By Tim Redmond
I have to add a personal note to the Chuck Nevius bullshit. Check out this little nugget from his column:
Daly would not respond to interview requests, but he has fallen into the pattern of thousands who have come before him. Idealistic, well-educated young people move into town, rent an apartment and become champions of social causes. After five years or so, when they discover that they might like to own a home, raise kids or live in a place where they don’t have to step over a homeless camper on their doorstep on the way to work, they realize they will have to move out of town.
You’re talking about me here, Chuck. Me and all my friends. And their friends. There are thousands of us — and your description is completely wrong.
I arrived in San Francisco in 1981 as an idealistic, well-educated young person. (I mean, more-or-less well educated — I have an economics degree from Wesleyan University, but I got a couple of Ds in my major and narrowly won my diploma with absolutely no academic honors or recognitions.)
I rented an apartment and did my best to become a “champion of social causes,” whatever that is.
And now, far more than five years later, I am raising two kids in the city, and I’m not going anywhere.
San Francisco has some great public schools and is a great place to raise kids. My son and daughter make friends in school who come from every ethnic group imaginable — but also from every socio-economic class, which is also really important. Everyone they meet isn’t just like them. You can’t get that experience in the leafy suburbs where Nevius lives.
Sure, my kids and I see homeless people on the streets almost every day. We usually give them money. Sometimes Michael, my son, dips into his (extremely modest) allowance and gives it away. (And sometimes, when I’m crabby or harried and I tell a panhandler that I don’t have any spare change, Michael pipes up and says “yes you do, Daddy. Give it to the man.”)
We talk constantly about why there are people living on the streets, how horrible it is, and how important it is for people like us not only to help out with money but to help by getting politically active and trying to change things. Michael is ten years old; he goes to political debates, submits questions and knows how to write to a supervisor or state legislator. San Francisco is a big city; it’s a lesson for kids in social and economic justice, every day. I think that’s priceless.
So do thousands and thousands of other San Francisco families, some of them homeowners, some of them renters, all of them living here because we still care about “social causes.” And because we love our city.
Chuck Nevius should spend a little more time in town; he might meet some folks like me.
I know Chris Daly well enough to know that he loves this city, too. His personal and family life is none of my business; I just wish him well. And I think that, unlike certain other city officials, he’s actually spending most of his time here, where I think he really wants to be.