THE PUBLIC OPTION, WHICH A MAJORITY OF AMERICANS
FAVOR, IS DROPPED FROM THE HEALTHCARE BILL
That option is out of the bill now,
And senators have no remorse.
For no one was really behind it–
Except for the public, of course.
Calvin Trillin: Deadline Poet
The Nation (l/l1/10)
By Rebecca Bowe
Sup. Chris Daly’s latest Facebook update? “Holy fuck.” This is apparently in response to today’s news coverage about Daly’s new year’s resolution. In an earlier post today, he wrote, “For 2010, I vow to use the word “fuck” in each of my remaining Board of Supervisors meetings,” and posted a link to SFBG’s cover story this week, in which Tim Redmond points out:
WHEREAS, A SIMPLE “YOU LIE” WOULD HAVE BEEN ADEQUATE
Sup. Chris Daly said “fuck you” three different times in one Board of Supervisors meeting.
Ought to make for some interesting quotes.
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By Juliette Tang
Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens
Local artists Annie Sprinkle (whose resume also includes sex educator, writer, and appearances in more than 200 pornographic films) and Elizabeth Stephens (Professor of Fine Arts at Porter College, current Chair of the UCSC Art Department) are married to more than just one another. Following a declaration of vows in Calgary two years ago, Sprinkle and Stephens set the remainder of their marital ambitions on our planet’s ecology. Three whirlwind courtships later, the two women are now jointly married to the earth in Zagreb, the stretch of sky over Oxford, and the sea in Venice. A chronicle of their romantic pursuits can be found at their website LoveArtLab.
This past Sunday, I attended the opening reception of their new month-long installation and exhibit at Femina Potens (2199 Market St) titled “Sexecology: Making love with the Earth, Sky, and Sea”. The artists coined the term “sexecology” to describe the overlaps in sexology and ecology, which includes the practice of “taking the earth as their lover.” This custom, otherwise weird and New Agey, should surprise no one who’s lived in the Bay Area for any amount of time.
Anyone care for some disco?
Wedding ephemera
The installation was an expression of the sexecological vision of its two artists. Environmentally-themed photographs and artwork (some of which included penises drawn on maps) by Sprinkle and Stephens were displayed on the gallery walls, along with scrapbook-type collages of wedding invitations, notes, and photos from their sexecological wedding ceremonies. A makeshift tree was erected from a beam in the center of the room, and paper-mache orbs, decorated with bits of greenish tiles and glass, dangled overhead. At first I thought they were intended to evoke wasp nests, which are also round and hang from trees, but upon closer inspection I decided they were probably nature-themed disco balls. An antique cabinet displayed selected wedding ephemera: the usual suspects of shoes, accessories, and decorative curios, albeit in color schemes based off the 7 chakra system.
Sky wedding dresses
The artists’ vision is certainly kooky, but singularly their own.
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Mary, Vincente and West Portal
Tell us about your look: “My roomies had a garage sale and this hat was left over, so I asked if I could have it and they said yes.”
By Steven T. Jones
New data shows that the number of automobiles in the United States last year declined for the first time since World War II, possibly indicating that Americans’ once-boundless affinity for the car actually does have some limits. And that’s good news for San Francisco and people who care about global warming, oil wars, and the rapid proliferation of these vehicles of mass destruction.
Our top urban thinkers, from Livable Cities’ Tom Radulovich (who forward me this news item) to SPUR’s Gabriel Metcalf to various official city policies, all agree that San Francisco can only continue to responsibly grow if we actively limit the use of automobiles. That reality may irk and inconvenience some overentitled motorists, but it’s basic math.
This already-congested city will become gridlocked if we don’t expand and improve public transit and facilitate modes like the bicycle while discouraging automobile use by limiting new residential parking, better managing commercial parking to encourage turnover, and creating other disincentives to drive.
Many San Franciscans still lose their minds over talk like this, as shown during the recent debates of extended meter hours. But maybe these new car ownership figures show that, at least among young urban residents, living without a car just isn’t as unthinkable as it once was.
Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University and the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics. His forthcoming book Freefall will be published this winter.
Overcoming the Copenhagen Failure
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
NEW YORK – Pretty speeches can take you only so far. A month after the Copenhagen climate conference, it is clear that the world’s leaders were unable to translate rhetoric about global warming into action.
It was, of course, nice that world leaders could agree that it would be bad to risk the devastation that could be wrought by an increase in global temperatures of more than two degrees Celsius. At least they paid some attention to the mounting scientific evidence. And certain principles set out in the 1992 Rio Framework Convention, including “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” were affirmed. So, too, was the developed countries’ agreement to “provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology, and capacity-building….” to developing countries.
By Caitlin Donohue
Hotel workers and their allies block Geary St. traffic last night to announce their boycott of the SF Hilton. Photo by Erik Anderson
Over 1,400 union members and community supporters assembled downtown last night to protest management’s role in contract negotiations with the hotel workers’ union, Unite Here! Local 2. Police arrested 140 activists for their peaceful protest, which blocked traffic on Geary for hours in the blocks surrounding the Hilton San Francisco. The hotel was targeted to announce its addition to a boycott list that now includes seven businesses. Shouts of “when they say ‘cut back,’ we say ‘fight back’!” sounded through the city streets as the sign-toting protesters marched a picket line in front the hotel, symbolic of a struggle whose implications in the labor movement reach well beyond the 9,000 San Franciscan members of Local 2.
Before the rally began, Local 2 member Ringo Mak saw the show of support encouraging. “This shows San Francisco is still a union town!” he said. Mak, a 20-year waiter at the Hilton and member of his union’s bargaining team, was heartened by the numbers turned out by supporters- especially for what it meant in terms of the fight hotel workers had ahead of them. “This is our first action of 2010,” he said, “and it’s a great way to show the Hilton that we’re not giving up.”
By Virginia Miller of www.theperfectspotsf.com.
EARLY TAKES ON THE LATEST RESTAURANT OPENINGS, Part Two
Continued from last week… I made initial visits in the first week or two of opening to give you an early take on these new, buzzed-about spots. Of course, more visits to come, realizing each needs time to settle in and claim their identity on our dense culinary map.
Beef speidini at Delarosa. Photos by Virginia Miller
Delarosa keeps up in the Marina
Delarosa recently opened in the Marina from the Beretta and Starbelly & folks, with heavy menu similarities, fine cocktails reminiscent of the former, draft beers like the latter. Having been many a time to both, I expected a "been there/done that" experience, which is only sort of accurate.
The shiny white and orange of the space was a bit sterile for me, and the Marina location ensures I probably won’t get there too often. But I’d recommend it to anyone who lives nearby or in the ‘hood. Service couldn’t be sweeter – I noticed they went above and beyond to address a couple minor concerns from nearby guests, giving free food and ensuring goodwill all around. Being open all day is a huge plus, and as a cocktail fanatic, I find theirs keep up (they do a mean Rye Flip: rye, whole egg, sugar, freshly grated nutmeg).
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Jen, 24th Ave. and West Portal
Tell us about your look: “My jeans are from the No Fear Store.”
As the aughts, a decade fondly described by many to be the worst decade ever, mercifully makes way to the grave, an uncharacteristically optimistic blogosphere is abuzz with requisite “best of the decade” lists, signaling that even the grimmest times come with small condolences. These “best of the decade” lists are — for all their neat hierarchies, pithy generalizations, and annoying assumption of authority — quite fun to read. And, as a rare opportunity to recycle old news as relevant content, they are also fun to write.
Among the many “best ofs” floating about at the moment, I find myself gravitating toward the literary. For all their Anglo-centric, sexist, dead white male undertones, and despite the occasional mentions of Malcolm Gladwell or Dan Brown, these “best books” lists seem far less depressing than their pop-cultural (like hipster of the decade) or political counterparts (like top political scandals of the decade). And as I peruse the many books deemed by many opinions to be the best of the year or, grander yet, best of the decade, I find myself compiling a modest, literary list of my own: 10 Sexy Books Published in 2009. Having been all of 14-years-old in the year 2000, I don’t really have the authority to create a “best of the decade list” regarding anything sexual.
However, I have certainly read some very sexy books this past year.
If sexy is to be taken by its dictionary definition as “sexually interesting or exciting,” then the following ten decidedly qualify. Some are sexy for their potent ability to raise readerly temperatures, others, for their intellectually seductive, mentally stimulating faculties. Despite a somewhat disparate array of themes and subjects, each book is capable of producing the feeling that compels readers to, as my aunt puts it, “close their legs and open a book”: the ecstasy of reading.
10. Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer, by Sam Benjamin. Ahh, Ivy Leaguers, drawn, as moths are to a flame, to porn careers which are subsequently turned into quarter-life memoirs. Or not. Mind you, this career trajectory is not something I fault a college graduate, or anyone at all, from pursuing. In an economy in which a college graduate is lucky to find a job doing anything, partying with porn stars sounds like the glittering reward at the end of a Horatio Alger (himself an Ivy League grad) tale. With the dreaded spring semester looming ahead, soon-to-be-graduates are advised to find inspiration where they can. Hint: Benjamin’s book.
9. Over Here, a volume of poems by Frank Sherlock. Having won a coveted Sexiest Poem of 2009 award, from CAConrad’s “Sexiest Poem Award” blog, Sherlock is a shoo-in for a spot on this list. “Over Here” is, without a doubt, a sexy poem — though it’s not a poem about sex. What makes Sherlock’s poem sexy is, in CAConrad’s words, its “tenacious defiance for culture’s endless forms of violence to our fellow humans, other animals and the environment.” Hmm… tenacious defiance…
8. Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object, by Kathleen Rooney. In the beginning, there was irony: Rooney began working as a nude model after being fired from her cafe job because she refused to sleep with her boss. Her experiences as an art model are the inspiration and subject of her book. Rooney is a talented writer whose honesty, conviction, and obvious poetic gifts underline her ambitious theoretical observations. In this contemplative book, Rooney ruminates on working in the buff and, in the process, finds something to say about Roland Barthes, Judeo-Christianity, and the Terra Cotta warriors of China. Somehow, she succeeds in making such declarations convincing; Rooney did earn money being naked, but her memoir cloaks that nudity in layers of meaning.
7. Obsession: An Erotic Tale, by Gloria Vanderbilt. I wrote about Vanderbilt’s erotica earlier this year. Vanderbilt, who will be entering her 86th year in 2010, has a habit of becoming hugely successful in endeavors that should reasonably predict the exact opposite. Like that time in the ’80s when she lent her name a line of high-waisted mom jeans… for women and men. The famous socialite’s new career as a writer of BDSM erotica has impressed even Salman Rushdie, who acknowledged, “Writing about work and writing about sex are probably the two hardest things. If I’m still doing it when I’m 85, I’ll be very grateful.”
6. Roberto Bolle: An Athlete in Tights, photographed by Bruce Weber. Men are lucky. Men are not confronted nearly to the degree that women are by images of bodily perfection. Can you imagine what would happen if half the advertisements featuring undressed women, from Victoria’s Secret to American Apparel to PETA, were to be replaced with one of Weber’s strapping Adonises? For my benefit, can we conduct an informal experiment using Weber’s images of Roberto Bolle?
5. Best Women’s Erotica 2010, edited by SF’s own Violent Blue. As a genre, erotica is tarnished with a sorry reputation, so it is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer in possession of good erotica-writing abilities must be in want of a literary champion. Anais Nin had Henry Miller; these women writers have Violet Blue. Like the other “Best Women’s Erotica” collections Ms. Blue edits, her latest will not disappoint her readers and fans.
4. Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry, by Leanne Shapton. To any degree that a break-up can be sexy, this one is, perhaps because, in reading Shapton’s book (an experiment of form that is part story, part photo essay, part auction catalogue) we can’t help but recall the intensity and sadness of our own past relationships. Through ingeniously chosen ephemera, vibrant “artifacts” Shapton employs to bring her characters to life, the otherwise cloying artifice of a fictional auction becomes believably real. As this is a story of a break-up, it makes perfect sense that we should see nothing of Lenore and Harold themselves. Like our own ex-lovers, their identies are marked by absence outlined in memory, as invisible fingerprints tracing the objects they leave behind.
3. The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder, by local writer Stephen Elliott. Granted, neither murder nor Adderall is sexy. Then again, this isn’t a book about murder or Adderall. Like most of Elliott’s work, The Adderall Diaries is about Stephen Elliott and, true to form, his latest effort contains (in addition to good writing and a dark backstory that readers familiar with Elliott’s work will recognize as one that could only have happened in this author’s universe) a healthy dose of stolid sexual confessionism. Judging from the behavior of some of Elliott’s fans, as gathered from his own reports and my own firsthand observations of several local readings, Stephen Elliott is a subject that some women do find sexy indeed.
2. We Did Porn: Memoir and Drawings by local writer/artist/pornographer Zak Smith, a tome that helped SFBG‘s D. Scot Miller overcome his “fear and predjudice of hipsters.” Given that Smith looks like a combination between Devon Sawa’s character in SLC Punk and a guy I had a crush on in high school who drew pentagrams on his fingernails with a White Out pen, we shouldn’t understate the accomplishment. In any case, it was the art that swayed D. Scot, who contends that despite being a “artsty-fartsy, probably spoiled, uber-talented white boy artist,” Smith’s “artwork is impeccable. There is tenderness, daring, heat in his pieces. With a Nan Goldin compassion, he captures an intimacy and inclustion that is often lacking in the movies he and his comrades made.” Seconded.
1. Don’t Cry, by Mary Gaitskill. Mary Gaitskill is, in my opinion, the sexiest writer currently working in the English language. I’ve been an overzealous fan since I discovered, at an impressionable age, her short story “Secretary,” a BDSM-themed story of a young secretary’s affair with her boss (that later inspired the Gyllenhaal/Spader movie of the same name). Gaitskill is unafraid to tackle grand themes in small spaces, and it’s her short stories — oozing as they are in love, sex, and grief — that her formidable abilities are most obvious. She lends an intelligence, devastating accuracy, and unmatched bravery of sentiment to topics otherwise reducable as merely “perverse”. In “Folk Song,” Gaitskill creates a female character who decides to have sex with a thousand men in a row. A 43-year-old woman, in “Old Virgin,” lends her anatomy to Gaitskill’s precisely honed scalpel. My favorite of the collection, “Mirror Ball,” reveals the theft of a soul, literally, as something that a beautiful young Mephistopheles collects from his trail of lovers. Like the sex that Gaitskill is so adept at describing, the stories in this collection are first brutal, then revealing — and necessarily in that order.
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Suzanne, 14th Avenue and West Portal
Tell us about your look: “This is sweater is from Canada. It’s 20 years old.”
‘Know your class’
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)
When Jack Hall died, flags were flown at half-staff throughout Hawaii, longshoremen closed the ports of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego for 24 hours, and thousands of other workers in Hawaii and all along the west coasts of the United States and Canada also stopped work to show their respect.
That was 40 years ago. Yet Jack Hall, one of America’s greatest labor leaders, is still remembered fondly by many working people. In Hawaii, where he was regional director of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, many ILWU members had a paid holiday on Jan. 2, the date of his death. Others will have a holiday on the Feb. 28th anniversary of Hall’s birth.
By Rebecca Bowe
GSA’s denial of a permit for an event outside the SF Federal Building inspired some art.
Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), a homeless advocacy group based in San Francisco, says he’s got busloads of people from cities up and down the West Coast headed into San Francisco Jan. 20 for a rally designed as a plea to the Obama Administration to make affordable housing a priority. But the estimated 1,500 participants in the event, dubbed “Homelessness Ends With a Home,” were left without a home base after word came down from the San Francisco Federal Building that the permit to hold it there had been revoked.
The event has since been changed to a permitted march that will go by the building, but Boden says the message he’s getting from the feds is essentially that freedom of assembly outside the new federal building will only be granted on narrowly defined terms, and with restrictions on the number of people who can attend. The San Francisco Federal Building, a green-design tower on Mission and 7th streets that opened in 2007, houses the offices of senators Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Jean Gibson, Regional Public Affairs Officer at General Services Administration (GSA), a government agency that manages the new federal building, says the permit denial was “no effort to silence the group,” but purely a decision to ensure functional operation and public access to the building.
WRAP had initially applied to hold the event in the plaza outside the building, and Boden says he specified in his permit application back in October that roughly 1,500 people were expected to attend, and that they planned to use a sound system. GSA approved the application and sent the nonprofit an event permit on Nov. 30, according to Boden. But a couple days later, after he called to ask where the port-o-potties should be placed, he says GSA responded with a disheartening email.
“After further review, General Services Administration (GSA) has made the decision to deny the use of the San Francisco Federal Building plaza area on January 20, 2010,” the email stated. “Thanks in advance for your understanding regarding this matter.”
Curiouser and curiouser … Two years ago every rhymer and her father’s indie rockstar wannabe mother was spouting vanilla skrilla all over LIl Wayne’s “A Milli.” And now, no sooner that a month after the leak of Sade’s exquisitely amazing new joint (yes, that Sade – and I’m certainly not alone in this opinion, plus just listen) a milli rappers seem to be taking a shine. Not all the flows hold up, of course, and Ghostface’s is just plain grafted on. But it’s nice to hear some heretofore unknown regional talent like Leech of Gran Rapids or Detroit’s righteous flowlogic get in the game. Here’s a little rundown so you can be the judge…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbZetvD5gSQ&feature=player_embedded
(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)
When Jack Hall died, flags were flown at half-staff throughout Hawaii, longshoremen closed the ports of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego for 24 hours, and thousands of other workers in Hawaii and all along the west coasts of the United States and Canada also stopped work to show their respect.
That was 40 years ago. Yet Jack Hall, one of America’s greatest labor leaders, is still remembered fondly by many working people. In Hawaii, where he was regional director of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, many ILWU members had a paid holiday on Jan. 2, the date of his death. Others will have a holiday on the Feb. 28th anniversary of Hall’s birth.
It would be hard to exaggerate Jack Hall’s importance. He was director of organization for the ILWU and one of its two vice presidents when a stroke killed him in 1971 at age 55 in San Francisco. But it was not what he had done during the previous 18 months in the drafty, run-down headquarters presided over by the legendary Harry Bridges that made Hall extraordinary.
Rather, it was what Hall had done before then in Hawaii, where he served for more than a quarter-century as the ILWU’s regional director. He was the key leader in bringing industrial democracy to Hawaii, transforming Hawaii from virtually a feudalistic territory controlled by a few huge financial interests into a modern pluralistic state in which workers and their unions have a major voice.
As former Gov. John Burns of Hawaii said, Hall Brought about “the full flowering of democracy in our islands.”
Hall’s first job was as a sailor in 1932. He sailed to the Far East, where he saw grinding poverty that sickened and angered him and, he later recalled, “determined which side of the fence I was on.” Hall landed in Hawaii four years later, a tall, skinny 26-year-old sent by the Sailors Union to help striking longshoremen win union recognition. Hall soon emerged as a leader of the longshoremen and later as a principal leader in organizing sugar and pineapple plantations.
Virtually all phases of life in the islands were controlled by five extremely powerful holding companies, popularly known as “the Big Five,” that owned the plantations. The workers, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Puerto Rican and others, were purposely segregated by race and ethnicity to keep them from acting jointly. They lived in company housing on the plantations where they worked, bought their food and clothing in company stores there, and had little choice but to do exactly what the bosses told them to do, at pay of less than 50 cents an hour.
The battles waged by Hall and his fellow organizers to overcome the employers’ absolute domination of their workers’ lives often got brutal. There were beatings, an attempt on Hall’s life, and a great furor over Hall’s admitted political radicalism.
The strike was the only weapon available to the workers. But when workers of a particular nationality struck to demand union rights, they’d be replaced immediately with workers of another nationality.
Hall, a tough, plainspoken, hard-drinking man, talked with the workers endlessly about the obvious need to bring them together in a single union. He spoke to them individually and often in meetings that were held in secret, outside the closely guarded plantations. He told the workers over and over that they could not achieve the unified strength necessary to overcome exploitation if they continued to remain apart because of racial and ethnic differences.
“Know your class,” Hall told them, “and be loyal to it.”
Finally, by the mid-1940s, the ILWU managed to organize workers on the plantations, as well as on Hawaii’s waterfronts. That gave the ILWU a powerful role in Hawaii’s economy that led the union quickly to a major role in Hawaii’s political life as well.
Hall helped put together a political league that became one of the most important political forces in Hawaii and the most racially and ethnically mixed such group anywhere. The union league helped break 50 consecutive years of Republican control of the State Legislature, which in turn led to passage of the most progressive laws of any state and helped make the ILWU as dominant in Hawaiian life as were the Big Five plantation owners before the coming of the union.
Plantation and longshore workers still are the backbone of the ILWU in Hawaii, but Hall long ago led the union into just about every other industry in the islands. Bakers, factory workers, automobile salesmen, supermarket clerks and a wide variety of other workers, especially including hotel workers and others in Hawaii’s ever-expanding tourist industry – all carry union cards.
Union membership is their guarantee of economic and political rights and rewards, of dignity and self-respect and the chance to determine their own destinies, of an effective voice on the job and in their communities, of fair and equal treatment their forebears could only dream of.
Jack Hall left a truly remarkable legacy.
Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.
Ross and Jeff and any other progressive candidates need to decide soon if they are serious about running for mayor and either announce that they are running or step out of the way so someone else can step forward
EDITORIAL Back in 2007, when no leading progressive stepped in to run against Gavin Newsom, Sup. Chris Daly called a convention in the hope that someone would come forward and take up the challenge. All the major potential candidates showed up and spoke, but none announced a campaign.
Let’s not go there again.
We’re two years into Newsom’s second term, and the city’s a mess. After absorbing a round of brutal cuts last year, the budget’s still half a billion dollars out of whack. The mayor’s only answer at this point is to cut more (then raffle off to landlords the right to get rich by evicting tenants and turning apartments into condos). The Newsom agenda hasn’t created jobs or addressed the housing crisis or resolved the unfairness of the tax code or taken even the first steps toward energy self-sufficiency. Over the past year, he’s been largely inaccessible and hostile to the press, a mayor who won’t even tell the public where he is and what he does all day.
A candidate who wants to change the direction at City Hall should have no problem getting political traction in 2011. But the progressives are still floundering. And while the race is two years away, the more centrist candidates are already out the door. Sup. Bevan Dufty has announced he’s in the race, and state Sen. Leland Yee might as well have announced since everyone knows he’s running. Same for City Attorney Dennis Herrera. And at a certain point — in the not-too-distant future — those candidates will be starting to line up endorsers and making promises to major financial backers and constituency groups, which aren’t going to wait around forever for the progressives to settle on someone willing to make the immense effort to mount a serious campaign for mayor.
So the potential candidates — starting with Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and Public Defender Jeff Adachi — need to decide, soon, whether they’re serious about this or not, and either announce that they’re running or step out of the way so someone else can step forward.
With public financing, a candidate in San Francisco doesn’t have to be as well-heeled as Newsom was his first time around. It won’t take $6 million in contributions to win. But a progressive who wants to be the next mayor needs to demonstrate he or she can do a few key things, including:
•<\!s>Motivate and unite the base. Labor (or at least the progressive unions), the tenants, the left wing of the queer community (represented to a great extent by the Harvey Milk LGBT club), the environmentalists, and the progressive elected officials have to be fairly consistent in backing a candidate or downtown’s money will carry the day. So Mirkarimi and Adachi (and anyone else who’s interested) ought to be making the rounds, now. If that critical mass isn’t there, the campaign isn’t going to work.
•<\!s>Develop and promote a signature issue. Newsom won in part because he came up with the catchy “care not cash” initiative. Voters frustrated with years of failed homeless policies (and an incumbent, Willie Brown, who said the problem could never be solved) were willing to try something new (however bogus it turned out to be). Nobody’s developed a populist way to approach city finance. Nobody’s got a workable housing or jobs plan. What’s the central issue, or set of issues, that’s going to define the next progressive mayoral campaign?
•<\!s>Put together a central brain trust. This city’s full of smart progressives who have experience and ideas and can help put together a winning platform and campaign strategy. A good candidate will have them on board, early.
•<\!s>Herrera, Yee, Dufty, and others who might run (including Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting) are already out there looking for progressive supporters and allies, but none has yet offered an agenda the city’s left can support. Dufty pissed off the tenants by refusing to back stronger eviction protections. Herrera pissed off immigrant advocates by refusing to be as aggressive in supporting the city’s sanctuary law as he was in defending same-sex marriage (and because he hasn’t officially announced yet, he’s still not taking stands on political issues). Yee tried to sell off the Cow Palace. Ting has taken some great initiatives (forcing the Catholic Church to pay its fair share of property transfer taxes), but hasn’t developed or spoken out on the broader issues of city revenue. More of those candidates have been leaders in the public power movement.
It would be inexcusable if the progressives, who control the Board of Supervisors, are forced to pick a mayoral candidate by default. It’s time to end the speculation and dancing and find a candidate who can carry the progressive standard in 2011.
By Steven T. Jones
After a three-week break in their ever-escalating labor battle with the owners of San Francisco’s biggest hotels, Unite-Here Local 2 workers and their supporters plan to hit hard tomorrow (Tuesday, Jan. 5) with a rally featuring national labor leaders, an expansion of the union’s hotel boycott, and civil disobedience.
The action begins at 4 p.m. at 750 Market Street, in the plaza between between 3rd and 4th streets, forming into a march to O’Farrell Street outside the Hilton, which will be the latest hotel to be added to the union’s boycott list. The others are Le Meridien, Hyatt Fisherman’s Wharf, Grand Hyatt, Westin St. Francis, Palace Hotel, and the W Hotel.
The big national hotel chains have claimed the recession and high health care costs are forcing them to reject union demands for a 1.5 percent increase in worker pay, but the union calls that ridiculous, noting that Starwood Hotels and Resorts – which owns more than half the hotels on the boycott list – made $180 million in profit in the first three quarters of 2009 and saw their stock price increase 66 percent.
Supporting the union tomorrow will be local progressive groups as well as Unite-Here’s national president John Wilhelm and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, both of whom will speak at the rally. In addition, organizers say about 100 workers will engage in civil disobedience and face arrest.
By Just A Guy
Editor’s note: Just A Guy was recently released from a California state prison. He continues to report and comment on corrections and law-enforcement issues. You can read his most recent post here.
I want to be clear about something: I don’t hate corrections officers or staff members that work for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and are trying to make a living. I don’t really hate anyone; it’s a tremendous waste of time and energy and harms me more than the person being hated.
I truly believe that most COs and administrators are just people trying to get by in this world, and my intention has never been to condemn anyone. My intention with this blog has always been to reveal the truth from MY PERSPECTIVE. To talk about things that don’t get talked about, to represent the under-represented. While there are certainly groups that represent inmates, they are the minority and their voices are like someone calling for help from the middle of the ocean at a rescue plane passing overhead.
A favorite adage of mine is, “Those who stand for nothing, fall for anything” – Alexander Hamilton. Not that my priority in life is to stand for inmates, but to stand for reason.
This blog is dedicated to all the COs out there that are doing their jobs, that aren’t corrupt, that aren’t apathetic haters. You have a hard job; I wouldn’t want to do it. You have a necessary job. Unfortunately, it’s never the good ones that stand out, but the bad. Just as you rarely hear two sides of the story with an inmate accused of something in prison, you rarely hear the COs side of the story that when one of them is allegedly bringing in contraband or has “assaulted” an inmate. That’s the way it is. The public doesn’t want to hear everything; people just want to hear the dirt, it’s more entertaining.
The unfortunate side of the whole process for both inmates and guards is the “wall of silence.” Just as an inmate can’t inform on his fellow inmates without severe repercussions, a guard can’t report another guard’s misconduct without being ostracized (or worse) by his fellows. It’s a real catch 22 across the board. I am not justifying when guards cover things up, but saying I understand why they do, just as I understand why inmates don’t inform. The Us vs. Them mentality has been instilled upon both groups. It takes a huge amount of courage to break beyond that mentality, and, quite frankly, from both perspectives (I think), the consequences may not be worth the act. An inmate puts his life on the line by informing and a guard (though it shouldn’t be this way) his/her livelihood. Can you imagine going into work every day and having all your fellow workers looking at you with derision? That would be very uncomfortable, and I imagine that’s why many CDCR employees keep their mouths shut in the face of what they would really like to do or say.
One of my desires, with this blog, is to open up a dialogue between inmates (ex or not), CDCR staff, and the general public that reveals the truth from individual perspectives. I don’t want people to read my blog and immediately go into a defensive posture. I would like for people to read Prison Report and question the state of criminal justice/prison policy in California and the rest of the country. Idealistic, sure. But idealism is what founded this country.
We have all been given an opportunity by the San Francisco Bay Guardian to speak freely and anonymously; shall we not take advantage of it in 2010 to air OUR truth?
Early releases are going to happen. Crime will continue. Parole will be, essentially, eradicated. The foibles of CDCR will continue. The foibles of felons most certainly will too. But changing the way people think about things begins with one voice — is it yours?
By Steven T. Jones
Boalt Hall Law Professor John Yoo has been a lightning rod for criticism since returning to UC Berkeley from his stint in the Bush Administration, where he wrote the controversial legal memos justifying the torture of detainees and ignoring the Geneva Convention’s rules of war, unconscionable justifications for abuse of power for which Yoo may still face professional or legal sanctions.
World Can’t Wait and other anti-war and human rights groups have called for Yoo’s disbarment and ouster, which university officials have resisted on the grounds of academic freedom. Activists plan to protest Yoo again on Jan. 12 when he begins teaching his latest class: “Constitutional Design and the California Constitution.”
That’s right, the legal mind that justified waterboarding and other torture techniques is teaching a class that “will examine the constitutional design issues in light of proposals to call a convention to reform the California constitution.” I can’t imagine what the unrepentant John Yoo might approve for the California Constitution….or maybe I can.
SFBG photog Ariel Soto scoops SF street fashion. See the previous Look of the Day here.
Today’s Look: Veronica (with Sadie), 15th Street and Market
Tell us about your look: “I got this sweater 10 years ago at a thrift store and I just keep sewing it up when it gets holes in it.”
Tired of stressing on the visiting family, appropriating food without asking during the holidays? Dig these words of wisdom from truth-teller Kool Keith — on how to stay cool when it comes to the fridge food.
