Civil Rights

Herrera’s gang injunction becomes part of D. 10 dialogue

Mary Magee
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As stated in this week’s article about City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s Viz Valley gang injunction, Herrera’s move gives D. 10 candidates an opportunity to show they are tracking all the issues in a district that is home to the city’s largest public housing site.

As C.L.A.E.R. Project director Sharen Hewitt put it at a debriefing session about the injunction, “D. 10 has been reduced to the Lennar issue, and that’s what’s criminal.”

And the injunction is becoming part of the dialogue in the D. 10 race, with eleven candidates in that race sounding off on the injunction, many of them critiquing Dennis Herrera’s approach and/or advocating for legal representation for those named in the suit, and more services in this historically neglected district.

Candidates Isaac Bowers, Kristine Enea, Chris Jackson, Nyese Joshua, Steve Moss and Marlene Tran attended Hewitt’s August 12 gang injunction debriefing.

And by meeting’s end, Bowers and Enea said they would help community members get legal representation.
“A lot of people being served, don’t know what an injunction is, or don’t show up at the hearing and then they become subject to the injunction,”  Bowers said.

Enea said she was glad that City Attorney Yvonne Mere clarified at the debriefing that the 41 young men named in Herrera’s filing could not be included in the actual injunction until they have been served.

“It was important to clarify the notice process,” Enea said.

Jackson said he’s committed to helping these men access job and education opportunities.
“If you i.d. folks as low-income gang members, there is a lot more you can do than simply hand over their names to law enforcement,” Jackson said.
“Before the City Attorney puts in a gang injunction, that office should talk about it with the community.” Jackson continued. “Ultimately this is about land use.”

“For the City Attorney to have a top down approach to gang injunctions is unfortunate,” Jackson said, noting that Herrera’s injunctions have been in predominantly
African American and Latino neighborhoods.

“And in terms of taking away people’s civil rights, it’s unacceptable, “ Jackson added, noting that the City Attorney’s list of targeted individuals is public information.

Reached by phone, Moss says he’d like to see a time limit imposed on gang injunctions. Currently, injunctions are indefinite, once they have been granted.

“I haven’t studied the precise details,” Moss said, noting that he went to Hewitt’s debriefing and has leaved through materials the City Attorney’s Office provided.
“Generally, no one likes gang injunctions because they potentially threaten civil liberties and sometimes the city gets it wrong,” Moss said, referring to cases where folks have been wrongly named in previous injunctions. “But in places where injunctions have been brought, they do seem to have reduced the violence and calmed down the district. I’d like there to be a time limit, a sunset clause.”

D. 10 candidate Marlene Tran said she thinks the injunction could help reduce violence in the neighborhood.
“I was trying to listen to the different input at the debriefing session,” Tran said. “But on TV, I heard that when Herrera talked to the Chinese press, he cited some 200 incidents in the proposed safety zone. About 100 of those incidents involved guns, and there have been ten homicides in three years. Those are really glaring statistics. And this morning I read that there is another injunction in Oakland, and they talked about success with gang injunctions in Salinas, where the homicide rate dropped from 50 to 5, compared to 2008/2009.”

Tran, who sits on the Community Advisory Board for the Police Department’s Ingleside Station, said she heard from Ingleside Captain Louis Cassenego that he wants to serve all 41 respondents named in the injunction peacefully.
“If this is done without any casualties to the district and the community, and if it prevents any further violence, then this is the way to go,” Tran said.

Tran expressed some due process concerns.
“If they spend that much personnel and time [on putting the injunction together], it should be done with due process,” Tran said.

But she feels the current level of violence in Viz Valley is unacceptable.
“I’ve lived here for twenty something years, and if you talk to residents and children, who wants to hear gun fire,” Tran said. “So I think we have to work for a peaceful community to prevent these problems. That’s why we call ourselves the emergent district.”

D. 10 candidate Ed Donaldson believes the injunctions are a product of neglect.
“It comes back to a question of overall neglect in the district,” Donaldson explained.  When you have that level of social and economic neglect, gang injunctions become “necessary’. But when you look at the resources coming into the district through local non-profits, which comes, I believe to $110 million a year, 80 percent of which is city money, paid mostly to non-profits that may not be based in the district, you have to ask, Are we getting what we paid for? And do these non-profits have enough integrity to make sure there is a level of impact to transform people’s lives? “

Donaldson says that, given the overall level of neglect in public housing, it’s not surprising the district has challenges.

“So, are we willing to invest in the neighborhood in a very transformative way, or are we going to continue to give money to police and prisons?” Donaldson asked.
He notes that every year, 1,600 men and women return to the southeast side of San Francisco, and there is a 71 percent recidivism rate among these folks.

“Why is this rate so high in a progressive city like San Francisco?” Donaldson said. “Part of the answer lies with our public housing policy: if you can’t get public housing, you can’t apply for a job, you can’t go to school to better yourself.”

Donaldson says there is a direct connection between the district’s homicide rate and the people getting out of prison, returning to the district and re-offending.
“So, what’s so hard about getting our arms around 1,600 people a year and stabilizing them? Because then a lot of stuff about public safety will go away.”

D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly believes that if there were gangs in Viz Valley, then Herrera’s injunction would be valid.
 “There is gang-like activity, but it’s small scale turf wars, shootings and retaliations, and it’s not organized,” Kelly said. “ Instead, you’ve got unorganized young black men with no other options, doing whatever it takes to get ahead. But instead of doing something constructive, the City Attorney calls them gangs.”

Kelly notes that the City Attorney claims that most of the individuals named in the Viz Valley injunction don’t live in the proposed safety zone.
“But according to what I’m hearing on the ground, a bunch of them do live here and/or grew up here,” Kelly said. “So, we want their families to get involved. They need safe havens. But combined with last year’s budget cuts, all this does is criminalize young people and pushes the problem around. As long as we have 40-50 percent unemployment, we are not going to solve our crime problem.”

DeWitt Lacy, also a D. 10 candidate, said he is concerned that gang injunctions are circumventing people’s due process rights.
“In a criminal case, you have the right to an attorney, but that’s not so in a civil action,” Lacy said.

Lacy worries that gang injunctions lend themselves to racial profiling.
“Folks have to stay in their house or quickly go to and fro because they can’t hang out in the neighborhood,” Lacy said. “A smarter approach would be to do community policy that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced in the Western Addition. It’s been shown to have a positive impact on criminal activity. We should have officers walking around in troubled areas. The more we change a foot patrol pilot into citywide policy, the more we actually address serious issues and problems. Everyone understands the value that police bring and everyone wants to be able to rely on them. When we only use police to bring a punitive action it reinforces the notion that they are evil enforcers.”

D. 10 candidate Malia Cohen said she was concerned by Herrera’s approach.
“I think we need a more comprehensive approach, otherwise, we’ll simply be moving crime two blocks over,” Cohen said. “We need long-term, not short-term solutions.”

Cohen noted that there are Chinese and Russian gangs in town, as well as African American ones, and Latino gangs like the Nortenos and Sudenos.
“But the style of how each gang manifests is different, which makes African Americans an easy target. We need to have a uniform approach to how we deal with this.”

The 41 men identified in Herrera’s latest injunction all appear to be African American, and many have family ties and roots in Sunnydale, meaning the injunction impacts a much larger circle of folks than those simply named in Herrera’s filings.
“The impact on families caught up in this can’t be overstated,” Cohen said.  “Either they’ll have to take bus down to court, or drag down and pay hella money for parking, and for food, and even take a day off from work if they are employed. And then there’s the emotional effect. We could be using our resources in a more productive way. I understand that Dennis Herrera is ambitious, but this is playing on people’s racism. It’s tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Maybe Herrera wants to be seen as tough on crime, but ut how about being seen as big on compassion? Or big on fair? This is not going to help people get jobs and housing. And it prevents American citizens from being able to travel.”

Eric Smith, also a D. 10 candidate, says it’s right to question the injunctions.
“David Campos and Eric Quezada both expressed concerns about Herrera’s injunction against the Nortenos, when they were running in the 2008 race for D. 9,” Smith observed.
“They talked about the unintended consequences of that injunction in terms of deporting folks who then train the next generation in the ways of gangs.”

Smith questions how effective gang injunctions are in the long-term.
“They are a band-aid,” Smith said. “This is like putting a finger in the dike, or using a hammer to kill a flea. Because the root causes are not addressed. If you don’t deal with young people’s lack of education and joblessness, their hopelessness, their choicelessness, the gang becomes their family. So, if the city did community policing and had great youth programs, it would help.”

Smith, who is a professional jazz musician, wants to see more music, poetry and spoken word programs and activities in the neighborhood.
“There’s a lot of untapped talent,” he said. “When you have arts, music and theater, those are life-saving opportunities.”

Also a bio-diesel advocate, Smith wants to see people who are returning to the community after a stint inside, being able to access green jobs, instead of doing more of the same stuff, only better, than the activities that landed them inside in the first place.

“I care about everyone in the district, but most of all about those who have been kicked to the curb and end up in gangs, on drugs, or dead.”

And D. 10 candidate Diane Wesley Smith believes there are better solutions than gang injunctions

“African American culture is almost opposite in terms of physical mannerisms and gestures and tone of voice, and that can be scary to someone who is used to being conservative,” Wesley Smith said, speaking to the rising tensions between some black and Asian residents in the district.

“I believe these things could be solved with town hall meetings, where there is food and translators so folks could talk things out, “ she said. “It’s never going to be worked out through the police. Only law enforcement benefits from these kinds of proceedings. We need to reach out and touch each other, so that the Chinese community knows that the black community has the same goals as they do, which are employment, housing and safety.”

“When we talk about violating people’s civil rights, posting people’s pictures on websites, preying on people’s fears, well, that’s how we got into the war,” Wesley-Smith said. “Unemployment. Lack of access to opportunity. Lack of education. No money for our schools, but an increase in spending on our jails. These all send the same message: You are not wanted.”

Wesley Smith is concerned that the gang injunctions will accelerate the mass exodus of blacks and people of color from San Francisco.
“We all want a safe San Francisco,” she observed. “The solution is more jobs, not war. People are just going to go more underground in face of these injunctions. Meanwhile, the kids in my district don’t have toilet paper or computer paper in their schools.”

“I understand that Dennis Herrera is a career politician, and time will tell what his true aspirations are, but this is not legislation we propose in a caring society,” Wesley-Smith concluded. “We’re not showing any of these kids any love. All we need to do is partner with business and government and work this out. Te thought that four men standing on a corner drinking an energy drink could be considered gang members is shocking. That’s how they perpetuated slavery, and that’s why blacks have problems today. All my nephews dress similarly. So, are we going to consider them gang members? The good and the bad kids dress the same. We need people and parents to understand that none of us can be safe, until we take care of those who have the least in our community. I’d venture that everyone who is a safety concern has not pursued their education, has not been assisted in pursuing education, and has not been assisted in pursuing employment.”

D. 10 candidate Lynette Sweet promised to call me back to talk about the gang injunction, and if and when she does, I’ll be sure to include her comments here. The same goes for Nyese Joshua, Geoffrea Morris and Steve Weber  who had not returned my calls as of blog time, and for any other D. 10 candidates that I was unable to reach for this article. So, stay tuned…

Crackdown on gangs — or civil liberties?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Crackdown on gangs — or civil liberties?

Sarah@sfbg.com

City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s Aug. 5 decision to file a civil gang injunction against two alleged gangs in Visitacion Valley is being hailed by top local law enforcement officials as an important weapon in a war between heavily-armed members of two rival gangs in the Sunnydale housing projects.

“I consider this another vital tool in the prosecution of violent criminals,” District Attorney Kamala Harris said in a City Attorney’s Office press release announcing the suit against the Down Below Gangsters (DBG) and Towerside Gang.

But in the middle of a heated race for supervisor in District 10, the gang injunction also has become a political issue — and infuriated civil liberties activists who say it’s unfair and won’t work.

Herrera’s complaint names and identifies 41 young black men using declarations from gang task force members, police reports, photographs of the men sporting tattoos, flashing hand signs, and wearing purported gang clothing — and even extracts from a letter that one listed individual sent to another alleged gang member, who was in jail.

If Herrera’s request is granted in court Sept. 30, it will be San Francisco’s fourth civil gang injunction. Herrera secured similar injunctions against the Bayview-Hunters Point Oakdale Mob in October 2006; the Mission District’s Norteños in 2007; and the Western Addition’s Chopper City, Eddy Rock, and Knock Out Posse in 2007.

The City Attorney’s Office claims a “cooling off” effect as a result of those injunctions. “Since Herrera launched the civil gang injunction program at the end of 2006, 46 percent of identified gang members (43 of 93) have gone without even a single arrest in San Francisco for crimes other than minor violations of the injunction itself,” Herrera’s office states.

It claims that the data also show progressive improvements over time. “Only 14 percent of identified gang members (13 of 93) were arrested for noninjunction crimes so far in 2010 — down from 41 percent in 2007,” Herrera’s office states.

But San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, civil rights lawyers, and community advocates worry that the injunction raises constitutional issues and practical problems that could be counterproductive in terms of Herrera’s stated effort to reduce violence in Visitacion Valley.

“The first difficulty you observe is that there is no right to counsel,” Adachi said, pointing to the three injunctions Herrera has already launched. “Instead, the burden is on the individuals named in the injunction to come forward and contest the injunction.”

Contesting an injunction is expensive and difficult, Adachi says.

“There’s a large amount of filing, and then there’s a hearing and a trial,” said Adachi, who represented individuals named in Herrera’s 2007 suit against the Norteños. “It costs between $10,000 and $20,000 to mount an adequate defense.”

Adachi claims Herrera’s past injunctions were mostly based on allegations and stale information that could have triggered more violence. “We saw that the city attorney based its injunction solely on what police officers had alleged, officers who in most cases were members of the Gang Task Force,” he said. “For instance, there was a woman who had been in a gang, but left years before. As a result of being named, her family was threatened and she was fearful there would be reprisals.” The woman’s name was ultimately removed.

Adachi represented a young man who had never been in trouble but found himself on Herrera’s Mission-based injunction list after he rapped about the Nortenos. “There was no evidence, but when we said there had been a mistake, the city attorney disagreed,” Adachi said. “In the end, a judge found there was insufficient evidence.”

Adachi worries about the impact on individuals mistakenly named in the suit. “When you name someone, that brands them. What we saw in other injunctions was that people lost jobs.”

He notes that only a few people came forward to challenge past injunctions. “But in at least four cases, people were found not to be gang members,” he said.

At the time of those injunctions, there was no way to get off the list. “So we worked with the ACLU to demand one and the City Attorney’s Office agreed,” Adachi said. “But I don’t know how many people have since filed paperwork.”

Ingleside police station Capt. Louis Cassenego told us that as of Aug. 20, 12 men had been served with the injunction — six allegedly from DBG, six from Ingleside.

“We had signage posted on utility poles, and no signs have been torn down,” Cassenego said. “And so far, the folks served have taken it in a matter-of fact fashion.”

But Sharen Hewitt, executive director of the C.L.A.E.R. Project, a community empowerment and violence prevention nonprofit, said she worries that people don’t understand the implications of being served and won’t take the trouble to opt out. “I talked to a young man after he got served and he tore up his notice,” Hewitt said.

Hewitt invited representatives from the City Attorney’s Office, Police Department, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Bay Area Legal Aid, and residents of the area to an Aug. 12 emergency debriefing. “We are sitting in the middle of a major war zone,” Hewitt said, referring to the meeting’s location at Britton Courts, a public housing project that Herrera claims is on DBG turf. “Although this situation threatens the community, it has also brought us together. And now we are trying to pull together a legal team.”

Deputy City Attorney Yvonne Mere explained that the suit seeks to ban criminal and nuisance conduct by creating a proposed safety zone that covers two-tenths of a square mile and encompasses both gangs’ alleged turf plus a buffer zone.

The injunction would impose a 10 p.m. curfew on the 41 men listed, who are a barred from trespassing, selling drugs, and illegally possessing firearms, loitering, displaying gang signs, and associating in public in neighborhoods surrounding the Sunnydale, Heritage Homes, and Britton Courts developments.

Some of this conduct is already against the law, but other activities, including assembling in groups, is typically protected by the Constitution, Mere explained.

Lt. Mikail Ali of the Ingleside station said many youngsters don’t want to be in a gang. “This is an out,” Ali said.

But some residents questioned whether some men on Herrera’s list are in a gang. “Who are you to say who is a gang member?” asked Sheila Hill, who was concerned that her son, the victim of a shooting a couple of years ago, was on the list. “Yes, they might have done something three or five years ago, but many of them have moved on, got married, and got a job. I don’t believe you guys are really checking your records.”

Mere disagreed (later clarifying that Hill’s son isn’t named by the injunction). “We looked at criminal records within the last five years, including shootings, shots fired, and weapons possessed, and it’s a pretty violent zone down here,” Mere said. Mere claims the war between DBG and the Towerside caused 10 murders in the last three years.

Leslie Burch, president of the Britton Courts Neighborhood Association and cofounder of the Visitacion Valley Peacekeepers, said a lot of the men named grew up together, playing sports, staying at each other’s houses overnight, and making affiliations.

“So I wouldn’t necessarily classify them as gangs,” Burch said. “They are just a bunch of friends who have common interests like music, sports, and hanging out together.”

Mere pointed to the opt-out option, part of a 2008 agreement between the city attorney, ACLU, and Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

“It’s an option for people to say, ‘No, you are wrong,'<0x2009>” Mere said. “They can submit letters from pastors and friends, and we’ll consider that between now and Sept. 30.“

But Burch challenged some of the evidence posted at the City Attorney’s wesbite, including photographs of people sporting alleged gang tattoos and clothing.

“Take the T sign,” Burch explained “The city attorney says it represents the Towerside. But I had a nephew who was murdered. His name was Trayon, and some people wear the letter T in remembrance of him. I was in court with a nephew who was trying to explain that he is not a gang member just because he’s wearing a hat with a T on it.”

Hewitt noted that the injunction follows budget cuts that decimated local nonprofits and that funding is desperately needed for programs that provide young men with jobs and other alternatives to crime.

Hewitt also noted that the injunction gives District 10 candidates an opportunity to show the community that they are tracking all the issues in this pivotal race. “D-10 has been reduced to the Lennar issue, and that’s what’s criminal,” Hewitt said, adding that coverage of the race has so far largely excluded Viz Valley, even though it’s home to the city’s largest public housing site.

Indeed, the injunction is becoming part of the dialogue in the District 10 supervisor campaign. Candidates Isaac Bowers, Kristine Enea, Chris Jackson, Nyese Joshua, Steve Moss, and Marlene Tran attended Sharen Hewitt’s Aug. 12 gang injunction debriefing. By meeting’s end, Bowers and Enea said they would help community members get legal representation. “A lot of people being served don’t know what an injunction is or don’t show up at the hearing, and then they become subject to the injunction,” Bowers said.

Jackson said he’s committed to helping these men get access to job and education opportunities.

Candidate Tony Kelly said if there are gangs in Viz Valley, Herrera’s injunction would be valid. “There is gang-like activity, but it’s small-scale turf wars, shootings. and retaliations. And it’s not organized,” Kelly claimed. “Instead, you’ve got unorganized young black men with no other options doing whatever it takes to get ahead. But instead of doing something constructive, the city attorney calls them gangs.”

DeWitt Lacy, also a candidate, said he remains concerned that gang injunctions are circumventing people’s due process rights. “In a criminal case, you have the right to an attorney — but that’s not so in a civil action.”

Bunny business

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bunny business

arts@sfbg.com

FILM The overlapping causes of liberating women and liberating sexuality have long been frenemies. There is no reconciling how the sexual revolution forwarded both women’s independence and their exploitation as sexual objects by industries overwhelmingly focused on male desire and purchasing power.

Nobody figures higher in that saga than Hugh Hefner. Fair to say he probably played as big a role in triggering said revolution (at least for men) as the pill. Yet he also cemented Slim-Waisted Young Blonde With Big Tits (real or factory-ordered) as the prevailing straight-male standard for desirability. An image that, decades later, strangleholds popular imaginations and private insecurities more than ever.

Brigitte Berman’s new Canadian documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel acknowledges that conflict without seriously exploring it. Instead, her focus is on "Hef"’s admittedly under-appreciated role as force for progressive change. Not just in expected arenas like censorship and sex laws, but also in public-spirited concerns from racial equity to film preservation. Hef has put his money where his editorial mouth is, with a passion probably equal to (if for many incongruous with) his need to be surrounded by glossy babes now one-fourth his octogenarian age.

One can fault Berman, as the purported first outsider "granted full access" to peek past Playboy‘s corporate gates, for not being tough enough. Hefner’s personal life (such as it’s been for a lifelong, briefly speed-addicted workaholic) isn’t much touched on. First wife and family simply vanish from the narrative once our protagonist decides to become his publication’s suave, anything-but-monogamous "playboy" archetype.

No ex-wives are heard from, no kids aside from Christie Hefner, who became her absentee father’s empirical second-in-command. No ex-girlfriends either, apart from Playmate-turned-B-movie-regular Shannon Tweed, who admits that being his "No. 1 girl" still wasn’t enough because "I don’t share well."

Casting him as a First Amendment and civil rights champion, the film skimps on the full breadth of artistic-slash-business involvements, from two decades’ worth of softcore video Playmate "portraits" (do I own the 1994 La Toya Jackson one? Does it contain a gauzy music vid implying sexual abuse by Papa Joe? Double yes!) to prior dabblings producing regular movies. (The regular dabblings included Roman Polanski’s 1971 post-Manson Macbeth and Peter Bogandovich’s fine 1979 Saint Jack, not to mention hard-to-find 1973 flop The Naked Ape, a sketch-format riff on Desmond Morris’ pop anthropology tome. Its awkward, touching mix of wink-wink smut and crusading good intentions distill peak-years Playboy.) Nor does it acknowledge the Playboy empire’s latter-day struggles as the Internet has rendered print erotica a quaint antiquity.

Beyond these omissions, Berman still strains to encompass a very colorful life in two full hours. Even if it eventually feels like a very long Wikipedia bio, her film is never boring. And Hefner remains notably articulate, despite all eccentricities. (Natch, he’s interviewed throughout in silk pajamas or velvet bathrobes, currently cohabiting with just three drastically younger blondes — down from a post-second marriage harem of seven.)

Playboy (initially to be called Stag Party) started in 1953 as a direct response to Hefner’s coldly unaffectionate family background and dissatisfaction with his prematurely boring home-career respectability. Raising funds himself, he gained enormous attention with a first issue featuring pre-stardom nude photos of Marilyn Monroe that everyone had heard about but few had seen.

Promoting "a healthier attitude toward sex," not to mention the shocking notion that "nice girls like sex too" — Playboy then sought to pedestal "girls next door" rather than pro models or strippers — swiftly brought a backlash. A successful fight against the U.S. Postal Service was just its first legal battle. As noted in the film, the most morally righteous opponents often proved the most hypocritical, including Charles Keating — who pronounced pornography "part of the Communist conspiracy," then decades later went to prison for 1980s Savings and Loan fraudulence — and fundamentalist Christians like late loon Jerry Falwell.

Meanwhile Hefner used the enormously popular periodical (and syndicated TV variety-show spin-offs Playboy’s Penthouse and Playboy After Dark) to articulate a "Playboy philosophy" stretching way beyond hedonistic libertarianism. He employed Red Scare-blacklisted talent; showcased African Americans in hitherto segregated contexts; and campaigned for abortion and birth control rights and against draconian punishments for sodomy and marijuana. The girly mag gave voice to countercultural and anti-Vietnam War sentiments, deliberately stirring controversy via in-depth interviews such as Roots author Alex Haley’s with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell.

Hefner got an eventual NAACP award, among other kudos. But as Dr. Ruth (or is it Bill Maher? Sorry, there are too many celebrities sampled to keep track) says, the "escapist" side that spun Bunny boobs into bazillions overshadowed the earnest intellectual. Veteran feminist Susan Brownmiller is cast as the unsexy scold who loses points for labeling Playboy‘s often extraordinary taste in literary and critical voices (Updike, Mailer, Bradbury, etc.) a mere clever ruse to legitimize its jismy gist. Yet who can argue with her vintage challenge that Hefner demonstrate true gender equality by going public "with a cotton-tail on your rear end"?

It would be nice to hear from more critical voices — not just the odd ludicrous one, like born-again MOR crooner and repentant former Playboy subscriber Pat Boone. Blaming Hefner for "breaking the moral compass" of our nation, he’s the sole interviewee photographed against a wall of vainglorious mementos — apart from KISS’ aviator-shaded Gene Simmons, presumably grumpy because for once he’s discussing someone else’s slutty serial cocksmanship. (These two have more in common than they’ll acknowledge: see Boone’s unforgettable 1997 CD In a Metal Mood.)

By any fair appraisal, Hefner looms large among 20th-century societal game-changers. This undeniably entertaining documentary celebrates his heroism. Yet it can’t help getting across on cheesier snapshots. Who can resist glimpses of Playboy’s Roller-Disco and Pajama Party, a 1979 prime-time network WTF featuring the combined talents of Richard Dawson, Chuck Mangione, the Village People, and Wayland Flowers and Madame? Plus jiggling Playmates on wheels, of course. Now that is a Rorschach of American "liberation" as fucked-up perfect as you’ll never find.

HUGH HEFNER: PLAYBOY, ACTIVIST, AND REBEL opens Fri/20 in Bay Area theaters.

Reading Hef for the articles

Andrew Lam
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“Did you see the film? Are you one of the ones who thinks it was biased?” So begins my phone interview with Briggitte Berman, director of the new documentary Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, Rebel. Her movie, (which Dennis Harvey will review in this week’s SFBG) has been criticized for being an overly laudatory look at the life of the man who’s sparked a thousand sexual hegemonies, though few would deny that Berman’s put together an entertaining ride. But enough about cinematic merits. Did she get loose at the Playboy mansion while filming? What are those things like for a woman actually wearing clothes?

Wrong question. “I don’t like big parties. I don’t go to big parties. I am a film maker,” Bergman replies, stiffly. 

Now, were I composing a piece on the Sultan of Smut, Hefner’s bacchanals would be one of the first places I’d hit to get background — even if that film, as Berman is quick to specify, seeks to examine not “merely” Hef’s personal life so much as the social legacy he’s created. 

And let’s be real, the man is a walking reality TV show: his personal excesses are the social legacy. Perhaps therein lies the key to the way the film shies away from the meaty dilemma at the heart of Hef. Berman just doesn’t care for the naughty bits.

After all, she clearly prefers Hef’s famously couth intellectual side. The filmmaker first came into contact with the icon via his admiration for her film on the jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke. Their acquaintance has taken place not in the grotto, but in the well-appointed Mansion dens where Hefner stages his regular film nights, screening old classics for an audience of similarly ancient chums. 

Couth Hef, gettin’ things done. Photo courtesy of Playboy Archives

This is the Hefner one reads for the articles, and it’s the one that Playboy, Activist, and Rebel makes the most of. We get to hear much about the man’s pro-integration stance (his Playboy clubs were the first mixed-race venues to host Black stand-up comedians), his crusade for women’s reproductive rights, and his battles with governmental persecution – his persistence in hiring black-listed artists for his TV shows was truly admirable. Berman catches Jesse Jackson on-screen calling Hef an activist, for chrissakes.

It’s all, like I said, really interesting, and will probably teach viewers a thing or three about the civil rights movement and precursors to the Sexual Revolution. But the key word here is precursors. When we look back on the magazine’s heyday from our queasy 21st century enlightenment, it’s plain to see all was not groovy in the land of rabbit ears. 

Which brings us to the bunny suits, the corset, heels, and floppy ear ensemble sported by the female employees of Hef’s infamous string of nightclubs. It always comes back to the bunny suits. Now, I’m not one to cry foul on the basis of corset alone – I know many a woman who gets off on having a cinched waist and four-inch spikes on her hind paws. There’s a moment in the film where Hefner is called out on a talk show by two feminists. They ask him, if the bunny suits aren’t meant to be demeaning and reductive, why doesn’t Hef strap on one of those cotton tails himself? 

His answer is unconvincing, and the women have a valid point. If Hefner was so into being more open about our sex lives, why were men never shown cavorting through the debaucherous scenes of his pictorials? “What I was trying to say quite frankly,” he shares in one of his many lengthy on-screen interviews in Playboy, Activist, and Rebel “is that sex is okay and nice girls like sex too.” Well, we all know what Hef’s “nice girl” looks like. Leaving aside all issues of body type normativity on the pages of Playboy, (we shouldn’t) is/was this really a vision of sexual freedom, or the freedom of one man to be sexual in his one, very particular way?

Berman didn’t look at this, and she should have. “I have made several documentaries about complex individuals and he is a very complex man. I didn’t make a film about dolphins. I leave that to other filmmakers,” she tells me (oh snap, The Cove, you Lisa Frank binder, you – Berman’s calling you out!). But the Hefner film differs from Berman’s other depictions of complex figures in that we already know how the person in question has colored our lives. Hef is a pop culture powerhouse, unlike Bix Beiderbecke or Artie Shaw, some of Berman’s previous targets.

So it’s not enough to give token opposition air time to one or two Boomer feminist thinkers who will merely tell us the same things we already know about disrespectful imagery and the like. For me, they didn’t come close to countering Gene Simmons telling the camera that women are “more sexually disconnected” because our genitals aren’t rubbing against our pants leg 24/7. Scenes with Dr. Ruth notwithstanding, it was time for Berman to roll out someone who understands the value of what Hef did, but also someone who could critique his methods in a way that’s constructive to the generations that are not scandalized by that Marilyn Monroe centerfold in Playboy’s debut issue. 

Before we hung up, I had one more query for Berman. “Does Hef get it when people called him misogynistic? Does he see what they taking issue with?” 

“If you ask me whether he has a sense,” she began. “I suggest you ask him that. The totality of who Mr. Hefner is – no film can ever reveal that. Sometimes the person him or herself doesn’t know that.”

But at the ripe old age of 84, one would like to think Mr. Hefner would be working on it. Berman could have spent her time on this film getting her hands a little dirty. She could have asked Hef to consider how he might have constructed the imagery of his empire – gasp! — differently. Now that would be some good reality TV. 

 

Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel starts Fri/20 at Lumiere Theatre and Shattuck Cinemas

 

Same-sex marriages set to resume in California

Sasha Cuttler
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0

Same-sex marriages in California will resume on Aug. 18, barring a higher court issuing a stay. Judge Vaughn Walker today announced that he is removing the stay against new same-sex marriages that was in place since his ruling last week that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure banning gay men and lesbians from getting married, was unconstitutional.

“Because proponents fail to satisfy any of the factors necessary to warrant a stay, the court denies a stay except for a limited time solely in order to permit the court of appeals to consider the issue in an orderly manner,” Walker wrote.

Mayor Gavin Newsom sent out a press release announcing that San Francisco will begin performing marriages again – just as it did in 2004 when Newsom permitted same-sex couples to apply for license, setting off California’s rollercoaster ride on the issue – as soon as it is allowed to do so.

“From the beginning, I have strongly agreed with Judge Walker’s decision that the right to marry deserves equal protection under the law as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Today’s decision by Judge Walker to lift the stay on marriage discrimination on August 18th is another victory for the fundamental American idea that all people deserve equal rights and treatment under the law,” Newsom said in the prepared statement.

Immigrant advocates accuse ICE of “pattern of dishonesty”

Mary Magee
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13
Immigrant advocates accuse ICE of “pattern of dishonesty”

A coalition of national civil rights organizations held a August 10 press conference to discuss recently released internal government documents that they say reveal “a pattern of dishonesty” regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)  “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) program.

Representatives with the National Day Laborer Organization Network (NDLON), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law noted that though ICE officials have declared their intention to expand S-Comm into every jurisdiction in the country by 2013, information about the program has been scarce, and development of its operational details has been shrouded in secrecy.

The coalition also pointed to a July 27 letter that U.S. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren recently wrote to Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder as evidence that ICE led Congress to believe that SecureComm is a voluntary, and not a mandatory, program.

In her letter, Lofgren, who is chair of the House of Representatives’ subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law,  asks for “a clear opt-out procedure for municipalities that do not wish to participate in the S-Comm program.”

“As we discussed, Secure Communities is a voluntary program that relies upon the resources of both of your agencies [referring to DHS and DOJ] in order to provide State, local, and federal law enforcement agencies with information related to the immigration status of persons booked into our nation’s jails and prisons,” Lofgren wrote.

“I am aware that some local law enforcement agencies have expressed concern that participating in Secure Communities will present a barrier to their community policing efforts and will make it more difficult for them to implement a law enforcement strategy that meets their community’s public safety needs,” Lofgren observed.

“There appears to be significant confusion about how local law enforcement agencies may ‘opt out’ of participating in Secure Communities,” Lofgren continued.

Lofgren notes that staff from her House subcommittee were briefed on this program by ICE and were informed that localities could opt out simply by making such a request to ICE, while subsequent conversations with ICE and FBI CJIS added  to the confusion by suggesting that this might not be so.

“Please provide me with a clear explanation of how local law enforcement agencies may pot out of Secure Communities by having the fingerprints they collect and submit to the SIBs checked against criminal, not immigration, databases,” Lofgren concludes.

To date, Lofgren has not received a reply, a press spokesperson in her office confirmed.

Immigration rights advocates charge that S-Comm, which is operative in 544 jurisdictions in 27 states, functions like the controversial 287(g) program and Arizona’s SB1070, making state and local police central to the enforcement of federal immigration law.

They say the program, which automatically runs fingerprints through immigration databases for all people arrested, targets them for detention and deportation even if their criminal charges are minor, eventually dismissed, or the result of an unlawful arrest.

After reviewing the recently released ICE documents and other information, advocates for NDLON said they found evidence supporting their claim that ICE has been dishonest with the public and with local law enforcement regarding S-Comm’s true mission and impact.

“While ICE markets S-Comm as an efficient, narrowly tailored tool that targets ‘high threat’ immigrants, it actually functions as a dragnet for funneling people into the mismanaged ICE detention and removal system,” stated a NDLON press release. “ICE’s own records show that the vast majority (79 percent) of people deported due to S-Comm are not criminals or were picked up for lower level offenses.”

They also charge that the program serves as a smokescreen for racial profiling, allowing police officers to stop people based solely on their appearance and arrest non-citizens, knowing that they will be deported, even if they were wrongfully arrested and are never convicted.

“Preliminary data confirms that some jurisdictions, such as Maricopa County Arizona, have abnormally high rates of non-criminal S-Comm deportations,” NDLON continued.

 “Lastly, the impression ICE fosters that S-Comm is not mandatory and jurisdictions can opt out is riddled with questions,” they conclude.

 “These records reveal a dangerous trend,” said NDLON Executive Director Pablo Alvarado. “This program creates an explosion of Arizona-like enforcement at a time when the results have proven disastrous. Thanks to S-Comm, we face the potential proliferation of racial profiling, distrust of local police, fear, and xenophobia to every zip code in America.”

 “S-Comm co-opts local police departments to do ICE’s dirty work at significant cost to community relations and police objectives,” said CCR attorney Sunita Patel. “Without full and truthful information about the program’s actual mission and impact, police are operating in the dark. The bottom line is that thrusting police into the business of federal immigration enforcement isn’t good for anyone.”

 “ICE is racing forward imposing its S-Comm program on new states and localities every day, without any meaningful dialog or public debate,” warned Bridget Kessler, a teaching fellow at the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

The three organizations vow to litigate for the release of more data and records “to uncover the truth behind S-Comm and other ICE efforts to draft local police into immigration enforcement.”

Also speaking at the Aug. 10 press conference was San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey. Earlier this summer, Hennessey blew the whistle on S-COmm, after attending a meeting in May at which ICE revealed it was going to switch the program on in San Francisco in June.

But despite Hennessey’s efforts to opt San Francisco out of the program, S-Comm went live June 8 in San Francisco.

“We were told we could opt out through the State Attorney General’s Office,” Hennessey said, recalling how AG Jerry Brown’s office told him that San Francisco could only opt out through the feds.

“We were given the run around,” Hennessey said.“It’s a program forced upon individual local law enforcement agencies, no matter what the local community wants,” Hennessey said.

Henessey worries that the program is having a chilling effect on community policy efforts.

“Witnesses and victims of crime won’t come forward for fear they will be deported,” he said.

Henessey notes that ICE has detained folks who were arrested for minor traffic violations, and whose charges were subsequently dropped, as well as folks with no criminal records.

“My Board of Supervisors, my Police Commission and my mayor have said they would rather not participate in deportations at that level,” Hennessey noted.

He worries that the program could be expanded to include employment record checks.

“They say the program won’t be used for civil purposes, but it’s already being used for federal employment checks,” Hennessey said. “This further isolates minority communities from the mainstream.”

Finally, some logic on same-sex marriage

David Talbot
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0
Finally, some logic on same-sex marriage

EDITORIAL Judge Vaughn Walker’s historic decision overturning Proposition 8 was remarkable not so much for its conclusion, but because it has taken so long for a federal court to conclude that same-sex marriage does no conceivable harm to anyone.

The legal scholars can debate whether this particular civil rights issue deserves strict scrutiny or must meet only a rational-basis test. And everyone knows the case will eventually wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where nine justices will decide whether official discrimination can be legal in the United States of America.

But what Walker did was crucial — he devoted the vast majority of his 138-page decision to discussing the facts of the case. As Bob Egelko notes in a nice San Francisco Chronicle piece Aug. 8, Walker provided a forum for the public debate that should have happened around the ballot measure but never did. Prop. 8 was decided after political consultants used carefully honed messages designed to play on people’s emotions; the real facts of the matter were hardly ever discussed on a statewide level.

The facts of the matter, as the record clearly shows and Walker eloquently related, are simple: there’s nothing wrong with same-sex marriage. The ability of same-sex couples to marry has no impact on the rights of opposite-sex couples. There is also no legal reason to believe that something rooted in an old tradition — from a time when gender roles were rigidly prescribed — has, in and of itself, any validity. "Tradition alone," Walker noted, citing a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court case, "cannot form a rational basis for a law." Furthermore, studies show that children brought up by same-sex couples fare just as well (and in some studies, better) than children raised in traditional households.

In fact, the judge concluded, the only real reason Prop. 8 supporters put the measure on the ballot is that they don’t like gay and lesbian people: "Proposition 8 was premised on the belief that same-sex couples simply are not as good as opposite-sex couples. Whether that belief is based on moral disapproval of homosexuality, animus toward gays and lesbians, or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate."

That record of factual evidence will make it harder for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or Supreme Court to overturn Walker’s ruling. And the very essence of his decision — that no harm comes to anyone in society when same-sex couples are allowed to wed — is ample reason for him to deny any stay while the case is on appeal. A stay, which would leave Prop. 8 in effect for several more years while the case works its way through the system, would make sense only if some irreparable harm would come to some party. There’s no such harm — real or potential or imaginable — to anyone or anything except institutional and personal bigotry.

The decision demonstrates another crucial factor, one that politicians of both parties should pay attention to this fall. Courts tend to (slowly) reflect changing attitudes in society. And while the polls are still inconclusive, the demographics are not: Almost nobody under 30 opposes same-sex marriage, and every year that passes, California and the country come closer to the day when Prop. 8 will seem as silly as anti-miscegenation laws.

Both Attorney General Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have asked Walker not to stay his ruling. Sen. Barbara Boxer has hailed the decision. But Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Senate contender Carly Fiorina remain adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage. Brown and Boxer shouldn’t be afraid to make this part of their campaigns. There’s not a whole lot to bring young people to the ballot this fall, and making Prop. 8 an issue can only help the Democrats.

It’s also worth remembering that nearly every Democratic leader in the nation blanched when San Francisco, under Mayor Gavin Newsom did the right thing and legalized same-sex marriage in 2004. We warned then that Sens. Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Washington crew would wind up on the wrong side of history. And now that a judge who has never been known as a leftist (or even a liberal) has made the case that marriage is a civil right and discrimination is never legally acceptable, they ought to admit they were wrong.

Finally, some logic on same-sex marriage

David Talbot
-
11

Same-sex marriage does no conceivable harm to anyone

EDITORIAL Judge Vaughn Walker’s historic decision overturning Proposition 8 was remarkable not so much for its conclusion, but because it has taken so long for a federal court to conclude that same-sex marriage does no conceivable harm to anyone.

The legal scholars can debate whether this particular civil rights issue deserves strict scrutiny or must meet only a rational-basis test. And everyone knows the case will eventually wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court, where nine justices will decide whether official discrimination can be legal in the United States of America.

But what Walker did was crucial — he devoted the vast majority of his 138-page decision to discussing the facts of the case. As Bob Egelko notes in a nice San Francisco Chronicle piece Aug. 8, Walker provided a forum for the public debate that should have happened around the ballot measure but never did. Prop. 8 was decided after political consultants used carefully honed messages designed to play on people’s emotions; the real facts of the matter were hardly ever discussed on a statewide level.

The facts of the matter, as the record clearly shows and Walker eloquently related, are simple: there’s nothing wrong with same-sex marriage. The ability of same-sex couples to marry has no impact on the rights of opposite-sex couples. There is also no legal reason to believe that something rooted in an old tradition — from a time when gender roles were rigidly prescribed — has, in and of itself, any validity. “Tradition alone,” Walker noted, citing a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court case, “cannot form a rational basis for a law.” Furthermore, studies show that children brought up by same-sex couples fare just as well (and in some studies, better) than children raised in traditional households.

In fact, the judge concluded, the only real reason Prop. 8 supporters put the measure on the ballot is that they don’t like gay and lesbian people: “Proposition 8 was premised on the belief that same-sex couples simply are not as good as opposite-sex couples. Whether that belief is based on moral disapproval of homosexuality, animus toward gays and lesbians, or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate.”

That record of factual evidence will make it harder for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or Supreme Court to overturn Walker’s ruling. And the very essence of his decision — that no harm comes to anyone in society when same-sex couples are allowed to wed — is ample reason for him to deny any stay while the case is on appeal. A stay, which would leave Prop. 8 in effect for several more years while the case works its way through the system, would make sense only if some irreparable harm would come to some party. There’s no such harm — real or potential or imaginable — to anyone or anything except institutional and personal bigotry.

The decision demonstrates another crucial factor, one that politicians of both parties should pay attention to this fall. Courts tend to (slowly) reflect changing attitudes in society. And while the polls are still inconclusive, the demographics are not: Almost nobody under 30 opposes same-sex marriage, and every year that passes, California and the country come closer to the day when Prop. 8 will seem as silly as anti-miscegenation laws.

Both Attorney General Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have asked Walker not to stay his ruling. Sen. Barbara Boxer has hailed the decision. But Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and Senate contender Carly Fiorina remain adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage. Brown and Boxer shouldn’t be afraid to make this part of their campaigns. There’s not a whole lot to bring young people to the ballot this fall, and making Prop. 8 an issue can only help the Democrats.

It’s also worth remembering that nearly every Democratic leader in the nation blanched when San Francisco, under Mayor Gavin Newsom did the right thing and legalized same-sex marriage in 2004. We warned then that Sens. Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Washington crew would wind up on the wrong side of history. And now that a judge who has never been known as a leftist (or even a liberal) has made the case that marriage is a civil right and discrimination is never legally acceptable, they ought to admit they were wrong.

Public trance-portation

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Public trance-portation

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER When caught riding Muni, one way to while away the time and ignore the lunatic seated next to you is to gaze out on the passing scene and its traffic, at the buildings and neighborhoods and detritus of the city, at all the lovers and loners, the shiny things people wear and drive and push and collect, as well as the tattered and forgotten stuff no one loves anymore.

It’s cheerier than remembering you’re stuck on a Muni bus, anyway. It’s a big ready-made rolling show and it’s only $2. True, Antenna Theater’s new ride, The Magic Bus, costs a little more, but then it comes with an added twist: time travel. I was stuck in traffic in 1968 last weekend. How many Muni riders can say that? Maybe only a dozen, tops.

Copresented with Teacher with the Bus (Jens-Peter Jungclaussen’s wheel-bound extracurricular excursion line), The Magic Bus is Antenna Theater’s latest experiential outing. Scooping up audience-passengers in Union Square, the bus — painted in somewhat low-key shades of psychedelia and hosted by a genial “hippie flight attendant” played by either Rana Kangas-Kent or Sarah David — goes tripping through the city and back in time to the 1960s, with all their hoary contradictions, antecedents, and legacies. These include but are by no means limited to monkeys in orbit; astronauts on the moon; wars overseas; civil rights struggles at home; communes off the grid; and sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll seemingly everywhere.

The interior video and sound collage — expertly composed by a collaborative team of artists and Antenna’s artistic director Chris Hardman, who supplies the concept, script, sound design, and onboard 3-D artwork — makes the real-life scene outside the bus something like a palimpsest, only the past, rather than bleeding through to the surface, is cast over the present by video screens that automatically descend over the windows.

If there’s something a bit pat and predictable about such a project from the get-go, it would still be hard to reduce the overall effect of the ride to the admittedly too-familiar narrative it rehearses. That’s partly because you actually are moving, through a real city in real time, and stuff is happening outside those windows. The conversation between past and present is immediate and captivating.

Screens rise momentarily on the Financial District, for instance, where the Transamerica Pyramid building fills out the windows on one side of the bus and the odd pedestrian strolls by in front. Here, the voice-over introduces the pyramid structure, and the pyramid scheme it represents, amid the other soaring money towers that “reach so high as to block out the sun for most of the day.” Deceptively straightforward, the video narrative goes on to satirize, mock, and dissect the corporate ethos and the ideology of success American-style, as we hear Allen Ginsberg howling, “Molloch, whose blood is running money … “

Tried-and-true tropes, of course, and rather easy ones at that. But there’s no denying a certain willingness to embrace them, here at the edge of capitalism’s ever-expanding desert. Moreover, Magic Bus‘s narrative is lively and thoughtful even while limning well-traveled terrain. If “hobbit hippie” consciousness is with us still, in subtler but more widespread patterns of sustainable living, it’s now driven less by “a beautiful vision of the future,” notes the narrator, “than necessity.”

THE MAGIC BUS

Through August 8, $20–$25

Union Square, SF

(415) 332-8867

www.antenna-theater.org

Beyond the rage

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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46
Beyond the rage

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Downtown Oakland became supercharged with emotion in the hours following the July 8 announcement of the verdict in the trial of former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle. And in the days that followed, the city remained electrified as residents struggled to make sense of the verdict, the rioting that occurred in its wake, and the historic significance of these developments.

But as the emotions dissipate, the issues behind the verdict and its aftermath remain — along with a series of questions that could determine whether this intensely scrutinized shooting of an unarmed man will lead to any changes in police practices or the justice system, as well as how the community will react if the judge imposes a light sentence.

After being moved out of the Bay Area because the publicity surrounding the case, a Los Angeles jury found Mehserle, a white officer, guilty of involuntary manslaughter for fatally shooting Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black man who was detained on a BART train platform in Oakland on Jan. 1, 2009 following reports of a fight.

The verdict stood out as an almost unprecedented conviction of an officer in a case involving deadly use of force, and a departure from an all-too-familiar narrative in which tragedies resulting from police shootings bring no consequences for those responsible for pulling the trigger. However, in the wake of the verdict, Grant’s family members made it clear that they did not believe that justice had been served.

“This involuntary manslaughter verdict is not what we wanted, nor do we accept it,” Oscar Grant’s uncle, Cephus “Bobby” Johnson, said at a July 10 press conference at True Vine Ministries, a West Oakland church. “It’s been a long, hard road, but there are chapters in this war. The battle’s just getting started.”

To Grant’s relatives and a coalition of supporters who came together in response to the shooting, the trial is intrinsically linked to a long history of police brutality that occurs with impunity in cases involving youth of color. Meetings organized by clergy and community members have been held weekly in West Oakland over the past 19 months with the ultimate goal of bringing about greater oversight of the BART police and effective police reform on a broader scale.

On July 9, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that its Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the FBI have opened an investigation into the shooting and would determine whether prosecution at the federal level is warranted. Defense Attorney Michael Rains also made a motion to move Mehserle’s sentencing to a date later than Aug. 6, the date it was originally expected.

As the events of July 8 solidify into the Bay Area’s collective memory, attention is now shifting toward the next steps, and to lingering questions. Mehserle’s sentencing is key: will his sentence be light, reflecting the jury’s conclusion that he simply made a mistake — or will it include substantial prison time, reflecting the fact that he shot and killed an unarmed man without justification? Will he receive a lighter sentence than someone else without a criminal record found guilty of involuntary manslaughter simply because of his identity as a former officer with law enforcement organizations still in his corner? If Mehserle receives a long sentence, will it signify a shift in a justice system that many perceive as biased — or a stand-alone result of intense public scrutiny?

And as a result of all this, will the BART police finally get the type of training and serious civilian oversight they so badly need?

 

RAW REACTION

On the day the verdict was announced, thousands turned out for a peaceful rally near Oakland’s 12th Street BART Station and City Hall to hear speakers sound off about how their lives had been affected by police brutality.

As night fell, looting and rioting began to break out as the media covered scenes of rage set against small trash fires, causing anger and frustration for many Oakland residents who were dismayed and frightened by the chaos and disorder. More than 80 arrests were made, and dozens of stores including Sears, Whole Foods, Subway, Foot Locker, and numerous banks were damaged or looted. Police efforts to respond to the situation gave downtown city blocks the feeling of a war zone for several hours.

Reactions to the verdict, and the chaotic aftermath that followed, varied in the following days.

“The truth is that in American history, this is both a high point and a low point,” Olis Simmons, executive director of Youth UpRising — an Oakland nonprofit that works with youth of color — told the Guardian the following day. Speaking to the fact that an officer had been convicted in a case involving a wrongful death, she said: “I think it really is a signal that America is changing. This is the farthest we’ve ever gone.”

She said she hoped that people who were infuriated enough to react violently on the evening of July 8 would channel that energy toward constructive goals of pushing for a more satisfactory outcome. Before rallies and later rioting began that night, Youth UpRising sent people into the crowd to hand out glossy flyers proclaiming “violence isn’t justice.”

Davey D Cook, an independent radio journalist who extensively covered activity surrounding Grant’s death on a news site called Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner, said he thought the mainstream media was ready to have “a field day” with the riots, pointing out that they ran special coverage in the days leading up to verdict, building up anticipation of violent outbreaks. He also said that the scope of the rioting should be kept in perspective.

On his July 9 KPFA radio show, Hard Knock Radio, Cook added a salient point: “Broken windows can be replaced, and in two weeks, they will be. Stolen merchandise can be replaced, and it will be. But who’s going to replace this justice system that got looted? What insurance policy takes care of that?”

Just before the July 10 press conference, a town hall meeting was held inside True Vine Ministries. It was crammed full of supporters from Oakland, San Francisco, and beyond who listened as Minister Keith Muhammad — a representative of the Nation of Islam who has worked closely with the Grant family and traveled to Los Angeles to watch the trial — spoke at length. Muhammad was dressed immaculately in a suit and tie, and spoke with an air of fiery conviction.

“In the outcome of this case, there is surely more to be resolved that has yet to be addressed,” Muhammad said. He emphasized that “we’re not satisfied,” but added: “You should know that dissatisfaction is the foundation of all change.”

He raised a number of questions about the proceedings, asking why there was an absence of African Americans on the jury, and why the judge called an early recess when Grant’s teenage friend, Jamil Dewar, sobbed uncontrollably on the witness stand — but not when Mehserle sobbed on the stand. He noted that Grant’s friends were kept in handcuffs for six hours after witnessing Grant’s death.

In the days following July 8, much was also said about mainstream media coverage of the events, in particular the notion that “outside agitators” would come in and start trouble. “I do not like this divisive campaign to divide our community and protestors by calling people outsiders,” Oakland defense attorney Walter Riley wrote in a statement posted on Indybay.org. “This is a great metropolitan area … we expect people from all over the map to participate in Oakland. Calling people outsiders in this instance is a political attack on the movement. The subtext is that the outsiders are white and not connected to Oakland. From the days of the civil rights movement to now, the outsider labeling failed to address the underlying problems for which people came together. We must engage in respectful political struggle. I understand the frustration. I do not support destruction and looting as political protest.”

 

LOOKING FORWARD

Mehserle’s conviction suggests the jurors believed his defense that he meant to draw and fire his Taser instead of his gun. In legal terms, settling on involuntary manslaughter, rather than second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter, means the jury was not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Mehserle had malice toward Grant. But the jury found that he was criminally negligent when he failed to notice that he had his gun instead of his Taser in the moments before he pulled the trigger.

“In California, and really in any state, it is extremely difficult for jurors to convict a police officer. There’s an extreme reluctance to do that,” Whitney Leigh, an attorney who formerly worked in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, told us.

“There are undoubtedly instances where things like this have happened at some time in the past in California, that weren’t videotaped,” Leigh continued. “But for the videotape, if you walked 10 witnesses in who said that what happened, happened, no one would believe them if the officer took the stand and said that’s not what happened. The only reason there’s a case at all is that there’s a videotape.”

Leigh said he thought that unless the public develops a better awareness that police misconduct regularly occurs, “individuals are going to continue to be victimized by a system that effectively encourages officers to believe that they can act with significant impunity.”

Asked whether he thought it was likely that the federal government would decide to step in after concluding its investigation, he said it was a tough call. “The Justice Department is highly selective in the cases it chooses to prosecute for these crimes,” he cautioned. “That said, the kinds of cases they choose are ones that tend to have a lot of public attention and concern, so this fits within that category. Since it’s such a public case, it can have more of a widespread impact.”

If Mehserle was prosecuted at the federal level, the case would invoke Criminal Code 18 U.S.C. Sec. 242, used when a government agent or an individual acting under the color of authority denies someone their civil rights through force, threats, or intimidation, based on their race, gender, or another protected category.

Then again, the federal government’s decision over whether or not to step in may be linked to the degree of severity of Mehserle’s sentence.

California Penal Code Section 193 specifies the mitigated, midterm, and aggravated sentences for involuntary manslaughter: two, three, or four years in state prison, respectively. Because Mehserle’s case involves his personal use of a firearm, a sentence enhancement of three, four, or 10 years can be added to his prison time under California Penal Code Section 12022.5.

The judge will weigh circumstances to determine Mehserle’s sentence, possibly including his record as a police officer, his criminal record, age, remorse, and other factors, explained Jim Hammer, a former prosecutor and current San Francisco Police Commission member. The judge could toss out the sentence enhancement for personal use of a gun — and there’s a possibility he would deem extreme circumstances, such as his police record, to warrant probation rather than prison time. But Hammer said he thought both of those outcomes are unlikely.

“The judge will want to appear more than fair, not giving special treatment,” Hammer said. “Judges have to stand [for] election too, and in the light of the fact that somebody’s dead, I think the chance of probation is incredibly slim.”

Even if Mehserle receives a light sentence and then faces prosecution at the federal level, there is a chance that information about his past record as an officer — which was not admitted as evidence, thanks to laws that afford protections for police officers in these kinds of cases — would continue to be shielded. The protection applies even though Mehserle resigned.

“The average person just wants courts to be fair,” Leigh said. “And there’s an inherent unfairness in a system that allows a government or a police department that has all the resources and records to … use against you while shielding what might be much more serious and relevant acts by police officers. That’s one change that would be great if that did happen.”

A key legal issue in the case and any possible federal case is reasonable doubt, Hammer said. “Reasonable doubt is everything, and no one talks about it. They just say, ‘Oh, he didn’t have intent.’ That’s not the issue. Can anybody really, honestly say that they don’t have some doubts about his intent?”

At the same time, Hammer tempered his legal analysis with some understanding of Grant’s mother’s pain in light of what happened to her son and as the verdict was reached.

“If the dictionary had three pictures of murder for a picture image, one would be shooting somebody in the back who is unarmed,” he told the Guardian. “What she’s saying is not outrageous. If it were my relative I would probably call it murder too. She’s not crazy.”

As things continue to unfold with Mehserle’s sentencing and the federal civil rights investigation, civil litigation is in the works too. Wrongful death civil lawsuits will likely be filed against BART by Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris on behalf of Grant’s mother, as well as another suit by five friends who were with Grant the night he was killed. BART settled a suit filed on behalf of Tatiana Grant, the slain man’s five-year-old daughter, in January. That total settlement should amount to more than $5.1 million, according to a media release on Burris’ website.

During an interview after the July 10 press conference, Johnson was asked how Grant’s young daughter was doing. He responded: “Tatiana is still struggling with the issue of when her daddy’s coming home. So it’s going to take time for her, when she does understand that he is not coming back home.”

Outside Grant’s family, many observers hope to see systemic change come out of this tragedy. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano introduced legislation to create civilian oversight of BART police after the shooting, but was unhappy to see how it was watered down during the legislative process. Now he wants to see stronger reforms.

“I think Oscar Grant’s death was inevitable based on the lack of caring about how those police were trained,” he told us. “If you’re going to have the kind of independent civilian oversight that’s going to prevent a repeat of what happened to Oscar Grant, you can’t have this namby-pamby law. The mantra has been, well, this is better than nothing. Unless they’re made to do it … it’s not going to happen the way we want.”

On the cheap listings

David Talbot
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 7

“Misspelled” Robert Berman/E6 Gallery, 1632 Market, SF; (415) 558-9975. 7pm, free. Attend the opening reception for Victor Reyes’ public art installation turned gallery exhibition that explores Reyes’ unique approach to graffiti, by dissecting individual letters and exposing the anatomy and architecture found in the symbols we use to communicate. Inspired by San Francisco’s streets, these alphabets recontextualize abandoned city surfaces to raise questions about how we interpret these spaces and the content within them.

FRIDAY 9

Japanese Superheroes Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF; (415) 525-8600. 7pm, $10. Join hosts Patrick Macias, August Ragone, and Tomohiro Machiyama for a new talk in the TokyoScope Talk Series about the fascinating history and origins of Japanese superheroes featuring rare film clips and images from numerous tokusatsu, sentai, and henshin hero productions including Ultra Seven, Kikaida, Space Sheriff Gavan, and more.

BAY AREA

Juggling and Unicycling Festival Berkeley High School, Jacket Gym, 1980 Allston, Berk.; www.berkeleyjuggling.org/festival. Fri. 3pm-Midnight, Sat. 9am-Midnight, Sun. 9am-5pm; free. Vaudeville style variety show Sat. 7:30pm, $15. Meet and watch some of the best jugglers and unicyclists on the West Coast and learn some tricks of the trade for all skill levels at juggling, unicycle, and circus arts workshops.

SATURDAY 10

Art Riot Space Gallery, 1141 Polk, SF; www.hyphenmagazine.com. 7pm; $5, or $15 including a one year subscription to Hyphen Magazine. Featuring an exhibit by illustrators and painters from across the country, live painting, music by DJs B-Haul and Gordon Gartrell, and vegan cupcakes by Black Orchid Bakery. Featured artists include Danny Neece, Eve Skyler, Jon Stich, Jorge Mascarenhas, and more.

“Borders” Root Division, 3175 17th St., SF; (415) 863-7668?. 7pm, free. This exhibit about lines and how we cross them will feature work by artists from 9 different states, representing 9 different ethnicities, that explores how we define and interact with the borders that surround us. Mediums to include interactive sculpture, video, photography, installation, performance, and new media.

Hayes Valley Community Picnic Patricia’s Green Park, Hayes at Octavia, SF; RSVP at (415) 240-2433. 1pm, free. Join members of your community for a picnic brought to you by the Dean Clark Store, where revelers will share food, soft drinks, play games, and exchange gifts.

Strike Reenactment Hyde Street Pier, Jefferson at Hyde, SF; www.laborfest.net. Noon and 3pm, free. See a live reenactment of the 1901 San Francisco Waterfront strike, when sailors, teamsters, and longshoremen went on strike for better pay and working conditions. Hear speeches and join the march to implore ships’ crews to join the ranks. Part of the 2010 LaborFest.

Summer Freedom School St. Francis Lutheran Church, 152 Church, SF; (415) 703-0465. Saturdays through Aug. 14; 10am, free. This six week seminar on the Civil Rights Movement (aka the Southern Freedom Movement) serves as a case study for how social movements happen and a tool for getting ready for the next one. Mornings will feature guest speakers, short films and discussions, followed by a pot luck lunch, and an afternoon portion of discussions and activities. For more information visit www.educationanddemocracy.org.

A Voice for Justice in Honduras Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts Theater, 2868 Mission, SF; 415-643-5001. 7pm, donations encouraged. Hear Karla Lara sing from the classic “Nueva Trova” repertoire with added themes of love, motherhood, and human rights. Lara and other musicians formed Artists in Resistance, a group that performs to maintain an open public opposition to the de facto governments of Roberto Micheletti and Porfirio Lobo, which repress media and democracy. Proceeds benefit Artists in Resistencia in Honduras.

BAY AREA

Treasure Island Triathlon 533 California, Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay; www.tricalifornia.com. 5k-10k Run Race, Sat. 7am-Noon; Olympic Distance Triathlon, Sat. 7:30am-5pm; Sprint Distance Triathlon, Sun. 7am-Noon; Sports Expo, Sat. 7am-3pm, Sun. 7am-Noon. All events free for spectators. Enjoy views from the scenic looped course as you watch athletes compete, including 50 contestants from past seasons of the TV series The Biggest Losers. A Sports Expo will be going on all weekend featuring the latest triathlon gear, athlete services and food vendors.

SUNDAY 11

Big Umbrella Open Studios Big Umbrella Studios, 906.5 Divisadero, SF; (415) 359-9211. 3:30pm; free, suggested donation for use of supplies. Join Big Umbrella artists in art making, art being, or art gazing at this participatory workshop for adults and children. Bring supplies, found objects, and works in progress. Art making supplies will also be available. Collaboration encouraged.

Jewish Music Festival Party Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission at 3rd. St., SF; (510) 848-0237 ext. 119. Noon, free. Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Jewish Music Festival at this picnic and party featuring performances, instrumental jams, a parade, and an instrument petting zoo for all ages. Instruments encouraged. Artists to include Eprhyme, Glenn Hartman and the Klezmer Playboys, Peter Jacques, Elana Jagoda, and more.

World Cup Finals Civic Center Plaza, Polk between McAllister and Grove, SF; (415) 831-2782. 11:30 a.m., free. Join fellow San Francisco soccer fans for a big screen broadcast of the World Cup finals featuring soccer-related activities for youth, food vendors, and valet bike parking. No glass bottles or alcohol permitted.

MONDAY 12

“What’s Cookin’ with Josh Kornbluth” Contemporary Jewish Museum Café, 736 Mission, SF; (415) 655-7800. Noon, free. Liven up your Mondays with an interactive improvised lunch performance by monologist Josh Kornbluth, who will entertain and engage you with lively lunchtime banter all summer long. Every Monday through August 30.

 

D. 10 candidates DeWitt Lacy, Tony Kelly and progressive planners blast Lennar’s plan

Mary Magee
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Recently, I spent some time talking with D. 10 candidates DeWitt Lacy and Tony Kelly about Lennar’s redevelopment plan for the shipyard and Candlestick Point. I also attended a Progressive Planners forum that addressed the massive development proposal. Those conversations and the issues they raised seem timely in light of the city’s crazily tight schedule for trying to ram final approvals for the project past government agencies this summer. And in light of three appeals that have been filed against the city’s recently certified final environmental impact report for the plan, raising concerns that the city will get bogged down in expensive and time-consuming litigation if it doesn’t get the plan right, while it still can.

(Lest other D. 10 candidates complain that they weren’t interviewed, too, I’d like to clarify that I’ll be covering the race between now and November, and I look forward to hearing what they all think at the Board’s July 13 meeting to hear appeals of the city’s final environmental impact report (FEIR) for the project. )

Both Lacy and Kelly are critics of Lennar’s plan, but not in a knee-jerk obstructionist way. Instead, they bring considered and informed critiques to the table at a time when the community desperately needs good advice and a workable strategy, if residents are to get needed amendments and concessions, before the developer get the green light, or before the Board puts  a moratorium on the project until the city’s FEIR flaws are ironed out.

Lacy is a bright and earnest candidate who learned lessons from the school of life, while growing up in San Jose in a working class family. Lacy says his father worked in an Adidas warehouse until he was injured on the job, and his mother worked as a secretary in Atari’s corporate office, but was laid off after two years.

Lacy recalls how his parents opened their own janitorial business, in the hope of making a better life for their six children.  He says that it was while cleaning homes alongside his mother, that he began to recognize the need for working class improvement and growth.

 In 1995, Lacy moved to San Francisco, where he has worked in the District Attorney’s office and formed his own law practice—experience that could serve District 10 well, since it’s home to many working-class residents and will be ground zero in the battle for construction-related contracts and environmental and economic justice, if Lennar’s massive redevelopment plan goes ahead,

“I know how to craft legislation for social justice,” Lacy said.

Lacy observes how Michael Cohen, Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, has repeatedly told folks that land transferred to Lennar will be subject to a “right of reverter.”
This means the Redevelopment Agency may re-take ownership of the land, if the developer fails to substantially complete the infrastructure in the time frame set forth in the city’s development and disposition agreement (the DDA)

But Lacy observes that this “nuclear option” isn’t likely to happen with so much riding on the Lennar deal, and he stresses that additional controls are needed, if the city is to ensure that the deal remains in the best interest of San Francisco, not just the developer.

Lacy’s probably right about that. (Remember how hard the community had to fight to just get an extra 15 days to read and comment on the project’s six volume draft EIR over the winter holidays?)

And how much political pressure was exerted to ram the city’s EIR for this project across the certification line on June 3, five days before Santa Clara voters decided to support a stadium for the 49ers near Great America.

“What’s needed is an impartial arbiter,” Lacy said. “The city needs regulatory controls and the capacity to fine Lennar if it breaks promises to build affordable housing, create jobs and hire locals. You’re not going to be able to hold their feet to the fire without that.”

“I’m not saying that we should be obstructionists, critics who are trying to prevent stuff for the sake of a political battle,” Lacy added. “But we need new blood. The benefit of my campaign is that I’m not downtown’s candidate. I’m a civil rights attorney, who can help the district by figuring out what battles we need to be fighting and which battles are winnable. And I want to make sure there are jobs and business opportunities for working-class folks in San Francisco. You shouldn’t have to be a doctor or lawyer to afford to live here.”

Lacy believes the Navy should remove the radiologically impacted landfill on the shipyard’s Parcel E2.
“That ground has to be taken out of there,” Lacy said. “I would hope the City Attorney’s Office would get involved and advocate for the people. But leadership is about taking a stance when no one else is.”

With the city suggesting that it can still win back the 49ers, Lacy said that he too, would love it if the 49ers decided to stay.
 
“But not at the cost of our health and safety,” Lacy said, referring to the city’s repeated claim that it needed to rush certification of the final EIR for Lennar’s project, if there was to be any hope of winning back the team.

“ I don’t think the solution is the rush,” Lacy said. “I say, let’s make sure we clean up the shipyard properly—and bring back the Warriors [a professional basketball team that relocated to San Francisco in 1962, until 1971, when it moved to Oakland].”

I also hung out with D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly, at an event that POWER hosted as part of a Progressive Planners Forum, the day after Lacy and I unsuccessfully tried to access the shipyard, and the same day that POWER was also blocked from the yard.

Kelly has been tracking issues in and around District 10 for years, and, much like Lacy,  he’s not afraid to speak his mind on the issues.

For instance, Kelly is incensed by the city’s attempt to ram through approval of the final EIR for Lennar’s development, when the Navy has yet to complete an environmental impact statement related to its proposed clean up activities at the shipyard..
“Is the EIS ever a trailer to the EIR?” Kelly asked. “It’s like planning on Mars.”

Kelly has also expressed concern over the developer’s plan to build two peaker plants in the community.

And he is worried about the consequences of the city’s plan to turn the entire Bayview into a project survey area for Lennar’s Candlestick/Shipyard plan.

“How do you pay for any other improvements in the Bayview, when the shipyard redevelopment plan sucks all the air out of the room?” Kelly said

But Kelly’s biggest concern right now is that once Lennar gets its final approvals this summer, “the developer will never talk directly to the community again.”

At the Progressive Planners Forum that Kelly attended, speakers also voiced measured criticisms of Lennar’s plan.

“The plan has some important elements, especially in the job areas, but I think it adds up to gentrification, which is disruptive to the surrounding community, families and the last bastion of the black community in San Francisco,” said Chester Hartman, who has authored over 18 books on race and urban planning, including the acclaimed City For Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco.

“There is a need for a response in terms of an alternative approach,” Hartman advised.
“It doesn’t have to be a detailed, but it should include a basic philosophy and goals, and retain good parts of the original plan.”

Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning at Colombia University, said the situation at the shipyard reminded him of the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf.

“Cap the land sounds like cap the spill,” Marcuse said, noting that in both cases the community is fighting to get folks who dumped toxins to clean them up.

Marcuse criticized the privatization of the planning process, as illustrated by the City’s claim that it has entered into a “public-private” partnership with Lennar,  and the community’s experience that the city and the developer keep ignoring or dismissing the public’s feedback and opinions.

 “There should have been a range of alternatives open for discussion,” Marcuse said. “Instead, there is a sense, of this mega project’s inevitability. And once the developer has title to the land, the city has to negotiate what should be a public matter.”

Marcuse critiqued the use of tax increment financing, which will use increased taxes on property throughout the Bayview to finance improvements in one relatively small area, the 770 acres of land that, as Marcuse put it, “got sold to Lennar for $1.”

“This is a form of government subsidy,” Marcuse warned.

“There have been some negotiations,” Marcuse continued. He pointed to the community-led Prop. F, which in the spring of 2008 sought to establish 50 percent affordable housing in the development. And the community benefits agreement (CBA) that the San Francisco Labor Council hammered out at in May 2008, in an attempt to nail down benefits for the community in exchange for the Council’s support for the Lennar-financed Prop. G in June 2008.

“But these negotiations with Lennar start on basis that Lennar’s interests have to be protected equally with those of the City and its residents,” Marcuse commented. “It ought to be a public responsibility to show the community what the alternates to Lennar’s vision are.”

Marcuse concluded by suggesting a moratorium on Lennar’s plan to allow for a community-based visioning process, in which residents could express their desire for housing, diversity, open space and protection against environmental hazards

‘The City should then come up with an alternative to Lennar’s plan—and listen to Lennar,” he said. “But this is a public responsibility, rather than a private negotiation with a corporation that has been a beneficiary of a huge subsidy and starts to make a huge profit, the minute its housing units begin to sell.”

Miriam Chion, who works for the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), also expressed concerns with Lennar’s massive plan, which proposes to build thousands of mostly luxury condos at Candlestick Point, with a smaller number on the shipyard.

“We are in the 21st century, how can we continue to use same mechanisms of displacement?” Chion said. “And how can we do that to the African American community, which we have displaced over and over, and which has managed to build a community here, in spite of everything?”

According to Lennar’s plan, 68 percent of its proposed 10,000 units will be built at market rate. Of the remaining 32 percent of units, only 15 percent will be built at truly affordable rates, with an additional 15 percent geared towards the working middle-class income levels, such as those enjoyed by police, fire fighters, nurses and teachers.

But two Bayview residents who attended POWER’s progressive planners’ forum expressed frustration at what they perceived as outsiders trying to tell locals what’s best.

“If you haven’t lived here, you don’t know about the Bayview,” one resident said. “If they are going to do what they are going to do, they should do it all the way, and change things for the better. I’m tired of seeing kids under 12, playing outside at 11 p.m. So, if you are not from here, you can’t come on my ground and pass judgment. If you’d been and lived here, I don’t think you’d see this negatively.”

“$700 million has been spent on cleaning up shipyard, and producing highly technical reports on it,”  another local resident said. “Highly intellectual discussions are not helping, we need some action today.”

“No one here is against development,” countered long-term Bayview resident Espanola Jackson, while a Bayview resident named Nyese resurrected longstanding concerns that the developer fatally broke community trust when it failed to control asbestos dust at the site, when it began grading the shipyard’s Parcel A .

“Four years ago, I found out that they were sending home workers at the shipyard, without informing the surrounding community,” Nyese recalled. “My son was having excessive nosebleeds, so it was phenomenally insulting that they didn’t not notify us.”
“Lennar is just a name, a conglomeration of shareholders,” Nyese further noted. “We need development. But we don’t need it on chemically toxic land.”

These competing concerns indicate that all the candidates in the D. 10 race are going to have to be asking critical questions as they track the progress of Lennar, the city and the Navy’s plans this summer. Failure to do so will cost them credibility within the community—and possibly the supervisor’s race this fall, though downtown money will pour in to support whichever candidate is deemed most likely to rubberstamp present and future development and contracting plans. Stay tuned. It’s going to be a (politically) hot July.

 

Political litmus test for Hunters Point Shipyard access?

Mary Magee
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Even though the U.S. Navy abandoned the Hunters Point Shipyard in 1974, the military has continued to control access to the shipyard that helped launch the A-Bomb. That’s because the Navy still owns most parcels of land on the shipyard and remains on the hook for cleaning up pollutants on these sites, including a radiologically impacted dump on Parcel E2, which has been deemed to be the dirtiest land on the site.

Currently, the Navy is proposing to cap, not excavate this landfill, despite repeated requests from the local community, and a citywide vote in support of Proposition P in 2000, which urged the Navy to clean up the land to the best extent possible, which would mean excavating the Parcel E2 landfill and replacing it with clean uncontaminated soil. And oddly, the City appears to want government agencies and officials to sign off on its final EIR for Lennar’s massive 770-acre redevelopment plan for the shipyard and Candlestick Point, even though the Navy has not yet completed an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to its proposed shipyard cleanup activities.

Currently, the Navy controls access to the facility beyond a couple of trailers that the city’s Redevelopment Agency has set up just within the yard’s main gate. And to gain access to the shipyard these days, you need to call or visit Redevelopment’s trailer and get a pass. Or, alternatively, if you know any of the artists who continue to rent studios at shipyard, you can call them to try and get the city to give you a pass.

Underlying these limits to accessing the shipyard are some legitimate safety concerns related to equipment and excavations on what is now an active clean up and construction site, along with fears that untoward characters could break into the abandoned buildings or bother the artists who still have studios in operation at the shipyard. But has an additional political litmus test been put in place when it comes to critics of Lennar’s redevelopment plan, who want to access to the yard? If so, does it mirror the tap dancing that the local community has had to undergo to get its voices heard as Lennar pushes to get final approval for its shipyard/ Candlestick Point redevelopment plan.

Those questions resurfaced last week when a private security guard manning the shipyard’s front gate denied access to D. 10 supervisor candidate DeWitt Lacy, who had dropped by hoping to take this reporter around the yard as part of an ongoing conversation about Parcel E2, which Lacy believes needs to be excavated completely, and how best to hold the Navy accountable for cleaning up a mess it created decades ago. The security guard told Lacy that folks who want to visit must get a pass at the Redevelopment Agency trailer.

At the Redevelopment trailer, Micah Fobbs, administrative assistant for W.B. Kennedy and Associates, which has a contract with Redevelopment’s Citizen’s Advisory Committee. told Lacy that without a preauthorized pass, he couldn’t let us onto the site. Fobbs added that he would be happy to take us on a tour himself, but he could not leave the trailer unmanned, since he was the only staff member there at the time. Fair enough. Though the rebuff gave us the feel that the City doesn’t want pesky investigative reporters that have been critical of the development running around the site. “And if they found out I was a civil rights attorney, they probably wouldn’t want me out here, either,” Lacy joked.

But the next day, I encountered what sounded like overt hostility to other critics of Lennar’s plan, when I tried to ride along on what had been billed as a “Toxic Tour of the Navy Shipyard” by POWER (People Organizing to Win Employment Rights). POWER had advertised its tour in an email which said it would involve 23 expert urban planners, who happened to be in the Bay Area for a Progressive Planning Forum. The tour was billed as happening on the morning of June 17, before an afternoon discussion at POWER’s Third Street office in the Bayview, which was to focus “on alternative approaches to the city’s current plan for development at the Shipyard/ Candlestick Point.”

Caught in traffic, I didn’t arrive at the Boys and Girls Club on Kiska Road in Bayview Hunters Point in time to join POWER’s kick-off get together. So, I headed direct to the shipyard, a move that meant I arrived alone and ahead of the school bus that POWER had rented for the occasion. At the gate, I was told by the security guard that I couldn’t get in, that another guard lost his job for letting unauthorized individuals onto the site, that POWER didn’t have a pass and that they’d been warned to watch for POWER “because they want to stop the development.”

“If you are not authorized with badges, you are not let through,” the guard said, giving me the telephone number of the Hunters Point Duty police officer, who in turn said I needed to call the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which in turn told me to call the folks at the Redevelopment Agency’s shipyard trailer. And so I called Fobbs again, who confirmed that the Navy still controls all the property, except Parcel A which has already been conveyed to the City which in turn has granted developer Lennar the right to develop thousands of condos on that particular parcel.

“As far as viewing the rest of the property, you have to put in a request, and no photography or videography is allowed,” Fobbs said. This stated ban on photography came as a surprise, given recent photos of the shipyard that ran in a New York Times article about Lennar and the city’s vision for the 770-acre property.

And the sudden difficulties in gaining media access seemed odd, given that Lennar’s PR firm, Sitrick and Company, offered to take the media on a tour on the morning of June 3—the day the Redevelopment and Planning Commissions subsequently approved the final EIR for Lennar’s plan to redevelop the rest of the shipyard, plus Candlestick Point, a FEIR that has now been appealed to the Board, on the grounds that it was rushed for political reasons, leading to fatal flaws in the final document.

“Well, if folks come here through Redevelopment or the Mayor’s Office, then they have been able to take photographs,” Fobbs said. “But we have had people trying to climb fences and get through doors of some of the buildings.” (Fobbs last comment was a reference to a recent climbing of the fence that the Nation of Islam’s Leon Muhammad engaged in, in an effort to determine if air quality monitoring devices near the Nation’s school and Oakdale public housing site were operating. (After Muhammad scaled the fence and reported that he’d found an empty bin where monitoring equipment was supposed to be, a kafuffle ensued, with the US EPA saying Muhammad was looking in the wrong place for the monitors which, it claimed, were in operation.)

Ultimately, Fobbs told me to call Redevelopment’s Audrey Kay if I wanted a tour, and several shipyard artists told me they would be happy to arrange a day pass so I can visit their studios and hear concerns that they will be required to move from a couple of shipyard buildings before replacement studios have been completed–an arrangement that would amount to a breach of promise that Lennar and the city previously made to the shipyard artists.

Shortly after I was turned away for a second time, POWER’s bus arrived at the gate, only to be blocked–a denial of access that meant 23 progressive planners were forced to view the shipyard from various remote viewing spots atop the hills that surround the site.

Together these episodes left me wondering what kind of political litmus test could end up being enforced at the site, if Lennar’s mega project gets the green light this summer, and what will happen if the Board decides to kick the plan back to the drawing board until the Navy completes a environmental impact statement and all of the community’s ongoing environmental and economic justice concerns are addressed.

So stay tuned, and don’t forget to mark July 13 on your calendar when the full Board of Supervisors is tentatively to hear appeals of the project’s final EIR, which the Planning and Redevelopment Commissions rubberstamped June 3. And, as always, it will be revealing to see which candidates in the hotly contested race for D. 10 supervisor, show up and speak truth to power.

 

 

Kim launches D6 campaign, stressing independence from “machine” politics

Sasha Cuttler
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Jane Kim launched her campaign for the District 6 seat on the Board of Supervisors last night during a spirited event at 111 Minna, showcasing some high-profile supporters and giving a speech that began with touting her early work on immigrant rights and homeless issues and ended with the declaration, “I’m not part of anyone’s machine and I’m certainly not a part of anyone’s master plan.”

That emphasis on her independence could be seen as a subtle dig at Debra Walker, another progressive who has been running for the seat for the last two years, who locked down early support from many progressive groups and officials, and whose supporters were unhappy with Kim’s late decision to enter the race, concerned it might split the vote and allow downtown-backed Theresa Sparks — who could be viewed as a “machine” candidate on the other end of the political spectrum — to steal the seat for the moderates.

When I asked what “machine” she meant and whether the comment was a reference to Walker’s supporters, Kim wouldn’t clarify the comment, refusing to criticize the Walker campaign and saying only, “I want to be a part of a new political process.”

And that new process seems to rely heavily on the energy of young people, including many of color, who dominated the crowd last night. Kim also signaled that she will be pushing a fairly bold progressive agenda that includes more city support for schools, Muni, immigrants, and low-income families, and making the streets more vibrant and democratic.

“The mantra of our campaign is to make our neighborhoods complete,” Kim said.

She proposed making substantial pedestian and bicycle improvements on several streets in her district, including 2nd, Folsom, Taylor, and Turk streets, creating more bikes lanes that are separated from car traffic, and turning many of the alleys in her district into more active public spaces. She called for the city to help fund youth programs and a longer school year and to offer more support to small businesses, which she called the city’s most important job generator.

Kim, a civil rights attorney and president of the school board, also emphasized the need to improve the tone of political debate in the city, which she helped accomplish on the school board (whose vice president, Hydra Mendoza, an employee of Mayor Gavin Newsom, was there in support). “People are disillusioned and disappointed with the process and the bickering,” Kim said.

Among Kim’s supporters at the event were Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, former Mayor Art Agnos, filmmaker Kevin Epps, Police Commissioner and immigrant rights activist Angela Chan, transportation activist Dave Synder, and representatives from a wide variety of community groups.

“She has epitomized the progressive values that I think all of San Francisco shares,” Chiu told the crowd, later adding, “She will be a part of the next generation of political leaders of San Francisco.”

“I’m really proud that Jane has put herself out there as a future leader and our supervisor,” said Epps, later adding, “I think Jane really has her ear to the streets.”

Kim pledged to run a clean campaign focused on her issues, and her only supporter to voice overt criticism of Walker was Agnos, who said he was impressed with Kim’s work with him last year in fighting Prop. D, which would have removed mid-Market from the city ban on new billboards, a measure that Walker supported.

“Prop. D for me was a tipping point, and Debra went with the commercial interests,” Agnos told the Guardian.

But Kim, 32, says her reason for running is to help push a progressive vision for the city and bring new blood into the political process.

“I have to tell you, I never wanted to go into politics,” she told the crowd. “But I had the desire to see some real change.”

25 ideas for our queer future

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
25 ideas for our queer future

What does the future hold in store for us? In an age of mainstream assimilation and aspiration, is there even such a thing as the queer future? We asked 25 queer leaders, artists, and activists to offer visions in their areas of expertise. The results — philosophical, poetic, practical, and priceless — are inspiring. One thing’s for sure, we’ll never lose our creative spark. Nor will we lose our motivational zeal. Fate is for the lazy: take action now. (Marke B.)

>>Click here for ideas from our amazing 2010 Hot Pink List

>>Click here for our Pride listings, and get out there!

THE FUTURE OF QUEER ACTIVISM We need to take back the power and stop being led by what the other side is doing. We need to empower ourselves enough so that we are no longer reacting but acting. We must use online social networks the way we used the streets and bullhorns to show our strength, speak out against wrongdoing, change minds, and win back our rights. We also must unite with our allies in other communities that are underrepresented and maligned in much of the same ways we are. When we stand with one another, we have that much stronger a voice.

Kelly Rivera Hart is the founder of Poz Activists Network (pansf.blogspot.com).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER COMMUNITY The difference between straight and gay cultures seems to be breaking down more and more, which is one of our goals, but we still need to support our own businesses, nonprofits, and leaders. We need to continue interacting with each other in the real world and not lose sight of who we are and what we share. Despite how the rest of the world sees us, there is still a lot of loneliness and isolation in the queer community. I think many of us have forgotten even simple things, like how to make actual friends, not just online. And it’s so easy! Renewing that spirit of interaction, freeing ourselves from fear of judgment, and moving outside our “safe zone” can lead to the greatest rewards.

Mark Rhoades is a charitable event planner and fundraiser who throws the annual Cupid’s Back and City Hall Pride parties.

THE FUTURE OF QUEER FASHION The past decade has witnessed an obsession with bulky, voluminous silhouettes disguised as “futuristic avant-garde” and inspired by GaGa and the ’80s. Let’s move on. Through clean lines, elegance, and wearable pieces, the future of queer fashion will shine light on socially relevant issues like bottom shame, positive-negative status reinforcement, and elite subcultures by using gay textiles and forgotten, non-era-specific imagery.

Allán Herrera is the design head of fashion house Homo Atelier (www.homoatelier.com) and a founder of HomoChic (www.homochic.com).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER FILM Future queer film will depend on the gays being at the forefront of distribution technology in the same way we pioneered social networking 15 years ago, spreading provocative and sexually honest/explicit films beyond the film festival circuit and toward a global audience. Special attention must be paid to the creeping homophobia of cultural and technological juggernauts like Apple. Our stories will need to bust through the pigeonhole, weaving our traditional themes (AIDS, coming-of-age) into larger storylines that are relevant to multicultural and transcontinental viewers.

Leo Herrera is a video artist, filmmaker, and a founder of HomoChic (www.homochic.com).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER YOUTH To be a true leader, one must envision the future. The future is a diverse society where LGBTQQ youth are embraced for who they are and encouraged to be who they want to be. In my pursuit for LGBTQQ youth rights, leadership has been about fostering the awareness in LGBTQQ young people about their own power as individuals and as a group, supporting them to access, develop, and master the skills and knowledge they need to transform their power into action, and building bridges to opportunities where their action can create just communities.

Jodi Schwartz is the executive director of LYRIC Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center (www.lyric.org).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER LABOR Storm of protest drives Congress to pass trans-inclusive ENDA! Support by labor unions critical to passage of this landmark legislation. Screaming, “We’re too queer for this bullshit!” workers hold drag-runway picket lines at transphobic companies across the country. Activists redefine the crisis of trans poverty and unemployment as the most critical queer civil rights issue of our time.

Bad hotel boycott forces Hyatt to sign a fair contract and treat their employees with respect. LGBTQ organizations rally with labor unions for immigration reform, hold signs reading “No borders on my cunt, no border on our countries!

Jane Martin is a queer labor activist and community organizer with SF Pride at Work (www.sfprideatwork.org).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER DRAG (PART ONE) My vision for the future of queer drag requires you to take a moment, stop, look, and listen to our past. We have such a rich history of fierce and amazing queens to learn from. The key is to get involved with a queer family that supports and loves you and what you do. Next, figure out your niche — whether it’s high drag or low camp, just be sure to always do it like you don’t need the money! Then pull it together and serve it up with lots of love and generosity. And, of course, top it all off with a fabulous wig!

Juanita More! (www.juanitamore.com) is the queen. Attend her boisterous Pride party on Sun/27 (see Pride listings), benefiting Bay Area Young Positives (www.baypositives.org).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER DRAG (PART TWO) Meg Whitman will become president of the United States and hire Lady Bunny as one of her speech writers. Oprah and Gayle will finally come out, and gender illusionist shows will dominate the OWN Network — every other channel will follow. In 2050, Heklina will clone herself, twice, and perform the hospital-convalescent home circuit as the Del Rubio Triplets. Apple will come out with a product called the iDrag, that transforms anyone into anything.

Fudgie Frottage is the king. He puts on the annual, wonderful SF Drag King Contest (www.sfdragkingcontest.com).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER DANCE FLOORS Lets start with a nice, clean piece of paper. Black paper. A clean slate. Say, for example, a deliriously rich and tasteful daddy were to buy the Stud. Step one: a deep, five-stage gay cleaning. Step two: gut the interior, maybe keep the bar and choo-choo train intact, they are cute. Otherwise keep it simple. Step three: install an exact copy of the sound system used by Dave Mancuso at the Loft parties in New York City. The tasteful daddy would have a matte gray private jet at our disposal to bring guests of our choosing. For the launch party we would have an all Kenny line-up: Kenny Dixon Jr., Kenny Hawkes, Kenny Carpenter, and Ken Collier (back from the dead) would DJ. Live PA by Kenny Bobien. Oh, and Kenny Kenny on the door. At the end, everyone would get together and cry like they do on those exploitative renovation reality shows. Daddy would miss the ribbon-cutting, but that’s OK — he sent flowers and bought an $80 Diptyque candle for the new bathroom. That would be a good start.

Honey Soundsystem is a future-past DJ collective. Catch the old-school house Honey Pride party on Sun/27 (see Pride listings).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER COMEDY The future is here. And now that gay marriage is mandatory for everyone, queer and straight, the same goes for comedy. All comedians, regardless of sexual orientation, are now required to do at least 75 percent queer comedy in their acts unless they obtain Permit No. 758219B through the Comedy Board, allowing for the special provision to do only 50 percent queer material. That’s right: comedy is now regulated by law. No jokes are allowed to have homophobic content, especially if you’re performing for tourists. Remember, you are ambassadors now. If you’re straight and have no queer material, just ask your aunt or your second cousin or your bachelor uncle whose best friend of 40 years, Bruce, comes to all the family functions.

Lisa Geduldig (www.koshercomedy.com) is a comic and MC who puts on such shows as Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, Funny Girlz, and Comedy Returns to El Rio!

THE FUTURE OF QUEER HOUSING It is beyond time for us queers to focus our fabulous and substantial God-given talents toward a vision of the future of queer housing. We are the trailblazers, the social entrepreneurs, the avant-garde. Imagining and creating the future is what we do best. Let’s put those substantial talents to work to realize our very own “No Place Like Home” dream of a home for our LGBT elders, our homeless LGBT youth, our people with HIV/AIDS, our artists, our activists, and everything in between. I’ll show you mine: the largest affordable housing for people with HIV/AIDS in the nation next to the Castro Theater and an LGBT homeless shelter at Geary and Polk. Now you show me yours.

Brian Basinger is the director of AIDS Housing Alliance/SF (www.ahasf.org).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER COMICS The future of LGBT comics will be about creators moving out of the traditional queer media ghetto and into new digital undergrounds, indie markets, and even the publishing mainstream. Web comics, graphic novels, minicomics, and zines … Queer comics will have to continue to diversify their formats to survive. At the core, though, remains the need to tell good stories! Look for more poignant narratives about the intersection of queer identities and the human condition. Also, robo-dykes, super-powered trannies, bisexual Lotharios, and zombie fags!

Justin Hall, a queer and erotic comics artist, runs All Thumbs Press (www.allthumbspress.com).

THE FUTURE OF QUEER LAW We would like to see the law catch up with the reality of transgender lives. Your gender identity is an innate and deeply felt sense of who you are. Whether you feel male, female, both, or neither, we envision a future where your legal gender will be exclusively determined by you and not by doctors or lawyers. By respecting your autonomy and your ability to know yourselves better than anyone else, the law will finally reflect society at large. The law is not far from fully recognizing that fact of life, but there is still work to be done. So break out your queer legal briefs and join in the fight for transgender civil rights!

Executive Director Masen Davis and the staff of the Transgender Law Center (www.transgenderlawcenter.org)

THE FUTURE OF QUEER SPIRIT As I look toward the future, I want to see the consciousness shift that Harry Hay and other gay pioneers were pushing for manifest itself more fully in both the gay culture and the larger hetero culture. As queer liberationists, we’ve already taught the world that we are a people. I want to see us recognized as always having been a people. I want to see us given the opportunity to cocreate a new, more beautiful world. To paraphrase: what if there were no “faggots,” only master healers, teachers, shamans? I hope to see the end of shame.

Zac Benfield is the president of the radical faerie Church of Nomenus. Attend his “Woo 101 for Hipster Faggots” workshop, part of the Faetopia Festival (See “Ongoing” in our Pride listings)

THE FUTURE OF QUEER SCIENCE

The alien scientist pipettes liquid
Into a flask to be shaken vigorously.
The origins of gay life.

On Earth, planets align, exposing
Realities once thought to be utterly impossible:
Gays are outta this world!

Queer scientists make the future
Always brighter, cleaner, sexier, and more fabulous
Stopping only for a cocktail.

Quietly, the gay scientist works,
Inching closer to the final answer that
Will change the world forever.

In the future of science
We see the world with different eyes,
All judged by ability alone.

Chris Waddling is a PhD scientist at UCSF.

THE FUTURE OF THE QUEER PAST The future of the queer past has always been fragile — and despite some positive developments in the past 25 years, it remains fragile today. The legacy of LGBT people is still largely invisible in the settings where our society formalizes its history. Our stories are rarely told in high school classrooms, in the galleries of museums, on the plaques of public monuments. Supporting the efforts and the growth of such organizations as the GLBT Historical Society and other pioneering queer history institutions will be key to ensuring that the memory of LGBT lives, struggles, setbacks, and triumphs can inform and inspire future generations.

Writer, editor, and antiquarian book dealer Gerard Koskovich is a founding member of the GLBT Historical Society and a member of the board of directors of the Mémorial de la Déportation Homosexuelle, a French national group that commemorates the homosexual victims of the Nazis.

THE FUTURE OF THE QUEER FUTURE My future selves are always popping back from the year 2023 or 2034 for the weekend, mostly because they know I’ll be their sex slave. They remember what 2010-me was like. (And apparently in the mid-2020s, time-traveling self-flagellation becomes a big fetish.) They’re not supposed to tell me anything about The Future, but they let slip wee details here and there — the 20-teens are a troubling time, but then we discover queer telepathy, and everybody starts secreting empathy endorphins and building communal gardens in the upper atmosphere. Hang in there until we get the first queer president, they always say. Once she comes out during her second term, that’s when the government really starts building something.

Charlie Anders is the managing editor of science fiction-forward site io9.com

A very cinematic Juneteenth: previews from the SF Black Film Festival

Andrew Lam
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General Gordon Granger could hardly have known that by signing General Order No. 3 into effect that sunny June 19th, 1865 in Galveston, Texas, he’d be providing an occasion for San Francisco’s young black filmmakers to share their artistic voice. He (most likely) didn’t appreciate that Juneteenth – as the day would come to be called – would mark a time for Bay area African Americans to reflect on the past, present, and future of their community. Probably not. But we get it. So as you munch your popcorn through these previews of the stories screening at this year’s San Francisco Black Film Festival (Thurs/17-Sat/19), take a moment to think on history’s – often unseen – framing of today.

Sounds of Poetry

When I first watched this preview, the young poet’s eloquence struck me. Child actors these days are something else, I thought. But Dawntavia Butler, who plays the lead role of Monique, a girl striving to rise above her mother’s addictions, is only half acting. Filmmaker Henderson Maddox based the script of Sounds of Poetry on Dawntavia and her sisters’ real life experiences at home. In light of the challenges she faced, Bullard’s spoken word performance takes on new meaning.

Flags, Feathers, Lies

The Mardi Gras Indians is a long standing tradition in New Orleans, a group that honors the role Native Americans played in helping slaves escape their bondage. But ask around at the parades these days – nary a party goer knows their name. Filmmaker Pablo Palacios makes the connection between the disappearing Indians with the devastating displacement Katrina left in its wake.

 

Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama

Sure, you know about Angela Davis. But what about Yuri Kochiyama, who was interned with her family during World War II, and grew up to join the struggle for Puerto Rican independence, liberation of political prisoners, and nuclear disarmament? What about what those two civil rights leaders would chat about, if they got the chance to hang? Mountains That Take Wing is here for you so that you can find out.

 

Trapped Haitian Nights

Of course, it’s not all civil rights and social problems. Take this action packed suspense, the last movie shot in Haiti before the disaster. The plot follows Vivica A. Fox investigating the murder of a doctor’s wife, a yellow boa, and rumors of voodoo craziness.

San Francisco Black Film Festival

Thurs/17-Sat/19

various venues and times, SF

(415) 400-4602

www.sfbff.org

Benefits: June 9-June 15

David Talbot
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Benefits: June 9-June 15

Ways to have fun while giving back this week


Wednesday, June 9

Friends of Saint Francis Childcare
Explore the local food and drink movement while helping to raise funds for Saint Francis Childcare Center at this Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) cocktail party featuring local wine and microbrews, local food, music, and a silent auction. Proceeds to benefit the Friends of Saint Francis Childcare Center, a non-profit preschool.
6:30 p.m., $50-$100
CUESA a
One Ferry Building, SF
(415) 861-1818
www.fosfchildcare.org

From the Ground Up
Celebrate grassroots action with IDEX as they recognize local partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for building sustainable community solutions to poverty and developing livelihoods. With guest speakers, Rajasvini Bhansali, IDEX’s new Executive Director, and Prativa Subedi, Founder and President of IDEX’s Partner Women’s Awareness Center, Nepal and featuring a silent auction, appetizers, wine and beer, and music.
6:30 p.m., $60
The Solarium
55 2nd St., SF
(415) 824-8384
http://idexfromthegroundup.eventbrite.com

Got Kidney?
Hip Hop(e) for Healing kicks off their U.S. southwest tour for RasCue and Organ Donor Registration Awareness featuring an all star line up of underground hip hop artists, including Rasco, Big Pooh, Kam Moye aka Supastition, and local MCs Otayo Dubb and 7 Daize.
9 p.m., $12
Mighty
119 Utah, SF
http://donatelife.net/

Friday, June 11

Hawaiian Luau Fundraiser
Hula for a good cause at this fundraiser for Connecting Point, Tenderloin Child Care Center, Positive Parenthood Project, Compass Family Center, and Clara House featuring live music, DJs, dancing, island food, and prizes for best Hawaiian costume and shirt, including 2010 tickets to Burning Man.
8 p.m., $25
Kelly’s Mission Rock
817 Terry Francois, SF
http://tikitodd.com/

Saturday, June 12

Bikers for Barkers
Join the motorcycle and pet communities as they come together to help rescue dogs that are in danger of being euthanized at this fundraising party where proceeds will go to Rocket Dog Rescue and Hearts for Hounds. Bid on one of the many local items and services, including Teatro Zinzanni, Kabuki Hot Springs, tattoo time from several local artists, gift baskets, and more, while enjoying live entertainment, DJ music, refreshments, and vegan delights. Please leave your pets at home.
6:30 p.m.; $20 donation, includes one raffle ticket
Dainese D-Store
131 South Van Ness, SF
www.bikersforbarkers.com

Hopalong Picnic and Bark-B-Que
Enjoy a fun-filled afternoon at this picnic lunch featuring a silent auction, music, and more to help raise funds for Hopalong and Second Chance Animal Rescue.
1 p.m.; $25 adult, $10 children
Miller Knox Regional Park
900 Dornan Dr., Point Richmond
www.hopalong.org

Intersection for the Arts Anniversary Gala
Celebrate Intersection’s 45th anniversary and the launch of their new art space in partnership with the Hub Bay Area with the exhibition, “Let’s Talk of a System.” Featuring live art auction, live entertainment, wine and food, and an awards ceremony to honor artists and organizations that impact the world.
7 p.m., $60-$250
Intersection at 5M
The San Francisco Chronicle Building
901 Mission, SF
(415) 626-2787 ext. 110
www.theintersection.org

Sunday, June 13

Radical History Bike Ride
Learn about the radical history of San Francisco from the 1800s through today on this bike ride and benefit for the National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco chapter. Tour led by Rai Sue Sussman will visit sites of protest and dissent relating to workers’ rights, immigrant rights, civil rights, women’s rights, environmental struggles, and more.
10:45 p.m., $15-$50 sliding scale donation
Meet at Harry Bridges Plaza
Front of Ferry Building along Embarcadero, SF
RSVP to raul@nlgsf.org
www.nlgsf.org

From the Kamala Harris party

Zelda Bronstein
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City Attorney Dennis Herrera, and Board President David Chiu, Criminal Justice Podcaster David Onek and other local luminaries floated around the Delancy Street Foundation where, oddly, the booze was free flowing, allegedly thanks to the largesse of Vanessa Getty.


The walls here are adorned with photos of Delancy Street Foundation founder Mimi Silbert, including an unusually unflattering photo of San Francisco’s mayor Gavin Newsom (with his name mispelled to include a final e). Among the crowd of supporters was Lateefah Simon, who works for the Lawyers Comittee for Civil Rights. She told me she was supporting Kamala Harris for AG based on her experience working for her for four years.


“I’ve never had a more difficult boss,” Simon said. “We would all shake before meetings because she demanded such a level of detail and excellence.


As of this time, Harriss has not put in an appearance, although she is rumored to be lurking in a back room in a building.

Insecure Sanctuary

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Insecure Sanctuary

Sarah@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors is urging San Francisco officials not to participate in Secure Communities, a controversial federal-local fingerprinting collaboration set to be activated June 1. But opting out of a program that threatens to make debates over “sanctuary city” protections of immigrants irrelevant may not be easy.

Speaking at a May 18 rally, Sup. Eric Mar warned that the use of Secure Communities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could cause the deportation of innocent residents and destroy local community policing efforts. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar warned, as he urged the city to opt out of the Department of Homeland Security initiative, which identifies immigrants who are sitting in U.S. jails and may be deportable under federal immigration laws.

Cosponsored by Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Chris Daly, Bevan Dufty, Sophie Maxwell, and Ross Mirkarimi, Mar’s resolution was scheduled for a May 25 vote that would make San Francisco the first jurisdiction in the nation to pursue withdrawing from the system.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar said, referring to Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation, SB 1070. “We can’t let Arizona come to San Francisco.”

ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice said the program’s focus is on criminal aliens. “These are folks who have been charged with or found guilty of felonies and have ignored deportation orders,” Kice said.

But ICE statistics show that the program mostly deports those with minor offenses. Between October 2008 and March 2010, Secure Communities submitted 1.9 million sets of digital fingerprints and deported 33,326 people nationwide. Fifteen percent of those deported (4,903 people) had criminal histories that included major drug and violent offenses such as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and kidnapping (Level 1 crimes). The other 85 percent (28,423 people) were deported for less serious drug and property offenses (Level 2 crimes) and other minor charges (Level 3 crimes).

Kice admits that Level 2 and 3 offenders constitute the largest percentage of SC cases. “That’s because representatively more people are arrested for Level 2 and 3 offenses than Level 1,” she said. “That’s probably fortunate, because Level 1 crimes are very serious.”

But American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel Joanne Lin warns that Secure Communities allows the federal government to circumvent local sanctuary policies and fast-track deportation. “It allows the Department of Homeland Security to identifty everyone who is booked, whether they are here lawfully or their charges are subsequently dropped or dismissed,” Lin said.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said he has no reservations about the program, which the Bush administration first announced in March 2008. “Sanctuary city policies were never meant to protect criminal behavior,” mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker said May 7, when San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey blew the whistle on the federal-local fingerprinting collaboration. “At the end of the day, federal officials should enforce immigration laws. We report — we don’t deport.”

The program links local law enforcement databases to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with states, allowing instantaneous information-sharing among local jails, ICE, and the FBI.

ICE implemented the program in North Carolina and Texas in October 2008. Under President Obama, the program has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. ICE plans to have a Secure Communities presence in each state by 2011, and in each of the 3,100 state and local jails nationwide by 2013, according to its Web site.

Under the program, participating jails submit fingerprints of arrestees to immigration and criminal databases, thereby giving ICE a technological presence in prisons and jails. An overview conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan National Immigration Law Center observes that “the critical element” of the program is that, during booking in jail, arrestees’ fingerprints will be checked against DHS databases, rather than just against FBI criminal databases.

“ICE asserts that the purpose of the Secure Communities program is to target violent criminals for removal,” NILC observed. “Advocates had criticized the program’s operation because it took place at the beginning of the criminal process and therefore indiscriminately targeted persons arrested for crimes of all magnitudes, rather than persons convicted of serious crimes.”

“The underlying purpose may be to lay the groundwork for real immigration reform,” NILC concludes. “But the mechanisms put in place will be difficult to dismantle, and the civil rights violations they produce cannot be undone.”

Scott Lorigan of the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information signed an interoperability agreement with ICE’s John P. Torres in April 2009. Since then, the system has been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura counties. Now it’s set to get switched on in San Francisco.

Campos thanks Hennessey for blowing the whistle, and lays the blame at Obama’s door. “None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Hennessey has written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for assistance in opting out of the ICE program. Brown’s office is reviewing his request. “The California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Brown’s press secretary Christine Gasparac clarified. “We were informed by ICE that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we’re advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.”

But it’s not clear what opting out will achieve. ICE’s Kice said jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE, which can act on it. Kice said that after an arrestee’s biometrics are forwarded to the feds, the information is bounced off FBI and DHS databases, and the information that comes back says if they have a record.

“What comes out is a recap of whatever relevant information is in the database,” she said. “For example, whether there has been a prior formal deportation or a prior arrest. It also shows if they have an adjusted status — whether they have legal permanent status. It will indicate if they are naturalized, in which case they are not subject to removal. That’s the information the community could cut off.”

“ICE always did these checks, but it was only available to local law enforcement agencies if they queried the system themselves, which required them to take a couple of extra steps,” Kice continued. “And it was name based. And that could be problematic, given duplicate names in system. That’s what fingerprints eliminate. Our concern is that municipalities are dependent to a large extent on information provided by the individual at the moment of arrest. We think the use of biometrics will ensure that folks who provide false information to local law enforcement officials don’t escape detection.”

Kice acknowledged that not everyone in the database is a violator. “The fact of having a record does not mean that you are a deportable alien,” she said. “And we understand that someone may get arrested and may not get convicted on their current charges. But what about a prior history? We know that folks have eluded detection, escaped, or been released from custody. So the individual may be someone who has other prior convictions. It’s the totality of their record that we are talking about here.”

At present, the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department only reports noncitizens who are booked on felony charges. Hennessey expressed concerns about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database.

He also warned that the 2,000 or so ICE referrals his office makes annually could explode. “We’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually,” Hennessey claimed. “And ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they pick up. They won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported. The basis of sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

East Oakland’s peaceful Youth Uprising

Andrew Lam
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Six months ago, Javae Reed could hardly have pictured himself as part of the solution to the problems that plague the East Oakland community where he grew up. Fresh off an incarceration in Reno (Reed had relocated temporarily to be with his mom) on charges of robbery, the 19 year old didn’t have a history of positive association with the system. But thanks to Youth Uprising, a youth advocacy non-profit — which celebrates its fifth anniversary with a gala fundraiser Tues/25 — Javae has landed a job, and got his driver’s license. Not to mention the fact that he’s performing policy work that will make a real difference for other young people like himself.

“I always had this potential in me,” Reed told me over the phone as he sat alongside YU director of strategy and investment director Maya Dillard-Smith. “I just needed that guidance to find it.” After hearing of  Youth Uprising through a friend upon his return to Oakland, Reed went to check out the program. The next day, he found himself heading out for a Youth Uprising LeaderShift retreat with 29 other young men, a trip which focuses on teaching individuals who are already leaders among their peers how to use their charisma and intelligence in a constructive direction.

Reed, a naturally outgoing guy, immediately found his niche. “By the second day, everybody was social, I got comfortable, the staff showed me support, we had fun. I became a part of the YU family,” he recalls. 

It’s indicative of the community-driven nature of YU that Reed was able to connect so readily. The organization celebrates a multi-pronged approach to youth empowerment, focusing both on physical (they operate the most used health clinic in Alameda County) and interior needs (a full purpose media lab gives participants a chance to use their voices artistically, and YU sponsors dance, theater and fine arts programs).

Reed was chosen to become a workshop facilitator, and the organization got to work helping him overcome the obstacles to employment for a young black man in Oakland. Through the Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program, they placed him as a janitor, enrolled him in a computing class to further develop his potential.

And then he was tapped to play a larger role. East Oakland is one of the 14 neighborhoods Building Health and Communities, California’s largest health care foundation, has chosen as a major aide recipient through 2020. Research was needed, however, to identify just how that money was to be allocated.

Who better than the area’s youth themselves to figure that out? Youth Uprising, the lead agency on the project, put Reed and a team of his peers in charge. They were tapped to draw up a survey for their neighborhood that touched on health and safety issues, then gathered responses, and presented their findings to BHC stakeholders (perhaps not surprisingly, national health care reform topped the list of concerns they uncovered). Their conclusions would drive $10 million in social investments.

It was an empowering experience. “You know these things are right, but you’ve never walked in my shoes,” Reed tells me. Although he’d never located himself in politics before, he can now say confidently “I speak for myself — and my generation.”

Reed’s lightening quick transition from disenfranchised youth to community leader is just the kind of change that Youth Uprising wants to keep on the country’s to-do list. “Some people believe the investment should be on the back end with incarceration,” says Dillard-Smith. “But we’re building up social enterprises.”

Which hasn’t been easy in an era of social service mass murder — but YU is pulling through. “We’ve got to have a diversified funding strategy, because the needs of this community are not going away when the funding does,” Dillard-Smith says.

YU’s developing ways to get businesses involved in a way that touches more than just the youth they served. They’ve teamed up with Silicon Valley corporations to keep their data entry programs from being outsourced overseas. “The young people we work with are incredibly computer literate, even when they can‘t read and write,” says Dillard-Smith. They’ve set up their own youth run Corners Café, which gives chosen program participants a chance to develop job skills in a real life environment, and is set to cater your next event.

With all this self made empowerment, it should be no surprise that YU was lauded by US attorney general Eric Holder as a “perfect example” of how change can happen in our beleaguered country. Check out their anniversary on Tues/25, featuring civil rights activist Lateefah Simon  — you’ll join the Uprising, too.

Youth Uprising 5th Anniversary Event
Tues/25 6:30-8:30 p.m., $50 donation
8711 MacArthur, Oakland
(510) 777-9099
www.youthuprising.org

SFBG Radio: Johnny and Tim on the craziest Senate campaign in years

Zelda Bronstein
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SFBG Radio: Johnny and Tim on the craziest Senate campaign in years

In today’s installment, Johnny and Tim talk about Meg Whitman’s precipitous poll collapse — and the Senate race in Kentucky, which could turn out to be one of the wildest in years. Will mainstream Republicans actually get behind a guy who doesn’t support the Civil Rights Act?

SFBGRadio5/20/2010 by SFBG

Shake-shake-shake

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Shake-shake-shake

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO And so, my queer peeps, we finally get an official “day” that won’t automatically invoke thoughts of rainbow jock straps, hot pink pasties, inscrutable promotional booths, and Miller Lite sponsorships. I’m talking about the new Harvey Milk Day, May 22, which doesn’t yet involve an Altoids float full of Gold’s Gym refugees or a Virgin sweepstakes. But I’m sure we’ll try our damnedest!

J/k, j/k, don’t get your Pride panties all in a twist, just sayin’. It’s beyond lovely that Mr. Milk is finally being recognized by California, thanks to our perennially tanned, leather-pantsed, and boyish state Sen. Mark Leno. And it’ll be plum-dandy to (hopefully) refocus on the great political legacy of the queer movement.

That’s not to say we’re not gonna have ourselves a little party. All day Saturday, the Castro District will be abuzz with what looks like 20-hundred gonzo events, everything from a “Hotcakes for Harvey” brunch at the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, to the crazy tricycle-race-meets-bar-crawl Tour de Castro with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, to a, duh, “Milk & Cookies Street Fair.” Happily bewilder yourself by visiting www.milkday.org for the full rundown. Then, on Sun/23, the ginormous Kink Armory gets taken over for a hootin’ and hollerin’ Castro County Fair (www.castrocountyfair.org) and a fruity evening Milk Shake party hits 715 Harrison (www.milkshake2010.com). No, we don’t get a day off work, but if you’re queer, you best be workin’ all the time anyway.

 

TERRORBIRD

Oh yes, Terrorbird is a real thing, with terrorclaws. OK, it’s not that scary, but Terrorbird is one of the biggest local indie and electronic music promoters going, and it’s celebrating its fourth birthday with a beakin’ extravaganza. DJs Sugar & Gold and Disco Shawn work it out between primo acts Man/Miracle, Baths, the Splinters, and Sister Crayon.

Thu/20, 8 p.m., $5. Milk, 1840 Haight, SF. www.milksf.com

 

JD SAMSON

If you don’t have a kinda-crush on JD Samson, formerly of Le Tigre and now of MEN, you are not human. Samson will bring expertly fun electro-fied rock skills to “create space for rad people to dance and smile and hold each other.” Unicrons and The Workout host, Honey Soundsystem, Distorted Disco DJs, Fonzie, and more open up.

Fri/21, 9 p.m., $10. Triple Crown, 1772 Market, SF. www.triplecrownsf.com

 

FAREWELL J.PHLIP

Oh man, one of my favorite DJs in San Francisco is leaving, and I can’t even be mad at her because she’s (of course) going to Berlin. You can catch her waving a mind-melting techno adieu at the superior Phonic party at the EndUp on Thursday, or you can watch her wig out with world-famous Dirtybird labelmates Claude Vonstroke, Justin Martin, Christian Martin, and Worthy at Mezzanine. Better yet, do both for a double dose. See ya on the Phlipside, J.

Fri/21, 9 p.m.-4 a.m., $15. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

NGUZUNGUZU

Completely mad tropical bass rave sounds from this young Los Angeles duo who are blowing up the spotlight with that warped airhorn sound. Catch them rumbling the intimate 222 Hyde space with support from Ghosts on Tape, Disco Shawn, and Rollie Fingers.

Sat/22, 10 p.m., $5. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

SANGUINE SUNDAY

Soulful sassiness all Sunday afternoon at this North Beach throwdown. Mama Feelgood hostesses, soul food is served, tacos cost a dollar, local artists astound, and DJs Centipede, Romanowski, Aebldee, and Honey Knuckles knock on smooth beats of every genres — vinyl 45s only, folks!

Sun/23, 2 p.m.–7 p.m., free. Mojito, 1337 Grant, SF. www.myspace.com/mojitosf

 

CAPSULE DESIGN FESTIVAL

Look, to go out you don’t just need to have style, you need to be style. Which may explain why I’ve worn the same flannel shirt and Tigers ball cap to the club for the past five years. Meet me at this Hayes Valley afternoon extravaganza featuring more local underground designers than you can shake a wire hanger at (and curated by Javier Natureboy, so you know it’ll be edgy). Let’s put on a new attitude.

Sun/23, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., free. Hayes Green , SF. www.uniondesignsf.com

On the Cheap Listings

David Talbot
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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THURSDAY 20

Open Show #13 Rayko, 428 3rd St., SF; (415) 495-3773. 7pm, free. Attend this interactive art salon and social mixer where five curated presenters will showcase a 20 image story or a 4-7 minute multimedia/video project. The audience is encouraged to engage presenters with questions and feedback.

FRIDAY 21

Bead and Design Show Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF; (530) 274-2222. Fri.-Sun. 10am-6pm; $10, good for all three days. Visit more than 150 artists and artisan exhibitors displaying and selling precious stones, jewelry, vintage and contemporary beads, metalwork, cloisonné, ceramics, handmade clothing, and more. You can also check out workshops and demonstrations in techniques such as jewelry design, metal work, bead making, found object jewelry, and more.

Fourteen Hills San Francisco Motorcycle Club, 2194 Folsom, SF; http://14hills.net. 7pm, free. Get a taste of new work by emerging and established writers at this Spring 2010 release of Fourteen Hills, San Francisco State University’s international literary magazine featuring poetry, fiction, short plays, literary nonfiction, and art. The release party to feature readings, art, DJ music, food, and great raffle prizes.

BAY AREA

Skank Bloc Bologna Number Four Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Bancroft, Berk.; (510) 642-0808. 7:30pm, $5. Attend the release party for Anne Colvin’s Skank Bloc Bologna, a looseleaf collection of works from an international cast of artists, writers, and poets, featuring a duet of music and verse with artist William Wiley playing the didgeridoo and poet Michael Hannon reciting.

SATURDAY 22

Harvey Milk Day Various locations throughout the Castro, SF; visit www.milkday.org for more info. 8am-2am, various prices. Celebrate the Castro neighborhood and its vibrant culture and history on the first ever Harvey Milk Day, a day of recognition for civil rights activist Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978. Events and activities to include a milk and cookies street fair, a free screening of “Milk” at the Castro theater, a Tour de Castro Tricycle race, a dedication of a new Civil Rights mural, and much more.

Open Gardens Angle of Repose, 1625 Plymoth, SF; Boyd’s Passage to India, 2619 Baker, SF; Live Oak Garden, 106 Collins, SF; Playful Pines Street Gardens, 2418 Pine, SF; Sea Cliff, 4 Sea Cliff, SF; Urban Labyrinth Garden, 1620 Plymouth, SF; 1-888-842-2442. 10am-4pm, $5 per garden. Take a stroll through some of San Francisco’s private gardens and help support the Garden Conservancy’s work to preserve exceptional American gardens.

BAY AREA

Slicing the Budgetary Pie Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists’ Hall, 1924 Cedar, Berk.; www.notmypriorities.org. 7pm; free, donations encouraged. Discuss the U.S.’s budget priorities and the militarism of our society with the group Not My Priorities while sharing some delicious pie. If you’d like to donate a pie, email office@bfuu.org.

SUNDAY 23

All You Can Dance Day Alonzo King LINES Dance Center, 5th floor, 26 7th St., SF; (415) 863-3040. 1pm, $5. Sample half hour dance classes geared towards adult dancers of all levels including hip hop, ballet, jazz, and more.

Capsule Design Festival Octavia between Fell and Grove, SF; http://uniondesignsf.com. 11am, free. Celebrate Bay Area fashion, accessory, and house wares designers at this all day outdoor street fair featuring 140 independent designers, music, food, and a special section of SF couture.

Sunday Streets Bayview 3rd St. and King to Terry Francois to Mariposa, 3rd St. from Mariposa to Carroll (Bayview Playground), SF; sundaystreetssf.com. 10am-5pm, free. Stroll, skate, cycle, people watch, or participate in activities and events spaced out along the car-free route at this Bayview Sunday Streets celebration coupled with the Bayview Festival. Meet up with the San Francisco Bike Coalition at Illinois and 3rd St. at 3pm for a tour of some of the newest bike lanes in town.

MONDAY 24

Make My Monday Fort Mason Center Firehouse, Laguna at Beach, SF; www.fortamson.org/mmm. 6:30pm, free. Support the local art community at this art-making party featuring music, cocktails, and freshly made art for sale for $5-$50. Watch at artist Rebecca Peters hand-colors linocuts and Robert Harris creates triptychs, while DJ Fingersnaps will set the mood.

Sheryl WuDunn Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; (510) 786-2500, ext. 226. 6:30pm, free. Hear Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist and co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Sheryl WuDunn, in conversation with Kavita Ramdas, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, as they discuss how to empower women worldwide with financial resources.

BAY AREA

Chill with the Union Night Bay Area IWW Office, 2022 Blake, Berk.; bayarea.iww.org. 7pm, free. Find out more about the Industrial Workers of the World Union (IWW), network, and socialize at this event featuring a talk about green-worker alliances with Judy Bari, Darryl Cherneym and Earth First.

TUESDAY 25

Bishop Christopher Sanyajo LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, SF; www.clgs.org. 6pm, free. Attend this public forum featuring Bishop Christopher Sanyojo, a Ugandan voice for equality, in conversation with Rev. Roland Stringfellow.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

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