Bruce Blog Archives — Page 12 of 56 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Dick Meister: The lessons of Ohio

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November 18, 2011

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.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has drawn some important lessons from last week’s election in Ohio that repealed a state law severely limiting the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Worse, it threatened to inspire passage of similar anti-bargaining laws elsewhere.

Listen to Trumka, a man who obviously knows what he’s talking about. In an article he wrote for Reader Supported News, he cites post-election polls showing that more than half of Ohio’s voters correctly “perceived the law as a political maneuver by Gov. John Kasich and state Republicans to weaken labor unions, rather than a genuine effort to make state government more efficient.”

Another poll, done for the AFL-CIO, showed that more than half the voters also found that Kasich and his allies “are putting the interests of big corporations ahead of average working people.”<–break->

Voters everywhere in the mid-term elections clearly wanted change. But, as Trumpka says, they did not want “political maneuvers and overreach” like those of Kasich and Republican legislators. They want effective action to curb unemployment, create jobs and deal with the other severe economic problems facing the country.

As Trumka notes, public employees, union members, Democrats and liberals voted overwhelmingly to repeal the Ohio law, but so did a majority of voters “from households with no public employee, workers without union representation and independents – as well as 30 percent of Republicans and 36 percent of conservatives.”

One of the key lessons Trumka draws from Ohio’s election is that “the myth of the pampered public employee has been busted. Public employees didn’t cause the economic crisis and they’re not the enemy. Demonization of public employees is neither a strategy nor a solution and the heartland Americans who voted to restore rights for public employees understood that.”

The election also reinforced the continued need for working people, public and private employees alike, to join closely together. That’s what happened in Ohio. There, as Trumka notes, “firefighters, teachers and other public employees were joined by plumbers, pilots and all kinds of private sector employees to win. Worker to worker, neighbor to neighbor, the message spread, and what began as an attempt to divide workers flopped famously. In the end, working people’s solidarity was the message.”

Politicians could also learn important lessons – if they will. For the Ohio voters “showed that when fundamental rights and livelihoods are targeted, working people will not only defend themselves, but come back stronger.”

The outcome of the Ohio vote should show politicians seeking office that it would be wise for them to pay much more attention to the wishes of working and middle class voters than to those of the wealthy and privileged. Says Trumka:

“Cutting taxes for millionaires and billionaires, scapegoating working Americans and their unions and downsizing Social Security and Medicare may get you a standing ovation from the 1%, but the voters who decide elections will not be fooled – and you may just get more than you bargained for.”

Trumka’s correct. But despite the results in Ohio and the lessons they hold for the anti-labor political right, many undoubtedly will continue what the AFL-CIO sees as “part of Wall Street’s strategy to chip away at collective bargaining rights, piece by piece, law by law, until unions and collective bargaining rights are destroyed.”

Working people and their unions can be reasonably certain, at least, that they’ll have strong support in trying to withstand the attack – including support from the Occupy Wall Street movement, which Trumka credits with “redefining the political narrative.”

The next major test will come in the presidential and congressional elections in 2012. They’re especially looking for support from the swing voters who supported President Obama in the 2008 election and generally have the same political views as the majority of Ohio voters.

Trumka describes the swing voters as “working Americans with modest incomes, moderate views and little patience for polices that aren’t fair and don’t work.”

He says politicians seeking election or re-election next year must heed them and “support public policies for the 99 percent – policies that create jobs, invest in America’s future, safeguard Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and promote fiscal sanity by requiring millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share.”

OK, that’s asking for much more than we’ve been getting. But the Ohio vote demonstrated that it is possible to garner the votes necessary to overcome the forces that would deny us vital economic and political rights.

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.

Guardian editorial: Mayor Ed Lee’s challenges

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November 15, 2011

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Mayor Ed Lee has always talked about bringing the city together, about avoiding division and harsh conflict. And now that he’s won a four-year term, he’s must address a wide range of city problems that in the past haven’t responded well to consensus and compromise.
He’s going to have to do it in the wake of an election in which the centrist candidates all finished low in the pack — and the strongest progressive actually won more votes than anyone else on Election Day. And his victory comes at a time when there’s more concern over economic inequality than this country has seen since the 1930s — represented most visibly by the large and growing OccupySF encampment.
The mayor received huge financial support — in the hundreds of thousands of dollars — from some of the same people and businesses that the Occupy movement is targeting. Some of his campaign contributors have an conservative economic agenda that’s way to the right of the center of San Francisco politics. And some of his closest allies (and strongest supporters) are, to put it kindly, ethically challenged. So it’s not going to be easy for the mild-mannered mayor to lead the city — and if he wants to be successful, he needs to work with and not ignore the left.
There are a few critical steps that would show the people who opposed him that he’s not a captive of big-business interests and that he can be trusted:

1. Appoint a real progressive to Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi’s District Five supervisorial seat. If Lee is really mayor who’s above petty politics, the chief criterion for the appointment shouldn’t be loyalty to Lee or Willie Brown or Rose Pak et al. District Five supported Avalos over Lee by a solid margin (in the Haight, Avalos got twice as many votes as Lee). The district has been represented by two people, Matt Gonzalez and Mirkarimi, both of whom were elected as Green Party members. It’s almost certainly the most left-leaning district in the city, and deserves a supervisor who represents that political perspective. Most of the qualified people who fit that description supported a candidate other than Ed Lee for mayor.

2. Don’t send the cops to roust OccupySF. The movement has support all over the city and is making an historic statement. It’s probably the most important political demonstration in San Francisco since the 1960s. A mayor who has any shred of a progressive soul should recognize that the most important issue facing this city and this nation is the wealth and income gap and help OccupySF make its voice even louder.

3. Present a plan for more than a “cuts only” budget. Yes, the sales tax measure lost, putting a hole in the city budget, and yes, it will be a year before a credible new revenue measure can go on the ballot. But now is the time to start bringing people together to look at what comprehensive tax reforms might be more appealing than a regressive sales tax.4. Don’t give away the city to the One Percent. A developer wants to build 160 condos for the very, very rich on the waterfront at 8 Washington. Mayoral ally Rose Pak supports the project. It’s about as blatant an example as possible of something that only benefits multimillionaires, and it will be one of the first major land-use decisions Lee will have to grapple with. Making his opposition clear would demonstrate his independence.

5. Support public power and community chocie aggregation. And appoint SPUC commissioners with visible, credible public power credentials. PG&E has maintained its illegal private power monopoly in San Francisco for decades by muscling mayors to appoint only PG&E-friendly commissioners who keep City Hall safe for PG&E.

6. Run an open administration. Both previous mayors, Gavin Newsom and Willie Brown, were openly hostile to the press, hostile to open government and and supremely arrogant. Lee has a different personal style and he ought to show that he respects the Sunshine Ordinance by directing his departments to abide by the rulings of the Sunshine Task Force. That’s what good government would look like.

Dick Meister: Mucho car!

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November 15, 2011

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based former sports car driver.

It’s gone forever, my beloved Triumph Spitfire, that classic, marvelous looking British sports car that never ran anywhere near as well as it looked. Pearl white it was, with black trim. Pretty. But noisy, roaring sports-car-like down streets and highways to disturb my neighbors and who knows how many others.

For more than 30 years my 1979-model British beauty served me, going everywhere I wanted it to go, drawing approving glances and remarks from pedestrians and other drivers. It was, as one Spanish-speaking admirer exclaimed, “mucho car!”

The Spitfire also gave me the chance to spend lots of time with John, an extremely able, pleasant and sympathetic mechanic. Not to mention the tow truck drivers I often called on to get the car to John’s place of business for fixing,

It also won me the acquaintance of Anthony, the attendant in the garage of the radio station where I regularly recorded commentaries. Whenever I drove in, his eyes lit up. And on those frequent occasions when the Spitfire was being cared for by John, and I arrived in my wife’s humble Toyota sedan, Anthony was clearly disappointed and concerned. He sincerely wanted to know right away whether something bad had happened to “the little car?”

But the Spitfire and I have both become too old to remain together – though the car’s looks don’t reveal its advanced age. My wife Gerry and I were reminded of that recently by two teenage boys who were walking by on the street adjacent to where we had just parked and were sitting with the car’s vinyl top pulled back.

“What,” one boy loudly asked, “is that funny old couple doing in that slick-ass car?”

So now we have parted for good. The memories, however, remain.

It seems not everyone is familiar with Triumph Spitfires, which don’t have brand name labels affixed to their bodies like most other cars. The rarity of the unlabeled Spitfires became frighteningly evident soon after we began our long relationship. My wife Gerry and I were purring along, a mild summer breeze flowing gently around us, brilliant sky above, and not a highway patrolman in sight. Sixty, seventy . . .

Suddenly, a car roared up behind us and then pulled alongside. The driver waved and shouted. What was he saying? “Flat? Flat? “

My God, and we were going close to 80! Gerry didn’t panic. She never does. But me, well . . . “Look! Look! Which tire! Find it! Watch out! Hang on!”

The car next to us slowed as we slowed, and the driver repeated his message. Only now I could see that he was smiling – and hear that he was not saying “flat” at all. The word was “Fiat” as in, “Is that a Fiat, or what?”

And there were those kids staring intently from the rear of cars in front of us on freeways, demanding to know what they were looking at. It wasn’t easy to concentrate on the road with two, three, maybe four kids mugging and waving and pointing as we rolled full tilt down the road.

Coming upon suspicious characters hovering about the car in darkened parking lots and alongside the curb on dark city streets was exciting, too. They always said things like, “Just trying to figure what make car you got here, mister.” But life in the big city being what it is, I was never sure about that.

Yet it was quite nice to be approached in garages and parking lots by young women anxious to learn the identity of “that great looking car.”

Some people didn’t even bother asking the question. One day, for instance, there was a couple crossing the street in front of us, eyeing my magnificent unlabeled machine.

“What?” asked the man, smirking most knowledgably. “A Fiat, of course.” Imagine. My unlabeled British gem being taken again for an Italian.

Then there was the time after I came out of a building in which I had been transacting some important business, quite aware the time had expired on the parking meter. A meter maid in no–nonsense navy blue was slowly circling my unlabeled Spitfire, peering quizzically at the front, side and rear.

“Ah,” said I. “Just in time.”

“No,” said she. “Ticket’s written up. Just looking to see what make to put on it.”

“Oh, ho. And what happens if I don’t tell you?”

“Nothing. I’ll just write it up, ‘Make unknown.’ Actually, you know, it doesn’t really matter to me what it is.”

The final insult to the Spitfire came on its very last day in my possession. It was in one of its frequent non-operating moods, so I yet one more time called AAA for a tow. Out came a truck in four hours – four hours! – a truck equipped to carry, not a beautiful sports car, but a mere motorcycle. The dispatcher had assumed that my Triumph Spitfire was – you guessed it – a Triumph-brand motorcycle.

I tried to drive the car out of the garage and onto the flatbed tow truck’s ramp. Click! Click! Click! Over and over I turned the key and pumped the gas pedal, expecting the usual roar. But the car refused to start. I could only conclude that my beloved Spitfire didn’t want to leave me after all our years together. Finally, the reluctant car was pushed up and onto the truck.

What a humiliating way to go for the Spitfire. For me, too. At least I was able to send the car off to a very good home – John the mechanic’s garage, where it will be on display with a half-dozen other bright, shiny, aged and I assume happy classic British sports cars.

I’ll miss the excitement and feeling of adventure that came with driving what I freely to concede was a highly undependable auto. Despite the fondness I now feel for the departed car, I can’t quite forget the feelings of genuine panic it too often caused me. Too many times, I’d be driving along happily, when, suddenly, the engine would fail me. “Sputter! Sputter! Sputter!” I panicked as I searched desperately for a safe place to park my temperamental machine.

The greatest adventure was my last. I was driving up a very steep San Francisco hill, cars moving in a steady stream in both directions. Then, suddenly, no brakes! Down I plunged, backwards, at ever-accelerating speed, until, finally, I smashed into a neighbor’s parked car. I had no other choice.

I also had no choice but to spend lots to get the brakes replaced. I was used to that, however. I calculate that over the 32 years of our life together, I spent more than $14,000 on repairs for the car that I bought new for $6200.

It’s taken lots of very hard thinking, but I’m finally reconciled to losing what has been my attractive daily companion for three decades. That’s all there is to it.

It’s gone. Gone!

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based former sports car driver.

Dick Meister: Strange bedfellows: Labor’s Tim Paulson and the Chamber’s Steve Falk

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November 11, 2011

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom and a former city editor of the Oakland Tribune, has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

It’s hard to imagine organized labor and the thoroughly anti-labor Chamber of Commerce on the same side, especially in a city like San Francisco with a major union presence.

It’s especially hard to imagine it at a time when unions everywhere are joining with Occupy Wall Streeters to demand justice from anti-labor business and corporate leaders like those who control the Chamber.

But consider what Tim Paulson, executive director of SF’s Labor Council, and President Steve Falk of the SF Chamber of Commerce had to say in a joint statement about the results of Tuesday’s election.

They were downright overjoyed about the passage of Proposition C, which will raise the amounts city employees must pay toward their less-than lucrative pensions and limit future cost-of-living raises. That’s a way to avoid raising business taxes to maintain city services in these recessionary times.

Perhaps most distressing, the passage of Prop C shifted control of the City Health Service System from the employees who are covered by the system to City Hall appointees who won’t have to demonstrate any particular experience in health care matters.

At least Paulson and Falk said they were pleased with the defeat of Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s outrageous Prop D – even though it would have changed the city pension system in almost exactly the same ways as Prop C.

In any case, the difference between C and D was not necessarily their content, but how they got on to the ballot.

Why, exclaimed Paulson in a separate, self-congratulatory statement, the results “sent new shock waves across San Francisco and America as workers demonstrated that collaborative democracy is the best way to set public policy.”

Collaborative democracy? By that I guess Tim was referring to the joining together of labor leaders and public employee unions and Chamber of Commerce members in a coalition with city officials, non-profit social agencies and community groups to put Prop C on the ballot.

The collaborators didn’t even include representatives of the retired employees whose health care would be seriously affected and who were quite active in helping elect labor-friendly candidates.

Paulson, a generally ineffective leader who always seems to be seeking approval of the City establishment, singled out billionaire Warren Hellman for being one of the principal collaborators.

Paulson boasted that every city employee union joined in what he actually described as “a real San Francisco way of doing things.” Hardly. If there really were such a thing, it would be a far cry from the “collaborative” approach that involved labor giving in to the wishes of its anti-labor corporate and business opponents.

Paulson and Falk claimed the approach will be “a model for the rest of the country.” Thankfully for the rest of the country, that seems highly unlikely given the widespread demands for actual reform triggered by the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Negotiations between labor and management eventually reach agreements that both can live with, albeit often uncomfortably. But no agreement can be reached, or should be reached, when one party – the Chamber of Commerce in this case – is not seeking real compromise with an enemy – namely unions – that it would like to put out of business, or at least seriously weaken. Unions, of course, have the same feelings about union foes like the Chamber.

Tim Paulson actually declared the election results “a great victory during difficult times.”

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom and a former city editor of the Oakland Tribune, has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

Dick Meister: Labor and the occupiers: a natural fit

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November 9, 2011

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LABOR & THE OCCUPIERS: A NATURAL FIT

By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom and a former city editor of the Oakland Tribune, has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

Think of what a combined effort by unions and the Occupy Wall Street movement could do to weaken the tight grip of corporate greed on the economy. Think of how it could greatly strengthen both the labor movement and the occupiers.

OWS and labor have worked together in some locations. But many occupiers consider labor a part of the economic and political establishment that they’re protesting, and fear that union leaders might try to take control of their movement, which, unlike unions, is based on direct rather than representative democracy.

And labor is not happy that OWS has no clearly identified leaders or formal demands, which of course is how unions operate.

Unions and the occupiers, however, have the same powerful enemies. They need each other if they are to overcome them. It seems to me that unions are in the best position to bring the two much closer together.

So, how to go about it? Unions need to make clear, in words and deeds, that they are indeed facing the same problems and opponents as the occupiers and that they need to join together so as to act as forcefully as possible to overcome their mutual enemies. They must make clear as well that union leaders do not want to take over their movement, but seek to strengthen it.

There’s an old, but still highly effective tactic that labor must stress to its potential OWS friends. It’s called solidarity.

Clearly identified unionists must march and otherwise demonstrate with occupiers, join them in their rallies and in their tent cities and elsewhere. They should provide them with food, blankets, medical care and other necessities. They should organize joint actions and show that labor leaders are doing important work in the occupiers’ behalf.

At the same time, unions should make clear that they do not support the destructive vandals who’ve tried to attach themselves to the OWS movement.

If necessary, labor should also take dramatic actions such as were taken November 2^nd by Occupy Oakland protestors who had been camped in front of Oakland’s City Hall for close to a month. They led a rally and then a march of some 7,000 people through downtown Oakland to the city’s port, one of the most important on the West Coast.

Occupiers and their supporters forced the port to close by blocking delivery trucks from loading or unloading cargo on the docks. At any rate, many dock workers, union members all, didn’t show up for work.

The march and port closure were planned as part of a citywide general strike that, while drawing many words of support from Oaklanders and others, was not widely supported otherwise.

Most notable among those who showed their support physically as well as verbally were more than 300 teachers who did not report to school. Some other teachers used the day to explain the nature of such protests to their students.

Unions certainly have had a long experience in doing what needs to be done to build the strength for battling powerful economic and political enemies. During the Great Depression, for instance, unions waged massive organizing drives to recruit workers and give them the strength they needed to overcome the greedy oppressors of the 1930s. That led to the laws that guarantee workers the right to unionization and regulate their hours and other working conditions.

Like the union activists of the thirties, occupiers have helped focus widespread attention on the financial interests which are responsible for battering the economy and on what the financial interests must do to make it right.

That has helped OWS gain support from the AFL-CIO, and from more than two dozen national unions and many of their local affiliates. Some of the unions have made participation in the occupy movement a major activity.

Unions already have spent lots of money and put lots of members into the occupiers battles to win much better treatment for workers from the same forces that are denying decent treatment to unionists.

A partnership of labor and the Occupy Wall Street movement could very well lead to reforms as far-reaching and vital as those won by activists eight decades ago.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom and a former city editor of the Oakland Tribune, has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

Guardian editorial: End the death penalty in 2012

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November 9, 2011

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It’s time to end the death penalty in California. And November, 2012, may be the best chance.

A coalition led by the ACLU is launching a campaign for a ballot initiative to end executions in this state. All the pieces are in place: an outmoded, dysfunctional system that a growing number of law-enforcement veterans say is a waste of time an money. An emerging majority of California voters who no longer support the death penalty. And what’s shaping up to be a well-funded, well-organized campaign aiming for a vote in a presidential election year, when turnout will be relatively high.

The moral and human case against the death penalty is obvious — giving the state the power to kill people is wrong. The implementation of the system is, to say the least, arbitrary and capricious: Poor people and people of color are way more likely to face capital punishment than white people who have money. Many, if not most, of the people on death row have serious mental health issues, organic brain damage or were victims of abuse. No other civilized country in the developed world still allows executions.

But there’s also hard, cold, financial evidence that the current system isn’t working, evidence that appeals to conservatives. Simply put, the death penalty is a phenomenal waste of money. Since 1978, a recent Los Angeles Times study showed, California has spent $4 billion to execute a grand total of 13 people. That’s $308 million per killing.

It costs $184 million more a year to keep 714 people on death row than it would cost if they were serving life without parole. It costs millions more to prosecute and defend capital cases (a relatively low-cost death penalty prosecution still costs $1 million more than a high-priced LWOP case) and the state spends more than $300,000 per inmate for publicly subsidized defense.

Most of the death row inmates have no appeals lawyers; the cost of appeals is so high, and the work so difficult, that few private lawyers will take those cases, and the wait for a publicly funded attorney is more than 15 years. Victims get little closure from executions, since the process (properly, and by law) takes so long and is so drawn out. In fact, the most common cause of death on death row is old age.

Then there’s the fact that the drugs used in California executions are no longer made in the United States — and imported drugs may not meet U.S. quality standards. So the lethal-injection protocol now in place — which is, by itself, cruel and unusual punishment — may not survive legal challenges.

So it’s time. Local governments in San Francisco and the East Bay should endorse the effort and help promote the ballot measure. The coalition needs money and volunteers for signature gathering. Go to safecalifornia. org and sign up.

The Guardian–and the historic elections of 1966 and 2011

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November 8, 2011

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(Written on election day before the polls closed. Scroll down for our editorial positions of 1966 and 2011)

In the second edition of the Guardian, dated Nov. 7, 1966, we published our first set of editorial endorsements that were to become a trademark of our form of alternative journalism. (Our 1966 editorial in pdf form.)

We strongly endorsed then Gov. Pat Brown, going for his third term as a progressive governor, over Ronald Reagan, making his first run at elective office as the voice of the new Republican conservatism, in what we called “our historic election.” In reading the editorial over on the eve of our current “historic election,” it was remarkably prescient.

“For the repudiation of Brown and the election of Reagan,” we noted gloomily, “would mean that a generation of progressive legislation—in medicare, in education, in welfare, in conservation, in water resources, in bringing to account the dreadful problems of growth, population, and sprawl—would be in grave jeopardy.

“It isn’t difficult to imagine, for example, what will happen to the conservation movement at the hands of a man who talks loudly about selling off ‘unused park land.’ It is this sort of statement that shows Reagan’s naivete, his total lack of qualification for any responsible government job and his complete misunderstanding of what is happening in our state.”

We pointed out that Brown had continued the progressive policies of Govs.Warren and Knight but that this forward movement would end abruptly with Reagan as governor. Well, alas, we were right. Reaganomics was born and the Guardian and everybody else have ever since been fighting the doctrine of tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, and the economics of greed is good and greed is legal.

The result can be seen in today’s election in San Francisco and other California cities and counties.

The mayoral regimes of Brown, Newsom and Ed Lee have carried on the key elements of Reaganomics: endless budget cuts and a bushelbasket of higher fees, no new revenue initiatives, no moves to tax the Warren Hellmans and the Gordon Gettys on the same basis as the middle class, no moves to tax the big realtors and banks and big downtown companies on the same basis as small businesses, maintaining and facilitating the galloping inequalities of income, keeping the corrupting PG&E/Raker scandal intact at City Hall and thus allowing PG&E to operate as an illegal private utility in San Francisco. On and on.

The sad thing is that if Lee wins and the tide of sleaze keeps rising in his office, and the progressives lose even more power, things are likely to get much worse and fast. If Avalos or Herrera win, things are likely to get better but slowly if at all. If Mirkarimi wins, he will make an excellent sheriff in the Mike Hennessey tradition and will immediately be a candidate in waiting to run for mayor as a progressive sheriff and keep PG&E and the Chamber of Commerce gang on edge. (Our position as outlined by Executive Editor Tim Redmond in “The bad old days” in our 45th anniversary issue of Oct. 19, 2011.)

In any event, the Guardian will be here to “print the news and raise hell for good causes,” to update our masthead motto of 45 years. B3

Impertinent questions to Sup. Sean Elsbernd

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November 4, 2011

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At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Sup. Sean Elsbernd voted against a sensible resolution supporting regulated and safe patient access to medical cannabis in San Francisco.

He was on the losing end of an an 8-3 vote, with Sups. Carmen Chiu and Mark Farrell also voting against.

I was curious why, in San Francisco in November of 2011, he would vote against what I and many others considered a sensible but restrained resolution supporting local small businesses that are regulated and paying taxes and about the only business showing growth in the city.

So I emailed him some Impertinent Questions:

“Why do you continue to support a federal crackdown on medical marijuana? Why do you do this as a purported advocate of small business and bringing in more tax revenue to the city?”

I also asked Elbernd who he now supported for mayor, since the last time I heard from him he said he would support Mayor Ed Lee only if there were no other candidate who could beat State Sen. Leland Yee. He replied that had not endorsed a candidate for mayor, but if I contacted him after the election he would tell me who he voted for. “Rest assured,” he said, “the Bay Guardian endorsements will certainly influence my decision making process.”

On the marijuana issue, Elsbernd objected strenuously to my statement that he “supported the federal crackdown. Please send me the recording, clip, reporter’s notes, or any other documentation you have that demonstrates t hat I specifically said I supported the federal crackdown.”

Elsbernd asked if I was referring to his note vote on the resolution. (B3 answer: I was.)

“Are you erroneously extrapolating an opinion of mine based on my ‘no’ vote. Is that journalism or is that political spin? Would not a journalist simply ask the question like this, ‘Why did you vote no” on the resolution Making assumptions without any fact to back it up seems a bit irresponsible and lazy for a journalist. While you e-mail me under the guise of being a constituent, and your certainly live in District 7, we both know that this email discussion will be posted very soon on your Bay Guardian website (hello to all of who have time in your day to read Bruce’s blog) with additional edits and snide comments to which you will not me the opportunity to respond. (B3 comment: Elsbernd knows that I send him Impertinent Questions from time to time and that the Q and A will appear on my blog. And he knows he can answer in the blog comments or in a letter to the Guardian. To his credit, Elsbernd always answers me and I enjoy hearing from him. And I keep inviting him to talk things over at tapas night on Thursday night at the Que Syrah wine bar in West Portal in his district. I even offer to buy the first flight, but alas he never shows.)

Elsbernd then says he will answer my real question. “Why did I vote ‘no’ on the resolution?

Did you read the entire resolution? (B3 answer: yes.) Did you agree with every ‘whereas’ clause and every ‘resolved’ clause? (B3 answer: Yes.) Elsbern continued, “I do not. In particular, I strenuously object to the ‘whereas’ clause on page l, line 12-16, which implies that all licensed medical cannabis dispensaries in San Francisco are ‘clearly acting in good faith,’ and that they ‘take every measure possible to be safe and professional members of the community.’

Elsbernd then gets specific: “I suggest you talk to your neighbors on the other side of Portola/Junipero Serra who live near the dispensary on Ocean Avenue and ask them if ‘every measure’ has been taken to to be safe and professional members of their community. I suggest you read the police reports in and around the area over the last five years and compare those same reports o before the opening of the dispensaries and ask whether or not ‘every measure possible’ has indeed been taken. If you take the time and do that work, I think you’ll understand, why, as the representative of those neighborhoods, I voted against that resolution. (B3 answer: I am always take note when Elsbernd purports to represent his constituents in his district. But he could have amended the motion in committee (he was absent on the committee vote) or at the board. Instead, he used this single example to justify his opposition to a timely resolution putting the city squarely on record as being opposed to the ridiculous, expensive, job-killing, and tax-killing crackdown by the federal government on medical marijuana and its use in treating debilitating diseases and chronic pain in thousands of patients in San Francisco and throughout the state. The resolution also resolved that the supervisors “encourage the President and Congress of the United States to enact legislation requiring federal law enforcement to respect state medical cannabis laws.”)

Elsbernd also argued that the resolution called “for a massive tax reduction for all dispensaries in its resolved clause to support HR 1985, a bill by Rep.Stark granting a tax exemption for all such businesses? I know the Guardian typically opposes all business tax exemptions. Do you guys support this one.” (B3 answer: The Stark bill is not a a tax reduction bill. It is a bill aimed at reversing an IRS crackdown on many large dispensaries—including Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest in Northern California, that they cannot write off normal business expenses and must pay a 35 per cent levy on those claims going back for three years. Harborside’s Steve DeAngelo told the Guardian that this IRS attack would put Harborside—or any company with high overhead costs—out of business. http://www.sfbg.com/2011/10/11/feds-crack-down

Stark’s bill would reverse that IRS decision and allow dispensaries to deduct expenses according to state law just like all other businesses in California.
http://americansforsafeaccess.org/downloads/Stark_bill_2011.pdf

And so my original Impertinent Question remains: why is Elsbernd (and Chiu and Farrell) supporting in effect a federal crackdown aimed at killing off marijuana dispensaries and killing off a growing sector of small business and a valuable source of tax revenue? If he isn’t supporting the federal crackdown with this vote, what is his position on medical marijuana dispensaries? Wine and tapas, Sean? B3)

Dick Meister: Searching for Joe

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November 4, 2011

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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 300 of his columns.

San Francisco’s unions have been looking for another Joe Alioto ever since he left the mayor’s office in 1976 after eight years of being one of the best political friends organized labor ever had – anywhere.

Unions certainly have no chance of finding such a staunch supporter among the candidates for mayor in Tuesday’s election – not even in former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, Alioto’s granddaughter. She reflects the conservative views of her former supervisorial district, which encompasses the upscale Pacific Heights and Marina neighborhoods.

Some of the other candidates claim to be labor-friendly, and some actually are. But none have gained anything approaching the all-out, almost unprecedented support that unions gave Alioto. Not surprisingly, unions have in turn been promised only relatively little post-election support by Tuesday’s candidates.

Alioto’s rewards to labor were based in part on the fact that, as he declared, “the controlling and decisive factor in my election was the support of organized labor.”

His administrations, he said, were “first of all sympathetic to labor.”

Alioto appointed union representatives to all of the city’s boards and commissions, some of which previously had little or no union representation, and helped unions in major strikes against recalcitrant employers, often stepping in to convince the employers to settle.

Probably the greatest benefits to union members came from the downtown building boom that Alioto launched, creating thousands of construction jobs.

So, with no Alioto-like union supporter in this year’s mayoral race, who are unions supporting? And how is labor likely to influence the outcome as well as the votes for ballot propositions, particularly Props C and D that involve the pensions and health care of public employees that have come to preoccupy municipal and state governments everywhere?

It seems clear that labor’s influence on the election outcome will turn out to be relatively slight, certainly considerably less than in Alioto’s time – less, in fact than in just about any other city election since the 1930s, when San Francisco was celebrated as one of the country’s premier “union towns.”

But no more. It’s sometimes hard to believe that San Francisco was ever a union town in the same league as New York, Chicago and Detroit.

The general public hardly hears from the city’s once vibrant and highly influential Labor Council and its leaders these days. Individual unions such as the Service Employees, Longshore and Warehouse Union, Nurses Association and Unite-Here, the hotel workers union, still have considerable clout, as do a few others. But that’s about it.

It’s partly the fault of the news media, but their scant coverage of organized labor reflects the failure of unions to take the leading position in politics as in economics that they once had, and must have if they are to prosper.

Unions are staging something of a comeback with the growth of public employee unions, which now dominate organized labor in numbers and influence – though locally unions probably do not yet have enough influence to play the role that once put them in a position to help elect politicians who considered them indispensable.

Public Defender and mayoral candidate Jeff Adachi and his conservative backers are trying hard to seriously weaken the growing strength of San Francisco’s public employee unions and their members, mainly through Proposition D. The apparent frontrunner in the mayor’s race, acting Mayor Ed Lee, is no particular friend of labor, either. Neither was Lee’s predecessor, Gavin Newsom.

Labor wasn’t helped by last year’s elections that gave the Board of Supervisors a strong minority of members on the political right who are at best indifferent to unions. Only five of the 11 supervisors can be legitimately considered pro-labor progressives.

It would help labor greatly to have a strong pro-union mayor, but none of the major candidates would play that role. The Labor Council endorsed Dennis Herrera and Leland Yee. The Building and Construction Trades Council went with Alioto-Pier and Yee.

But what about me? Glad you asked. I say it should be Herrera, who’s an excellent city attorney, has a broad base of supporters and, as a Hispanic, would give that underrepresented minority an important voice in City Hall. All the major candidates for sheriff and district attorney have solid credentials, and I’m sure any of them would do a good job.

Can’t see any reason not to vote for Prop A, a much needed school bond measure, and Prop B that would authorize bonds to pay for needed road and street repair. A big no on the foolish Prop E that would allow the Board of Supervisors to undo measures previously approved by voters.

No on F, another foolish and unnecessary measure. But Prop. G’s a good one. It raises the sales tax by half a percent to finance public safety programs and services to children and seniors.

Prop H is bad news. It would take away parental choice of schools and force students to attend only their neighborhood schools. Since many neighborhoods are still segregated by race or along socio-economic lines, it also would re-segregate schools citywide.

The main event includes, of course, Props C and D, and we should reject both measures. Don’t be confused by those who say, “I can’t vote no on C, because if D gets more votes, Adachi will win.” That ain’t necessarily so, for if neither measure gets at least 50 percent+one of the votes, then both would be defeated.

Make no mistake: Both propositions would be extremely harmful, because both would needlessly increase the financial burden of city employees by limiting the pensions of many new employees, while at the same time requiring them to make higher contributions to city pension funds. Both measures would also require some current employees to contribute more, although Prop D’s rates are somewhat higher, especially for higher income employees. Both C and D would also limit cost-of-living raises for current retirees.

Ever since voters in 2004 approved a badly needed reform of the City Health Service System that oversees the health care of employees and retirees, their elected representatives have had a genuine voice, with four members on the service’s seven-member governing board. The other three have been City Hall appointees.

Prop C would reverse the numbers, substituting another City Hall appointee for one of the elected members and otherwise limiting the voice of the elected members. Sponsors of Prop C would have you believe that the proposition is a “consensus” measure agreed to by all parties. But don’t you believe it.

Retirees, who make up a large part of those in the Health Service System, were not allowed to be part of the consensus negotiations, presided over by acting Mayor Lee.

It’s certain Joe Alioto would never have allowed that to happen.

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 300 of his columns.

Guardian editorial: Leave the occupiers alone!

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November 1, 2011

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As the world watches, San Francisco and Oakland should set the standard by supporting Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland and supporting their goals and peaceful tactics. B3

With all of the police raids and arguments over messages and demands and tactics, it’s easy to forget that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear political point — and it’s right.

The movement is about the devastating and unsustainable direction of the American economy, about the fact that a tiny elite controls much of the nation’s wealth, that virtually all of the income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the very top, about the collapse of the middle class and the rise of economic inequality that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Those are the central issues facing the United States, the state of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland today — and instead of trying to crack down on the protests, city officials ought to be endorsing the occupy movement and talking about cracking down on the financial institutions and the wealthy.

A few things worth noting:

1. The protesters are almost entirely nonviolent. Although there have been a few isolated incidents in Oakland and SF, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people at Justin Herman Plaza and Frank Ogawa Plaza are actively promoting and insisting on nonviolence. This is not a crowd that is a threat to anyone.

2. There’s a precedent for long-term political protest camps in San Francisco. The AIDS Vigil remained at U.N. Plaza — with tents, tarps, and cooking gear — for ten years, from 1985 to 1995.

3. The city of San Francisco’s citations — reported without question in the daily newspapers — about health and sanitation problems are way overblown. The OccupySF protesters are making extraordinary efforts to keep the place clean. When the city failed to live up to its promise to provide portable toilets, the protesters ordered (and paid for) their own. As state Sen. Leland Yee (not known as a crazy radical) noted after a visit Oct. 26: “While hundreds gathered, there was not one incident of violence. If the interim mayor thinks there are health issues, I certainly didn’t see them.” We visited Oct 31, and the place was clean and peaceful.

4. The cat-and-mouse game with the San Francisco police is the equivalent of psychological warfare; protesters have to be on edge at all times for fear of a crackdown that may or may not come.

5. Mayor Jean Quan made a bad mistake sending in the cops to roust Occupy Oakland. Nothing good at all can come of any further police eviction action.

Frankly, we don’t see why the protesters — who are well-behaved, represent no threat to anyone, and are doing a huge civic and national service by bringing attention to an issue that the powers that be in Washington, Sacramento and (sadly) San Francisco have largely ignored — can’t stay where they are. If there are health issues, let the Department of Public Health work with the occupiers. If there’s a problem with a portable kitchen, let the Fire Department show the protesters how to run it safely and legally (there are portable cooking devices at every street fair, in dozens of food trucks and in probably 100 other places around town).

The people at OccupySF and Occupy Oakland have done an amazing job of building a safe, respectful and inclusive community. They are the political heroes of 2011. If there’s anyplace in America where the movement ought to be allowed to grow and thrive, it’s here in the Bay Area.

Dick Meister: Respect for car wash workers

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October 31, 2011

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RESPECT FOR CAR WASH WORKERS – AT LAST

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.

Few workers are more poorly treated and generally ignored than those swift moving and hard-working employees of the country’s many thousands of car washing facilities. But finally, there’s genuine hope that the carwash workers will win much better conditions.

Workers at a major Southern California carwash have won what could very well be just the first of many union contracts in California and elsewhere that will guarantee them decent treatment. The workers are significantly strengthened by their membership in a local of the powerful United Steelworkers union.

Their initial contract, with a major Southern California carwash, is what could be only the first of many union contracts in California and elsewhere that will promise carwash workers decent treatment.

As they had in winning the contract, it’s certain they’ll have strong backing from a coalition of the Steelworkers, AFL-CIO and hundreds of community and faith organizations that began a unionizing drive three years ago.

The contract terms are modest, but they’re an important, badly needed start toward correcting the carwash workers’ truly deplorable conditions. As one Steelworkers official said, they generally are treated “like workers in a third-world country.”

Most carwash workers are immigrants, many undocumented. A successful organizing drive among them undoubtedly would lead to stepped-up organizing drives among the nation’s millions of other immigrant workers, particularly janitors, nursing home aides and security guards.

The AFL-CIO noted that the car wash workers generally “are without the power to fight back against the horrible conditions in which they work.” The New York Times reported that “they are to scared to speak out or give their bosses any excuse to fire them.”

A veteran car washer, Oliverio Gomez, said bosses at the now unionized firm “didn’t treat us like people. What I hope is that future generations who come to work here aren’t treated as badly as we were – that they’re no longer humiliated, but respected.”

Car washers often work 10-hour days, six days a week, often for as little as less than half the legal minimum wage, often for as little as $30 to $40 a day. Some work before, after or even during their scheduled shifts strictly for tips. Many aren’t paid for the time they spend waiting for customers to drive in.

The work is dangerous. As the AFL-CIO reported, employers commonly violate health and safety laws, exposing workers to “a variety of toxic chemicals without adequate protective gear and frequently work for extended periods under the sun without rest or shade.”

An investigation by the Los Angeles Times estimated that two-thirds of the car washing facilities that have been investigated by California’s Labor Department over the past eight years were violating one or more laws. That included underpaying workers, hiring child labor, going without workers compensation insurance and denying workers meal breaks.

Meanwhile, the employers were doing well. Their profits in Los Angeles, for instance, were averaging $1 million a year.

The monetary terms of the car washers’ two-year union contract include a modest raise of only about 2 percent, and cover only 30 workers. But whatever the terms, they are an important foundation for better terms in later contracts covering far more workers at other car washing firms.

There are other terms in the contract, however, that are more important than pay raises. The contract guarantees badly needed health and safety protections, prohibits employers from disciplining or firing workers without just cause, including firing those who complain openly about unsafe conditions. And it sets up a formal procedure for settling grievances and a procedure to settle disputes by arbitration.

Although it shouldn’t be necessary, but certainly is, the contract requires employers to follow the labor laws that many have been openly violating. Among other things, that will require breaks for workers and paying them for time spent awaiting customers rather than just for their time working.

Above all, as car wash worker Olivereo Gomez declared, the union contract means “we finally get respect as workers.”

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.

Potrero Hill History Night: a special occasion for a special neighborhood

Gen Fujioka

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October 28, 2011

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Potrero Hill History Night: a special occasion for a special neighborhood

Scroll down for Potrero Hill History Night photos

And so Country Joe McDonald ambled on to the stage Saturday night at the International Studies Academy on Potrero Hill and told an full auditorium full of history night groupies that since he was playing in a school he would open with a spelling lesson.

“Give me an F,” he roared, and the audience roared back with an F.

“Give me a U, give me a C, give me a K,” and the audience roared back again and again with knowledge of the lyrics of the anti-war song “I Feel Like I’m Fixing To Die” that Country Joe made famous during the Vietnam war and has been singing as his trademark song ever since.

He would pause and the audience would continue on with the words. Country Joe was in top form, the audience loved him, and it was a stunning beginning to the 12^th annual Potrero Hill History Night. And the fact that Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland were fixing to explode sooner or later in nearby neighborhoods only gave some timely poignancy to the occasion.

But Country Joe wasn’t at History NIght to perform as a singer or political activist. He explained that he was there as a turnaround artist to interview Joel Selvin, the veteran San Francisco Chronicle pop culture reviewer and author of “Smart Ass,” a collection of 40 years of Selvin’s music journalism. Significantly, Selvin also happens to be a longtime Potrero Hill resident. The latter phrase is the key, because the point of History Night is to focus on the rich history and colorful personalities of Potrero Hill and put them together into a lively program. In this segment, Joe the performer interviewed Joel the reviewer/reporter who had been writing about Joe for years.

The two made a splendid team and it turned out that Joel was as good onstage in this format as Country Joe. It was good fun, instructive at times, particularly with the stories about Bill Graham’s antics and angry outbursts and how each dealt with him. The audience had fun trying to figure out through questions just how rock n’ roll and Country Joe from Berkeley connected to the hill. Well, one answer was that Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, claimed three different addresses on Rhode Island Street.

The program this year was the best ever. A barbecue outside the building serviced by a platoon of History Night groupies on a warm and wondrous Potrero Hill evening. And a program featuring a formal presentation of a chunk of goat hoofprints embedded in concrete, an interview with the woman who tended the goats decades ago, a surprise appearance by the lady who found and preserved the hoofprints for years, and a starring role by Phillip DeAndrade of Goat Hill Pizza who was given the goat hill hoofprints as a surprise gift because he once had goats in the back of his Goat Hill pizza parlor and because, well, he’s Phil DeAndrade.

DeAndrade is a Potrero Hill version of the Scarlett Pimpernel (he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere). For this evening, he was doing triple duty as the worthy receiver of goat hoofprints in concrete, as master of ceremonies, and as the Hot Interviewer of the Colorful Potrero Hill Veteran, the key finale of every history night event.

DeAndrade was specially eloquent in explaining the importance of history night. It is, he said, a special event (nobody else in town has one) that showcases Potrero Hill.as a special place and its people as special people who live in a special neighborhood with a special culture and a special history and such institutions as the Neighborhood House built in the 1920s with Julia Morgan as the architect.

The goat hoofprints in cement made his special point. The artifact dates from 1925 or so and was found and preserved by Rose Marie Ostler, a Potrero Hill native. She kept the hoofprints for years and then decided they should go to DeAndrade of Goat Hill for his historic connection with goats. She presented them at the ceremony, with help from Dr. Frank Gilson, a local chiropractor wearing a Halloween type goat hill mask.

This year’s Potrero Hill veteran was Josephine Firpo Alioto, who was born on Potrero Hill 90 years ago, and now lives in San Jose. She married Frank Alioto, son of Police Capt Calogero and Vincenza Alioto. The Alioto family moved to 755 Carolina St. around 1930, just around the corner from Josephine’s house. There were no houses on the cornerin those days, so they had a clear view of one another’s houses. Josephine and Frank were friends for 80 years and married for 65 and a half years. They were married at nearby St. Theresa’s Church. With expert coaching from DeAndrade, she was most articulate and provided the details of life and times of growing up on the hill in the 1920s and 1930s.

Perhaps the most “newsworthy” comment came when she took the audience by surprise when she mentioned that her cousin, Luis Firpo, known as the Raging Bull of the Pampas in Argentina, knocked Jack Dempsey out of the ring in a championship fight. (My google check showed she was right. Firpo did knock Dempsey out of the ring in the famous 1923 heavyweight championship fight at the Polo Grounds in New York City and Dempsey’s head hit a reporter’s typewriter. But Dempsey got back in the ring on a contested long count and won the fight in the third round in what many think is the greatest fight of all time. It was Dempsey’s last successful defense of his title. The fight is on UTube and googleable under Firpo.)

As is the history night custom, there were lots of Firpos and Aliotos in the audience to help fill in Josephine Alioto’s story and answer questions from the audience and provide the evidence of a very special neighborhood.

All in all, it was a most memorable event and all to the credit of Peter Linenthal, the founder and impresario of Potrero Hill History Night. His event even got a nice writeup in Leah Garchik’s Chronicle column. UCSF at Mission Bay was the sponsor of the event and the Parkside, Chat’s Coffee, and Bottom of the Hill donated to the barbecue. Linenthal is also the curator of the Potrero Hill Archives project, assisted by Abigail Johnston. The two co-authored an excellent book on Potrero Hill. For more on the archives project, go to potreroarchives.com. You may find out more about Potrero Hill than you need to know.

I think Linenthal has done what every impresario dreams of doing: making his event so special and so memorable that it will live on and on. B3

Rose Marie Ostler formally presents the goat hoofprints in cement to Goat Hill Phi.

The audience of History Night groupies.

Selvin expands, Country Joe listen.

Josephine and Phil, a dynamic duo,

Josephine and Phil, getting ready for prime time.

The Apollo jazz group in concert at History Night.

A student from the International Studies Academy selling tickets for the barbecue. The money goes to the ISA student travel program.

Halloween 1951: Fast times in Rock Rapids, Iowa

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October 28, 2011

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The tale of what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in Rock Rapids, Iowa (Reprinted by popular demand)

By Bruce B. Brugmann

As I was preparing to update my annual Halloween blog, I checked this week’s Guardian to see what the action looked like for Halloween Eve.

Three years ago, then Mayor Gavin Newsom shut down the Halloween celebration in the Castro, killing off one of San Francisco’s most famous party events. Last year a local flash mob operator by the name of Amandeep “Deep” Jawa organized an unauthorized “Take Back Halloween” party in front of the Ferry building.He had arranged for at least two mobile DJs to spin and more than 300 people had signed up on Facebook. But he had no permits and the police were threatening to shut down the event.

This year, the Guardian promoted a “Ghost Hunt” and a “quick and spooky guide to haunted SF.” Which means there aren’t any big Halloween events and that much of the action may be with Occupy SF and Occupy Oakland and their nationally newsworthy interaction with the mayors and cops over permits and authorization . (Editorial aside: Support the occupiers!!)

Well, back where I come from in the Halloweens of my youth, we didn’t get permits, didn’t have authorization, and the police (actually, just one cop) tried and failed to shut down our events. This was in my hometown of Rock Rapids, a small farming community nestled along the Rock River in northwest Iowa. But we did have some fast times and created some almost famous urban legends on Halloween. I can speak for a generation or two back in the early 1950s when Halloween was the one night of the year when we could raise a little hell and and hope to stay one step ahead of the cops.

Or, in the case of Rock Rapids, the one and only cop, who happened to be Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger. Shinny had the unenviable job of trying to keep some semblance of law and order during an evening when the Hermie Casjens gang was on the loose. Somehow through the years, nobody remembered exactly when, the tradition was born that the little kids would go house to house trick and treating but the older boys could roam the town looking to make trouble and pull off some pranks.

It was all quite civilized. The Casjens gang would gather (no girls allowed) and set out about our evening’s business, being careful to stay away from the houses of watchful parents and Shinny on patrol. Dave Dietz and I specialized in finding cars with keys in the ignition and driving them to the other end of town and just leaving them. We tipped over an outhouse or two, the small town cliche, but one time we thought there was someone inside. We never hung around to find out. There was some mischief with fences and shrubs and lawn sprinklers and potted plants on porches.

After an evening of such lusty adventures, we would go home about ll p.m. and tell our parents what we had been up to and how we evaded Shinny the whole evening and they would (generally) be relieved. Shinny would just drive around in his patrol car and shine his lights here and there and do some honking. But somehow he never caught anybody or made any serious followup investigation. And the targets of our pranks never seemed to make police complaints. I once asked Paul Smith, the editor of the Lyon County Reporter, why he never wrote up this bit of zesty small town lore. “Bruce,” he said, “I don’t want things to get out of hand.” During my era, they never did.

Nonetheless, the city elders decided to keep Halloween devastation to a minimum and scheduled a dance in the Community Building, with the misbegotten idea the pranksters would give up their errant ways and come to the dance. The Casjens Gang would have none of this. In fact it was the year of the dance diversion that we made our most culturally significant contribution to Halloween lore in Rock Rapids. We happened upon a boxcar, loaded with coal, parked on a siding a block or so from Main Street, which also served as a busy main arterial highway for cars coming across northwest Iowa.

It is not clear to this day who came up with the idea of rolling the boxcar across Main Street and blocking all traffic coming from both directions. We massed behind the car and pushed and pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Then Bob Babl came up with a brilliant stroke: to use a special lever his dad used to move boxcars full of lumber for his nearby lumberyard. Bob slipped through a fence behind the yard and somehow managed to find the lever in the dark.

We massed again, now some 20 or so strong, behind the car and waited for the signal to push. Willie Ver Meer climbed to the top of the car and wrenched the wheel that set the brakes. We heaved in unison and the car moved slowly on the tracks until it reached the middle of Main Street. Willie gave a mighty heave and ground the car to a dead stop, bang, square in the middle of the street. Almost immediately, the cars started lining up on both sides of the car, honking away. Grace under pressure. An historic event. Man, were we proud.

We slipped away and from a safe distance watched the fruits of our labor unfold. Shinny, the ever resourceful police chief, soon came upon the scene. He strode into the dance in the nearby Community Building and commandeered enough of the dancers to come out and help him move the car back onto its siding. We bided our time and then went back and pushed the car once again into the middle of the street. Jerry Prahl added a nice touch by rolling out a batch of Firestone tires onto the street from his Dad’s nearby store. Suddenly, Main Street was a boxcar- blocked, tire-ridden mess. Again, the cars started lining up, honking away. Then we fled, figuring we were now wanted pranksters and needed to be on the lam.

The Casjens gang and groupies have retold the story through the years at our regular get togethers at the Sportsmen Club bar at Heritage Days in Rock Rapids and at our all-Rock Rapids Cocktail Party and Beer Kegger held in the back lawn of the Mary Rose Babl Hindt house in Cupertino. We would jokingly say that the statute of limitations never runs out in Rock Rapids and so we needed to be careful what we said and ought not to disclose fully the involvement of Dave Dietz, Hermie Casjens, Ted Fisch, Ken Roach, Jerry Prahl, Bob Babl, Romain Hahn, Willie Ver Meer, and lots of others, some who were there working in peril, others who declared they were there safely after the fact.

Two years ago, just before Halloween, I was invited back to Rock Rapids to speak to a fund-raising event for the local high school. It was a a crisp clear night just like the night of Halloween in l95l and a perfect setting to tell the story publicly in town for the first time. The event was at the new community building, on Main Street, just a block or so from the old Community Building, and a block or so from the siding where we found the boxcar. I told the audience that Shinny had assured me the statute of limitations had run out in Rock Rapids and that I could now, 54 years later, tell the boxcar- across -Main -Street caper with no fear of prosecution. And so I did, with relish.

Chuck Telford was in the audience and I recalled that he had driven up to us that night, as part of a civilian patrol, and inquired as to what we were doing. When he could see what we were doing, he just quietly drove off. “Very civilized behavior,” I said. Afterward, I told Chuck I would back him for mayor, on the basis of that incident alone. Craig Vinson, then the highway patrolman for the area, came up to me and said he remembered the incident vividly because he was on duty that night and came upon the boxcar blocking the highway with long lines of honking cars. “I got ahold of Shinny that night and told him it was his job to move the boxcar and get it off the highway,” he said. Others said they had gotten a whiff of the story but were never able to pin it down. The high school principal and superintendent didn’t say much and, I suspect, were worried my tale might lead to the Rock Rapids version of the movie “Ferris Buhler Takes A Day Off.”

For years, I said in my talk, I didn’t think that Shinny ever knew exactly what happened or who was involved in the caper or how we pulled it off, twice, almost before his very eyes. Shinny retired in Rock Rapids and I saw him twice a year when I came back to visit my parents. But I never said anything and he never said anything but finally a couple of years ago I found the right moment and cautiously filled him in. He chuckled and said, “Let’s drink to it.” We did. And we have been drinking to it ever since.

This year, for our reunion of the famous Dream Class of l953, I invited Shinny to sit in with us. He was still going strong at 89. He assured us once again that the statute of limitations had run out and we could speak openly about the Halloween caper in his presence and in front of witnesses. So Dave Dietz and I retold the story with expansiveness and gusto. Shinny supplied some key missing details. For example, he said that he didn’t get his troops out of the dance but out of the nearby movie theater with the threat that he would arrest them if they didn’t help him move the boxcar.

So there we were, 57 years later, working to make the fast times even faster on Halloween in Rock Rapids. Did he ever arrest anybody on Halloween? “No,” he said. “I would just shine my car lights and everybody would run.”
Any hard feelings? Shinny chuckled. “Naw,” he replied. “Let’s drink to Halloween in the good old days.” And so we did. Shinny still calls me now and then in my office in San Francisco and he always tells the receptionist, “Tell Bruce, it’s Shinny. I’m his parole officer in Rock Rapids.” Alas, Shinny died earlier this year but I am glad that I was able to confess properly to the top cop and only cop of Rock Rapids in l951 and to hear Shinny’s side of the story.

Those were the days, my friends. The days of fast times and safe Halloweens in Rock
Rapids, Iowa. On Rock Rapids, B3

P.S.: Ted Fisch, one of the conspirators, called me the other day. He was the center when I was the left-handed quarterback on our 195l team. He became a colonel in the Air Force and loved to say that he was the only field grade officer he knew of who was a solid Democrat. We went over the Obama prospects and the campaign in detail. And then he said, Bruce, a friend of mine googled my name the other day and found that I was mentioned in your Halloween story. How could that be? Does that mean I am up there forever? Somehow, it made me feel good.

P.S. I love smalltown lore and will from time to time lay out the life and fast times and wild adventures of my hometown, the best little town in the territory. I invite you to contribute your smalltown stories and lore.

Guardian editorial: Let OccupySF and Oakland stay

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October 27, 2011

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With all of the police raids and arguments over messages and demands and tactics, it’s easy to forget that the Occupy Wall Street movement has a clear political point — and it’s right.The movement is about the devastating and unsustainable direction of the American economy, about the fact that a tiny elite controls much of the nation’s wealth, that virtually all of the income growth over the past 20 years has gone to the very top, about the collapse of the middle class and the rise of economic inequality that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Those are the central issues facing the United States, the state of California and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland today — and instead of trying to crack down on the protests, city officials ought to be endorsing the occupy movement and talking about cracking down on the financial institutions and the wealthy.

A few things worth noting:

1. The protesters are almost entirely nonviolent. Although there have been a few isolated incidents in Oakland and SF, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people at Justin Herman Plaza and Frank Ogawa Plaza are actively promoting and insisting on nonviolence. This is not a crowd that is a threat to anyone.

2. The city of San Francisco’s citations — reported without question in the daily newspapers — about health and sanitation problems are way overblown. The OccupySF protesters are making extraordinary efforts to keep the place clean. When the city failed to live up to its promise to provide portable toilets, the protesters ordered (and paid for) their own. As state Sen. Leland Yee (not known as a crazy radical) noted after a visit Oct. 26: “While hundreds gathered, there was not one incident of violence. If the interim mayor thinks there are health issues, I certainly didn’t see them.”

3. The SF Mayor’s Office and the police have made no serious effort to work with or negotiate with the protesters. Even the five supervisors who arrived Oct. 26 (and good for them) when there were rumors of a police action, had no idea what the cops were up to — and Police Chief Greg Suhr wasn’t responding to their phone calls. It’s the equivalent of psychological warfare; protesters have to be on edge at all times for fear of a crackdown that may or may not come.

4. Mayor Jean Quan made a bad mistake sending in the cops to roust Occupy Oakland. Nothing good at all can come of any further police eviction action.

Frankly, we don’t see why the protesters — who are well-behaved, represent no threat to anyone, and are doing a huge civic and national service by bringing attention to an issue that the powers that be in Washington, Sacramento and (sadly) San Francisco have largely ignored — can’t stay where they are. If there are health issues, let the Department of Public Health work with the occupiers. If there’s a problem with a portable kitchen, let the Fire Department show the protesters how to run it safely and legally (there are portable cooking devices at every street fair, in dozens of food trucks and in probably 100 other places around town).

The people at OccupySF and Occupy Oakland have done an amazing job of building a safe, respectful and inclusive community. They are the political heros of 2011. If there’s anyplace in America where the movement ought to be allowed to grow and thrive, it’s here in the Bay Area.

Editorial: Mirkarimi vs. the conservatives in the sheriff’s race

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October 25, 2011

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The Chronicle, Examiner and Mirkarimi’s conservative opponents promptly pounced on Mirkarimi’s proposal to give a tax break to businesses to hire ex-convicts as a cheap and effective way to reduce the crime rate. They accuse him of being soft on crime and coddling felons and putting “victimizers before victims.” Okay. What’s their plan to deal with the worsening problem of more ex-cons on the street in the context of high recidivism rates? B3

Editorial: It’s easy to forget why the race for San Francisco sheriff is so important. For 30 years, retiring Sheriff Mike Hennessey has done such a good job promoting progressive law-enforcement policies that the voters haven’t had to think much about the office. But the race between Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, former police union leader Chris Cunnie and deputy sheriff Paul Miyamoto is critical — and there’s no better evidence than the debate over recidivism.

More than 65 percent of the people incarcerated in San Francisco wind up reoffending after they’re released. That’s a huge number, something the city’s been struggling with for years. Now Mirkarimi has a proposal to address that: He’s suggesting a tax break to encourage businesses to hire ex-cons. And already, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and Mirkarimi’s two opponents have jumped on the idea, accusing him of being soft on crime, of coddling felons and putting “victimizers before victims.”

For the record, we’re not fond of tax breaks as a way of stimulating job creation. We opposed the payroll tax break for Twitter and we opposed the biotech tax break. We’ve never seen any credible evidence that giving one group of companies special treatment under the city’s payroll tax actually encourages the creation of a single job.

But at least Mirkarimi is trying to address a problem that is only going to get worse. Under Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment, thousands of prisoners who would normally be sent to a state institution are going to wind up in the San Francisco jail system — and nearly all of them will ultimately be released, in the city.

If 65 percent of those people wind up committing another crime, that’s more victims, more police work, more time and expense for the courts — and more prisoners to crowd the local jails. And one of the biggest factors in recidivism is the lack of employment opportunities.

In other words, putting ex-felons to work is a cheap and effective way to reduce the crime rate. Cunnie and Miyamoto, who have both spent their careers in the criminal justice system, ought to know that.

But instead of supporting Mirkarimi’s approach — or even his overall goals — they’ve been taking a surprisingly right-wing line. Miyamoto announced that the proposal would “needlessly coddle at-risk individuals.” Cunnie charged that “the supervisor’s proposal puts victimizers before victims when it comes to incentivizing job creation.”

Never mind that the federal government adopted a similar program under the administration of that notorious criminal coddler George W. Bush. Never mind that several states have followed suit. Never mind that this is anything but a radical idea. Never mind the logic: Two of the candidates for sheriff of one of the most liberal cities in America are talking like hard-core Republicans.

We prefer direct public spending and other approaches to job creation, but Mirkarimi’s goal is entirely valid. The city ought to be putting resources into finding jobs for ex-offenders. And the fact that Mirkarimi is the only one talking about that shows had profoundly important this race is for the future of law-enforcement policy in San Francisco.

Editorial: Mirkarimi vs. the conservatives in the sheriff’s race

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October 25, 2011

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The Chronicle, Examiner and Mirkarimi’s conservative opponents promptly pouned on Mirkarimi’s proposal to give a tax break to businesses to hire ex-convicts as a cheap and effective way to reduce the crime rate. They accuse him of being soft on crime and coddling felons and putting “victimizers before victims.” Okay. What’s their plan to deal with the worsening problem of more ex-cons on the street in the context of high recidivism rates? B3