Arizona

Alerts

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alert@sfbg.com

 

WEDNESDAY 2

Occupy Oakland General Strike

In response to last week’s police crackdown, Occupy Oakland called for a general strike on Nov. 2, urging workers and students to shut the city down and join the movement. Convene with neighbors, community members .and affinity groups to take part at a moment when “the whole world is watching Oakland.” Banks and corporations that don’t close will be marched on. The Strike Coordinating Council will begin meeting every Wednesday at 5pm in Oscar Grant Plaza before the daily General Assembly at 7pm. All participants are welcome.

All Day, free

Oscar Grant Plaza

14th & Broadway, Oakland

www.occupyoakland.org

 

THURSDAY 3

Transgender Film Festival

This year at the 10th Annual Transgender Film Festival, watch the captivating collection on defiance, bullying, romance, relationships, sex, and so much more. International filmmakers journeyed from across the globe. Be sure to buy your tickets before they sell out, which it is expected to.

8-10 p.m., $12-15

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

Contact Eric Garcia: intern@freshmeatproductions.org

www.sftff.org

 

FRIDAY 4

Sacred Sites Peacewalk

The Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Social Justice Committee will provide overnight shelter space for participants in Sacred Sites Peacewalk for a Nuclear Free World. All are welcome for a potluck dinner, speak out and discussion featuring a Buddhist teacher and peace activist. The walk began Oct. 22 at Diablo Canyon and ends Nov. 6 at Glen Cove, Vallejo.

6-9 p.m.

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall

1924 Cedar, Berkeley

(510) 841-4824

www.bfuu.org

 

SATURDAY 5

Occupy Wells Fargo

The marginalized in the 99 percent are fed up with austerity, especially these 67 Suenos, a collective of undocumented youth and allies that refuse to be passive about violence in the Bay Area community. Stand in solidarity against banks who aggressively invest and profit off anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s AB 1070. Come and join in planning preparations.

10 am- 1 p.m., free

Contact: 67suenos@gmail

Oscar Grant Plaza/Downtown Wells Fargo 1 block away

14th St. and Broadway, Oakl.

 

Marxism Conference

From Athens to Cairo to San Francisco, capitalism has proven its instability and people are fighting back. With the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, it’s the perfect time to further understand the Marxist philosophy on exploitation and how the working class can liberate the oppressed. Featured speakers include Alan Maass, editor of Social Worker newspaper and Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor, editorial board member of International Socialist Review.

10 am- 6 p.m., free

UC Berkeley

Rooms 220 Wheeler and 126 Barrows

Telegraph and Bancroft, Berk

iso@norcalsocialism.org

www.norcalsocialism.org

 

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Big Harp on writing lyrics, Saddle Creek, and touring with kids

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I listened to Big Harp’s debut album, White Hat, without any preconceived notions, and fell in drippy, folky, love. I fell into the slight country twang and gentle plucking of baritone singer-guitarist Chris Senseney, and the sweet backing vocals of bassist Stefanie Drootin-Senseney.

It was only after I went back and read up on it that I realized (1) Big Harp is a Saddle Creek band (my forever weakness) – meaning the musicians have been part of the ongoing Saddle Creek creative community, known for swapping members and working together in fluid ongoing capacities. Drootin-Senseney has played with Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes and Tim Kasher’s the Good Life among many other bands on the label. Plus (2) the duo behind Big Harp is married with two kids. Too adorable.

So I jumped at the chance to learn more about Big Harp, chatting with Drootin-Senseney while she, her husband, her babies, her mother-in-law, and Big Harp’s drummer John Voris trekked through the Southwest in the modern folkrock take on the covered wagon caravan.

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Where are you in the tour?
Stefanie Drootin-Senseney: We’re driving through Arizona. We stayed in New Mexico at a Holiday Inn last night and they had a restaurant [laughs] – we had our first sit-down meal of the tour.
SFBG: How is it touring with the kids?
SDS: It’s so different, we rush home after the show because they wake up at six in the morning. It’s like a family road trip with a show at the end of the night. I’m seeing more of each place we go to then before we had the kids. We’re seeing lots of zoos and parks and museums.
SFBG: You and Chris actually met on a tour, right? When Good Life toured with Art in Manila.
SDS: We met a month before the tour, but we definitely got to know each other on tour. That was the end of 2007.
SFBG: When did you start making music together?
SDS: It happened out of nowhere, we were so wrapped up with raising the kids that we didn’t have time to make music – but I’d always been a big fan of Chris’ songwriting, and we’d been talking about him making a record, then he wanted me to work on it with him. He really writes all the lyrics and most of the melodies, I work on tempos and structure, change this and that, but he comes in with the core of the song.
SFBG: Are Chris’ lyrics autobiographical?
SDS: He says it would be a mistake to take the lyrics as him writing it personally, it’s more storytelling.
SFBG: Tim Kasher once said the same thing to me and yet, both of their lyrics seems so personal.
SDS: [Chris] and Tim both take inspiration from personal lives, but it’s not like reading a diary.
SFBG: Did you  always know you’d want to put out Big Harp on Saddle Creek?
SDS: We really wanted to be on Saddle Creek – it’s family, going with another label would have been different, but we wanted to stay in the family.  I was 17 when I met Conor and Tim and we really kept a closeness, there’s something so similar to the friends I had, their personalities, the relaxed, laid back, friendly, warm vibe. We’re on tour right now with [fellow Saddle Creek artist] Maria [Taylor] and I’ve played with Azure Ray and her solo work, she’s one of our best friends in the world. We’re all attached to each other in ways. We want to stick around the same people and play in each others bands.
SFBG: What did you and Chris grow up listening to?
SDS: [I listened to] Violent Femmes, Bob Dylan, fIREHOSE, Tom Waits. My mom listened to a lot of Neil Young and Carol King. Dad listened to Queen and Black Sabbath and jock rock [laughs]. I think it definitely had an influence on me. Chris grew up listening to a lot of old country, he grew up in a small, rural town, Valentine, Nebraska, and you can hear that. 
SFBG: What do your kids listen to?
SDS: Twila is one so she listens to whatever we listen to. Hank [who is three] likes Fleetwood Mac, the Beatles, Neil Young. His favorite is “Back in the USSR” – that’s his song.
SFBG: Will you teach them to play instruments when they get older?
SDS: They definitely show an interest already, Hank will say “Let’s go to band practice.” We won’t push them, but we’ll encourage it.

Big Harp
With Maria Taylor and Dead Fingers
Sat/22, 9 p.m., $12-$14
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
www.rickshawstop.com

 

Mormons and Republicans

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CalBuzz, one of my favorite political sites, has an interesting essay on what the anti-Mormon sentiment in America means for Mitt Romney. Among the central points:

Gallup found that Democrats (27%) were more unlikely to support a Mormon than were Republicans (18%) – suggesting that in a general election, a Mormon’s hard-right views on gays, marriage, abortion and women’s rights might have more to do with resistance to an LDS candidate than religion itself.

Actually, not all politically active Mormons share that “hard right” approach — Stew Udall, the Arizona environmentalist, Congressmember and interior secretary under Kennedy and Johnson was a Mormon. So was his brother Mo, a liberal member of Congress who ran for president in 1976 as a left alternative to Jimmy Carter. But like evangelical Christians, Mormons in general tend to be conservative, especially on social issues.

The CalBuzzers are puzzled by the distrust of this particular religion:

It’s hard to determine what, exactly, drives anti-Mormon sentiments – whether it’s what people know, what they don’t know or what they think they know.

Are they familiar with Joseph Smith, Jr., the treasure digger from Palmyra, New York, who said he was visited by the angel Moroni in 1827 and guided to a box of golden plates which he said contained what is now known as the Book of Mormon, after he transcribed them from “reformed Egyptian”?

Are they thinking about the breakaway Mormons in HBO’s late great “Big Love” with Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplethorn, Chloe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Bruce Dern, Mary Kay Place and Amanda Seyfried? Maybe they think Mormons are all like Roman Grant, the evil self-proclaimed prophet and leader of the Juniper Creek Compound played by Harry Dean Stanton.

Or are they like one wag we know who argues that the only difference between Mormonism and Scientology is the choir?

If you want to pounce on logical improbabilities in religions, you’ve got your parting of the Red Sea and the burning bush, the immaculate conception and the resurrection and that passel of virgins waiting for you in Heaven. Pick your myth.

The point, of course, is that the stuff Mormons believe is no odder than the teachings of most major religions. But there’s a big difference, and I find it fascinating.

The thing is, if you believe in Jesus or Abraham or Mohammed, you’re talking about people who lived a really long time ago, before there were accurate written records. Despite former Guardian writer Burton Wolfe’s best efforts, you can’t really prove that Jesus lived or didn’t live, or did or didn’t turn water into wine or cure lepers. The Bible has been translated so many times (and by many accounts, rewritten so many times) that it’s hard to know exactly what the original stories even were.

On the other hand, there are people alive today whose grandparents might have known Joseph Smith. Mormonism came to life in a time of newspapers and nearly-modern record keeping. Upstate New York in 1827 wasn’t exactly Manhattan today, but it wasn’t the Middle East in 44 B.C. either. There are still accounts of newspapers of the day denouncing Smith as a charlatan and fraud. Nobody can argue about whether he was into polygamy or not.

In the context of the 1800s, although there was plenty of strange religious stuff going on, the notion of a failed treasure hunter finding golden plates left by an angel (who then took the plates back after Smith made the one and only translation) seems pretty bizarre. That’s in part because the traditional religions all teach that the weird shit took place a really long time ago, which somehow makes it easier to justify.

If the son of a carpenter announced in 1827 that he was really the son of God, and that his mother was a virgin who had been impregnated by something called the Holy Spirit, who was also sorta, kinda part of God, isn’t it likely he might be called a nutjob? Ya think?

And the way the Mormon Church operates, with all of its official secrecy, just encourages people to think of it as a cult. But you ever tried really looking into the Vatican?

My point is that poor Mitt is going to face an uphill battle over his religion largely because the stuff that’s really, really hard to believe supposedly happened a couple millenia after stuff that’s really, really hard to believe was supposed to happen.

Not defending the Mormons here. (Although, if you stipulate that women have equal opportunity and gay people can get married, too, what IS wrong with polygamy?)

Just saying.

 

 

 

The Performant: They Might be Giants

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Stagewerx and SF Olympians Festival go big

It’s been a turbulent year for independent theatre and its venues. In truth, every year is. But there have been some notable successes too. Boxcar Theatre’s addition of a new studio space on Hyde Street. Bindlestiff Theatre’s move into a new permanent space. Pianofight’s acquisition of the old Original Joe’s in order to create a hybrid performance space-kitchen-bar right on the cutting edge of the downtown theatre district. 

And just in case you’d missed it, this is the month that Stagewerx, which has been occupying the literal theatrical underground in the basement of 533 Sutter since 2007, has opened the doors of its community-supported digs at 446 Valencia — the old Intersection for the Arts space. 

Following a big-ticket Kickstarter campaign* and months of hard labor, rebuilding one venue from scratch while running another, the Stagewerx crew’s labor of love has finally put down its expansive roots in the Mission District.

It was a low-key but convivial christening, a bevy of Stagewerx supporters and performers (and supporter-performers) poking around the nooks and crannies of the strangely familiar, yet revitalized space. The evening’s emcee, Mikl-em, presided over a variety show of musicians and comedians (and musician-comedians), including a special guest appearance from Carol Channing, as well as one by Sean Owens, who mysteriously often appears on the same bill as Channing. (It’s rumored they share a booking agent.) 

Other acts included Circus Finelli, Tom Sway from Undergroud Sound, Joe Klocek from Previously Secret Information, Tom Jonesing, Don Seaver, and Gerri Lawlor. No sooner was the party over, Stagewerx hit the ground running with a Monday performance of the Picklewater Clown Cabaret and a four-weekend whirlwind of sketch comedy dubbed PanderFest 2011, co-starring Pianofight’s Mission CTRL and Crisis Hopkins. 

Meanwhile downtown, another theatre festival of quietly epic proportions. The SF Olympians Festival, opened with staged readings of new full-length plays by Thunderbird Theatre Company and Megan Cohen and a veritable constellation of shorts, kicking off a four-weekend run of its own on the EXIT Theatre mainstage. 

In its second year, the SF Olympians Festival uniquely fuses ancient Greek mythology with modern-day theatre-making, with each play featuring a different mythological figure—from Andromeda to Zephyrus—and a different local playwright (there are 29 represented in this festival of 32 plays). 

On Friday, a three-play bill of two shorts and one full-length work debuted, thematically clustered around Orion, one of the most recognizable of all constellations. Claire Rice’s very short, “Dog Day”, starred Benji Cooper as Canis, who morphed into the narrator of stage directions for Megan Cohen’s full-length “Hunter and Hunted,” which turned the Orion myth into an updated crime noir. 

Starring Matt Gunnison as the beleaguered “Joe Ryan,” an old-school detective on the trail of the Scorpio gang, Cohen’s often humorous play turned the otherwise familiar streets of San Francisco, from North Beach to the Panhandle, into a giant playground for the infamous Scorpio gang. 

Rounding out the evening with a case of constellation envy was “Scorpio,” a short penned by Seanan Palermo, starring an exasperated John Lennon Harrison as the titular character, fruitlessly pursuing Orion across the deserts of Arizona. There’re still three weekends left of the festival, each night more ambitious than the last, and at just ten bucks a pop, repeat visits are not only possible, but recommended.   

*Full disclosure, the author of this piece made a kickstarter donation to the Stagewerx campaign.


PanderFest 2011

Through Oct. 29

Various times, $20

Stagewerx

446 Valencia, SF

www.stagewerx.org/446.html

www.panderexpress.com

 

SF Olympians Festival

Through Oct. 29

 Various times, $10

Exit Theatre

156 Eddy, SF

www.sffringe.org

www.sfolympians.com

 

 

Jeb Bush, Rupert Murdoch bound for S.F.

The Foundation for Excellence in Education, a Florida-based nonprofit led by Jeb Bush, will host its National Summit on Education Reform at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco Oct. 13 and 14.

Bush, former Florida governor and the brother of former President George W. Bush, will deliver a welcome address Thursday. Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire head of News Corporation who came under pressure in recent months as the News of the World phone-hacking scandal erupted, will deliver a keynote address Friday.

Washington Post columnist Valerie Strauss sums up the irony of having Murdoch as the guest of honor at the conference here:

“Yes indeed, the Rupert Murdoch set to speak on technology’s power to transform education is the same Rupert Murdoch recently hauled before a British parliamentary committee to explain why a newspaper he owned had used technology to hack the phones of thousands of British citizens for years — including the phone of a murdered 13-year-old girl, thus interfering with the police investigation. (Murdoch closed the newspaper.)”

Panelists at the event will include News Corporation executives, CEOs of for-profit schools, state senators from Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma, and the author of a book titled School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy.

The conference will feature a number of “strategy sessions,” and one is actually called, “Don’t Let a Financial Crisis Go To Waste.” The session will focus on education funding formulas and purports to explain “just what lawmakers and policymakers can do to get a better return-on-investment for their education dollars,” according the conference agenda. It will be moderated by a director of education policy at the George W. Bush Institute, which “champions change” based on the educational policies of No Child Left Behind.

The first strategy session is called “The Teaching Profession 2.0,” and hints of an anti-union agenda: “During the last two years, states across the country have ushered in the most sweeping reforms of the teaching profession in our nation’s history,” according to the workshop description. “More meaningful evaluations. An end to tenure and destructive last-in, first-out policies. Salaries that reflect student learning rather than seniority. Learn how lawmakers and policymakers from states around the nation are changing the paradigm of the teaching profession.”

Another segment will focus on digital learning, or teaching through technology, which the Foundation for Excellence in Education seems dedicated to advancing. A video on a newly launched website touted by the foundation features Tom Vander Ark, CEO of Open Education Solutions, explaining, “Our mission is to advance digital learning in every classroom, in every school, in every state in America.” But Vander Ark’s recent vision for opening charter schools in New York City did not go so well, according to this New York Times story. Murdoch delivered an address at the e-G8 in Paris last year titled, “Digital’s Next Frontier: Education.”

In any case, San Francisco — famed for its left-leaning politics — seems an odd choice for Bush and Murdoch, especially during a week when the streets are likely to be filled with protesters marching in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Will Mayor Lee veto legislation that helps workers and protects consumers?

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After the Board of Supervisors today voted 6-5 to bar San Francisco businesses from pocketing money they and their patrons set aside for employee health care, Mayor Ed Lee faces a tough but telling choice: Whether to heed business community demands that he veto legislation that has wide labor and consumer support.
A veto is widely expected, but complicating that decision is the position that was staked out today by one of his main rivals as a mayoral candidate, Leland Yee, who issued a statement echoing supporters claims that this is an issue of workers’ rights and consumer protection versus corporate greed: “This is a defining issue of who we are as a city. If Ed Lee vetoes this legislation, one of my first acts as Mayor will be to reverse his veto and sign this legislation into law.”
Neither Lee’s mayoral nor campaign spokespersons answered a Guardian email about whether he will veto the measure, which would kill it unless two supervisors who opposed the measure (David Chiu, Sean Elsbernd, Mark Farrell, Carmen Chu, and Scott Wiener) break ranks, which is unlikely given the polarization on this measure. San Francisco Chamber of Commerce officials have made a top priority of killing the measure, even threatening to withdraw support from Prop. C, the pension reform measure that they helped create with Lee.
At issue is the roughly $50 million per year that San Francisco businesses have been taking from health savings accounts they create for employee health care – funds that are often subsidized by 3-5 percent surcharges that many restaurants have chosen to tack onto their customers bills – under legislation that then-Sup. Tom Ammiano created to require employers to provide health care coverage for their employees.
The position of the Chamber – which fought Ammiano’s legislation and supported years of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging it – is that this $50 million “loss” to city businesses would be a “job killer.” Chiu has also accepted that paradigm and introduced legislation that would let businesses use that money, but require them to let employees know they can tap into it and other reforms. But supporters of the legislation say these businesses are deceiving their customers, defying city law, and stealing from their employees.
“People have tried to complicate this issue, but it is a simple issue. It’s about the right of workers to have health care,” Sup. David Campos, the author of the legislation, said at today’s hearing.
Campos said he would limit his comments, given how widely the issue has already been discussed, and he announced a limitation on how long employees could tap the fund after their termination “in the spirit of compromise.” But then opposing supervisors attacked the measure, its timing, and supporters’ refusal to “compromise,” with Elsbernd chiding Campos that his legislation is “not the best way to encourage jobs.”
So Campos went into more detail about why his measure was needed, noting that Chiu’s alternative would cap an employee’s access to health care at just $4,300, far less than the cost of a night’s hospital stay and a small fraction of the cost of a serious ailment. “You’re looking at a situation where very little could be provided for them,” Campos said.
He also said how important it is to ban the fraudulent practice of restaurants charging customers for employee health care costs and then simply keeping the money, a practice that a recent Wall Street Journal investigation discovered was widespread. Campos said 80 percent of the money collected on diners’ bills is pocketed by the restaurants.
“When consumers are paying for this, the expectation is that workers will have basic coverage,” Campos said, noting that his legislation would guarantee that “every cent that that consumer pays is actually spent on health care…This is not just about workers, it’s about consumer protection.”
Even worse, Campos noted that these consumers are actually paying twice for restaurant employees’ health coverage, first on their dinner bills, and then again as taxpayers when those uninsured employees end up in General Hospital with their expenses paid for by the city.
Under the federal ERISA law – which was the basis for the failed lawsuit challenging the city program, brought primarily by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association – the city cannot tell employers how to provide health coverage, and so they have the option of providing health insurance, paying into the city’s Healthy San Francisco plan, or providing the medical savings accounts that this legislation addresses.
Sup. Jane Kim said she supported the legislation largely because of the horror stories she’s heard from employees who not only weren’t told of the existence of these accounts, but who were denied payment for medical procedures even after they learned about them. She also said the city could be vulnerable to another ERISA lawsuit if it took Chiu’s approach of directing how businesses used their funds, citing an earlier discussion of the board’s role in protecting the city from litigation.
On that issue, Kim today introduced an alternative to legislation by Farrell and Elsbernd that would end the city’s program of providing matching funds to publicly financed mayoral and supervisorial candidates once their privately financed competitors break the spending cap. The US Supreme Court recently ruled a similar program in Arizona to be unconstitutional.
The Chamber and other downtown groups – mostly supporters of Mayor Lee, who are close to breaking the spending limits – had signaled their intent to sue the city over the issue. The Farrell/Elsbernd legislation, which needed eight votes to change the voter-approved program, today failed on a 6-5 vote, with Sups. Campos, Kim, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Ross Mirkarimi opposed.

Progressives battle downtown over economic and political reforms

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Battles between progressive members of the Board of Supervisors and downtown power brokers such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce defined City Hall politics for much of the last decade, until the new politics of “civility” and compromise took hold this year, a dynamic that has favored downtown interests. But now, a pair of important, high-profile issues headed to the full board on Tuesday has revived the old dynamic. And in both cases, wealthy interests are putting enormous pressure on the board.

The first involves a proposal – put forward by Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Mark Farrell, the two most conservative supervisors – to gut the city’s system for publicly financing campaigns because downtown is threatening a lawsuit. They propose to end San Francisco’s program of giving publicly financed candidates more money when a privately funded candidate exceeds the spending cap because the Supreme Court recently struck down similar provisions in Arizona.

This week, after convening in closed session to discuss the threat of litigation by downtown groups, the board voted 7-3 – with Sups. David Campos, Jane Kim, and Eric Mar opposed, and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi absent because he rushed out to large structure fire in his district – for the Elsbernd/Farrell measure, one vote short of the supermajority needed to amend the current city law.

Campaign finance reform advocates such as Steven Hill argue that it’s unfair to modify the city program right in the middle of an election season in which Mayor Ed Lee and the wealthy independent expenditure groups supporting him are poised to spend millions of dollars to defeat a large field of mostly publicly funded mayoral candidates.

Hill and his allies are appealing to Mirkarimi – who told the Chronicle that he is leaning toward supporting the amendment when the measure returns to the board on Tuesday – not to support what they consider an overly broad capitulation to downtown’s threats. They’re also lobbying Sup. John Avalos to switch his vote, while downtown players are putting the screws to supervisors as well.

In an interview with the Guardian, Mirkarimi clarified his stance, noting that he was the sponsor of the original public financing law and his goal is to protect it, even if it needs to be modified to withstand a legal challenge. “I’m looking for alternatives to fortify San Francisco’s program,” he told us, noting that he missed some of this week’s discussion and he’s hoping something can be done to retain provisions that level the financial playing field with wealthy candidates.

Meanwhile, downtown forces are pulling out the stops to kill Sup. David Campos’ legislation that would prevent San Francisco businesses from pocketing money they set aside for their employees’ health care under a city mandate that they provide health coverage – totaling about $50 million last year – legislation that gets its first hearing tomorrow (Friday/30) at 10 am.

Board President David Chiu has put forward competing legislation that is more to the Chamber’s liking, letting businesses (mostly restaurants that are even placing surcharges of customers’ bills, ostensibly to subsidize their legal obligations) keep the money. But Campos and his labor allies believe they have the six votes they need to pass the legislation, thanks largely to moderate Sup. Malia Cohen’s pledge to support the measure.

While even some supporters have quibbled with the timing of this measure, Campos notes the urgency of keeping money intended for workers in their hands. “It’s an outrage and the longer we wait, the worse it gets,” Campos tells us, noting that the practice, “is what many of us consider fraud.”

Unfortunately, even if the board approves the measure this Tuesday, it will still need the signature of Mayor Lee to become law. While he hasn’t formally taken a position, given that his political base is the downtown crowd, he’s expected to veto the measure. But we’ll ask him about it tomorrow when he’s scheduled to meet with the Guardian for an endorsement interview at 2 pm.

The attack on public finance

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EDITORIAL The two most important political reforms in modern San Francisco history were the restoration of district elections and the creation of a public-finance system for mayoral and supervisorial elections. Both give candidates who lack big-business support a chance to win elective office. Both give independents a chance to compete against the downtown interests. Both have improved local government considerably in the past decade. And now public financing is directly under attack.

The Board of Supervisors was slated to meet in closed session Sept. 27 to discuss amendments to the public disclosure law — allegedly, according to Supervisors Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd, to avoid legal liability. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down in July that an Arizona law giving increased public money to candidates who were being badly outspent by well-financed opponents. One aspect of the city’s law, which allows extra public money for candidates once their opponents break the spending cap, might fall under the high court’s ruling.

But the city’s right in the middle of a heated mayoral election, and all of the candidates entered knowing the current rules — and more important, nobody has come forward to sue, or even threaten to sue, over the city’s law. So there’s no urgent reason to rewrite the ordinance.

The very fact that so many qualified candidates are in the race is an argument for public financing. Many of the current candidates would be unable to raise the vast sums required for a serious campaign without the help of public finance — and that opens up the field to more ideas, more debate, more policy discussions. It also gives the voters more of a choice — which, is, after all, what democracy is about.

Besides, as activist Larry Bush pointed out to us, “you have two choices with money in elections — you can pay up from with public funding or you can pay afterward with sweetheart contracts. And we all know which one is cheaper.”

Mayor Ed Lee, who has refused to take public money (because he doesn’t have to — he’s got plenty of rich and powerful backers) is attacking the campaign law, complaining in a TV ad that his opponents are “using taxpayer money” for “attack ads” — and that’s spurring discussion about whether there ought to be limits on how public money can be used. Any move in that direction would undermine the whole point of the law — if candidates can’t do negative ads (which, like it or not, are part of the modern campaign world) with public funds, they’ll raise outside money instead.

There are plenty of ways to improve the city’s public finance law (increasing disclosure requirements for late money and expanding the restrictions on donation by city contractors would be a good start). But amending the law in the middle of a campaign when there are no existing legal threats is a bad idea, and the supervisors should scrap it.

PS: If Lee wants to be mayor, he needs to start showing up — at debates and forums. That’s part of the job.

Guardian editorial: The attack on public finance

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ATTACKING PUBLIC FINANCE, COURTESY OF SUPERVISORS SEAN ELSBERND AND MARK FARRELL WHO ARE  CARRYING THE WATER FOR THE DOWNTOWN GANG AND ITS WELL-FUNDED CANDIDATE MAYOR ED LEE

Impertinent questions for the supervisors:
Why are you discussing amending/gutting a damn good thing (the public finance system)  for reasons of “liability” when nobody has sued the city?
Why not tell Mayor Ed Lee to start showing up at debates and forums instead of hiding behind the gushers of PG&E/Chamber/downtown/real estate money flowing  into his campaign?  B3

 

EDITORIAL: The two most important political reforms in modern San Francisco history were the restoration of district elections and the creation of a public-finance system for mayoral and supervisorial elections. Both give candidates who lack big-business support a chance to win elective office. Both give independents a chance to compete against the downtown interests. Both have improved local government considerably in the past decade. And now public financing is directly under attack.

The Board of Supervisors was slated to meet in closed session Sept. 27 to discuss amendments to the public disclosure law — allegedly, according to Supervisors Mark Farrell and Sean Elsbernd, to avoid legal liability. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down in July that an Arizona law giving increased public money to candidates who were being badly outspent by well-financed opponents. One aspect of the city’s law, which allows extra public money for candidates once their opponents break the spending cap, might fall under the high court’s ruling.

But the city’s right in the middle of a heated mayoral election, and all of the candidates entered knowing the current rules — and more important, nobody has come forward to sue, or even threaten to sue, over the city’s law. So there’s no urgent reason to rewrite the ordinance.

The very fact that so many qualified candidates are in the race is an argument for public financing. Many of the current candidates would be unable to raise the vast sums required for a serious campaign without the help of public finance — and that opens up the field to more ideas, more debate, more policy discussions. It also gives the voters more of a choice — which, is, after all, what democracy is about.

Besides, as activist Larry Bush pointed out to us, “you have two choices with money in elections — you can pay up from with public funding or you can pay afterward with sweetheart contracts. And we all know which one is cheaper.”

Mayor Ed Lee, who has refused to take public money (because he doesn’t have to — he’s got plenty of rich and powerful backers) is attacking the campaign law, complaining in a TV ad that his opponents are “using taxpayer money” for “attack ads” — and that’s spurring discussion about whether there ought to be limits on how public money can be used. Any move in that direction would undermine the whole point of the law — if candidates can’t do negative ads (which, like it or not, are part of the modern campaign world) with public funds, they’ll raise outside money instead.

There are plenty of ways to improve the city’s public finance law (increasing disclosure requirements for late money and expanding the restrictions on donation by city contractors would be a good start). But amending the law in the middle of a campaign when there are no existing legal threats is a bad idea, and the supervisors should scrap it.

PS: If Lee wants to be mayor, he needs to start showing up — at debates and forums. That’s part of the job.
 

Dick Meister: VIVA EL BOICOTTEO!

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By Dick Meister

(Third part of a five part daily series)

Although the United Farm Workers initially relied solely on strikes in its drive to win union contracts for California’s farm workers, it soon switched to the much more effective weapon of the boycott.

Growers could easily replace strikers, and often did. But they couldn’t do much about customers – individuals and institutions – who heeded the UFW’s call to not buy any grapes, lettuce or wine from growers who continued to rebuff the UFW demands for union recognition.

The boycotts helped forge a potent coalition of clergymen, industrial unionists, young activists and civil rights advocates, liberal Democratic politicians, socially conscious shoppers and others. They also waved crimson banners, sang the farm workers’ songs, chanted their slogans and espoused non-violence, on city streets, outside supermarkets, in meeting halls, wherever they could. There were an estimated 17 million of them worldwide between 1968 and 1975, including 10 to 12 percent of all U.S. adults. Later boycotts drew less support but were nevertheless effective in winning new contracts.

John Giumarra Jr., a young lawyer who spoke for the grape growers who signed the first UFW contracts, declared that boycott pressures had been threatening to “destroy a number of farmers.” Lionel Steinberg, a major Coachella Valley grape grower who was the first to agree to a UFW contract, urged others to quickly reach an agreement, lest they continue losing millions of dollars in sales.

Steinberg told his fellow growers, “It is costing us more to produce and sell our grapes than we are getting paid for them. We are losing maybe 20 percent of our market. The boycott is illegal and immoral, but it also is a fact.”

The signing of the union contracts with grape growers in Delano signaled the inevitable. California’s farm workers were going to be organized, and the next target would be those in the nearby Salinas and Santa Maria valleys, which produced 70 percent of the nation’s iceberg lettuce and much of its other vegetables. It was called “America’s Salad Bowl,” a flat, fertile place where morning fog hung heavy over land carpeted green for miles.

Men and women hovered over the land, gripping hoes so short their handles scarcely protruded above their fast-moving hands as they stooped and cut, stooped and cut. Most worked under the supervision of men with the broad accents of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas who had wielded hoes for small independent growers before giant corporations bought up the land and hired them to manage their new holdings. These men were among the Dust Bowl Refugees of the 1930s who had made their own violently opposed demands for better working lives during the Great Depression.

Many of the former Dust Bowl Refugees were lured into urban employment when the depression ended, but those who remained as managers joined the farm corporations to oppose the demands of the Chicano and Filipino American farm workers who replaced the at the bottom of the economic totem pole.

The demands were for union recognition elections in which the UFW seemed a certain winner. But if they didn’t agree to elections, the growers faced the certain prospect of a boycott like that which had been so costly to grape growers.

There was, however, an alternative that the growers had overlooked until the inevitability of unionization arrived with the UFW demands. They might arrange to bypass elections and sign with another union that would demand less than the aggressive, unorthodox UFW and at the same time ease the sting of a boycott by enabling by enabling growers to point out that their workers were unionized.

The growers found their alternative in the Teamsters Union, which feared that UFW strikes and boycotts would endanger the flow of produce handled by truck drivers, cannery workers and other Teamster members. What’s more, Teamster officials were eager for representation rights that would allow them to control the field workers. The potential was immense: more than 30,000 farm workers in the two valleys alone. That would bring a lot of new money into the dues and pension funds used by leaders of the corruption-ridden Teamsters to gain power, influence and fat salaries for themselves.

Virtually all the 170 growers in the two valleys soon announced they had signed Teamster contracts, even though the Teamsters had no farm worker members. The growers and Teamsters hadn’t even agreed on specific contract terms. They were in so great a rush to head off the UFW, they merely signed agreements that the terms would be filled in later. The terms, however, would not be decided in consultation with the workers or their union. Terms were left solely to grower and Teamster representatives.

The workers were not even allowed to ratify the contracts, although they would be required to join the Teamsters and have union dues deducted from their paychecks. If they didn’t join the Teamsters, they’d be fired. Most workers got basic pay raises of 10 to 50 cents an hour in return for forced membership in the Teamsters and some minimal health and welfare benefits – but that was all.

Teamster recognition was a very small price for growers to pay in exchange for maintaining their ability to make decisions on pay and working conditions in isolation from the direct collective demands of their employees. Since the Teamsters’ main interest lay elsewhere, in transportation and food processing, growers also could expect that even the minimal terms of the contracts would not be fully enforced and that strikes and boycotts were hardly a possibility. But on the slim chance that the growers might still feel insecure, the contracts were written to stand for five years.

Chavez was outraged at the Teamsters’ “act of treason against the legitimate aspirations of farm workers.” He declared “all-out war against the Teamsters and the bosses ” and marched into Salinas with several hundred farm workers and an AFL-CIO contingent headed by Organizing Director Bill Kircher. Pickets went immediately to a farm where 250 workers had been fired for not joining the Teamsters. Hundreds of workers struck at other farms and the UFW began preparing for legal action and a nationwide lettuce boycott.

Growers got a court order against what was ruled an illegal jurisdictional dispute, but the pickets and boycotters kept marching nevertheless and Chavez began “a penitential fast against injustice.”

In less than two weeks, the Teamsters were asking for a treaty with the UFW. It was quickly reached. The Teamsters agreed to reallocate jurisdiction over field workers to the UFW and agreed that growers who had signed with the Teamsters could switch to the UFW without penalty.

But there was a catch. Growers who had signed Teamster contracts would not give them up. Finally, UFW members voted to strike. It was, at the start, the largest and most effective farm strike since the mid-1930s. More than 5000 workers left their jobs at nearly 150 farms, and produce shipments were cut from 200 carloads a day to 75 or less. Growers were losing an average of $500,000 a day.

Unlike the vineyard strike, this dispute was violent, with beatings suffered by UFW and Teamster partisans alike. Some of the turmoil was caused by officials of a Teamster cannery workers local who were charged with using $25,000 in union funds to hire some of the local’s burly members to “guard” fields from UFW organizers.

A judge ruled there could only be one informational picket at 22 of the Salinas Valley farms that made up the strikers’ main targets, none at the eight others. Nor would the UFW be allowed to call a boycott against any of the 170 growers who held Teamster contracts. The union nevertheless called a boycott. Officially, the strike continued, but the major effort was at food markets in 64 cities across the country, where UFW members and supporters urged shoppers to bypass lettuce from the struck growers.

A judge ordered Chavez arrested. He went to jail accompanied by more than 2000 UFW members and supporters, including Coretta King and Ethel Kennedy. They cheered Chavez’ parting advice to “boycott the hell out of them!” and then began a series of prayer vigils and other highly publicized demonstrations. After three weeks, Chavez was released, pending the outcome of a UFW appeal.

The boycott continued at an intensified pace throughout the early months of 1971 until a committee of Catholic bishops mediated a settlement between national Teamster and AFL-CIO leaders. But growers still refused to give up their Teamster contracts. They held them for a half-dozen years more, until the Teamsters, beaten badly in a series of union representation elections under California’s new farm worker bargaining law, finally abandoned as futile the fierce fight they had waged against the UFW for more than a decade.

Meanwhile, the boycott continued, as the UFW expanded its organizing efforts to Florida and Arizona. The UFW’s victory in California was truly spectacular. Imagine, one of the youngest and smallest unions in the country, representing the most oppressed of American workers, decisively beating the country’s largest and most powerful union.

It was the UFW’s incredible use of the boycott that did it,  the major non-violent weapon available to all who would seek justice from an oppressor.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

 

Tim Lincecum Bobble Head Day comes to AT&T Park. Giants fans get their Freak on.

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“They’re taking torture to a new level.”

Such were the words of Giants manager Bruce Bochy after his team’s exhilarating 10th inning 2-1 walkoff win versus the visiting Houston Astros on Saturday night. Although it might not have been the best fielded game or the offensive show of force the Giants have been longing for, the team escaped with a win thanks to the bat of trade deadline acquisition Jeff Keppinger. 

But before the night’s climactic finish on the field, a different kind of celebration took place, just off it. It was Tim Lincecum Bobblehead Day at AT&T Park.

Giants fans impatiently lined up for their chance to get a miniature model of their beloved freak. Thousands of fans dressed in orange and black crammed their way into lines that surrounded every inch of the ballpark. 

The 25,000 bobbleheads available vanished within minutes of the gates being opened. If you didn’t line up at least two and a half hours before the game, you probably missed out on the action.

One of the die-hard fans anxiously waiting his opportunity to receive his figurine was Robert Novoa. A 52-year old San Francisco native, Novoa has been a Giants fan since 1963 and has memories of the Giants teams of the ‘60s and legends like Willie Mccovey and Willie Mays. He arrived in front of the Willie Mays gates six hours before the start of the Saturday night’s ballgame, but he was still all smiles at the prospect of scoring his one-of-a-kind Tim Lincecum bobblehead. “[Lincecum’s] the best there is right now. He’s got a unique way of pitching the ball. You have to watch him,” he said. 

But though the pregame chaos was pure Lincecum, the night’s on-field spotlight shined on another Giant. To a roaring, sold-out crowd, left handed pitcher Eric Surkamp took the mound, making his major league baseball debut. Prior to Saturday night’s game, Surkamp played for the Giants’ minor league team Richmond Flying Squirrels. 

“It was awesome. You dream about it your whole life. And for it to finally come true, is amazing,” he said.

The rookie pitched six solid innings, striking out four and allowing just one earned run. Surkamp, who admitted that he couldn’t feel his legs at the beginning of the game, was able to rid himself of the pre-game jitters and put on quite a performance in front of his friends, family, and 42,000 Giants fanatics. “The kid was impressive tonight,” said Bruce Bochy. “He comes in a packed house, pitching his first game. Believe me you’re nervous, you’re amped up, but he never showed it and looked very comfortable out there. I thought he did a great job.”

With the ups, come the downs. Outfielder Nate Schierholtz was placed on the 15 day disabled list with a bone fracture on his right foot; adding to the never ending list of injury ridden Giants. This marks the twenty-fifth time the Giants have used the disabled list, the most in the majors.

The win versus the Astros was the Giants second straight consecutive victory, something they hadn’t done since August 13th. However, they still remain three games back of the Arizona Diamondbacks who beat the San Diego Padres 3-1.

“Hopefully we’ll get on a roll here, keep this thing close, and get this offense clicking”

The Giants will look for production from right fielder Carlos Beltran to provide some offensive prowess for the ball club. Since returning from the disabled list and missing thirteen games, Beltran has been impressive; going 7-for-16 with a .438 average. Beltran went 2-for-4 on Saturday with a run batted in during the first inning.

Up next the Giants look to capitalize on a three game series against the struggling Chicago Cubs, and then will await the arrival of the Arizona Diamondbacks for a crucial weekend series.  

Game Note: On Sunday The Giants lost to the Astros 4-to-3 in eleven innings, and are now four games back of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL West Division.

 

 

Editor’s Notes

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tredmond@sfbg.com

August is a bad time to split town. When I left for vacation a couple of weeks ago, Ed Lee was just starting to act like a candidate in a slow-developing mayor’s race. Nobody except my lunatic pal h. brown had any inkling that Public Defender Jeff Adachi would jump into the Room 200 sweepstakes at the last minute. And the Giants were three games up.

Now Lee is the clear front-runner, Adachi — a guy who defends criminals for a living — is the darling of a some anti-government conservatives, there are Avalos signs all over the Mission, and nobody knows exactly how to figure this all out.

Oh, and Arizona — which I hate (yeah, I hate the entire state, including the governor, the baseball team and the newspaper chain that’s based there) — is leading the National League West.

Welcome home, I guess.

The first thing I want to say about the mayor’s race is that none of this would be possible without ranked-choice voting and public financing. Think about it: Five serious Asian candidates, two of them leading in the polls and at least three of them real contenders — and nobody’s complaining that Adachi or Lee will “split” the Asian vote. If anything, several strong Asian candidates help each other; the supporters of Ed Lee and Leland Yee may be trashing the opposition day and night, but in the end, a lot of Chinese voters will probably still rank the incumbent mayor and the man who’s been elected citywide four times as two of their three choices.

And without public financing, the race would be dominated by one or two contenders — the ones who could privately raise $1 million or more to stay in the game. Instead, we have at least four and perhaps as many as five or six candidates who have a real chance of finishing on top. Already, the Chron and the Ex are complaining about the cost of public financing; the cost of closed elections where only those with big-business connections could win was much, much higher.

The other factor that will make this fascinating is that Lee’s job just got much, much harder. He’s not the amiable technocrat who comes to work early and gets the job done anymore; now he’s an ambitious pol who has never had to stand up to the heat of a tough campaign. He’s going to have to be a candidate, and campaign, and answer some hard questions about some of his political allies and supporters. That’s not the gig he wanted in February. And I don’t know how well he’s going to handle it.

Giants fans and offense take a snooze at AT&T Park

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On yesterday’s clear and sunny Wednesday afternoon, the San Francisco Giants played in front of a sold-out crowd for their sixtieth straight home game in a row. 

But even the 42,000-plus fans in the bleachers couldn’t ignite the recently gone-limp bats of the 2010 world champs. The Giants lost the matinee by a lopsided score of 9-2 to the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team who before arriving in the Bay had lost 10 games in a row. 

There was no joy for Giants fans — until the evening’s post-game special event, that is.

But first, the game itself. Starting pitcher Jonathan Sanchez continued to struggle to find his rhythm since returning from the disabled list on August 1 (he had tendinitis in his left bicep). Sanchez only pitched four and one-third innings, giving up five runs and four earned runs and allowing four walks in the mere four innings he pitched.

“I don’t think it was a very good outing, to be honest,” said Giants skipper Bruce Bochy at the post-game press conference. “[Sanchez] hurt himself. The pitcher sets the tone for the game and it wasn’t a very good one today for him.”

This was an abysmal home showing for the defending champs. In the last 10-game stretch, the Giants have produced a losing record of 3-7, ceding three straight series in a row to the Philadelphia Phillies, Arizona Diamondbacks, and as of yesterday, the Pittsburgh Pirates. The last time the Giants did that was in May of 2008.

The team’s even lost its first place spot in the National League West Division to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who beat the Astros Tuesday night. 

The Giants’ struggles can easily be credited to the lackluster performances displayed by the team’s offense. It’s a problem that Bochy is having issues resolving. “I wish I had an easy answer for that, they just have to get it going (offensively) — I don’t know how else really to say it. We had our chances to get back in the game. You keep going out there and working on it,” said Bochy

The team was missing its key trade deadline acquisition Carlos Beltran, who did not play for the third straight game due to a strained wrist, which he suffered during Sunday’s game against the Phillies. Outfielder Nate Schierholtz also did not play in Wednesday’s game.

But with all the offensive vacancies, Bochy says that he will not alter the lineup for Friday’s series opener against the Florida opener. “This is our club; we’ve got guys that have been around. They’ve got to figure it out,” said Bochy. Friday marks the start of a 10-game road trip for the G-men. The team will make crucial stops in Atlanta, Florida, and Houston. 

Said Bochy, “When you’re in something like this you think, gosh are we going to come out of it? And we will, and I think our offense will as well.”

But the day was not entirely ruined by baseball. After the game, bases and ground chalk were traded in for giant inflatable slides and tents. The ninth annual Giants slumber party was held Wednesday evening — sold-out, as always — right inside AT&T Park. 

Friends and families filed onto the makeshift campground immediately after the game ended, unloading tents, sleeping bags, flashlights, and teddy bears for the night’s festivities. 

They got to participate in a scavenger hunt throughout the stadium, they rambled through the dugouts, they scored autographed paraphernalia, and kids and parents settled down with a screening of Despicable Me projected on the ginormous high definition scoreboard.

All in all, not your average backyard overnighter — $200 per person (including a ticket to the game) has a way of putting AT&T Park in a whole different light. But how can you put a pricetag on home team happiness?

SF Giants asked to take a stand against racism UPDATED

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Updated with response from SF Giants at bottom of post

The San Francisco Giants will host the Arizona Diamondbacks tonight (July 31), beginning a three-game series that will determine the first place slot in the National League West. A lot of eyes will be on our 2010 league champions – all the more reason, says a classic Mission District arts and culture organization, for them to take a stand against racist anti-immigration laws.

In early June, community members who had been leaders of the 1960s to ’80s group Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes sent Giants CEO Bill Newcombe a letter with a simple request. They want the baseball team to wear its popular ‘Gigantes’ jerseys while playing the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Atlanta Braves, two squads that hail from states that have recently passed laws codifing racial profiling in the fight against illegal immigration. The letter tells the team “this kind of law has created a paralyzing climate of fear among Latino families, citizen and non-citizen alike.”

San Francisco, the Casa Hispana elders insist, does not swing at discriminatory government. Reminding the Giants organization of its long-standing support of the Latino community, they’re politely encouraging the team to represent its fans by speaking out against discrimination. We caught up with Casa Hispana elder Don Santina for an email interview to explain why his group asked its team for a wardrobe change. The Guardian was unable to reach the SF Giants for comment – but any organizational response we get will be added to this post.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Tell us about the mission of Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes.

Don Santina: Casa Hispana de Bellas Artes was founded in 1966 in the Mission District by a group of artists and poets to promote cultural advocacy for Latino-Chicano-Raza culture. [Our] group produced and sponsored programs year-round but focused particularly on an annual two-month long Raza/Hispanidad Festival which opened on October 12, Dia de la Raza. Among the multitude of programs, exhibits, performances, and events produced included major undertakings like the Chichen Itza exhibit at SF State, the pre-Colombian artifacts at the De Young and 24th Street BART station opening, the Cisco Kid Festival with Duncan Renaldo, and the Latin American Theatre Festival with Enrique Buenaventura, and low rider car exhibit at the US Presidio. Casa faded into history in 1983 when its major funding sources withdrew. The National Endowment for the Arts was seized by Reaganites.

In 1975 Casa Hispana executive director Amilcar Lobos Yong read a bilingual version of “Casey at the Bat” at Candlestick Park as part of a program in honor of the Giant’s support of the Latino community. Photo by Joe Ramos

SFBG: Why did you send this letter to the Giants?

DS: The elders of Casa wrote to Bill Newcomb’s Giants organization because it had produced a pre-game program in Candlestick Park with Horace Stoneham’s Giants team in 1975 honoring the Giants for their “pioneer recognition of Latin players” in the racist world of major league baseball.  At the event, Casa Poets Theatre read “Casey at the Bat” in English and Spanish before the game and gave awards to the Giants, Juan Marichal, and Tito Fuentes for his works with youth in the Mission District (editor’s note: the awards were presented by long-time Bay Area Latino news legend Luis Echegoyen). Casa people felt that the Giants should continue that anti-racist policy by making a genuine statement against SB 1070 by at least wearing Gigantes uniforms when playing Arizona and Atlanta.

 

SFBG: What’s been the response from the team? Did they get back to you?

DS: The Giants received Casa’s letter on June 9, and the business has not responded. Casa is disappointed in this lack of response and respect from a San Francisco-based team which has many Latino players.

 

SFBG: What is a professional sports team role’s in their community? Should they be speaking out on political and social issues? 

DS: A professional sports team has the same responsibilities to the community as any other business; in a word: Spike Lee’s “do the right thing.” Unfortunately, these teams are all mega-corporate businesses with morality based on profit. Dave Zirin has covered this topic very thoroughly.

 

SFBG: How much of the artists and community members involved with Casa Hispana are baseball fans?

DS: Most of the Casa people love the Giants; however, they also love fútbol, a.k.a. the international game of soccer.   

 

SFBG: Do you think they’ll be wearing the Gigantes jerseys at AT&T Park tonight?  

DS: We don’t think they’ll wear the Gigantes uniforms without public pressure or embarrassment. [But] if they do, it will be beneficial as a public stand against racial profiling laws. 

 

UPDATED WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3: The Guardian contacted Giants spokesperson Shana Daum, who said she couldn’t recall recieving Casa Hispana’s letter but that the Giants would not be wearing their Gigantes jerseys at all during this week’s Arizona series. “We try to support the community, but we don’t want to take a political stance,” she told us.

“There’s other ways for major league baseball to get involved.” Daum cited the team’s annual Fiesta Gigantes celebration during September’s Hispanic Heritage Month, HIV/AIDS awareness days, the team’s pioneering involvement in the It Gets Better campaign. She added “but we appreciate the spirit in which [Casa Hispana’s request to wear the Gigantes jersey] was asked.”

Editorial: Don’t gut SF campaign law

1

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

 

 

Don’t gut SF campaign law

0

The U.S. Supreme Court, which has already ruled that corporations can spend all the money they want on political campaigns, dealt another huge blow to democracy in June when it struck down a campaign finance law in Arizona that was designed to level the playing field for candidates running against better-financed opponents.

The ruling has implications for San Francisco’s public finance law, and already the Ethics Commission has moved to amend — some would say gut — the ordinance. The supervisors also have to approve the changes, and they should move cautiously; there is much about the local law that can still be saved, and there are experts working on alternative models that could still work under the Arizona ruling.

The Arizona law gave public funds to candidates who agreed to limit personal spending to $500. The more privately financed opponents and independent expenditure (IE) committees spent on a candidate, the more public matching money the other candidates received.

The idea: if one rich candidate — or one candidate supported by deep-pocketed special interests — tried to dominate the election, the others would be given enough money to make things fair.

That’s the same motivation behind San Francisco’s law, which sets a spending limit for the mayoral and supervisorial races, provides matching funds for small contributions — and gives public money to candidates who are attacked by outside independent expenditure committees.

It’s possible that the current IE match won’t hold up to legal scrutiny under the Arizona decision. And already some of the city’s biggest downtown interests are threatening to sue to overturn the local ordinance. But there is much about the San Francisco law that will likely survive a court challenge.

Bob Stern, a campaign finance expert and president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, told us that he’s working on a new model law for cities like San Francisco. The Ethics Commission knew that when it voted July 11 to eliminate matching for IEs and to reduce the available pot of money.

Now the law comes to the Board of Supervisors, where eight votes are required to accept the Ethics Commission amendments. Good government advocates say the supervisors should do only what is clearly legally necessary: “The Ethics Commission should have used a scalpel, not a sledgehammer,” Oliver Luby, a former commission staffer, told us.

The November mayor’s race is a huge test for the city’s law; this will be the first time effective public financing will be in place for a citywide race, and the success of the ordinance will draw national attention. The supervisors should stop short of so badly amending it that it will lose all its teeth.

The board should hold public hearings and solicit input from local and national experts. The supervisors shouldn’t be intimidated by downtown lawsuits and consider only the most limited changes — after reviewing every possible alternative. 

 

Calling the doom tune

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER 2012: The Musical!, the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s latest offering in its annual free outdoor theater shows, opens in the Oval Office, where President Obama (Michael Gene Sullivan) — face painted a garish red, white, and blue — sells out Workingclass Man (Cory Censoprano) at the bidding of his spooky capitalist overlords. It plays like a parody of agitprop conceits and, sure enough, it is. Audiences sprawled on the glade at the northwest corner of Dolores Park this Fourth of July (the production tours throughout the summer and fall across the Bay Area and beyond) were being treated to the radical stylings of “Theater BAM!”, a tiny left-wing theater company fighting the good fight against the Man and the Pigs, among other stock characters in the black-and-blue pageant of industrial and postindustrial capitalism.

It earned a good laugh, this dramatic feint. The scene ends, the company takes its bow, and the “real” play begins as life imitates art with uncomfortable (and self-referential) complications: the members of Theater BAM! are indeed committed to overthrowing the system, but have been at it some time now with limited results and redundant gestures. Worse still, the company is facing an unprecedented financial crisis that has them leaning toward corporate sponsorship.

This last detail appalls at least one member, steadfast artistic director Elaine (Lizzie Calogero). But the rest of the company finds itself swayed by Elaine’s sister and fellow BAMmer, ambitious daytime corporate sellout Suze (Siobhan Marie Doherty), otherwise busy climbing the ladder as assistant to investment banker Arthur Rand (Victor Toman). (“It’s all dirty money,” she sings, in composer-lyricists Pat Moran and Bruce Barthol’s bouncy 1950s-style R&B. “If you don’t take dirty money you don’t have any money at all.”)

Rand, for his part, tired of competing with the piffling “people” in the political marketplace, gets the idea (with Suze’s prompting) to buy himself a politician outright. The serviceable Senator Pheaus (Sullivan) does nicely in this position (i.e., supine). Eagerly, desperately following Rand’s explicit instructions, the telegenic Pheaus pushes forward Wall Street’s business-as-usual agenda through a ready rhetorical smokescreen of nebulous and all-pervading fear.

Meanwhile, the stalwarts of Theater BAM! find themselves underwritten by an ostensibly progressive, feel-good corporation called Green Planet, Inc., headed by a bubbly Ms. Haverlock (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro) who, with hands clasped firmly on the purse strings, “offers” increasingly invasive production suggestions. The upshot? A new musical about the end of everything called 2012, replete with Mayan priests and giddy millennial mayhem. Needless to say, apocalypse doesn’t go so well with political commitment or revolutionary change, but dovetails quite nicely with an apolitical consumerist ethos of all now and damn the future.

Directed with reliable snap by SFMT vet Wilma Bonet (augmented by Victor Toman’s big-time small-stage choreography) 2012: The Musical! is a solid SFMT production attuned to the timber of the “end times,” not as a biblical prophesy but as capitalist conspiracy. It also flags the messy compromises made all too easily by artists and audiences alike with “the system.” The script (by longtime head writer Sullivan, with additional dialogue from Ellen Callas) is along the way dependably smart and funny — and seemingly inspired at least in part by the recent Flake flap (to wit, Congressman and Arizona Republican Jeff Flake’s attack on NEA chair Rocco Landesman last May for the NEA’s funding of the 52-year-old left-wing San Francisco Mime Troupe). The half a dozen songs are equally snazzy, with admirably clear and pointed lyrics, and while the singing is not as strong as in recent years, the comic acting is first-rate.

But if the story complicates the usual agitprop scenario represented by the fictitious Theater BAM!, it can also be too pat to be wholly satisfying. The excuse offered business as usual by the distracting and enervating fear of the millennium has several sources after all, including the pernicious hard-on by religious demagogues for spiritual redemption in a fiery end (a crowd and pathology wonderfully exposed in SFMT’s Godfellas). The solutions as presented here are also less than clear. Getting the airhead Senator Pheaus to save the day by reading a speech crafted by our heroes, instead of his Wall Street handlers, only underscores the idea that such “representatives” are ventriloquist dummies who lean left or right depending on whose forearm is up their ass. Those guys are Theater Bum, and they’re overfunded.

2012: THE MUSICAL!

Through Sept. 25

Various Bay Area venues, free

www.sfmt.org

 

Civil rights advocates say S-Comm reforms are spin, part of bigger FBI biometric tracking plan

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In face of mounting criticism nationwide, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced today changes to its Secure Communities (S-Comm) deportation program. These changes include protections for domestic violence victims, and immigrants who are pursuing legitimate civil liberties protections. They give more discretion to ICE prosecutors, create a new detainer form that stipulates in multiple languages that arrestees cannot be detained under an ICE hold for more than 48 hours, except on holiday weekends. The form also requires local law enforcement to provide arrestees with a copy, which has a number to call if they believe their civil rights have been violated. The agency also said it will provide civil rights training related to its S-Comm program at the state and local level.

Immigrant and civil rights advocates said the announcement shows that the administration acknowledges that there are serious problems with S-Comm’s design and implementation. But they charged that the announced reforms fall far short of the S-Comm moratorium that an increasing number of advocates and lawmakers, including California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, have demanded.

And some advocates expressed concern that the feds’ insistence on expanding S-Comm, in which fingerprints taken by local law enforcement agencies are automatically shared with federal and international databases, is proof that the program is the first step towards rolling out a much larger program called the Next Generation Identification (NGI) initiative.

Under the NGI, the FBI plans to phase-in the deployment of a host of new biometric interoperability capabilities to state and local law enforcement agencies within the next five years. And NGI likely won’t be limited to non-citizens and undocumented immigrants, suggesting that US citizens charged with a crime will also find that once their fingerprints are taken, law enforcement agencies will immediately compile a huge and internationally interconnected dossier on them, regardless of whether they are innocent of the charges.

Civil rights advocates also worry that local enforcement agencies’ participation in S-Comm will become inevitable because S-Comm is simply the first of a number of biometric interoperability systems being brought online by the NGI.
In other words, S-Comm is just the first of many additional information systems that are being made available to local law enforcement agencies to fully and accurately identify suspects in their custody.

And, according to the FBI/CJIS’s own documents, the feds have adopted a three-part strategy to deal with jurisdictions that do not wish to participate:
1.    Deploy S-Comm to as many places as possible in the surrounding locale, creating a “ring of interoperability” around the resistant site.
2.    Deploy S-Comm selectively to state correctional system facilities, permitting identification of Level 1 offenders who may have been arrested and sentenced in the non-participating jurisdiction,
3.    Ensure that the jurisdiction understands that non-participation does not equate to non-deployment.
In other words, though a local law enforcement agency is technically free to shut off, or ignore, the receipt of records related to the fed’s fingerprint-matching capabilities, the feds are already warning local law enforcement agencies that local officers may find themselves “deprived of substantive information relating to an arrested subject’s true identity, place of origin, and other pertinent data of significant law enforcement value.”

Ammiano, who is the author of California’s TRUST Act, which would allow local governments to opt out of S-Comm, said: “Today’s announcement by ICE is simply window dressing. How many more innocent people have to be swept up by the ironically named Secure Communities program before the Obama administration will change course? Talking about the need for comprehensive immigration reform is not an excuse for continuing with a flawed, unjust program that is having tragic consequences for communities across the country. It is time for a moratorium on S-Comm pending a real review of the program not just PR spin from ICE.”

Professor Bill Ong Hing, immigration law expert at the University of San Francisco, stated, “The fact is, under our Constitution, immigration is a federal responsibility. Neither a state like Arizona, nor the federal government itself, can force local governments to act as immigration agents. Such measures compound the injustices of our deeply broken immigration system – and public safety and local resources are among the first casualties.”

And the Asian Law Caucus, the ACLU of California, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the California Immigrant Policy Center, and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network released the following joint statement:  “We are deeply disappointed by the inadequacy of the Administration’s response to the mounting body of evidence that the ‘Secure’ Communities program is damaging public safety and ensnaring community members. The painful stories of domestic violence victims and other innocent community members facing deportation thanks to S-Comm underscore that the program has simply gone off the rails. While today’s announcement acknowledges that problems exist with the program, the measures outlined by the Administration are a far cry from workable solutions these problems. To announce “reform” before review is an exercise in politics, not policy. The administration should suspend the program and wait for the Inspector General report in order to develop fair and transparent policies.” 

“Before vital relationships between local law enforcement and immigrant communities are furthered damaged, before more domestic violence victims, street vendors, family members, and workers who are merely striving for the American dream are swept up for deportation, S-Comm must be reigned in,” the coalition continued. “For the sake of public safety and transparency, we need real solutions. We strongly support California’s TRUST Act, which sets safeguards the federal government has failed to implement and allows local governments out of S-Comm, and we continue to call for a national moratorium on this fundamentally flawed program.”

In recent weeks, Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts, have either pulled out or refused participation in the program while numerous local governments have sought a way out of a deportation dragnet that harms public safety and has operated with no transparency or local oversight. And Ammiano’s TRUST Act, which also sets basic standards for those jurisdictions that do want to participate in S-Comm passed the state Assembly in May and the Senate Public Safety Committee this week.

During today’s press conference, ICE Director John Morton told reporters that “it makes sense to prioritize resources. We don’t have enough resources to remove everyone who is here unlawfully.”

But when the Guardian asked if the reforms address the community criticisms that S-Comm was rolled out as a way to catch serious criminals, but has been largely used to deport non-felons, Morton maintained the S-Comm has always focused on serious criminal offenders, but was never limited to that.
“We remove felony offenders at a higher rate than are convicted in the general population,” he stated. ‘But federal law does not provide that you can come here unlawfully and then commit crimes other than violent crimes.”

True, but local law enforcement agencies have repeatedly observed that you break vital trust with immigrant communities if they believe that contact with police, including  being arrested for crimes they did not actually commit, or arrests for very low-level misdemeanors, will lead to deportation.

“This feels like a non-announcement, and it’s far from reform,” said B, Loewe of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. “You don’t put a collar around a snake and call it a pet.”

And SF Police Commissioner Angela Chan, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus, said the reason ICE and the FBI, “are so crazy for S-Comm is because it’s the first step in a much bigger loop that will include citizens and non-citizens alike.”

NDLON and the Asian Law Caucus are part of the coalition that is calling on the Obama administration to publicly oppose and terminate all programs that create partnerships between state and local law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security; halt the development of the vast data gathering infrastructure that houses S-Comm, and inform the public of the current scope and purpose of its data collection and dissemination activities; and allow state and local jurisdictions to opt-out of S-Comm.

After today’s press conference, ICE issued a press release stating that through April 30, 2011, more than 77,000 immigrants convicted of crimes, including more than 28,000 convicted of aggravated felony (Level 1) offenses like murder, rape and the sexual abuse of children were removed from the U.S. after identification through S-Comm.

“These removals significantly contributed to a 71 percent increase in the overall percentage of convicted criminals removed by ICE, with 81,000 more criminal removals in FY 2010 than in FY 2008,” ICE stated. “As a result of the increased focus on criminals, this period also included a 23% reduction or 57,000 fewer non-criminal removals.

ICE also observed that the agency currently receives an annual congressional appropriation that is only sufficient to remove a limited number of the more than 10 million individuals estimated to be in the U.S. unlawfully. “As S-Comm is continuing to grow each year, and is currently on track to be implemented nationwide by 2013, refining the program will enable ICE to focus its limited resources on the most serious criminals across the country,” ICE stated.

ICE further noted that it is creating a new advisory committee that will advise ICE on ways to improve S-Comm, including recommending on how to best focus on individuals who pose a true public safety or national security threat.  This panel will be composed of chiefs of police, sheriffs, state and local prosecutors, court officials, ICE agents from the field and community and immigration advocates.  The first report of this advisory committee will be delivered to the Director of ICE within 45 days.

ICE Director Morton also issued a new memo that directs the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to ensure that victims of and witnesses to crimes are properly protected. The memo clarifies that the exercise of discretion is inappropriate in cases involving threats to public safety, national security and other agency priorities.

And ICE and the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) have created an ongoing quarterly statistical review of the program to examine data for each jurisdiction where S-Comm is activated to identify effectiveness and any indications of potentially improper use of the program. “Statistical outliers in local jurisdictions will be subject to an in-depth analysis and DHS and ICE will take appropriate steps to resolve any issues,” ICE stated.
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Candidates land punches in first D.A. debate

5

District Attorney and former SFPD Chief George Gascón, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Sharmin Bock, and former San Francisco Police Commissioner David Onek all landed solid punches during a three-way District Attorney debate that was co-hosted by the San Francisco Young Democrats and the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and moderated by Recorder editor Scott Graham. The primary sponsor of the debate was the City Democratic Club, according to CDC President Jim Reilly. So, thanks CDC for helping to pull off a great event.

The debate was framed as a choice between Bock, a veteran prosecutor with leadership experience, Gascón, a career cop with managerial experience, and Onek, a former San Francisco Police Commissioner and criminal justice reform expert. And above all it proved that if you lock three attorneys in the same room and pit them in a three-way fight, you’ll be rewarded with a blood sport spectacle.

Bock kicked off by noting that there are many similarities between the three candidates—except when it comes to independence and experience “Experience matters,” Bock said, throwing a one-two punch at Gascón and Onek. “The job of the District Attorney is not a management job, a police job or a job for someone with just a law degree. It needs a veteran prosecutor,” she said—remarks that resonated well with the crowd, judging from the applause.

But after a few niceties, Gascón shot right back at Bock and Onek. “I am the only one who has led large organizations and pushed public policy forward in an effective manner,” he said.

And Gascón struck a home run when he revealed that when he took the job of Chief of Police in Mesa, Arizona, he was “facing one of the most toxic environments” in terms of hatred towards people of color and the LGBT community–and that he did something about it, by standing up to anti-immigrant Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, and protecting the local LGBT community’s right to protest.

When it was his turn to speak, Onek fired off his own rounds at Bock and Gascón, noting that the state’s criminal justice system is broken—and claiming that it will take an outsider to fix it.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reform the criminal justice system,” Onek said, laying out his reform-minded track record.

And then he stuck it to both Bock and Gascón by stating that the death penalty does not work. “I will never seek it in San Francisco under any circumstances,” Onek said, earning excited applause, as he noted that he’ll look at all policy question through the prism of three questions: ‘Does it make us safer, is it cost effective and is it fair and equitable?”

Onek also noted that neither the Supreme Court’s ruling that California must reduce its prison population by 30,000, nor Gov. Jerry Brown’s call for prisoner realignment, come with any money.
‘That’s a disaster,” observed Onek, as he stressed the need to demand resources to help deal with the upcoming load of prisoners that about to return to San Francisco.

Gascón fielded questions about whether they are enough people of color and LGBT background in management in the D.A.’s Office. “Well, I think there’s definitely always room for improvement in any organization,” he said, noting that he has a history in the Los Angeles Police Department, the Mesa, Arizona Police Department and the SFPD, “of pushing very aggressively to have diversity within the office.”
But he started a bit of a buzz when he said it was “really a surprise to me that I promoted the first male, black, police captain to the San Francisco Police Department.”
“You would think that there have been, you know, male African-Americans in that department for many years. It was hard for me to believe that actually in 2009 we had not had one,”  Gascón continued, a remark that got some debate observers asking afterwards, if this meant that Gascón really did not know that former SFPD Chief Earl Sanders was a black male.

Meanwhile, Bock was happily trampling all over the sit-lie legislation that then SFPD Chief Gascón and Mayor Newsom backed last fall, as she noted that more foot patrols and community policy are what’s actually needed. “Political hot-button measures don’t work,” Bock said. “Both sides agree it hasn’t worked. It’s the wrong response to the real problem.

Asked if he had a conflict of interest, when it comes to investigating allegations of police misconduct, Gascón claimed the problem is limited to a small number of officers, adding, “if the allegations are true.”

“In reality the majority of the SFPD are hard-working people doing the right thing,” he said. “And there has been only one challenge—and our office has prevailed,” Gascón said. “However, there have been a finite number of cases where I personally adjudicated the bad conduct—and those will be handled by the Attorney General’s office.”

Bock stressed that she was not in favor of sending drug offenders to prison and would focus on restorative justice, instead. Asked if she would have a panel on her staff review potential death penalty cases, Bock confirmed that she is committed to having a Special Circumstances Committee, as D.A. Kamala Harris did, to get input around the facts and from lawyers involved in such cases.“The ultimate decision is mine, and I oppose the death penalty,” Bock said, noting that she does not believe that 12 jurors will return a unanimous death penalty verdict. “But I do think as prosecutor you need to go case by case.”

Asked if he would have sought the death penalty in a case like the L.A. Night Stalker, who murdered 13 people, many of them elderly, Gascón said, “Probably not. All of us agree that the death penalty is not a good tool. But it is part of our system, and I continue to have the system Kamala Harris had in place. At the end of the day, it’s my decision, and I’m the only one in the room, who can say I’ve already turned down the death penalty.”

Agreeing with Bock that a jury is unlikely to go for the death penalty, Gascón maintained that the death penalty is “an illusory issue,” and that the real question is, “How do we rewrite the State Constitution [so the death penalty is not on the books]?”

Asked how he felt about marijuana, Gascón said he doesn’t believe folks should be incarcerated for use—and that folks are already being diverted to community courts in those instances.

But when Onek tried to wrap up by positioning himself as a the reformist-minded outsider, Gascón pounced, reminding folks that Onek was a Police Commissioner, when the Police Commission recommended Gascón to Mayor Newsom as the next SFPD Chief. “While David is someone I respect—and one of those who hired me, David has painted himself as an outsider, when the Police Commission is the policy-making body for the SFPD. There are no outsiders here. The question is, what have you done? There’s a difference between calling yourself a reformer and having other people call you a reformer.”

Bock for her part used her closing remarks to remind folks that there has been a crime lab scandal, alleged police misconduct, a DNA backlog, and about 100 cases dismissed as a result of these scandals, and a bunch of prisoners are about to be sent back to the community because of realignment. “We’re in challenging times, at a critical crossroads, with stormy weather ahead,” she said. “I’m not going to be trying things out at your expense. As a veteran progressive prosecutor, I’m fully prepared.”

The Performant: A pox upon’t

0

 

The Coen Brothers meet The Bard in Much Ado About Lebrowski

The best parodies are born from admiration for the targeted subject, be they the tortured plot twists of Spaceballs, the foppish mop-tops of The Rutles, or the beleaguered hero’s quest of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail. In a swoop guaranteed to appeal to worshippers of high and low culture alike, the Primitive Screwheads’ remount of last year’s hit mash-up Much Ado About Lebrowski manages to pay homage to one of the most-produced playwrights in the English language (ye olde Billy Shakespeare) and a pair of our most intriguing modern filmmakers (the Coen Brothers) in one borderline-blasphemous production, with enough in jokes and innuendo from both to keep aficionados of either on their toes. 

Lines from plays such as The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth pepper the tortured syntax of the SoCal-meets-soliloquy text while characters from Raising Arizona and songs from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou mix effortlessly in with the endless “drinks of Russia White” and nihilist antics. 

Admittedly more closely calibrated to the many ludicrous tropes of the Coen Brothers’ film than those of Much Ado About Nothing, the Screwheads’ version begins with the appearance of three minstrels (John Carr, Paul Trask, and Sam Chase) who lead the room in a rousing rendition of “Ring of Fire” before launching into “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”, straight from the movie soundtrack. A fetching chorus line (Tara Navarro, Sarah Leight, Audra Wolfmann, and Suzanne Taylor) briefly set the scene before the Dude, henceforth dubbed “the Knave,” Geoffrey Lebowski (Alfred Muller) is hauled to the stage by two thugs (Karl Schackne and Omeid Far) who dunk his head in the commode — strategically located in the lap of a guy in the front row. From that point, no-one in the oddience is safe, the invasion of “space personal” a tried-and-true Primitive Screwheads tradition. 

Without a budget for much in the way of special effects (or props, or set…) the show very much relies on the merits of its actors, most of whom ably play multiple roles in the confused comedy of errors that transpires. Muller portrays “the Knave” with just the right blend of apathy and outrage, and his bowling buddies Sir Walter and Sir Daniel are hilariously inhabited by Steve Bologna and Omied Far (“Shut the firk up, Daniel!”). 

Inflatable beach balls rolled down the center aisle serving as the makeshift bowling lane, and a gigantic wooden sword as Sir Willaim’s weapon of choice. Dream sequences of giant bowling pins, Viking helmets, and an inexplicable pink unicorn are perhaps less visually psychedelic but no less hilarious than the ones from the movie, and the obvious willingness of the oddience to suspend disbelief and play along, partly assisted by rounds from the inexpensive bar, makes The Big Lebrowski as much a participatory event as spectator sport. And while “a knave by any other name would abide just as well,” you’d be hard-pressed to find any as up to the challenge as those who call the Primitive Screwheads family. Of course that’s just, forsooth, my opinion, man. 

 

Through June 25

 Fri-Sun 8 p.m., $20-25

Cellspace

2050 Bryant, SF

(415) 648-7562

www.primitivescrewheads.com/2011

 

The death drug dealers

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration is conducting a multistate criminal investigation into the actions that prison systems have taken to obtain a death drug no longer produced in the United States, documents obtained by the Guardian indicate.

The documents don’t reveal the specific targets of the investigation, but federal agents have seized drug shipments in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee and are apparently also looking into drug procurement policies in California, Arkansas, Alaska, and Arizona.

The states have been scrambling to obtain sodium thiopental, a drug used in executions, after the lone American manufacturer, Hospira Corp., stopped producing it last year.

Georgia and Arizona both received shipments of the drug from Dream Pharma, a British wholesaler that, according to the Associated Press, “shares a building with a driving school in a gritty London neighborhood.”

In October 2010, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sent agents on a secret mission to get some of Arizona’s supply. The agents drove under cover of night to the Arizona state prison in Florence, where at midnight the warden handed them 12 grams of thiopental, enough for an execution.

The state later ordered 521 grams — far more than the state could possibly use in the next few years — from Archimedes Pharma, also a British supplier.

Several other states, including Georgia, obtained the drugs from a different British supplier, Link Pharmaceuticals. According to the Associated Press, Nebraska’s supply was imported from India.

Most of the states imported the drugs without the proper DEA paperwork, a federal crime, the documents show.

Sodium thiopental is part of the three-drug mix used for lethal injections in most states that allow capital punishment. It renders the subject unconscious before the other drugs stop the heart and lungs from operating.

If the drug isn’t effective — that is, if it’s an improper formulation or an off-market product that doesn’t meet U.S. standards — the condemned inmate could suffer horrible pain, something the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear is not legally tolerable.

The drug isn’t often used in hospitals; it has been replaced by other drugs. And California had to put all of its executions on hold last fall when the state’s last batch expired.

The documents are the latest released as the result of a federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Northern California and the Guardian seeking access to all records related to the import of the death drug. Last week the DEA released 71 pages of documents, but withheld 160 pages, justifying the withholding by saying that some of the records are part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

A May 16 letter from Katherine Myrick, the DEA’s chief Freedom of Information Officer, states that there are “two active investigations” and that release of the records could “reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” The documents reveal how desperately state prison authorities were trying to find a way to procure the drug — and how concerned the DEA was about importing a controlled substance by agencies that had no medical or research functions.

Among other things, they show that the Obama administration was taking an active role in the process: “The White House is involved and is trying to sort things out,” a Nov. 11, 2010 memo from the Office of Diversion Control states.

Another Nov. 11 memo notes that “states have been importing the lethal drug regimen from England … the U.K. has written the State Department (and the FDA?) asking the U.S. to end the importation of the drug, which is being used in lethal injections.”

A Nov. 9 memo notes that “FDA is concerned about importation of non-FDA approved sodium thiopental used for executions … Safety, efficacy and indication are FDA issues. So is the matter of off-label use (which was also brought up).”

The memo from the Liaison and Policy Office explains that the “DEA requires a valid DEA registration as an importer and a properly executed declaration in order to import controlled substances.”

A Nov. 12 memo confirms that “only two import declarations have been filed for sodium pentothal” — meaning that all the other states obtained their supplies illegally. The identity of the two states is blacked out.

Arizona has an execution date set for May 25, and Nebraska has an execution scheduled for June 14. But the documents are so heavily redacted, and so many pages are missing, that it’s impossible to tell exactly which states are doing what — and whether any of the upcoming executions would be using illegally obtained drugs.

“The DEA is making it impossible to know whether the states are complying with the law and whether DEA is fulfilling its obligation to enforce our nation’s drug laws,” said Natasha Minsker, death penalty policy director for the ACLU of California. “Importing sodium thiopental without informing the DEA is a crime. We now know the DEA was poised to go into the Arizona Department of Corrections and seize their drugs, as they did in Georgia, but for some unknown reason they did not. Why did the DEA seize drugs in some states but not others?”

Calls and e-mails to the California Department of Corrections seeking information on whether the department is the target of a federal investigation were not returned.