• No categories

Politics Blog

Daly and the Democrats

-
11

42009daly.jpg 420longo.jpg

Daly, Longo

By Tim Redmond

The race between Chris Daly and August Longo for regional director of the California Democratic Party has gotten a blog lot of blog press — far more attention than this low-lvel internal party stuff garners. Frankly, most people have no idea what a regional director does, or why it ought to matter to them.

But there’s a lot more going on here than what the cynics see as Daly looking for a new job when he’s termed out of office. (By the way, this isn’t exactly a job — the regional directors aren’t paid. It’s a volunteer position. And other than the chance to move up in state party leadership, it’s not a job that carries a lot of power or influence. Honestly — how many of you even knew that Longo was the ten-year incumbent?)

At the last state convention, there were signs everywhere that the Howard Dean wing of the party, the young, tech-savvy activists who were coalescing around Barack Obama, was getting restive. You saw it at the Resolutions Committee, where a handful of party-reform measures popped up, and were nadily shot down by state party Chair Art Torres. You saw it when Hillary Clinton was booed over Iraq. The Old Guard kept control, but you got a sense that the energy was all on the other side.

And now that Obama’s in the White House, that reformer energy will be even more visible in Sacramento this weekend. The Daly-Longo race won’t by itself change the party, but it will be a signal about its future direction.

Should the state bar investigate torture lawyer Yoo?

-
10

By Tim Redmond

Protests are going to continue at UC Berkeley over John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote memos authorizing CIA torture. I’m generally an academic-freedom purist, and I hate to suggest that anyone be fired from a university position because of his or her political statements.

On the other hand, the California bar does have rules of professional conduct, and one of them goes like this:

Rule 3-210. Advising the Violation of Law

A member shall not advise the violation of any law, rule, or ruling of a tribunal unless the member believes in good faith that such law, rule, or ruling is invalid

Would that include international law? Would that include advocating torture? I’m not a lawyer or an expert on legal ethics, but perhaps the state bar ought to look into this.

What’s in a Mayor’s Office merger? Pots of money it seems

-
5

You can’t blame folks for being confused about and/or suspicious of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s attempted merger of the Mayor’s Office of Community Investment and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, or whatever they are calling themselves these days.

(When you call folks in the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, some identify themselves on their voice mail like so: “This is so-and-so with the Mayor’s Office.” I won’t name names, but you know who you are. And besides, this seems like an accurate description of where people feel OEWD stands in Newsom’s pantheon, no matter what the department is called.)

Following the Boards’ April 15 Budget committee hearing, it became clear for the first time since Newsom announced the merger in December, that the resulting shift in funding and staff is not a done deal, since it needs Board approval, per the city charter.

As a result of yesterday’s legislative revelations, the Board budget committee has convened a task force to examine Newsom’s proposal, which apparently, is part of his 2009-10 budget submission, which is due in June. The Board then has 30 days to decide, on the basis of these recommendations and its own impressions, whether to approve or disapprove of the merger.

Judging from the reactions and comments of Budget Chair Sup. John Avalos and Sups. David Campos, Carmen Chu, Bevan Dufty, Eric Mar and Ross Mirkarimi, approval seems far from automatic, with many folks worried that the merger is really about raiding the community development cookie jar in a time of ballooning deficits.

At yesterday hearing, OEWD deputy director Jennifer Entine Matz clarified that OEWD has not been part of the Mayor’s Office for years.

Sunday Streets corporate sponsorships, writ small

-
1

By Steven T. Jones

Responding to criticism of the corporate sponsorships of this year’s Sunday Streets events, which begin April 26, organizers say it was a necessary evil that will barely be noticeable to attendees of the six street closure events.

“It will be the same exact Sunday Streets that you saw last year,” Wade Crowfoot, who is coordinating the event for the Mayor’s Office, told us, promising that corporate signage and promotion would be minimal. “The average person will not be aware that there’s private entities funding the direct costs.”

Crowfoot headed up fundraising for the events, tapping many of the same entities that have funded Mayor Gavin Newsom’s political ambitions, including Lennar, PG&E, WebCor Builders, Clear Channel, and Warren Hellman. But with six events costing up to $300,000, he said the grassroots help from Livable City, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF and other progressive groups is more important that ever.

Members of those groups love the Sunday Streets concept and recognize the city’s fiscal realities, but say this isn’t ideal. “I would have loved to have a city-sponsored event,” Livable City director Tom Radulovich told us. “It ought to be the city’s responsibility to create safe recreational spaces for people.”

Bailey murder linked to Bey IV

-
1

The Chauncey Bailey project and the Chronicle have major breaking news on the Chauncey Bailey front. Here’s the Project’s story from this morning:

By Thomas Peele, Bob Butler and Mary Fricker, The Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — Murder charges are imminent against former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and another man in the August 2007 killing of journalist Chauncey Bailey under a plea deal reached with the only person arrested in the case, law enforcement and other sources said Wednesday night.

Devaughndre Broussard, who confessed to killing Bailey and later recanted, has signed an agreement to testify that Bey IV ordered the hit to silence the journalist and that Antoine Mackey, another of Bey IV followers, helped carry it out. Bey IV and Mackey would face murder charges if indicted by a grand jury.

Charges in two other killings in July 2007 that police long have suspected bakery members committed also

are likely. Broussard will admit to killing Odell Roberson and testify that Mackey shot and killed another man, Michael Wills. Both Roberson and Wills were slain in July of 2007 near San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland.

Grand jury testimony is scheduled for next week, followed by indictments of Bey and Mackey.

In exchange for testimony, Broussard would plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter and receive a set sentence of between 20 and 30 years, officials said.

Broussard would also admit to killing Roberson at Bey IV’s order. Roberson was the uncle of Alonza Phillips, who was convicted of killing Bey IV’s older brother, Antar Bey, in 2005.

Bey IV is jailed without bail on a host of unrelated charges, including kidnapping and torture. Mackey, who San Francisco police suspect was involved in multiple unsolved gang killings, is serving an unrelated burglary charge in state prison and could be released within a year.

Deputy District Attorney Christopher Lamiero said he could not confirm any details Wednesday night.

“We are very close to a point where we are going to be able to hold accountable all of those responsible for Bailey’s murder,” he said. He declined to say anything further.

Should prisoners have cell phones?

-
28

By Tim Redmond

The hottest contraband in prisons these days isn’t drugs or weapons. It’s cell phones. The California Department of Corrections is pushing for stiff criminal penalties for cell phone possession:

“Cell phone smuggling into California’s prisons is a very serious and growing problem. Public safety officials in prisons and prosecutors on the outside need additional tools to combat cell phone smuggling to inmates,” said Matthew Cate, CDCR Secretary. “Illegal cell phones are used to circumvent supervision of conversations, and can be used by inmates to orchestrate criminal activity, plan escapes, and be a menace outside of prison walls.

There’s state legislation. There are cell-phone-sniffing dogs (seriously, cell-phone-sniffing dogs). There’s a lot of press fuss, and almost all of it has focused on the possibility that crimes can be committed from inside prison wall with cell phones.

But let me suggest some other reasons why the CDC might be trying to ban these handy little devices. For one thing, forcing inmates to use incredibly expensive, overpriced pay phones is quite lucrative for private vendors and state and local government. Inmates who have cell phones can call home without forcing their loved ones to pay huge collect-call charges.

I called the CDC today to ask if revenue has dropped since cell phones started showing up in prisons, and spokesperson Gordon Hinckle said he’d get back to me if that information was something the notoriously secretive agency might be willing to release. Of course, he said, “By no means is that any reason why we’re trying to crack down on this.”

And then there’s the fact that cell phones have cameras.

Imagine if the routine prison-guard misconduct — the beatings, the abuse, the violence — that goes on in state prisons could be captured by inmates and sent to the outside world. Imagine if the next Oscar Grant turned out to be a prison inmate, say, someone denied medical care or beaten near death by the authorities.

You think the wardens and the prison guards’ union wants any chance of that ever happening?

I get the point about the crimes and the potential for problems. But I also think there are plenty of inmate who are just serving their time and aren’t parts of gangs and aren’t plotting assassinations and who might have slightly better lives if they were allowed to communicate more cheaply and freely with the outside world.

BART police legislation stuck in committee

-
2

By Tim Redmond

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s bill that would force the BART police to create a civilian-oversight agency came before the Public Safety Committee for a hearing today, and the BART Board — the clueless, inexcusable BART Board — tried to derail it.

The BART directors sent a letter to the committee saying, in effect, Trust Us: We’re working away, with our closed-door committee, to draft our own oversight policy, and we’ll come up with something. Maybe by the end of the year.

Ammiano probably had the votes to pass the measure out, but the committee chair, Jose Solorio, declined to call for a vote, leaving AB 312 in limbo. Solorio said he wanted to wait to see what BART came up with, and then compare the BART proposal with Ammiano’s.

The problem is that BART isn’t going to come up with anything. This crew has had 17 years to come up with a civilian oversight program. At least three people have been improperly killed by the BART police. We should be done trusting BART — and an Orange County Democrat shouldn’t be telling the Bay Area delegation, most of whom support the bill, how to regulate BART.

So now Ammiano has to figure out how to get Solorio to call the measure up for a vote. “I’ll get it out of the Assembly,” Ammiano told me. But he’s going to need some help.

We haven’t heard much from Sandre Swanson on this. The recent killing of Oscar Grant happened in Swanson’s district; he ought to be a cosponsor of Ammiano’s bill, and he should have been there at the hearing today, and he ought to be helping Ammiano lobby Speaker Karen Bass to make sure this bill gets to the floor.

And Fiona Ma, who’s on the Public Safety Committee, didn’t say a word in support of the bill. That’s bogus, big time.

What’s in the Republicans’ tea?

-
14

By Steven T. Jones
alice_party.jpg
As overhyped and ridiculous as tomorrow’s Republican Tea Party events are, I find them a fascinating manifestation of the perplexing posture of victimhood that the US ruling class and its right-wing shills seem to revel in. So I might just have to pop down to Civic Center Plaza from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow to see San Francisco’s festivities.

The US has one of the lowest rates of taxation in the industrialized world. Fiscal conservatives have been calling the political shots in this country since 1980, resulting in an extraordinary consolidation of wealth, a threadbare social safety net, and an economic system collapsing because we refused to regulate greed and corruption.

“Yet on this Tax Day, all taxpaying Americans should be concerned that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats’ runaway tax hikes will be the death of America’s economy as they extend the ‘Pelosi Recession,’” warned National Republican Congressional Committee director Guy Harrison in an alarming mass e-mail. “This week, thousands of patriotic Americans will gather to protest oppressive government taxation, and stand as one for fiscal sanity at tea parties across the nation.”

Really? We should all be alarmed that Congress and President Barack Obama are considering increasing the upper income tax bracket by a couple of percentage points? Frankly, I’m pissed that they’re being too timid in getting our money back from the rich motherfuckers who stole it. And I certainly feel that our corporate-sponsored political system is essentially taxation without representation from those of us who can’t afford a campaign contribution.

So maybe we’re all a little indignant.

Lennar’s housing scam, redux

-
6

By Steven T. Jones

Our post the other day on how Lennar and its allies misrepresented promises to build 32 percent affordability into its 10,500 homes proposed in southeastern San Francisco has earned us indignant calls from the Labor Council and ACORN. But at the end of each of those conversations, my belief that the city is getting a raw deal has only been strengthened.

Sure, these organizations and the city are collectively getting millions of dollars from Lennar. But if construction of affordable housing in the part of town with the lowest income San Franciscans is the concern, as it rightfully should be, it’s clear that Lennar has gotten one helluva deal, thanks to Mayor Gavin Newsom and other establishment Democrats.

Lennar gets free land from the city and free cleanup money from the federal government. Then they build market rate units (in a real estate market that’s already oversaturated with them), except for the same 15 percent below market rate units that every other developer in town (most of whom pay for their land) is required to build. And then they give some of our land back to us to build more affordable units, at the public’s expense.

Please, somebody out there explain to me why this is such a great deal for San Francisco.

John Ross and the cops

-
2

41409ross.jpg
John Ross reads at Modern Times

By Tim Redmond

John Ross, the legendary poet, writer and shit-disturber who has been our Mexico City correspondant for years and broken numerous big stories, called me last week to say he’d been knocked around by the SF cops.

Now, that’s nothing new for John — he has never done well with authority and has been beaten badly by police officers in San Francisco, Mexico City and numerous other locations over the years.

But today, John is 71, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and recovering from surgery and chemotherapy for liver cancer. He’s physically weak and has a hard time walking. He’s certainly no threat to law enforcement.

And somehow, he tells me, he wound up on the wrong side of a violent police confrontation, right on 24th and Valencia.

There was no protest; he wasn’t in the middle of a riot or disturbance, trying to get a story (as he’s done so many times before.) He was walking — slowly, with a cane — to a café to buy a bottle of blueberry Odwalla, which he figured was good for his liver.

Read his account after the jump.

SF Weekly’s deadbeat dad

-
3

By Tim Redmond

I can’t even send a couple of questions to the executive editor of Village Voice Media without setting off a premature ejaculation.

That’s right — Mike Lacey was attacking my story on how VVM is ducking payment in our lawsuit before I even had the story written. And he even quoted Dire Straits! From 1985! How incredibly hip!

So here’s the deal: VVM owes us $20 million and doesn’t want to pay.

I email Lacey to get a comment – -which is only fair, and which I have always done, even though most of the time he ignores my questions — and he responds with this.

The guy’s got a thing for “brain vomit,” which seems to be his standard comment on anything he doesn’t like.

I particularly like the comment about “class bitterness,” which works so well these days. And of course, he ducks the point: VVM owes us a bunch of money. If Lacey wanted to wait until after the appeal, he could have posted an appeal bond — but if he did that, then we’d be guaranteed payment if we won the appeal.

This way, even if we win (which I think we will) he can try to slime away without paying.

Hell of a guy. Hell of a company.

Oh, and by the way: His description of the trial testimony isn’t terribly accurate either. You can read the whole history here.

On the point about the building, Bruce and the rent, I have to weigh in since Lacey and his cohorts have been trying to retail this crap for years. In the late 1980s, when office space in the Mission was dirt cheap, the Guardian signed a ten-year lease on a building on Hampshire St. When the lease ran out, the market for office space in the Mission (and all over town) had changed, dramatically. Our rent was going to double, or more; and every place we looked at offered about the same (high) rates.

We figured out that we could buy a building, lease out the space we didn’t need, and pay LESS every month than what we would have had to pay to rent, either at our old place or anywhere else. So yes: The rent the Guardian was paying went up after we bought the building. It could have gone up even more, and the cash could have gone to a commercial landlord. Instead, we got a great deal on a building, gained some equity, and have kept our costs LOWER ever since.

Bruce and Jean don’t make any money from the Guardian on the building. Anyone who thinks they would try to squeeze their own newspaper for their personal gain is either nuts, doesn’t know them, or is just trying to be an asshole.

I suspect Mr. Lacey fits in category three.

The Lennar family rewards you. Seriously.

-
0

Here’s a juicy lead: Seems Lennar is willing and able to give folks who register with the “Lennar family” discounts at Home Depot, Blockbuster, Ace Hardware and Target,

Does that mean Lennar is planning on trying to bring all of those big boxes into D10, home of the Bayview, Hunters Point Shipyard, Viz Valley and Candlestick Point, on the southeast of town?

Can Fun police itself?

-
1

bw.jpg
By Steven T. Jones

Yesterday’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event showed how a weird, community-based event that draws thousands of people and even has a real element of danger can be remarkably responsible, well-organized, and self-policing, without any help from police or other city officials, who mostly stayed at bay until the event was over.

Nonetheless, as the Examiner reports today (joining the Guardian’s years-long campaign against the Death of Fun), city officials continue to insist on expensive permits and the hiring of too many police officers on overtime for most events, making it increasingly difficult to stage the fun that makes San Francisco what it is.

The next big test is whether the Mayor’s Office can get the SFPD to back off of its demand that the How Weird Street Faire pay almost $10,000 up front. While senior mayoral adviser Mike Farrah has gotten involved with mediating the dispute, the latest word from the SFPD is they want their money by May 1 or else. Organizers say they won’t have the money until the day of the May 10 event when they collect donations.

As Lt. Nicole Greely wrote to How Weird organizer Brad Olsen just this morning, “Although we appreciate your position, it would be unwise for the SFPD to risk public money by not collecting the required fees prior to the event. If the event is the only way your group is able to pay for police services, we are all betting that the event will be as successful as you hope. However, a rainy day or other unforeseen problem would mean that you would be unable to fulfill your financial obligation and that is an inappropriate risk for a City agency. Possibly seeking a loan from another source would be an option.”

Transbay Terminal’s two-station solution

-
4

By Steven T. Jones

As the deadline approaches for the Transbay Joint Powers Authority to figure out how its massive new Transbay Terminal will accommodate the California High-Speed Rail project, it appears the agency may pursue a two-station solution to the capacity question.

TJPA spokesperson Adam Alberti tells the Guardian that involved agencies are hoping operational adjustments can be made to handle up to eight trains per hour at Transbay, and that the additional four trains per hour that the California High-Speed Rail Authority says it wants might have to stop at the existing 4th and Townsend station.

He said there is a growing consensus against building a second floor of train platforms, which could add $1 billion to the price of the project. The TJPA board needs to land on a plan by May so current contracts can be issued and so regional agencies can come together on a request for about $1 billion in federal stimulus money when the state makes its formal request for federal high-speed rail funding in June.

CHSRA Chair Quentin Kopp continues to question the Transbay Terminal project, saying its schedule and location have been dictated by its bus component and noting that its costs have been creeping ever higher. “This has all the earmarks of San Francisco’s Big Dig.”

Lennar breaks its affordable housing promise

-
10

Lennar_Logo.jpg
By Deia de Brito

Last year, Florida-based Lennar Corp. broke local ballot funding records at the time when it spent close to $5 million on its campaign to approve Proposition G, giving it the right to develop more than 10,000 homes in southeast San Francisco, and to defeat Proposition F, the alternative measure demanding that half these units be affordable.

Lennar, the Redevelopment Agency, and Mayor Gavin Newsom argued that 50 percent affordability would doom the project. But to win the support of the San Francisco Labor Council, the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), Lennar agreed to increase the number of affordable units from the 25 percent it proposed up to 32 percent of the total, along with guarantees of using local union members in the construction.

But in its first residential project under that plan, revealed on Tuesday at the Redevelopment Agency, it proposes building 88 market rate ownership units at the shipyard’s Parcel A, with only 13 are set aside for families earning less than 80 percent of the Bayview’s Area Median Income. That’s less than even the 15 percent required of most projects in San Francisco, and less than half what the company promised San Francisco voters.

Sup. Chris Daly authored Prop. F and warned at the time that Lennar couldn’t be trusted. “It’s not surprising, but it is unfortunate,” Daly said of Lennar’s opening residential project. “They should either live up to their promises or we should kick them out of town.”

SF to allow Big Wheel event after all

-
3

Big_Wheel_Pic-DRV2-PCZ.jpg
By Steven T. Jones

Under pressure from the community, the Mayor’s Office, and Sup. Sophie Maxwell, organizers of this Sunday’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event say the San Francisco Police Department has reversed its position and will allow the event to happen as long as organizers promise to apply for permits next year, which they have agreed to do.

“This could be the start of something really cool,” said Tom Price, who has been lobbying City Hall on behalf of the event, whose organizers have reached out to neighbors, rented porta-potties, stressed responsibility, and promised a vigorous cleanup effort.

As we reported yesterday, the SFPD had taken a hard line on this increasingly popular annual event. Capt. John Loftus told organizers, “We will barricade the street and you won’t be able to go two feet anywhere on that block. If downtown wants to come up with another solution, fine.”

But downtown apparently intervened. Earlier in the day, I spoke with top mayoral adviser Mike Farrah, who had been working with Price to reach a resolution. “These events are important to San Francisco. I think they are vital to the foundation of our economy, not to mention, they’re fun,” Farrah, who has become something of a City Hall liaison to the Burning Man community, told me. “And I think there’s been an effort to try to be responsible.”

Reclaim San Francisco’s corporate-sponsored public spaces

-
8

corp small.jpg
By Steven T. Jones

I love the idea of temporarily closing streets to cars and transforming them into open space, a concept known as cicolovia that San Francisco has adopted under the moniker Sunday Streets and which now take place in Portland, Miami and New York City, as well as a host of foreign cities where the idea began many years ago.

Last year, the Guardian heavily promoted the first Sunday Streets events and even defended Mayor Gavin Newsom against attacks from supervisors and business interests for supporting them. This year, the first of six Sunday Streets is coming up on April 26. But after looking through the details of this year’s corporate-sponsored events, I’m having a hard time summoning much enthusiasm for them.

San Francisco is slowly becoming a place where it takes corporate backing just to throw a simple street party, or even to ride your Big Wheel down the street, and where failure to fill out the proper forms and display the sponsors’ logos will get you shut down by the cops.

Bailout money — for newspapers?

-
3

By Tim Redmond

Check out Nancy Pelosi on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. SHe looks pretty bad, has no sense of humor, etc, etc, but here’s the fun part:

At one point, Pelosi says that “newspapers” have been calling her, asking for federal TARP bailout money.

Now, I wonder which “newspapers” that might be.

We know Hearst — in the person of Phil Bronstein — has met with Pelosi, and that Pelosi has talked about relaxing antitrust rules for newspapers. Did Bronstein or someone else at Hearst also ask for federal money to support the ailing Chron?

I dunno — Pelosi’s press office hasn’t called me back to say whether she will identify the “newspapers” that have contacted her. I haven’t heard back from Bronstein, either.

I suppose it’s not out of the question — if the taxpayers can bail out AIG and General Motors, why not the San Francisco Chronicle? But would Obama then want to fire the publisher?

Bus riders balance the MTA’s budget while drivers get a free pass

-
0

By Steven T. Jones

If you want to get a real sense of how screwed up this city’s budget priorities are, just look at how the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is looking to close its whopping $129 million budget deficit.

A good chart in the Examiner the other day detailed the proposals, but it didn’t add them, so let me break it down for you: over $30 million in increased Muni fares, $56.4 million in Muni service cuts, and $11 million in higher parking fees. So poor bus riders contribute almost $90 million to the problem and drivers kick in $11 million.

And to make up the difference, Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing to sell off taxi medallions, privatizing a public resource in a way that will enrich and give more power to the cab companies. So the average San Franciscan gets screwed and continues to subsidize the automobiles that clog our roadways – a problem that will only get worse as Muni becomes more expensive and less efficient.

It’s no wonder people are pissed and supervisors are threatening to reject the MTA budget. And the MTA’s budget problems are exacerbated by Newsom allowing other city departments — mostly notably the cops — to treat the MTA as a piggy bank for solving their own budget gaps. San Francisco is better than this, and Newsom should pay a heavy political price if he continues on this path.

Protest the BART police — in Sacramento

-
1

By Tim Redmond

The protests over the latest BART police killing continue, with one activist chased out of a BART Board meeting today after trying to throw red paint on General Manager Dorothy Dugger.

I’m not endorsing paint-throwing (though pies are always fun), but it’s clear that the BART protests need to continue, because the BART Board members simply will not accept adequate police oversight unless it’s forced on them.

And that’s what Assembly Member Tom Ammiano is trying to do. His bill to require civilian oversight for the BART Police will be heard in the Assembly Public Safety Committee April 14, 9 am, in the state Capitol Room 126. There needs to be a strong showing of support.

Assmbly member Fiona Ma is on that committee, and is weak on this issue. Call her office before the hearing ((916) 319-2012) and let her know you support the measure.

The BART cops will try to derail this. The BART Board is not on board. This will be up to the rest of us; let’s give Ammiano and civilian oversight a show of support.

Death of Fun: SFPD’s crackdowns and shakedowns

-
12


By Steven T. Jones

OK, things are starting to get ridiculous! For years, we’ve been warning our readers about the impending Death of Fun in San Francisco, but now the city crackdowns are coming so fast and furious that it’s tough to keep up.

Since our last reports on Bay to Breakers restrictions and threats to go after flash mobs such as the Valentine’s Day pillow fight, police officers have rudely shut down the Flashdance dance party, repeatedly swept through Dolores Party busting people for drinking, and now they’re threatening tickets and arrests for participants in this coming weekend’s Bring Your Own Big Wheel event.

Seriously, exactly what law is someone breaking by riding a Big Wheel down the street? Police officials have been unable to tell me, and they say they’ll get back to me about that and their other crackdowns. Meanwhile, they’re still demanding that the How Weird Street Faire come up with almost $10,000 in protection money in advance of the May 10 event.

I know that we have a budget crisis, but are extortion and aggressive ticketing really how we want the SFPD to close its budget gap? Isn’t the right to peacefully assemble one of our bedrock constitutional guarantees? And in a vibrant, colorful city like San Francisco, why is fear trumping fun?

Mayor’s Homeless Count report: Just as invisible as many homeless San Franciscans

-
0

By Rebecca Bowe

On an evening in late January, hundreds of volunteers hit the streets of San Francisco to complete the 2009 Homeless Count, a biennial point-in-time head count of homeless persons in the city. The count is required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for all jurisdictions receiving federal funding to provide housing and services for the homeless. To do it, city staffers from various departments team up with volunteers to go out into city streets, emergency shelters, drop-in centers, jails and hospitals to take a tally of how many homeless people they encounter.

In the weeks leading up to it, the Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a press release announcing that he was working with the city’s Human Services Agency to conduct the point-in-time count. “Having an accurate count of our homeless community is essential in determining the effectiveness of our homeless outreach efforts,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’ve got a long way to go toward ending chronic homelessness in San Francisco, but this count will help us to continue in the right direction.”

We called the Mayor’s Office of Communications in January and asked them to keep us in the loop when the results of the homeless count were released. Given the tanking economy, home foreclosures, and anecdotal accounts of rising homelessness, we were interested to see what this survey might reveal. Yet after submitting a series of requests to the MOC earlier this week for the homeless count results, we were finally told: “There has not been a report that has been released.”

Really? How strange. Because Jennifer Friedenbach from the Coalition on Homelessness later forwarded us a document from the city titled “2009 Homeless Count: Executive Summary,” featuring an introduction, survey methods, homeless count results, and analysis. Looks like a report. Sounds like a report. It must be a report!

Peru pursues justice; when will the US?

-
0

fuji.jpg
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori conducted a “dirty war” against Shining Path guerillas and their supporters. Photo by Agence-France Press.

By Steven T. Jones

Nobody is above the law, not even heads-of-state. That’s the important message from today’s sentencing of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to 25 years in prison for the murders, kidnapping, and other official excesses that he ordered during his long battle against leftist rebels.

And it’s a message that should send a chill down the spines of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of their murderous, torturing regime, which is already being targeted by the same Spanish court that had Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet arrested on similar charges (although Pinochet later slipped the loose, much to the shame of the US and British governments).

San Francisco-based human rights group The Center for Justice and Accountability helped with Fujimori’s prosecution and issued a statement that included this quote from executive director Pamela Merchant: “The Supreme Court of Peru’s conviction of former President Alberto Fujimori is an extraordinary example of the rule of law prevailing over the rule of men. Peru, a young and fragile democracy recovering from years of violence, sets an important example for all nations: a real democracy is only possible where no one is above the law and the victims can achieve justice. We applaud today’s ruling and the hope it brings to thousands of victims and their representatives working to seek justice.”

1...178179180...258Page 179 of 258

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org