inspire labor and political activists worldwide.

As author Joyce Kornbluh notes in her magnificent IWW anthology, “Rebel Voices,” the Wobblies made “an indelible mark on the American labor movement and American society” – laying the groundwork for later mass unionization, inspiring the formation of groups to protect the civil liberties of dissidents, prompting prison and farm labor reforms and leaving behind “a genuine heritage … industrial democracy.”

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Occupy 4 Prisoners hits San Quentin

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Occupy 4 Prisoners hits San Quentin

About 800 protesters marched to San Quentin’s East Gate in a day to protest what they called inhumane conditions in prison Feb. 20

Protesters called for an end to the practice of trying children as adults, three strikes laws, life sentences, life without the possibility of parole, and the death penalty.They did not call for the dismantling of the prison system or an end to the practice of incarceration, as Chip Johnson implies here.

In San Quentin– and in prisons across the country—inmates are subjected to solitary confinement, sometimes for decades. Kids as young as 13 are tried as adults and sometimes sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. In three-strikes states, people are sentenced to decades in prison for non-violent crimes that sometimes amount to less than a couple hundred dollars in damages. And in death penalty states, state-sponsored execution means that lives, sometimes innocent, are thrown away.

Twenty-four US states do not have three strikes laws, many countries cap prison sentences at 15 years regardless of the severity of the crime, and only one European country- Belarus- continues to impose the death penalty. The United States incarcerates its citizens at a rate that far surpasses any other country in the world; second on the list in Rwanda.

Conditions and laws like these have spurred decades of prison reform and prison abolition activism, both from inmates and supporters on the outside. Feb. 20, this movement joined with Occupy Oakland to protest outside San Quentin prison and demand that these issues be addressed.

As protesters arrived, organizers blasted music, hoping to reach the ears of prisoners. Dozens of prison guards and representatives from the Marin County sheriff’s department were stationed in front of the prison gate, and well as on hills looking down on the protest group.

The loud music continued with a performance from the Brass Liberation Orchestra, and subsequently a drumming ritual.

“As First Nations people, we’re no strangers to occupation. We’re also no strangers to prison. The first prisons were the reservation and the slave plantation,” said George Galvis, Executive Director of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.

“We have post-colonial stress disorder in our communities,” added Galvis.

Author, film producer (Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story) and 2006 California gubernatorial candidate Barbara Becnel helped facilitate the event.

In her opening statements, Becnel praised the crowd, packed with Occupy activists, family members of incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people, and others.

“We should really be proud of ourselves today. Because today, we are history makers. We have merged the prison rights movement with the Occupy movement,” said Becnel to an eruption of applause.

Throughout the program, speakers read solidarity statements addressed to Occupy Oakland from prisoners across the country, including Mumia Abu Jamal, Leanard Peltier, Kevin Cooper, and group statements from Pelican Bay human rights organizers, and those involved in state-wide prison strikes in Georgia.

A movement has coalesced around the claim that Cooper, a death row inmate at San Quentin since 1985, is innocent. Cooper was denied an appeal in 2009 in a ninth-circuit court case in which five judges dissented, declaring that, “the state of California may be about to execute an innocent man.” Their 103-page dissent statement includes descriptions of evidence tampering leading to Cooper’s conviction.

Cooper helped call for the Occupy 4 Prisoners day of action.

Speakers at the rally called for Cooper’s freedom, and for the end of death row entirely.

Becnel related a story about some prisoners, charged with life without the possibility of parole, that she had met while campaigning against the death sentence for Stan “Tookie” Williams.

The men, Becnel said, told her: “We only leave here in a casket also. We are also dead men walking.”

Speakers also decried the use of solitary confinement as a punishment in prisons.

Sarah Shourd, known for her imprisonment in Iran after accidentally crossing the border during a hike, spoke along with fellow imprisoned hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer.

Shourd, who was held in solitary confinement for 14 months, related her experiences.

“After just two months my mind began to slip. I would spend large portions of my day crouched down by a small slot in my door, listening for any sounds from the outside that might distract me from the sheer terror of my isolation.”

A statement from a Texas prisoner, read by an Occupy Wall Street organizer, also addressed solitary confinement.

“We tend to think of man as a collection of individuals, each complete in himself, who just happen to come together to satisfy certain needs. Actually, however, there is nothing distinctly human that can be exhibited by an individual in isolation,” said the philosophical letter.

The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike last year highlighted solitary confinement, and prisoners demanded an end to the practice, in which inmates are held in isolated rooms with no sunlight for 23 hours a day, often for years on end. Some inmates at Pelican Bay have been held in these conditions for over 30 years.

Organizers of the hunger strike called it off when the California Department of Corrections promised to investigate the issue, but started to strike again several months later when no changes had been made to any of the conditions that they were protesting.

Kelly Turner, 42, who was sentenced to 25 years to life for writing a bad check for $146.16 in 1997, was also placed in solitary confinement for one year. However, she focused her speech at the rally on California’s three strikes law, the legislation that turned what would have been a three-year sentence for forgery into a possible life sentence for Turner. Turner said she was lucky that good pro bono lawyers defended her, and would likely still be in prison had they not; she now owns her own business.

Turner, who advocates for Families to Amend California Three Strikes (FACTS), urged the crowd to vote for an initiative to amend the law that is slated to appear on the California ballot this November. 

In her speech, Turner described meeting women in the Central California Women’s Facility is Chowchilla that were also serving decades-long sentences after having been charged with a third strike.

“I am here today for the woman that was on my dorm that had 27 years to life for drinking a 99 cent lemon line soda out of a store. Or the woman who stole a jar of Vaseline, a bottle of vitamins, two pairs of boxers,” said Turner.

Tatiana, a young prisoners rights advocate who spent time in juvenile hall, read a statement from incarcerated youth Veronica Hernandez.

Hernandez, 20, has been imprisoned since age 16.

She was tried as an adult, an outcome that she attributes to a public defender who did not do his best to fight for her.

“There are no law libraries or legal services at juvenile hall, so a juvenile, for better or for worse, is entirely dependent on his or her court-appointed attorney, and must trust that he or she will lead them in the right direction. Unfortunately for me, that direction was to adult court. I now face a life sentence should I be convicted,” said Hernandez in her statement.

No speaker argued for the dismantling of the prison system, instead focusing on what they saw as unjust sentencing and inhumane treatment in prisons.

In a statement calling for Occupy 4 Prisoners, Kevin Cooper connected a call to end the death penalty with struggle for correct racial and economic justice and an end police brutality:

“America has a deep-seeded philosophy in which it only allows for the execution of its poorest people. These seeds have taken root and have grown in such a way that no person who this system sees as a ‘have-not’ is safe from the death machine. Whether they are within (San Quentin) or on a BART platform.”

Bauer also expressed the importance of tying prison rights to the Occupy movement, saying, “This Occupy movement needs to permeate the prisons. God forbid one day some people here will be on the other side of this fence. But when movements get strong, people start getting locked up. We should know this. This happens in every country. Prisons are places where movements are killed. But at the same time, when movements successfully permeate prisons, a space built to break people down, the movement is at its strongest. This is true all over the world.”

Occupy Oakland organizers have already been hit with bizarre and seemingly invalid charges, such as “lyching,” “bike,” “boat,” and umbrella. In one of the most extreme cases, Khali, an Occupy Oakland protester, may face life in prison after being arrested for a allegedly taking a blanket out of a garbage can. Advocates for Khali say that he was denied prescription medications in jail for ten days before allegedly assaulting a police officer; his third strike.

Well-known prison rights advocate and former Black Panther Elaine Brown ended the program. After remarking that “there aren’t enough songs in this movement,” she sang Oh, Freedom as the crowd peacefully exited the site, as several volunteers picked up any trash that was left behind.

“Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my comrades and be free,” sang Brown.

Justin Vivian Bond talks Occupy Wall Street, the power of language, and the politics behind the music

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When Justin Vivian Bond was a little kid, v (more about that unique pronoun below) confidently wore Iced Watermelon lipstick to school and, inspired by feminist movements of the time, brandished a sign reading “Kids Lib!” Adults told the young Mx. Bond that these things were wrong, but v knew how right they felt, and represents for queer pride and radical poltics to this day. The writer, singer and activist is best known for v’s role as Kiki DuRane in Kiki and Herb, a drag cabaret show with partner Kenny Mellman. The show started in San Francisco and made it to Broadway, and was nominated for a 2007 Tony award. V’s memoir Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels was released this year (wherein Bond tells the lipstick story and a lot more about growing up gender-free). Bond is still touring and will be back in San Francisco Feb. 23, performing from v’s new album, Dendrophile. I talked with v about the upcoming concert, v’s recent performance at Occupy Wall Street, and how music can bring people together.

SFBG What can people expect at your upcoming concert?

JVB I’m going to be performing songs from Dendrophile. I did my release concert when I was in the Bay Area in the spring. So some songs from that, some others songs, and some monologues about contemporary political observations. Also– 20 years ago I married a local performer by the name of Leigh Crow, aka Elvis Herselvis, and she and her band the Whoa Nellies are going to be opening. So it’s going to be an anniversary celebration.

SFBG You performed at Occupy Wall Street. What was that like?

JVB It was really awesome. I performed for the Trans-form the Occupation rally Nov. 13. It was a lot of trans activists talking about trans issues and establishing a presence of trans people within the revolution. It was so inspiring, empowering and exciting for me to perform my song on the Peoples’ Mic. The song, New Economy, is about the current obsession with whether people have enough and who has it. It was such a great experience.

Of course, the next day the police came in and closed Zuccoti park down. In my show I joked that once the queers and the trans people started making their presence known the police they realized they’d better shut it down. They were probably having flash backs to the ACT UP and Queer Nation days!

SFBG Do you think there has been a good presence of queer and trans issues in the Occupy movement?

JVB There certainly was that day. We didn’t get to see how that manifested within the community at the park. But I do feel that there are a lot of queer and trans people involved in raising awareness about social and economic disparities within our culture, so I think that its an inevitability that the subjects are going to be part of the Occupy conversation. Because trans people are constantly being oppressed and harassed.

SFBG How do you think music can help bring that kind of political awareness?

JVB I think that music is a way of bringing people together, especially people that may not realize how much they have in common, or may not have an excuse to be in the same space. If there’s an artist who starts voicing thoughts, ideas, and political sentiments, that’s one person making a statement, and people all of a sudden find themselves in a room with like-minded people. Community is formed. That community can become a larger voice, and that’s a powerful way of affecting the culture. Historically, music and artists have been a rallying potent for great and powerful change.

SFBG What’s your most powerful political song?

JVB Probably New Economy, this song that I did at occupy Wall Street . There’s also my cover of 22nd Century, which was written by Exuma, whose a Bahamian voodoo priest and spiritual revolutionary writer. That one really seems to get people going.

 

SFBG What inspired New Economy?

JVB I wrote it when the stock market was collapsing and everybody was freaking out. People were losing their 401k plans or health insurance. As an artist, I’ve never had those things. So seeing people freaking about something I’m so used to dealing with was kind of comforting. It was like, we are all going to be on a similar level for a while and try to figure out how to solve peoples problems. The song is about our commonality. The final line is “take what you need and give a little back,” because I believe there is enough out there for everybody.

SFBG You’ve been involved with Radical Faeries, a group that celebrates queer sexuality, connection with the earth, and community. Have you been involved recently, and what does it mean to you?
 

JVB I haven’t been to a Faerie Gathering since the fall, but yes, I’m still involved. Its about community, and its about finding alternative economies, and ways of sharing and supporting each other on a very human, person-to-person level. That’s as opposed to having your reality dictated by the mass media and corporations.

SFBG Last year, you announced your official pronoun: V. You also use the honorific Mx. The move raised awareness for genderqueer and non-gender-conforming people, and also created backlash. It’s been a year now—how are you feeling about your pronoun decision?

JVB It’s been really great for me. Of course there’s frustration with people who somehow feel like they know me or my trip better than I do. But in general its been really liberating. And on a social level, I’ve met a lot of wonderful people who are going through similar experiences, that are not interested in being part of a fundamentalist or gender-fascist paradigm. So it’s nice to meet other people who feel this same way, and amazing to find out how many of those people there are out there.

SFBG I know some writers don’t like using gender-neutral pronouns (some commonly-used pronouns that don’t signify a particular gender include ze and they.) But as a writer who has used the incorrect pronoun for somebody in the past, then edited the piece, I feel– it’s not that hard to respect how people identify!

JVB I’ve been shocked to find out how heavily invested some writers are are in what they’re used to. For people that make their living using words, I’m almost shocked at how inflexible they can be. As for me, I love language and the power of it. The conversation that the pronoun provokes has been a great conversation to have with so many people. There have been times when people have done that same thing with me, then they fix it online and apologize, so that’s a nice thing.

SFBG Well thank you, and we’re excited for your concert.

JVB It’s going to be really fine show. It’s going to be a celebration, and I’m looking forward to it.

Valentine’s Day dump the banks rally: If only all break-ups involved this much singing (VIDEO)

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Valentine’s Day dump the banks rally: If only all break-ups involved this much singing (VIDEO)

Protesters across the country participated in “break up with your bank” day on Feb. 14. Several protesters happened throughout the Bay Area, including a demonstration organized by Causa Justa :: Just Cause, Occupy Bernal, Occupy SF Housing, and the San Francisco Tenants Union.

In past months those organizations have variously stopped evictions and foreclosures, prevented homes from being auctioned off, and organized mass protests. They’ve created trouble shutting down bank branches, sometimes for hours, on dozens of occasions.

For Valentine’s Day, protesters decided to have a little fun.

“Our intention is not to shut down the banks,” insisted Causa Justa organizer Maria Zamudio. “Just to break up with them.”

About 60 marched through the financial district Feb. 14, presenting large red broken hearts and “dump the banks” banners decorated with pink balloons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-f6pHXQkbs

Security guards at the banks that the group approached locked their doors. Protesters, amused, began chanting “the banks shut themselves down.”

Bank of America building locked their doors when they saw the protest approaching. At the Wells Fargo west coast headquarters around the corner, a representative who identified himself as David accepted the card.

Afterwards, a dozen members of the group headed to City Hall for a Board of Supervisors meeting in support of a resolution brought by Supervisor John Avalos and co-sponsored by Supervisor Eric Mar. The resolution supports the city treasurer’s office in its recent efforts to include social responsibility and community reinvestment in its evaluation criteria as it searches for new banks in which to invest San Francisco’s money. The resolution passed.

“It’s not a victory, but a great step in the right direction,” said Zamudio. She hopes that the social responsibility assessment will look at a bank’s history with predatory loans, investment in small businesses, and refinancing mortgages.

Hearing today on bizarre Occupy Oakland stay-away order case

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Hearing today on bizarre Occupy Oakland stay-away order case

The first Occupy Oakland protester to allegedly be in violation of a stay-away order has a hearing today.

Joseph Briones, 30, was arrested along with 408 others at an Occupy Oakland protest Jan. 28. He is one of 12 who were apparently issued the restraining orders, and is therefore barred from being within 300 yards of Oakland City Hall, potentially for the next three years, according to Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Teresa Drenick.

But based on a Feb. 8 hearing, Briones and his lawyer understood that he did not have a stay-away order against him, said Occupy Oakland media committee member Omar Yassin.

“That’s why he was at the plaza, carefree, on Wednesday,” said Yassin. That’s when Briones was arrested.

In a Feb. 9 press release, Officer Johnna Watson of Oakland Police media relations said that “Joseph Briones is one of four individuals charged with a violent felony offense stemming from the Jan. 28 protest.” But according to records at the District Attorney’s office, that’s incorrect; Briones is charged with three misdemeanors.

While everyone scrambles to get their story straight, Briones is still in jail. He has a hearing at 2 o’ clock today. If found to have violated a stay-away order, he could face six months in prison.

So far, Briones is legally innocent of any crime; he has not been convicted of any of the charges leveled on him in connection with Jan. 28. None of the other 11 who are prohibited from going near City Hall have been convicted of anything either.

Besides all that, the stay-away orders may be entirely illegal.

According to Jivaka Candappa, one of the attorneys working on the stay-away order cases, “the orders are unconstitutional and unreasonable.”

Most of the charges on the twelve are as benign as blocking the sidewalk and remaining at the scene of a riot (the latter is the same charge that was placed on  hundreds who were cited and released with no bail, and whose charges will likely be dropped—including me.) Even the felony charges, such as assault of a police officer, are common charges leveled on protesters that are usually dismissed. It is highly unusual to ban individuals from any public place, for any reason, let alone City Hall and a public plaza so obviously necessary for access to First Amendment rights, under any circumstances.

“This is legitimate action in, for example, a domestic violence situation. Here, protesters have not attacked anybody and they’re not a physical threat,” said attorney Mike Flynn, president of the San Francisco chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

Candappa says that he and his colleagues may file motions in the Alameda County Superior Court challenging constitutionality of the stay-away orders.

Said Candappa, “preventing someone from exercising their First Amendment rights doesn’t promote public safety. Courts are very reluctant to restrain someone’s expressive rights, because its really a cornerstone of any democracy and if you want to be able to participate in democracy you’ve got to have a right to express yourself. To take away that fundamental right to express yourself is something courts are very reluctant to do, especially when those conditions are applied against someone who has not yet been convicted.”

 

The story of hip-hop

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The story of hip-hop

By Courtney Garcia

MUSIC From the start, Ice-T was a versatile chameleon, the product of an integrated culture, and a student of the marginalized.

Born in New Jersey, raised in the Crenshaw District of LA, he joined the Crips then pursued the army to pay his bills. His career was blazed in rap, though he once flipped the game to heavy metal. Multifaceted talent that he is, Ice would later grow even more famous on television.

It’s no surprise, then, that he now adds the title of director to his resume, with the debut of his first documentary, Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap, at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The feature length endeavor is the pioneering artist’s tribute to the culture that bred him, beat him, and made him who he is; it’s a culture he feels is slowly slipping from his grasp. It’s a story as much about the traditions of hip-hop as it is a fervent call to action, told through the eyes of its maker and his impressive posse of friends.

The premise, nevertheless, is simple: this is the story of hip-hop. “It’s a lot of life lessons because you’re not only hearing about rap, but experiences and struggles,” explained Ice during a one-on-one breakfast interview at The Lift in Park City, Utah. He was present for the screenings, along with Grandmaster Caz and Chuck D, both of whom appear in the film.

Other notable feature players include Eminem, Dr. Dre, Kool Moe Dee, Kanye West, Royce da 5’9,” Common, Rakim, KRS-One, Bun B, and Snoop Dogg. “You’re hearing people who you thought woke up successful talk about how they thought about quitting, how they had to find their voice,” Ice said. “I wanted to catch these guys when they were vulnerable, to show they’re real people, and that success doesn’t come without some blows.”

Ice got into rap initially to avoid falling back into gang life, first experimenting with turntables while enlisted in the military. Musically, he made his name as an underground artist before signing with Warner Music/Sire Records, and eventually winning a Grammy for his song, “Back On the Block.” He would follow such success with a branch into acting, currently starring in the primetime series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. And while his schedule is more than demanding, he found time between shoots to direct this documentary, a film he believes had to be made to challenge the fallacious imagery of hip-hop in American culture.

“This movie is not about the money or the cars, it’s about the craft,” he says. “The only questions we get asked by the press were, you know, ‘Who are you having sex with?’ ‘How high do you get?’ ‘Who don’t you like?’ They don’t care about your work…I wanted people to see the hip-hop I know, not the hip-hop that’s been given out until now. You’re getting this image that’s not real.”

Something From Nothing begins on the streets of New York, and follows the beat to the sunny coast of Los Angeles. Interviewing the gamut of rap’s finest, Ice catches his friends at the record store, in the studio, on their patio and at the diner. They eat; they smoke; they talk hip-hop. Some, like Kanye, freestyle for the camera; others spit the rhymes they can’t get out of their heads.

In one of the more poignant scenes, Ice speaks with Eminem about his toil to commit to the trade amidst extreme discouragement, and the moment he realized it was his raison d’etre. Equally surreal, the filmmaker travels to Dr. Dre’s lavish estate in the Hollywood Hills, where the two converse about the late, Tupac Shakur.

Because the name ‘Ice-T’ signifies authority, the strength of this film is his access to the inside, exposing tales most people would never have a chance to hear. He hits on every shade of the genre, from gangster rap to native tongue, the poetics of Q-Tip to the in-your-face anarchy of Immortal Technique.

Introducing the film at Sundance, he described his impetus as a dissatisfaction with the current state of hip-hop, and an earnest aim to improve the situation.

Later, he elaborated. “To me, the most pinnacle moment in the movie was when Mos Def quoted Q-Tip saying ‘rap is not pop; rap never had pop ambitions.’ It’s a counterculture. Now it’s become pop, and how you gonna get mad at the kids? They want to eat; they want to make money; they want to live. If you ask me what my dream is, I would love to see a 19 year-old Public Enemy come out of nowhere; I would love to see the new 18 year-old Ice Cube just come kick in the door, and start telling motherfuckers, ‘Fuck the bling, this is what’s good. Let’s talk about Obama, let’s talk about Occupy Wall Street. Let’s go in.'”

He added, “It will never get radio play, but I believe if a young group of kids really nailed it, they could get a movement going. And it’s needed. I took Rage Against the Machine out as my opening act, so of course I want to see that. The terrain is wide open.”

It’s rare to catch Ice-T without his signature shades, and somehow it’s obvious he truly is the OG he claims. Yet his inner sincerity and passion show through in this project, an ode to the first platform to ever give him a voice. He sold the rights to film after the Sundance showings to The Indomina Group for worldwide distribution; a theatrical release is planned for summer.

“Music has that power to give people emotion, and that’s what’s lacking right now,” he reiterated. “They’re not using art form at full power. They’re just rubbing the surface of it.”

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