By Tim Redmond
We still have no idea who killed a transgender woman whose body was found on Cesar Chavez and Indiana March 19. But these deaths are far too common, and the community is coming together to hold a memorial Friday night. Keep checking Leftinsf for more details.
by Amanda Witherell
thanks for the photo, from “brighter than sunshine” on flickr
How awesome would it be if every time the Mayor’s office violated the Sunshine Ordinance, which it’s doing now, they got slapped with a fine or jail time like they do down in Florida. That’s right: if San Francisco amended the ordinance and granted its governing task force the right to levy fines and penalties, Gavin would have to shift some of the coin from his personal bank account into the City’s general fund for every day he continues to ignore citizen requests for information from his office. At the rate he’s going, maybe we’d have enough to fund that free MUNI he’s proposed!
By Sarah Phelan
Earlier today, I got a call from San Francisco Chronicle reporter Rob Selna alerting me that Lennar’s Kofi Bonner has submitted a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, alleging that recent stories in the Chronicle and the Bay Guardian concerning Lennar, “contain a number of errors, inaccuracies and misinformation.”
View the letter here (PDF file)
That’s funny, because the Bay Guardian hasn’t received any communications from Lennar or Bonner concerning our coverage of Lennar’s failures to monitor and control asbestos dust at the Hunters Point Shipyard, which we documented in our cover story, last week. Nor have we received letters regarding SFBG’s coverage of the lawsuit that three Lennar employees have brought against the mega developer.
In that suit, the trio allege that Lennar retaliated against them for questioning construction dust, imposed a code of silence and targeted them and other African Americans in the workplace with racial discrimination and harassment.
As author of both pieces in the Bay Guardian, I challenge Bonner to “delve” into my alleged errors, inaccuracies and misinformation, and explain exactly he is referring to, or write a retraction.
Meanwhile, members of the BVHP community are holding a press conference today at 5pm at Alex Pitcher Community Room, Southeast Community College, 1800 Oakdale Avenue. Stay tuned…
SAVE OAKS
by Sarah Phelan
Photographer Jack Gesheidt (he of rollerblading naked through San Francisco fame) just called to alert me that the website for the group organizing the ongoing efforts to save the beautiful mature Coast Live Oaks is http://www.saveoaks.com.
I mistakenly posted http://www.savetheoaks.com link in our print version this week, thereby misdirecting readers to a site about the Bacterial Leaf Scorch plague in the Delaware Valley. Oops.
What I meant to do was send readers to http://saveoaks.com a site which educates people about UC Berkeley’s plans to make a bunch of squirrels, birds and beetles homeless so they can build a stadium on a fault line.
By Tim Redmond
This is big news.
Marc Salomon, a local activist, has done something that the City Planning Department should have done years ago: He’s carefully tracked who’s moving into new housing in San Francisco, using voter registration data. His conclusion: Fully two-thirds of the people moving into the new market-rate units are from out of town. That is, the vast majoirty of the new housing the city is allowing developers to build does nothing for the San Francisco renters who want to buy homes, the familes who are being driven out of town …. and nothing for the local housing market.
We are building housing for very rich people who don’t live here. That’s exactly the opposite of what the city’s official policy is and what any sane housing policy would do.
By Tim Redmond
The Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club may wind up endorsing Mark Leno for state Senate next month without even hearing from his opponent, Carole Migden.
The club voted March 12 to go ahead and suspend the normal rules to allow an early endorsement of Leno, who is challenging Migden for state Senate. Frankly, it’s not a big surprise — everyone knew that Alice would wind up backing Leno. That club is very much his political base.
Still, some club members thought that there ought to at least be a candidate’s forum before the final vote, where Migden would have a chance to show up and make her case. A motion to make the early endorsement contingent on that was handily defeated.
Now, club president Rebecca Prozan is scrambling to pull a forum together before the final endorement vote in April — but there’s guarantee it will happen. Prozan told me she thinks Migden should have been invited to speak before the final vote, “but the membership rejected that position.”
This strikes me as a bit unfair — and not a terribly productive way to go about local politics right now. Sure, Leno’s the club favorite, and that’s fine — but Migden is also a legitmate LGBT community leader with a credible record and constituency, and a queer San Francisco political organization in a potentially divisive race like this ought to go out of its way to be fair to all involved and not to leave anyone with bitter feelings.
By Tim Redmond
The CoCo Times has this beauty of a report on the missing records from the mayoral administration of Jerry Brown. This kind of crap has been commonplace in San Francisco — exiting officials grab anything that might be negative or incriminating and flee with it — but I didn’t expect that from Jerry, who is not the state’s attorney general. Bad news.
By Tim Redmond
The City of Santa Clara has a lot that the San Francisco 49ers find attractive: A nice site for a stadium, a local fan base — and, it turns out, $200 million in cash. That money, which the team has its eyes on, is sitting in the bank — it’s the surplus from the city’s municipal electric utility.
Isn’t it funny: San Francisco may lose a football team in part because our competing city did what we should have done many years ago, and created a public-power agency. Now it’s got some money to spare.
This all came up at Mayor Gavin Newsom’s weekly department heads meeting March 18. when a mayoral staffer gave a briefing on the Santa Clara 49ers situation, including an explanation of how the Niners want that $200 mill (which the Santa Clara power agency is reluctant to part with). In the middle of the briefing, Sheriff Mike Hennessey dared to interrupt with the obvious question:
“Are you saying,” he asked, “that a city can make a profit from public power?”
The staffer’s response: “No comment.”
By Tim Redmond
Gavin Newsom has a slick new website, which his campaign team has decided to call actlocallysf.org, I guess to give the impression that it’s more than flackery for the mayor. The lead item on it is, in fact, a nice piece by the head of the Business Alliance for Living Local Economies, talking about how to create an economically sustainable city.
But that’s actually a serious policy challenge that involves taking on big, powerful international interests — and Newsom isn’t doing any of that. In fact, if you scroll down the page, you find an article on why San Francisco should turn over the future of its electronic communications infrastructure to a couple of giant corporations.
A real sustainable city would look at creating the network locally, using city funds and local nonprofits and small businesses, and keeping control of it in the public sector. Gavin: get with the program.
PS: BeyondChron has a nice takeout on the new website.
PS2: The Bay Guardian and Beyond Chron both have links on the site, under the category “mean but interesting.” Mean? To the poor little mayor who can’t take any criticism? Jesus. At least we’re interesting.
Intern Sam Devine reports from Monday morning’s Chevron protest
At approximately 6:30 a.m. on March 19, 2007, the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War, nine activists locked themselves in a human chain across the main entrance to Chevron-Texaco’s corporate headquarters. They tied ropes and carabineers to their wrists. The carabineers where then attached to metal rods concealed inside empty oil drums and large red pipes, both covered with slogans. By 8:30, five more people had willingly joined the chain. They were all ready to get busted.
This was the third protest at Chevron’s San Ramon since talk of Iraq began a little over 4 years ago. The demonstration, which forced employees to use a side entrance and fouled up traffic on Bollinger Canyon Road, was organized to protest of the new Iraqi Oil Law.
By Tim Redmond
… Even Donald Trump . He says Bush is a liar, the war is a disaster and the U.S. should immediately withdraw. He’s ahead of Nancy Pelosi!
G.W.: You’re fired
By Tim Redmond
That’s the question ABC news is asking It’s always annoying when this sort of stuff comes from the mainstream media, which always tend to downplay the size of protests. (Note that the Chronicle ran a big story about pro-war demonstrators on Saturday).
But it’s absolutely true that there were fewer people on the streets this weekend than we saw four years ago, and that the crowd was mostly controlled and orderly. Even the die-in was fairly orderly, and the arrests went without incident.
I know there’s a lot of protest burnout going on, and people don’t feel like the White House cares. Which is absolutely true. But there’s also been a shift here: The battle has moved to Congress, and activists are putting pressure on everyone from Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership to the likes of Ellen Tauscher in the East Bay, who is almost certainly going to face a primary challenge over the war.
Remember: We have won the debate. Almost everyone agrees now that the war was a bad idea and has to end. Don’t get discouraged; keep up the pressure.
Sarah Phelan reports from Saturday’s Obama lovefest in Oakland
Barack Obama has the cutest, toothy, crinkly-at-the-edges smile. Yeah, he’s the Democratic Presidential candidate with the dangerously high level of charisma and everyone knows it. (A recent poll, taken the same week as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill giving California an early Feb. 5 2008 presidential primary, placed him only a few points behind Sen. Hillary Clinton, with Sen. John Edwards trailing in third place.)
(pic by Khalil Abusaba)
That’s why folks during Obama’s St Patrick’s Day appearance in Oakland were wielding a “You’re Barackin’ Me Crazy” sign, and Double Funk Crunch, the band chosen to serenade this youthful presidential hopeful, warmed up the crowd by singing “Crazy.”
Not that the crowd needed any warming. Oakland crowds are hot. And the minute the youthful Senator from Illinois stepped onto the stage, things got even hotter.
“How’s it going, Oakland? I’m fired up! This is a good-looking crowd,” Obama told the 10,000 + people crammed into Oakland’s Frank H. Ogawa Plaza outside City Hall.
(pic by Khalil Abusaba)
By Sarah Phelan
Pardon my French, but the hazy memories excuse that White House spokesperson Tony snow trotted out today is one of the most lame-ass explanations that the Bush administration has trotted out to date.
Ask yourself this: if you were running this country, would you expect anyone to believe that you could not remember who came up with the radical notion to fire ALL 93 federal prosecutors?
Course not.
And if they really can’t remember, they should not be running a country, least of all the United States. Look what happened the last time they couldn’t “remember” who leaked Valerie Plame‘s name.
By Tim Redmond
The letters go out today assigning kids to SF public schools, and often there is wailing and gnashing of teeth when parents don’t get their very first choice. I agree, the system isn’t perfect, but my advice, as someone who went through it and though he’d been utterly screwed, is: relax. There are a lot of good schools in SF; you don’t have to be in Rooftop or Clarendon.
We visited all the supposedly top schools, applied for seven of them, and got none of our choices. Then on the second round, we discovered McKinley — and we couldn’t be happier.
So don’t freak if you don’t get Clarendon. I complain about the administration all the time (well, not so much now that Arlene Ackerman is gone), but the truth is, the district has come a long way, is improving, and there are lots of great places to send your kid.
So don’t panic.
By Sarah Phelan
Nothing draws attention to the beauty of an oak tree better than a bunch of nudes draped across its naked branches, their soft curves pressed into the tree’s whorly bark. And trees are, to quote famed nature photographer Jack Gescheidt, “a beautiful miracle that provides shade but that we take for granted.”
Famous for his portraits of nudes
on and among trees, Gescheidt has decided to step into the midst of the debacle surrounding the threatened Memorial Oak Grove at UC Berkeley by taking a photograph using a bunch of nude volunteer models. And by bunch, he means hundreds and hundreds of people.
“I can accommodate 400 to 500 people,” says Gescheidt, noting that this is the first time he’s had advance press for a nude photo, but this time it’s inevitable since this in an existing situation full of tree sitters, university officials, athletes and of course, the trees.
“The trees will help remind me to stay grounded, that there is no rush, and that this is an opportunity for meditation,” says Gescheidt. “I’m a simple guy, but the reason I’m getting involved is that it’s clear there is an alternative to cutting the trees down.”
Save the Oaks organizer Doug Buckwald says people are staying in the trees, even though there is a temporary injunction against removing the trees, “because UC Berkeley has announced that it still plans to cut down the trees and build a stadium.”
“They must have sat in a room and said, what’s the one thing we could do to anger everyone in Berkeley,” says Buckwald of the decision to cut down this grove of 38 mature coast live oaks, which is home to countless squirrels, birds and insects, and frequented by a “wonderfully playful pair of red foxes.”
As for UC Berkeley 3 for I promise to plant three trees for every one axed, Buckwald is unimpressed.
There is no comparison between young sapling s with about 100 leaves and mature trees with 10,000 to 100,000 leaves,” he says. ‘What matters is biomess, which creates more niches and more space for organisms. If you cut down a wonderful old tree, there’s no way you can replace that by planting 3 saplings, or even 10 for that matter, since they take 80-200 years to grow.”
To take part in Gesheidt’s naked photo, meet at the Memorial Oak Grove at 8:30 am.
For instructions to the Grove
go to www. savetheoaks.com and click on the “Find the Grove” button.
by Sarah Phelan
In case you missed it, March 14 was International Day of Action for Rivers, those beautiful silvery slivers of water that feed salmon fingerlings into the world wide mobius of oceans, then draw the adult salmon back to the headwaters where they were spawned, like pods beamed back up to the mother ship.
Only in the case of salmon, who jump six feet on average, returning is impossible if there’s a big fat dam in their way.
Such is the case on the Klamath River in Oregon. Once the third most productive salmon fishery in America, the river is encumbered by four power dams, which were built 80 years ago, average 84 ft in height and stand between the threatened salmon and over 350 miles of historic spawning grounds.
By Sarah Phelan
You gotta give it up to snarky SFist for snagging the longest comment thread on any -ist site around the world (take that, London, Paris, Rome!).
This achievement occurred as part of the ongoing eruptions around the comments that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s girlfriend, Jennifer Siebel, made after she labeled Ruby Rippey Tourk as “the culprit” in the Chronicle. (Last time, we checked, the comments were up to 429 and people were still posting.)
You also gotta give it up to Jennifer Siebel for opening the gates on what was clearly a repressed longing in this city to find out and vent about a) WTF happened between the Mayor and Ruby, b)why and c) on whose dime.
All with JS starring as a pleasant-to-look-at, bee-saving punch bag who is pitted against Gavin’s former flame, Ruby, thereby creating a cyber cat fight, in which the Mayor comes out looking like a royal jerk.So, as the mayor winds up his trip in NYC, you can imagine how cranky his PR machine is sounding:
“Best to say nothing, Gav.”
“But if I don’t, people will think that what Jen said is what I said.”
“Well, wasn’t it?”
“And that makes me look blamey and pathetic.”
“Er…”
“And If I say nothing it looks as if I’m hanging Jen out to dry.”
“Er…”
“So what am I gonna say?”
See the problem? Especially if the mayor is gonna stay true to his promise to be honest and sober etc.
Maybe the Mayor and JS should model “SFist is the Culprit” T-shirts. As should all you folks who spent the last few days posting/reading at SFist instead of spinning your hamster wheels at work. (What, moi?)
By Tim Redmond
Kim Knox at leftinsf has posted the minutes of the Community Advisory Committee looking for a new SF school superintendent. Mostly pretty predictable stuff — except for a poll commissioned by a business group that has some really scary results:
To the question, is SF Unified School District going in the right direction or the wrong track:
Right Direction-22%
Wrong Track-54%
To the question, how would you rate the quality of the education provided by SFUSD:
Good to Excellent-28%
Not So Good to Poor-54%
To the question, how well do you think SFUSD manage its funds:
Excellent 20%
Not So Good to Poor 53%
One leftinsf commenter, Nakayama, concluded:
What ignorance. Anybody keeping a close eye on our public schools in SF –whether parent, student or administrator–can readily see that the schools are much better now than they were five or 10 years ago.
Why the misconception?
Because very few San Franciscans have children, and they have no idea what is happening in our schools.
I agree with the first part — I have a kid in the public schools, I’m really happy about his school (McKinley) and I think the public schools have improved dramatically in the past few years. But I don’t think the misconception is entirely due to the fact that most people in SF don’t have kids.
Let’s remember: Of the two superintendents who have been in charge since the 1990s, one ran an administration riddled with corruption; the other, while a talented educator, was arrogant, vindictive and disdainful of the community. That sort of thing doesn’t help with the perception of the district.
The second problem is that the district has spent a lot of money on a public-relations office whose chief job in the past has been to protect and promote the superintendent — so not a lot of effort has gone into promoting the schools in general. That’s changing now, under Acting Superintendent Gwen Chan, who seems to be doing a great job so far — and with a little effort, SFUSD could (and should) organize a major advertising and public-relations campaign to promote the quality and importance of public education in the city. That would help a lot.
Because those numbers really suck. And we all have to work to change them.
By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom is the culprit. He’s the elected official, the boss, the guardian of the public treasury, the guy asking for our continued trust, the only reason why anyone cares who Ruby Rippey-Tourk fucked.
Amid all the chatter about Newsom girlfriend Jennifer Siebel’s nasty comments about Rippey-Tourk, few people have keyed in to what strikes me as the most important revelation in all of this: Newsom appears to have lied when, upon admitting the affair, he proclaimed, “I am accountable for what has occurred.”
Newsom has proven himself anything but accountable since then. He has refused to answer questions about the incident or the alleged alcohol abuse treatment he’s chosen to seek, even as there have been new revelations about improper payoffs to Rippey-Tourk using public funds and ethical questions raised about his rehab.
Except for one softball television interview, Newsom has refused to field any questions on the subject from the public or media, acting like a wounded victim or a blind and deaf man whenever I or anyone else has tried to press the issue at public events (something we’re forced to do by Newsom’s refusal to hold regular press conferences). Absent that accountability, we’re left to sift through the tea leaves of his girlfriend’s extensive comments – which, it seems clear, are based on what Newsom has told her– to learn how Newsom really feels about Rippey-Tourk and his own culpability in the affair.
In other words, this is closest thing we’ve seen to Newsom’s true feelings about what happened (an account that Newsom has yet to disavow, going on three days later). And the results are not pretty, revealing Newsom to be a dishonest and dishonorable cad who still doesn’t have a clue as to what he did wrong.
By Tim Redmond
Carole Migden has finally done the right thing: She has requested Michael Colbruno take down his nasty posts about Mark Leno, and Colbruno just called to tell me he is going to do it.
So this is a victory for the collective efforts of many on the left to prevene mud-slinging, and let’s hope we can keep things (somewhat) civil going forward.
By Tim Redmond
I really, really wish I didn’t have to write about this. But here we go.
I’ve spent far too much of the past few days researching a 2006 bill by Mark Leno that has led a local blogger to dub him a “Kiddie Porn King.” I now understand exactly where this came from, and I’ve talked to all sides, and I can fairly conclude that it’s a stupid, vicious, shitty little allegation that doesn’t belong in San Francisco politics.
The guy responsible for this is Michael Colbruno, a former aide to Migden who now works for Clear Channel Oudoor. I finaly got a comment from Migden’s campaign today; spokesman Paul Hefner told me Migden “does not approve of this” and “wants her supporters to run a positive campaign.” Which is nice, but I think she should go a step further: If the senator called Mr. Colbruno and told him to take that shit down, now, I suspect he’d comply.
Anyway, let me lay out the background here, since it’s a case study in how political smears are created.
