Democratic Party

How to repeal Prop. 8

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EDITORIAL When the late Sup. Harvey Milk was fighting to defeat the Briggs Initiative, a statewide ballot measure that would have barred gay people from teaching in public schools, he repeatedly made the point that the more Californians met and interacted with openly gay and lesbian people, the less likely the voters would be to sanction discrimination. Mayor Gavin Newsom made the same basic point in his statement following the horrifying Supreme Court decision that legalized discrimination in this state.

"I know many of my fellow Californians may initially agree with this ruling," he said, "but I ask them to reserve final judgment until they have discussed this decision with someone who will be affected by it.

"Please talk to a lesbian or gay family member, neighbor, or coworker and ask them why equality in the eyes of the law is important to every Californian."

That ought to be the theme of the November 2010 ballot measure that seeks to overturn Proposition 8.

It’s going to be a tough, uphill battle — after all, the voters just passed Prop. 8 last fall. But the campaign against it was, almost everyone now agrees, fatally flawed — the TV ads spoke in platitudes, there was almost no use of the words "gay" or "lesbian," and, perhaps most important, no coherent, grassroots effort to convince swing voters by making connections between them and the queer community. And there was far too little outreach to black and Latino voters.

And the tide of national sentiment is turning, far faster than anyone expected. Maine and Iowa recently legalized same-sex marriage. The New York Assembly has passed a marriage equality bill and, if it clears the state Senate, the governor has promised to sign it. By the time the 2010 election rolls around, gay marriage will be sweeping the country, and California will be way behind. And, of course, every year a new group of 18-year-olds gets the right to vote — and that demographic is heavily in favor of marriage equality.

So there’s no question that Prop. 8 can be overturned — and placing the issue on the same ballot as the governor’s race will sharpen the issue, force the candidates to take a stand, and generate additional voter turnout.

This time, though, the campaign has to be much more inclusive. The soft-pedal-homosexuality-and-pretend-queers-don’t-exist approach didn’t work. The write-off-the-black-community-and-religious-voters gambit backfired. Harvey Milk was right: Gay people and their allies need to be everywhere in this next fight, and need to take the message directly to those moderate voters who are going to think differently about someone they have met and talked to than about some image the right-wing nuts have conjured up.

Straight supporters of same-sex marriage need to be deployed properly. Newsom spent much of his time during the No on 8 campaign appearing before adoring crowds in places like the Castro District, which was a waste of time; he needs to be in Walnut Creek. African American ministers like the Rev. Amos Brown ought to be visiting churches in conservative areas and trying to make inroads. Art Torres, the former chair of the state Democratic Party, came out this spring and is popular among Latino voters.

We agree with Newsom. It’s time to start this campaign, now. But this time, let’s get it right. *

What’s all the fuss about Articles 10 & 11?

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By Rebecca Bowe

The San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council is planning a “Rally for Jobs” on May 5 at Civic Center Plaza to oppose “a measure on historic preservation that would kill much of our work,” according to an announcement on the council’s Web site. “Work is hard to find now. Don’t let it go away forever,” the announcement declares. At issue is the rewrite of Articles 10 and 11 of the city’s planning code, which deal with historic preservation and are integrally linked with the newly created Historic Preservation Commission.

There’s no question that the effects of an unstable economy and the downward slide of the housing market have led to a shortage in construction jobs, and it’s clear that the workers in this industry are hurting. At the Democratic party luncheon picket last week, I spoke with a number of masons, electricians and others who were struggling to make ends meet while they were out of work. Some 400 workers in the bricklayers union alone have lost their jobs, one union member told me, and times are tough.

But is the Historic Preservation Commission to blame? Would the pending revisions of Articles 10 and 11 really be the last nail in the coffin for development in San Francisco, obliterating the last remaining construction jobs in the city? I called the city Planning Department to find out what this rewrite will mean for the city and was directed to Tara Sullivan, who works in legislative affairs and has been deeply involved in the process. “There’s some speculation that this will halt development around the city,” Sullivan told me. “But it’s not an anti-development tool at all. And it’s not citywide.”

Historic proportions

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news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY "110 The Embarcadero" is the stately address of a building that doesn’t exist yet. But the battle that continues to be waged over this proposed development, along with skirmishes that are brewing over other proposed buildings nearby, speaks volumes about a complicated tug-of-war that is emerging over a prominent slice of the city’s northern waterfront.

Preservationists are concerned about saving a union hall on Steuart Street that housed the International Longshoremen’s Association during the strike of 1934, which would be razed to build 110 The Embarcadero. That’s one of a number of historic properties critics say could face the wrecking ball as new building plans are drafted. Other proposals, among them 8 Washington and 555 Washington, have neighborhood activists anxious about long skyscraper shadows that could be cast on public parks, the development pressure that would result from allowing skyscrapers to exceed height limits, and views of the bay that would be enhanced from inside luxury high rises but blocked to others.

On the other side of the coin, building-trades union members increasingly desperate for work are fervently advocating for new construction projects that would open the spigot on jobs. And the Port of San Francisco hopes development money will help cover its huge infrastructure backlog.

Meanwhile a report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission noted that the waterfront stretch from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge is one of the most vulnerable to sea-level rise. As plans for this part of the Embarcadero are hashed out in public hearings and architects’ sketches, a new reality must be factored into the mix: some of that land could soon be underwater.

MISSING HISTORY


110 The Embarcadero initially won praise for its goal of attaining the highest certification level for nationwide green-building standards. Sponsored by Hines Interests, it was a shining example of ecodesign that even featured living vines climbing the sides. Even though it would shoot 40 percent above the allowable height limit of 84 feet, the San Francisco Planning Commission gave it a green light.

Enthusiasm waned, however, when historic preservationists pointed out that the building slated for demolition — 113 Steuart St. — was an ILA labor hall during the famous maritime strike of 1934, which erupted into violence after two union members were gunned down by police and led to a four-day general strike that paralyzed the city. "Harry Bridges rose to fame in this building," says architectural historian Bradley Weidmeier, referring to the famous labor leader. "Labor historians from around the country are going to be blocking this."

Hines hired a leading historic architecture firm, Page & Turnbull, to conduct a historic assessment of that building as part of the planning process. Yet the initial report neglected to mention anything about the building being at the center of a profound moment in San Francisco’s labor history.

Former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, an opponent of the project, says the gaps in information weren’t hard to miss. "The fact that it was ground zero for bloody Thursday, that it was ground zero for the general strike … that people were shot in front of there, that their bodies lay inside. You want to know how we found that out? We got it online," Peskin said.

Page & Turnbull later submitted an addendum, including historic photos depicting people crowding into the two-story building to pay respects to the slain union members. The firm acknowledged its historic significance this time, but asserted that the now-empty building had undergone too many retrofits to comply with historic landmark requirements.

This, too, was challenged by project opponents. "You can look at pictures of dead people laying there on the sidewalk with that building in the background, and look at it today, and godammit, it’s pretty much the same building," Peskin says.

The Board of Supervisors in mid-March approved an appeal of the project and instructed city planners to prepare an environmental impact report. Ralph Schoenman, a preservation advocate who says he met with board members about the project, told us that "members of the board were plainly shocked by finding out that the historic report was so flawed and untrue."

That feeling may have lingered for some at the April 21 bard meeting when Supervisors voted 7-4 to reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s nomination of Ruth Todd, a Page & Turnbull principal, to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.

WHOSE WATERFRONT?


Though the project has been stalled, the issues it stirred are gaining momentum. The picture of what this stretch of the Embarcadero could look like is shaping up to be quite different from developers’ gauzy artistic renderings. Sue Hestor, a land-use lawyer, is a driving force behind a community-led meeting scheduled for June 24 at the headquarters of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 34 (the successor to ILA) to initiate a new approach to development along the western edge of the Embarcadero.

"Threatened demolition of the 1934 Waterfront Strike headquarters at 113 Steuart has pulled us together," Hestor wrote in a widely disseminated e-mail. "The community will proactively start defining changes we want. No more waiting for a developer proposal, then meekly responding. The community gets to define how the city should look … along the northeast waterfront. When you start at the Embarcadero it is possible to weave in so many areas, so many neighborhoods, so much of our political and immigrant and labor history."

ILWU members are joining with preservationists in the effort to preserve 113 Steuart. "We are at a historic moment when working people are under unprecedented attack," a team of six Local 34 leaders wrote in a recent statement opposing the demolition. "That living history is a prologue to our struggles of the future."

Not all labor unions agree. At a picket staged by San Francisco’s Building and Construction Trades Council outside a Democratic Party luncheon April 21, protesters carried a few flew signs reading "How can we feed our kids with history?" The signs referenced the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, but the same question might be asked of 110 The Embarcadero, which was favored by building-trade workers.

Neighborhood groups are also worried because the construction of the two proposed 84-foot condominium towers at 8 Washington could cause the adjacent Golden Gateway Tennis and Swim Club to lose half its facility. "Six hundred to 700 kids come every summer to learn to swim and to play tennis," Club director Lee Radner says. "To us, it’s just a matter of the developer not considering the moral issues of the neighborhood club that has given so much to the community." Friends of Golden Gateway (FOGG), which formed to preserve the club in the face of development, has hired Hestor as its attorney.

Because the development would be partially built on a surface parking lot controlled by the Port Commission, a parcel held to be in the public trust under state law, developers proposed a land-swap to get around provisions prohibiting residential uses in those parcels. Renee Dunn, a spokesperson for the Port Commission, noted that the Port’s annual revenues total $65 million, while the amount that would be needed for repairs and maintenance of its century-old infrastructure is almost $2 billion. In general, "Public-private developments provide the dollars needed to make improvements," she told us.

In the wake of concerns about 8 Washington, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu sent a letter to the Port Commission requesting an update to the waterfront plan for that area. "Concerns are currently being raised regarding the proposed development … and the future development of seawall lots along the northern waterfront, and I share many of these concerns," Chiu wrote. In response, the Port agreed to conduct a six-to-eight month focus study for those seawall lots.

Meanwhile, a quietly growing problem may mean that plans for this stretch of the Embarcadero will get more complicated. A report released in early April by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicts a 16-inch rise in the level of the San Francisco Bay by 2050, and a 55-inch rise by 2100, based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Along San Francisco’s waterfront, the most vulnerable area will be from Pier 35 to the Bay Bridge, the report found. "Sea-level rise has been linear, and it’s continuing, and we expect that based on what we know about climate change, it will accelerate," notes Joe LaClair of BCDC. In the event of storm surges, he adds, "we will have to find a way to protect the financial district from inundation."

As local governments begin to get up to speed on mitigating the effects of climate change, new questions — beyond developers’ plans vs. neighborhood input — will have to come into play. One that BCDC plans to tackle in coming months, LaClair notes, is: "What does resilient shoreline development look like?" It’s a good one to start asking now.

Arnold’s big hoax

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The choice facing California voters May 19 is, to put it mildly, unpleasant. The budget deal hammered out by the governor and legislative leaders — which these six ballot measures will confirm and implement — at least kept the state solvent and prevented a financial catastrophe. But the solution is just terrible, and will lock the state into a budgetary nightmare for years to come.

State Sen. Mark Leno, who supports the deal, makes no attempt to soft-peddle what went on here. It was, he told us, the result of "extortion." Because California has an arcane and counterproductive rule mandating that any state budget and any tax increases must be approved by two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature, and because Republicans control just enough votes to block any budget, and because those Republicans have all signed a written promise never to raise taxes under any circumstances, and because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t get the GOP to go along with his compromises and is unwilling to accept Democratic proposals that might escape the onerous supermajority, budget stalemate in tough times is almost guaranteed. And in this case, because the state was running out of cash and hundreds of thousands of people were about to be put out of work as state-funded projects shut down, the Democrats were forced to accept a compromise none of them like.

A small number of Republicans insisted on vast changes in the way California does business — and because the Democrats saw no other options, the GOP faction got much of what it wanted. The result: the Democratic Party leadership is campaigning for a series of measures that reflect, to a significant extent, a Republican view of how the state should be run.

The opposition to the package comes from the far right (which is upset because the budget deal includes some new taxes, albeit regressive ones) and, increasingly, progressives, who argue that the measures will make it harder for the state to meet the needs of a growing (and aging) population.

We’ve listened to both sides, researched the measures in depth, and concluded that the best choice for Californians is to reject Propositions 1A through 1F. The proposal may address (most of) this year’s budget woes and keep the state running for a while, but it will create a fiscal straightjacket on the order of Proposition 13 that will damage California and undermine any progressive policy hopes for many, many years into the future. If the voters accept this deal today, they’ll come to regret it.

Proposition 1A doesn’t quite reach the Republican holy grail — a cap on annual government spending — but it goes a long way in that direction. The measure would require the state to make annual contributions to a budget reserve fund until the reserve reaches 12.5 percent of general fund revenue. The state would have to set aside reserve money every year, even in very bad years. If next year’s budget deficit is as bad as this one, Prop. 1A would make it worse. It restricts the use of "unanticipated revenues" — meaning the state can’t spend money it might have in very good years. There’s a really complicated formula for when the state can dip into the reserve, and how it can be used, but the California Budget Project, the respected policy watchdog group, points out that the measure amounts to a cap in spending, one that won’t keep pace with California’s needs.

"Prop. 1A would not address California’s existing structural shortfall — the gap between revenues and expenditures — that exists in all but the best budget years," CBP notes. "By basing the new cap on a level of revenues that is insufficient to pay for the current level of programs and services, Prop. 1A would limit the state’s ability to restore reductions made during the current downturn out of existing revenues."

The guidelines for future spending don’t take into account the increased demand for public services California will face in the next few years. The population will increase by 29.4 percent over the 2000 level by 2020, state officials project, but the number of people 65 and older will increase by 75 percent. That will put a huge new demand on state services — and if Prop. 1A passes, the budget won’t be able to expand to meet those needs.

The budget compromise included some temporary tax increases. The sales tax is slated to go up by one cent on the dollar, the vehicle license fee will rise slightly, and there’s an across-the-board increase in income taxes. Sales taxes are the most regressive way to raise revenue, and the income tax hikes hit the rich and the middle class evenly — hardly a fair or progressive plan.

But that money is needed to close the horrendous budget gap, and the propositions are designed to make it hard for progressives to say no. If Prop. 1A and Prop. 1B go down, the taxes expire after two years. If those measures pass, the taxes continue until 2012.

Prop. 1B is part of a deal that the governor cut with the California Teachers Association, the largest union of educators in the state. It shifts some more money to the public schools to make up for what was cut this year and last. It’s a complicated formula, but in effect it probably does nothing more than what Prop. 98 — the state’s mandate to fund education — already requires. The problem is that the governor and the school districts disagree on what Prop. 98 says, and without 1B, it’s unlikely that money will be forthcoming. The money California’s public schools get under 1B is still woefully inadequate; and again, this does nothing to address the structural problems.

Prop. 1C allows the state to borrow $5 billion from future lottery revenues to help balance the current budget. Of course, that money won’t be available in future years — unless, as 1C suggests, the lottery can find ways to sell more tickets. The idea here: increase lottery revenue through better marketing, thus taking more money from poor people (the lottery is an overwhelmingly regressive source of income).

Prop 1D’s title, "Protects children’s services funding," is a complete lie. Instead it redirects money earmarked for early childhood programs into the general fund, essentially de-funding some of the most effective and inexpensive programs California offers. Prop. 1E is a similar deal — it temporarily suspends the program that funds mental health services with a tax on the very rich, and puts that money into the general fund instead.

Prop. F is just stupid — it prevents lawmakers and the governor from receiving pay increases when there’s a budget deficit. That’s not going to change anything in Sacramento.

We’re acutely aware of the risks inherent in voting down this intricately orchestrated budget compromise. In effect, the Legislature, which has been paralyzed by the two-thirds rule, will have to go back and try again. The governor, who is ineffective at best and a severe roadblock at worst, will be little help. And the anti-tax forces will claim that the voters have vindicated their position.

But let’s look at reality. The tax increases will be in effect for the next two years anyway. The state’s budget position has worsened in the past month, so the Legislature will have to figure out how to deal with an $8 billion additional shortfall no matter what happens.

And in the fall of 2010, state voters will almost certainly have a chance to repeal the two-thirds budget rule — and have a good chance to elect a Democratic governor.

California needs major, structural budget reform. If we thought this were just a temporary painful deal that would postpone the worst of the state’s problems until Schwarzenegger and the GOP obstructionists were gone, we’d be tempted to support the package. But these measures lock the state into an unacceptable budget situation forever.

Vote no on 1A–1F.

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

Gray Davis was a pretty poor governor. He ran as a moderate who could manage the state, but utterly failed to deal with the energy crisis of 2000-01, leaving rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills as his legacy. He cost the state billions. He presided over a legislative budget stalemate. He was a captive of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. He gave the Democratic Party a bad name.

And for all that, nothing he did was close to what his replacement, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the Republicans in Sacramento are doing today.

Under Gov. Davis, California reduced the size of public school classes, mandating that K-4 teachers have no more than 20 students. That has made a huge difference in the classrooms, and the results show it. But it’s going to be almost impossible for most school districts to stick to that target now, because the schools are getting huge budget cuts.

So are all the other state services, and aid to counties, which means more layoffs and cuts at the local level. And still, the state is $8 billion more in the hole.

Democrats in the Legislature have tried everything they could think of. They negotiated with the Republicans, who have a veto over the budget because of the crazy two-thirds rule. They came up with a plan that fit what Schwarzenegger had been asking for, and he still refused to accept it. And now the Democratic leadership is forced to try to sell a series of state propositions that nobody likes, that will put California in worst financial straights, and that will have as bad a long-term impact on the state as Proposition 13.

Propositions 1A-1F are a terrible deal, the result of GOP blackmail and extortion — and they won’t even solve the problem. This governor is going to leave the state in the worse shape it’s been since the Great Depression. Almost makes you long for the days of Gray Davis.

In 1967, at the height of the antiwar movement, when American cities were in political chaos, a young tenant organizer named John Ross ran for San Francisco supervisor as a radical out of the Mission advocating rent control and an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, among other things. But one of his opponents discovered that Ross was a convicted felon who served two years and six months in federal prison for refusing the draft, so they took his name off the ballot.

Now, 42 years later, Ross — the writer, poet, unrepentant radical, and longtime Guardian correspondent, may be getting some recognition from the city. Sup. John Avalos is going to introduce a resolution honoring Ross for his extensive literary and political contributions to San Francisco. The May 12 ceremony, at 3:30 in the Board of Supervisors chambers, will be followed by "poems under the dome" — a poetry reading at City Hall at 5:30. If you want to help out (or donate money — please) contact Diamond Dave Whitaker at 240-0286 or Avalos’ office at 554-6975. *

Do the right thing, Dianne

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OPINION At the end of World War II, approximately 36 percent of American workers belonged to a union. Today that number has shrunk to about 12 percent, lagging behind the world’s other industrial democracies. But now, with a Democratic president in office, we have a realistic chance of enacting the most significant piece of labor legislation in decades, the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the right of workers to organize into a union.

The opposition, of course, is well organized and well funded. Opponents will spend more than $200 million to defeat the bill in the Senate. They will argue that EFCA is just a special interest bill that helps big labor. But the truth is that the legislation should be part of the long-term economic recovery plan and is key to rebuilding the middle class.

In 1980, average CEO pay was 42 times that of the average blue-collar worker. By 2006, CEO pay had grown to 364 times the average blue collar worker’s pay. A survey of median weekly earnings in 2007 revealed that union workers make 30 percent more than their nonunion counterparts, and are 59 percent more likely to have employer-provided health coverage than other workers.

The key EFCA reform, and the one that has generated the most controversy, is called “card-check.” Under EFCA, if the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finds that a majority of employees have signed written authorization forms designating the union as their collective bargaining representative, the union is certified.

Opponents of card-check often argue, erroneously, that EFCA will deprive workers of their right to a so-called secret ballot. In fact, EFCA preserves both options, but it places the choice in the hands of workers, not employers. Moreover, the history of these “secret ballot” elections shows that they are often anything but democratic. Too often employers use their power over unorganized employees to intimidate them into voting against the union. Such documented employer tactics have included mandatory attendance at antiunion meetings, one-on-one meetings, threats to close the business if the union wins the vote, and harassing or even firing workers engaged in organizing activity.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has an 87 percent lifetime voting record from the AFL-CIO and has co-sponsored EFCA in the past. But now, with EFCA finally within reach, she has announced that she is looking for a “less divisive” option.

Say it isn’t so, Senator.

For many years progressive activists have had concerns about Feinstein, even going as far as to seek her censure at a state Democratic convention two years ago. In 2007, the party leadership reminded the activists that although she may stray occasionally, Feinstein is really a good Democrat who shares our basic values and commitments. There was no censure.

But workers’ rights is no side-issue in our Democratic Party. Economic justice is the issue. This is a moment of truth for Feinstein — and all of us who are her constituents have an obligation to help her get to the right answer.

On April 28 at 7 p.m. at the LGBT Community Center, the SF Labor Council, Pride at Work, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club are sponsoring a community briefing on our campaign to urge Feinstein to support working people. Join us. *

Robert Haaland is the co-chair, SF Pride at Work. Rafael Mandelman is president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.

 

Uncivil unions

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steve@sfbg.com

Who really cares about an appointment to the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors? There isn’t a delicate balance of power on the board or any major initiative at stake in this fairly obscure district. San Francisco certainly has more pressing issues and concerns.

Yet the Board of Supervisors’ April 14 vote to reject Larry Mazzola Jr. and select Dave Snyder for that board says more about San Francisco’s political dynamics, the state of the American labor movement, the psychological impact of the recession, how the city will grow, and the possibilities and pitfalls facing the board’s new progressive majority than any in recent memory.

It was a vote that meant nothing and everything at the same time, a complex and telling story of brinksmanship in which both sides of the progressive movement arguably lost. And it was a vote that came at a time when they need each other more than ever.

"It was a win for the Newsom-oriented elements of labor," Sup. Chris Daly, who helped spark the conflict, told the Guardian.

The bloc of six progressive supervisors who shot down Mazzola — who helps run the powerful plumbers union and was the San Francisco Labor Council’s unwavering choice for an appointment that has traditionally been labor’s seat on the bridge board — is the same bloc the unions helped elected last year. It is also the same bloc that has been fighting the hardest to minimize budget-related layoffs.

The vote says a tremendous amount about the crucial alliance between progressives and labor, how that delicate partnership formed, and what the future holds.

PLUMBERS VS. PROGRESSIVES


The Mazzola name carries a lot of weight in San Francisco labor circles. The Web site for the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry Local 38 (UA 38) features a photo of U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis standing between Larry Mazzola Sr. and Larry Mazzola Jr., the father and son team that runs the union.

But the Mazzolas and their union are also controversial. As the Guardian has reported ("Plumbers gone wild," 2/1/06), the union owns a large share of the Konocti Harbor Resort (which a lawsuit by the Department of Labor said was a misuse of the union’s pension funds) and owns the Civic Center Hotel, which tenants and city officials say has been willfully neglected by a union suspected of wanting to bulldoze and develop the site. The plumbers and other members of the building trades have also fought with progressives over development issues and generally back moderate-to-conservative candidates.

Sup. Chris Daly and several progressive groups locked horns with the union over the hotel a few years ago, and Mazzola Sr. responded by opposing Daly’s 2006 reelection campaign, targeting him with nasty mailers and donating office space to Daly’s opponent, Rob Black. Yet more progressive unions like Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents city employees, convinced the Labor Council to back Daly and union support helped Daly win.

So when Mazzola Jr. came before Daly’s Rules Committee last month, the supervisor unloaded on him, and Mazzola gave as good as he got, telling Daly he didn’t want his support and defiantly telling the committee he didn’t know much about the bridge district, or its issues, but he expected the job anyway. Those on all sides of the issue agree it was a disaster.

"He was just patently unqualified for the position," Daly told the Guardian. Mazzola tells us his experience with labor contracts would be an asset for the position, but he admits the committee meeting didn’t go well. "I was caught off-guard and put in a defensive mode that altered my planned presentation," Mazzola told us.

Whatever the case, Sup. David Campos joined Daly in keeping the Mazzola nomination stuck in committee while the progressive supervisors privately asked labor leaders to offer another choice. "We said, ‘Give us anyone else as long as they can intelligently talk about transportation issues and the bridge district," Daly said.

But labor dug in. "It seemed as though the board was trying to dictate to labor what labor should do," Michael Theriault, who heads the San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council. And the other unions decided to back the trades, for a number of complicated reasons.

"The reason we supported Larry Mazzola is because this was important to the plumbers union," said Mike Casey, president of the Labor Council and head of Unite Here (which includes the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). "To the extent we can support the trades, we want to."

So when the four most conservative members of the Board of Supervisors used a parliamentary trick to call the Mazzola nomination up to the full board on April 14, the stage was set for the standoff.

THE STATE OF LABOR


Labor is truly a house divided, despite its universal interest in minimizing recession-related layoffs and taking advantage of a new Congress and White House that is generally supportive of labor’s holy grail: the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it far easier to form unions.

The April 25 founding convention of National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) in San Francisco caps a years-long battle between Sal Rosselli’s United Healthcare Workers (UHW) and their SEIU masters (see "Union showdown," 1/28/09). Rosselli and many others say SEIU under Andy Stern has become undemocratic and has climbed in bed with corporate America, while SEIU says getting bigger has made the union better able to advocate for workers. Both accuse the other of being power-hungry and not fighting fair.

"Inside SEIU, we’ve been struggling for four years basically on a difference of ideology and vision of what the labor movement is," Rosselli told us. David Regan, who SEIU named as a UHW trustee after ousting Rosselli, told us the union divisions have been overstated by the media. "Everyone is together in pushing the Employee Free Choice Act," he said, glossing over the fact that the legislation is in trouble and recently lost the support of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Nationally, SEIU has been at war with all of the most progressive unions. The union recently made peace with the California Nurses Association after a particularly nasty struggle that involves many of the same dynamics as SEIU vs. NUHW, including accusations by CNA that SEIU was a barrier to achieving single-payer healthcare and was illegally meddling in its internal affairs.

SEIU is also accused of breaking up Unite Here, which fought the most high-profile labor battle here since Newsom became mayor in its contract fight with the big hotel chains. Last month, a large faction from the old Unite affiliated with SEIU, whose officials say they were just helping out after the end of what all knew was a bad marriage. "This is an example of a merger that didn’t take," SEIU spokesperson Michelle Ringuette told us. But the building trades have backed Unite Here in its fight against Sterns’ SEIU. As Casey told us, "We’re in a major fight over our right to exist. There’s no other way to characterize it."

Yet in San Francisco, SEIU plays a different role. Local 1021 is the advocate for the little guy, representing front-line city workers who deliver social and public health services. It is the union facing the deepest layoffs in the coming city budget fight and is still negotiating contract givebacks with the Mayor’s Office. The union’s biggest allies in City Hall are the exact same six supervisors who voted against Mazzola.

So why this standoff? SEIU, Unite Here, and other progressive unions share the Labor Council with the building trades, which are traditionally more conservative and friendly with downtown and, these days, starting to really get desperate for work. "We have thousands of guys on the verge of losing their homes and families," Theriault said. "We are desperate."

That was one reason the San Francisco Labor Council last year cut a deal with Lennar Corporation to back Proposition G, which lets Lennar develop more than 10,000 homes in the southeast sector of the city. Daly, who wanted firmer guarantees of more affordable housing, was livid over the deal and has been at odds with the council ever since. But Daly said labor’s undercutting of progressives goes back even further and includes the early reelection endorsement Rosselli’s UHW gave Newsom in 2007, which helped keep big-name local progressives out of the race.

Tenants groups, affordable housing advocates, and alternative transportation supporters form the backbone of progressive politics, but on development projects, they often clash with the trade unionists who just want work. And labor expects support from the progressive supervisors. As Mazzola pointed out, "It was labor that got most of those guys elected."

But labor has its own fights on the horizon. SEIU fears deep city job cuts if the Mayor’s Office can’t be persuaded to start supporting new revenue measures. NUHW is getting challenged by SEIU for every member the try to sign up. And Unite Here’s hotel contracts start expiring in six months, reopening its battle with downtown hotel managers.

"We’re going to be in a real war with some of those employers," Casey said. Yet he said its actually good time for the otherwise distracting fights with SEIU over how nice to play with big corporations. "I embrace this fight because I think this is exactly the struggle we need to have in the labor movement."

But the Mazzola fight was one that neither side relished.

TO THE BRINK


The Board of Supervisors chambers was filled with union members flying their colors on April 14, but the progressive supervisors were just as unified, voting 6-5 to reject Mazzola. All that was left was the political posturing, the decision of what to do next, and the fallout.

"I am disappointed and surprised by the board’s action," Sup. Sean Elsbernd (who voted for Mazzola and publicly called it "a sin" to deny him) told us, refusing to confirm the private joy over the outcome that many sources say he has expressed. "What shocked me is a majority of the board turned their back on labor."

Daly admits that the standoff hurt progressives. "I’m not sure who came up with it, but it’s certainly true that the Sean Elsbernds of the world were able to take full advantage of the situation to drive a wedge between unions and progressives," Daly said.

Yet Daly noted how ridiculous is was for Sups. Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier to be publicly professing such fealty to labor while opposing revenue measures that would minimize layoffs. "At the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days," Daly said. "It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola."

Politically, Elsbernd says the progressives misplaced their hand. "I think the easy middle ground for them was to reject Mazzola and send it back to committee," Elsbernd said. Others echoed that point. Instead, supervisors appointed Synder, a widely acclaimed transportation expert who created the modern San Francisco Bicycle Coalition then started Transportation for a Livable City (now Livable City) before becoming the first transportation policy director for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR).

"I don’t like how that went down, and I’m not happy with the inability of the board and labor to come to an agreement," Snyder told us. "I was stuck in the middle. I wish they had sent someone the board could have agreed to."

After the vote, Snyder went back to the SPUR office and resigned. SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf admits that labor leaders lobbied him to pressure Snyder to withdraw his name, and that he asked Snyder to do so. But Metcalf said he didn’t want to lose Snyder, whose vast knowledge of transportation issues as been a real asset to SPUR. "It was his choice and not my preference."

"This issue is not why I left SPUR, but it was the precipitating event," said Snyder, whose progressive values have occasionally differed from SPUR’s stands. "My sense of social justice has more to do with class issues than I was able to pursue at SPUR."

In fact, the clashes between progressives and developers (who are often backed by the trade unions) often revolve around how much affordable housing and community benefits will be required with each project approval. Snyder said the defining question is, "How do we accommodate development in San Francisco and maintain progressive values in a capitalist economy?"

He didn’t answer that question, but it is one the building trades also understand. Theriault said he supports holding developers to high standards, even when progressives have block certain projects to get them. "I’m okay with that as long as I see the endgame," Theriault said.

He expects the progressive board to listen to labor more than Daly or Democratic Party chair Aaron Peskin, who Theriault said helped shore up the progressive opposition to Mazzola (which Peskin denies). "With the exception of Daly, the relationships are reparable. But they have to show some independence from Daly and Peskin," Theriault said. "The real fear for me is what comes next."

Theriault was referring to things like new historic preservation standards that supervisors will soon consider, as well as the string of big development projects coming forward this year. And for progressives, they hope their efforts to save city jobs will be followed by labor support for progressive candidates for the Board of Supervisors (such as Debra Walker and Rafael Mandelman) in next year’s election.

"The one thing I know about labor is, we’ve been screwed by politicians on the left and the right," Casey said. "Are we angry about this and disappointed? Yes. But does that mean the alliance between labor and progressives is dead? No. We’re going to work through this stuff, talk, take deep breaths, and move forward."

NUHW’s founding convention takes place April 25 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Everett Middle School, 450 Church St., San Francisco.

Behind the Democratic Party lunch picket

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Chris Daly amid the picketers. Photo: Luke Thomas, Fog City Journal
By Rebecca Bowe

Imagine it’s a sweltering day, and you’re on a crowded sidewalk in a dark suit surrounded by about 200 tough, angry men who are booing you in unison, clamoring for your resignation, and yelling inches away from your face as you pass by. Do you try to dodge the swarm and duck into the building you’re headed to? Not if you’re Supervisor Chris Daly.

This afternoon, when Daly showed up downtown for the San Francisco Democratic Party Unity Luncheon at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, a crowd of building-trades union members greeted him with shouts and jeers. With cameramen shadowing his every move, Daly paraded up and down the line, seeming almost as if he enjoyed soaking in all the negative attention, getting into heated exchanges with some of the protesters and shaking hands with others. At one point, when the tradesmen started chanting, “What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!” Daly simply joined in with the chorus, punching his fist into the air for emphasis. Once people caught on, they stopped chanting and booed him all over again.

According to San Francisco Building and Construction Trade Council head Michael Theriault, the protest was over proposed changes to the city’s planning code that would strengthen historic preservation standards, which he said he feared would “freeze the entire city as a historic preservation district” and put a drain on already-scarce construction jobs. Much anger was directed toward the Historic Preservation Commission, a city body created by Prop J — a ballot measure authored by San Francisco Democratic Party chair and former Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, placed on the ballot by an 11-0 vote of the supervisors, and approved by nearly 60 percent of the voters last November.

But the underlying issue was the Board of Supervisors’ 6-5 vote on April 14 that rejected Larry Mazzola Jr. as board director of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. Mazzola, who helps run the plumbers’ union, was the San Francisco Labor Council’s choice for the seat, but his appointment was blocked by the board’s six progressive members, who were more inclined to go with Dave Snyder — a transportation expert who was deemed more qualified. “The majority of the Board of Supervisors has taken up a war against labor, and they disrespect labor. It’s all about us losing our jobs and our health coverage,” Mazzola told the Guardian just before he turned and started chanting, “Daly, resign!” about three inches away from Daly’s face.
But in an interview for a Guardian story that will hit stands tomorrow, Daly said, “at the same time the plumbers were attacking me, I was sponsoring paid sick days. It’s the six members of the board that are the most pro-labor who voted against Larry Mazzola.”

Daly and the Democrats

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Daly, Longo

By Tim Redmond

The race between Chris Daly and August Longo for regional director of the California Democratic Party has gotten a blog lot of blog press — far more attention than this low-lvel internal party stuff garners. Frankly, most people have no idea what a regional director does, or why it ought to matter to them.

But there’s a lot more going on here than what the cynics see as Daly looking for a new job when he’s termed out of office. (By the way, this isn’t exactly a job — the regional directors aren’t paid. It’s a volunteer position. And other than the chance to move up in state party leadership, it’s not a job that carries a lot of power or influence. Honestly — how many of you even knew that Longo was the ten-year incumbent?)

At the last state convention, there were signs everywhere that the Howard Dean wing of the party, the young, tech-savvy activists who were coalescing around Barack Obama, was getting restive. You saw it at the Resolutions Committee, where a handful of party-reform measures popped up, and were nadily shot down by state party Chair Art Torres. You saw it when Hillary Clinton was booed over Iraq. The Old Guard kept control, but you got a sense that the energy was all on the other side.

And now that Obama’s in the White House, that reformer energy will be even more visible in Sacramento this weekend. The Daly-Longo race won’t by itself change the party, but it will be a signal about its future direction.

Shielding Goni

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news@sfbg.com

Top Democratic Party pollster Stanley Greenberg rolled into San Francisco last month to promote his latest book, Dispatches from the War Room — In the trenches with five extraordinary leaders (2009, St. Martin’s Press). The slight, bespectacled man spoke at the Commonwealth Club, sharing what he hoped were "honest and frank" accounts of working with leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Bill Clinton.

While he happily pontificated on the lessons these experiences held for President Barack Obama, he was a bit more defensive on why he had proudly featured in the book Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada, former president of Bolivia who is currently wanted for his role in a massacre of 67 people in October 2003.

Greenberg was drafted in 2002 to help Goni, a wealthy University of Chicago-educated businessman, get elected president during a time of social upheaval created largely by U.S.-backed neoliberal economic policies. Branding Goni as the only man who could "resolve the crisis," Greenberg and other U.S. political consultants helped their client scrape an electoral victory with just 23 percent of the popular vote.

The deaths took place less than a year later when Goni announced deeply unpopular plans to privatize the country’s natural gas reserves and give foreign corporations more control over Bolivia’s resources. Road blockades erected by protesters in the poorest outlying neighborhoods of the high altitude city of La Paz effectively cut off supplies. Goni signed a decree that instructed the army to clear the roads and promised "indemnification for any damage to property and persons which might occur." That effective carte blanche resulted in the army shooting live ammunition indiscriminately at men, women, and children.

Military repression brought to a head one of the country’s bloodiest years, in which more than 150 people died in social protests. Rising popular anger led Goni to flee the country to exile in the United States. He has since lived comfortably in Chevy Chase, Md., protected by Republicans and Democrats alike.

Greenberg admits in the book that the violence caused him "to take stock," yet he ends up saying he is now "more certain of my course and his [Goni’s]." He concludes: "I am proud of what we did to help Goni become President." From the podium at the Commonwealth Club, he blamed the atrocities on the supposed "parallel violence" by the protestors.

It seems a surprising conclusion for a man who is supposedly in touch with the electorate. Goni is universally reviled in Bolivia as a corrupt and arrogant politician who devalued Bolivian lives. Even Goni’s Vice President Carlos Mesa denounced him and swore that he would never use violence to enforce policies. Two-thirds of Bolivia’s Congress — including many who had formed part of Goni’s coalition — approved a trial seeking responsibility for the massacres. Disgust at Goni’s "free market" (or neoliberal) economic and social policies, which increased poverty and inequality, was partly behind the landslide 2005 electoral victory of one of the leaders of the protest movements, Evo Morales.

Yet sadly, Greenberg’s positive spin of Goni seems to be a view that is widely shared with the Democratic Party. At a Washington launch event for Greenberg’s book, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi also appeared to hold Goni in high esteem, warmly welcoming him to the event and calling him a "very special man." Goni’s former defense lawyer, Gregory Craig, is now Obama’s White House counsel. The Democrats’ historic loyalty to one of their favored pro-American friends seems to outweigh their commitment to human rights and fair legal process.

Rogelio Mayta, the resolute lawyer representing the families whose loved ones were killed in October 2003, tries to give Pelosi the benefit of the doubt. "We want to believe in the good faith of … Pelosi and believe that these praises are due to misinformation rather than a concrete line of action and thinking by the U.S. government," he said.

Yet the anger of Eloy Rojas, who lost his eight-year-old daughter when troops entered his village and started shooting indiscriminately, is harder to hide. "Every effort that allies of Sánchez de Lozada make to present the ex-president as a victim and an honest man is for us an offense. It is an offense against the pain and suffering that his terrible actions had for our lives. His determination to defend his and other people’s economic interests meant that he stopped valuing peoples’ lives … That is why we continue to seek justice."

In March, Bolivian families who lost loved ones marked a significant milestone in their struggle to end the legacy of impunity for political elites like Goni. After five years of navigating political games and legal loopholes, a date was set for the trial of responsibility for Goni and seven of his ministers. Yet the main defendant, Goni, will be missing because the U.S. government has ignored requests for extradition for several years.

Many in the U.S. and worldwide continue to hope that Obama’s inauguration will mark a new chapter in relations worldwide, especially in Latin America, where there has been a new wave of resistance against U.S. attempts to impose its economic interests. Obama has made some important first steps in ordering closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and reinvigorating the use of diplomacy in regions such as the Middle East. But if he really wants to start a new chapter of international relations rooted in human rights, he doesn’t need to travel abroad. He just needs to respond to Bolivia’s lawful request for extradition and send home the man who lives just seven miles from the White House. 2

Nick Buxton is a British journalist who was based in Bolivia for many years before moving to San Francisco last year. His blog, Open Veins, is at www.nickbuxton.info.

Letters

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THE VICE MAYORS


Thanks so much for the great article on Climate Theater ("Still crazy after all these years," 2/25/09). I’ve lived and worked in SoMa since 1973 and can think of no art venue that has done more to create a vibrant, inspiring community.

If playa types like Suck Up Willie Brown (I’ve seen him at Hollywood parties) and our current mayor, The Talking Haircut, could live in Climate World for six months, they might develop souls.

Joegh Bullock and Marcia Crosby are the co-mayors, or shall I say vice-mayors, of South of Market. Thanks for giving them props.

John LeFan

San Francisco

THE FATE OF THE CHRON


Good riddance to the San Francisco Chronicle and good luck finding a buyer.

I know of one union that has already been cut to the bone — pressmen and prepress workers, Local 4N. As a matter of fact, there will be about 200 press workers out of a job in June when the Canadian Company Transcontinental starts printing the Chronicle at the new printing facility in Fremont. Not one member from the San Francisco Local has been hired.

All production department union jobs are being outsourced. This includes mailers, machinists, and electricians. I wouldn’t count on any of them giving anything up since they are going to be unemployed come June 29th.

Maybe the Hearst Corporation should cancel the 15-year, $1 billion contract it signed with Transcon. I’m sure all the unions that will be out on the street come June would be willing to sign contracts for a lot less.

Bruce Carlton

Local 4N retiree, San Francisco

SF’S SLEEPING GIANT


Paging Matt Gonzalez! If truth is the first casualty of war, what is ceded in total occupation? Calvin Welch’s op-ed ("It’s a recession, let’s get cracking," 2/25/09) reflects the nascent realization that what San Francisco lost in electing Gavin Newsom over Gonzalez, the nation has now lost in validating the pro-corporate centrist DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) wing of the Democratic Party on a grand scale.

The opposition from the right is inarticulate and, as Welch notes, the truly democratic left is hopelessly inarticulate. Sustainability, of our environment, our economies, and our health is the challenge that must be met. It wasn’t that long ago that "a sleeping giant stirred in San Francisco." Can it happen again? Paging Matt Gonzalez!

Poplicola

From sfbg.com

The Guardian welcomes letters commenting on our coverage or other topics of local interest. Letters should be brief (we reserve the right to edit them for length) and signed. Please include a daytime telephone number for verification.

Corrections and clarifications: The Guardian tries to report news fairly and accurately. You are invited to complain to us when you think we have fallen short of that objective. Complaints should be directed to Paula Connelly, the assistant to the publisher. We prefer them in writing, but Connelly can also be reached by phone at (415) 255-3100. If we have published a misstatement, we will endeavor to correct it quickly and in an appropriate place in the newspaper. If you remain dissatisfied, we invite you to contact the Minnesota News Council, an impartial organization that hears and considers complaints against news media. It can be reached at 12 South Sixth St., Suite 1122, Minneapolis MN 55402; (612) 341-9357; fax (612) 341-9358.

Doesn’t anybody here know how to run this state?

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By Tim Redmond

Well, the polls look pretty shitty for Gavin Newsom For Governor (thanks, sfist for the tip), and his ratings will just get worse as he attempts to solve a budget crisis without working with the supervisors or the other key stakeholders. At this rate, the way he’s treating the city employee unions, there’s no way he’s getting labor support, and for a candidate who will be running as a liberal to be shunned by labor is a major problem.

(And if he thinks a movie-star wife will give him some glam, check out the reviews.)

And Newsom’s counterpart to the south, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ain’t looking so hot right now.

John Garamendi has been reborn as a progressive populist, but a guy who was at best a moderate state legislator is going to have his work cut out for him wooing the left in a primary. And Jerry Brown … well, Jer’s on the right side of the same-sex marriage debate (finally), but he was a terrible mayor of Oakland and has changed his political spots so many times that nobody knows quite which Jerry we’ll get this time around — or whether his current manifestation will last.

Is this really the best the Democratic Party can do?

I guess we should be glad that the Republicans have an even worse lineup. But that’s not exactly something to celebrate.

Losing the tax argument

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EDITORIAL The lead topic on the local cable TV show City Desk News Hour Feb. 21 was the state budget, and a panel of local reporters were talking about the mix of tax increases and service cuts the Legislature finally passed. After a bit of back and forth, Scott Shafer, host of KQED’s California Report, piped up. "Everyone knows it’s a bad idea to raise taxes in a recession," he said.

Shafer, who was a press secretary to former Mayor Art Agnos, is hardly a conservative commentator. In fact, at the risk of damaging his credentials as an unbiased reporter, we might even call him a liberal. And to judge from the response of most of the panel, nothing he said was particularly controversial. Sure, raising taxes in a recession is bad; so is cancer, and violent crime. Next question.

But that’s not just a limited viewpoint — it’s factually inaccurate. Raising taxes during a recession can be an excellent economic idea, if it’s done right. Because the one thing almost every credible economist outside of the far-right intellectual swampland agrees on these days is that cutting government spending during a recession is a terrible idea — and if the only way to keep the public sector jobs, the social services, and the welfare payments going is to raise taxes, then raising taxes on those who can afford to pay is not only good politics, it’s good policy.

And it’s infuriating that this point seems to have dropped out of the mainstream of debate. That’s a major failure of the Democratic leadership, in California and nationwide.

Historians can argue forever about the direct impact the New Deal had on ending the Great Depression. But it’s pretty clear that what Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman calls the great jobs program of World War II turned the American economy around. And during World War II, tax rates, particularly on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, were exceptionally high. The top marginal income tax rate exceeded 80 percent. Corporations that made more than a modest return paid a high excess-profits tax. The high income tax rates on the richest Americans remained through the postwar boom era, a time when inequality declined and overall wealth grew.

That money went into the public sector, not just for the war but for retooling and rebuilding U.S. industry. High taxes on the rich paid for the interstate highway system, the University of California system, the California Water Project, the birth of the Internet. It took almost half a century for the Republicans and no-taxers to wreck the economic gains of that high-tax era.

And yet, despite all the consistent, clear evidence, we still hear the news media, the commentators, and even liberal Democrats saying that tax cuts are good for the economy and tax hikes are bad.

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

One of the most important goals of the next year or two, under the Obama administration, is to change the national debate over public and private priorities. That won’t be easy. President Obama has started off in the right direction, although the Republicans forced him to include several hundred billion in wasteful tax cuts in his stimulus bill. The tax hikes in the state budget plan are almost entirely regressive (sales taxes and a flat increase in the income tax.)

Here in California, and here in San Francisco, elected officials who claim to represent the Democratic Party’s future need to stop mouthing the old Republican line. None of the Democratic candidates for governor, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, have been our front about the need for more government spending, even if it means higher taxes on the wealthy (say, a business tax that hits harder on the biggest and less so on the small). In fact, Newsom has taken the opposite line, writing in a Feb. 13 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed piece that "we have to reduce spending." The San Francisco supervisors are at least talking about new revenue sources, but polls show that will be a hard sell.

Why do the polls show that? Because people like Newsom — and to some extent, the supervisors — aren’t using their bully pulpits to change the tone of the discussion, to make the case for economic sanity, to challenge the demented wisdom that’s brought us to this nightmare.

That has to change, now, or there will be no way out. *

A couple of interesting candidates

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By Tim Redmond

A couple of interesting candidates looking at runs for those even-numbered supervisorial seats in 2010.

In district two, where the progressives have never had much of a chance (Gavin Newsom, then Michela Alioto-Pier), Janet Reilly, who ran a strong race against Fiona Ma for state Assembly, told me she’s looking at the race. She’d be well financed – her husband, Clint Reilly, is one of the top campaign donors in the city and she’s proven she can raise money on her own. She’s clearly not as far to the left as John Avalos or Eric Mar, but it’s a conservative district – and she’s a smart, articulate woman with strong policy ideas who would probably vote with the progressives some of the time and would be independent of the mayor.

Then there’s district 6. I’m starting to sense that Jane Kim isn’t pushing herself out there as a candidate right now — but another activist is, and his campaign raises some interesting questions.

Paul Hogarth, managing editor of BeyondChron, an online newspaper, is planning to file a statement of intent to run sometime this spring. “Yes, the rumor is true. I’m the candidate who can get things done for the District — having worked in the community for about 9 years,” he told me by email.

I like Paul, and I like BeyondChron, which by any standard is part of the progressive community. We’ve had some disagreements, but that’s pretty common in the San Francisco left.

And he’s certainly qualified – he’s a lawyer, a former Berkeley Rent Board commissioner, and has been a tenant organizer with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. He’s also been pretty active in the Democratic Party and has shown some solid journalistic instincts and abilities.

So I just assumed that he would take a leave of absence from Beyond Chron when he launched his campaign. I mean, it’s a brave new world, and the line between journalists and activists has been getting pretty blurry, but I’m not sure how you can be the managing editor of a political newspaper, and actively report on and write about local politicians and campaigns, when you’re actually running for office yourself.

But no – when I asked Paul about that, he told me he saw no conflict at all. I tried to reach his boss, Randy Shaw, by phone but after we played tag a little, I went to email and asked:

“Hi, Randy, sorry we didn’t connect by phone today. I hear Paul is running for D6 supe; how you going to handle that at BeyondChron? Can he possibly cover local politics while he’s running for office? Strikes me as a problem.”

Shaw’s response:

“Why?

I pursued it: “Well, one reason is that people will think he’s promoting his own interests by the way he covers candidates and issues. For example, there might be a perception that he was writing more positive things about people who endorsed him. It’s pretty basic journalistic ethics. I have immense respect for Paul, and I don’t think he’d do anything unethical, but in the media. appearance matters. I know you aren’t a traditional news outlet, but people trust and respect you in part for your independence.”

Shaw: “This recalls a past discussion I’ve had with the Guardian, where it became clear we have different views of activists as journalists.”

I don’t recall that discussion, although I’m sure it happened, since I talk about this stuff all the time. I am an activist and a journalist, and the Guardian is a newspaper that cares about and promotes causes. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with BeyondChron, which is part of Randy Shaw’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic shop, covering the city from a pro-tenant, progressive perspective. I’m glad BeyondChron is around.

But there’s a difference between writing about and promoting causes that you care about and promoting something that gives you, personally, a direct financial or career benefit. How will we know that a piece Paul Hogarth writes about a local politician isn’t tainted by the fact that he wants that person to endorse him?

Paul seems to be aware of the problem; when he wrote about Mark Leno in the state Senate primary, he was careful to run disclosures like

EDITOR’S NOTE: As a private citizen, Paul Hogarth has endorsed Mark Leno in the State Senate race. He does not play an advisory role in the campaign, nor did he coordinate with Leno’s staff in writing this article.

Fair enough. Full disclosure is good. But what’s he going to do now – stop writing about local politics? Or end all his articles with

EDITORS NOTE: Paul Hogarth is running for supervisor in District 6, but none of the commentary about any other office holder here should be construed as a possible pitch for an endorsement?

And what if one of the other candidates argues that his paid promotional platform is in fact an in-kind campaign contribution? I’m not sure I’d buy that – there’s a First Amendment issue here – but the Ethics Commission might consider it worth investigation, which would be a huge distraction to both the candidate and his online newspaper.

It’s going to be tricky. That’s all I’m saying.

Inauguration parties you can believe in

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>>>All parties take place tonight, January 20

ActivelyOUT.com Obama Ball

ActivelyOUT.com hosts an Obama Ball at Bruno’s Night Club, featuring plasma screens with highlights from Inauguration Day, a dance party with DJ Duarte and a free glass of champagne for the first 150 people. A donation from the evening’s proceeds will go to And Marriage for All, a collaborative partnership of African-American community leaders spearheading dialogue and public education about same-sex couples’ freedom to marry. “Gay fabulous, str8 friendly, no H8-ers!”

6 -10 p.m., $8 cover, $5 for activelyOUT.com members

Bruno’s Night Club

2389 Mission St., S.F.

www.activelyout.com

————

Rock Barack

Glide into a new era with budget-friendly drink specials at the Paradise Lounge. Rock Barack: The Obama Inauguration Party will featuring 99-cent drafts and 99-cent well drinks from 6 to 9 p.m. the event will benefit not just your budget but the Glide Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit working to end poverty.

6-9 p.m., $10 donation

Paradise Lounge

1501 Folsom St., S.F.

www.paradisesf.com/calendar.html

————————–

League of Young Voters
LYV says: “No need for upscale dress attire for our BALL! We’ll have drinks, ginger bread cookies and a good crew celebrating Obama’s Inauguration! We need YOU to get the party really started!”

8pm -11pm; $5-25 sliding scale.

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.theleague.com/sf

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Obama mambo

Boogie down to support Amnesty International during its fundraising event, "Dance for Change." Music from hip-hop to house to rock will be spinning all night long, so prepare to shake it for Barack to the wee hours.

9:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m., $10

Le Colonial
20 Cosmo Place, SF

www.amnestyusa.org

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Inaugural Ball

Electric Works gallery is hosting an Inaugural Ball featuring a rebroadcast of the inauguration followed by dancing. Formal dress is suggested but not required (changing rooms and borrowed finery will be available for those coming directly from work). Drinks and light hors d’oeuvres will be provided and proceeds benefit the San Francisco Food Bank.

6–10 p.m., $10 donation requested

130 Eighth St., SF

www.sfelectricworks.com

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Women, Democrats, and democratic women

The San Francisco Democratic Party and local women’s political groups — including Emerge California, Good Ol’ Girls, and the San Francisco Women’s Political Caucus — are throwing an Inauguration Night party in the swanky Green Room of the War Memorial Opera House, featuring hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and entertainment.

5:30–8:30 p.m., $25

301 Van Ness, SF

www.actblue.com/page/inaugurationsf

(415) 626-1161

info@sfdemocrats.org

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Inauguration Skaters’ Ball

The California Outdoor Rollersports Association hosts a political roller disco featuring Sarah Palins and Barack Obamas on wheels. There’s even a chance that a live feed from the party will be broadcast at the Presidential Gala in Washington. Dress up as your favorite politician and resist the urge to knock out your rivals.

7–11 p.m., $10 adults, kids free. $5 for skates

Funkytown SF

1720 19th St., SF

www.cora.org/ObamaParty.htm

Inauguration parties!

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› alerts@sfbg.com

TUESDAY, JAN. 20

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States is a historic event, with the rise of the first African American president coinciding with the end of perhaps the worst presidency in US history. So it’s time to celebrate, and here’s where you can do so on Jan. 20.

Sock it to me


NextArts has reserved the space outside City Hall for a simulcast of the inaugural proceedings and what it’s calling a Sock It To Me Concert. In the spirit of grassroots, progressive change, the price of admission is new socks and underwear with tags still attached for donation to the homeless.

7 a.m.–noon, free with donation

Civic Center Plaza

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Plaza, SF

www.nextarts.org

The dream lives


The College of Alameda will broadcast Obama’s 9 a.m. swearing-in and offer open mike commentary during commercial breaks. The event also features several speakers on the civil rights movement and what Obama’s presidency means for Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.

8 a.m. –1:30 p.m., free

F Building student lounge, College of Alameda

555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Parkway, Alameda

(510) 748-2213

Quiet time is over


The African American Interest Committee is sponsoring a public viewing of the inauguration ceremony at the San Francisco Public Library. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis and refreshments will be available in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room.

9 a.m.–noon, free

Koret Auditorium, SF Public Library

100 Larkin, SF

mjeffers@sfpl.org

Party for grid alternatives


Come try the signature Obama cocktail at the Swedish American Music Hall’s inauguration event. Watch a 9 p.m. rebroadcast of the inauguration on the big screen and dance and enjoy catering by Radio Africa and Kitchen. Proceeds benefit Grid Alternatives, an Oakland-based organization promoting renewable energy.

7 p.m., $22 advance, $25 at the door

2170 Market, SF

www.cafedunord.com

Obama mambo


Boogie down to support Amnesty International during its fundraising event, "Dance for Change." Music from hip-hop to house to rock will be spinning all night long, so prepare to shake it for Barack to the wee hours.

9:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m., $10

Le Colonial
20 Cosmo Place, SF

www.amnestyusa.org

Pray for change


After a week of shared prayer in mosques, temples, churches, and synagogues, the inauguration celebration will be the final stop for "Unity for the Sake of Change," a prayer event open to all religions.

7 a.m., $5

Oracle Arena

7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.

(510) 272-6695

obamacelebration.org

Inaugural Ball


Electric Works gallery is hosting an Inaugural Ball featuring a rebroadcast of the inauguration followed by dancing. Formal dress is suggested but not required (changing rooms and borrowed finery will be available for those coming directly from work). Drinks and light hors d’oeuvres will be provided and proceeds benefit the San Francisco Food Bank.

6–10 p.m., $10 donation requested

130 Eighth St., SF

www.sfelectricworks.com

Women, Democrats, and democratic women


The San Francisco Democratic Party and local women’s political groups — including Emerge California, Good Ol’ Girls, and the San Francisco Women’s Political Caucus — are throwing an Inauguration Night party in the swanky Green Room of the War Memorial Opera House, featuring hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and entertainment.

5:30–8:30 p.m., $25

301 Van Ness, SF

www.actblue.com/page/inaugurationsf

(415) 626-1161

info@sfdemocrats.org

Inauguration Skaters’ Ball


The California Outdoor Rollersports Association hosts a political roller disco featuring Sarah Palins and Barack Obamas on wheels. There’s even a chance that a live feed from the party will be broadcast at the Presidential Gala in Washington. Dress up as your favorite politician and resist the urge to knock out your rivals.

7–11 p.m., $10 adults, kids free. $5 for skates

Funkytown SF

1720 19th St., SF

www.cora.org/ObamaParty.htm 2

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alerts<\d>@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Offies 2008

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Wow. What a year.

Sarah Palin ran for vice president. Joe the Plumber got his 15 minutes. Gavin Newsom made out with Sarah Silverman. Eliot Spitzer seemed to be the only one in New York with any money left to spend. Dana Rohrabacher dressed in drag to go to prison. And O.J. Simpson finally managed to get convicted of something…. It was a year for the ages. And it’s finally, finally over.

HEY, GIVE THE POOR WOMAN A BREAK — YOU CAN’T SEE FRANCE FROM ALASKA

Sarah Palin took a call from a Canadian radio comedian posing as French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy and remained on the line, convinced she was talking to a foreign leader, for several minutes as the comedian told her his wife was hot in bed and that he loved the Hustler smut film Who’s Nailin’ Paylin?.

FROM ALASKA, YOU CAN SEE RUSSIA, AND RUSSIA’S COLD, AND IF IT ISN’T IT WOULD STILL LOOK COLD, SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

Palin said the "jury’s still out" on global warming and that even if the climate was changing, she didn’t know what was causing it.

KILLING YOUR WIFE IS NOTHING, BUT DON’T YOU DARE STEAL FOOTBALL CARDS

O.J. Simpson faced more than 30 years in jail for stealing some sports memorabilia he said belonged to him.

AND FOR A FEW WEEKS, THE ENTIRE STATE OF WORLD DISCOURSE GOT A LITTLE BIT SMARTER

Ann Coulter broke her jaw and had her mouth wired shut.

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE COMPARED TO A $99 FLAT-SCREEN?

A temporary worker in a Long Island, N.Y., Wal-Mart died when bargain-crazy crowds smashed through the store’s front door.

AND HE STILL GOT MORE VOTES THAN MCCAIN

Absentee ballots in an upstate New York county listed "Barack Osama" as a presidential candidate.

SEE, IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF "YOU BETCHA" IS

The Alaska legislature concluded that Sarah Palin had violated ethics laws when she tried to have her ex brother-in-law fired from the state police. Palin immediately announced that she had been cleared of any wrongdoing.

AND THIS WAS THE GUY WHO RAN THE ECONOMY ALL THOSE YEARS?

Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan admitted there was a "flaw" in his free-market approach to economic policy, but said he wasn’t sure exactly what went wrong.

GREAT MOMENTS IN PUBLIC POLICY

A Treasury Department spokesperson announced that the agency had set $700 billion as the amount for the financial bailout because "we just wanted to choose a really large number."

THEY SAVED VILLAGES THAT WAY IN VIETNAM, TOO, BUT YOU MANAGED TO DUCK THAT WAR, SO YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND

George W. Bush addressed the massive federal bailout of the banking system by saying, "I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

WHY THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND ME

John McCain admitted he didn’t know how many houses he owned.

PROOF POSITIVE OF THE VALUE OF A YALE EDUCATION

President Bush, addressing the state of the economy, announced that "if money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down."

WHOOPS, GUESS THAT ONE ISN’T WORKING OUT SO WELL, EH?

Levi Johnston, who impregnated Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, described himself as a "fucking redneck" who didn’t want kids.

THE CASE FOR A FEDERAL BAILOUT, #422

P. Diddy announced that the economy and the cost of fuel had forced him to give up private jet travel.

ENTIRELY APPROPRIATE FOR A MAN WHO’S AN ASSHOLE

A book by Cliff Schecter reported that McCain had called his wife, Cindy, a "cunt."

WELL, THEY’RE A LOT MORE POLITE ABOUT THESE THINGS DOWN IN BRAZIL

A Brazilian former exotic dancer said she’d had an affair 50 years ago with John McCain, whom she called "my coconut desert."

BUT DON’T WORRY, HILLARY, BARACK LIKES YOU FINE

Samantha Power, an advisor to Obama, called Hillary Clinton "a monster."

THAT’S RIGHT — THE ONE WHO KICKED YOUR ASS. THAT ONE.

In a presidential debate, McCain referred to Obama as "that one."

SUCH HIGH PRAISE FROM SUCH A WONDERFUL MAN

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich referred to Obama as "that motherfucker."

NATURALLY — SHE LIVES IN ALASKA, AND YOU CAN SEE ENERGY FROM THERE

McCain said that Palin "knows more about energy than probably anyone in the United States."

FORTUNATELY, HE NEVER GOT TO THE OVAL OFFICE, SO SOME OF US MAY ESCAPE CUSTODY

In a speech, McCain referred to Americans as "my fellow prisoners."

AS LONG AS THEY SIP IT SLOWLY, SO AS NOT TO BURN THEIR ITTY-BITTY MOUTHS

McCain proclaimed that "we should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies."

NEVER MIND GRAN TORINO, THE WRESTLER, AND MILK — THE OSCAR GOES TO . . .

A TV station in Germany reported that the East German secret police had made private porno movies in the early 1980s with titles like Private Werner’s Big Surprise and Fucking for the Fatherland.

WHERE IS PRIVATE WERNER WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

Eliot Spitzer, the crusading governor of New York, had to resign after a federal sting operation found he had spent more than $80,000 on high-end prostitutes from the Emperor’s Club. On an FBI wiretap, a prostitute named Kristen, after an assignation with Spitzer, told her boss she’d heard that the governor would "ask you do to do things that, like, you might not think were safe" but that "I have a way of dealing with that. I’d be like, listen dude, do you really want the sex?"

NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE, YOU BETCHA

Palin gave a speech on the economy while TV cameras captured a farmer beheading turkeys and draining the blood from their carcasses.

ANOTHER HERO FROM MCCAIN’S STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS

Joseph Wurzelbacher rose to fame as Joe the Plumber after he confronted Obama and said that the Democrat would force him to pay higher taxes. It later turned out that Joe wasn’t a licensed plumber, owed $1,182 in back taxes, and didn’t make anywhere near enough money to be affected by Obama’s tax plans.

CROSS DRESSING, GRASSY KNOLL VARIETY

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Orange County) dressed in drag and pretended to be a human-rights worker named "Diana" to sneak into a state prison and badger Sirhan Sirhan, whom the congressman believed was part of a vast Arab conspiracy to kill Robert Kennedy.

IT’S FINE TO BLAST THE QUEERS, JUST DON’T GO BADMOUTHING AMERICA

Barack Obama, who was stung by criticism that his former pastor criticized America, chose for his inaugural convocation a pastor who says homosexuality is a sin.

LET’S SEE. 90,000 CIVILIAN DEATHS, THE RISE OF AL QAEDA, WATER, FUEL, AND ELECTRICITY SHORTAGES, GANGS OF ARMED THUGS IN THE STREETS … CAN’T IMAGINE WHAT THIS DUDE WAS UPSET ABOUT

An Iraqi journalist who threw two shoes at Bush was beaten badly by security guards; Bush later said he "didn’t know what the guy’s beef was."

WHY HE WOULD COVER UP THAT BEAUTIFUL HAIR, WE’LL NEVER KNOW

Mayor Gavin Newsom wore a cowboy hat and rode a horse for a photo shoot at his wedding.

PERHAPS MS. SILVERMAN CAN GET HIM TO PUT HIS HANDS AROUND THE CITY BUDGET, TOO

Newsom groped comedian Sarah Silverman on stage at a Democratic National Convention party after she said she wanted to "sexually discipline" him.

FIRE IN THE HOLE

An unknown arsonist with an unknown motive set more than half a dozen portable toilets on fire in San Francisco.

THIS, FROM A MAN WHO WROTE THE BOOK ON POLITICAL SLEAZE IN CALIFORNIA

Former Mayor Willie Brown complained about progressives using techniques from "Tammany Hall or Richard Daly’s Chicago" to take over the local Democratic Party.

HEY, SOMEBODY’S GOT TO CHANNEL MR. MAGOO

Witnesses reported seeing Carole Migden talking on her cell phone and reading while rapidly changing lanes at 80 mph on the freeway shortly before she crashed into another car. One caller to the state police asked officers to "please get out here, she’s scary."

NOW THAT WE KNOW WHO’S REALLY IN CHARGE AT CITY HALL, WE CAN STOP WASTING OUR TIME WITH THE ELECTED OFFICIALS

Newsom’s press secretary said that reporters wondering about the mayor’s position on public power should ask Pacific Gas and Electric Co. consultant Eric Jaye.

MY GOD, YOU WOULDN’T WANT ANY HUNGRY PEOPLE TO ACTUALLY EAT THE MAYOR’S FOOD

Newsom spent more than $50,000 in city money protecting his slow-food victory garden near City Hall from homeless people.

I’M HAPPY TO WORK WITH YOU, AS LONG AS I DON’T HAVE TO TELL YOU ANYTHING AND YOU DON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS

Newsom appeared before the Board of Supervisors to discuss his budget cuts, but didn’t actually hand out the budget proposal. Press aides handled that job two hours later.

SINCE THAT APPROACH HAS WORKED SO WELL WITH RAPE VICTIMS

Sam Singer, a $400-per-hour flak for the San Francisco Zoo, sought to blame the victims of a tiger attack by saying that they were drunk and asking for it.

WE’LL GET THOSE BUGGERS — AND THEIR LITTLE DOGS, TOO

California officials threatened to bombard the Bay Area by spraying hazardous moth pheromones from helicopters to eradicate an agricultural pest that has probably been around for decades and will almost certainly survive the assault anyway.

YOUR RATEPAYER DOLLARS AT WORK

PG&E spent $10 million to fight a public power proposal.

THE CROWDS CHEERED A DRAMATIC EVENT AS THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION CAME TO ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT CITIES . . . OH WAIT, THAT MUST HAVE BEEN SOMEWHERE ELSE

Newsom decided to avoid protests by keeping the route of the Olympic torch relay secret.

ANOTHER SIGN OF POLITICAL BRILLIANCE FROM THE MAN WHO WOULD BE GOVERNOR

Newsom tried to mess with the supervisors by having voters support his Community Justice Center, which the voters then rejected.

WHEN THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS LEFT FOR THE WORLD’S GREAT RELIGIONS TO SPEND MONEY ON

The San Francisco Catholic archbishop helped convince Mormon leaders to join him in pouring millions of dollars into defeating same-sex marriage.

Obama economics: change we can’t bank on

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Columnist Robert Scheer, writing in a Nov. l9th Chronicle op ed, pointed out that former Clinton Treasury
Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers “deserve a great deal of the blame for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that has derailed the world economy.” He said that they should be kept at a safe distance from our nation’s leadership.

He also noted that Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, had served under both Rubin and Summers and was a candidate for the Obama Treasury Secretary.

On Friday, Nov. 2l, the Obama camp leaked the word that Summers was expected to be director of the National Economic Council in the White House, the president’s principal economic adviser and policy coordinator, and that Geithner was the likely nomination for Treasury Secretary.
Meanwhile, Heard on the Street column in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal noted that Geithner “in the past espoused many of the views championed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in terms of a hands-off approach to market regulation.” Obama is expected to announce his economic team at a press conference on Monday.

In short, the deregulation virus, and the carriers of the deregulation virus in the Clinton administration, are alive and well and thriving in the emerging Obama presidency. Where are the progressive economists from the Joseph Stiglitz/James Gailbraith/Paul Krugman wing of the Democratic Party? After all, the deregulators have been proven to be disastrously wrong about the economic crisis. And the warnings of the progressive economists have been proven to be on target. And their New Deal-type prescriptions are what are needed. Again, this will require that the progressives put strong and unending pressure on the emerging Obama administration, who will be getting pressure from the financial lobbyists pressuring to keep the bailouts coming without proper regulation or requirements. B3


Click here to read Robert Scheer’s timely and prescient Chronicle column: .

Progressive Victory Party in SF

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daly.jpg
Sup. Chris Daly displays finger puppets that look like supervisors-elect John Avalos, Eric Mar, and David Chiu, mocking efforts during the campaign to assert that they would be nothing but his puppets.

By Steven T. Jones

San Francisco progressives celebrated the movement’s election night victories and set their sights on the mayor’s office during a party last night at The Independent sponsored by the San Francisco Democratic Party, San Francisco Labor Council, and the SF Tenants Union.
“The progressives in San Francisco still need the real prize and that’s Room 200,” said Aaron Peskin, who will continue in his role as chair of the local Democratic Party after leaving the Board of Supervisors at the end of the year.
He wasn’t the only one looking forward. John Avalos, who won the Dist. 11 seat on the Board of Supervisor, praised the unified movement’s ability to withstand withering attacks by downtown-funded groups and said, “Together, we can take the mayor’s race in 2011.”

‘Fight’ songs

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

On the night of Nov. 4, while President-elect Barack Obama was giving his victory speech in Chicago, Flobots were performing at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

"We ended up performing just after McCain gave his concession speech, and then we stopped when Obama gave his acceptance speech," remembers Jonny 5, the rap band’s lead vocalist, on the road to New Haven, Conn. He calls the moment "full of euphoric disbelief." Outside the club "there were people everywhere in the streets, giving each other hugs, and impromptu parades."

It wasn’t the first time Flobots’ career path had intertwined with that of the president-elect. In September, when the Democratic Party held its convention in the group’s hometown of Denver, they participated in several ancillary events, including a concert with Rage Against the Machine. "The entire event was planned to support the Iraq Veterans Against the War, who had a march immediately after the event," says Jonny 5. "So we used the stage to rally people."

Flobots’ rise from regional upstarts to modern-rock radio stalwarts mirrors Rage’s emergence more than 15 years ago. Just as Zack de la Rocha and company did with their fuzzy emo-punk, Jonny 5 — along with rapper Brer Rabbit — adds rhymes to an exotic mix of jazz horns, funky breaks, and hard-rock guitar. And the six-member crew are equally consumed with progressive politics. Each song on Fight with Tools (Universal Republic/Flobots Music, 2007), the outfit’s second album, overflows with righteous anger and activist fervor.

Flobots, “Handlebars”

"We want money for health care and public welfare! Free Mumia and Leonard Peltier!" Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit offer on "Same Thing." "We say, ‘Yes,’ to grassroots organization, ‘No,’ to neoliberal organization! Bring the troops back to the USA and shut down Guantanamo Bay!"

"Handlebars," of course, was Flobots’ breakout moment. Much of Fight with Tools, which Flobots released independently last year, before Universal Republic signed them and reissued the album this spring, feels overwhelmed by earnest slogans. But on "Handlebars," Jonny 5 weaves a stream-of-consciousness allegory about American exceptionalism while the rest of the band build, like an orchestra, to a cacophonous conclusion.

Jonny 5 says his influences range from hip-hop collectives such as Project Blowed to organic music ensembles like Ozomatli. The unusual chart success of "Handlebars," which soared into the Billboard Top 40 last summer, helped Flobots sell more records than any of their inspirations.

"Personally, I had this obsession or insecurity about whether we were really hip-hop, and whether we were representing the hip-hop community correctly. I don’t know … I was hung up on it," Jonny 5 explains. "[Influential indie rapper] 2Mex was with us for four or five dates on the West Coast, and the minute we would mention any criticism we’d get, he’d say, ‘Fuck that, man. Keep expanding. That’s what hip-hop is.’<0x2009>"

FLOBOTS

Sun/23, 8 p.m., $27.50–<\d>$30

Warfield

982 Market, SF

www.goldenvoice.com

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Is anyone else appalled that the Obamas are not even considering sending their kids to public schools? Seriously. This may not seem like the most important issue on the president’s agenda, but I think it’s a big deal.

According to The New York Times, Michelle Obama has toured Sidwell Friends, the pricey private school where Chelsea Clinton was educated. She’s also looking at Maret School and Georgetown Day, two institutions that cater to the children of the rich and powerful. There are no public schools on the list.

Adrian Fenty, the mayor of Washington, DC has urged the Obamas to consider the schools that most DC kids attend, but he has little moral suasion: Mayor Fenty’s twin sons go to private school.

I’m a public school parent, and this really bothers me. What the Obamas are saying, in essence, is that there is no public school anywhere in the district good enough for their kids. They’re saying that if you’ve got the money, you should flee for the safety of private academies. Those lowly public places are just for the peasants.

That sort of statement matters. It matters when you think about the new president’s priorities. It matters when you think about the role he wants to play not just as a chief executive but as an agent of change and a moral compass for the nation and the world. In a way, it’s his first test, and he’s flunked it.

I’m sorry: the children of the president should go to public schools. The children of mayors, and city council members, and county supervisors, and city attorneys should go the same schools as the kids of the majority of their constituents. And if those schools aren’t as good as they’d like, well then, join the team. The rest of us are working like hell to make the under-funded, over-stressed public schools better. You can, too.

And by the way, Mr. President-elect, my public school in San Francisco is giving my son and daughter a great education. And they’re growing up with kids who aren’t just like them. That’s worth way more than your fancy $21,000 private school can ever offer.

* * * *

The election of Sup. Ed Jew two years ago gave ranked-choice voting a bad rep. This year, however, I think we saw how the system can work.

I understand the critics who say that old-fashioned runoffs — second-round elections held a few weeks after the general — are more fair and allow for excitement, like Tom Ammiano vs. Willie Brown in 1999 and Matt Gonzalez vs. Gavin Newsom in 2003. But they also create a problem, particularly when one side has a lot more money than the other.

Downtown had almost endless resources to try to defeat Eric Mar, David Chiu, and John Avalos. The Democratic Party, thanks to the progressive takeover this summer, was supporting the three progressives, as was labor, the Sierra Club, and the Tenants Union. And while party chair Aaron Peskin raised a sizeable sum for slate cards and labor spent cash on organizing efforts, that was dwarfed by the landlords and developers.

Mar, Chiu, and Avalos had the advantage of a high-turnout election. If they’d been forced to run again three weeks later, downtown would have again dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the races — and at some point, the good guys would run out of money. Plus, RCV gave the candidates an incentive to make alliances.

Not a perfect system, but better, I think, than the obvious alternative.

Politics behind the picture

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› news@sfbg.com

The new Harvey Milk movie, which opens later this month, begins as a love story, a sweet love story about two guys who meet in a subway station and wind up fleeing New York for San Francisco. But after that, the movie gets political — in fact, by Hollywood standards, it’s remarkably political.

The movie raises a lot of issues that are alive and part of San Francisco politics today. The history isn’t perfect (see sidebar), but it is compelling. And while we mourn Milk and watch Milk, we shouldn’t forget what the queer hero stood for.

Milk started out as something of a pot-smoking hippie. “The ’70s were a hotbed of everything,” Sup. Tom Ammiano remembered. “Feminism, civil rights, antiwar.” Milk’s early campaigns grew out of that foment. “Sure, he wanted to be elected,” Ammiano told us. “But the main ingredient was courage. He was fighting with the cops when they raided the bars … what he did was dangerous.”

Milk never would have been elected supervisor without district elections — and the story of district elections, and community power, ran parallel to Milk’s own story, for better and for worse.

Milk tried twice to win a seat on the at-large Board of Supervisors and never made the final cut. But in the mid-1970s, a coalition of community leaders, frustrated that big money controlled city policy, began organizing to change the way supervisors were elected. The shift from an at-large system to a district one in 1976 was a transformational moment for the city.

“I think that San Francisco doesn’t always appreciate the sea change that district elections brought,” Cleve Jones, a queer activist and friend of Milk who helped Dustin Black write the script for Milk, told us. “It wasn’t just important to the various communities that had been locked out of power at City Hall — it was the glue that began to grow the coalitions.”

Milk was elected as part of what became the most diverse board in the city’s history, with Asian, black, and gay representatives who came out of community organizations. The board, of course, also included Dan White, a conservative Irish Catholic and former cop. And it was the assassination of Milk and Mayor George Moscone by Sup. White — and the civic heartbreak, chaos, and confusion that followed — that allowed downtown forces to repeal district elections in 1980. That gave big money and big business control of the board for another 20 years, a reign that ended only when district elections returned in 2000.

Milk was a gay leader, but he was also a tenant activist, public power supporter, advocate for police reform, supporter of commuter taxes on downtown workers, and coalition-builder who helped bring together the labor movement and the queer community. It started, ironically, with the Teamsters.

“Those of us who came out of the antiwar movement remembered that the Teamsters supported Richard Nixon until the very last moment,” Jones said. “And they were seen as one of the most homophobic of all the unions.”

But in the 1970s, the Teamsters were at war with the Coors Brewing Company, and trying to get San Francisco bars to stop serving Coors beer. Allan Baird, a Teamsters leader who lived in the Castro District, saw an opportunity and contacted Milk, who agreed to help — if the Teamsters would start hiring gay truck drivers.

“It wasn’t just San Francisco and California,” Jones recalled. “We got Coors beer out of every gay bar in North America.” And gays started driving beer trucks.

Today, the queer-labor alliance is one of the most powerful, effective, and lasting political forces in San Francisco.

Milk was never popular among the wealthier and more established sectors of the gay community; he believed in a populist brand of politics that wasn’t afraid to take the fight to the streets — and beyond San Francisco. A central theme of the film is the fight against Proposition 6, a 1978 measure by conservative state Sen. John Briggs that would have barred homosexuals from teaching the public schools.

Milk, defying the mainstream political strategists, insisted on debating Briggs in some of the most right-wing parts of the state. He refused to downplay the gay-rights issues. And when Prop. 6 went down, it was the end of that particular homophobic crusade.

Milk was always an outsider, and he ran for office as a foe of the Democratic Party machine. “His campaign for state Assembly was all about Harvey vs. the machine,” former Sup. Harry Britt told us. “His main supporter was [Sup.] Quentin Kopp. He didn’t run as the liberal in the race; he ran against the machine.” And for much of the next 20 years, progressives in San Francisco found themselves fighting what became the Brown-Burton machine, controlled by Willie Brown and John Burton.

It’s too bad the movie wasn’t released early enough to have had an impact on Prop. 8, the anti same-sex marriage measure that just passed in California. Some critics of the No on 8 campaign say the message was far too soft, and that a little Harvey-Milk-style campaigning might have helped.

But for us, one of the most striking things about the movie is the fact that Milk and his lover, Scott Smith, were able to leave New York with very little money, arrive in San Francisco, rent an apartment on their unemployment checks, and open a camera store. That wouldn’t be possible today; the Harvey Milks of 2008 can’t live in the Castro — and many can’t live anywhere in San Francisco. The city is too expensive.

In fact, for all the victories Milk won, for all the successes of the movement he helped to build, much of his agenda is still unfulfilled, even in his hometown.

The first time Harvey Milk gives a public speech in the film, he’s standing on a soapbox … literally. He brings out a box with “soap” written on the side; a funny gag, but a serious and telling moment for him and San Francisco.

The issues that Milk spoke so passionately about in that speech included police reform, ending the war on drugs, protecting tenants and controlling rents, and improving parks and protecting people’s rights to use them liberally — all issues with as much resonance today as they had back then.

The movie leaves us with a painful question. For all the celebration of Milk’s legacy by San Franciscans of various political stripes, why have we made so little progress on some of his signature issues? We celebrate the martyr — but often forget what the man really advocated.

Support for gay rights is de rigueur for anyone who aspires to public office in San Francisco. But a quarter of city residents still voted to take away same-sex marriage rights in this election. Many older gay men today are barely able afford their AIDS medication and rent. And transgender people and other nontraditional types are still ostracized, unable to get good jobs, and sometimes treated contemptuously when they seek help from their government.

Sure, marijuana is supposedly legal for medical uses in California and pot clubs proliferate around San Francisco. But even these sick patients are still targeted by the federal government and its long arms in San Francisco, including former US Attorney Kevin Ryan, whom Mayor Gavin Newsom named his top crime advisor and who is now seeking to crackdown on the pot clubs. Why, 30 years after Milk was shot, does one have to claim an ailment or illness to smoke a joint in this town?

Two-thirds of city residents are renters, a group Milk championed with gusto, but we barely beat a state initiative in June that would have abolished rent control. Housing is getting steadily more expensive. And in this election, Newsom and his downtown allies opposed Proposition B, an affordable housing measure, and Proposition M, a common sense measure to prohibit landlords from harassing their tenants. Such harassment is a common tactic to force tenants from rent-controlled units, even though the City Attorney’s Office is currently suing the city’s biggest landlord, Skyline Realty, for its well-documented history of harassment. Newsom may be the champion of same-sex marriage, but when it comes to issues like tenants’ rights, we suspect that Milk would be appalled at Newsom’s gall.

Ted Gullicksen of the San Francisco Tenants Union noted that in the wake of Milk’s death and before the repeal of district elections, San Francisco established rent control and limits on condo conversions. The tenant movement has grown steadily stronger and more sophisticated, he said, as it had to in order to counter increasing economic and political pressures and creative gambits by landlords.

“The city has gentrified phenomenally since that time, and that’s put tremendous pressure on tenants and on condo conversions,” Gullicksen told us. “It continues to be a real struggle.”

Police reform was also a huge issue for Milk and his gay contemporaries, who suffered more than most groups from the behavior of thuggish cops protected by weak oversight rules and a powerful union. And today, the Police Officers Association is stronger and meaner than ever, but the oversight has improved little, as both the Guardian and San Francisco Chronicle have explored with investigations in recent years.

And in our public parks, San Francisco officials in recent years have banned smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, playing amplified music, and even gathering in large numbers without expensive, restrictive permits. Even in the Castro, where Milk and his allies took it as a basic right to gather in the streets, Newsom and the NIMBYs unilaterally cancelled Halloween celebrations and used police to chase away citizens with water trucks.

Is this really the city Harvey Milk was trying to create? In the film, he talks about transforming San Francisco into a vibrant, tolerant beacon that would set an example for the rest of the country, telling his compatriots, “We have got to give them hope.”

Well, with hope now making a comeback, perhaps San Francisco can finally follow Milk’s lead on the issues he cared about most.

>>Back to the Milk Issue

The Democratic Party and SF’s progressives

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By Tim Redmond

Steve Jones and I had a lot to say about the election, but in retrospect, we left something out.

The progressive victories owed a lot to labor and tenant organizers, but also to the Democratic Party — and since I haven’t in the past been prone to praise the local party, I think it’s worth special mention.

The progressives took over the Democratic County Central Commitee this year, and elected Aaron Peskin chair, and you can see the results: The party raised money and put out slate mailers in the key districts, supporting Eric Mar, John Avalos and David Chiu. With the barrage of downtown attacks in those districts — and the close margin of victory in District 1 — the party, by linking Mar, Avalos and Chiu to the Obama campaign, helped make the difference.

It’s a new Democratic Party in this town, and that’s one more thing to celebrate.

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