California Archives — Page 136 of 219 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

March 23, 2010

Tredmond@sfbg.com

In 2003, after the United States invaded Iraq, a San Francisco Chronicle technology columnist named Henry Norr got fired for participating in an antiwar demonstration. Marching against the war, the Chron’s managers decided, was a conflict of interest. Although Norr didn’t write about politics, or international affairs, or anything other than computers, he was sent packing.

A year later, Chronicle reporter Rachel Gordon was barred from covering the biggest story in town — Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to allow same-sex marriages — because she’d married her same-sex partner. Again the paper’s editors went up on their big high horses and pronounced her conflicted.

So how come it’s fine for columnist and former mayor Willie Brown — who writes about politics all the time — to work as a flak for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.?

Brown was on hand to represent PG&E March 17 at a California Public Utilities Commission hearing on Proposition 16, a statewide ballot measure aimed at blocking public power. He sat with the PG&E executives and said in public that he was there on PG&E’s behalf. PG&E has been a client of his private law firm, and he acknowledged that the company "sought my counsel" over the past few years.

Sounds like a lot more obvious conflict than anything Norr or Gordon did.

But guess what? The Chron has a different standard for celebrity former mayors who carry water for corrupt utilities. When we asked Chronicle editor Ward Bushee about Brown’s obvious conflict, here’s what he said: "Willie Brown writes a popular weekly column for the Chronicle, and readers frequently tell us that they look forward to reading his informed insights and entertaining opinions on issues ranging from politics to movies.

"Our readers like his column to a large degree because he’s the Willie Brown with a long and colorful political history and many connections," he continued. "Willie is not an employee or a member of the Chronicle staff but his columns go through standard editing procedures. He understands conflict of interest as well as anyone. I’m confident that he would not use his column to promote or benefit outside interests or clients. But if you feel differently, why don’t you contact him and ask him these questions directly."

Um, actually, Mr. Bushee, you need a history lesson. Brown was notorious for using his position as speaker of the state Assembly to promote the interests of his private law clients — something that could have gotten him disbarred in 47 states (but not this one). So he has a long history of "promoting … outside interests or clients."

And I did try to contact him. The first time I called, he answered his phone but said he was too busy to talk. I’ve left messages since then, and he hasn’t called back.

For the record, I enjoy Brown’s column too. And for the record, I have no problem with a journalist taking stands on issues. I speak about issues all the time — on panels, on the radio, at community events … anytime anyone’s willing to listen, I’ll tell you what I think. Which is pretty much what you read right here.

But I never get paid for advocating for anyone, certainly not PG&E. And I don’t like double standards.

Frankly, Bushee is wrong here. If Willie Brown can show up as PG&E’s spokesperson at a public hearing on a major political issue and still cover San Francisco and California politics as a columnist (without, by the way, ever disclosing in his column that a major player in the political world is a private client of his), then the Chron should give Henry Norr his job back. And Rachel Gordon should be able to write about the politics of same-sex marriage. Because this looks really, really bad.

Cut administration, not schools

Zelda Bronstein

March 22, 2010

I received an interesting opinion piece this week from a group of teachers and parents working on sfbudgetblog.com, which looks at the San Francisco School District budget. They make some valid points:

By T.R. Amsler
Just when you think you’ve reached bottom, California schools find another shovel. Next year, San Francisco school children face even deeper cuts as many lose summer school, face increased class sizes and witness the dismissal of beloved teachers.

In identifying Sacramento as the crux of the problem, San Francisco schools superintendent Carlos Garcia has advocated a lawsuit against the state of California for failing to provide adequate funding to educate all children.
While we wait for a lawsuit that has not been filed, his proposed a 2010-11 budget slashes funding to classrooms while protecting central office jobs.

We wholeheartedly support Garcia’s effort to hold California accountable for the shameful under-funding of our schools. But change at the state level will take time—and in the meantime, we are baffled as to why, on a local level, he is not demonstrating the kind of ethical leadership we know he believes in.

Because of the state cuts, San Francisco must reduce its schools budget by $113 million over the next two years. The superintendent proposes making over 50% of those cuts from schools and classrooms. Over $8 million of the cuts are achieved by increasing K-3 class size—impacting our youngest and most vulnerable children. Over $8 million is slashed from Targeted Instructional Improvement Block Grant funds for the city’s lowest performing schools. Another $4.5 million comes from summer school programs for our struggling high school students. Garcia saves over $3 million by eliminating supplemental counseling funds for high schools supporting college readiness. Another $9 million is saved through furlough days, cutting instructional time for all students when we need to be expanding it.

Some say these draconian cuts are the only option. Some say we cannot find cuts in the central office because it is already lean. Yet the facts suggest otherwise: Compared to four similar-sized school districts (Elk Grove, Santa Ana, San Bernadino, and Capistrano), San Francisco spends significantly more on administration ($462 per student in SF compared to an average of $387) and less on instruction ($4,763 per student in SF compared to an average of $5,685).
Where does San Francisco spend its money instead of schools? This year, the district spent $340 million in centrally-budgeted services, as compared to $257 million in school-based funding. A portion of the central funds flows to schools in the form of centrally-funded staff, but the majority does not. There are many talented people working in the central departments, and many of the central services are helpful. But in a crisis, we must ask: do non-classroom-based expenditures better support student achievement than direct support of classrooms?

If San Francisco were to cut 20% from these central office budgets, we could save $68 million a year and close the budget gap without touching a penny of school-based funding. This would mean radically rethinking how the central office works—but if the alternative is radically slashing our schools, that’s some rethinking we cannot afford to put off.
Garcia’s proposal is to drastically defund school sites, fundamentally changing the experience of students and families. The radical shift however needs to happen not to families, but to the central office.

A group called the Children’s Allocation Team has created an alternative set of central office cuts that demonstrate the real possibility of protecting our schools and classrooms during this budget crisis. We need district staff to engage in this kind of creative thinking too.

In the San Francisco Chronicle on January 27, Superintendent Garcia wrote, “I recognize that we are in the midst of extraordinarily difficult economic times, but to place that burden on our children is morally unethical.” We agree.
Now we need our superintendent to make the morally ethical budget cuts he calls for. It is time to radically re-think the central office, not to fundamentally defund classrooms. We can, and we must, close the budget gap without touching classrooms and students.

T.R. Amsler has been a high school teacher and journalism teacher for ten years. SFbudgetblog.com is a collection of teachers, parents and administrators losing sleep to represent their investigations and analysis of the SFUSD local budget. Read, consider and contribute at www.sfbudgetblog.com

Jerry Brown’s inner populist emerges

Zelda Bronstein

March 22, 2010

In the 1990s, when Jerry Brown ran for president against Bill Clinton, his whole persona had a populist streak. He crashed with supporters instead of staying in fancy hotels; he raised money with an 800 number (the precursor to netroots fundraising); he railed against big-money interests. He even once put the future president of the United States on hold while he took another phone call. (Clinton gave up after waiting about ten minutes and disconnected.)

But then he became mayor of Oakland and turned into a friend of developers, a tough-on-crime hardass and a promoter of military school. And he ran for attorney general as that Jerry Brown, not the old one.

So I’m glad to see some of his populism starting to re-emerge, not that I really think it’s going to stick (he’s still against raising taxes on the rich), but because it’s the only way he’s going to beat Meg Whitman.

Meg’s got a problem — the incumbent Republican is now rated as the worst governor ever, with the lowest popularity ratings in history. So Brown’s going to be running against the party that, by almost all accounts, wrecked California — and Whitman will have to run like hell away from the titular head of her own party in this state.

Brown also has the advantage, if he wants to take it, of being able to rail against the very types of financial institutions that Whitman and her anti-regulation platform represents. If he can make this about Wall Street, he wins, going away.

Let the Eagle Fly!

David Talbot

March 22, 2010

The long and dramatic struggle for basic labor and civil rights by the California farmworkers led by Cesar Chavez is wonderfully told in an exceptional new musical, “Let the Eagle Fly,” that’s now playing a limited engagement in San Jose, the city where Chavez began the organizing career that brought him worldwide acclaim.

The musical score is excellent, as are the musicians and the actors – some in their teens or younger, others with broad experience. They tell the story of Chavez and the early struggles of the farm workers union he founded in 1964 and led for three decades – in lively song and dance, often with humor. And for all its artistry, the story they tell is accurate, down to small details. I know first-hand of the events dramatized, since I covered them in detail as the SF Chronicle’s labor editor.

Chavez’ start as an organizer for the Community Services Organization, his unwavering belief in the non-violent tactics of Mohandas Gandhi, his fasts and other personal sacrifices and those of his sometimes reluctant family . . .

The rushed and exhausting motions of vegetable pickers, wielding 18-inch hoes as they scurry over the fields like spiders, bent double, rhythmically bending, stooping and straightening, as they scoop up lettuce, carrots and other produce. Bend and pick. Bend and pick. Endlessly . . .

The fruit pickers, making their way swiftly through vineyards, reaching high to pluck the grapes. Reaching, stretching and picking. Reach, stretch, pick. Endlessly. Fast and endlessly.

The racist growers who fought fiercely to avoid giving their Chicano grape pickers decent pay and working conditions . . . the Kern County sheriff who sided with the growers . . . the dogged determination of Chavez and his followers . . . the nationwide grape boycott that finally won the workers the right to bargain with the growers and, in doing so, finally win union contracts guaranteeing them decent pay and working conditions . . . Chavez’ untimely death in 1993 . . .

The words and music show and tell all that and much more, and the audience can’t help but be drawn into the dramatic finale. We were quickly on our feet, cheering, applauding, clapping rhythmically, singing along with the actors, followed by a standing, cheering, much deserved ovation.

Only four more performances are left in the run of “Let the Eagle Fly” in the San Jose City College Theater – Thursday March 25, at 8 p.m.; Friday March 26, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, March 28, at 2 p.m.; and a final performance Wednesday, March 31, at 7:30 p.m. Details on ticket availability, prices and directions are available at www.lettheeaglefly.com.

Viva la huelga!

San Francisco writer Dick Meister is the co-author of “A Long Time Coming: The Struggle to Unionize America’s Farm Workers (Macmillan).

In the wake of March 4, education battles continue

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

March 19, 2010

Two weeks after protests against cuts to education filled Bay Area streets (and one freeway) on March 4, employees in the public-education sector are still engaged in a fight against budgetary rollbacks. But it’s an uphill battle, as was made clear at a briefing organized by United Educators of San Francisco at City College of San Francisco March 18.

At El Dorado Elementary School in the Bayview, 11 of 15 teachers were issued pink slips, according to elementary school teacher Megan Caluza (featured in the video above). While this doesn’t mean all 11 teachers are on their way out the door, it does mean that none of them knows for sure whether there’s a guaranteed job in the school district in the coming year. Since the budget cuts hit, Caluza says she’s been spending just as much time “fighting to teach” as she has in the actual classroom.

Elementary schools aren’t the only places being hit hard. Statewide, more than 23,000 layoff notices were sent to K-12 teachers recently, with no one knowing for sure which recipients will stay or face job losses.

“What is more important to you, corporate tax loopholes, or teachers in your daughter’s classroom?” asked Dennis Kelly, president of United Educators of San Francisco. “A college education for your son to get ahead, or tax breaks for the wealthiest Californians?”

Meanwhile, community colleges throughout the state face fee hikes even as classes are being cancelled, summer programs are being scaled back or eliminated altogether, and staff faces layoffs and furloughs. According to AgainstCuts.org, a group that was instrumental in organizing March 4 activities, the student population at California community colleges is comprised of more than 50 percent women and people of color, with around 80 percent of students working while taking classes. Blows to this educational system impedes opportunities for career advancement for the nearly 3 million community college students, which is bad news not just for students with lifelong dreams and high hopes, but California’s economy as a whole.

On Monday, March 22, more than 3,000 students, faculty members and others from City College of San Francisco plan to hold a march and rally in Sacramento to highlight the impact of cuts to community colleges. Around 62 buses will be leaving SF early in the morning to arrive in Sacramento for a 10 a.m. rally on the steps of the State Capitol Building.

Joining students and teachers at CCSF yesterday was a representative from Californians for Democracy, an organization that is pushing a November ballot initiative, authored by University of California Berkeley Professor George Lakoff, that would change the two-thirds majority vote requirement for the state Legislature to pass a budget or raise taxes to a simple majority vote. While the initiative is still circulating petitions to gather signatures, it seems to have found allies in the growing movement against cuts to education.

March 4 represented “the first time we’ve ever done an all-education action,” Joan Berezin, a faculty member at Berkeley City College for 20 years, told the Guardian. “We’re trying to build the broadest coalition possible.”

Anti-war movement seeks allies

Sasha Cuttler

March 18, 2010

By Jobert Poblete

This Saturday (March 20) will mark the seventh anniversary of the Iraq war and local groups are mobilizing for another round of protests to oppose the occupation of Iraq and the expansion of the war into Afghanistan. But this year’s program will also highlight local struggles as well, with speakers delving into the fight for more public education funding and the march passing by two hotels where union workers are in strained negotiations for a new contract.

The protest is being organized by ANSWER – Act Now to Stop War and End Racism – a coalition notorious for its everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to protest. Besides its plugs for Iraq, Afghanistan, public education, and local labor struggles, flyers promoting Saturday’s protest include demands around jobs, Palestine, Latin America, and Haiti. ANSWER organizer Chris Banks told us that these seemingly disparate issues are connected.

“There is a finite amount of resources in our society,” Banks said. “And if those resources are used on wars and to bail out banks, then we can’t use them for schools, health care, and public transit. The wall between foreign policy and domestic policy is a fictitious wall.”

This year’s protest will focus on the economic crisis and on “bailing out people instead of banks.” Students who helped organize the recent March 4 Day of Action are part of the coalition mobilizing for the Saturday protest and students and teachers will be among the speakers at the rally at Civic Center. Protest endorsers include the United Educators of San Francisco, a union that represents more than 6,000 public school employees. Dennis Kelly, president of UESF, told us that the protest “ties directly in with our concerns about the California state budget, that the priorities being set are the wrong priorities.”

The rally will be followed by a march that will pass by the Hilton and the Four Seasons, two hotels where members of Unite Here Local 2 are without a contract because of a negotiating impasse with management. The biggest point of contention between the hotels and union is over health care. (Union members currently pay $10 a month for family coverage but the hotels want to increase that to $200 a month.)

Israel Alvaran, a community organizer at Local 2, said that the health care issue provides a connective thread between the anti-war movement and his union’s struggles. “We believe in stopping the wars in the Middle East,” Alvaran said. “They’re driving the war economy that’s preventing people at home from getting affordable health care, public education, programs for creating jobs and building the economy.”

Alvaran hopes the March 20 protest will help raise the visibility of hotel workers and show the hotel corporations that the union has broad community support. He also said that including workers’ struggles in the protest is important because it exposes young activists joining the anti-war movement to labor and union issues.

Banks echoed this desire to raise public consciousness about local issues. “As much as possible, we want people to make the connection between local struggles and imperialist wars,” Banks said. “People go into political motion for different reasons. We want them to come out on March 20 and they’ll have opportunities to hear speakers representing different movements.”

Saturday’s protest will begin with a rally at Civic Center Plaza at 11 a.m. At noon, protesters will march through downtown San Francisco before returning to Civic Center.

Sunshine sleuth nets $3.5 million for SF

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

March 18, 2010

Sunshine sleuth nets $3.5 million for SF

Sunshine advocate Kimo Crossman is sometimes counted as a thorn in the side of city government agencies due to his tendency to pepper them with public-records requests. But in the last couple days, he earned a gold star from the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder for pointing out that when Morgan Stanley walked away from five high-profile San Francisco properties, it neglected to pay a transfer tax. Thanks to an email from the ever-inquisitive Crossman, the assessor-recorder was able to collect roughly $3.5 million and feed it to the city’s ailing General Fund.

It started when Crossman read an article on Bloomberg.com about Morgan Stanley walking away from five San Francisco skyscrapers last December that it purchased in 2007: One Post, Foundry Square I, 201 California St., 60 Spear St. and 188 Embarcadero — collectively valued at around $279 million.

He was annoyed. “Individuals can’t walk away from their obligations,” he said. But for the huge financial firm, “it doesn’t appear that they have any negative repercussions.”

The surrender of properties was described as a “transfer,” so he sent a note to the city asking, “is the SF city transfer tax incurred when Morgan Stanley walks away from SF office buildings which they are calling a ‘Transfer’?”

Why indeed it is, came the reply.

“Some transactions trigger transfer tax, while others may not trigger transfer tax because of an existence of an exlusion in the SF Real Property Transfer Tax Ordinance,” explained Zoon Nguyen, deputy assessor-recorder, in an email. “I wanted to let you know that no exclusion was applied toward the Morgan Stanley transaction. As a result, the Assessor-Recorder’s Office collected about $3.5M in transfer tax revenue for the City and County General Fund. I want to thank you, once again, for being engaged in these tax issues. I certainly appreciate knowing that there are people, like you, who are also monitoring these transactions. I would ask that you continue to send us these emails.”

Crossman told the Guardian, “I did it just to help the city and because I was mad at the banks walking away from their loans.”

However, this might just turn out to be the most lucrative cut-and-paste that Crossman has ever executed. There is a possibility of earning a “taxpayers reward” for bringing this to the city’s attention, he tells us. According to legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors in 2006, taxpayers who sniff out tax evasions such as this can, in certain cases, earn up to 10 percent of the collected tax revenue as a bonus — in this case, the maximum would be a whopping $350,000. But it’s entirely at the discretion of the assessor-recorder, and Crossman isn’t holding his breath.

“I’m not the most favorite person in City Hall,” he laughed. We placed a call to the assessor-recorder for details, but haven’t heard back yet.

Prop 17 discourages going car-free

Sasha Cuttler

March 18, 2010

Efforts to encourage car-sharing and ways of getting around that don’t involve owning a car would be undermined by Proposition 17, a June ballot measure that I wrote about in this week’s cover story. While I didn’t mention that impact in the story, it is of real concern to people like me who don’t own cars and encourage others to try the car-free lifestyle on for size.

The measure, sponsored by Mercury Insurance, allows companies to substantially increase monthly premiums on customers who haven’t had continuous insurance coverage. That would be one more barrier to people making the leap of faith to give up their cars and rely on bicycles or public transit, a switch that ought to be encouraged in increasingly traffic-congested cities such as San Francisco.

As I wrote about in another cover story last year, I made the decision several years ago to give up my car, although I still sometimes rent cars to visit my children. Consumer advocates say the cost of renting cars or using car-sharing services – particularly locally owned companies that can’t self-insure like the corporate behemoths – could increase and there would be a disincentive to consider trying it.

“Anyone who has used car sharing (or for that matter rental cars) as their means of transportation would almost certainly not be considered continuously insured and would face the Prop 17 surcharge if they had to go back to private insurance at some point,” Doug Heller, an insurance expert with Consumer Watchdog, told me.

Currently, the law allows insurance companies to issue discounts to those who have maintained continuous policies with them (Prop. 17 would expand that to allow drivers to change companies and keep their discounts, which would be offset by surcharges on customers who were new or had a lapse in their coverage), and those companies use that discount to actively try to discourage people from experimenting with car-free lifestyles.

Brian Smith, who works for an environmental nonprofit in Oakland, recalls getting that kind of hard sell when he made the leap and got rid of his car.

“When I cancelled my car insurance, AAA warned me not to. They said, ‘We will make it much more expensive when you come back.’ I said, ‘I sold my car, I don’t need car insurance.’ They said ‘We are just giving you a warning, Sir.’ I said, ‘Cancel it you fucking bastards. I’m never coming back.’ That was 10 years ago.’” Smith wrote to me about the issue.

Proponents of the measure say it would save some drivers $250 per year, while opponents (citing data from Mercury) say the surcharges for everyone else would be about $1,000 per year. So for the soldiers who go off to boot camp, the college students who get an internship in a city with good public transit or bikeways, unemployed individuals who need to trim expenses, or people who want to experiment with going car-free, they would all pay for more for insurance if they went back to driving a car than those who continuously maintained a car-dependent existence.

So, add this to the list of good reasons – and there are many of them in this week’s cover story — to oppose Prop. 17.

Herrera stands up to PG&E

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

March 18, 2010

Yesterday, at the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E executives raised some eyebrows with their presentation about Proposition 16, the ballot initiative designed to make it difficult for municipalities to enter the electricity business. CPUC President Michael Peevey expressed his skepticism about a measure that would require only a simple majority vote to set up a two-thirds majority system.

Today, PG&E might suddenly have bigger problems on its hands than scolding remarks from the CPUC and the Legislature, thousands of pissed off SmartMeters customers, the threat of competition from municipalities, and a slew of editorials from newspapers throughout the state chiding the utility giant for trying to amend the state’s constitution for its own financial gain.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is leading a lawsuit to strike Proposition 16 from the June ballot. The complaint calls Prop 16 “wholly false and misleading” and said the company “profoundly misled the citizens who were induced to sign the petition.”

“We’re not seeking to fix it, we’re seeking to nix it,” Herrera’s press secretary Matt Dorsey explained.

The lawsuit was filed jointly by the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission, the City and County of San Francisco, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the City of Moreno Valley, the City of Redding, the California Municipal Utilities Association, the San Joaquin Valley Power Authority, the Modesto Irrigation District, and the Merced Irrigation District.

A hearing date has been set for May 4 in Sacramento Superior Court, according to Dorsey.

Banks declare SF Weekly and parent company in loan default

Zelda Bronstein

March 18, 2010

Banks declare SF Weekly and parent company in loan default

The Bay Guardian’s lawsuit against SF Weekly and its parent company took a dramatic turn this week when a banking syndicate announced that Village Voice Media has defaulted on its $77 million loan.

San Francisco Superior Court Commissioner Everett A. Hewlett, Jr. also ordered that all of the Weekly’s advertising income be sequestered in an account designated by the Guardian and held there until April 5, when the Guardian will ask the court to appoint a receiver to take control of the Weekly’s assets.

The Weekly and its parent owe the Guardian more than $21 million as the result of a 2008 lawsuit verdict. A San Francisco jury found that the Weekly had sold ads below cost in an effort to damage the Guardian.

The case is on appeal, but the Weekly and Village Voice Media haven’t posted an appeal bond — essentially an insurance policy that would guarantee payment of the judgment. So the Guardian has the legal right to collect the money.
VVM has been hiding its money behind a complex corporate structure, but in recent weeks the Guardian has won a series of court decisions that have allowed us to seize two Weekly vehicles, all of the income that the newspaper’s subtenants pay for leasing office space, and 50 percent of the Weekly’s ad revenue (and 100 percent of the revenue from credit card payments).

In an effort to block us from collecting that revenue, the Weekly filed a motion March 16 seeking a restraining order that would have stopped the Guardian from contacting Weekly advertisers. The court refused to issue the order – but as part of its application, VVM disclosed some rather dramatic facts.

Among the exhibits filed in court: A March 12 letter from the Bank of Montreal, which leads a banking syndicate that has helped VVM expand and advance its alternative newspaper empire. The letter, signed by Managing Director Thomas McGraw, states that because of the “recent economic downturn and the resulting financial difficulties,” VVM had been “unable to meet its amortization payments” and had been forced to renegotiate the loan in June, 2009. That new agreement had required that VVM send all of its profits — that is, “all revenue above its costs, plus a minimal operating cushion” — directly to the bank.

And now that the Guardian has been awarded a lien on all of the Village Voice papers and the right to half the Weekly’s income, the bank had declared VVM in default on the entire loan, which now stands at $77 million.

The default allows the bank to claim that it has the first right to any Weekly ad revenue, and VVM lawyer Randall Farrimond tried to make that argument to Commissioner Hewlett. But Hewlett was skeptical: “The Court never determined that the Bank of Montreal had any rights that had been adjudicated yet,” Hewlett said at a March 16 hearing. In fact, after hearing that the bank had sent its own letters to Weekly advertisers ordering them to send payments directly to the bank, Hewlett noted:

“Now, I’m not terribly sympathetic with Bank of Montreal doing what they did. “I mean it is possible that, absent some adjudication of their interests, that they are in contempt of court by interfering with the Court’s order.”

Hewlett said he had no intention of granting the restraining order or changing the essence of his earlier ruling — that the Guardian had the right to half SF Weekly’s income stream. But to save the advertisers from confusion over who to pay, he ordered that all money collected from advertisers be placed in a bank account chosen by the Guardian, in a bank that was not part of Bank of Montreal’s syndicate.

The Guardian will be back in court April 5 to ask for the appointment of a receiver, who would take control of the Weekly’s business operations and, under court guidance, divide any revenue between the Guardian and any other creditors.
In the meantime, VVM and the Bank of Montreal have asked a judge in Delaware – where SF Weekly is formally incorporated – to block collection efforts in California.

At a surprise hearing where the Guardian’s lawyers were given only five minutes warning and had no opportunity to present any evidence, the Delaware Chancery Court was nonetheless very skeptical of Bank of Montreal’s claims, and essentially ruled only to maintain the status quo until the Court could make a more informed decision.

The case continues to draw extensive news media interest; the Stranger, a Seattle alternative paper, ran a lengthy, detailed story on the case March 17.

You can read the key documents (including a declaration from Weekly publisher Josh Fromson and the bank letters) in the recent filing here. (PDF)

Fine hike was like seeds in a bag of good weed

Sasha Cuttler

March 17, 2010

Fine hike was like seeds in a bag of good weed

By Jobert Poblete

Legislation designed to help pot smokers instead had many of them going all like, “Dude, what the fuck?!?!” But the author is now telling everyone to chill out, no problem, he’s got it under control.

California Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF) introduced a bill last month that would make possession of up to one ounce of marijuana an infraction instead of a misdemeanor. As introduced, the bill – Senate Bill 1449 – would also raise fines to $250 from $100, which pot advocates and their allies thought was a serious bummer. But Leno called this a “drafting error” that he intends to correct with an amendment this week.

Marijuana possession is currently the only misdemeanor on the books that does not result in a jail sentence. Leno told us that SB 1449 would correct this irregularity. Leno also said that the bill would save the state time and money. Unlike infractions, misdemeanor charges give defendants the right to costly jury trials and access to public defenders.

“Because of the allowance for a jury trial, a lot of time, money, and effort is wasted when it’s an infraction, misnamed,” Leno told us. “Either we call it what it is – a $100 fine is an infraction – or if it is a misdemeanor, then increase the penalty to include jail time. But no one wants to do that.”

Similar bills have failed in the Senate before. But Leno thinks that the economic crisis and changing attitudes have changed the climate in Sacramento. He cited polls that show a majority of Californians support decriminalizing marijuana possession altogether and an initiative to do just that could appear on the November ballot.

Drug policy reform advocates supported the move to make possession an infraction instead of a misdemeanor but raised concerns about the possible increase in fines. “We have always supported making marijuana possession an infraction instead of a misdemeanor,” said Dale Gieringer, vice chair of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Aaron Smith, California policy director at the Marijuana Policy Project, raised concerns about the possible increase in fines and emphasized the need to focus on broader efforts to decriminalize marijuana. “Everyone should be focusing on making marijuana taxed and regulated instead of fiddling with the fines,” Smith said.

Leno considers his bill complementary to the broader efforts to legalize marijuana. “If we’re going to decriminalize and tax, we’re really going from infraction to decriminalization,” Leno said. “It’s really an infraction, so let’s call it that.”

Our Weekly Picks

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 16, 2010

WEDNESDAY 17

DANCE

Ben Levy

Folk and social dancing exert a pull on the imagination because they allow for participation even if you have two left feet. Ben Levy’s Intimate Visibility — part of Dancers Group’s ONSITE program, which sponsors free public performances in primarily outdoor locations — is a contemporary version of the informal dances at family gatherings. Instead of making friends on Facebook, Levy suggests trying it on the street. He designed the piece for video installation, dancers, and a flash mob. Unlike ONSITE’s first participant, Patrick Makuakane, who put his “Hit and Run” Hula dancers on a city bus and performed, more or less randomly, at 10 different locations on a single day, Levy is traveling his intimate show for hundreds through March 26. (Rita Felciano)

8 p.m., free

Washington Square, SF

9 p.m., free

Union Square, SF

415-920-9181

www.dancersgroup.org

MUSIC

Filthy Thieving Bastards

Prepare yourself for a punk rock Paddy’s Day with an all-star lineup that’ll do Brendan Behan proud. Counting members of the Swingin’ Utters among their rank, the Filthy Thieving Bastards combine the influences of their independent upbringing with the sounds of the legendary Pogues and other folk-fueled rockers. The band’s material runs from stripped down working-class ballads to raucous tunes. Special guests include Blag Dahlia of the Dwarves, Zander Schloss of the Circle Jerks, and Sean Wheeler of Throwrag. (Sean McCourt)

8 p.m., $10

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

MUSIC

Gomez

After winning the Mercury Music Prize for its debut album Bring It On (Hut/Virgin) in 1998, Gomez didn’t bask in its newfound success. Instead, it headed back to the studio, created another album, and hasn’t looked back since. Twelve years later, the “How We Operate” rockers from across the pond are on the brink of their sixth studio album, A New Tide (ATO). Opening acts for its three-night stint include Buddy, One eskimO, and the Little Ones. (Elise-Marie Brown)

9 p.m. (through Fri/19), $28

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

THURSDAY 18

MUSIC

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba

It was only a matter of time before the swirling, seductive sounds of West Africa made significant inroads into American indie music, and the past couple years have finally seen that come to a rightful fruition. A case in point is Sub Pop’s launch of its world music offshoot Next Ambiance, whose first release I Speak Fula by Mali’s Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba is an intoxicating brew of soaring griot sing-song and near-mystical finger-picking on Kouyate’s native ngoni lute. (Brady Welch)

With DJ Said

8 p.m., $20–$25

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

MUSIC

Shout at the Devil Karaoke

I go to my share of live shows, but some of my best 2010 musical experiences have been courtesy of Shout at the Devil Karaoke. Traveling KJ Nathan is gradually accumulating a song list that’ll please or at least appease those with a taste for metal, and there are other odd delights (Strawberry Switchblade’s “Since Yesterday,” anyone?) mixed in with the standards. For some reason, I’m drawn to Foreigner lately. Maybe it’s my double vision. But my ears have enjoyed Genevieve’s note- and look-perfect update of Olivia Newton John’s “Magic,” and the way anyone can walk in off the street and blow everyone away. (Johnny Ray Huston)

9 p.m., free

Pissed Off Pete’s

4528 Mission, SF

(415) 584-5122

www.facebook.com/pages/shout-at-the-devil-karaoke

FILM

Monsturd and Retardead Double Feature

San Francisco schlockmeisters Rick Popko and Dan West are hard at work on a brand-new bad-taste should-be classic (the concept in five words or less: Satanists in wine country). But there’ll be no shortage of fake blood and goofy jokes at a night highlighting their previous efforts: 2008’s lower-education zombie epic Retardead, and their greatest contribution to cinema to date, 2003’s Monsturd. The prison escapee-turned-monster is made of poop, people! POOP! You can’t run! You can’t hide! You can’t even take a shit in peace! Thrillville’s Will the Thrill oversees the fecal festivities, while Meshugga Beach Party strums live surf jams. (Cheryl Eddy)

7:30 p.m., $10

Four Star

2200 Clement, SF

(415) 666-3488

www.thrillville.net

MUSIC

Groove Armada

London-based electronic smoothies Groove Armada live on the same knife’s edge of popular dance music favored by mega-acts like Crystal Method and Sasha and Digweed. Underground snobs (ahem) love to hate them because, while the music of these go-to stadium-fillers can evoke moody atmospherics and fractured hipbones in equal measure, it never quite pushes into intellectually interesting territory. Plus, like, my mom’s really into them. But we also hate to love them — no matter how many forests of Glo-sticks we have to mow down, we’ll still try to make it to the speakers at their live shows. The new Black Light (OM) has shaky vocal moments, but the beat keeps knockin’. Wear your shades to the Fillmore, though, because the light show’s the real star. (Marke B.)

8 p.m. (also Fri/19), $30

The Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.livenation.com

FRIDAY 19

MUSIC

“Zigaboogaloo: A Celebration of Legendary Funk Drummer Zigaboo Modeliste with an All-Star New Orleans Funk Revue”

Zigaboo Modeliste, best known from his work with the Meters, is one of the best drummers and percussionists in the American funk scene. He’s in the Bay for a three-night run, joined by New Orleans natives Dr. John (keys), Nicholas Payton (trumpet), Donald Harrison (sax) and others for an all-star funk revue. A prolific songwriter as well, Ziggy has written more than 200 tunes. The “godfather of groove,” his music has been featured in movies like 1997’s Jackie Brown and has been sampled by Queen Latifah, Run DMC, NWA, Ice Cube, and other hip-hop icons. (Lilan Kane)

8 and 10 p.m. (also Sun/21, 2 and 7 p.m.), $5–$35

Yoshi’s

510 Embarcadero West, Oakl.

(510) 238-9200

www.yoshis.com

MUSIC

Harlem Gospel Choir

The beat of the tambourine, uplifting cries of the soprano section, and echoing reverberations of the organ merge to create the colossal sound that is gospel music. From the historically rich jazz neighborhood in New York, the world-renowned Harlem Gospel Choir brings soul-enriching hymns to the Jewish Community Center. Be prepared to spend the evening clapping your hands and stomping your feet. (Brown)

8 p.m., $45

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

3200 California, SF

(415) 292-1200

www.jccsf.org

MUSIC

Sunshine Anderson

Under the management of Macy Gray, Sunshine Anderson debuted with her 2001 album Your Woman (Atlantic Records). Her hit single “Heard It All Before” reached No. 3 on the R&B charts. With songs everyone can relate to and a husky, sexy voice everyone wants to hear, Sunshine now records and performs with Matthew Knowles’ label. Tonight she’s joined by East Bay soul singers FEMI and Viveca Hawkins. Three voices in one night — treat yourself to a triple threat. (Kane)

9 p.m., $16,

Shattuck Down Low

2284 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 705-1151

www.shattuckdownlow.com

MUSIC

Mandolin Magic with Avi Avital

Oh, the mandolin, a miniature relative of the guitar. I’ve always admired musicians who could master playing chords on such a small neck while plucking on the tiny strings, and Avi Avital is no exception. The multifaceted Israeli musician attended Padua Conservatory. Tonight he plays live renditions of Bach’s Concerto in A Minor, Golijov’s “Last Round,” and Beethoven’s Andante con Variazioni, accompanied by a double string quartet. (Brown)

8 p.m., free

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 248-1640

www.sfchamberorchestra.org

SATURDAY 20

EVENT

Ub Iwerks

Before he was 007, Sean Connery played a small-town Irishman in the 1959 Disney favorite Darby O’Gill and the Little People. The role helped get the attention of Bond producers, but the real star of the movie was the Nodal Point Camera. By creating the correct scale between actors portraying humans and short, mythical creatures, the new technology helped give life to the film’s story of an old man’s run-ins with the king of the leprechauns. This afternoon, Don Iwerks discusses how his father, the legendary Ub Iwerks (who also helped animate the first Mickey Mouse cartoons and contributed to special effects for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 The Birds) created the camera. (McCourt)

3 p.m., $10

Walt Disney Family Museum Theater

104 Montgomery, SF

(415) 345-6800

www.waltdisney.org

DANCE

Chitresh Das Dance Company

Dancers in their 30s often know that a career change is imminent. So what is 65-year-old Chitresh Das doing dancing with Jason Samuels Smith, who is more than 30 years his junior? Setting the floorboards afire with percussive dancing that is virtuosic. Just to keep it “simple,” two of the four feet on stage are barefoot, with 25 pounds of bells attached to them. If you haven’t seen these two master practitioners — kathak for Das, tap for Smith — this is the time. The show has an early curtain because a gala dinner follows (separate tickets required). (Felciano)

6 p.m., $35–$75

Palace of Fine Arts

3601 Lyon, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.cityboxoffice.com

MONDAY 22

MUSIC

Monday Soul Series presents Jamillions

You may have heard Jamillions on Wild 94.9 or 106 KMEL or seen his name on the back of someone’s album — the man has recorded with major players including Traxamillion, Too Short, and Clyde Carson. With either a microphone or a pen in his hand, he breaks the current mold in a world of auto-tuning and ghostwriting. He’s busy recording his debut album and is ready to give a little live preview. Gracious, talented, and driven, Jamillions just might find himself in the same ranks as Ne-Yo and Usher one day. (Kane)

10 p.m., free

Air Lounge

492 Ninth Street, Oakl.

(510) 444-2377

www.airoakland.com

TUESDAY 23

MUSIC

Imelda May

Mainstream American audiences got their first glimpse of Irish chanteuse Imelda May at this year’s Grammy Awards, where she sang with Jeff Beck in tribute to the late Les Paul. But the dervish from Dublin has been rocking stages for more than a decade in the U.K.. Taking the sounds of traditional rockabilly and giving them an injection of her own infectious energy and style, May can make listeners swoon at a ballad like “Falling In Love With You Again” or jump to attention on searing rockers like “Johnny Got A Boom Boom.” She’s opening for Jamie Cullum, but you can be sure the next time she’s stateside she’ll be the well-deserving headliner. (McCourt)

8 p.m., $35

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 371-5500

www.thefillmore.com

MUSIC

Devendra Banhart and the Grogs

The first time I saw Devendra Banhart perform, he refused to begin playing until someone in the audience supplied him with drugs. It’s difficult to say how much he was playing into his role as the forerunner of “freak-folk,” but both his musical and social experiments indicate that he is unpredictable. Ridiculously prolific and sometimes experimental to a fault, Banhart has spent the last decade mining psychedelic pop, Laurel Canyon folk balladry and R&B, often singing in Spanish. On his Warner Bros. debut What Will Be, his sound remains as schizophrenic as ever but shows a bit more restraint. Perhaps the slippery white whale of a style Banhart’s been seeking all these years is finally within reach. (Peter Galvin)

With Dorothy and the Originals

8 p.m., $25

Warfield Theatre

982 Market, SF

(415) 775-7722 www.thewarfieldtheatre.com The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Homecoming

March 16, 2010

le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS Dear Earl Butter,

Thank you for putting real flowers and tiny plastic battery-operated candles in your closet for me. I slept like an angel that snores like a truck driver. Speaking of which, thank you for the chili and cornbread too. It made my homecoming that much sweeter and spicier, in addition to giving me gas. Which I am happy to have, and allowed to have, praise God, now that I’m back in a Free Country.

Plus the Maze of course, being beautiful, was waiting for me at the airport with a huge colorfully hand-painted sign that read, “Welcome home, Dani. We love you.” Signed: “The Bay Area.”

He admits having had help with the wording from at least one person, and with the painting from a couple more, so maybe there is some truth to this. If so, the feeling is very very mutual.

I will never leave the Bay Area ever again, not even to go camping. Just think, while my ex and my ex’s ex-ex are holed up together in their dark, cold, provincial town in southern Germany, clinging to each other’s small corner of obscurity, writing and editing their mediocre novel that is set in San Francisco, I get to live here. And love and be loved, and play and work and eat here.

I can’t speak for working, exactly, but it’s the greatest playing and eating place in the world that I know of. Here.

There, do you know what they eat, Earl? Well, the ex’s ex-ex doesn’t cook, and my ex’s specialty is ramen noodles. That’s what they call cooking. When they go out, it’s for sushi. Really really bad landlocked German sushi. Imagine!

Meanwhile, I have been shucking fresh-picked oysters and scallops on the west coast of France, inventing home-raised cherry chicken-heart stew, eating up Paris and Rome, hobnobbing with extraterrestrials, crunching into crack conch in the Caribbean, and passing the guitar with a couple Haitian boys outside their single-family chicken-coop shack.

And now … now I get to go get a burrito. Whenever. The fuck. I want. Because that’s what San Francisco is. It’s “what kind of beans,” the best of all-things-edible, and raw onions and garlic no matter who you might breathe on afterward. No problem. We live here.

Anyway, I do. You do. And I do again. I can’t think of a more appropriate way to celebrate my 20-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco than moving back to San Francisco.

St. Patrick’s Day 1990 was the day. I still remember my amazement, the air and the sky. Thank you for getting me back in, Earl — albeit on the ground floor, literally, with an option on your upstairs apartment’s closet. But I breathe better in closets than I did in small-town Germany, and I see more sky in one heartbeat here, through my dirty, barred sidewalk window, than I saw all this winter there. The Winter of My Discombobulation.

And now, if you will excuse me, m’dear, I have to go recombobulate.

Peace and pickles,

Your L.E.

Dear Lady of SF,

That is great. We went to Urbun Burger because the Mission has a lot of places to eat. You wanted to walk around because you have returned. I know the area and fear I will never be able to leave, except, perhaps for my parents’ funerals. We went to the Community Thrift where 15 or so years ago, you found that really neat 49ers glass, and that made me jealous because I never, ever found a glass I really liked. Years later, when I read in your column that it had broken, I was happy. Karma, sigh, is on me.

But Urbun Burger. Lotta money, lotta meat. These burgers are 1/2 pounders. It was not $10 for my California Sensation burger, it was $9.50, and naturally I did not pay. There are a couple of burgers over $10, but they come with good fries. Super selection of condiments and a real nice, lively atmosphere. I enjoyed the colors in there. So did you.

And so it ends, my fit of usefulness to the good people of San Francisco. Yours begins anew. Welcome back. I hear it is a very good town.

Earl Butter

URBUN BURGER

Mon.-Thu. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.;

Fri.–Sat. 11 a.m.–3 a.m.; Sun. 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

581 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-2483

MC/V

Beer & Wine

L.E. Leone’s new book is Big Bend (Sparkle Street Books), a collection of short fiction.

From Beijing to Oakland

March 16, 2010

arts@sfbg.com

LIT In 2005, after dropping out of a PhD program in immunology, Chinese writer Yiyun Li debuted her first book of fiction, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. A collection of stories exploring the aftershock of the Cultural Revolution on mainland and overseas Chinese, it won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award. Li’s story “Immorality” won the Paris Review Plimpton Prize.

Afterward, Li’s green card application was rejected by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — twice. Her “extraordinary ability” as an artist (Title 8, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 204.5) could not be proven until she won, on top of those accolades, a Pulitzer Prize.

Fortunately for the status of fiction in America, Li’s extraordinary ability was finally recognized in 2007, 11 years after her arrival to the United States. In a journey that has taken her from Beijing to Iowa, Li now resides in Oakland with her family. Li left China in 1996 to pursue a doctorate in immunology at the University of Iowa. Living in China, she had no interest in writing fiction, and her natural affinity and aptitude for telling stories in English took her by surprise. Her second language in speaking, she discovered, was really a “first language in creating and thinking.”

Li has a scientist’s eye toward precision and a gifted storyteller’s ability to extract meaning from the mad fracas of human circumstance. Last year, she published a well-received first novel called The Vagrants. Set in China during 1979, in a fictional provincial city called Muddy River, the novel provides an unflinching view into the era’s brutality and violence. The novel also reveals, carefully and without sentiment, the unexpected moments of transcendence that result when love, empathy, and human emotions bloom in the harshest of environments.

Li spoke with the SFBG about The Vagrants, released in paperback by Random House a few weeks ago.

SFBG You write in English, which you learned as an adult. Does this have to do with any innate differences linguistic between English and Chinese? Does it have anything to do with your associations with China?

YIYUN LI I wasn’t trained as a writer in China, and even though I widely read Chinese literature when I was in China, I never had the urge to write in Chinese until I came to America, picked up English, and felt it a natural way to express myself. I think it is a more personal decision than I may have indicated, though honestly I myself sometimes feel mystified by this switch of languages too. I feel much more like myself when I write in English, which is to say English is really my first language in creating and thinking. In a way I do censor myself less when I write in English — again, that censoring is not from others, but from myself.

SFBG Do you think in Chinese?

YL I no longer think in Chinese. Of course as my mother tongue, Chinese is still used in my everyday life — I still count and do my math in Chinese, but when I think about literature, art and philosophy I think in English.

SFBG As an international student, your decision to forgo a promising medical career and become a writer was extremely brave. During the process of writing your first book, did you experience great anxiety or doubt? Were you ever tempted to give up and go back to medicine?

YL I didn’t feel self-doubt — I think by the time I gave up my immunology career, I was certain I wouldn’t go back. There was a certain level of anxiety but I would say at the time it was minimal. I probably just lived with a tunnel vision and all I thought about was to write, and write well. I was certain that I needed some time to improve myself, so it did not occur to me to give up.

SFBG When you write, do you find you draw any lessons from your experiences studying medicine?

YL Medical knowledge, like any kind of knowledge, is helpful and useful for a fiction writer. I think my training perhaps helps me look at the world and its many violences without being sentimental.

SFBG In The Vagrants, even small children in Muddy River are completely unmoved by public executions. This strikes me as devastating and true. My mother told me that when she was growing up in China during the early 1970s, she saw a man bleed to death on the side of the road. The real horror of the experience didn’t dawn on her until decades later. You were seven years old in 1979, the year in which The Vagrants takes place. Writing about violence from the perspective of children, do you recall events from your own childhood in China?

YL Your mother’s experience was quite close to my own experience, and indeed for most children, empathy and sympathy come not naturally, but with some help from grownups and education. When violence is prevalent, as one sometimes finds in life, not only children but adults too stop questioning the injustice. I did draw from my own memories of the time, but like your mother, I had to look back as a different person to understand the tie.

SFBG Have you gone back to China since you’ve left? How are you received?

YL Yes, I have been back visiting. I keep a very low profile when I visit China. so there is not much trouble for me.

SFBG You’ve mentioned that your biggest literary influence is William Trevor. You’ve named Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Greene as influences, too. Do you draw any influences from Chinese literature?

YL My favorite Chinese author — Shen Congwen — influenced me a lot, not in the way of how he wrote stories and how he used language but how he looked at the world as a storyteller.

SFBG Speaking of Chinese novels, some of your characters in The Vagrants, like Teacher Gu, are quite literary. I enjoyed that Kai and Kialin hold their clandestine meetings in the library. I also liked that Jialin’s mother steals books for him from the shelves she’s supposed to guard. What books are these characters reading? If you could pick a book for each Gu, Kai, and Jialin, what might be a book that affected the way each viewed the world at that time?

YL This is a great question. For Jialin and Kai, I imagine they would be reading Gadfly, a little-known novel in the West but a hugely popular novel in China (and Soviet Union) written by the Irish author Ethel Voynich. I also thought Jialin might be interested in reading French authors. For Teacher Gu, I would imagine he would read Tolstoy.

Buying power

March 16, 2010

news@sfbg.com

California voters are about to be bombarded by more than $50 million in political advertising designed to convince them to approve a pair of measures desperately sought by two powerful corporations with a long history of lies and political corruption.

Will this brazen and transparently self-serving effort work? And what does it say about the state of modern politics — particularly California’s money-driven initiative system — that these deceptive campaigns just might convince voters to cast ballots against their own interests?

The corporations have every incentive to try to buy the election — and if they win, it could encourage others to follow. By spending tens of millions of dollars on a campaign today, they will potentially save and earn many times that over the long run. It’s a business decision, plain and simple.

If Pacific Gas & Electric Co. can pass Proposition 16, which requires a two-thirds vote for any municipalities to do renewable energy projects and deliver that power directly to consumers, that will kill the chances of government-backed rivals popping up to compete. It will save the company the tens of millions of dollars it regularly spends to defeat public power campaigns across the state.

If Mercury Insurance is successful with Proposition 17, which overturns part of the landmark insurance reform measure Prop. 103 and would allow companies to increase the car insurance premiums for new drivers and those whose coverage has lapsed, a company notorious for mistreating customers and defying regulators will be able to greatly increase its market share and profits.

Both measures are strongly opposed by legitimate consumer rights groups, public interest advocates, and almost all of San Francisco’s elected officials. But both corporations have proven to be unusually effective over the years at using lavish spending — with money extracted from consumers — to convince private groups and public officials from both major parties to do their bidding.

And plenty of public officials who ought to be opposing the measures are either on the wrong side or silent.

Will Mercury-backed Californians for Fair Auto Insurance Rates (which calls itself Cal-FAIR) be able to convince voters that Prop. 17 is really about saving drivers money? And will PG&E-financed Californians to Protect our Right to Vote succeed in making the case that supermajority thresholds are a needed safeguard against the electricity schemes of elected officials?

That all depends on how informed voters are when they cast their ballots.

MERCURY RISING

Mercury Insurance founder and chairman George Joseph became a billionaire by offering car insurance policies to California drivers who were at a higher risk for accidents than most other companies would accept, charging them expensive rates and then challenging their claims.

When Forbes magazine named Joseph the 283rd richest American in 2005, with an estimated worth of $1.2 billion, it wrote laudably about the practice in describing him: “Numbers guru earned Harvard math and physics degree in three years. Began as actuarial trainee at Occidental Life for $225 a month, quit after realizing salesmen made more. Created own property and casualty insurance company. The Mercury General 1962: targeted customers having trouble getting auto insurance; aggressively investigated suspicious claims. Took public 1985.”

Mercury currently has about $2.3 billion in market capital and a stock price that has roughly doubled in the year since the company began funding a $3.5 million signature-gathering effort to place Prop. 17 on the June ballot. That may be a coincidence, but it’s certainly true that Mercury’s fortunes are tied up with California motorists.

The company’s most recent annual report, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month, shows California car insurance policies are the lion’s share of the company’s business. Almost 80 percent of its premiums are in California (followed by Florida, Texas, and New Jersey), and 83.2 percent of its $2.6 billion in total premiums cover private passenger cars (as opposed to commercial auto, homeowners, and other insurance products). In California, 81 percent of Mercury customers earned “good driver” discounts, while 19 percent are in higher-risk categories, paying much higher monthly premiums.

California’s car insurance regulation system was created almost entirely by the 1988 pro-consumer ballot measure Prop. 103. That initiative established a system of regulatory oversight and financial transparency, cutting premiums by about 20 percent and limiting what companies could consider when assigning rates.

The main rating factors, in descending order of importance, are customers’ driving safety records, number of miles they drive each year, and the number of years they have been driving — which all have a direct relationship to the odds of having an accident.

Before Prop. 103 went into effect in 1990, insurance companies could pretty much charge whatever they wanted, based on whatever criteria they saw fit. And that freedom became a gold mine in 1984 when the California Legislature required all drivers to have car insurance.

“After that, everyone in the marketplace is required to buy insurance and there’s no protection against how much insurance companies could charge you for it, or even if they refused to sell it to you because of where you lived or the color of your skin. There were just no protections,” said Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog.

So Rosenfield wrote Prop. 103 and he’s been battling Mercury Insurance ever since. They’ve tangled in the halls of the Legislature, where politicians from both major parties have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions to push bills to undermine Prop. 103. They’ve fought in court in countless hearings over more than two decades, most recently on March 12 in a dispute over Prop. 17 ballot language and arguments. And they’ve fought in the court of public opinion, right up to today, as Rosenfield leads the fight to defeat Prop. 17.

“One of the most pernicious practices after the Legislature said you have to buy insurance was that when you went to the insurance companies and said, ‘OK, I’m required by law to buy insurance, now sell it to me.’ They’d say, well you didn’t have it before, so we’re not going to sell it to you now. Or, you didn’t have it before so therefore we’re going to surcharge you and double the price of insurance. Talk about a Catch 22,” Rosenfield said.

Rosenfield and other consumer advocates appealed to legislators, but, he said, “Of course, the Legislature was too beholden to the insurance lobbyists to do any of the proposals that we were offering, so we went to the ballot box in 1988.” And despite an $80 million campaign financed by the insurance industry, Rosenfield’s group won — sort of.

“No longer would your ZIP code be the dominant determinant for how much you pay,” Rosenfield said. But the struggle to implement the law continued. “That battle, just to get that put it in place, we didn’t win that until 20 years after [Prop.] 103 began. We won basically in 2006, 18 years later, after court challenges and going to the [insurance] commissioner.”

INSURANCE POLITICS

Mercury was one of the major industry players challenging Prop. 103 in court. The company also deftly worked the political system, most scandalously through former Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, a Democrat now running for mayor of Oakland. Mercury not only gave extensive political contributions to Perata, who then carried legislation for Mercury, including a bill to basically do what Prop. 17 would do, but a San Francisco Chronicle investigation in 2004 found that Mercury’s cash allegedly went into Perata’s personal account in a money-laundering scheme that reportedly triggered an FBI investigation and raid on Perata’s house (no charges were ultimately filed).

Rosenfield described how the company operates in the political arena: “Mercury realizes it’s going to lose the civil suit, goes to Sacramento, spreads a fortune in campaign contributions, and lo and behold, gets a bill passed overriding this provision of Prop. 103, legalizing its surcharges. [Gov. Gray] Davis vetoes it in 2002 on the grounds it violates Prop. 103. Another year goes by, Mercury spreads even more money around, and this time Davis is in a recall election and needs Mercury’s money. So he takes the money — it’s $100,000 or more — and Davis signs the bill. We have to go to court and challenge the bill as an unconstitutional amendment to Proposition 103, which we finally succeed in doing and it’s upheld by the Court of Appeals in 2005. All that time, Mercury is overcharging people. Ultimately, Mercury is told that the law you sponsored is invalid and you can’t do it anymore, so it stops in 2005 — 10 years of wanton, brazen violation of the law. And that brings us to the Mercury initiative.”

Joseph refused to talk to us (he grants almost no press interviews) and Mercury spokesperson Coby King referred questions to Kathy Fairbanks, who heads the Mercury-sponsored Cal-FAIR.

But when we noted that this group is supposedly independent of Mercury, and that my questions were about the company’s history of hostility to Prop. 103, King finally made this comment: “Prop. 103 is the law of the land, but to the extent there are improvements that can be made that are pro-business and pro-consumer, Mercury has not been shy about acting in the public interest.”

POWER PLAYS

Another corporation that has not been shy about flexing its muscle in the political arena is SF-based PG&E, California’s largest and most influential utility company. It is single-handedly bankrolling the Yes on 16 Campaign. Dubbed the “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” Prop. 16 was crafted by a Sacramento public relations outfit and law firm that have long histories with PG&E. Its goal: end the expansion of public power in California.

The utility has amassed a war chest of funding to sink into passing Prop. 16, which would make it difficult for municipal governments to break into the electricity business by requiring a two-thirds vote at the ballot before any such efforts could get underway.

Last month, PG&E executives notified shareholders that the estimated $35 million expenditure for the Prop. 16 campaign would affect individual share values by 6 cents to 9 cents. Following on the heels of this news brief was the revelation that PG&E CEO Peter Darbee received a total compensation of $9.4 million in 2009, reflecting a 9 percent pay spike from the previous year, according to the Associated Press.

Since PG&E Corp., the parent corporation, derives 100 percent of its revenue from PG&E Co., the utility company regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, critics have argued that PG&E is using ratepayers’ money to finance a campaign ultimately designed to limit ratepayers’ ability to choose their electricity provider.

As the utility seeks to alter the state constitution with Prop. 16, it is also boldly pursuing a rate hike of roughly 20 percent by 2011. Winning the Prop. 16 campaign could trigger an economic boon for PG&E since it would dramatically decrease the potential for municipal competitors to spring up and win over customers with lower rates, cleaner power, and more reliable service. Locking in such a monopoly would leave consumers with little choice but to endure rate hikes.

If Prop. 16 fails, however, the utility company’s financial outlook will be dicey. If twin efforts at green, community choice aggregation (CCA) programs moving steadily forward in San Francisco and Marin County prove successful, PG&E could see a depletion of its customer base from those territories and any other municipalities that follow suit.

What this means is that the stakes are high — and PG&E is prepared to pull out every trick in the book to win the Yes on 16 campaign. And yes, there actually is a playbook for how to use deceptive tactics to win these campaigns, a copy of which was obtained by the Guardian.

PG&E’S PROPAGANDA MANUAL

The San Francisco public relations firm Solem & Associates, which has worked with PG&E for nearly 30 years, has produced a step-by-step guide tailored specifically to its anti-public-power campaign needs. This hefty insiders’ playbook is titled “Defending Your Shareholder-Owned Electric Company Against New Municipalization Threats: A Tactical Guide.”

Jonathan Kaufman and Anne Solem, both executive vice presidents, are listed as coauthors. Kaufman is a white-haired guy with owl-like spectacles who can be seen regularly in the public seating section in meetings at City Hall, furiously scribbling notes, whenever the city’s green CCA program is up for discussion. He did not return the Guardian’s calls for comment.

The key strategy explained in Solem & Associates’ playbook is to create the impression that there are influential community leaders and a grassroots coalition agitating independently for the company’s agenda — when in fact the entire campaign is funded, organized, and run by one corporation.

Although the playbook never comes out to state just how the utility should go about persuading these “community allies” to see things their way, it makes it clear such allies are crucial to convince legislators, voters, and the general public that electricity programs run by municipal entities are “fraught with financial risks and other hazards.”

The playbook even recommends seeing to it that “independent” studies are published with findings that support this claim. “To provide third-party credibility to your company’s point of view … develop various reports and studies that analyze the risks and costs involved in a new public power takeover,” the playbook suggests. “It is preferable that the studies come from an independent group rather than your company.”

At certain junctures, Kaufman and Solem blatantly encourage the electric company to engage in misleading practices to hide the influence of campaign consultants working to advance a corporate agenda. “Develop opinion editorials and draft letters to the editor,” the playbook instructs. “Then ask your community supporters to personalize them and submit them to local newspapers.”

It’s interesting, given this advice, that a Twitter feed posted recently by Californians to Protect Our Right to Vote, a PG&E-bankrolled front group set up to promote the Yes on 16 campaign, highlights two different op-eds in the Fresno Bee and Sacramento Bee published within two days of one another. Both editorials were written in support of Prop.16 — one from a former sheriff of Sacramento, and the other from a former city council member of Fresno. Both editorials mention budget cuts to police and fire departments in the second paragraph. Both express surprise at the publications’ editorials against Prop. 16 in the fourth paragraph. Both cite the same statistic in the second-to-last paragraph. And both conclude with the words: “Taxpayers Right to Vote Act.” Is it a strange coincidence?

The playbook contains specific instructions for media-relations techniques, too. “Identify several community and business leaders who are willing to serve as spokespersons for your company,” the playbook recommends. “Try to keep the community leadership out in front of the reporters. Your community supporters can be much more effective with the media than perhaps your company’s own spokesperson.”

In other words: Try not to let anyone know that this is nothing more than a special-interest campaign.

Solem & Associates also suggests planting people at key local government meetings (in case of public comment, “provide them with talking points,” Solem & Associates recommends).

ON THE GROUND

How these tactics get played out in real life can be seen this year in the fight between the PG&E and Mercury front groups, and the eclectic coalition of grassroots organizations and public officials who are opposing them.

Jeff Shields, general director of South San Joaquin Irrigation District, a body governed by five elected board members, described how PG&E operates in testimony to a legislative hearing in Sacramento last month.

“PG&E attends every board meeting of SSJID, often taking video and tape recordings of our meetings, and they fund political consulting firms to campaign against our efforts and pepper us with Public Records Act requests,” he said. “Never once has a voter in our service area had the opportunity to cast a vote to allow PG&E to provide service and never have our citizens been afforded an option to vote for a PG&E Board member or attend — let alone record — a PG&E meeting.”

Yet all of the rhetoric by PG&E’s Californians to Protect the Right to Vote perversely casts the measure as about voting rights, even though this undemocratic measure protects an unelected power provider and is promoted with money that ratepayers didn’t approve for the purpose. “I am a California veteran,” Shields said. “I defended this country in uniform and I am appalled that PG&E has stated in no uncertain terms that its shareholders are paying to amend our constitution. If that is true, then it is important to examine who those shareholders are.”

He pointed out that Barclays Global Investors U.K. Holdings, Ltd., a U.K. bank, owns roughly 4 percent of PG&E shares, while JP Morgan Chase & Co. owns around 2.5 percent. “If these foreign banks and Wall Street institutional investors are truly at will to manipulate the California Constitution and this legislature has no ability to prevent that, God help us all, for the greed that motivates PG&E’s Proposition 16 is only the first thread to be pulled from the fabric that binds our society.”

John Geesman, a former member and director of the California Energy Commission, raised the possibility that if the utility is able to amass so much funding for a ballot initiative, its rates are too high. “The indisputable truth is that PG&E’s rates are set by the CPUC to provide capital to invest in needed infrastructure. If rates are so generous that PG&E can create a $35 million slush fund for political adventurism, something is seriously wrong.”

Indeed, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who shepherded the creation of this city’s CCA, Clean Power SF, told a recent Harvey Milk Democratic Club forum that the campaign raises larger concerns about corporate power.

“Know what? If we’re gonna lose, we go down as warriors. And if we win, then we win not for San Francisco or Marin, but we win to address the very fact that Washington is not moving in the direction we would like addressing climate change,” Mirkarimi said. “The complete corporate hubris and arrogance in that they think they can continue to operate in the way that they have is unimaginable.”

The people representing these corporations and their front groups, such as Cal-FAIR director Kathy Fairbanks, stressed to us the “broad coalitions” that support their measures. Those coalitions include “consumer groups” such as Consumers First and Consumer Coalition of California — each which seem to be comprised of only single individuals that back business-friendly measures each election.

Fairbanks defends claims that Prop. 16 would lower rates for most Californians, citing state figures that 80 percent of drivers in the state have continuous coverage and therefore could quality for the discount even if they change carriers to a provider like Mercury that generally offers lower rates than many of its competitors.

And while she grudgingly acknowledges that premium discounts for some are always offset by increases for others, she said the measures would create more “competitive markets” that would cause insurance companies to lower costs and decrease rates across-the board. “They’re going to do whatever they need to do to get more customers,” she said.

Asked whether Mercury’s bad reputation, and the difficulty many voters will have in believing that they’re spending millions of dollars to lower the premiums they collect, hurt the campaigns chances of winning, she said, “Voters are not going to do anything more than read the measures and vote in their interests.”

Rosenfield agreed that this campaign could turn on who can convince voters where their interests lie. “Here’s the issue in a nutshell: will California voters be duped by a $20 million insurance initiative campaign in which the insurance company has to hide behind a phony front group?”

COMPLICIT DEMOCRATS?

After Prop. 17 qualified for the ballot last year, the struggle to defeat it moved into the office of Attorney General Jerry Brown — who is running for the Democratic Party nomination for governor — and again Rosenfield was frustrated by the unwillingness of powerful Democrats to challenge Mercury Insurance.

The Attorney General’s Office writes the ballot title and summary for all initiatives. Given the complexity of insurance law and attractiveness of claims by proponents that the measure would save consumers money (“as much as $250 per year” for “your family,” proponents claim in their ballot arguments), the language of the summary could decide the outcome of the election.

Initially, last August, the AG’s office summarized the measure as “allows insurance companies to increase or decrease the cost of auto insurance based on a driver’s coverage history,” something that seemed to accurately capture what it would do.

“Mercury went crazy because I guess their polling showed that if voters read that it allowed insurance companies to raise your premium, they wouldn’t vote for it. So Mercury made a completely cosmetic change to the ballot measure, refiled it, and this time, magically, the title and summary comes back from Jerry Brown’s office: ‘allows insurance companies to discount your premiums.’ Nothing about raising them, nothing about surcharges. It was outrageous,” Rosenfield told us when we met with him on Feb. 9.

Consumer Watchdog formally challenged the language and issued press releases shaming Brown, which resulted in a minor scandal in which a Brown aide got fired for illegally recording a telephone conversation he had with Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci about the issue. By Feb. 5, Brown’s office had retreated slightly, including the line “may allow insurance companies to increase costs of insurance to drivers who do not quality for a discount,” but it came below the emphasis on the discount and had weak language that didn’t reflect reality.

Eventually, after Rosenfield submitted studies proving this reality to the AG’s office, it issued language that Consumer Watchdog finds fair and accurate: “Permits companies to reduce or increase cost of insurance depending on whether driver has a history of continuous insurance coverage.”

Then something strange happened. Due to what AG’s spokesperson Christine Gaspara labeled a “clerical error,” the office inadvertently sent the old, weaker “may allow” language over to the Secretary of State’s Office. And because they didn’t realize this before the deadline passed, the AG had to sue the state and its ballot printer to get the correct language in the voter guide.

On March 12, Judge Allen Sumner ruled against Mercury, so the language will read: “Will allow insurance companies to increase costs of insurance to drivers who do not have a history of continuous coverage,” which the official ballot argument against Prop. 17 says will be “$1,000/year (based on Mercury’s numbers).”

Meanwhile, Rosenfield has also been jousting with Assembly Member Dave Jones (D-Sacramento), who is running for Insurance Commissioner this year, trying to shore up his opposition to Prop. 17 over the last few months. When we spoke last month, Rosenfield said Jones privately said he opposed the measure but had yet to do so publicly.

But Jones, who has a strong voting record supporting consumer rights, told us the criticism wasn’t accurate, and that he has consistently opposed the measure. “As I campaign throughout the state, I point to Prop. 17 as a measure that we should defeat … Certainly what Mercury is proposing in Prop. 17 would be bad policy and I oppose it. It undermines Prop. 103.”

Like Rosenfield and other critics of the measure, Jones said the measure is bad for all Californians because it makes insurance more expensive for those who haven’t had coverage. “The danger here is that the dramatic price increases could cause these drivers to drive without insurance — and that is dangerous for all of us,” reads a statement on his Web site.

But the cached Web site function on Google shows that statement was the only one of nine issue statements that wasn’t on the site as of Jan. 30. Asked when the statement was posted, Jones told us he directed staff to include it “some time ago, but we’ve had some issues with our site. It may have gone up recently for all I know.”

Jones’ Democratic primary challenger, Assembly member Hector de la Torre (D-Los Angeles County), has made an issue of his stand on the measure, telling us, “I came out very clearly and strongly on the measure and I wasn’t calculating or cautious … I came out against it months ago and I’m working within the Democratic Party to have them oppose it.”

The state party has yet to take a stand on the measure, and neither Democratic Party executive director Bob Mulholland nor chair John Burton returned our calls on the issue, just as Rosenfield told us he “can’t get Burton to return my calls.” But he remains hopeful the party will oppose the measure at its April convention and put money into defeating it.

“I’d like to think the Democrats will stand up against this insurance company, but Mercury Insurance is very politically connected and the Democratic Party, as we know all too well lately, doesn’t seem to have that kind of backbone,” Rosenfield said.

San Francisco Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin said he’s confident the state party will join the fight to defeat it: “This is a complete abuse of the initiative process and the voters of California should not be fooled.”

BAD ACTORS

Rosenfield isn’t the only one who has battled with Mercury for many years. “I’ve been after them for 20 years, so this is not a new issue for me,” said U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (D-East Bay), who served as California’s first Insurance Commissioner from 1991 to 1995 and then again from 2003 to 2007. “He [Joseph] has refused to accept the fact that the world has changed around him.”

Beyond just trying to change the rules, Mercury has blatantly ignored them, as a decade’s worth of documents from the Department of Insurance that were released last month show, triggering upcoming legislative inquiries. In 275 pages unearthed by the Chronicle and then obtained by the Guardian, Mercury documents show the company illegally discriminating against certain professions, including soldiers, artists, bartenders, and traveling salespeople.

The Department of Insurance, now headed by a Republican, singles out Mercury as an especially bad actor with a history of hostility to regulation. As Rosenfield told us Feb. 9, “Here’s what California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said about Mercury in a case that’s actually going to be heard tomorrow in Oakland. This is a quote: ‘Mercury’s lengthy history of serious misconduct and its attitude, contempt towards and/or abuse of its customers, the commissioner, its competition, and the Superior Court are all relevant to determining the penalty needed to best ensure the protection of the public for future violations and wrongdoing.’ In my 22 years of working on insurance stuff, I’ve never heard the Department of Insurance refer to a company like that.”

And here in San Francisco, the Guardian has a long history of exposing political corruption by PG&E, from essentially bribing local officials to give it control of the city electricity system — in direct violation of the Raker Act, the federal legislation that authorized the city to construct O’Shaughnessy Dam — to illegally funneling money into anti-public-power campaigns (one such violation in 2002 resulted in the largest fine ever issued by the San Francisco Ethics Commission).

The record on both companies is clearly malevolent, their political dealings utterly corrupt. Good government advocates say Props. 16 and 17 represent a clear litmus test on the power of corporations to push their interests ahead of the general public’s in California.

“To me, it’s a classic case study of what’s going on with the initiative process in California and politics in general,” said Derek Cressman, western regional director of Common Cause. “These are two initiatives literally sponsored by corporations to push very narrow interests.”

“They are laws designed to give a financial advantage to a specific industry or company,” Garamendi said, adding that he is afraid the effort may be successful. “Money talks. It always has, particularly in propositions, and the odds are money will talk again.”

Sen. Mark Leno (D-SF), who also opposes both measures, was a bit more hopeful: “Californians have been savvy in the past, and I do believe they’ll be able to see through the tens of millions of dollars in misleading ads.”

Thawing ICE

March 16, 2010

sarah@sfbg.com

Top San Francisco officials are still refusing to implement legislation approved by the Board of Supervisors that requires due process to play out before immigrant youth accused of felonies are turned over to the federal government, despite recent developments that call into question arguments that have been made against that policy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose veto of the legislation was overridden by the board in November 2009, has been the main obstacle to putting the new policy in place. He has argued that it violates federal law, that the city faces civil liability for harboring undocumented immigrants accused of crimes, and that only serious criminals have been affected by his unilateral 2008 decision to turn minors over to federal authorities before they have been convicted.

But then Muni bus driver Charles Washington’s wife, Tracey Washington, and 13-year-old stepson, undocumented immigrants from Australia, were placed under the control of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ordered deported after the boy got into a fight at his middle school.

The case generated sympathetic media coverage because the felony charges and deportation order seemed excessive, so the federal government issued a 60-day reprieve to allow the family to finish applying for green cards and so the boy could have his day in juvenile court.

“All this got triggered by the non-implementation of a law that the board duly enacted last year,” Washington said March 11, a week after getting his reprieve, expressing exasperation with city officials. “The police are overcharging kids and waiting for someone else to whittle the charges down, and the probation officers are referring the kids to ICE, waiting for someone else to deal with the situation.”

Newsom’s policy required the city’s juvenile probation department to refer Washington’s stepson to federal immigration authorities after local police charged the boy with felony robbery, assault, and extortion in a dispute over 46 cents. Authorities then required his mother, rather than his stepfather, to come pick him up and placed an electronic monitoring device on her pending a deportation hearing.

Newsom’s policy has had a big impact in the city’s immigrant communities. Since July 2008 when the mayor ordered changes to Sanctuary City policies that had been in place for two decades, 125 youths have been referred to ICE, according to a March 9 report from the city’s Juvenile Probation Department.

In addition to the Mayor’s Office, the JPD has refused to enforce policies enacted through legislation by Sup. David Campos that are technically supposed to be the new city policy on referring undocumented youth, and the City Attorney’s Office has not required city employees to follow the new law, arguing it can only give advice and not compel departments to take action.

“With the benefit of legal advice provided by the City Attorney’s Office and outside legal counsel, and in light of current restrictions imposed by federal law, particularly the position taken by federal law enforcement authorities, the department has concluded that it cannot modify its policies and practices,” probation chief William Siffermann said at a March 4 hearing of the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee on why his department didn’t implement the legislation.

Grilled by Campos, Siffermann could not identify a federal law that requires city officials to report kids to federal immigration authorities upon arrest. Instead, Sifferman pointed to what many in the criminal justice community see as U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello’s overly broad interpretation of federal immigration laws, including his allegation that transporting arrested juveniles to court hearings amounts to “harboring aliens.”

But the Washingtons’ case struck a raw nerve at City Hall, and the Obama administration’s conciliatory response, along with other recent legal developments, indicate that it isn’t the feds that are preventing implementation of Campos’ legislation.

In February, Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard ruled in a civil case that the Bologna family — of which three members were murdered in 2008, allegedly by Edwin Ramos, an undocumented immigrant who had been in city custody as a juvenile — can’t hold the city liable for failing to prevent the murders.

That crime had been sensationalized by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and nativist groups, putting pressure on Newsom to change the Sanctuary City policy. Newsom’s spokespeople repeatedly have referred to it as an example of the civil liability the city faced.

On March 1 (the same day Washington first went public), City Attorney Dennis Herrera replied to allegations that his office has not done enough to implement Campos’ amendment by citing its victory in the Bolognas’ civil case, which sought punitive damages and to invalidate the city’s sanctuary ordinance.

Herrera also asked Gary Grindler, acting deputy attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, to direct the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California to “not use its limited resources to criminally prosecute local officials and employees who abide by California and local laws regarding the reporting of undocumented juvenile immigrants to the federal immigration authorities.”

Herrera based his March 12 request on an Oct. 19, 2009 memo that Grindler’s predecessor, David Ogden, issued curtailing federal action against medical marijuana dispensaries, which Herrera argued could serve as the model for clarifying the federal position on the city’s sanctuary law.

“If city officials and employees follow the mandates of state law, including those regarding the confidentiality of records of juvenile detainees, and the requirements of the amendment permitting the reporting to ICE of juveniles only after they have been adjudicated as wards of the court for criminal conduct, then the U.S. Attorney should not make it a priority to use its scarce federal resources to prosecute those city officials on the theory that by not reporting them at an earlier point, the city officials or employees are guilty of harboring,” Herrera wrote.

Campos said he welcomes any effort to get clarification from the feds, but believes such clarification is not necessary — and may not be forthcoming anyway. “So San Francisco should move forward. The law, in my view, allows us to do so, and it’s the right thing to do.”

Who profits from ICE’s electronic monitoring anklets?

Mary Magee

March 16, 2010

One of the many troubling things to emerge from the threatened deportation of the wife and stepsons of Muni bus driver Charles Washington is the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using electronic monitoring bracelets to track immigrants–and is turning to private contractors to deliver these services.
Take the Washingtons’ case. Charles Washington told reporters that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told him they would release his teenage stepson, if his wife Tracey, went to ICE’s Sansome Street office in San Francisco and agreed to wear an electronic anklet (pictured below).

Tracey's anklet
Tracey Washington agreed to the deal, worried about her 13-year old son, who had spent close to a week in detention at juvenile hall, after he got into a fight at school over 46 cents, and who was now in the hands of federal immigration authorities. And she had cause to worry. The feds have been known to transfer teenage immigrants arrested in San Francisco to detention facilities in Florida, Virginia and Oregon, while their deportation is pending.
So, the Washingtons hurried down to Sansome Street to retrieve their son. And, there Tracey Washington was given deportation orders for herself and her son, and an electronic monitoring device, which contains a GPS device to monitor her movements 24/7, was placed around her ankle.
Tracey says the device was too tight at first, and, though it has since been adjusted, wearing it makes her feel as if she has committed a serious crime. But so far, no one in her family has actually been found guilty of a crime in this Kafkaesque episode.
Instead, her 13-year-old son has been charged with felony robbery, assault and extortion, charges that sound serious but have yet to be adjudicated in a juvenile justice court, and that were made in the wake of a schoolyard fight, which did not involve weapons, after the parent of the victim called the police.
But these felony charges are the reason why a juvenile probation officer called ICE, who picked up the boy, and, within 5 hours, released him to his mother, once they’d locked an electronic monitoring device on her ankle.
As for the question of the Washingtons’ visa overstay, which is ICE’s grounds for the anklet, the couple say they called the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (US CIS), not once, but twice, two days after they got married in April 2009, when Tracey, who met Charles on vacation six years ago, was midway through a 90-day visa waiver.
The couple say they were given misinformation on the phone about the urgency of applying for a green card, and that’s how they came to be only at the beginning of that process when their son got nabbed—a lag that Charles Washington attributes to the time it took for his family to save up the thousands of dollars that green card applications cost.
And apparently there is no way for the Washingtons or the US government to verify what happened when the couple called US CIS, and spoke to an operator. US CIS spokesperson Sharon Rummery told the Guardian that it is impossible to ascertain if a contractor with the US government misinformed the family.
‘I can’t say that it’s true or not, because it was a private conversation between one of the operators who works on our customer service line,” Rummery said. “Our operators are highly trained and are backed up by our trained officers,” Rummery continued, confirming that the operators are contractors, not US CIS staff.
Either way, Tracey Washington is left wearing an anklet. And as a hard-working, bus-driving US citizen, her husband Charles is not pleased that his tax dollars are being put to use in a way that leaves his wife stressed and feeling like a criminal.

“It’s my belief they are wasting tax payer money,” Washington said, eight days after US ICE granted his wife and stepson 60-day deportation reprieve. “With all the publicity this case has received, and the fact that our green card application has been sent in, I don’t see why she needs to be on the anklet. Everything that immigration has requested, we have complied with.”

So, just how widely spread is the use of anklets to track immigrants?

In 2002, federal immigration authorities created a $3 million Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, to ensure that “aliens released from detention appear for their court hearings,” according to a 2010 ICE report.Fast forward to 2010 and the program’s FY 2010 budget is set at $69.9 million.
And somewhere along the way, the program began requiring immigrants who are in the process of applying for residency to wear electronic monitoring ankle bracelets 24/7—a requirement otherwise reserved for rapists, child molesters and other convicted criminals on parole.
This pilot program, which began in eight cities, including San Francisco, has since grown to a nationwide multimillion opportunity for contractors and now involves at least 30 cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, Baltimore, Boston, Hartford, Buffalo, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Los Angeles, Delray Beach, Miami, Orlando, Newark, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, St. Paul and Washington.
In July 2009, DHS/ICE’s office of Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) awarded a $372 million, 5-year contract to BI Incorporated, a Boulder Colorado-based company, to provide support services for its Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) 11, as the federal government previously called its electronic monitoring program.
G4S Government Services of Atlanta, Georgia, which held the previous ISAP’s pilot contract, and put in a S489 million bid for ISAP 11, protested the BI award, arguing that DHS’ evaluation and BI’s price proposal were “unreasonable.”
Either way, DHS’ “statement of work” documents, which were posted online as part of that contract bid, suggest that ICE plans to use ATD on an even wider basis, in future.
“Approximately, 32,000 persons are held in secure detention by DRO each day,” the contract’s statement of work (SOW) section states, noting that this figure includes “aliens in the United States who are in violation of the Immigration and Nationality ACT (INA) who pose a threat to community safety, national security, and/or may be a flight risk, in addition to those aliens required to be detained under specific provisions of the INA.”
“Limited detention capacity and an increasing detainee population coupled with the need to lower alien absconder rates have sparked national efforts over the past several years to integrate into DRO’s general practices the use of various alternatives to detention for aliens who do not require mandatory detention in accordance with the INA,” the contract continues. “Alternatives to detention offer the prospect of a considerable cost savings over secure detention for eligible aliens.”
“Depending on available funding during the execution of the ISAP 11 contract, DRO intends to expand its ISAP coverage,” the contract notes. An attached appendix shows a list of 165 cities in which the program would operate nationwide. In addition to San Francisco and Los Angeles, California cities on the list include Bakersfield, San Diego, El Centro, Fresno, Imperial, Lancaster, Lompoc, Sacramento, San Jose, San Pedro, Santa Ana, Stockton, and Ventura.
Under the current contract, BI was expected to be fully prepared with sufficient staff and equipment to fulfill all statement of work requirements for 16,750 ISAP II slots, within two months of assuming control of the program. San Francisco was expected to fill 850 of these slots, putting it in fourth place behind Los Angeles (3,400 slots), New York, (1,500 slots) and Washington, D.C., (1,025).
And by the end of the five-year contract, the numbers of slots are expected to rise to 27,237 slots—a 10,487 increase, along with a steady increase in participating cities. Under those estimates, San Francisco is expected to have 957 slots five years from now,
The federal government touts ISAP, which relies on telephonic reporting, unannounced home visits, and regular face-to-face interviews, as well as electronic GPS monitoring devices, as a “cost-effective alternative to detention for aliens being processed through the Immigration Court system.”
ICE’s Lori Haley stressed that the program, with its focus on alternatives to detention, is part of the department’s “commitment to immigration reform.”
“Our mission is to ID non-citizens here without legal status and move them through the immigration process how the court sees fit,” Haley said.
She also stressed that the anklet program is preferable to detention and is suitable for folks with families who are not posing a danger to their community.
“We also found that as people get closer to the conclusion of the process, they may need a stronger level of monitoring,” Haley added, alluding to the reaction of folks on realizing that they are going to be deported after all.
These statistics paint a perhaps surprising picture to the average American, who likely wasn’t aware that there are thousands of immigrants in the US, who haven’t committed a serious crime, yet are walking around wearing these onerous, privacy-invading devices, hidden beneath their pants, or while they shower, or go to bed, while they await a ruling from the courts on their request to stay here permanently.
And these numbers are only going to grow bigger, if ICE has its way.
“Depending how long an alien remains in the ATD program and the number of individuals enrolled in the ATD program, implementing ATD nationwide would require between $88 million and $513 million,” ICE stated in its 2010 report to Congress. “The most realistic scenario for expansion requires a reduction in the average length in the ATD program to 180 days, down from the current average of 310 days. Reducing the average length on the program requires significant coordination within the Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review.”
“310 days in an anklet” sounds like the name of a funny film. Unfortunately for the 800 people in San Francisco, including Tracey Washington, who are apparently walking around wearing these devices in any given year, the situation is not funny, but it is all too real. And is this really the way to reform the federal immigration system in a humane and meaningful way?

Willie Brown to speak in favor of Prop 16 tomorrow

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

March 16, 2010

A public forum will be held tomorrow at the California Public Utilities Commission to discuss Proposition 16, the ballot initiative that PG&E is bankrolling in order to require a two-thirds majority vote before any municipality can become an electricity provider.

The Guardian has received word that former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown will be speaking in support of Prop. 16. We initially heard that he would be speaking on behalf of the California Chamber of Commerce, so we placed a call with the COC to verify whether that was the case. That prompted Robin Swanson, spokesperson for the Yes on 16 Campaign, to call and clarify that Brown is speaking on his own behalf. “He’s just speaking in support of Prop 16,” she said, speculating that maybe he was interested in the issue due to his own experience in local government.

Willie Brown formerly worked for PG&E providing “consulting services,” according to a 2007 annual report.
When asked whether Brown was approached by either PG&E or the Yes on 16 Campaign to speak in support of the initiative, Swanson said, “I don’t know how that came about.”

We placed a call to Brown to ask him directly, but haven’t heard back yet.

The public forum, which will begin with a press conference on the steps of the CPUC building at 505 Van Ness, will be held from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Additional information can be found here.

Film listings

David Talbot

March 16, 2010

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Erik Morse, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. The film intern is Peter Galvin. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

SF INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs through Sun/21 at the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Viz Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Camera 12 Cinemas, 201 South Second St, San Jose. Tickets (most shows $12) available at www.asianamericanmedia.org. All times pm.

WED/17

PFA Agrarian Utopia 7. Mundane History 9:20.

Sundance Kabuki "Classic Filipino American Shorts" (shorts program) 4:15. God is D_ad 4:30. "FutureStates" (shorts program) 6:45. Wo Ai Ni Mommy 7. You Have Been Weighed and Found Wanting 9:15. Aoki 9:30.

Viz "Memory Vessels and Phantom Traces" (shorts program) 4:45. Ninoy Aquin and the Rise of People Power 7. Dear Doctor 9:15.

THURS/18

PFA Hana, Dul, Sed… 7. Bayan Ko: My Own Country 9.

Sundance Kabuki Mundane History 5. "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) 5. "Blueprints for a Generation" (shorts program) 5. Au Revoir Taipei 7. "FutureStates" (shorts program) 7:15.

Viz "Sweet Dreams and Beautiful Nightmare" (shorts program) 5. Tehran Without Borders 7:30.

FRI/19

Camera Au Revoir Taipei 7.

PFA What We Talk About When We… 7. The Forbidden Door 9:10.

SAT/20

Camera Dear Doctor noon. "3rd I South Asian International Shorts" (shorts program) 2:45. Aoki 3. The People I’ve Slept With 4:45. A Village Called Versailles 5:30. Make Yourself at Home 7:15. Like You Know it All 7:45. Prince of Tears 9:15.

PFA Manila in the Claws of Neon 6. About Elly 8:30.

SUN/21

Camera "Wandering, Wondering" (shorts program) noon. Talentime 2. State of Aloha 2:15. Cooking With Stella 4:30. Fog 4:45. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee 6:45. The Forbidden Door 7. The Message 9.

OPENING

The Bounty Hunter Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston play a formerly married couple who … zzzzz. Huh? Oh, whatever. (1:50)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid The agonies of middle school come to life in this kid-friendly comedy. (2:00)

The Girl on the Train André Téchiné’s beautifully photographed, ripped-from-the-headlines film explores the events that led a young Parisian girl to lie about being the victim of an anti-semitic attack. Téchiné’s dramatization fails as an account of the incident, but the film manages to evoke a powerfully mysterious tone due largely to two stellar performances, by Émilie Dequenne as the 20-something Jeanne and Catherine Deneuve as her persistent mother. Much of the running time follows Jeanne’s experiences before the fabrication, as she falls for (and moves in with) a young wrestler named Franck, before a tragic event causes Jeanne to invent the famous lie. An arty exploration into the psychology of victimization that happens to be anchored by a real-life event, The Girl on the Train may disappoint those looking for easy answers but is undeniable as a showcase for some outstanding acting. (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Galvin)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo See "Life After Death." (2:32) Albany, Embarcadero.

Mother Bong Joon-ho’s latest is a crime drama about a mentally challenged murder suspect and his formidable mother. See review at www.sfbg.com. (2:09) Clay, Shattuck.

*Neil Young Trunk Show As loose as Jonathan Demme’s prior Neil doc Heart of Gold (2006) was tidy, with a taste for rave-ups where that film emphasized the mellower country-rock side, this neck-deep wade into Young’s four-decade-plus songbook is pretty dang nirvanic. Shot at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA —exactly the kind of funky old midsized venue you’d want to see him at — it’s assembled via camera and editorial choices as seemingly random yet astute as Young’s grab bag of tunes. The latter range from historic hits ("Cinnamon Girl," "Harvest," "Cowgirl in the Sand") to more recent compositions ("The Believer," "No Hidden Path") and some real obscurities from the bottom of that trunk, including a few acoustic heartbreakers. Even shown out of concert order — there’s never any sense just where we are in the audience’s evening — they meld seamlessly, the epic half-hour oceanics of "Path" just as well as something small and plaintive like "Sad Movies." Never in better voice (qualify that as you will) at age 65, surrounded by an assured band of five plus scattered oddball props and one live canvas painter, Young is the eye of this particular hurricane — even if "Like a Hurricane" is the one performance that feels a tad uninspired. If you’re a fan, this will be pretty close to sheer ecstasy. If not … well, frankly, I have absolutely no idea whether
you’ll be converted, mildly entertained, or bored to death. (1:22) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Repo Men Nope, not a sequel to the 1984 cult classic. Jude Law and Forest Whitaker will, however, relieve you of your futuristic mechanical organs if you can’t pay for them post-transplant. (1:53) Shattuck.

The Runaways In Floria Sigismondi’s tale of the rise and fall of a 1970s all-girl band, LA producer Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon) proclaims that the Runaways are going to save rock and roll. It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of this pronouncement, but you can certainly hear, in songs like "Cherry Bomb" and "Queens of Noise," how the band must have brightened a landscape overrun by kings of prog rock. Unfortunately, a handful of teenagers micromanaged by a sleazy, abusive nutcase proved not quite up to the task, though the band did launch the careers of metal guitarist Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and, more famously, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart). Sigismondi’s film entertainingly sketches the Runaways’ beginnings in glam rock fandom and gradual attainment of their own rabid fan base. We get Currie lip-synching Bowie to catcalls at the high school assembly, Jett composing "Cherry Bomb" with Fowley, glamtastic hair-and-wardrobe eye candy, pills-and-Stooges-fueled intra-band fooling around, and five teenage girls sent off sans chaperone on an international tour with substantial quantities of hard drugs in their carry-on luggage. What follows is less pretty: a capsule version of the band’s disintegration after the departure of bottoming-out 16-year-old lead singer Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning). In a film darkened by Currie’s trajectory, Jett’s subsequent success is a feel-good coda, but it’s awkwardly attached and emblematizes one of The Runaways‘ main problems. When the band begins to fall apart, the film doesn’t know which way to turn and ends up telling no one’s story well. (1:42) Bridge. (Rapoport)

ONGOING

Ajami You may recognize the title of Yaron Shoni and Scandar Copti’s debut collaboration as one of five films nominated for a 2010 Academy Award in the Foreign Category. Though it didn’t bring home the grand prize, Ajami remains a complex and affecting story about desperation and its consequences in a religiously-mixed town in Israel. As we follow the lives of four of Ajami’s residents the narrative shifts perspective almost maddeningly, switching characters seemingly at the height of each story’s action. But once all of the stories fully intersect, the final product has the distinction of feeling both meticulously calculated and completely natural. I was most impressed to learn that Shani and Copti prepared their actors with improvised role-playing rather than scripts. By withholding what was going to happen in a scene before shooting, we are treated to looks of surprise and emotion on actor’s faces that never feel unnatural. Attaining such a level of realism may be Ajami‘s crowning achievement; it can’t have been easy to make a foreign world feel so familiar. (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Galvin)

Alice in Wonderland Tim Burton’s take on the classic children’s tale met my mediocre expectations exactly, given its months of pre-release hype (in the film world, fashion magazines, and even Sephora, for the love of brightly-colored eyeshadows). Most folks over a certain age will already know the story, and much of the dialogue, before the lights go down and the 3-D glasses go on; it’s up to Burton and his all-star cast (including numerous big-name actors providing voices for animated characters) to make the tale seem newly enthralling. The visuals are nearly as striking as the CG, with Helena Bonham Carter’s big-headed Red Queen a particularly marvelous human-computer creation. But Wonderland suffers from the style-over-substance dilemma that’s plagued Burton before; all that spooky-pretty whimsy can’t disguise the film’s fairly tepid script. Teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska) displaying girl-power tendencies is a nice, if not surprising, touch, but Johnny Depp’s grating take on the Mad Hatter will please only those who were able to stomach his interpretation of Willy Wonka. (1:48) Castro, Cerrito, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Art of the Steal How do you put a price on something that’s literally priceless? The Art of the Steal takes an absorbing look at the Barnes Collection, a privately-amassed array of Post-Impressionist paintings (including 181 Renoirs) worth billions — and the many people and corporate interests who schemed to control it. Founder Albert C. Barnes was an singular character who took pride in his outsider status; he housed his art in a specially-constructed gallery far from downtown Philadelphia’s museum scene, and he emphasized education and art appreciation first and foremost. But he had no heirs, and after his death in 1951, opportunists began circling his massive collection; the slippery political and legal dealings that have unfolded since then are nearly as jaw-dropping as Barnes’ prize paintings. Philly documentarian Don Argott has a doozy of a subject here, and his skillful, even suspenseful film does it justice. (1:41) Elmwood, Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Avatar James Cameron’s Avatar takes place on planet Pandora, where human capitalists are prospecting for precious unobtainium, hampered only by the toxic atmosphere and a profusion of unfriendly wildlife, including the Na’vi, a nine-foot tall race of poorly disguised cliches. When Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-marine, arrives on the planet, he is recruited into the "Avatar" program, which enables him to cybernetically link with a part-human, part-Na’vi body and go traipsing through Pandora’s psychedelic underbrush. Initially designed for botanical research, these avatars become the only means of diplomatic contact with the bright-blue natives, who live smack on top of all the bling. The special effects are revolutionary, but the story that ensues blends hollow "noble savage" dreck with events borrowed from Dances With Wolves (1990) and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). When Sully falls in love with a Na’vi princess and undergoes a spirit journey so he can be inducted into the tribe and fight the evil miners, all I could think of was Kevin Bacon getting his belly sliced in The Air Up There (1994). (2:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Richardson)

The Blind Side When the New York Times Magazine published Michael Lewis’ article "The Ballad of Big Mike" — which he expanded into the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game — nobody could have predicated the cultural windfall it would spawn. Lewis told the incredible story of Michael Oher — a 6’4, 350-pound 16-year-old, who grew up functionally parentless, splitting time between friends’ couches and the streets of one of Memphis’ poorest neighborhoods. As a sophomore with a 0.4 GPA, Oher serendipitously hitched a ride with a friend’s father to a ritzy private school across town and embarked on an unbelievable journey that led him into a upper-class, white family; the Dean’s List at Ole Miss; and, finally, the NFL. The film itself effectively focuses on Oher’s indomitable spirit and big heart, and the fearless devotion of Leigh Anne Tuohy, the matriarch of the family who adopted him (masterfully played by Sandra Bullock). While the movie will delight and touch moviegoers, its greatest success is that it will likely spur its viewers on to read Lewis’ brilliant book. (2:06) Elmwood, Oaks. (Daniel Alvarez)

Brooklyn’s Finest "Really? I mean, really?" asked the moviegoer beside me as the final freeze-frame of Brooklyn’s Finest slapped our eyeballs. Yes, that’s the sound of letdown, despite the fact that Brooklyn’s Finest initially resembled a promisingly gritty juggling act in the mode of The Wire and Cop Land (1997), Taxi Driver (1976) and Training Day (2001). Bitter irony flows from the title — and from the lives, loves, bad habits, pressure-cooker stress, and unavoidable moral dilemmas of three would-be everyday cops, all occupying several different rungs on a food chain where right and wrong have an unpleasant way of switching sides. Eddie (Richard Gere) is the veteran officer just biding his time till he gets his pension, all while comforting himself with the meager sensuous attentions of hooker Chantel (Shannon Kane). Sal (Ethan Hawke) is the bad detective, stealing from the dealers to fund a dream home for his growing family with Angela (Lili Taylor). Tango (Don Cheadle) is the undercover detective who has cultivated friendships with dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) and sacrificed his marriage for a long-promised promotion from his lieutenant (Will Patton) and his superior (Ellen Barkin, in likely the most misogynist portrayal of a lady with a badge to date). You spend most of Brooklyn’s Finest waiting for these cops to collide in the most unfortunate, messiest way possible, but instead the denouement leaves will leave one wondering about unresolved threads and feeling vaguely unsatisfied. In any case, director Antoine Fuqua and company seem to pride themselves on their tough-minded if at times cartoonish take on law enforcement, with Hawke in particular turning in a memorably OTT and anguished performance. (2:13) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Crazies Disease and anti-government paranoia dovetail in this competent yet overwhelmingly non-essential remake of one of George A. Romero’s second-tier spook shows. In a small Iowa hamlet overseen by a benevolent sheriff (Timothy Olyphant) and his pregnant wife (Radha Mitchell), who’s also the town doctor, a few odd incidents snowball into all-out chaos when a mysterious, unmarked plane crashes into the local water supply. Before long, the few residents who aren’t acting like homicidal maniacs are rounded up by an uber-aggressive military invasion. Though our heroes convey frantic panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on, The Crazies never achieves full terror mode. It’s certainly watchable, and even enjoyable at times. But memorable? Not in the slightest. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Crazy Heart "Oh, I love Jeff Bridges!" is the usual response when his name comes up every few years for Best Actor consideration, usually via some underdog movie no one saw, and the realization occurs that he’s never won an Oscar. The oversight is painful because it could be argued that no leading American actor has been more versatile, consistently good, and true to that elusive concept "artistic integrity" than Bridges over the last 40 years. It’s rumored Crazy Heart was slotted for cable or DVD premiere, then thrust into late-year theater release in hopes of attracting Best Actor momentum within a crowded field. Lucky for us, this performance shouldn’t be overlooked. Bridges plays "Bad" Blake, a veteran country star reduced to playing bars with local pickup bands. His slide from grace hasn’t been helped by lingering tastes for smoke and drink, let alone five defunct marriages. He meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), freelance journalist, fan, and single mother. They spark; though burnt by prior relationships, she’s reluctant to take seriously a famous drunk twice her age. Can Bad handle even this much responsibility? Meanwhile, he gets his "comeback" break in the semi-humiliating form of opening for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) — a contemporary country superstar who was once Bad’s backup boy. Tommy offers a belated shot at commercial redemption; Jean offers redemption of the strictly personal kind. There’s nothing too surprising about the ways in which Crazy Heart both follows and finesses formula. You’ve seen this preordained road from wreckage to redemption before. But actor turned first-time director Scott Cooper’s screenplay honors the flies in the windshield inherited from Thomas Cobb’s novel — as does Bridges, needless to say. (1:51) Lumiere, Piedmont, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

*An Education The pursuit of knowledge — both carnal and cultural — are at the tender core of this end-of-innocence valentine by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig (who first made her well-tempered voice heard with her 2000 Dogme entry, Italian for Beginners), based on journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Hornby breaks further with his Peter Pan protagonists with this adaptation: no man-boy mopers or misfits here. Rather, 16-year-old schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a good girl and ace student. It’s 1961, and England is only starting to stir from its somber, all-too-sober post-war slumber. The carefully cloistered Jenny is on track for Oxford, though swinging London and its high-style freedoms beckon just around the corner. Ushering in those freedoms — a new, more class-free world disorder — is the charming David (Peter Sarsgaard), stopping to give Jenny and her cello a ride in the rain and soon proffering concerts and late-night suppers in the city. He’s a sweet-faced, feline outsider: cultured, Jewish, and given to playing fast and loose in the margins of society. David can see Jenny for the gem she is and appreciate her innocence with the knowing pleasure of a decadent playing all the angles. The stakes are believably high, thanks to An Education‘s careful attention to time and place and its gently glamored performances. Scherfig revels in the smart, easy-on-eye curb appeal of David and his friends while giving a nod to the college-educated empowerment Jenny risks by skipping class to jet to Paris. And Mulligan lends it all credence by letting all those seduced, abandoned, conflicted, rebellious feelings flicker unbridled across her face. (1:35) Oaks, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Ghost Writer Roman Polanski’s never-ending legal woes have inspired endless debates on the interwebs and elsewhere; they also can’t help but add subtext to the 76-year-old’s new film, which is chock full o’ anti-American vibes anyway. It’s also a pretty nifty political thriller about a disgraced former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan) who’s hanging out in his Martha’s Vineyard mansion with his whip-smart, bitter wife (Olivia Williams) and Joan Holloway-as-ice-queen assistant (Kim Cattrall), plus an eager young biographer (Ewan McGregor) recently hired to ghost-write his memoirs. But as the writer quickly discovers, the politician’s past contains the kinds of secrets that cause strange cars with tinted windows to appear in one’s rearview mirror when driving along deserted country roads. Polanski’s long been an expert when it comes to escalating tension onscreen; he’s also so good at adding offbeat moments that only seem tossed-off (as when the PM’s groundskeeper attempts to rake leaves amid relentless sea breezes) and making the utmost of his top-notch actors (Tom Wilkinson and Eli Wallach have small, memorable roles). Though I found The Ghost Writer‘s ZOMG! third-act revelation to be a bit corny, I still didn’t think it detracted from the finely crafted film that led up to it. (1:49) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Green Zone Titled for the heavily-guarded headquarters of international occupation in Baghdad, Green Zone reunites director Paul "Shaky-Cam" Greengrass with star Matt Damon, the two having previously collaborated on the last two Bourne films. Instead of a super-soldier, this time around Damon just plays a supremely insubordinate one as he attempts to uncover the reason why his military unit can’t find any of Saddam’s WMDs. With the aid of the CIA, a Wall Street Journal reporter and a friendly Iraqi, Damon goes rogue in order to suss out the source of the misinformation. The Iraq War action is decent if scarce, but an overindulgence in (you guessed it) shaky-cam and political jargon cannot hide the fact that Green Zone‘s plot is simplistic and probably light on actual facts. Damon makes a fine cowboy-cum-hero, but the effectiveness of the mix of patriotism and Pentagon paranoia will vary based on your penchant for such things. Still, Green Zone moves fast enough that it remains worth a matinee for conspiracy thriller aficionados. (1:55) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

The Hurt Locker When the leader of a close-knit U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad is killed in action, his subordinates have barely recovered from the shock when they’re introduced to his replacement. In contrast to his predecessor, Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner) is no standard-procedure-following team player, but a cocky adrenaline junkie who puts himself and others at risk making gonzo gut-instinct decisions in the face of live bombs and insurgent gunfire. This is particularly galling to next-in-command Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). An apolitical war-in-Iraq movie that’s won considerable praise for accuracy so far from vets (scenarist Mark Boal was "embedded" with an EOD unit there for several 2004 weeks), Kathryn Bigelow’s film is arguably you-are-there purist to a fault. While we eventually get to know in the principals, The Hurt Locker is so dominated by its seven lengthy squad-mission setpieces that there’s almost no time or attention left for building character development or a narrative arc. The result is often viscerally intense, yet less impactful than it would have been if we were more emotionally invested. Assured as her technique remains, don’t expect familiar stylistic dazzle from action cult figure Bigelow (1987’s Near Dark, 1989’s Blue Steel, 1991’s Point Break) — this vidcam-era war movie very much hews to the favored current genre approach of pseudo-documentary grainy handheld shaky-cam imagery. (2:11) Cerrito, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Last Station Most of the buzz around The Last Station has focused on Helen Mirren, who takes the lead as the Countess Sofya, wife of Leo Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer). Mirren is indeed impressive — when is she not? — but there’s more to the film than Sofya’s Oscar-worthy outbursts. The Last Station follows Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), hired as Tolstoy’s personal secretary at the end of the writer’s life. Valentin struggles to reconcile his faith in the anarchist Christian Tolstoyan movement with his sympathy for Sofya and his budding feelings for fellow Tolstoyan Masha (Kerry Condon). For the first hour, The Last Station is charming and very funny. Once Tolstoy and Sofya’s relationship reaches its most volatile, however, the tone shifts toward the serious — a trend that continues as Tolstoy falls ill. After all the lighthearted levity, it’s a bit jarring, but the solid script and accomplished cast pull The Last Station together. Paul Giamatti is especially good as Vladimir Chertkov, who battles against Sofya for control of Tolstoy’s will. You’ll never feel guiltier for putting off War and Peace. (1:52) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Peitzman)

*The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers For many, Daniel Ellsberg is a hero — a savior of American First Amendment rights and one of the most outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war. But as this documentary (recently nominated for an Academy Award) shows, it’s never an an easy decision to take on the U.S. government. Ellsberg himself narrates the film and details his sleepless nights leading up to the leak of the Pentagon Papers — the top secret government study on the Vietnam war — to the public. Though there are few new developments in understanding the particulars of the war or the impact the release of the Papers had on ending the conflict, the film allows audiences to experience the famous case from Ellsberg’s point of view, adding a fresh and poignantly human element to the events; it’s a political documentary that plays more like a character drama. Whether you were there when it happened or new to the story, there is something to be appreciated from this tale of a man who fell out of love with his country and decided to do something about it. (1:34) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*North Face You’ll never think of outerwear the same way again — and in fact you might be reaching for your fleece and shivering through the more harrowing climbing scenes of this riveting historical adventure based on a true tale. Even those who consider themselves less than avid fans of outdoor survival drama will find their eyes frozen, if you will, on the screen when it comes to this retelling/re-envisioning of this story, legendary among mountaineers, of climbers, urged on by Nazi propaganda, to tackle the last "Alpine problem." At issue: the unclimbed north face of Switzerland’s Eiger, a highly dangerous and unpredictable zone aptly nicknamed "Murder Wall." Two working-class friends, Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann of 2008’s Jerichow) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) — here portrayed as climbing fiends driven to reach summits rather than fight for the Nazis — take the challenge. There to document their achievement, or certain death, is childhood friend and Kurz’s onetime sweetheart Luise (Johanna Wokalek, memorable in 2008’s The Baader Meinhof Complex), eager to make her name as a photojournalist while fending off the advances of an editor (Ulrich Tukur) seeking to craft a narrative that positions the contestants as model Aryans. But the climb — and the Eiger, looming like a mythical ogre — is the main attraction here. Filmmaker Philipp Stölzl brings home the sheer heart-pumping exhilaration and terror associated with the sport — and this specific, legendarily tragic climb — by shooting in the mountains with his actors and crew, and the result goes a way in redeeming an adventure long-tainted by its fascist associations. (2:01) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Our Family Wedding America Ferrera and Lance Gross play a couple of lovebirds who must jump through some serious family hoops before they get married in the mostly serviceable Our Family Wedding. What begins as a dual Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, with the differences in each family’s traditions forcing complications and compromises, soon loses sight of its matrimonial plot as the focus steers towards a childish rivalry between the fathers. While it’s being marketed as a goofy comedy, the final product seeks a relatively sentimental tone, which makes the few slapstick moments — like a goat trying to rape Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker — seem pretty inappropriate. Still, for some audiences the well-tread plot will act as comfort food: they fight, they make up, and it all ends in a big wedding where we watch the characters dance for damn near ten minutes. (1:41) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief It would be easy to dismiss Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief as an unabashed Harry Potter knock-off. Trio of kids with magic powers goes on a quest to save the world in a Chris Columbus adaptation of a popular young adult series — sound familiar? But The Lightning Thief is sharp, witty, and a far cry from Columbus’ joyless adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001). Logan Lerman stars as Percy Jackson, the illegitimate son of Poseidon and Catherine Keener. Once he learns his true identity at Camp Half-Blood, he sets off on a quest with his protector, a satyr named Grover, and potential love interest Annabeth, daughter of Athena. Along the way, they bump into gods and monsters from Greek mythology — with a twist. Think Percy using his iPhone to fight Medusa (Uma Thurman), or a land of the Lotus-Eaters disguised as a Lady Gaga-blasting casino. A worthy successor to Harry Potter? Too soon to say, but The Lightning Thief is at least a well-made diversion. (1:59) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)

*A Prophet Filmmaker Jacques Audiard has described his new film, A Prophet, as "the anti-Scarface." Yet much like Scarface (1983), A Prophet bottles the heady euphoria that chases the empowerment of the powerless and the rise of the long-shot loner on the margins. In its almost-Dickensian attention to detail, devotion to its own narrative complexity, and passion for cinematic poetry, A Prophet rises above the ordinary and, through the prism of genre, finds its own power. The supremely opportunistic, pragmatically Machiavellian intellectual and spiritual education of a felon is the chief concern of here. Played by Tahar Rahim with guileless, open-faced charisma, Malik is half-Arab and half-Corsican — and distrusted or despised by both camps in the pen. When he lands in jail for his six-year sentence, he’s 19, illiterate, friendless, and vulnerable. His deal with the devil — and means of survival — arrives with Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), temporarily locked up before his testifies against the mob. Corsican boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup) wants him dead, and Malik is tagged to penetrate Reyeb’s cell with a blade hidden in mouth. After Malik’s gory rebirth, it turns out that the teenager’s a seer in more ways than one. From his low-dog position, he can eyeball the connections linking the drugs entering the prison to those circulating outside, as well as the machinations intertwining the Arab and Corsican syndicates. It’s no shock that when Cesar finds his power eroding and arranges prison leaves for his multilingual crossover star that Malik serves not only his Corsican master, but also his own interests, and begins to build a drug empire rivaling his teacher’s. Throughout his pupil’s progress, Audiard demonstrates a way with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment, and when Malik finally breaks with his Falstaffian patriarch, it makes your heart skip a beat in a move akin to the title of the director’s last film. This Eurozone/Obama-age prophet is all about the profit — but he’s imbued with grace, even while gaming for ill-gotten gain. (2:29) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Remember Me Ominously set in New York City during the summer of 2001, Remember Me, starring Robert Pattinson (of the Twilight series) and Emilie de Ravin (of TV’s Lost), pretty much answers the question of whether it’s still too soon to make the events of September 11 the subject of a date movie. Or rather, not the subject so much as the specter waiting just off-camera for its walk-on while brooding 21-year-old Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson) quotes Gandhi, gets into brawls, gets drunk, writes letters to his dead brother, and otherwise channels despondency and rage into various salubrious outlets. One of these is romancing (under circumstances severely testing the viewer’s credulity) de Ravin’s Ally Craig, grappling somewhat more constructively with her own familial tragedy. Ally is the sort of self-possessed, strong-willed young woman whose instincts, shortly after she’s been backhanded by her drunk father (Chris Cooper), tell her to placate and have sex with her drunk boyfriend when he comes home enraged after battling his own father (Pierce Brosnan). She is there to teach Tyler, through quirky habits like eating dessert first, what director Allen Coulter (2006’s Hollywoodland) wishes to teach us: that time is short and one must fill one’s life with meaningful actions — like throwing a fire extinguisher through a window to convince a classroom of tweens to stop bullying one’s little sister. The film is seeded with allusions to an impending catastrophe that feels less integrated than exploited. And it’s uncomfortable seeing the fall of the towers used to make the ground shake under a sweet, fairly depthless depiction of love and grief. (2:08) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

She’s Out of My League From the co-writers of the abysmal Sex Drive (2008), She’s Out of My League could be another 90-minute assemblage of gross-out humor, dick jokes, and unabashed homophobia. As it turns out, the latest offering from Sean Anders and John Morris is legitimately funny — far better than the trailer (and that half-assed title) would have you believe. The adorkable Jay Baruchel stars as Kirk, a hapless loser who finds himself dating bonafide hottie Molly (Alice Eve). Once you get past the film’s silly conceit — Kirk’s only "movie ugly," and personality goes a long way — you’re left with a surprisingly charming comedy. The characters are amusing and the wit is sharp. Not to mention the fact that She’s Out of My League offers a downright heartfelt message. There’s a sincerity here that feels genuine instead of just tacked-on: yeah, yeah, it’s about what’s inside that counts, but there’s more to it than that. Ignore the dreadful "jizz in my pants" scene, and the movie’s almost an old-fashioned romcom. (1:44) Elmwood, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

Shutter Island Director Martin Scorsese and muse du jour Leonardo DiCaprio draw from oft-filmed novelist Dennis Lehane (2003’s Mystic River, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone) for this B-movie thriller that, sadly, offers few thrills. DiCaprio’s a 1950s U.S. marshal summoned to a misty island that houses a hospital for the criminally insane, overseen by a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who believes in humane, if experimental, therapy techniques. From the get-go we suspect something’s not right with the G-man’s own mind; as he investigates the case of a missing patient, he experiences frequent flashbacks to his World War II service (during which he helped liberate a concentration camp), and has recurring visions of his spooky dead wife (Michelle Williams). Whether or not you fall for Shutter Island‘s twisty game depends on the gullibility of your own mind. Despite high-quality performances and an effective, if overwrought, tone of certain doom, Shutter Island stumbles into a third act that exposes its inherently flawed and frustrating storytelling structure. If only David Lynch had directed Shutter Island — it could’ve been a classic of mindfuckery run amok. Instead, Scorsese’s psychological drama is sapped of any mystery whatsoever by its stubbornly literal conclusion. (2:18) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

A Single Man In this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, Colin Firth plays George, a middle-aged gay expat Brit and college professor in 1962 Los Angeles. Months after the accidental death of Jim (Matthew Goode), his lover for 16 years, George still feels worse than bereft; simply waking each morning is agony. So on this particular day he has decided to end it all, first going through a series of meticulous preparations and discreet leave-takings that include teaching one last class and having supper with the onetime paramour (Julianne Moore) turned best friend who’s still stuck on him. The main problem with fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford’s first feature is that he directs it like a fashion designer, fussing over surface style and irrelevant detail in a story whose tight focus on one hard, real-world thing — grief — cries for simplicity. Not pretentious overpackaging, which encompasses the way his camera slavers over the excessively pretty likes of Nicholas Hoult as a student and Jon Kortajarena as a hustler, as if they were models selling product rather than characters, or even actors. (In fact Kortajarena is a male supermodel; the shocker is that Hoult is not, though Hugh Grant’s erstwhile About a Boy co-star is so preening here you’d never guess.) Eventually Ford stops showing off so much, and A Single Man is effective to the precise degree it lets good work by Goode, Moore and especially the reliably excellent Firth unfold without too much of his terribly artistic interference. (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Sweetgrass Recorded between 2001-03 by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, Sweetgrass immerses us in sheep farming before taking off after a pair of latter-day cowboys on a 150-mile drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth range — a journey with deep historical roots and no practical future. As its rugged scenery beggars (but ultimately unseats) projections of the pastoral, so too do its mild sheep trigger myriad symbolic associations. Sweetgrass is finally about the relationship between farmhands and their flocks, and in this, it is notably unsentimental. During long takes of shearing and birthing, the correspondent displays of violence and tenderness, much of it erotic and seemingly reflexive, speaks to the human-animal encounter Berger eulogized in 1977. The lonesome cowboys whisper sweet nothings to the dogs and hurl fantastically mismatched streams of curses at the sheep (the absence of women being the common link). Through it all, Castaing-Taylor’s camera is an embodied presence, and hard work at that. Compared with Planet Earth‘s impossible views and spectacular displacements, Sweetgrass has its feet planted on the ground. (1:41) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Goldberg)

REP PICKS

The Female Bunch Al Adamson was the Ed Wood Jr. of the late 60s and 1970s, albeit a version without any delusions of grandeur — in it for the money, he knew his ultra-cheap films were crap. This one, titled to cash in on The Wild Bunch and made the same year (though there were no distribution takers until 1971, two years later), is closer to an unacknowledged, soporific remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ great ’68 She-Devils on Wheels, with the deadly dames on horseback rather than motorcycles. When Sandy (Nesa Renet) is dumped by her faithless Vegas lounge singer boyfriend — and no wonder, since she behaves like a Velcro doormat — her showgirl friend Libby (peroxide-blonde perennial Adamson star and subsequent spouse Regina Carroll) recommends she join a "club" of women on a secret ranch. They smuggle drugs, have soft-core orgies (with Mexican men and each other), abuse the local "wetbacks," and enforce a strict "no men" rule on ranch property whose violation can lead to the poor sod getting branded, dragged to death, or worse. One such unfortunate is Russ Tamblyn, who sure fell hard and fast from being third-billed in Best Picture winner West Side Story just eight years prior; another is pathetic ranch hand Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his last roles, seeming even more pathetic than called for because he was undergoing debilitating cancer treatments at the time. The "she-devil" here is serious man-hater Grace, whose thespian Jennifer Bishop also appeared in such greats as 1970’s Bigfoot (as one of the pretty girls it keeps chained in its cave), 1974’s Impulse (imperiled by William Shatner), 1969’s The Maltese Bippy, and two Hee Haw episodes. The Female Bunch was advertised with slogans including "Hot Pants — and a Fast Draw! They Treat Their Horses Better Than Their Men!" It was partially shot at the Spahn Ranch, also home at the time to Charlie Manson and company. This grade-Z opus is preceded at the Vortex Room by the very big-budget Candy (1968), an abysmal stab at Terry Southern’s porn satire whose all-star cast included everyone from Brando and Burton to Ringo Starr, Sugar Ray Robinson, John Huston, and Anita Pallenberg. Thurs/18, 9 p.m., $5, Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. (Harvey)

Music listings

David Talbot

March 16, 2010

Music listings are compiled by Paula Connelly and Cheryl Eddy. Since club life is unpredictable, it’s a good idea to call ahead to confirm bookings and hours. Prices are listed when provided to us. Submit items at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 17

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Astral Force, DC/AC El Rio. 7pm, donation. Benefit for AIDS/LifeCycle.

Epiphanette, Great Girls Blouse, Miriam Speyer and New Blend Retox Lounge. 9pm, free.

Filthy Thieving Bastards, Blag Dahlia, Zander Schloss Thee Parkside. 8pm, $10.

Gomez, Buddy Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Kegels, Jokes for Feelings, Mitchell Experiment Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $8.

Kim Wilson Blues Revue Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $24.

Camaron Ochs, Spooky Flowers, Ayla Nereo Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $12.

Razorhoof, Iron Witch, Hazzards Cure Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

Undead Boys, Love Songs, Dope Charge, Keeners Elbo Room. 6pm, $8.

Zoo Station, Stung Slims. 8pm, $15.

DANCE CLUBS

Booty Call Q-Bar, 456 Castro, SF; www.bootycallwednesdays.com. 9pm. Juanita Moore hosts this dance party, featuring DJ Robot Hustle.

Hands Down! Bar on Church. 9pm, free. With DJs Claksaarb, Mykill, and guests spinning indie, electro, house, and bangers.

Jam Wednesday Infusion Lounge. 10pm, free. DJ Slick Dee.

Machine Sloane, 1525 Mission, SF; (415) 621-7007. 10pm, free. Warm beats for happy feet with DJs Sergio, Conor, and André Lucero.

Mary-Go-Round Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF; (415) 431-0306. 10pm, $5. A weekly drag show with hosts Cookie Dough, Pollo Del Mar, and Suppositori Spelling.

RedWine Social Dalva. 9pm-2am, free. DJ TophOne and guests spin outernational funk and get drunk.

Respect Wednesdays End Up. 10pm, $5. Rotating DJs Daddy Rolo, Young Fyah, Irie Dole, I-Vier, Sake One, Serg, and more spinning reggae, dancehall, roots, lovers rock, and mash ups.

Synchronize Il Pirata, 2007 16th St., SF; (415) 626-2626. 10pm, free. Psychedelic dance music with DJs Helios, Gatto Matto, Psy Lotus, Intergalactoid, and guests.

Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJ Carlos Mena and guests spinning afro-deep-global-soulful-broken-techhouse.

THURSDAY 18

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Common Eider King Eider, Raccoons, Das Blut, Hiss and Hum, Marigold Crowns Amnesia. 9pm, $7.

Willie G Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

Gomez, One Eskimo Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Groove Armada, Lilofee Fillmore. 8pm, $30.

HIJK, Love is Chemicals, Rademacher Café du Nord. 8pm, $10.

Hurry Up Shotgun, Victory and Associates, Genius and the Thieves Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

*Jucifer, Grayceon, Serpent Crown Thee Parkside. 9pm, $8.

Static Thought, Spawn Atomic, Step Up! El Rio. 8pm, $7.

Tokyo Raid, Pan Demon, Bitch Be Cool, Housecoat Project, Red Penny One Paradise Lounge. 9pm, $7.

Trifles, Cheetahs on the Moon, Bodice Rippers Hotel Utah. 9pm, $6.

Victims Family, Bar Feeders, Polar Bears Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $10.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Babatunde Lea Quintet Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8pm, $20.

Dred Scott Quartet Coda. 9pm, $7.

Pepe Jacobo Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Bassekou Kouyate, Ngoni Ba Slims. 8pm, $25.

Dime Store Dandy Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

DANCE CLUBS

Afrolicious Elbo Room. 9:30pm, $5-7. DJs Pleasuremaker, Señor Oz, and guest Earthrise Soundsystem spin Afrobeat, Tropicália, electro, samba, and funk.

Club Jammies Edinburgh Castle. 10pm, free. DJs EBERrad and White Mice spinning reggae, punk, dub, and post punk.

DJ Key Bump and Tropicana Madrone Art Bar. 5-9pm. With a performance by Mestiza.

Drop the Pressure Underground SF. 6-10pm, free. Electro, house, and datafunk highlight this weekly happy hour.

Echo-A-Gogo Knockout. 10pm, free. Vintage dub reggae with DJ Lucky and friends.

Electric Feel Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $2. With DJs subOctave and Blondie K spinning indie music videos.

Funky Rewind Skylark. 9pm, free. DJ Kung Fu Chris, MAKossa, and rotating guest DJs spin heavy funk breaks, early hip-hop, boogie, and classic Jamaican riddims.

Good Foot Yoruba Dance Sessions Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. A James Brown tribute with resident DJs Haylow, A-Ron, and Prince Aries spinning R&B, Hip hop, funk, and soul.

Heat Icon Ultra Lounge. 10pm, free. Hip-hop, R&B, reggae, and soul.

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Jorge Terez.

Koko Puffs Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary; 885-4788. 10pm, free. Dubby roots reggae and Jamaican funk from rotating DJs.

Meat DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $2-5. Industrial with DJs BaconMonkey, Netik, Sage, and Unit 77.

Nightvision Harlot, 46 Minna, SF; (415) 777-1077. 9:30pm, $10. DJs Danny Daze, Franky Boissy, and more spinning house, electro, hip hop, funk, and more.

Peaches Skylark, 10pm, free. With an all female DJ line up featuring Deeandroid, Lady Fingaz, That Girl, and Umami spinning hip hop.

Represent Icon Lounge. 10pm, $5. With Resident DJ Ren the Vinyl Archaeologist and guest.

Rock Candy Stud. 9pm-2am, $5. Luscious Lucy Lipps hosts this electro-punk-pop party with music by ReXick.

Solid Club Six. 9pm, $5. With resident DJ Daddy Rolo and rotating DJs Mpenzi, Shortkut, Polo Mo’qz and Fuze spinning roots, reggae, and dancehall.

FRIDAY 19

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Joe Bagale, Oona, Thrill of It All Independent. 9pm, $14.

Blasphemous Rumours, Cured Slims. 9pm, $15.

Con Funk Shun Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $26-30.

Deceptikon, Captain Ahab, Twin Crystals, Tik/Tak Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Gomez, Little Ones Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $28.

Groove Armada, Fenech-Soler Live Fillmore. 8pm, $30.

Horse Operas, Goldie Wilson House of Shields. 10pm, $5.

Kaptron, James Lanman, Kit, Kat and the Suitcase Brothers Hotel Utah. 9pm, $10.

Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Voodoo Glow Skulls, Hub City Stompers, Compton SF Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

Yung Mars, Get Back Crew Coda. 10pm, $10.

Z-Trane Electric Trio, Justin Ancheta, Con Brio Pier 23. 9:30pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Black Market Jazz Orchestra Top of the Mark. 9pm, $10.

Emily Anne’s Delights Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Equinox Trio Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Keith Jarrett Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $30-95.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Harlem Gospel Choir Kanbar Hall, 3200 California, SF; www.jccsf.org. 8pm, $40-45.

"Jewish Music Festival" Congregation Sherith Israel, 2266 California, SF; www.jewishmusicfestival.org. 6pm, free. "Journey to Shabbat" performance with Rita Glassman, Yuval Ron, and Jamie Papish. See website for complete festival schedule.

Mazacote Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

Nell Robinson, Henriettas Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF; www.noevalleymusicseries.com. 8:15pm, $18.

Bassam Saba Arab Cultural and Community Center, Two Plaza, SF; www.arabculturalcenter.org. 8pm, $15.

Smiley Mountain Band Plough and Stars. 9pm, $6-10.

Zoyres Eastern European Wild Ferment Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

DANCE CLUBS

Activate! Lookout, 3600 16th St, SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm, $3. Face your demigods and demons at this Red Bull-fueled party.

Alcoholocaust Presents Riptide Tavern. 9pm, free. DJ What’s His Fuck spins old-school punk and other gems.

Bridges: Brooklyn to the Bay and Beyond Elbo Room. 9pm, $8. With DJs Concerned and Jimmy Love, and live performance by Andy Allo.

Deep Fried Butter, 354 11th St., SF; (415) 863-5964. DJs jaybee, David Justin, and Dean Manning spinning indie, dance rock, electronica, funk, hip hop, and more.

Dirty Rotten Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Morale, Kap10 Harris, and Shane King spinning electro, bootybass, crunk, swampy breaks, hyphy, rap, and party classics.

DJ Jeremiah and Friends Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. Afrobeat, ju ju, and tribal funk.

Exhale, Fridays Project One Gallery, 251 Rhode Island; (415) 465-2129. 5pm, $5. Happy hour with art, fine food, and music with Vin Sol, King Most, DJ Centipede, and Shane King.

Fat Stack Fridays Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; (415) 885-4788. 10pm, free. With rotating DJs Romanowski, B-Love, Tomas, Toph One, and Vinnie Esparza.

Gay Asian Paradise Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 9pm, $8. Featuring two dance floors playing dance and hip hop, smoking patio, and 2 for 1 drinks before 10pm.

Good Life Fridays Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF; (415) 989-3434. 10pm, $10. With DJ Brian spinning hip hop, mashups, and top 40.

Hot Chocolate Milk. 9pm, $5. With DJs Big Fat Frog, Chardmo, DuseRock, and more spinning old and new school funk. This week’s guest is QDUP Foundation.

Hubba Hubba Revue DNA Lounge. 9pm, $10-15. Burlesque show.

Look Out Weekend Bambuddha Lounge. 4pm, free. Drink specials, food menu and resident DJs White Girl Lust, Swayzee, Philie Ocean, and more.

Loose Stud. 10pm-3am, $5. DJs Domino and Six spin electro and indie, with vintage porn visual projections to get you in the mood.

M4M Fridays Underground SF. 10pm-2am. Joshua J and Frankie Sharp host this man-tastic party.

Oldies Night Knockout. 9pm, $2-4. Doo-wop, soul, and one-hit wonders with DJs Primo, Daniel, and Lost Cat.

Radioactivity 222 Hyde, SF; http://222hyde.com. 6pm, free. Low-budget synthesizers and Eastern European cold war beats.

Rockabilly Fridays Jay N Bee Club, 2736 20th St., SF; (415) 824-4190. 9pm, free. With DJs Rockin’ Raul, Oakie Oran, Sergio Iglesias, and Tanoa "Samoa Boy" spinning 50s and 60s Doo Wop, Rockabilly, Bop, Jive, and more.

Tingel Tangel Club Second Anniversary Blowout Celebration Café du Nord. 9:30pm, $20. With Veronica Klaus, Joey Arias, Basil Twist, Todd Almond, Fauxnique, Marga Gomez, and DJs Juanita More and Bus Station John.

SATURDAY 20

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Airfix Kits, Housecoat Project, Teutonics, DJ the Wizard, DJ Phil Lantz Knockout. 5-9pm, free. Crime record signing from 5-6pm.

Tim Barry, Possessed by Paul James, Fire Whiskey Thee Parkside. 8:30pm, $10.

Con Funk Shun Yoshi’s San Francisco. 8 and 10pm, $30.

Shane Dwight Biscuits and Blues. 8 and 10pm, $20.

Foreverland, Barely Manilow Mezzanine. 9pm, $15.

Inferno of Joy, Reaction, Dutch Windmill El Rio. 9pm, $7.

Lilan Kane Blues Band Lou’s Pier 47, 300 Jefferson, SF; www.louspier47.com. 8pm.

Octomutt, Dandeline Rite Spot, 2099 Folsom, SF; www.ritespotcafe.net. 9pm, free.

Rosin Coven, George Cole Quintet, Kim Boekbinder Café du Nord. 9pm, $15.

Ron Silva and the Monarchs, Franco Nero Ska Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $8.

Slipstream Sparrows, Headshear, Richard Bitch, Anhata Sound Hotel Utah. 8pm, $8.

Small Change Romeos, Mavalour, Midway Delta, DJ unk’l funk’l El Rio. 3pm, $8.

Uzi Tattoo, Prik Flower, Economen Thee Parkside. 3pm, free.

Xiu Xiu, tUne-YaRdS, Noveller Bottom of the Hill. 10pm, $12.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Alphabet Soup Coda. 10pm, $10.

Audium 9 1616 Bush, SF; (415) 771-1616. 8:30pm, $15.

Eric Kurtzrock Trio Ana Mandara, Ghirardelli Square, 891 Beach, SF; (415) 771-6800. 8pm, free.

Hiromi, Robert Glasper Experiment Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF; www.sfjazz.org. 8pm, $25-55.

Loveseat Trio Revolution Café, 3248 22nd St, SF; (415) 642-0474. 8:45pm, free.

Ricardo Scales Top of the Mark. 9pm, $15.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Albino!, Alma Desnuda Independent. 9pm, $17.

Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge Red Poppy Art House. 8pm, $10-15.

Marara Music Store, 66 W. Portal, SF; www.shelbyashpresents.net. 2pm, free.

Pine Box Boys, Earl Brothers, Last Men on Earth, Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit Slims. 8:30pm, $15.

Fito Reinoso Cigar Bar and Grill, 850 Montgomery, SF; www.cigarbarandgrill.com. 9pm, $7.

Sila, Meklit Hadero, DJ Jeremiah Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $14.

Marcus Tardelli, Carlos Oliviera, Ricard Peixoto Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 242-4500. 8pm, $34.

DANCE CLUBS

Bootie: Donner Party DNA Lounge. 9pm, $6-12. Mash-ups with John! John! and the Wagonistas.

Booty Bassment Knockout. 10pm, $5. Hip-hop with DJs Ryan Poulsen and Dimitri Dickinson.

Cockfight Underground SF. 9pm, $7. With DJs Earworm and Matt Hite.

Fire Corner Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; 885-4788. 9:30pm, free. Rare and outrageous ska, rocksteady, and reggae vinyl with Revival Sound System and guests.

Fringe: An Indie Rock Dance Party Madrone Art Bar. 9pm, $5. With DJs Blondie K and subOctave.

Full House Gravity, 3505 Scott, SF; (415) 776-1928. 9pm, $10. With DJs Roost Uno and Pony P spinning dirty hip hop.

HYP Club Eight, 1151 Folsom, SF; www.eightsf.com. 10pm, free. Gay and lesbian hip hop party, featuring DJs spinning the newest in the top 40s hip hop and hyphy.

Road to Ultra Supperclub, 657 Harrison, SF; info@santrancecisco.com. 10pm, $15. With Javi Cannus, Sheff, Dutch, Michael Anthony, Jeff Richmond, and Hil Huerta.

Saturday Night Soul Party Elbo Room. 10pm, $10. With DJs Lucky, Phengren Oswald, and Paul Paul.

Sharam 1015 Folsom. 10pm, $10. With DJ Rooz, Taj, and more.

Social Club Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF; (415) 431-0306. 9pm. Shake your money maker with DJs Lee Decker and Luke Fry.

Spirit Fingers Sessions 330 Ritch. 9pm, free. With DJ Morse Code and live guest performances.

SUNDAY 21

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

B-Stars, Hi Rhythm Hustlers, Royal Deuces, Karling Abbeygate Band Knockout. 9pm, $8.

*Blowfly, Clarence Reid, Knights of the New Crusade, Awesome Party DNA Lounge. 6:30pm, $15.

David Matthew Daniels, Robert Meade, Sean McArdle Brainwash Café, 1122 Folsom, SF; www.brainwash.com. 6pm, free.

Fat Tuesday Band Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $15.

*Kreator, Kataklysm, Evile, Lightning Swords of Death Slims. 8pm, $24.

Massive Moth, Your Cannons, Here Come the Saviours Hemlock Tavern. 9:30pm, $6.

Janelle Monae Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

Ralph’s World Swedish American Hall (upstairs from Café du Nord). 3pm, $18.

Rollercoaster, Watch it Sparkle, Sweet Nothing Kimo’s. 9pm.

JAZZ/NEW MUSIC

Terry Disley Washington Square Bar and Grill, 1707 Powell, SF; (415) 433-1188. 6pm, free.

"Jazz Jam Session" Epicenter Café. 6pm, free.

Sunday Sessions Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With Wil Blades.

Kenny Washington Bliss Bar, 4026 24th St, SF; (415) 826-6200. 4:30pm, $10.

FOLK/WORLD/COUNTRY

Motel Drive, Clay Thee Parkside. 4pm, free.

"Salsa Sundays" El Rio. 4pm, $5. With Danilo y Universal.

Jake Shimabukuro Yoshi’s San Francisco. 7 and 9pm, $18-24.

"Te Gusto Musical" Coda. 8pm, $10. With Anthony Blea and friends.

DANCE CLUBS

Call In Sick Skylark. 9pm, free. DJs Animal and I Will spin danceable hip-hop.

DiscoFunk Mashups Cat Club. 10pm, free. House and 70’s music.

Dub Mission Elbo Room. 9pm, $6. Dub, roots, and classic dancehall with DJ Sep, Maneesh the Twister, and guest DJG.

Gloss Sundays Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 7pm. With DJ Hawthorne spinning house, funk, soul, retro, and disco.

Honey Soundsystem Paradise Lounge. 8pm-2am. "Dance floor for dancers – sound system for lovers." Got that?

Kick It Bar on Church. 9pm. Hip-hop with DJ Zax.

Stag AsiaSF. 6pm, $5. Gay bachelor parties are the target demo of this weekly erotic tea dance.

MONDAY 22

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

American Studies, Ash Reiter, Mark Matos and Os Beaches Elbo Room. 9pm, $6.

*Karine Denike, Dina Maccabee Band, Upstairs Downstairs Knockout. 9pm, $7.

"Felonious Presents Live City Revue" Coda. 9pm, $7.

Mama Lion, Eighteen Individual Eyes, Heated El Rio. 7pm, $5.

Janelle Monae Café du Nord. 8pm, $12.

DANCE CLUBS

Bacano! Som., 2925 16th St., SF; (415) 558-8521. 9pm, free. With resident DJs El Kool Kyle and Santero spinning Latin music.

Black Gold Koko Cocktails, 1060 Geary, SF; 885-4788. 10pm-2am, free. Senator Soul spins Detroit soul, Motown, New Orleans R&B, and more.

Death Guild DNA Lounge. 9:30pm, $3-5. Gothic and industrial with DJs Decay, Joe Radio, and Melting Girl.

Manic Mondays Bar on Church. 9pm. Drink 80-cent cosmos with Djs Mark Andrus and Dangerous Dan.

Motown on Mondays Madrone Art Bar. 6pm, free. With DJ Gordo Cabeza and guests.

Monster Show Underground SF. 10pm, $5. Cookie Dough and DJ MC2 make Mondays worth dancing about, with a killer drag show at 11pm.

Network Mondays Azul Lounge, One Tillman Pl, SF; www.inhousetalent.com. 9pm, $5. Hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word open mic, plus featured performers.

TUESDAY 23

ROCK/BLUES/HIP-HOP

Axe, Terroritmo, Foga Na Roupa Elbo Room. 9pm, $7.

Devendra Banhart and the Grogs, Dorothy and the Originals Warfield. 8pm, $27.50-32.50.

Bias Tape, AJ Rivlin El Rio. 8pm, free.

Jason Collett, Bahamas, Zeus Café du Nord. 8:30pm, $15.

Jamie Cullum, Imelda May Fillmore. 8pm, $35.

Fell Voices, Addaura, Elk, Necrite, DJ Rob Metal Thee Parkside. 8pm, $8.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Bleached Great American Music Hall. 9pm, $17.

Serena Maneesh, Depreciation Guild, Veil Veil Vanish Bottom of the Hill. 9pm, $12.

Savoy Brown Biscuits and Blues. 8pm, $20.

Stagger and Fall, Hollowbodys, Idle Threats, Hounds and Harlots Knockout. 9:30pm, free.

Thralls, All Time High, Hollow Earth Hemlock Tavern. 9pm, $6.

DANCE CLUBS

Alcoholocaust Presents Argus Lounge. 9pm, free. With DJs Corruptor Ref, Sebastian Twot, and What’s His Fuck.

Eclectic Company Skylark, 9pm, free. DJs Tones and Jaybee spin old school hip hop, bass, dub, glitch, and electro.

La Escuelita Pisco Lounge, 1817 Market, SF; (415) 874-9951. 7pm, free. DJ Juan Data spinning gay-friendly, Latino sing-alongs but no salsa or reggaeton.

Share the Love Trigger, 2344 Market, SF; (415) 551-CLUB. 5pm, free. With DJ Pam Hubbuck spinning house.

Womanizer Bar on Church. 9pm. With DJ Nuxx.

Oakland’s Camaron Ochs may inspire folk-pop Barbie

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

March 16, 2010

Oakland’s Camaron Ochs may inspire folk-pop Barbie

Big blonde hair, rosy cheeks, and an adorable little frame … folk-pop songstress Camaron Ochs — who’ll be performing Wed/17 at Cafe Du Nord — is a doll. Coincidentally, she is also being stalked by one— the Oakland singer-songwriter has seen quite a lot of Barbie in the past year, the long plastic limbs have been spotted at two East Bay venues where Ochs took the stage: the Stork Club, where the bar is decorated with stacks of cased holiday Barbies and Mama Buzz, the coffee shop/art gallery that hosted an art exhibit of the dolls in adult-style dioramas.

“There’s a Bat Girl Barbie at the Stork Club and I want it,” she says with a warm smile. “And I really liked the Barbie on the unicorn at Mama Buzz.”

Besides the constant grin, Ochs has nothing in common with her 11.5-inch stalker. An extensive travel record and a day job as a lab manager for emotion research means this pretty lady’s personality is far from plastic. Ochs’ brand of folk-pop is light and sweet, with genuine lyrics that ask listeners to live with their “heartforward”; a term Ochs coins as her philosophy on life and the title of her debut album.

“I came up with the term when I was living in Nepal. I was learning all about the seven chakras— the heart is the fourth,” she explains at a coffee shop in her sunny Temescal neighborhood. Skipping a few details, Ochs summarizes that being ‘heart forward’ literally means setting yourself up to take in the endless possibilities that surround us. “It’s about putting yourself out there, not just in a romantic sense, but in a life-sense.”

Bright guitar strums and a beautiful, rich voice flutter throughout Ochs’ songs, lyrics exploring relationships and offering insightful snapshots into lessons she’s learned while visiting cities around the world. Inspiration stems from other indie-folk blends, like The Weepies and yet also carry a more country tone, like that of her other favorite artist, Patsy Cline. There’s an audible optimistic bliss in her music and an honest indication that the woman behind the strings is a solid, well-rounded being.

Born a California girl, Ochs grew up with an interest in music, taking notes from her grandparent’s love of classic country and learning to sing in multiple languages. In college Ochs started her own A Cappella group, but it wasn’t until her study abroad experience in the Netherlands that she picked up a guitar.

“I decided to do the college thing— get a guitar. But I wasn’t any good at it. I would play on the streets of Amsterdam and then I even tried to sell it on the street, but no one wanted it.”

Eventually she gave it to a boyfriend and headed back home. A few months later, Ochs realized she missed her box of strings.

“So I borrowed a backpacker, basically just the neck of a guitar without the body, and brought it with me into the mountains of Nepal.” The trip included a flight over Kathmandu, a six-hour bus ride, five hours in a taxi and a ten-hour walk straight up into the mountain to where she would take residency for the next six weeks.

A girl on her own in a foreign land, Ochs had no choice but to keep an open mind and her ‘heartforward.’

“The first two weeks, I cried and cried. All I could focus on was how much different everything was there,” she says recalling the trip. “And then I realized that when you strip away everything you’ve ever had in your entire life, that’s when you see what you really are and who you really want to be.”

She met a couple of traveling Canadians and together they would play music, battling the inconsistent electricity with late night guitar parties. Building on that experience and developing her own relationship with the instrument once she returned home, Ochs is now playing confidently and taking on stages across the Bay with a full band. She couldn’t have been happier when her CD release party sold out.

“I think I’m really lucky. But I’m working really hard, so I guess it’s really not luck afterall.”

Camaron Ochs

Wed/17, 8:30pm, $12

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

Alerts

David Talbot

March 16, 2010

By Jobert Poblete

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17

Citywide community meeting

Advocates for homeless youth in San Francisco discuss the upcoming supervisor elections and the proposed sit/lie ordinance, a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom to criminalize sitting on sidewalks.

5:30–7 p.m., free

LGBT Community Center

1800 Market, SF

smashbangboom@gmail.com

"Shout! Art by Women Veterans"

The peace and social justice group Swords to Plowshares hosts this two-day event to honor women veterans and bring together community members working to serve them.

6–-9 p.m., $10

1632 C Market, SF

www.swords-to-plowshares.org

THURSDAY, MARCH 18

Poizner on Poizner

The Commonwealth Club hosts Steven Poizner, California’s insurance commissioner and a candidate to be the Republican nominee for governor this June. Poizner has stirred controversy recently with his anti-immigrant position, so come listen to or protest his plans for California.

5:30 p.m., $7–$45

Lafayette Veterans Memorial Hall

3780 Mount Diablo Blvd., Lafayette

www.commonwealthclub.org

Bilingually speaking

The Piedmont Appreciating Diversity Committee, Piedmont League of Women Voters, and Diversityworks screens Speaking in Tongues, a film about bilingual programs in Bay Area Schools and a 2009 SF International Film Festival Audience Award winner.

6:30–9 p.m., free

Wildwood School Auditorium

301 Wildwood, Piedmont

www.diversityfilmseries.org

FRIDAY, MARCH 19

Planetary grooving

Stomp the Stumps! brings together political rock dance bands to raise money for environmental causes. This year’s concert features the Quilt, the Funky Nixons, and the Gary Gates Band. Proceeds go to the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters and Earth First!

8 p.m., $10 adv/$12-15 at the door

Ashkenaz

1317 San Pablo, Berk.

www.ashkenaz.com

SATURDAY, MARCH 20

Antiwar march and rally

Another year, another Iraq war anniversary. This one marks the seventh anniversary of the start of the Iraq war. This year’s march also supports city hotel workers’ contract fights by paying visits to two hotels being boycotted by their union, UNITE HERE Local 2.

11 a.m., free

Civic Center Plaza, SF

www.answersf.org

SUNDAY, MARCH 21

Great American Meatout

Thinking about going vegetarian? To get you started, the San Francisco Vegetarian Society and Unitarian Universalist Church will host its fifth Meatout Celebration, complete with a vegetarian lunch and free recipes.

12:15–3:30 p.m., $5

Unitarian Center

1187 Franklin, SF

www.sfvs.org

TUESDAY, MARCH 23

UC Regents Meeting

Today is the first day of the UC Board of Regents’ three-day meeting at UCSF. Inside, the regents will discuss buildings, grounds, and capital projects; outside, there will be fireworks of sorts as activists mobilize for protests.

2:30 p.m., free

Community Center, UCSF Mission Bay

1675 Owens, SF

www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; 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.

Steve Poizner is scary!

Sasha Cuttler

March 16, 2010

I knew that Republicans have gotten pretty loony these days, but gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner was downright scary in his debate with Meg Whitman yesterday, threatening to create racial unrest and bankrupt the state in the name of being more conservative-than-thou.

He wants to deny all public services to undocumented immigrants and chided Whitman for not currently supporting Prop. 187, the 1994 measure that was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. And after correctly saying California was “on the brink of economic collapse,” he went on promote that collapse by calling for a 10 percent reduction in sales, corporate, and income taxes, which really would bankrupt a state government that is already wrestling with a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.

Now, I know that he’s pandering to the right-wing lunatic fringe of California, where Republicans are less than a third of voters and shrinking, and they’re all riled up these days from drinking too much Fox-brewed tea. But damn, this guy has really lost his mind.

Behind the Mexican drug war

Zelda Bronstein

March 15, 2010

Editors note: The killings of three U.S. consular employees in Ciudad Juarez has brought increased press attention in this country to the violence of Mexico’s drug gangs. Our Mexico City correspondent, John Ross, reports on the background story.

MEXICO CITY – Last July, in a meticulously planned raid reminiscent of the classic guerrilla jail breakouts that are legend in Latin America, a commando force of 20 heavily armed fighters freed 53 comrades from a prison in the northern state of Zacatecas. Were the perpetrators in fact guerrilleros from some as-yet unknown revolutionary foco or narcos emulating a guerrilla-style jailbreak intent on freeing their own?

Recent assassination attempts against high-ranking state officials — Sinaloa’s Secretary of Tourism (successful), Coahuila’s Attorney General (the restaurant at which he was dining with a Texas mayor was sprayed with automatic weapon fire), and a Baja California finance undersecretary (hung by the neck from a Tijuana freeway overpass) — suggest revolutionary retribution in a year that marks the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution in which jitters of new uprisings are legion. January 1st was welcomed in with anarchist bombs, sabotage, and “expropriations” in Mexico City and Tijuana on the northern border.

Although the incidents cited suggest revolutionary subversion, they were all the handiwork of Mexico’s five narco cartels, which are locked in an intractable war with both President Felipe Calderon’s military and federal police — and reportedly hundreds of U.S. drug warriors — that has now taken more than 19,000 lives since December 2006.

The jail breakout in Zacatecas and the Sinaloa and Coahuila shootings are attributed to the syndicates headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, his former associates in the Beltran Leyva gang, and the notorious Zeta cartel.

The hanging of Baja California state finance official Rogelio Sanchez Jimenez was charged to a blood-drenched capo Teodoro Garcia Simentel, a.k.a. “El Teo” or “Three Letters” who is deemed responsible for hundreds of hangings, beheadings, and excessively violent homicides — an associate, Santiago Meza (“El Pozalero”) has reportedly confessed to dissolving 300 victims in vats of acid. Most of the victims were allies of the fading Arellano Felix clan, with whom El Teo is contesting Tijuana.

Simentel was captured this past January 14th in an upscale residential neighborhood of La Paz in adjourning Baja California Sur state, the second top-rung narco purportedly taken down by Mexican authorities in a month. The bust earned bouquets of kudos from Washington, which is financing Calderon’s drug war under the $3,000,000,000 Merida Initiative.

The U.S. role in the capture of El Teo and Arturo Beltran Leyva, “the Boss of Bosses,” who was gunned down by Mexican marines December 16th, appears to have been purposefully downplayed. According to an unidentified member of Calderon’s Security Cabinet as reported by Gustavo Castillo, a La Jornada correspondent with exceptional sources, Simentel was located by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration & Customs Enforcement, a first indication that ICE is now being deployed in Mexico’s drug war.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI are also thought to have armed agents on the ground here under provisions of the Merida Initiative and the North American Security and Prosperity Agreement.

The Calderon government vehemently denies that participation of U.S. agents led to the capture of El Teo or Beltran Leyva, although it acknowledges enhanced cooperation between the two nations’ drug fighters. The suggestion that Washington has assets on the ground here is not acceptable to many Mexicans, whose country has been repeatedly invaded and even annexed by U.S. troops, and is regarded as a violation of national sovereignty.

The number of U.S. security agents working in Mexico is closely held, but observers of Washington’s presence here such as specialist Jorge Camil affirm that it has been rising dramatically since the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington and now totals in the hundreds. The DEA and the FBI now have offices in provincial capitals such as Tuxtla Gutierrez Chiapas, close to the Guatemalan border and multiple smuggling routes.

Mexico is not only in the crosshairs of the U.S. security apparatus because of the flourishing drug trade — the infiltration of terrorists across the porous border also excites attentions, although all reported incidents to date have proven to be false alarms.

Of increasing interest to Washington is the possible alliance of narco gangs with Mexico’s fledgling guerrilla cells, an interpolation of the Colombian model.

The concept of narco-guerrilla coalescence was first proffered in the mid-1980s, soon after Ronald Reagan officially proclaimed the War on Drugs. Then-veep George H.W. Bush, a Navy man, was placed in charge of overseeing interdiction efforts in the Caribbean to stop the Colombian cocaine flow into the southern United States.

Under Bush’s watch, intelligence reports placed the onus on the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Army of National Liberation (ELN), and M-19, a left nationalist movement later decimated by the Colombian army, for extending protection to such world-class kingpins as Pablo Escobar.

The truth was, however, more diffuse: paramilitary units such as the United Auto-Defenders of Colombia (AUC) armed by right-wing rural “terratenientes” (rich land owners) and the Colombian military were the big players in the so-called “narco-guerrillas,” although several FARC fronts openly provided protection to the druglords.

The narco-guerrilla thesis eventually became the underlying reason d’etre for Plan Colombia, in which the twin wars on drugs and terrorism were married. Since the late 1990s, Washington has pumped billions into Colombia to sustain this counter-insurgency strategy. The Merida Initiative, signed in that Yucatan city by George Bush and Felipe Calderon in 2007, is often referred to as Plan Mexico.

As recipients of billion-dollar boodles in U.S. drug war largesse, Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe and Mexico’s Calderon are Washington’s most significant allies on a continent where the left has taken power in a majority of countries.

Today, despite a decade of Plan Colombia, Colombian cocaine production has held steady and the FARC ranks as Latin America’s most powerful narco-guerrilla group. Although Mexico has no known counterpart, FARC activities here are closely monitored. FARC offices were shuttered during the presidency of Vicente Fox (2000-2006) — the FARC and Colombian president Andres Pastrana entabled negotiations in Mexico City in the 1990s.

A Colombian-born National University graduate student was deported to Bogotá last year on terrorism charges for sympathizing with the FARC, and Uribe has issued extradition warrants for a Mexican student who survived the bombing of the Ecuadorian jungle camp of FARC leader Raul Reyes (not his real name) in 2008.

One connection: FARC operators are said to consort with the Valle del Norte Cartel, the main Colombian supplier for El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel. A purported 2007 jungle tete a tete between Reyes, and an unidentified cartel representative suggested the possibility that the Sinaloa boys would buy cocaine directly from the Colombian rebels rather than deal with a series of middlemen suppliers.

Mexico’s armed leftists take pain to steer clear of association with drug gangs. Military intelligence first identified the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as drug and gunrunners on the Guatemalan border, an estimate said to have been backed up by CIA satellite overflights. The Zapatistas have dodged the stigma by waging a vigilant crusade against drugs in their autonomous communities in southeastern Chiapas. Cultivation of marijuana by militants is severely punished by banishment from the EZLN. Nonetheless, the Mexican Army has repeatedly stormed into Zapatista villages on the pretext of marijuana patch sightings.

Mexico’s homegrown guerrilla bands have their roots in the north of the country where this distant neighbor nation’s 1910-1919 revolution first germinated. Revolutionary martyrs Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa, Venustiano Carranza, and Alvaro Obregon were all northerners who marched their armies south to seize power. In 1965, Arturo Gamiz, a disaffected rural schoolteacher, and 12 rebels laid siege to army barracks in Ciudad Madero, Chihuahua; all were killed in the assault. Six years later, the September 23rd Communist League based in the northern industrial city of Monterrey took its name from the date of the assault; 15 armed groups of which the September 23rd league was the most prominent operated throughout Mexico in the 1970s. The Forces of National Liberation (FLN), also based in Monterrey, gave birth to the EZLN in Chiapas. A sister guerrilla group, the Villista Army of National Liberation in Chihuahua, was never consolidated.

Conditions in the north of Mexico where both the narco cartels and the military concentrate their forces are propitious for a resurgence of guerrilla activity.

Unemployment in the region, driven by the decline of the maquiladora industry (many assembly plants have moved to China), is at a 15-year high. The rural economy has been eclipsed by neo-liberal adventures such as the North American Free Trade

Agreement and the deepening recession, the worst in 80 years, is forcing campesinos to abandon their land. A hundred years ago in this vast, mineral-rich region of deserts and scarred mountains, landless peasants and displaced farmers formed the nucleus of Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army.

In 2010, many survive the economic crisis by turning to drug cropping — a half million Mexicans are said to earn their living in the drug economy. One indication of increasingly close ties between militant farmers and the drug cartels was the slaying of Margarito Montes Parra, longtime leader of the leftist UGOCEP (General Popular Union of Workers and Farmers) who was ambushed by cartel gunmen in Ciudad Obregon last fall.

Widespread human rights abuses by federal troops who combat the narcos along the northern border has provoked a wave of anti-army, anti-government anger in many northern states and conditions for a Gamiz-like assault on military installations cannot be discounted should drug gangs and armed radicals find common cause.

For prospective guerrilla formations, alliance with narcos has its perks: weapons and money. Both the narcos and the radicals are interested in subverting the state, although their motives may be distinct. For anti-imperialist revolutionaries, poisoning the Yanquis with drugs is a weapon of class war. But negatives abound: everything the cartels touch is corrupted by profit-driven mercantile greed that is at odds with revolutionary ideals, although there are always those who will argue that the end justifies the means.

For Homeland Security and Washington’s security apparatus, the nightmare prospect of a coalition of narcos and guerilleros cruising the border is reason enough to sustain agents on the ground south of the border whether or not Mexican authorities are prepared to admit their presence. Indeed, this January, Obama’s Justice Department announced the merger of its International Terrorism and Narcotics investigation units to prepare for just such an eventuality. The vision of Mexico as a potentially failed narco-state advanced by the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a 2008 evaluation is a five-star national security issue for Washington and the option of a U.S. preventative invasion is always on the table.

John Ross continues to slog across Obama’s America now in the second month of his monster book tour with “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption In Mexico City” (“gritty and pulsating” – NY Post.) The author will be in Madison Wisconsin, Traverse City, Grand Rapids Michigan and Chicago (Heartland Café March 31st) during the final two weeks of March. Consult johnross@igc.org or www.nationbooks.org for local dates.

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