City Hall Archives — Page 14 of 63 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The plutocrat

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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November 27, 2012

news@sfbg.com

On October 6, 2010, longtime civic leader and financier Warren Hellman stood before the Bay Area Council’s annual dinner and announced the presence of a special guest. MC Hammer stepped forward to introduce the man of honor. His name was Ron Conway, and, according to the SF Business Times, he’d moved to San Francisco from Atherton six years earlier.

But now, he was acting like he owned the place.

Former Mayor Art Agnos was in the audience, and he remembers the moment well. “This guy stood up and said that we have to take the city back from the progressives,” Agnos told us. “I barely knew who he was. I’ve been in San Francisco since 1966, and here he comes telling us what to do.”

Agnos minces no words about the man who is, by some accounts, now the most powerful unelected person at City Hall despite suddenly bursting onto the political scene just last year, shortly after that event. “He’s come to San Francisco using his multimillions of dollars to buy systems and people to effectively mandate his views, to project his way of doing things onto liberal San Francisco.”

So who is this guy? He’s one of Mayor Ed Lee’s closest advisors. He’s poured more than $1 million into the last two local elections — dropping at least $625,000 in this year’s election cycle (journalist Larry Bush reports this year’s total at about $800,000). That includes $275,000 to help pass Prop. E, which lowered the business tax rates for technology companies in which he’s invested, and $69,000 to help oust Sup. Christina Olague for defying Lee and Conway on a couple of key votes.

Conway is one of the Silicon Valley’s preeminent angel investors since just after the dawn of the Internet, parlaying his early successes bankrolling Google, PayPal, and Facebook into investments with a vast array of SF-based tech companies, including Twitter, Digg, Airbnb, and Zynga.

His net worth is widely reported at $1.5 billion, but he disputes that he’s a billionaire. Business Insider obtained a leaked list of his investments in 2011 and it included 228 companies. A report on his investments that appeared on Crunchbase.com quantified many of Conway’s investments, including $10 million each in Square (the SF-based startup by a Twitter founder), Stitcher, Yammer, and Pinterest; $20 million in AddThis, $8.3 million in AirTime; $8 million in BuzzFeed; and $5 million each in Twitter, Friend.ly, and Magnetic, among more than 200 tech investments.

It’s difficult to discern his precise financial worth — but nobody doubts that it’s more than enough to funnel vast amounts into local politics, as Conway has been more willing to do than anyone in these last couple years.

There have always been wealthy people in San Francisco who have tried to throw their money — and political weight — around. Walter Shorenstein, the developer and commercial landlord, dominated Democratic Party politics for decades. Warren Hellman and Gap founder Don Fisher put money and time into political initiatives. The list goes on.

But most of them were fairly homegrown — they’d been active in the city for many years before they became political players. And they tended to make their mark in major charitable and philanthropic efforts as well as partisan politics.

Conway, while he does give money to charities like Ronald McDonald House, is a different type, part of the impatient tech generation that’s right-wing on economic policy (Conway was a registered Republican before switching to decline-to-state as he became political active here in early 2011), wants things done his way, and sees no need for community accountability.

“Warren Hellman was interested in children’s issues, public education, he wanted to invest in building community,” Sup. John Avalos told us. “Conway is all about the bottom line of his industry, and nothing more.”

Avalos complained that Conway (like many in his industry) disdains openness and public access. “It’s all behind the scenes,” he told us. “That’s how he likes to operate.”

In each of the last three years, Conway has doubled or quadrupled his political contributions. He’s the first big spender to operate in the city in the post-Citizens United era, when one rich person can play an outsized role in politics, creating independent expenditure committees that can throw around unlimited amounts of money.

And right now, a lot of City Hall insiders say, this unelected, unappointed operative is helping undermine progressive policy and send city politics in a very different direction.

WEALTHY, CONSERVATIVE ROOTS

Conway declined to be interviewed for this piece, with his press spokesperson — Aaron McLear, who served as press secretary to then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other prominent Republicans — offering up a canned statement for print. So what little we can glean of Conway’s beginnings come from public records, other media reports, and Gary Rivlin’s insightful book The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms.

Ronald Crawford Conway was born in San Francisco on March 09, 1951. The middle child in an Irish-Catholic family of 12 siblings, Conway also has a twin brother, Rick. Ron Conway went to St. Stephen’s boys high school in San Francisco until he was 15, when the family moved to the wealthy nearby enclave of Atherton.

Conway’s father was a top exec at the then-Oakland-based American President Lines, which today is a major shipping company for Walmart’s goods. The elder Conway cashed out for what Conway described as “a couple million dollars,” according to Rivlin.

Driving through Atherton, you get a feel for how starkly different it is from San Francisco. Stone walls 10-feet high surround most homes, many that look like Spanish villas or small castles to the eye of a San Francisco native. The Conways home there was valued at $18 million in 2001.

It was in wealthy, conservative Atherton that Conway found his political voice, according to Rivlin’s book. “It was in high school where I became more outspoken,” Conway told him. While studying political science at San Jose State, Conway served on the Atherton City Council starting at the age of 21, mostly to “counteract the noisy student protesters at nearby Stanford,” Rivlin wrote.

While his father had been active in San Francisco politics as a Democrat, Conway got involved in local Republican politics as a teenager and worked on Nixon’s 1968 campaign for president, telling Rivlin that he and his twin brother were “dyed-in-the-wool conservatives.”

That ideology apparently stayed with Conway, who records show gave $50,000 to George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and $90,000 to Schwarzenegger, his “recover team,” and the California Republican Party in 2005-06.

But, Rivlin noted, “he was hardly someone you would describe as politically engaged.” On the issues, Conway told him, “I could care less.” He cares about government, Rivlin noted, “to the extent it has an impact on the business climate.”

GETTING HIS WINGS

Conway worked for National Semiconductor in the 1970s and cofounded Altos Computer Systems in 1979, selling it in the early ’90s and using its proceeds to become an “angel investor,” providing early capital in exchange for an ownership stake, in small tech startups in the early years of the Internet.

To Conway, being an angel seemed to be about helping the rich get richer by pumping up the first big tech bubble. His Angel Investors, LP consisted of Conway and a number of already wealthy Internet and film luminaries, from hardcore investors and disinterested tinkerers, each contributing to the pot that was controlled by Conway.

To be a part of his exclusive investment club you had to have a minimum net worth of at least a million dollars, or have a famous name, according to Rivlin. Countless of the Internet’s rising stars joined Angel Investors and its successor companies. Cobbled from myriad business journals is a small list from among many of Conway’s chosen: Dean Morton of Hewlett Packard, golfer Tiger Woods, Stanford University Engineering Dean Jim Gibbons, Twitter CEO Biz Stone, entertainer MC Hammer, venture capitalist Frank Quattrone, and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

For a man who made his fortune investing in the hottest names in tech, Conway is often described as a bit of an anti-tech Luddite. Not relying on product knowledge, his strategy boils down to this: Conway trusts his first impression of a startup’s CEO. He goes with his gut, as he explains in a free Stanford YouTube class featuring Conway.

And though sometimes his companies would fail, the successes more than made up for those failures — so much so, that he had to expand. Conway started new LLCs to handle his expanding investments. Angel Investors II started with $150 million, according to Rivlin. SV Angel III and IV were no slouches either, starting with investments of $40 million apiece, according to SEC filings for the companies.

The number of investments from Angel Investors at the time of Rivlin’s 2001 book was already well over the hundreds. And the most recent numbers for SVAngel, from 2011, list the number of startups they’ve invested in at 290 companies.

Conway disciple David Lee officially took over as head of the Angels last year, according to California business filings, but several sources indicate Conway is still the largest investor in the various “Angel” branded companies.

Conway is also the head of a long list of other shadowy businesses, all incorporated in Delaware for its lax tax and regulatory policies. Among the more than a dozen companies just in San Francisco that list Conway as president, partner, founder, or agent-of-service — for which most have little information publicly available — are SV Angel Management Holding, RC Chirp Fund LLC, RC Chirp Management LLC, 2000 Washington Street, 2006 Washington Street, Conway Family Foundation, and Magillicutty LLC.

What separates Angel Investors, though, from the usual investment angels, is Conway’s unique way of leveraging his network, known as his “Rontourage.” Hundreds of tech luminaries and celebrities tied to Conway’s Angel companies have an understanding that they will trade favors, according to Rivlin’s book.

“The only caveat, whether you joined a side fund, an advisory board, or Angel Investors, was that you should lend a hand when you could,” Rivlin wrote. “If you’re in the club, you can do someone a favor and trust that somehow you’re going to get repaid for that favor,” tech entrepreneur Jad Duwaik told Rivlin.

That strategy goes a long way towards explaining what Conway is doing in San Francisco.

CEO OF SAN FRANCISCO

Mayor Lee nows seems to be getting the royal Conway treatment, and the companies Conway invests in are getting strong support from the Mayor’s Office at City Hall, from the tax breaks that Twitter and Zynga received last year to this year’s unsuccessful effort to maintain Ainbnb’s exemption from the transient occupancy tax (a decision made by the Treasurer/ Tax Collector’s Office, which defied Lee’s public lobbying on the issue).

SV Angel has investments or equity in over 103 total San Francisco startups, according to SV Angel documents leaked to Fortune last year, including Airbnb, Digg, Formspring, Wikia, EventBrite, Zynga, StumbleUpon, Justin.TV, and a little company called Twitter.

It was Twitter’s threat to leave San Francisco in early 2011, which newly appointed Mayor Lee countered with a multi-million-dollar exemption from the city’s payroll tax — followed by a repeal of the city’s tax on stock options — that first attracted Conway and his wealth to city politics as Lee’s biggest benefactor.

Conway formed the independent expenditure group San Franciscans for Jobs and Good Government to back Lee and undermine his challengers, seeding it with $100,000 and urging fellow tech titans including Benioff and Sean Parker, founder of Napster and an early Facebook backer, to do the same (see “The billionaire’s mayor,” 10/18/11).

Beyond just money, Conway tapped his connections to back Lee, filling a re-mix video of MC Hammer’s “2Legit2Quit” promoting Lee with members of his Rontourage, including local sports stars Ronnie Lott and Brian Wilson, former Mayor Willie Brown, Twitter CEO Biz Stone, and Google exec Marissa Mayer — all performing their parts on the roof of Conway’s Pacific Heights home during a party he threw for them.

Emboldened by Lee’s decisive victory and the mayor’s apparently willingness to move Conway’s agenda of propping up tech companies, Conway upped the ante this year.

RAISING THE STAKES

After successfully pushing last year’s measure exempting Twitter and other mid-Market businesses from paying taxes on new hires, Conway this year supported broadening out those tax cuts through an overhaul of the business tax that voters approved as Prop. E this year.

The measure initially pitted Conway and the technology companies against more traditional businesses, at least in terms of which companies would see tax hikes and which would get the cuts. With large payrolls and low revenue streams until they take off, tech companies stood to gain the most from the measure.

Some technology companies could see their business taxes decrease by 25 percent, while large real estate firms could see theirs increase by a similar amount. The San Francisco Controller’s Office estimated “information” companies saw their share of city tax revenues drop from 8 percent to 6 percent under the change, while “Finance, Insurance, Real Estate” rose from 23 percent to 28 percent.

In October, Reuters reporter Gerry Shih reported on an heated exchange during a closed-door meeting at City Hall in April, where Conway reportedly cut off SF Chamber of Commerce leaders, telling them they “need to get on board” with backing the tax overhaul because “the tech industry is producing all the jobs in this city.”

That may not be entirely true, but Conway and his tech allies are certainly acting as if they are indispensable to both the business community and the city’s political landscape. The next month, on May 11, Conway donated $49,000 to the newly formed Mayor Ed Lee for San Francisco Committee.

And that was just the beginning of spendy year for Conway, from the $275,000 he spent to help pass Prop. E to the $69,000 that he and his wife Gayle contributed to San Francisco Women For Accountability to go after Olague for defying Lee by supporting efforts to have Prop. E bring in some extra revenue, creating CleanPowerSF, and the reinstating Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi.

Now, Conway has pledged to fund the campaign to recall Mirkarimi, continuing his efforts to support Lee and undermine progressives into the new year.

CONWAY’S AGENDA

Whether the Conway-funded attack on Olague was about power, payback, domestic violence, or something else is difficult to say for sure. But his formation earlier this year of San Francisco Citizens Initiative for Technology and Innovation (sf.citi) made clear his politics and agenda in a strange video it made.

The video talks about the range of San Francisco’s problems — you can’t get a cab fast enough, Muni doesn’t work very well, and there’s trash and graffiti on the streets. All of these problems, the video suggests, can be solved with technology. But there’s nothing in the video, or in sf.citi’s agenda, about homelessness or poverty or the gap between the rich and the poor — or the fact that the tech boom is making a lot of those problems worse.

In fact, sf.citi — and Conway’s agenda — offers nothing for San Franciscans who are not middle class or above. There is no suggestion of an app for facilitating improvements to dilapidated public housing in the city, or for a map of free immunization clinics in low-income neighborhoods, or a database for easily tracking the political influence of Conway and his wealthy friends.

In the end, Conway had only this to stay in a statement delivered to us by McLear: “I am very proud to support Mayor Lee and members of the Board of Supervisors who are tackling the important issues facing our City head-on, from creating jobs for San Francisco residents to building more affordable housing to improving our parks, transit and infrastructure.

I became involved in San Francisco politics and formed sf.citi with leading technology companies because we believe that the technology industry shares in the responsibility to solve our City’s challenges and give back to our community. That’s why I donated generously this year to support consensus measures for our parks, City College, affordable housing and protect Hetch Hetchy, and why sf.citi and so many of its member companies supported these measures as well. sf.citi member companies and I will continue to partner with City leaders and communities to give back to the City we love and work together to create jobs and to improve our public transit, public schools, public safety and the lives of every San Francisco resident.”

But his record shows that he’s mostly interested in how the public sector can help the private sector. McLear says that Conway has supported many Democrats; that’s true of almost anyone who tries to be a power-broker in a city where Republicans are a tiny minority.

“He is not right-wing,” McLear said, but when we asked McLear to tell us if Conway had ever supported a measure to raise taxes on wealthy people, we got no response.

That’s because Conway’s agenda is about — as he himself announced at the Bay Area Council and again later at the Commonwealth Club — repealing the progressive agenda. “He wants to make this a totally business-friendly city with nothing that would slow down his plans or those of his friends,” Agnos said.

Adds Avalos: “He wants San Francisco to be a mirror image of Silicon Valley, but he doesn’t have any real concern for the social impacts for working people, renters, and the rest of us.”

Conway’s role in the campaign to defeat Olague showed a fascinating, and dangerous, side of his politics. When Lee first named Olague to the Board of Supervisors, she told us she was introduced to Conway as someone who would support her.

“Willie Brown collected some checks from him,” she told us. She also said caustic mayoral aide Tony Winnicker, who sent Olague a vicious text message after the Mirkarimi vote with a vow to “defeat you,” is Lee’s main liaison to the tech industry. That vote was the last straw after she didn’t play along with Conway on taxes and defeating CleanPowerSF, so the Conway shithammer came down.

“It was a calculated, cruel political strategy to punish her, and to send a message to other politicians that this is what happens if you cross him,” Agnos said. “And that message is going to spread unless progressives stand up against it.”

Added Olague: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

And Conway doesn’t like to operate in the sunshine. In fact, that’s a key part of his political strategy: Rather than contributing to existing organizations — the Chamber of Commerce, for example — Conway sets up his own independent committees, sometimes several in an election cycle. That can make it harder for the public to follow the money.

Avalos said the main problem with Conway is that “his campaign contributions gives one person, him, overwhelming influence in San Francisco elections and puts San Francisco’s democracy at great peril. ” Steven T. Jones and Larry Bush contributed to this report

Aggressive Warriors

Andrew Lam

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November 20, 2012

0

steve@sfbg.com

No standard defensive strategy is likely to stop the Golden State Warriors, Mayor Ed Lee, and their huge team of partners and employees from dominating the game of approving construction of a new basketball and concert arena on San Francisco’s central waterfront. That became clear on Nov. 14, as the political operation overcame fire, darkness, and neighborhood-based opposition for the first big score.

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee was set to consider declaring the project, which the Warriors want to build on Piers 30-32 by the 2017 basketball season, to be “fiscally feasible,” recommending it move forward with more detailed environmental studies and a term sheet nailing down myriad administrative details.

Before the 11am hearing, the project team held a packed press conference to announce that the Warriors had volunteered to abide by the city’s local-hire standards for public works projects, hiring San Francisco residents or military veterans for at least 25 percent of total construction jobs and 50 percent of apprenticeships. A beaming Lee praised the deal as an “unprecedented” indicator of the Warriors’ willingness to partner with the city.

The event overflowed with union members in hard hats and orange “Build It Now!” T-shirts, as well as a full range of local political pros, from former mayoral and current project spokespersons PJ Johnston and Nathan Ballard to former aides to progressive supervisors, David Owen and David Loyola. Among the agreement’s four signatories were Joshua Arce, the Brightline Defense Project head who last year crusaded for Sup. John Avalos’s local hire ordinance, and building trades chief Michael Theriault.

Strikingly missing at the press conference was Sup. Jane Kim, in whose District 6 the project would be built — over the objections of many residents who are raising concerns about the loss of waterfront views, huge crowds attending what is projected to be more than 200 events per year, high interest rates paid by city taxpayers, the project’s accelerated approval schedule, and other concerns.

Kim is one of the three members of the Budget Committee, which held its meeting despite an electrical fire in the basement of City Hall that knocked out power to the building. Portable photography lighting was brought in to supplement the emergency backup lights, making it bright enough so the televised show could go on but giving a strangely surreal feel to the proceedings and reinforcing the urgency project supporters feel to move this forward without delay.

Kim raised the concerns of her constituents, winning support for amending the resolution to ensure the Citizens Advisory Committee — whose chair was given two minutes to convey how its members feel steamrolled by the accelerated process, asking it be delayed by a month or two — will be given chances to weigh in and pushing the EIR scoping meetings back a few weeks to January.

In the end, Kim and the committee voted to move the project forward. A few days later, on Nov. 19, the process repeated itself with another flashy press conference in the Mayor’s Office — with another important union endorsing the project — followed by the Land Use Committee responding favorably to the project.

The full Board of Supervisors was scheduled to approve the project’s fiscal feasibility the next day, after Guardian press time, but there was little chance that the full board would take any other action than giving the Warriors, Lee, and their huge roster of teammates what they want.

This despite unusual financing and some very real concerns about waterfront development.

JOBS, MONEY, AND SUPPORT

Mayor Lee — who has placed a high priority on this project since announcing his deal with the team in May — emphasized its job creation and contribution to the local economy during the Nov. 19 press conference.

“I remind people, this is a private investment of hundreds of millions of dollars,” Lee said of a project pegged to cost around $1 billion. “It means a lot of jobs, and that is so important to all of us.”

The project is expected to directly create 4,300 jobs: 2,600 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent jobs, including those at the 17,000-seat sports and entertainment arena and the 250-room hotel and 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurants that would be built as part of the project.

“We’ve been spending a lot of these last many months describing what it is we want to build,” Warriors President Rick Welts said at the press conference before casting the project in grander terms. “That’s not really what we’re building. What we’re really building are memories.”

But city residents and workers are looking for more tangible benefits than just the highs of watching big games or concerts. The building trades were already expected to strongly support the project, which only got stronger with last week’s local-hire deal. Labor’s support for the project was broadened on Nov. 19 with the announcement that the Warriors agreed to card-check neutrality for the hotel, making it easier for its employees to join UNITE-HERE Local 2.

“Thank you for being a partner and we’re looking forward to working with you in the future,” Local 2 head Mike Casey, who notably also serves as president of the San Francisco Labor Council, said to Welts at the event before the two signed a formal agreement.

In addition to allowing the hotel workers to easily organize, the Warriors agreed to card-check neutrality for vendors at the arena with at least 15 employees and those outside the arena with more than 45 employees, as well as giving those who now work Warriors’ games at Oracle Arena first dibs on jobs at the new arena.

“I think that speaks a lot about what the project is. It’s not just a San Francisco project, but a Bay Area project,” Casey said. He also said, “I want to thank the mayor for bringing people together and laying all this out.”

While Lee and the Warriors do seem to have this deal pretty well wired, this is still a San Francisco project, a complex one on the politically and environmentally sensitive waterfront that city taxpayers are helping to pay for and one for which the residents there will bear the brunt of its impacts.

PAYING FOR IT

Lee, Office of Economic and Workforce Development head Jennifer Matz, and other key project supporters have repeatedly claimed this project is funded completely with private money, noting how rare that is for urban sports stadiums these days.

But in reality, city taxpayers are spending up to $120 million for the Warriors to rebuild the unstable piers on which the arena will be built, plus an interest rate of 13 percent, an arrangement that has drawn criticism from a key source.

Rudy Nothenberg, who served as city administrator and other level fiscal advisory roles to six SF mayors and currently serves as president of the city’s Bond Oversight Committee, wrote a Nov. 12 letter to the Board of Supervisors urging it to reject the deal.

“Quite simply, I would have been ashamed of such a recommendation,” Nothenberg wrote of the high interest rate. “In today’s markets it is incomprehensible to have such a stunning recommendation brought to your honorable Board in such haste.”

Johnston and Matz each disputed Nothenberg’s characterization, citing a report by the project consultants, the Berkeley-based Economic and Planning Systems Inc. (EPS), that 13 percent is a “reasonable and appropriate market based return.”

Matz told us the rate was based on the risky nature of rebuilding the piers, for which the Warriors are responsible for any cost overruns. And she compared the project to the massive redevelopment projects now underway on Treasure Island and Hunters Point, from which the city is guaranteeing powerful developer Lennar returns on investment of 18.5 percent and 20 percent respectively.

Johnston, who was press secretary to former Mayor Willie Brown and worked with Nothenberg on building AT&T Park and other projects, told us “I have great respect for Rudy.” But then he went on to criticize him for taking a self-interested stand to defend the views from the condo he owns nearby: “They don’t want anything built in their neighborhood. They would rather leave it a dilapidated parking lot.”

But Nothenberg told us his stand is consistent with the work he did throughout his public service career in trying to keep the waterfront open and accessible to the public, rather than blocking those views with a 14-story stadium and hotel complex.

“I have a self-interest as a San Franciscan, and after 20 years of doing the right thing, I don’t want to see this rushed through in an arrogant way that would have been unthinkable even a year ago,” Nothenberg told us. “I spent 20 years of my life trying to deal with waterfront issues.”

He is being joined in his opposition by other neighborhood residents, land use experts such as attorney Sue Hestor, some opponents of the 8 Washington project concerned with the creeping rollback of waterfront development standards, and members of the Citizens Advisory Committee who have felt steamrolled by the rapid process so far and unable to thoroughly discuss the project or the neighborhood’s concerns.

“We would like to slow this process down,” committee Chair Katy Liddell told supervisors on Nov. 14. “Things are going so quickly.”

DETAILS OF THE DEAL

The $120 million plus interest that the city will owe the Warriors would be offset by the $30 million the team would pay for Seawall Lot 330 (the property across from the piers where the hotel would be built), a one-time payment of $53.8 million (mostly in development impact fees), annual rent of nearly $2 million on its 66-year lease of Piers 30-32, and annual tax and mitigation payments to the city of between $9.8 million and $19 million.

Kim raised concerns at the Budget Committee hearing about the more than 200 events a year that the arena will host, but she was told by Matz that’s necessary to make the project pencil out for the Warriors.

Many of the project’s financial and administrative details are still being worked out as part of a term sheet going to the Board of Supervisors for approval, probably in April. Other details will be studied in the project Environmental Impact Report, which is expected to come back to the board in the fall.

The Department of Public Works, Police Department, and — perhaps most critically given its impact on Muni and roadways — Municipal Transportation Agency have yet to estimate their costs.

“We do have a lot of concerns in the neighborhood about this project,” Kim told the Land Use Committee, singling out impacts to the transportation system as perhaps the most important, followed by quality-of-life issues associated with huge crowds of sports fans.

Kim noted that the area already has a problematic transportation infrastructure, with some of the highest rates of motorist-pedestrian collisions in the city and a public transit system that reaches capacity at peak times, and said that many residents worry this project will make things worse. The EIR will deal with the transportation details. But Kim praised how about half the space on the piers, about seven acres, will be maintained as public open space: “I think the open space aspect is incredible and it could actually increase access to the waterfront.” In the end, Kim urged project proponents to heed the input of the CAC and other concerned parties because, “This could be a very valuable project, or it could also be a disaster.”

Supervisors approve nudity ban on close vote

Sasha Cuttler

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November 20, 2012

139

Supervisors approve nudity ban on close vote

Over the objections of progressive supervisors and under threats of a lawsuit from nudists and civil liberties advocates, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted 6-5 to outlaw public nudity in the city. Supervisors voting against the ban were David Campos, Christina Olague, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim.

Sup. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the measure, cast it as a last resort to deal with what has become daily displays of nudity in the Castro district he represents (and most recently around City Hall as his legislation was being considering in committees), noting that, “Public nudity is part of San Francisco and is appropriate in some circumstances.” His legislation makes exceptions for permitted events such as the Folsom Street Fair and Bay-to-Breakers.

But Wiener said that “public nudity can go too far,” as he says it has over the last two years in the Castro’s Jane Warner Plaza, and that “freedom of expression and acceptance does not mean you can do whatever you want.”

Campos echoed some of the legal concerns that critics of the legislation have raised, noting that, “As a lawyer, I do worry about when you ban specific conduct and then you have exceptions to that.” He also questioned whether Wiener has done enough to try to mediate the increasingly divisive conflict he’s been having with the nudist community and whether this was an appropriate use of scarce police resources.

“I don’t believe we’re at the point of saying this becomes a priority over violent crime,” Campos said, noting that he’s been unable to get more police foot patrols to deal with a recent spate of violent crimes in the Mission, which shares a police station with the Castro.

Avalos said it was absurd to focus city resources on this victimless issue when the city is wrestling with far more serious problems, such as poverty and violence, and he played a clip from the film Catch 22 where a soldier goes naked to a ceremony to highlight that absurdity. “I will refuse to put on this fig leaf, I just can’t do it,” Avalos said.

Mar said he sympathized with Wiener’s concerns, but agreed with Campos that Wiener could have done more to mediate this situation before both sides dug in: “I really don’t think we need citywide legislation, particularly overbroad legislation, to deal with a problem isolated to one neighborhood.”

Wiener seemed stung by the comments and said he could cite example of each supervisor pushing resolutions or ordinances that dealt with similarly trivial issues, comparing it to refusing to deal with a constituent’s pothole complaint until that supervisor fixed Muni and solved the city’s housing problem. But Campos pushed back, calling the comparison ridiculous and saying there was no reason for a citywide ban to deal with such an isolated issue.

Nudists at the hearing reacted angrily to the approval and started to disrobe before President David Chiu ordered deputies to intervene and abruptly recessed the hearing. Now, it will likely be up to the courts to decide whether Wiener’s concerns about weiners can withstand legal scrutiny.

Critics urge caution on fast-moving Warriors arena deal

Sasha Cuttler

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November 13, 2012

28

Critics urge caution on fast-moving Warriors arena deal

UPDATED The proposal to let the Golden State Warriors build a new sports arena complex at Piers 30-32 is moving forward quickly, with the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee considering approving its fiscal feasibility tomorrow (Wed/14), the Land Use Committee hearing its design and transportation aspects on Monday, and the full board scheduled to move it forward on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving. After that, it will undergo an environmental study and work on myriad fiscal and administrative details, coming back to the board for final approval, probably in the fall, with the goal of opening by the 2017 basketball season.

[UPDATE 11/14: The Finance Committee today voted 3-0 to approve findings of fiscal feasibility for the project after Sup. Jane Kim made amendments delaying the EIR scoping session until January and ensuring the Citizens Advisory Committee will be given more time to review the project and its term sheet. City officials and the Warriors also signed a deal this morning requiring that at least 25 percent of its construction jobs and half of its apprenticeship positions go to local residents or military veterans. We’ll have more details and analysis of what happened in the coming days.]

Critics of the project say it is being rammed through too quickly, with too little public notice or attention to blocking off views of the bay, and on terms that are too costly to city taxpayers. To some, Lee’s quest for a “legacy project” is reminiscent of the groupthink boosterism that characterized the initial America’s Cup proposal, before it was revealed to really be a lucrative waterfront real estate scheme that was great for developers but costly to the public, and later abandoned.

And just like last time, when the Guardian, then-Sup. Chris Daly, Budget Analyst Harvey Rose, and others forced a major scaling back of the developers’ ambitions, there are some prominent voices of caution now being raised about the Warriors arena deal and its potential to fleece city taxpayers, including concerns raised by someone with decades of experience shepherding some of San Francisco’s biggest public works projects.

Rudy Nothenberg, who served as city administrator and other level fiscal advisory roles to six SF mayors and currently serves as president of the city’s Bond Oversight Committee, yesterday wrote a letter to the Board of Supervisors urging it to reject the deal.

Among other things, he criticized the 13 percent interest that city taxpayers would pay on the $120 million in pier restoration work that the Warriors will do. “Quite simply, I would have been ashamed of such a recommendation,” Nothenberg wrote. “In today’s markets it is incomprehensible to have such a stunning recommendation brought to your honorable Board in such haste.”

Project spokesperson PJ Johnston and its main advocate City Hall, Office of Economic and Workforce Development head Jennifer Matz, each disputed Nothenberg’s characterization, citing a report by the project consultants, the Berkeley-based Economic and Planning Systems Inc. (EPS), that 13 percent is a “reasonable and appropriate market based return.”

Matz told us the rate was based on the risky nature of rebuilding the piers, for which the Warriors are responsible for any cost overruns. And she compared the project to the massive redevelopment projects now underway on Treasure Island and Hunters Point, from which the city is guaranteeing powerful developer Lennar returns on investment of 18.5 percent and 20 percent respectively.

Johnston, who was press secretary to former Mayor Willie Brown and worked with Nothenberg on building AT&T Park and other projects, told us “ I have great respect for Rudy.” But then he went on to criticize him for taking a self-interested stand to defend the views from the condo he owns nearby: “They don’t want anything built in their neighborhood. They would rather leave it a dilapidated parking lot.”

But Nothenberg told us his stand is consistent with the work he did throughout his public service career in trying to keep the waterfront open and accessible to the public, rather than blocking those views with a 14-story stadium and surrounding commercial and hotel complex.

“I have a self-interest as a San Franciscan, and after 20 years of doing the right thing, I don’t want to see this rushed through in an arrogant way that would have been unthinkable even a year ago,” Nothenberg told us. “I spent 20 years of my life trying to deal with waterfront issues.”

Among those also sounding the alarm about how quickly this project is moving is land use attorney Sue Hestor and former Mayor Art Agnos, who told us the supervisors should heed the input of Nothenberg and make sure this is a good deal for the city.

Agnos said, “Rudy Nothenberg stands apart from every other department head and CAO in the modern history of San Francisco for his financial and managerial expertise in bringing major projects with complex finances to completion that worked for our City. That is why the past six mayors…whether conservative or liberal…trusted him to advise them and administer the biggest projects in this city from Moscone Convention Center to the new main library to the Giants baseball park and Mission Bay. “

Legislative Analyst Harvey Rose released his initial analysis of the project on Friday. The $120 million plus interest that the city is paying to the Warriors would be partially offset by the $30 million the team would pay for Seawall Lot 330, a one-time payment of $53.8 million (mostly in development impact fees), annual rent of nearly $2 million on its 66-year lease of Piers 30-32, and annual tax and mitigation payments to the city of between $9.8 million and $19 million.

But the report also notes that many city departments and agencies – including the Department of Public Works, Municipal Transportation Agency, and the Police Department – have yet to estimate their costs. Both Johnston and Matz emphasized Rose’s conclusion that the project is “fiscally feasible” – the determination that supervisors will have to agree with to move the project forward – but the report also noted “the finding of ‘fiscal feasibility’ means only that the project merits further evaluation of environmental review.”

The full text of Nothenberg’s letter follows:

Dear Supervisors:

My experience as a high level financial advisor and city administrator for Mayors Moscone, Feinstein, Agnos, Jordan, Brown, and Newsom, and current President of the City’s Bond Oversight Committee cause me to write in the hope that you will reject the outrageous 13% interest rate that the developers of the waterfront arena are proposing to charge the City for their cost of replacing Piers 30/32.

In my years as General Manager of Public Utilities, the Municipal Railway System, Water and Hetch Hetchy, and later as the Chief Administrative Officer for the City and County of San Francisco, I took probably more that a billion dollars worth of various debt instruments to the Board.

Never…even in the worst days of highest modern era interest rates of the 1970’s hovering at 20% …never did I ever bring a 13% City borrowing to the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors for approval. Quite simply, I would have been ashamed of such a recommendation.

In today’s markets it is incomprehensible to have such a stunning recommendation brought to your honorable Board in such haste.

Even more remarkable is the fact that just weeks ago, Allentown, Pennsylvania has just procured a 4.78 % interest rate for $224.4 million of taxable bonds to help build with private contributions a hockey arena for 8500 seats.

Yet, you are being told the best our city can do is 13% for $120 million.

No Board of Supervisors I ever appeared before would tolerate such dramatic discrepancy.

It is with this in mind, I would most respectfully urge you to send this proposed deal back to the developers, instructing the City’s negotiators not to bring it back without a far more favorable interest rate for City tax payers not to exceed a maximum of 7.5%.

And that would still be almost twice what the City would need to pay for City issued debt and more than amply compensate the developers for any risk premium that they allege that they are taking.

Any such instruction from you to the City negotiators should also make it clear that they are not to make any new concessions to the developers in exchange for achieving a still high, but eminently more reasonable interest rate.

Thank you for your attention.

Rudy Nothenberg

Chief Administrative Officer (Ret.)

Documentation:

1. The Warriors Arena negotiates 13% interest on $120 million from San Francisco when the City of Allentown in Pennsylvania just issued $224.4 million of taxable bonds for an arena at an average interest rate of 4.78%.

13% for SF versus 4.78% for Allentown

http://www.allentownpa.gov/Home/AllentownCityNews/tabid/142/xmmid/636/xmid/2000/xmview/2/Default.aspx

City of Allentown – PA – Official Site

www.allentownpa.gov

The official website for the City of Allentown, PA. Learn about all the exciting events going on in the city of Allentown, from music, arts, theater, and sports. Allentown is the largest city in the

2. Allentown hockey arena bonds cost $4.2 million to issue …

www.lehighvalleylive.com/allentown/…/allentown_hockey_ar…

Oct 10, 2012 – About $224.4 million in municipal bonds were sold last week to help finance arena construction. City officials say the issuance costs are about …

Get ready for a garbage rate hike

Zelda Bronstein

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November 12, 2012

30

Recology, the San Francisco garbage monopoly, usually comes to the city to ask for a rate increase once every five years or so. It’s been almost seven since the last one — and it’s not as if the company’s costs have come down. Anyone who’s running big diesel trucks and paying for fuel has been hammered in the past year or two.

So why did the folks at Recology wait until this fall — Sept. 11 — to let the city know they want to change the way they charge for trash — and most likely rise rates at the same time?

Well, for one thing, there was a ballot measure back in June that would have broken up the lucrative monopoly and opened the waste-removal franchise to competitive bidding. That’s Recology’s worst nightmare. Since 1932, the company (through its predecessors) has had the exclusive right to pick up residential and commercial refuse in San Francisco; unlike virtually every other outfit that does this level of business with the city, the contract never comes up for renewal and nobody else ever gets to bid. There’s virtually no chance that anyone but Recology would ever win a bid for the deal anyway — we’re talking about a unionized, worker-owned local company, and all of the other big garbage outfits are nasty out-of-state operations with bad management and environmental records. But if there were other bidders, Recology might have to sweenten the city’s deal — keep the rates lower or give some more money to City Hall.

Ant any rate, the ballot measure went down under a flood of Recology money, and to nobody’s surprise the rate hike is now on the table.

Your rates won’t actually go up for a while — the process is long and complicated and both Recology and the Department of Public Works agree that the earliest any new pricing would go into effect would be next summer. We won’t actually see a firm proposal until December.

But already, the company’s talking about ending the current practice of charging for the black (garbage-to-the-landfill) cans and picking up recycling and compost free. The city and the company are both trying to reduce the amount of landfill material that gets discarded — and ultimately, everyone would like to eliminate the black cans altogether. But that, Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner told me, doesn’t work with the current business model: “We can’t rocus our financial operations on a black can if we’re trying to get rid of it.”

Which leads to a dilemma: If you want people to recycle and compost more, how do you get away with charging them more to do it? “That’s the challenge,” Potashner said.

Either way, the rates are going to go up. “There hasn’t been a cost-of-living increase since 2010,” Douglas Legg, finance director at DPW, told us. The increase might be fairly steep, too — after all, it’s been seven years since the last one.

All of which comes back to the competitive bidding question. If this weren’t a monopoly, and Recology had to compete for the contract every once in a while, “these rate hikes might be more moderate,” retired Judge Quentin Kopp, a longtime critic of the company, told us.

Finally, some clarity in SF

Zelda Bronstein

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November 6, 2012

7

So right after I complained about SF dragging its feet on returns, we get another big chunk and it shows Eric Mar taking D1 handily. Amazing: A carpet-bombing campaign of big money, and the quiet progressive pulls it out.

Now: He had the support of Rose Pak, but mostly he had troops on the ground, a lot of them from the labor movement and a lot of them pro-tenant folks who saw the clear and present danger that David Lee would bring to City Hall.

Lee has to be in shock — how can you spend $800,000 and lose in a district race? The guy got 7,300 votes; that’s about $109 a vote. Stunning.

But it shows that, as former Sup. Chris Daly put it, “when progressive are united, we win.”

Progressives were never united in D5 — except in their opposition to London Breed. So now we have to see if the second-place votes break that way — or if a district that elected two Green Party members will wind up putting a moderate centrist on the board.

It’s odd — right now, it appears that either Norman Yee or F.X. Crowley will win in D7, making the most conservative district in the city a swing vote. And if London Breed is elected, the most liberal district in the city could become a swing vote. Weird times.

Tomorrow I’ll try to get some perspective on how all of this happened.

Locally grown

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November 6, 2012

0

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM First and foremost, make it your business to see Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet, which is playing the San Francisco Film Society’s “Cinema By the Bay” series and the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, both of which open this week. (See DocFest article elsewhere in this issue.)

Director Jesse Vile’s film shares some themes with The Sessions, in that its subject is a fiercely talented person who manages to be wildly alive despite being almost completely paralyzed. Hailing from Richmond in the East Bay, Jason Becker got his first guitar at age five as a Christmas present; it wasn’t long before his family realized he was a genuine riff-slingin’ musical prodigy. Home movies and MTV-style videos capture the teenage metalhead’s ascension from school talent shows to jam-packed arenas, and his delight at being hired for a highly sought-after gig in David Lee Roth’s post-Van Halen band.

He was just 20 — big-haired, wide-eyed, and fond of saying “Daaaang!” whenever anything took him by surprise — when he sought medical treatment for what he thought was a pinched nerve but what turned out to be ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Though his body deteriorated rapidly, his remarkably supportive family invented a way for him to communicate using only his eyes. Today, he can no longer play his beloved instrument, but he still makes music — and takes delight in embarrassing whoever’s “translating” for him by cracking off-color jokes.

Closing night selection CXL (from first-time feature director Sean Gillane and writers Theo Miller and Katherine Bruens) follows perpetually bummed-out writer Nolan (Cole Smith), whose Mission District existence is so realistic (oy, that awkward hipster house party) the film could only have been made by a local. Though he still pines for his ex, he falls for Cassie (Lisa Greyson), whose penchant for zany behavior lurches her dangerously close to Manic Pixie Dream Girl status: “I open random doors!” she exclaims when Nolan asks her what she does for fun. Groan.

But wait! Thankfully, CXL changes course before morphing into Ruby Sparks 2 — a dark plot twist ushers in a cheerfully surreal second half, as Nolan’s book, hilariously titled Dehydrated Tears, becomes an unexpected success, and his relationship with Cassie (and with reality) evolves in ways I won’t spoil here. A recurring sight gag has a pack of Nolans trailing behind the real one — suggesting that maybe there are parallel realities at play, or just a guy with a hell of a lot of personal baggage.

Finally, film fans will remember photographer Lucy Gray for “Big Tilda,” a piece that projected huge digital collages of actor (and San Francisco International Film Festival favorite) Tilda Swinton onto SF’s City Hall as part of SFIFF 2006. “A Conversation with Lucy Gray” includes a screening of her short film debut, Genevieve Goes Boating, about a playwright who pens a whimsical story about a girl who sets sail on a homemade boat — narrated by Swinton, of course. *

“CINEMA BY THE BAY”

Fri/9-Sun/11, $12–<\d>$25

New People Cinema

1746 Post, SF

www.sffs.org

The billionaire attack on D5

Zelda Bronstein

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November 2, 2012

155

The attack on Sup. Christina Olague, funded by a couple of right-wing billionaires, is in full swing in District 5, with mailers, robocalls, a social-media buy and even TV ads. It’s a disgraceful effort to buy an election in the final week, a flood of sleaze that’s outrageous even by modern political standards.

On the surface, the PAC called San Francisco Women for Responsibility and an Accountable Supervisor is talking about domestic violence. One mailer features a woman whose daughter was killed by an abuser saying she is “appaled” that Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi still has his job — and that Olague voted not to throw him out. A 60-second TV ad features Ivory Madison, the Mirkarimi neighbor whose video was the centerpiece of the campaign to oust the sheriff.

But the PAC is entirely funded by Ron Conway, his wife Gayle, and Thomas Coates. Conway hasn’t been a leading voice on domestic violence issues, and neither has Coates — they are business people who are primarily interested in making money. In the case of Conway, he’s someone who has publicly announced that he wants to “take San Francisco back” from progressives and install more big-business-friendly politicians at City Hall. Coates is a real-estate investor who has spent a lot of time and money fighting to limit tenant-protection laws.

Why are these two so interested in the D5 race? Well, in an email, Conway told me that “the Committee that my wife Gayle and other women, including longtime anti-domestic violence advocates, have formed and that I and others support exists solely to oppose Christina Olague because she put her own politics ahead of women and the victims and survivors of domestic abuse.”

But it’s eminently clear that there’s a larger agenda here, that the wealthy donors are using the domestic violence issue to get rid of a supervisor who they see as not sufficiently friendly to their economic interests. And there’s probably a bit of payback involved: Olague defied the mayor with her Mirkarimi vote — and while a lot of observers still say this was all a setup to demonstrate her independence in time for the election, Conway, one of the mayor’s closest allies and advisors, clearly didn’t get that message.

Coates lives in Los Angeles. Conway lives in Pacific Heights. Neither of them has any connection the D5 — except for their desire to get rid of Olague. They’ve taken a real, serious issue — domestic violence — and used it to their own political advantage.

We haven’t endorsed Olague, but we know a shady scam when we see one, and that’s exactly what this is. The voters of District 5 should reject this kind of outside-influence politics and not let a couple of billionaires decide the future of their the city.

Calaveras and chysanthemums: Where to celebrate Dia de los Muertos

Andrew Lam

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November 1, 2012

0

I don’t know about you, San Francisco, but after the orange-and-black, champagne-and-candy-corn geyser that the past week has been, I’m ready for a little sobriety, a little quiet reflection, and a lot of community-crafted art (that vagina costume I saw walking down South Van Ness the other day notwithstanding.)

Thank goodness, the next few days are full of lovely Dia de los Muertos moments, and collections of altars honoring those who have passed continue to pop up in more and more places. I’ll even give up on harping on facepainted gringos for a moment. The Bay’s way may not be exactly how the holiday is celebrated in Mexico — but we have created a unique tradition of our own.

“Fluorescent Virgins”

“I realized we don’t talk about death, don’t bring the subject to surface even though we are extremely vulnerable to it,” SF State student Pilar Gordillo told me when I asked her why she was organizing a Dia de los Muertos altar exhibition. The resulting assemblage of shrines by six artists pays homage to passed loved ones, but with a distinctly contemporary patina, bringing the Day of the Dead celebrations all the way out to the Park Merced campus.

Through Nov. 8. Opening reception: Thu/1 5-8pm, free. SF State Cesar Chavez Student Art Center, 1650 Holloway, SF. Facebook: Fluorescent Virgins

Supper of the Souls

Raise money for the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts at a three-course meal in this neo-taqueria. On the menu are chicken with mole colorado, tamales, empanadas, arroz con leche, pan de muertos, and walls bearing art by the man who made La Catarina who she is today, turn-of-the-20th-century Mexican cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada.

Thu/1 6-9:30pm, $75. Tacolicious, 741 Valencia, SF. www.tacolicioussf.com

SOMArts’ altar installation

We love father-son team Rio and Rene Yañez, and the artistic duo’s curatorial powers shine at the yearly SOMArts altar exhibition. The cavernous main gallery of the arts center is turned into an atmospheric labyrinth of multimedia tributes to the dead, with some altars large enough to enter, sit down, and meditate on the fleeting nature of life.

Through Nov. 10. SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF. (415) 863-1414, www.somarts.org

Los Lupeños de San José

The dancers may not be spinning in full white-and-black face, but this edition of City Hall’s free dance series will teach you more about authentic Mexican culture than many of the other events on this list. This Latino troupe has been twirling its skirts since 1969, benefiting from cheorography and mentorship from dance teachers both here and south of the border.

Fri/2 noon, free. SF City Hall rotunda, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Pl., SF. www.dancersgroup.org

North Berkeley Day of the Dead

Bay Area Day of the Dead: not just for the Mission anymore. This year, you can play La Catrina in the burgeoning restaurant district of North Berkeley — or, if you’re not just looking for an excuse to wear facepaint, view altars and mourn those who have recently passed with a candle and your community in the somber night-time processional.

Fri/2 community altars: 5-7:30pm; candle-lit procession 7:45-9pm, free. Shattuck and Rose, Berk. www.gourmetghetto.org

“Death on Installment/La Muerte En Plan de Pagos”

We love the Mission Cultural Center’s ability to push dialogue forward when it comes to Latino art, and this year’s Day of the Dead exhibition curated by Maurizzio Hector Pineda promises to continue its tradition of excellence deeply rooted in community. Wander the colorful displays, check out Aztec dancers, maybe even make a mask while the Mission roils around you in Muerto fesitivities.

Through Nov. 17. Gala reception: Fri/2 6:30-10pm, $5. Mision Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. www.missioncultural.org

Pre-procession sugar skull workshop

Galeria de la Raza was the original center of the Mission’s Dia de los Muertos celebrations, so it only makes sense that you would come here before this year’s procession begins to celebrate with the neighbors. The gallery has been holding workshops teaching the finer points of refined sugar artistry all through October — whip up a sugar skull of your own real quick on this day of Catarina and candle.

Fri/2 6pm, free. Galeria de la Raza, 2857 24th St., SF. www.galeriadelaraza.org

Mission District parade and altars

There’s no denying that the community-led, candle-lit procession and park full of homemade altars can be breathtakingly lovely. Arrive early at Garfield Park to tiptoe around meticulously, sometimes even extravagantly decorated tributes to dead family members and public figures. Add a note of your own to the interactive exhibits, and await the arrival of the costumed procession, whose inevitable approximations of La Catrina are a distinctly San Franciscan way of celebrating the holiday. The all-ages percussion group Loco Bloco will be massing up at 5:30pm in front of Brava Theater (2781 24th St., SF) if you’re looking for the hot spot for skeleton beats, and to get your face painted.

Fri/2 Procession: 6-7pm, free. Starts at Bryant and 22nd St., SF; festival of altars: 6-11pm, free. Garfield Park, Harrison and 26th St., SF. www.dayofthedeadsf.org

SF Symphony Dia de los Muertos community concert

Is a skeleton a xylophone or a marimba? You can bet your sweet sugar skull there’ll be an ocean of chromatic bones, dancing akimbo, at the vibrant annual celebration of the afterlife. The family favorite boasts performances from the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra (playing Aaron Copland’s El Salón México and Jose Pablom Moncayo’s Huapango), dance company Los Lupeños de San José, Mariachi Nuevo Tecalitlán, and more, all narrated by the twinkling Luis Valdez, “father of Chicano theater.” Face painting, paper flower-making, tons of colorful art, and a pre-show by the Mixcoatl Anahuac Aztec dancers, the 30th Street Chorus, and the Solera singers boost the fun — but really they had us at cinnamon-infused Mexican hot chocolate and pan de muerto. (Marke B.)

Sat/3 2pm, $17.50–$68. Davies Symphony Hall, 401 Van Ness, SF. (415) 864-1000, www.sfsymphony.org

Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Sasha Cuttler

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October 31, 2012

72

Olague attacks led by billionaires and a consultant/commissioner with undisclosed income

Understanding how political activists are being paid is important to understanding what their motivations are. For example, is Andrea Shorter – a mayor-appointed former president of the Commission on the Status of Women – leading the campaigns against Sup. Christina Olague and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi out of concern for domestic violence, or is it because of their progressive political stands, such as supporting rent control and opposing corporate tax breaks?

As a city commissioner who is required under state law to report her income on annual financial disclosure forms to the city, the public should be able to know who is paying this self-identified “political consultant.” But we can’t, because for each of the last five years, Shorter has claimed under penalty of perjury on Form 700 to have no reportable income, which means less than $500 from any source – an unlikely claim that was the source of complaints filed today with the Ethics Commission and Fair Political Practices Commission.

Shorter led efforts to have her commission support Mayor Ed Lee’s failed effort to remove Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct, and now she’s become one of the main public faces leading an independent expenditure campaign called San Francisco Women for Accountability and a Responsible Supervisor Opposing Christina Olague 2012, funded with more than $100,000 by Lee’s right-wing financial supporters: venture capitalist Ron Conway and Thomas Coates (and his wife), who has also funded statewide efforts to make rent control illegal.

Neither Shorter nor Conway responded to our requests for comment, but tenant advocates and Olague supporters are pushing back with an 11:30am rally at City Hall tomorrow (Thurs/1). Organizers are calling on activists “to beat back the attacks on rent control and workers by billionaires Ron Conway and the Coates family. The 1 Percent Club, Coates and Conway want San Francisco to be a playground for the rich. Take a stand to say that these opportunists CANNOT buy elections!”

The Ethics Commission complaint against Shorter was filed this morning by sunshine activist Bob Planthold, who also filed a similar complaint a couple weeks ago against District 1 supervisorial candidate David Lee, who also appears to have grossly understated his income of the same financial disclosure form during his service on the Recreation and Parks Commission.

“There’s been too little attention by mayor after mayor after mayor in that the people they appoint are allowed to be sloppy, negligent, unresponsive, and under-responsive to these financial disclosure requirements,” Planthold told us.

Although the Ethics Commission doesn’t confirm or deny receiving complaints or launching investigations, Planthold said Ethics investigators have already notified him that they were investigating the Lee complaint, and he expects similar action against Shorter. “Ethics is pursuing my complaint against David Lee. It’s not one of the many that they decided to ignore,” Planthold said.

The FPPC complaint against Shorter is being filed by former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who told us, “The complaint speaks for itself.”

Although Shorter claims no income on public forms, the political consulting firm Atlas Leadership Strategies lists Shorter as the CEO of Political Leadership Coaching, which works with political candidates and causes. Atlas also represents PJ Johnston, who was press secretary for then-Mayor Willie Brown and now represents a host of powerful corporate clients.

“Her brand of discreet, highly confidential, political coaching works to equip leaders with tools to exercise more effective, impactful, innovative and – where possible – transformative leadership,” was one way Atlas describes Shorter.

Is she working in a discreet and confidential way to elect moderate London Breed to one of the city’s most progressive districts? Is she being paid for that work by Conway or anyone else? Is she doing the bidding of Mayor Lee and his allies in hopes of greater rewards?

Or should voters just take at face value her claim to really be standing up for “accountability” from public officials? Is this really about the statement Shorter makes in the video prominently displayed on the sfwomenforaccountability.com website: “Christina Olague has lost the trust of victims’ advocates. She has set our cause back. I’m profoundly disappointed in her and I can’t support her anymore.”?

With less than a week until the election, voters can only speculate.

A new feminism for San Francisco

Andrew Lam

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October 23, 2012

34

OPINION Accountability is one of the hardest things that we have to do. Being accountable stretches us to our very limits as human beings. Blame and deflection is a function of shame, and more often than not, when we make a mistake, it’s more common to point the finger at someone else than it is to acknowledge our mistake and work towards a different practice. The story time and time again is how it never happened — and then when the water gets too hot, there’s generally a soft acknowledgment that something did happen, but by then, the damage is done and trust is broken.

As feminists working in the progressive community for social justice, we are calling for a new type of accountability — one that’s not about demonization or polarization, but instead consists of checking ourselves, checking each other, supporting each other when we are brave, and having the courage and integrity to acknowledge our mistakes and work towards making whole what has been damaged.

Progressives need to take a look at ourselves and come together so that we can advance our vision for San Francisco. We aim to build a progressive movement in San Francisco that is rooted in compassion and love, that acknowledges our contradictions and works to create bridges across class, race, and gender that are so often the typical pitfalls that keep us from accomplishing what we really want and need. Checking ourselves is an act of love for ourselves and for our communities.

The last few weeks in San Francisco have not just been about men behaving badly; it’s also been about women treating each other badly. White feminists in San Francisco came together to “save” Eliana Lopez, an immigrant woman of color, but never actually included her in the conversation — and then treated her like she had Stockholm syndrome. Women who supported Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi were suddenly not feminists anymore. Survivors of domestic violence who supported Mirkarimi and supported redemption were shunned by a large portion of the domestic violence community.

We recognize that there are important reasons why domestic violence law allows charges to brought without the consent of the survivor; however, in this case, these laws were misused. How demoralizing to see a largely white, second-wave feminist advocate community come together around a woman they failed to include in the conversation about what she felt was best for herself and her family. Are we still in the 1950s?

The attempt to remove Mirkarimi from office was a political attack. It does a disservice to the cause of domestic violence to use it as a political tool to unseat a politician. At the same time, it was also regrettable that many progressives supporting the sheriff did not take the domestic violence charges against him seriously enough — both in the initial outcry that surrounded the charges and by being disrespectful towards the domestic violence advocates who testified at City Hall.

On the other hand, following close on the heels of the Mirkarimi situation, District 5 candidate Julian Davis was accused of a troubling history of inappropriate and nonconsensual groping by more than one woman. We have to take into account that there is an unacceptable cultural reality that people are likely to believe accusations against men of color by white women that are untrue, but that is not what has happened with the accusations brought forward about Davis.

In this scenario many in the progressive community knew about this history and were complicit in silencing any real conversation about it. It was only when Davis started intimidating one of the women that brought accusations against him with threats of legal action that a real conversation opened up.

Our goal is not to rehash Davis’s past behavior; everyone deserves redemption. However, it would make it easier for those of us who want to work with him going forward if he could take responsibility for his past instead seeking to silence his accusers.

Many have stood up to support the woman who came forward, but sadly others have not. For women and feminists in our movement it was exceedingly demoralizing to watch people who call themselves progressives attack a woman who came forward or dismiss her allegations because of political allegiances. One blog even went so far as to try and discredit her by alleging that she had been in a pornography film, as if somehow this would cast doubt on her allegations.

We seek a kind of feminism that supports and empowers women to make informed choices about their lives, not the type that falls into the same pattern of erasing the voices of women of color and immigrant women. We are calling for a cutting-edge feminist movement that includes men in our strategy of ending violence against women, and a feminist movement that walks away from this tired dualism between “victims and perpetrators,” when we all know that these so-called perpetrators are often victims of violence themselves.

We are calling for restorative justice that bridges the divides of class and race and gender and makes us stronger to achieve the lives that we want and need. We seek a feminist movement that sees housing and economic justice and racial justice and gender justice as all part of the same movement.

The truth of the matter is that in our progressive movement here in San Francisco, there is still a prominence of straight white men who continue to believe that they are the sole arbitrators of what is or is not progressive in this city, who go after women of color in leadership with a ferocity that they do not for our progressive male counterparts, and who continue to excuse problematic behavior in ways that undermine us all.

So much has happened so quickly that it has been hard to orient ourselves and keep fighting for our rights and our communities. After the election, we call for a public conversation around what it means to be a third- or even fourth-wave feminist progressive that we can build our work around — where men are feminist and women of color leaders can actually get some support from the progressive left. Gabriel Haaland is a queer, transgender Labor feminist and domestic violence survivor. Jane Martin and Alicia Garza are queer, feminist community organizers in San Francisco’s working-class communities of color

The ‘heightened sensitivity’ blues

Andrew Lam

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October 23, 2012

74

OPINION

“No one can deny that there is presently a particular sensitivity around domestic violence issues, and this may have been a contributing factor in their decision in this instance. I want to emphasize that I respect this heightened sensitivity and I will not criticize those allies of mine that have chosen to withdraw support.”

– Oct. 17 press statement from District 5 candidate Julian Davis

This is not a Julian Davis hit piece. Just as much as any young progressive in this town, I know the guy. He’s not a bad guy.

He can be a boor. But to be fair, he’s only doing what he’s been taught to do in this era of the San Francisco City Hall progressive scene.

Lemme take it back to my first assignment covering politics for the Bay Guardian (indulge me.) I was a culture intern.

I was assigned to the Democratic County Central Committee election-night party at the Great American Music Hall. I had the early shift, because those hours of the evening are boring enough to entrust to an intern with little background knowledge of the San Francisco political scene. While I was there, gamely interviewing the only person I recognized from the newspapers (a man who I’ve been told ad nauseum is a leader of the San Francisco progressive movement), a shrill -– to appropriate a term usually coded for women and gays –- elderly, straight male blogger approached us and inquired loudly if I was the politician’s escort.

Now, I am pro-sex worker. But as a young woman who was performing an important task for the first time, when a dinosaur implies that you are at a stone-dull political happening to solicit sexual favors for money -– well I’m sorry, brothers and sisters, but I was there to interview people for a newspaper. I don’t think this man’s query, shouted as it was over the crowd, implied a high degree of sex-positivity.

The progressive leader seemed unfazed. Who knows, maybe it happens all the time. He briefly made introductions and ninja-moved into the social melée, leaving me with old blogger, who commenced interrogating me rudely, on camera, from a distance close enough that I could smell him. It wasn’t a superlative scent.

Perhaps Kay Vasilyeva felt similarly six years ago when she went to Bill Barnes, who was serving as campaign manager for Chris Daly, the San Francisco progressive deity at whose campaign event she says the most egregious incident with Davis took place.

Davis groped her, she told Barnes. He told her she could report the incident to the police, and when questioned about the incident by Fog City Journal last week, he said “my memories that are most clear about that campaign were the political side of what was going on, not about the interpersonal issues.”

I’ve told my election night story a couple times over the last week since it stands out clearly as the moment I knew, for sure, I would never get involved in San Francisco politics.

More than one of my friends told me I was asking for this humiliation, what with having identified myself as a Guardian reporter. I’ll admit, that perhaps I could have expected such diminutive behavior. The paper’s, like, “controversial.” All the same, I told those friends, as respectfully as possible, to fuck off.

In the wake of the Ross Mirkarimi and Julian Davis debacles, and in the wake of reaction to said debacles (decidedly the more catastrophic happenings, even compared with the acts themselves), many are realizing that the dominant face of SF progressivism is that of a self-absorbed, hierarchy-enforcing man.

Perhaps some are making the cognitive leap to wonder about why we’re not exactly overwhelmed with progressive females in elected office.

Could it be that through sloppily coded language like that used in Davis’s email, the Barnes response, and my election night incident, an environment is systematically being created that no intelligent young women would ever sanely choose to take part in?

Tell me I’m too soft for politics. Sure you’re right. Tell me it’s equal opportunity assholery. Probs. Tell me that’s just how it is.

I’ll tell you this: being progressive is about more than voting in favor of rent control and raising teacher’s wages. Being pro-choice is not the end of one’s involvement in women’s issues. You can have all the right politics on paper, but if you make those who are different from you feel like shit when you’re two cocktails into election night, take a seat, wrench your eyes from their tits, and let someone else take the lead, because you’re the reason why the progressive movement, the labor movement, et. al., are stale and worn.

Convince all the young women and other people who are not the face of power in this country that they have no place and they will find a different place, and your slate will be all the dumber for it.

Beware, boorish men, when you blame the current spate of sexual abuse unmaskings on “political climate” or “interpersonal issues.” Denigrate actual justice as a “trend” or “gossip” and you will most certainly find yourself fighting for something that you really, really don’t want — the increased infirmity of the movement you claim to hold so dear.

“Heightened sensitivity” getting you down? Hit up a pharmacy, I bet they have a cream for that.

Move on, Mr. Mayor

Andrew Lam

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October 23, 2012

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EDITORIAL San Francisco politics hasn’t been this tense in years — and it’s not just because of the upcoming election. The battle over Mayor Lee’s attempt to oust Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has left bitter divisions at City Hall and in communities all over town. And the mayor is only making things worse.

In an odd way — and we say odd because it was so expensive and a misuse of mayoral power — the system worked. Mirkarimi, who had a physical altercation with his wife that left a bruise on her arm, took responsibility and pled guilty to a misdemeanor; he’s now on probation and undergoing counseling.

After the mayor decided to invoke a rarely used Charter provision and suspend Mirkarimi without pay, the Ethics Commission held hearings, conducted and extensive inquiry and voted to uphold the charges, with the chair, Benjamin Hur, strongly dissenting. Every one of the commissioners raised thoughtful points; several poked big holes in the mayor’s case.

Then the Board of Supervisors met — and again, the members carefully considered Mirkarimi’s actions, the language and history of the City Charter, the prevailing law, and the facts of the case. There was remarkably little political grandstanding; we listened to the entire meeting, lasting more than seven hours, and were left with the impression that the supervisors took their job seriously, weighed the case, forced the City Attorney’s Office, representing the mayor, and Mirkarimi’s defense team, to justify their arguments, and rendered a ruling.

Nine votes were needed to remove the sheriff; that’s appropriate for such a profound sanction. Only seven supervisors sided with the mayor, and the four who rejected the charges had excellent, well-stated and credible reasons.

That’s the way the Charter outlined this process playing out, and in the end, the mayor lacked the overwhelming consensus he would have needed to use his executive authority to remove from office someone duly chosen by the voters. It’s done; it’s over. Most of the city would like to move on.

That’s not to say that Mirkarimi should be celebrating. He did an inexcusable thing. Domestic violence advocates have every right to be unhappy with his actions — and nobody, nobody in town should condone his behavior. He’s not denying it, either; he accepted the criminal consequences and will now have to demonstrate that he’s able to do his job.

But the mayor won’t move on. Mirkarimi sent him a note asking for a meeting, and Lee hasn’t responded. That shows a lack of leadership — and a lack of the civility that the mayor promised us when he took office. Ed Lee started this political process, and now that it’s over, he should be leading the effort to pull the city back together, to recognize that there were valid arguments on both sides of this case and his didn’t prevail — and to stop the demonization of people who didn’t agree with him.

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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October 23, 2012

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Wednesday 24

Senior and disability action Western Addition Senior Center, 1390 ½ Turk, SF; 415-546-2096. 9:30am-1:30pm, free. Senior and Disability Action University presents a workshop series on strengthening health care services for these populations in San Francisco. Learn about current health care services, how they could be improved, and the leadership and community organizing skills to get it done. This is the second to last session in the series, the last one is on Halloween, and it’s all free. The group also provides leadership and empowerment classes in several languages throughout the city.

Thursday 25

Take back the plaza Oakland City Hall, 14th and Broadway, Oakl; www.occupyoakland.org. 5pm, free. A year ago Oct. 25, the streets of downtown Oakland were the site of a historic event. Police had moved in on the Occupy camp next to City Hall, and the people there, and hundreds of supporters, resisted. In the dark, the fight raged on, and the tear gas clouds, bean bag bullets, and tear gas clouds would spread fear and radicalism throughout the crowd. In one infamous incident, Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen was hit in the head with a bean bag round, and his name spread throughout the country. Occupy Oakland will not let the anniversary of this day pass unmarked. Instead, they are calling for a night of protest.

Unite for prop A El Rio, 158 Mission, SF; Facebook: Community united for Prop A at El Rio. 6-9pm, $10-25. If fighting for a better world isn’t your thing this Thursday, try fundraising for one! Join Sups. John Avalos and David Campos, City College board members, and labor leadership for a event supporting Prop. A. The measure would create a much-needed parcel tax to keep City College serving students even as it faces the challenges of the accreditation process. You can also come to be entertained by MC Anna Conda and StormMiguel Florez, and leave decorated with the “I am City College” logo if you bring something to silkscreen.

Friday 26

SWOP happy hour El Rio, 158 Mission, SF; Facebook: SWOP Happy Hour Fundraiser — In the Name of Robyn Few! 4-6pm, free. Drink in the name of deceased sex workers rights and marijuana advocacy legend Robyn Few (see “Fierce, forceful, amazing: remembering Robyn Few,” 10-2-12.) The money raised at this happy hour benefit will go to Sew Workers Outreach Project Bay Area, the local branch of the international advocacy and action group that Few founded. There will also be a raffle with prizes like a pro massage, art and sex toys.

Sunday 28

ASWAT in concert Islamic Cultural Center, 1433 Madison, Oakl; www.mecaforpeace.org. 3-5:30pm, $10-50. ASWAT, whose name means “one voice,” will be performing songs that “represent our feelings towards occupation (the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), the beauty of the land, our civil rights in this country, the Arab American experience and fighting hate and misinformation,” according to ASWAT’s founder Nabila Mango. This is the big annual benefit for the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), and this year the money goes to their Maia Project, which helps with “clean water for the children of Palestine. To date we’ve installed 37 water sanitation/purification systems in schools in Gaza, reaching 35,000 children and their families. The World Health Organization cites that 95 percent of the water in Gaza is unfit to drink.”

Tuesday 30

Ballot breakdown Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St., SF; (415) 323-5768, theleaguesf.tumblr.com. 6:30pm, free. The League of Pissed-Off Voters is also known as the League of Young Voters. But frankly, it’s pissed off. Well, pissed off at some things, like California’s Prop. 32 that would screw unions, and District 1 candidate David Lee’s potential illegal coordination with Realtors, a problem that it hopes the Ethics Commission looks into after it filed a complaint about it this week. But the League is also very not pissed off about some things on this year’s ballot. Come to this event with questions, concerns, and a burning need to discuss the election with members of the League, from statewide propositions to city measures to local races.

Agnos and other progressives rally for Olague

Sasha Cuttler

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October 22, 2012

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Agnos and other progressives rally for Olague

A string of prominent local progressive leaders today offered their support to Sup. Christina Olague – including former Mayor Art Agnos, who announced his endorsement of her in the District 5 supervisorial race – in a rally on the steps of City Hall.

In the process, many voiced a need to broaden and redefine progressivism as valuing independence and diversity of perspective more than just stands on specific issues, traits they said Olague embodies. But more than anything, the rally seemed aimed to consolidating progressive support around Olague as the best hope to beat moderate London Breed in one of the city’s most progressive districts.

“District 5 is often referred to as the most progressive of San Francisco’s supervisorial districts. It includes a diversity of views and opinions on how to meet the challenges all our communities face,” Agnos said. “And it takes a supervisor who know how to listen, to hear and respect those differing views, while working for a resolution that moves us forward.”

Sup. David Campos made only a veiled, indirect reference to the problems some progressives (himself among them) have had with some of Olague’s stands since she was appointed to the job by Mayor Ed Lee, but he said, “Those of us who have worked with her know what’s in her heart…She has been the independent person we always knew she would be and I’m proud to stand with her today.”

Several speakers made reference to Olague’s working class roots, her perspective as a Latina and member of the LGBT community, and her history of progressive activism in San Francisco. Cleve Jones, Gabriel Haaland, Sandra Fewer, and Sup. Eric Mar were among those there to offer support.

“It was a big give by the Mayor’s Office to appoint someone who wasn’t always going to agree with him,” said Sup. Jane Kim, but that was about the only positive reference to the Mayor’s Office, which turned on Olague after she voted to reinstate Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, setting the stage for her return to the progressive fold.

“To be a progressive is to share an ideology that understands and believes that the best decisions for our city require the participation of all of us, no matter who we are, where we live, or how big our checkbook is,” Agnos said. “As with so many who have endorsed her, that progressive label says she is a politician who understand this fundamental truth.”

SF Rising board member Alicia Garza kicked off the rally by saying, “We are here to set the record straight that the progressive movement is alive and well in San Francisco.” Later, she praise Olague’s history as a community organizer, saying that, “She understands deeply what it means to empower communities.”

Sup. John Avalos, another supervisor who hasn’t always agreed with Olague in the last nine months and just endorsed last week, commended her for the courage it takes to assert her values instead of simply supporting the mayor who appointed her. He said Olague recognizes that, “We live in a city of extremes, with extreme differences between the haves and have-nots.”

Another new progressive endorsement, coming in the wake of one-time progressive favorite Julian Davis’ troubles, was Quintin Mecke, who said he first worked with Olague on anti-gentrification issues 13 years ago. “I trusted her work then and I trust her work today,” he said. Activist Lisa Feldstein – like Mecke, a former D5 candidate – echoed the sentiment.

“I’m here because I really trust Christina and want to fight for her,” Feldstein said. “She comes from a place of integrity and compassion.”

When Olague finally took the podium, she said, “I am humbled by the heartfelt words of my colleagues.” She also tried to help define progressivism in San Francisco, said that it “isn’t about a cult of personality.”

Instead, she said it’s about working to building people’s capacity to create an inclusive and just city. “It’s about building a movement that can weather any storm,” Olague said, closing by saying she’ll ensure “the progressive voice is always strong in District 5 and I’ll keep working to make it heard until I’m blue in the face…I am the most progressive person in the race.”

SF Stories: Kevin Killian

Andrew Lam

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October 16, 2012

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46TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL Today it’s mostly about the rents. People come to my tiny apartment, a shoebox I share with three cats and a genius, and they wonder two things at the same time—what the mad Romantic poet Holderlin called the condition of “pallaksch,” an occurrence that presses your yes and no buttons simultaneously. I can see my visitors wondering, you’re only an avant-garde writer at the bottom of the heap, how can you afford to live in San Francisco? And another part of them is answering their own questions by guessing, it must be rent control.

We moved into our place in 1990. Minna Street was then the foulest street I’d ever lived on, but because of the recent earthquake of 1989 the rents were dirt cheap and you just couldn’t say no. From what I understand, the building shook so much during the quake that if you didn’t live on the ground floor, you got the hell out. And the bottom feeders, like ourselves, moved in. I said, “Lightning’s not gonna strike twice,” and so far the building hasn’t crumbled. We came to love our little alley, the neighbors, the quiet, even the drug dealers. It was the bohemian quandary: if a neighborhood improves, does gentrification automatically follow?

I write this in the mourning attendant to the September 29th death, in New York, of radical geographer Neil Smith, the Scots-born teacher and theorist whose work on uneven development has helped us identify these patterns more clearly. Walking down the streets of a big city, or even passing through my shoebox (for he taught us that the same patterns that shape a city are shaping our interiors too), it’s impossible not to think of the man. “Capital,” he wrote, “is continually invested in the built environment in order to produce surplus value and expand the basis of capital itself. But equally, capital is continually withdrawn from the built environment so that it can move elsewhere and take advantage of higher profit rates.” That’s the uneven part of the theory of uneven development. We always wondered why there was so much crack and prostitution on Minna Street, a stones throw from City Hall, from the Opera House, from the other landmarks of capital. But Smith knew. How does rent control even survive in a totalizing city like San Francisco? It has to for capital to flourish, to breed, to flex its muscles.

The legends of the uneven are rampant. When I interviewed the poets and artists who flocked to San Francisco after WWII for my book on the life of Jack Spicer, men and women 85 today if still they live, they would invariably mention moving into a room in North Beach that was 19 dollars a month, a four-bedroom flat in the Fillmore for sixty a month. When the evidence of inflation is pressed up to one’s face like a rag dowsed in chloroform, we younger people inhale sharply. And we’re the same way, we who moved here later on, in the 60s, 70s, even the 80s, when rents were 200, 300, 500 dollars. It wasn’t like we could afford our apartments even then. But at least there would be another worse one we could repair to when “times got tough.” And now, instead, there are fields further away, from which capital has been temporarily withdrawn. Oakland we hear. Last month we counted and realized that only three poets under the age of forty remain in San Francisco. And in each case it’s an exception—a quirk in the system—perhaps the wrinkle that determines the system’s face? The face that says yes to us and no to us with the same grinning wet mouth.

Kevin Killian’s new novel is called Spreadeagle (from Publication Studio). His next book is Tagged, a collection of his intimate color photos of poets, artists, filmmakers, musicians naked, or the next thing to it, edited by Darin Klein. (A show of this work opens at White Columns in New York on October 27th). On November 8, SFMOMA and San Francisco Poets Theater present a revival of Killian’s 1995 play WET PAINT, in conjunction with the Jay DeFeo retrospective (Nov 3 — February 3, 2013) organized jointly by SFMOMA and New York’s Whitney Museum.

Gascón’s challenge to Mirkarimi belies his own official shortcomings

Sasha Cuttler

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October 11, 2012

162

Gascón’s challenge to Mirkarimi belies his own official shortcomings

The backlash against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi’s reinstatement by those who oppose him has often been biting and bitter – an indicator that coming together around real solutions to domestic violence, something most supervisors pledged, could still be difficult – but the most hypocritical reaction came yesterday from District Attorney George Gascón.

“Ross is now reinstated as our Sheriff and I accept that. What I will not accept is any compromise of public safety as a result of his reinstatement. Ross Mirkarimi is on probation in this county for a crime of domestic violence. He is, at a minimum, incapable of adequately performing the functions of his office that relate to crimes of domestic violence,” Gascón said in a public statement, calling for Mirkarimi to “wall himself off” from all domestic violence programs and inmates and hire an independent special administrator to oversee them.

Gascón didn’t explain why he believes Mirkarimi can’t oversee these functions, although that’s been a common refrain among Mirkarimi’s critics, almost an article of faith that to them needs no explanation. I understand the sentiment, but as a practical matter, it still doesn’t make sense to me (I’d welcome comments that could offer insights or explanation). I’ve also posed that and other questions to both Gascón and his spokesperson, Stephanie Ong Stillman, and I’ll include an update when I hear back.

Maybe the issue is a conflict of interest, the belief that Mirkarimi will either be too easy or too hard on domestic violence inmates or programs, which seems to be stretch. But if that’s the case, Gascón should get off his high horse. Gascón was the police chief when then-Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed him as DA, and there were many voices in the community who questioned such an unconventional move, one that raised obvious questions about whether Gascón could be objective about cases of police abuse, evidence tampering, or assorted other cases in which he would be called upon to make tough judgments about the SFPD. There were calls for Gascón to wall himself off from such cases, which he refused to do, even though that was arguably a more serious and direct conflict of interest than Mirkarimi overseeing the jail.

Also, let’s not forget that it was Gascón who started this whole ordeal by deciding to charge Mirkarimi with domestic violence crimes, accept the plea bargain to misdemeanor false imprisonment, and recommend the punishment that the court accepted – which included the highly unusual requirement that Mirkarimi issue a public apology to his neighbor, Ivory Madison, who went to police against the wishes of Mirkarimi’s wife. At the time, Mirkarimi was serving as sheriff and overseeing all the department’s functions – and he wasn’t letting the batterers run free or battering them himself – and Gascón didn’t raise this issue of then or make it a condition of Mirkarimi’s plea, which he certainly could have.

Finally, there was this sanctimonious statement by Gascón: “As the chief law enforcement official in this City and County, I will stand unapologetically with the victims. I will work tirelessly to be sure both victims and witnesses know this city does not tolerate domestic violence.” Yet the record of his office indicates something that falls far short of tireless efforts to combat domestic violence.

As a San Francisco Public Press investigation revealed last month, San Francisco has by far the lowest rate of domestic violation prosecutions of any Bay Area jurisdiction, a terrible record that has gotten even worse since Gascón took over. Whether judged by the number of domestic violence cases filed per capita (29.5 per 10,000 residents, compared with 58.5 in the region) or the number cases it received that it declined to prosecute (it dropped 6,200 of the 8,600 cases that it received from police), Gascón has no business claiming to show zero tolerance for domestic violence. His prosecution of Mirkarimi was more aberration than rule.

We’ve been trying to get a comment out of the DA’s Office on this issue for weeks, and they still haven’t replied (Stillman told me today that “we’re still working on it”). Gascón was also asked about his office’s poor record on domestic violence recently on KQED’s Forum and gave only a deflective non-answer. Perhaps he’d be better off figuring out how his office could so consistently fail the victims of domestic violence rather than worrying so much about the too-few of them that he’s managed to send to jail.

We all understand what an emotional and important issue domestic violence is, and even how unsettling it may be to many to have Mirkarimi as sheriff. But the members of the Domestic Violence Consortium and La Casa de las Madres – those who have led the campaign to oust Mirkarimi – aren’t the only people who care about this issue.

During the public comment portion of Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, there were many domestic violence victims who expressed more outrage over the failure of these domestic violence groups or the DA’s office to support them than they were about Mirkarimi continuing to be the sheriff. The city just spent $1.3 million trying to remove Mirkarimi and another [[CORRECTED FIGURE: $140,000]] paying his interim replacement, Vicky Hennessy – money that could have been better spent directly responding to domestic violence than this fruitless symbolic stand.

But that’s over now, just like their efforts to remove Mirkarimi, and we all need to move on instead of trying to re-fight this difficult battle over and over again. People can still disagree with what happened and vent and be angry – and from what we’re hearing from City Hall, many of the messages have been quite savage, some even threatening violence. They can even work on a recall campaign or take other political actions.

Yet we all still share a city – a wonderfully diverse city with a wide range of perspectives and opinions – and we’re all forced to accept things about it that we don’t like. Gascón doesn’t get to decide who the sheriff is or how he plays that role any more than Mirkarimi got to tell Gascón how to do his job – despite suffering far more direct impacts.

We each have our roles to play, and we’ll all be better off if we do them well and accept that we live in a rainbow city, not a black-and-white world.

Avalos, Campos, Kim, Olague: Four profiles of courage at City Hall

Maria Poblet

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October 11, 2012

30

Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, Jane Kim, and Christina Olague earned profiles of courage for their votes to reinstate suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi up against enormous pressure for a political assassination, accelerated by Mayor Lee’s demand for a pre-election vote.

And the other seven supervisors, well, they helped answer the question, who’s afraid of Willie Brown? Who’s afraid of Rose Pak?

Note to Mirkarimi: It’s time to repair the damage and get back to work implementing the ambitious program of rehabilitation outlined in your splendid inaugural address as Sheriff.

Unsolicited advice to mayor Ed Lee: Stop taking bad advice.

See my “Profiles of courage” blog for the context of this crucial vote.

Mayor’s aide’s totally inappropriate text to Olague

Zelda Bronstein

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October 10, 2012

64

Mayor’s aide’s totally inappropriate text to Olague

Wow — a source just passed me the text messages that Tony Winnicker, a senior advisor to Mayor Lee, send to Sup. Christina Olague after her vote on the Mirkarimi case.

It’s totally crazy, outrageous — and inappropriate coming from a top mayoral staffer. Check it out:

As your constituent you (sic) disgust me and I will work night and day to defeat you. You are the most ungrateful and dishonorable person ever to serve on the board. You should resign in disgrace.

Winnicker confirmed to me that he wrote the text, but insisted he wasn’t speaking for the mayor:

As you know I am not the Mayor’s spokesperson and have not been for some time, especially on matters like this. I am, however, a district five constituent who disagrees strongly with my district supervisor’s vote last night and i took the opportunity to express my opinion and extreme disappointment in her decision and judgment. It is just that, however, my personal opinion and frustration with her vote, a frustration shared by many fellow district five residents who agree with Mayor Lee and the majority of the Board of Supervisors that Ross Mirkarimi should not be Sheriff.

Holy shit. I hope the mayor tells Mr. Winnicker that this is not an example of the “civility” Lee is trying to promote at City Hall.

Local censored 2012

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October 10, 2012

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BEHIND THE MIRKARIMI CASE

In early January, details from the police investigation of then-Sheriff-elect Ross Mirkarimi bruising his wife’s arm during an argument were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and other news outlets. The key piece of evidence was a 45-second video that Mirkarimi’s wife, Eliana Lopez, made with her neighbor, Ivory Madison, displaying the bruise and saying she wanted to document the incident in case of a child custody battle. That video convinced many of Mirkarimi’s guilt, and a majority of Ethics Commissioners say they found it to be the main evidence on which Mirkarimi should be removed from office on official misconduct charges (the Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote on Mirkarimi’s removal on Oct. 9, after Guardian press time).

But that video was only a small part of the overwhelming and expensive case that Mayor Ed Lee brought against Mirkarimi, including the more serious charges of abuse of power, witness dissuasion, and impeding a police investigation, all of which go more directly to a sheriff’s official duties. All of those charges got lots of media coverage and they helped cement the view of many San Franciscans that Mirkarimi engaged in a pattern of inappropriate behavior, rather than making a big momentary mistake. Yet most of the media coverage during the six months of Ethics Commission proceedings ignored the fact that none of the evidence that was being gathered supported those charges. Indeed, all those charges were unanimously rejected by the commission on Aug. 16, a startling rebuke of Lee’s case but one that was not highlighted in many media reports, which focused on the one charge the commission did uphold: the initial arm grab.

THE NEXT DOT-BOMB

In the late 1990s, San Francisco was in a very similar place to where it is now. The first dot-com boom was full bloom, driving the local economy and creating countless young millionaires — but also rapidly gentrifying the city and driving commercial and residential rents through the roof (great for the landlords, bad for everyone else). And then, the bubble popped, instantly erasing billions of dollars in speculative paper wealth and leaving this a changed city. The city’s working and creative classes suffered, but the political backlash gave rise to a decade with a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors.

The era ended in 2010 when Ed Lee was appointed mayor, and he began ambitious agenda of pumping up a new dot-com bubble using tax breaks, public subsidies, and relentless official boosterism to lure more tech companies to San Francisco. Lee has been successful in his approach, in the process driving up commercial rents and housing prices. By some estimates, about 30 percent of the city’s economy is now driven by technology companies.

Yet there have been few voices in the local media raising questions about this risky, costly, and self-serving economic development strategy. The Bay Citizen did a story about Conway’s self interested advice, the New York Times did a front page story raising these issues, and San Francisco Magazine just last month did a long cover story questioning how much tech is enough. But most local media voices have been silent on the issue, and much of the damage has already been done.

OLD POWERBROKERS RETURN TO CITY HALL

More than a decade ago, then-Mayor Willie Brown and Chinatown power broker Rose Pak worked together to empower big business, corrupt local politics, and clear the path for rampant development — an approach that progressives on the Board of Supervisors repudiated and slowed from 2000-2010. But Brown, Pak, and a new generation of their allies have returned in power in City Hall, and it’s as bad as it ever was.

Many San Franciscans know of their high-profile role appointing Lee to office in early 2011. But their influence and tentacles have extended far beyond what we read in the papers and watch on television, starting in 2010 when their main political operatives David Ho and Enrique Pearce ran Jane Kim’s supervisorial campaign, beating Debra Walker, a veteran of the fights against Brown’s remaking of the city.

Now, this crew has the run of City Hall, meeting regularly with Mayor Lee and twisting the arms of supervisors on key votes. Pearce and Ho persuaded longtime progressive Christina Olague to co-chair the scandal-plagued Run Ed Run campaign last year, she was rewarded this year with Lee appointing her to the Board of Supervisors. Pearce has been her close adviser, and most of her campaign cash has been raised by Brown and Pak. Even progressive Sup. Eric Mar admits that Pak in raising money for him, a troubling sign of things to come.

THE REAL OCCUPY STORY

The Occupy San Francisco camp that was cleared by police last week may have been mostly homeless people. And major news media outlets from the start reported that Occupy was dangerous, filthy, and a civic eyesore.

But last fall, the camps were comprised of a huge variety of people that chose to live part or full time on the streets. Students, people with 9-5 jobs, people with service jobs, and the unemployed were all represented. Wealthy people who lived in the financial districts where camps popped up mixed with working-class people who came from suburbs and small towns. Families came out, welcomed in the “child spaces” set up in many Occupy camps throughout the country. Most camps also boasted libraries, free classes, kitchens, food distribution, and medical tents.

As news media focused on gross-out stories of pee on the streets and graphic descriptions of drunk occupiers, they managed to ignore the complex systems that were built in the camps. Nor did anyone mention that homeless people have the right to protest, too.

It’s almost over: Supervisors set to decide Mirkarimi’s fate

Sasha Cuttler

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October 9, 2012

17

It’s almost over: Supervisors set to decide Mirkarimi’s fate

If there’s one thing that supporters and opponents of suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi can agree on – and judging by the vitriolic tenor of the reader comments every time I write about this case, there isn’t much – it’s that everyone will be happy when this sordid scandal is behind us, which could happen today when the Board of Supervisors holds a marathon hearing and likely vote on whether to remove Mirkarimi from office for official misconduct.

The hearing begins at 2pm in the Board Chambers in City Hall, but get there early if you want a seat, although you can always settle for the overflow room. Better yet, just follow my updates on the SFBG Twitter feed. I’ll post the important highlights, and a few ugly lowlights, and you won’t need to sully yourself with this muck and mire. You’re welcome.

This has been an unseemly case from start to finish, from the revelations in early January that Mirkarimi grabbed and bruised his wife’s arm during a New Year’s Eve argument to the sensational way it was played in the local media to Mayor Ed Lee’s decision to pile on a bunch of other unsupported charges that were dispelled during Ethics Commission hearings that dragged on and on.

Unfortunately, no matter what happens today, there will be aftermath. Reinstatement could at least end things today and send him back to an office that is usually fairly low-profile, at least until domestic violence advocates and other Mirkarimi-haters launch a recall campaign against him (whee, won’t that be fun?!?!).

If Mirkarimi is removed, then we can probably expect this case to continue rattling through the courts for awhile as Mirkarimi and his attorneys challenge the city’s untested official misconduct language, adopted in 1995, as unconstitutionally broad and pursue other avenues of appeal. But, no matter what happens, this will all soon be just a disturbing memory.

Rally for Ross at noon today on the City Hall steps

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October 8, 2012

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Join Sheriff Michael Hennessey; Mayor Art Agnos; Dolores Huerta, Co-Founder of the UFW & Medal of Freedom Recipient; Supervisors Sophie Maxwell, Harry Britt, Doris Ward, Willie Kennedy and Carol Ruth Silver; Public Defender Geoff Brown, and others in calling for the reinstatement of Sheriff Mirkarimi this Tuesday before the Board of Supervisors Vote.

RALLY @ NOON, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9 2012 – CITY HALL STEPS

The San Francisco Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, SF Labor Council, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1021, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, Latino Democratic Club, Bernal Heights Democratic Club, District 5 Democratic Club, Padres Unidos, Bay Area Iranian Democrats, SF Green Party, San Francisco Guardian, Bay Area Reporter, Sunset Beacon, and Central City Democrats all Support Reinstatement!!

Come to the rally and show your support too!!!

Dolores Huerta, Co-Founder of the UFW, Medal of Freedom Recipient, Eliana Lopez and Friend

If you can not make the Rally – Please call you supervisor today – Let them know you Stand with Ross and will not stand for anything but reinstatement!

Click to Donate to the Ross Mirkarimi Legal Defense Fund

or by sending a check to:
Ross Mirkarimi Legal Defense Fund
721 Webster Street
San Francisco, CA 94117

The Mirkarimi vote: Will there be some profiles of courage?

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October 8, 2012

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(See the postscript for the Chronicle’s shameful crucifixion coverage of Mirkarimi and a timely, newsworthy oped it refused to run by Mirkarimi’s former girl friend. And how Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders ran the Nieves piece on her blog. Damn good for you, Debra Saunders.)

On Jan. 6, 2011, the Bay Citizen/New York Times broke a major investigative story headlined “Behind-the-Scenes Power Politics: The Making of Ed Lee.” The story by Gerry Shih detailed how then Mayor Gavin Newsom, ex-Mayor Willie Brown, and his longtime political ally Rose Pak orchestrated an “extraordinary political power play” to make Ed Lee the interim mayor to replace Newsom, the lieutenant governor-elect.

The story also outlined the start of a chain of events that leads to the vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday on whether Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi keeps his job.

Shih reported that “word had trickled out” that the supervisors had narrowed the list of interim candidates to three—then Sheriff Michael Hennessey, former Mayor Art Agnos, and Aaron Peskin, then chairman of the city’s Democratic party. But the contenders “were deemed too liberal by Pak, Brown, and Newsom, who are more moderate.”

Over the next 48 hours, Pak, Brown, and the Newsom administration put together the play, “forging a consensus on the Board of Supervisors, outflanking the board’s progressive wing and persuading Lee to agree to become San Francisco’s first Asian-American mayor, even though he had told officials for months that he had no interest in the job,” Shih wrote.

The play was sold on the argument that Lee would be an “interim mayor” and that he would not run for mayor in the November election. The Guardian and others said at the time that the play most likely envisioned Lee saying, or lying, that he would not run for mayor and then, at the last minute, he would run and overpower the challengers as an incumbent with big downtown money behind him. This is what happened. That is how Ed Lee, a longtime civil servant, became the mayor and that is how the Willie Brown/Rose Pak gang won the day for the PG&E/Chamber of Commerce/big developer bloc and thwarted the progressives.

Let us note that the other three interim candidates would most likely never have done what Lee did and suspend Mirkarimi for pleading guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment in an arm-bruising incident with his wife Eliana. In fact, Hennessey supported Mirkarimi during the election and still does and says he is fit to do the job of sheriff.

This was a political coup d’etat worthy of Abe Ruef, the City Hall fixer at the start of the century. “This was something incredibly orchestrated, and we got played,” Sup. John Avalos told Shih. Sup. Chris Daly was mad as hell and he voted for Rose Pak because, he told the Guardian, she was running everything in City Hall anyway. Significantly, the San Francisco Chronicle missed the story and ever after followed the line of its columnist/PG&E lobbyist Willie Brown and Pak by supporting Lee for mayor without much question or properly reporting the obvious power structure angles and plays.

This is the context for understanding a critical part of the ferocity of the opposition to Mirkarimi. As the city’s top elected progressive, he was a politician and force to be reckoned with. His inaugural address as sheriff demonstrated his creative vision for the department and that he would ably continue the progressive tradition of Richard Hongisto and Hennessey. That annoyed the conservative law enforcement folks. He could be sheriff for a good long time, keep pushing progressive issues from a safe haven, and be in position to run for mayor when the time came. So he was a dangerous character.

To take one major example, the PG&E political establishment and others regard him as Public Enemy No. 1. Among other things, he managed as an unpaid volunteer two initiative campaigns during the Willie Brown era. They were aimed at kicking PG&E out of City Hall, enforcing the public power provisions of the federal Raker Act, and bringing the city’s cheap Hetch Hetchy public power to its residents and businesses for the first time. (See Guardian stories since 1969 on the PG&E/Raker act scandal.)

He then took the public power issue into City Hall when he became a supervisor and aggressively led the charge for the community choice aggregation (cca) project. His work was validated in the recent 8-3 supervisorial vote authorizing the city to start up a public power/clean energy program. This is the first real challenge ever to PG&E’s private power monopoly.

Significantly, Willie is now an unregistered $200,000 plus a year lobbyist for PG&E. He writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle promoting, among other things, his undisclosed clients and allies and whacking Mirkarimi and the progressives and their issues on a regular basis. And he is always out there, a phone call here, an elbow at a cocktail party there, to push his agenda. The word is that he’s claiming he has the votes to fire Mirkarimi.

The point is that the same forces that put Lee into office as mayor are in large part the same forces behind what I call the political assassination of Mirkarimi. And so, when the Mirkarimi incident emerged, there was an inexorable march to assassination. Maximum resources and pressure from the police on Mirkarimi. And then maximum pressure from the District Attorney. And then maximum pressure from the judicial process (not even allowing a change of venue for the case after the crucifixion media coverage.) And then Lee calls Mirkarimi “a wife beater” and suspends him with cruel and unusual punishment: no pay for him, his family, his home, nor legal expenses for him or Eliana for the duration.

And then Lee pushes for maximum pressure from the City Attorney and the Ethics Commission to try Mirkarimi and force the crucial vote before the election to put maximum pressure on the supervisors. Obviously, the vote would be scheduled after the election if this were a fair and just process.

Lee, the man who was sold as consensus builder and unifier, has become a polarizer and punisher on behalf of the boys and girls in the backroom.

And so the supervisors are not just voting to fire the sheriff. Mirkarimi, his wife Eliana, and son Theo, 3, have already paid a terrible price and, to their immense credit, have come back together as a family.

The supervisors got played last time and voted for a coup d’etat to make Lee the mayor, rout the progressives, and keep City Hall safe for Willie Brown and Rose Pak and friends. This time the stakes are clear: the supervisors are now voting on the political assassination of the city’s top elected progressive and it’s once again aimed at helping keep City Hall safe for PG&E, the Chamber, and big developers.

The question is, will there be some profiles of courage this time around? b3

P.S.1 Julian Davis for District 5 supervisor: “Supes mum on sheriff,” read the Sunday Chronicle head. Nobody would say how he/she would vote. And poor Sup. Sean Elsbernd claimed that he would be “holed all Sunday in his office reading a table full of thick binders of official documents related to the case plus a few that he’s prepared for himself containing some case law.” (Anybody wonder how he’s going to vote? Let’s have a show of hands.)

The last time I saw Julian Davis he was holding a “Stand with Ross” sign at a Mirkarimi rally on the City Hall steps. With Davis, there would be no second guessing and hand wringing on how he would vote. That’s the problem now with so many neighborhood supervisors who go down to City Hall and vote with Willie and downtown. Davis would be a smart, dependable progressive vote in the city’s most progressive district (5), and a worthy successor to Matt Gonzalez and Ross Mirkarimi. If Davis were on the board now, I’m sure he would stand with Ross and speak for Ross, no ifs, ands, or buts. And his vote might be decisive.

P.S. 2 The Chronicle’s shameful crucifixion of Mirkarimi continues The Chronicle has refused to run a timely and newsworthy op ed piece from Evelyn Nieves, Mirkarimi’s former girl friend. She wrote an op ed piece for the Chronicle four days before the Tuesday vote. Nieves is an accomplished journalist who for several years was the San Francisco bureau chief for the New York Times. She told me that she was notified Monday morning that the Chronicle didn’t have room for the op ed in Tuesday’s paper. I sent an email to John Diaz, Chronicle editorial page editor, and asked him why the Chronicle couldn’t run her op ed when the paper could run Willie Brown, the unregistered $200,000 plus PG&E lobbyist who takes regular whacks at Mirkarimi, as a regular featured column in its Sunday paper. No answer at blogtime.

This morning, I opened up the Chronicle to find that the paper, instead of running the Nieves piece today or earlier, ran an op ed titled “Vote to remove Mirkarmi,” from Kathy Black, executive director of the Casa de las Madres, the non profit group that advocates against domestic violence. It has been hammering Mirkarimi for months. On the page opposite, the Chron ran yet another lead editorial, urging the supervisors to “Take a Stand” and vote for removal because “San Francisco now needs its leaders to lead.” It was as if Willie was not only directing the Chronicle’s news operation but writing its editorials–and getting paid both by PG&E and the Chronicle. And so the Chronicle started out with shameful crucifixion coverage of Mirkarimi and then continued the shameful crucifixion coverage up until today. Read Nieves on Ross.

Well, the honor of the Chronicle was maintained by columnist Debra Saunders, virtually the Chroncle’s lone journalistic supporter of Mirkarmi during his ordeal. Many Chronicle staffers are privately supportive of Ross, embarrassed by Willie’s “journalism,” and critical of the way the Chronicle has covered Mirkarimi. Saunders posted the Nieves column her paper refused to print on her Chronicle blog. Damn good for you, Debra Saunders.

Feminist vigilante gangs to march on Oakland Friday

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October 3, 2012

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Feminist vigilante gangs to march on Oakland Friday

Oakland’s last feminist vigilante gangs march was a demonstration promoting offensive feminism in response to rape, assault, and murder of “women, queers, gender rebels and allies.” It was also a birthday party.

“The first march basically came about because it was my 30th birthday,” said Lauren, one of the organizers of that march and a second feminist vigilante gangs march, which will take place in Oakland on Friday.

“I had been talking a big game about feminist vigilante gangs and calling attention to the need for people to form affinities for a long time. When I was asked what I wanted for my 30th birthday I said, I want a feminist vigilante gangs march, as a joke. But people were into it.”

Last time, a group, equipped with and radical queer and feminist literature, banners, and glitter, marched from the “fake neighborhood” of uptown Oakland to downtown Oakland, Lauren said, ending with a dance party in “Oscar Grant Plaza,” Occupy Oakland’s longtime home base outside City Hall.

Along the way, organizers “stopped at some places to talk about things have had happened there,” said Lauren. “For instance, the place where Brandy Martell was killed.”

Brandy Martell was transgender woman who was shot April 29. Her murder remains unsolved. Martell’s is a “a high-profile case of transgender bashing. She died, and so we know about. But these types of things happen everyday on the streets in Oakland,” said Lauren.

The next feminist vigilante gangs march begins Friday at 7pm from 19th and Telegraph. It will also stop at the spot where Martell was killed, as well as other spots where queer bashing, rape and assault have taken place.

Lauren says the march is a few things. It’s a call-out “encouraging women, queers, gender outlaws in the Bay Area to start thinking offensively about the abuse that we’re on the receiving end of.”

It’s also “a way for us to practice discipline in the streets. Because we live in a culture that’s so abusive towards women, queers, gender variant people, its really hard for us to form affinities.”

The group plans for a tightly organized march. A security team and a league of bike scouts to protect the march have already begun training, and before the march begins a generalized security training is planned. Anyone who arrived alone will be given the chance to hook up with a marching buddy. Street medics and “emotional medics” from the Occupy Oakland safer spaces working group– “people who have some training to interact with people who are experiencing PTSD or who are experiencing emotions that are making it difficult for them to participate”– will be on hand.

“We have a bloc that is set up for people with limited mobility, that’s wheelchair users, cane users, people using walkers,” Lauren said.

Community self-defense

Organizers of the march hope that its spirit and practice of community building and self-defense can extend to the everyday lives of participants.

One way is by connecting demonstrators “with the resources to begin things like self-defense training, especially in a feminist and collective environment,” Lauren said. Groups like the Offensive Feminist Project, the Suigetsukan Dojo, and Girl Army.

“Something that we should be creating in marginalized communities is community self-defense. That’s something that the Black Panthers worked on. It’s not a new concept, in Oakland we have a lot of history with that,” said Lauren.

Community self-defense, of course, is supposed to be unnecessary; crime prevention and retribution is supposed to be relegated to the police and the criminal justice system. But Lauren said that these institutions are not working.

“I don’t believe that the criminal justice system is just, or serving anyone. And I think that’s a perspective shared by the people who are organizing the march, and probably by most of the people who will attend it,” she said. “I say this as someone who’s watched the police interrogate a rape victim and– interrogate is the correct word. There’s no justice in the criminal justice system for victims of rape and assault. So we want to talk about extra-legal methods of dealing with these issues.”

Extra-legal means of dealing with violence, she says, is “what feminist vigilante gangs is all about.”

After the march, organizers plan to continue this conversation at “a series of plenaries and salons in the East Bay” where participants will discuss questions like “What does feminist vigilantism look like?” Lauren said.

“As these conversations continue we will be spending a lot of time focusing on issues like race, and things like the history in the United States of falsely accusing men of color of assaulting white women so that they can be imprisoned or abused or killed,” Lauren said.

The group also has an open call for entries for a feminist vigilante gangs zine, for those who want to continue the discussion on paper. “People have been writing about bashing back. The Bash Back book Queer Ultraviolence just came out this year,” she noted.

Still, many people have not been exposed to the ideas and practices behind the feminist vigilante gangs march. On Friday, a lot of people will be– the march will coincide with Art Murmur, and downtown Oakland’s streets will already be crowded. A contingent from GLITUR, aka the Grand Legion of Incendiary and Tenacious Unicorn Revolutionaries, is coming down from Seattle. This march might get big.

But never fear, Lauren assured: “We should have enough glitter bandanas for everyone who comes.”