Displacement Archives — Page 8 of 13 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Special occasion eviction

Andrew Lam

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April 30, 2013

STREET SEEN “My customers are Latin,” says the owner of Latin Bridal Silvia Ferrusquia, entertaining a crowd of mamas, grandmas, and our photographer while we wait for the models for our photoshoot to get their hair and makeup done, and don the massive, fairytale quinceañera dresses and tiaras they bought from her shop for their big days.

“They may not have a lot of money, but they have good taste. There’s nobody that serves this community the way we do.”

Sadly, the community may have to look for other options. After a decade in the Mission Street storefront, Ferrusquia — whose crowded, colorful shop is one of the last of its kind in the neighborhood — has been served an eviction notice.

In the spring of 2012, in the middle of the shop’s busy season, a damaged sewage pipe caused 11 ceiling tiles to fall, ruining close to a hundred of Ferrusquia’s ornate bridal, communion, and quince dresses with foul liquid. She says a representative from Prado Group, her landlord, told her to hold her rent payments until damage could be assessed and reparations made.

“What are we going to do without you?” customer Veronica Ortiz wonders, when she hears of the shop’s predicament. Ortiz was picking up her daughter’s communion dress, with its skirt of carefully-curled tulle roses. Like her sisters and sisters-in-law, Ortiz also bought her wedding dress from Latin Bridal. An extravagant gown inspired by Princess Diana’s famous nuptials, it had 6,000 crystals sewn to it, and a 20-meter train that Ortiz says was mistaken by guests at her hometown wedding in Durango, Mexico for the church aisle’s carpet as she said her vows.

Things went further south for the shop when the Prado representative with which they were communicating was fired. Ferrusquia was told by the company that she had to pay up the three months’ back rent in short order. After the losses sustained while her shop was smattered with sewage, mildew, and subsequent discovery of asbestos during its busy months, she was forced to file for bankruptcy.

After multiple warnings to pay the back rent (which has ballooned to a figure over $25,000 — a number representing six months’ rent that Ferrusquia does not understand and went unexplained by the Prado Group, who declined to comment when contacted for this feature), she was served with a final eviction notice this month. She tells me the building’s other tenants are being pushed out, that the Prado Group would only renew the shoe store next door’s commercial lease for a year and a half, and that she worries for the residential tenants upstairs.

The shop may be gone by the time you read this, if small business advocates are unable to help. At the very least we will have these photos of young customers in the Latin Bridal dresses they wore on the heretofore most important day of their lives — proof positive of Latin Bridal’s importance in a neighborhood that seems to have decided to change. “At least we’ll have gone out big,” says Ferrusquia’s son Eddie, thanking the shoot crew after the lights and curling irons are packed out.

“Don’t worry about anything on your day,” Ferrusquia says in Spanish to one of our customer-models, for whom the shoot is a test drive for her quinceañera next week. “Don’t let anyone rush you! This day will never happen again.”

Latin Bridal 2631 Mission, SF. (415) 647-4200, www.latinbridal.com

Models: Amaris Tenorio, Brenda Diaz, Michelle Trejo

Art direction: Caitlin Donohue

Photography: Shot in the City

Makeup: Sarina Martinez/porcelainglow@gmail.com

Hair: Vivien Brown/Salon Miel

Assistant: Dick Van Dick

Boom life: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore talks about ‘The End of San Francisco’

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April 25, 2013

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Boom life: Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore talks about ‘The End of San Francisco’

A picture of Brian Goggin’s iconic site-specific sculpture “Defenestration” (that 16-year-old “furniture leaping out of an abandoned building” piece in SoMa that may be demolished soon) is pictured on the cover of Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s latest book, The End of San Francisco — which I reviewed in this week’s Guardian.

It’s an almost too-perfect image to represent the book’s contents — “Defenestration” cheekily channeled the out-the-window frustration of the dawning of the first Internet boom, with its hordes of tech gold-rushers pushing out old San Francisco culture. (And now, in the middle of another tech boom, the artwork itself will be pushed aside to make way for affordable housing — the term for anything under $2500 per month rent pretty much at this point.) The End of San Francisco takes us on an atmospheric, highly personal through the turbulent period of the ’90s and early 2000s, while asking some hard questions about the queer activism, participatory gentrification, and “alternative culture” of the period. Along the way, Mattilda intimately delves into issues like her recovered memories of sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her father; the rampant drug use, mental illness, and hostile attitudes of Mission queer culture; the gynophobia and transphobia of many “underground” scenes, and much, much more.

I asked Mattilda a few questions over email in advance of her appearances here at City Lights (April 30) and the GLBT Historical Society (May 9) to help set her book in the context of what was happening then, and what’s still happening now. As always, she pulled no punches.

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE reads Tue/30, 7pm, free at City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF. www.citylights.com, and Thursday, May 9, 7pm, free at the GLBT History Museum, 4127 18th St., SF. www.glbthistory.org

SFBG What was the impetus for writing such a wide-ranging memoir? You cover almost your entire life, from some of your earliest memories to when you officially moved away from San Francisco. Was there a specific purpose when you sat down to write it?

MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE With my anthologies, I always have a specific purpose in mind, a political intervention, but for this kind of personal writing – I write to stay alive. So it’s a different kind of intervention. I started with 1200 pages of material, and then separated different sections into themes. So, for example, the chapter called “The Texture of the Air,” originally that was something like 200 pages of writing about cruising and its limitations, about trying to regain a sense of hope in my own sexuality. Now it’s 15 pages. At some point I realized that the book centered around the myths and realities of San Francisco as a refuge for radical queer visions in community building. I first moved to San Francisco in 1992, when I was 19, and it’s where I figured out how to challenge the violence of the world around me, how to embrace outsider visions of queer splendor, how to create love and lust and intimacy and accountability on my own terms. I left San Francisco in 2010, and in some ways this book is an attempt to figure out why or how this city has such a hold on me, in spite of the failure of so many of my dreams, over and over and over again.

SFBG I think the most fascinating parts of the End of San Francisco are your spot-on description of life here in the 1990s, and your detailing of the excruciating decline of that era in the dot-com boom. Now
that we’re undergoing another dot-com boom, what are some of your thoughts as to how that’s once again affecting “alternative culture.” Is there any such thing as “alternative culture” anymore?

MBS Oh, it’s so sad! The way gentrification has progressed over these last 20 years. The displacement, the homogenization, the transformation of cultures of resistance into commodities. The way all of this limits people’s imaginations. At the same time, I don’t want to romanticize the past. In the early-‘90s, it felt like everywhere people were dying of AIDS and drug addiction and suicide; it was a desperate time, even if in some ways there were more possibilities for choosing a life outside status quo normalcy. But, no matter when we are living in this country so responsible for genocide, endless war, the destruction of the environment, we are living in a desperate time and we still need to come up with radical alternatives to giving up.

SFBG I figure a lot of the people who were here in that era (me included) will recognize a lot of truth in what you describe, including some pretty scathing but deadly accurate words about the people who thought they were on the forefront of alternative culture back then — how a lot of it was “vintage store glamour” and the “strung-out junkie look.” Have you had any reactions from anyone about that? Or from any of the people who were close to you back then that you’ve written about?

MBS I offered the manuscript ahead of time to everyone in the book who plays a major role. A few people didn’t respond. Some offered detailed feedback. And some, of course, are featured in conversations about the book, in the book – while The End of San Francisco is about my memories, of course these memories exist in the context of the relationships I’m describing. I want to challenge the notion of one true story, while at the same time I obsess about figuring out all these formative moments for me – politically, socially, sexually, ethically, emotionally. One of the funniest responses was from the first person who I trusted, we moved to San Francisco together in 1992. She wanted me to take out the parts where we do drugs, so she could show her kids!

SFBG Another fascinating part is your account of the rise and peter-out of Gay Shame [the guerilla anti-assimilationist co-founded by Mattilda]. You’ve talked about this before in previous books, like the anthology That’s Revolting — how did you approach writing about it within the context of this memoir?

MBS This writing is more self-critical. It’s more about the relationships I formed through activism, the gaps between our rhetoric of inclusiveness and the more complicated realities. Ultimately I’m looking at this activist group that meant so much to me, that challenged and inspired me in so many ways, but ultimately failed me. I’m not saying that it failed, but it did fail me and I’m trying to figure out why.

SFBG Do you think there’s any space now, in SF or anywhere else, for a true queer resistance movement?

MBS There never is space. We have to create it. There is so much self-congratulatory rhetoric in San Francisco, especially in radical-identified queer spaces, and we’re never going to get to something beyond a cooler marketing niche unless we can examine the ways that so often in radical queer spaces people treat one another just as horribly as in dominant straight culture or mainstream gay culture, and it hurts so much more when this kind of viciousness comes from people you actually believe in.

SFBG I loved your take on the Eagle even while I disagreed with some of it. Have you been following the whole return of the Eagle thing, spearheaded by probably our loudest current voice in queer anti-assimilationism, Glendon Anna Conda Hyde?

MBS In the book, mostly I’m talking about how the Eagle, a bar entrenched in mainstream gay norms of mandatory masculinity, objectification without appreciation, racial exclusion, and fear of all things feminine without beards, became a hipster hotspot without changing its core values. I can’t comment specifically on Glendon Anna Conda Hyde, but I will say that it depresses me when people embrace tragic gay institutions as “community,” as if they have ever offered us anything meaningful beyond a place to get smashed with people we’ll hate in the morning. Yes, it’s also depressing that public sex cultures that used to exist South of Market have basically disappeared, but I think we need to envision new possibilities instead of fetishizing the past.

SFBG You write so boldly and candidly about sexual abuse, drug will addiction, illness, relationships, politics … were there any memoir models you worked off of, and were there any rituals you went through to be able to open up so much?

MBS I think most memoirs take the most fascinating, multifaceted, complicated lives and turn them into Choose Your Own Adventure books without the choice. I wanted to create something more layered and honest — I was drawn to exploring the places where my analysis stops, to using those gaps as openings into something more spontaneous and incisive. As a teenager I needed to create a facade of invulnerability in order to survive, in order to find other kids like myself, in order to go on living. But now that façade leaves me feeling shut off rather than connected. Now I’m drawn towards expressing vulnerability, I think that’s what will save me.

SFBG I felt like you left us with a cliffhanger in terms of your father reconciling with you over memories of your childhood sexual abuse. Was there ever any resolution?

MBS I love that it felt like a cliffhanger for you even though the part about visiting my father before he died was right at the beginning. That was an incredibly intense moment for me, to visit him on his deathbed, to go to the house where I grew up with all that violence and still be able to express everything, to sob and tell him that I loved him, something I would never have imagined I would even want to say, but it’s what I felt in the moment and so I figured why not, he’ll be dead soon and I don’t want to hold anything in. For me that felt really powerful: it meant that all this work I’d done to become someone other than the person my parents wanted me to be, it really had worked. That was a certain kind of closure, that openness. But no, he refused to acknowledge anything. He wouldn’t even tell me that he loved me.

SFBG In terms of queer relationships and friendships, The End of San Francisco speaks insightfully about pain, desire, co-dependence, processing, betrayal, apathy, need, and abuse. Was there ever any love? Could there be?

MBS Yes, there was so much love – I hope that comes through in the book! And nothing has let me down more than love.

“Ten more Ron Conways” would destroy San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler

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April 19, 2013

44

“Ten more Ron Conways” would destroy San Francisco

As I reported in this week’s cover story, San Francisco has lost its balance under Mayor Ed Lee, with economic development pushing sustainability – both environmental and economic, as shown by rising rents and costs of living – onto the back burner. And in today’s New York Times, Lee reinforces the idea that corporate titans should dictate what kind of city this becomes.

In profile of venture capitalist Ron Conway, who is heavily invested in tech companies and Lee’s political campaigns, Lee said that Conway – a longtime Republican ideologue with an open grudge against progressives, as we revealed in a December cover story – is someone “whose values benefit the city” and said that “Ten more Ron Conways would be helpful.”

That’s really an astonishing statement given the pro-corporate, self-dealing nastiness that just one rich Conway has injected into San Francisco politics over the last couple years. In the article, Conway himself dismisses all values beyond creating tech jobs, including the displacement and gentrification caused by the monomaniacal focus on promoting technological companies, for which he proudly says, “You need a catalyst, so I’m a catalyst.”

He also does little to disguise the libertarian groupthink that seems to guide his bubble-inflated industry, telling the Times, “The tech community is a closely knit group, which is why it’s so powerful. All of these companies have an affinity for each other, even if they compete with each other.”

Yes, they all want tax breaks, which is what Lee has been giving them, over and over again, by waiving payroll taxes on new hires in the mid-Market area around Twitter, exempting stock options for local taxes (undoing an initiative by his predecessor, Gavin Newsom, who was definitely no foe of corporate America), and doing a business tax reform that cut taxes on tech companies.

How much more do they really want? Are we really going to simply put local government completely into the service of a handful of already wealthy technology investors, who are the real beneficiaries of Lee’s taxpayer-subsidized largesse?

If we had 10 more Conways pushing this right-wing agenda with the billions of dollars they’ve amassed during this modern Gilded Age, I don’t think San Francisco continue to be open to this city’s tenants, small businesses, artists, and the vast majority of its workers, whose per capital income of $46,777 is almost barely enough to survive.

Attention, Mr. Mayor, this is a big city with lots of interests and needs. It’s time to pull your head out of this bubble and pay attention to the vast majority of this city’s residents, whose interests Ron Conway doesn’t share or even acknowledge.

The art of staying put

Andrew Lam

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April 2, 2013

11

On a sunny Thursday afternoon, the sound of whirring power tools floats down to Market and Golden Gate as office renovations surge ahead in the building next to the Warfield, which looks as if it had been shrink-wrapped in white plastic to control the dust. Before long, several tech startups and a venture capital firm will occupy three floors there.

The newcomers will be following a trend: Twitter and Zendesk, beneficiaries of a payroll-tax exclusion zone created to attract growing businesses, already have offices nearby. Further down the street, a glossy sidewalk-level billboard walls off a stretch of empty storefronts. “This is the Place,” the message proclaims. “250,000 square feet of retail space, opening 2015.”

San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood is changing fast. But this growth comes at a cost. It’s driving up rents for nonprofits and small businesses — and it may scuttle the long-promised ambitious plans to create an arts center with affordable space for small performance groups at 950 Market Street.

Mayor Ed Lee, who pushed for the tax breaks and lauds the changes in mid-Market, also wants the arts center, and has asked potential developers who are bidding on the site to consider that use. But it’s not the most profitable use — that would be tech offices — and there’s nothing mandating that a private company comply with the wishes of the mayor, at a potential loss of millions of dollars.

Instead, the city is discussing a possible incentive package — that is, special zoning or city financing schemes to help get developers interested in the project.

BEYOND THE MILLIONAIRES

Mid-Market is still home to many people who are not bent on achieving tech millionaire status. Some are merely focused on finding their next meal, and might even dig through the trash for it. There are wheelchair-bound veterans, drug addicts, street merchants, and people living with AIDS. There are artists, actors, small business owners, serious sidewalk chess players, SRO dwellers, and nonprofit service providers. An economic development study determined that a full 31 percent of the households in the densely populated area earn less than $15,000 a year, making the neighborhood three times as poor as the citywide average.

The city’s been trying for years to formulate a strategy for the economically and racially diverse, centralized, transit-connected neighborhood, which is just a stone’s throw from City Hall. In recent years, community stakeholder meetings have been convened, email lists fired up, neighborhood surveys commissioned, pedestrian habits tracked, official reports generated. In November 2011, the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development unveiled its Central Market Economic Strategy, which charted a course for the Market area stretch roughly bracketed by Fifth and Tenth streets.

The report opens with a set of “guiding principles” that residents said ought to inform any future revitalization efforts. Priority No. 1: “Promote the development of a healthy, economically functional low-income neighborhood.” Priority No. 2: “Prevent displacement of existing residents and businesses.”

A great deal of emphasis has also been placed on bolstering the area’s art scene, and the report acknowledges that efforts should be taken to “stabilize” low-income communities so they aren’t forced out through gentrification catalyzed by art. The strategy “also includes an action item for the creation of artist housing,” Christine Falvey, Mayor Lee’s press secretary, told us, but “community feedback on the strategy directed the city to prioritize non-housing arts space in the first year of implementation.”

The goals expressed in OEWD’s report hint at some of San Francisco’s most pressing issues — homeless families unable to sustain high housing costs are increasingly flocking to overwhelmed service providers in San Francisco; nonprofits are vanishing in the face of impossibly overpriced rents; artists are moving to Oakland.

And the fate of 950 Market could be a pivotal moment when the city learns if it’s actually possible to bring high-end economic development to the area without displacement.

The 950 Center for Art and Education represents a multi-layered community planning effort many months in the making. Described as “the first multi-tenant, multi-use arts and education center in San Francisco,” it came out of a desire to create a permanently affordable complex to house existing art, education and nonprofit organizations in Central Market and the Tenderloin, many of which are finding it harder to remain in San Francisco. In addition to dedicated arts facilities, the complex could provide 20,000 square feet of nonprofit office space.

“The mayor has been very clear with the development community that he thinks arts and cultural facilities are a good fit for this site,” Falvey noted. “He communicated this point at a breakfast meeting which he convened along with Supervisor Kim, to developers on Central Market and those looking at property in the area.”

Invitations to the breakfast, held Jan. 30, were extended to all interested bidders, as well as area developers. City officials treated the real-estate heavyweights to a power point presentation about local arts organizations, and representatives from a couple prominent foundations were on hand to show philanthropic support for the concept.

IT’S UP TO TEXAS

Lone Star, a Texas-based hedge fund, is selling the complex that would house the center, and was expected to receive final bids earlier this month. Sup. Jane Kim, whose District 6 includes mid-Market, said she was hopeful that the developer would go along with the vision for an arts space — but at this point, that’s not the city’s decision.

After all, city officials haven’t established binding requirements to use the space in a particular way, and turning it into commercial office space or market-rate housing would be far more lucrative. Lone Star declined to comment for this story.

Kim stressed that there are other shuttered properties in the area — the Hibernia Bank, for example — that could eventually house arts groups if this opportunity is lost. But that means going back to the drawing board, even as tech startups eagerly anticipate the completion of their own office renovations.

City officials have also been contemplating a way to sweeten the deal with “a package of incentives to make the project pencil out for the developers,” Kim said. This could take the form of an infrastructure finance district, or building height bonuses, she said.

But even with accommodations for wealthy real estate speculators on the table, the plans could still go up in smoke, given Mid-Market’s new identity as a tech hotspot. “I’m very concerned about that,” Kim said. “The last thing any of us hoped to see is just office space development.”

Plans for the 950 Center aim to support economic diversity by placing anchor tenants in long-term leases, then incorporating shared facilities at affordable rates for part-time users in need of lower rent. The idea is to promote stability by sharing resources.

Among those who’ve expressed interest in moving into the 950 Center is the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, a prominent African American theater group founded in 1981 that lost its performance space but still maintains an office in the neighborhood.

“As a community, we can’t allow ourselves to lose Lorraine Hansberry Theatre,” Tenderloin Economic Development Project executive director Elvin Padilla wrote in a recent blog post. “I can’t think of a more meaningful place for its historic name and presence to be seen and felt.” Padilla has been integral in crafting 950 Center plans, but did not return calls seeking an interview for this story.

Youth Speaks, an arts organization that exposes Bay Area youth to spoken word, theatre, and poetry with a focus on kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods, has also expressed interest. “Our rent just doubled,” explained James Kass, the organization’s executive director. “It’s a typical nonprofit thing. We move in and then Yelp, or Zynga, or Twitter moves in, and the rent goes up.”

Kass added, “A lot of us are fighting to stay in San Francisco … but rent is cheaper in Oakland.” While he was hopeful that Youth Speaks would get an opportunity to move into the 950 Center, he wasn’t convinced that it would come to pass. “With the rapid growth, all of a sudden it’s a hotspot for redevelopment. It’s too bad there wasn’t something put down on paper awhile ago,” guaranteeing an art use, he said.

Shortly after Kim and Lee hosted the breakfast for Mid-Market developers, they succeeded in convincing Lone Star to include language in its Offering Memorandum asking prospective buyers “to help provide input into possible developer incentives for arts uses.”

At the end of the day, longtime arts and community-oriented groups fighting to keep their toeholds in San Francisco haven’t been promised anything, despite years of stakeholder meetings convened by the city emphasizing art as a central focus. Yet Padilla, clearly keeping his eye on the prize, lauded Kim and Lee for inventing perks to entice developers to support art over profit. “While this is indeed a major victory, the mention of a ‘potential arts component’ does not translate into a done deal for the 950 Project,” he wrote in a blog post. “Speculative bidders with billions of dollars in their arsenal will still try to avoid addressing this issue and test the resolve of City Hall and the local community. This means the hard work of advocacy … must continue.”

“It just gets different”: Ali Liebegott on her third book ‘Cha-Ching!’

Andrew Lam

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March 26, 2013

1

“It just gets different”: Ali Liebegott on her third book ‘Cha-Ching!’

When you’ve spent long, smelly months in a bus traveling the world sharing words with pockets of alternative community, the issue of place takes the fore. As she releases her third book Cha-Ching!, and as her decades-old Sister Spit collective embarks upon yet another tour of spoken word, queer revelry, and cramped living conditions, author Ali Liebegott is getting academic about it.

“I’m kind of obsessed with how artists can live,” she tells me in a SoMa coffeehouse. She had texted me for clarification the night before on whether it was okay to look “scummy” at our interview, but she looks pretty neat in her white tee, motorcycle helmet sitting next to her on a bench. “And how queer people can live. I always think, where would I live if I couldn’t live in San Francisco or New York?”

Liebegott teaches Sarah Schulman’s Gentrification of the Mind — a book that looks at how economic displacement changes our brain’s wiring — in her fiction class at Mills College. And in Cha-Ching!, the economy is an ever-present force, guiding protagonist Theo into shitty apartments in both NY and SF neighborhoods where there are few out gay people. (Not to mention a ludicrously depressing janitor job at a junk mail factory.) The book is Liebegott’s third after The Beautifully Worthless and The IHOP Papers.

When I ask whether they’re getting easier to write as time goes on she just laughs. “If I had been a plumber, I’d be able to fix things in my sleep. It doesn’t get easier, it just gets different.”

Liebegott reads from Cha-Ching! at City Lights in October

In an ever-more-caffeinated manner, she and I discuss how those higher rents are coinciding with an era in which publishing houses are more hesitant about what they throw their weight behind. “[Queer literature] is the first to go,” Liebegott says. “All the queer books at Barnes and Noble are behind a potted plant, there’s like four of them, and one of those is Best Lesbian Erotica 1994.”

So it’s good that, as poor queers and creatives and poor creatives and queers get kicked out of their urban homes and prime shelf space, Sister Spit is on the rise. Once restricted to queer female writers, the tour now includes a variety of genders, and different kinds of artists.

Liebegott’s book is one of the first to come out on the imprint that the group’s founder Michelle Tea was able to start through City Lights Books in the fall of 2012 — The Beautifully Worthless was also released through the imprint, as well as the amazing Sister Spit anthology from earlier this year. Tea’s fantastical young adult novel Mermaid in Chelsea Creek, set to drop this summer, is delicious. The collective’s gig at the main library on Sun/31 is in advance of yet another of its fabled tours. This time the path lies up and down the coasts, up to Canada, and into the Mid-West.

>>LISTEN TO CITY LIGHTS BOOKS’ RECENT PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH ALI LIEBEGOTT

Along the way, the Sister Spit artists will meet audience members in places where there is no queer community, places where people fundraised to get them there.

“I don’t want to say we’re a beacon of hope, but it is nice to give people this connection that they might not have,” Liebegott says.

And that connection, more and more, may not be associated with any specific urban area. San Francisco, for example, would be beyond Liebegott’s reach as a home if it weren’t for her and her girlfriend’s rent control. “I kind of feel like we’re headed towards hell,” Liebegott muses, taking in our swank, caffeinated surroundings. “I feel like we’re already there.”

Regardless, art. Cha-Ching! deals in gambling addiction, drug addiction, poverty, ennui, animal abuse, powerlessness — but nonetheless, can be laugh out loud funny even, especially, when characters hit their low points.

She’s already planning her next book, about a war vet obsessed with feeding ducks. “I feel like I’m so mired in depressing things!” Liebegott says. “My threshold for that is much higher than most people.”

Cha-Ching!‘s ending, though, leaves room to hope that queers can triumph over today’s adversities. Or does it? At any rate, you have ample chances to buy the book at this week’s readings (Liebegott is one of the featured artists at the Sister Spit reading on Sun/31 as well.)

In other news, Liebegott’s big into Sizzler. She told me to write that.

Ali Liebegott’s Cha-Ching! release party

Wed/27, 7pm, free

City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus, SF

www.citylights.com

Sister Spit tour kick-off reading

Sun/31, 2-5pm, free

San Francisco Main Library

100 Larkin, SF

www.sfpl.org

Gentrification’s simple math

Zelda Bronstein

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February 27, 2013

66

Chuck Nevius is big into gentrification these days. He thinks it’s a dandy thing and “no longer a dirty word,” says the even longtime residents of the Mission love it, and has a nice photo of a person walking in Dogpatch, where two really cool dive bars just shut down — thanks to the gentrication that’s such a great thing.

Nevius quotes Randy Shaw, who has a bizarre statement:

In the ’70s and ’80s there was massive displacement of residents in the Haight, Noe Valley and the Castro,” says Randy Shaw, executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic. “But now you are seeing a massive influx of upper-income people into previously unoccupied areas.”

What? “Previously unoccupied?” Like the Mission and Soma and Dogpatch? Unoccupied by the wealthy, maybe, but there are people living in almost every square inch of San Francisco, and in some parts of town, they are low-income people, and richer people force them out. That’s happening on the same scale today that it did in the 1980s, except worse: In the 80s, if you werer priced out of the Haight or Noe Valley or the Castro you could move to the Western Addition or the Mission or Soma. Now prices are so high everywhere in town that your only move is out of San Francisco altogether.

And while ol’ Chuck does admit there are downsides, he seems to think that somehow you can move wealthier people and more upscale establishments into existing lower-income areas without anything bad happening, as long as you respect “the delicate balancing act.”

But it isn’t a balancing act at all — it’s a zero-sum game. There’s finite space in this city, and when when something or someone comes in, something or someone has to leave. (Yes, you could build a lot more housing, but nobody’s building housing for working-class people.) But you can’t build more storefronts on Valencia or Mission; force out the existing community serving businesses and they have noplace else to go.

San Francisco has failed spectacularly at the fundamental challenge facing a city under this kind of pressure. First, before you allow more development, more upscaling, more of what C.W. Nevius loves, you have to protect existing vulnerable populations. That’s not a balancing act; that’s a mandate. If you don’t do it, you lose the character of the city and San Francisco becomes another sterile, corporate community.

Jesus. Why is this so hard to understand? I’ve lived through it several times, these booms that people like Mayor Lee and Nevius always celebrate, and every time, the pattern has been the same, the city has been damaged, and community institutions have been lost. I’m not one of those preservationists opposed to all change, but again: First protect existing vulnerable populations.

City considers making building owners do seismic upgrades

Sasha Cuttler

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February 4, 2013

84

City considers making building owners do seismic upgrades

City Hall sources have confirmed the basic details of a San Francisco Public Press report from Friday afternoon that the Board of Supervisors will consider requiring the owners of soft-story buildings of three stories or more to seismically retrofit them by 2020 – at the expense of building owners, something sure to rouse controversy.

The legislation was developed and introduced by the Mayor’s Office and it’s being sponsored by the board’s two most prolific and effective supervisors, Board President David Chiu and Sup. Scott Wiener, which is probably a signal that city officials know this one is going to be “challenging,” as one source told us.

Details are still being hammered out before the measure is introduced at tomorrow’s board meeting, including some of the financing options that would be open to property owners. But after voters in 2010 narrowly rejected Measure A, a bond that would have provided low-cost loans for the seismic retrofits, property owners could be forced to dig deep to ensure their buildings don’t collapse in an earthquake.

Wiener confirmed that the legislation would be mandate on building owners without public money attached: “It would be a mandate that they within a certain time frame do an earthquake retrofit,” Wiener told the Guardian.

As the Public Press reported, the legislation would apply to all wood-framed buildings of three stories or more built before 1978, with smaller buildings and single-family homes exempted. In the most recent print edition of the Public Press, extensive coverage of the city’s earthquake vulnerabilities estimated that about 58,000 San Franciscans live in the nearly 3,000 soft-story buildings deemed dangerous places to be when the next big earthquake hits.

Wiener said city officials have been deeply involved with negotiations with various effected groups, including building owners and their tenants, who could face displacement as the work is done or higher rents if landlords pass through those costs. Wiener said the legislation is bound to evolve as talks and hearings continue: “There are a lot of variables and the introduction is really just a preliminary step.”

The machine

Andrew Lam

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January 29, 2013

127

steve@sfbg.com

Scott Wiener is a political machine.

I don’t mean that he’s part of a political machine, although he is arguably a member of a few nascent operations in town, from the old-school Democratic Party establishment to the morphing amalgam of groups pushing what he calls a “livability” agenda. I mean that Supervisor Wiener, who represents District 8, is a machine — almost robotic in his tireless, 24/7 engagement with all things political.

In just two years on the board, he’s become one of the most productive legislators in the city, courting controversy and taking on issues others had ducked. He is relentless in his quest to make government run more efficiently. He’s affable, mild-mannered and accessible, often willing to work with opponents — but he has an agenda for the city that he pursues aggressively.

Perhaps more than anyone at City Hall, Wiener embodies the current political zeitgeist in San Francisco, with its emphasis on civility and private-sector job creation. He isn’t the most powerful person in city government, but he’s playing an outsized role in shaping the city’s future — and that will only grow this week as he assumes the chair of the board’s Land Use Committee.

Wiener defies easy labels. Critics who call him an uncaring conservative aren’t quite right, and it’s equally tough to simply accept the “urbanist” and “good liberal Democrat” labels that Wiener applies to himself. And it’s hard to pin Wiener down on what sort of city he envisions, except for one with minimal bureaucracy where the trains and buses run on time.

In his City Hall office, where the walls contain little artwork, just the occasional reminder of past political episodes (like the framed Guardian butt cover from when he banned the nudists in the Castro from putting their bare asses on benches), he was happy to talk to me at length about policy. But he had less to offer on who he thinks this city is for — about who should be able to stay here, and who has to leave. He talks about preserving a safety net — but not about pushing back against gentrification and displacement with any tools up to the task.

In the end, his focus is on making government and the city’s infrastructure work well for those who are able to live in a city that’s become openly hostile to low-income and working-class people. He’s an agent of change — but his change is disturbing to progressives. He’s steadily moving legislation that makes it more difficult to counter trends that are gentrifying and sterilizing the city.

A BIT OF A NERD

Born in Philadelphia and raised mostly in the small, conservative New Jersey town of Turnersville, the young Scott Wiener always felt one step removed from his surroundings. So he poured himself into his studies. “I was always a bit of a nerd. I’ll admit I was voted most studious in high school,” Wiener said.

What social life he had centered around his synagogue in a Christian-dominated community. His parents — dad an optometrist, mom running his practice — were “very partisan Democrats” in a Republican county. Although they weren’t very politically active, Wiener’s earliest political memory is the 1980 presidential election that brought Ronald Reagan to power: “Our house was like a place of mourning.”

Involvement in Democratic Party politics seemed to just flow from his academic life, interning with a member of Congress as a teenager and then helping form a Democratic Club when he attended Duke University, which devoted itself to campaigning against then-Sen. Jesse Helms when Wiener was a sophomore.

Coming out as a gay man at the age of 20 wasn’t terribly traumatic in a family where his cousin and aunt were lesbians. His main concern was whether it might hinder his plan to run for president of his fraternity, the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi, but he won that election anyway.

Still, Wiener calls being gay and Jewish the “galvanizing experiences” of his formative years, particularly at a time when AIDS had devastated this new community he was joining, so his political activism focused on LGBT issues as he worked his way through Harvard Law School, choosing to settle in San Francisco in 1997.

Tall and gangly, almost obsessed with Democratic Party politics, his only real hobby or pastime is yoga, which he said “helps me stay sane.” Wiener has always been less fun-loving than many of the gay men around him in the Castro, the neighborhood he represents.

“Dating has not always been my strong suit,” Wiener said. He’s close to family and friends but really hasn’t had any serious romantic relationships to speak of. “Men are challenging.”

So he works, and works, and works. He’s been working the Castro with door-knocking intensity since well before his successful run for supervisor in 2010, during his long tenure on the Democratic County Central Committee and his day job as a deputy city attorney, focused mostly on defending the San Francisco Police Department.

Department heads have learned that he’s always on duty. “I was at Nancy Pelosi’s New Year’s party on Sunday, and I saw [SF Muni head] Ed Reiskin and I started walking up to him because I had like three things to talk to him about, and the look I saw in his eye was the same look that I think I sometimes get in my eye when a particularly aggressive constituent approaches me,” Wiener recalled.

It’s a look that Wiener has had to adopt regularly over the last two years as he’s sponsored a string of the city’s most controversial pieces of legislation.

AGENT OF CHANGE

Right now, Wiener is pushing legislation that would limit people’s opportunities to appeal development projects (dubbed “CEQA reform”) and co-sponsoring legislation that would let owners of tenancy-in-common (TIC) housing units pay a fee to bypass the city’s condo conversion lottery, which limits the removal of apartments from the rental market.

Both changes, two of the most controversial measures of this new legislative session, have been opposed by progressives for decades. And they follow Wiener’s sponsorship of the two most controversial pieces of legislation from the last session: his unsuccessful attempt to remove the exemption of nonprofits from paying the city’s Transit Impact Development Fee and his ban on public nudity, which passed on a 6-5 vote in November, making national headlines.

The two new bills reflect an agenda that’s popular with landlords, property owners, and developers — and opposed by tenants, neighborhood activists, and just about every progressive group in town.

Yet, at the same time, Wiener is supportive of nightlife and an advocate for Muni and bike lanes — softening his image as a downtown conservative and sometimes giving him a chance to divide the progressive community. And last year he cast the crucial eighth vote needed to create the CleanPowerSF public-power program and override a threatened mayoral veto.

“I strongly believe in the capacity of government to make people’s lives better,” Wiener said.

Wiener told me he believes in the social safety net and rent control. He says he has supported every tax measure on the ballot in recent years, he understands that Muni and other vital city infrastructure go deeper in the hole with every new development project the city approves, and he knows that San Francisco is becoming steadily less affordable to those on the bottom half of the economic spectrum.

Yet, even when pressed on the topic at length, he doesn’t have a good answer for how to maintain San Francisco’s long-term socioeconomic diversity. It’s almost as if that’ s not part of his consciousness. Instead, he’s making it easier for capitalism to have its way with San Francisco.

Tom Radulovich, director of Livable City, puts it this way: “One thing he’s really doing is reforms in the process of government. He wants to smooth the way for the transformation of the city.”

While smoothing the way for change is good for those who desire certain changes — whether it be a developer building luxury condos or the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition trying to add more bike lanes — there are often good reasons why change occurs in a slow, methodical way in San Francisco, a city of great wealth and power but also lots of checks and balances on how power gets wielded.

“Process is important in San Francisco,” Radulovich said. “For a lot of people that want to slow things down, they are very process focused, and he’s really messing with that.”

Wiener’s efforts particularly rankle people like Aaron Peskin, who started as a historic preservation activist before leading a prolific agenda (he said he authored 205 ordinances in eight years, far faster than Wiener’s pace) as a supervisor during the board’s modern progressive era.

Peskin — who successfully ran against Wiener for DCCC chair in 2008 and has fought him on historic preservation and other progressive issues since then — doesn’t mince words when describing Wiener’s agenda and key votes as supervisor: “Supervisor Wiener is intent on turning the clock back on San Francisco’s decades-long legacy of cutting edge legislation to protect consumers and the environment.”

Radulovich says the trend is upsetting the city’s balance in unpredictable ways. “The net result is he’s speeding everything up, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He’s taking the brakes off of change,” Radulovich said. “In all of these changes, it’s hard to tell what’s going to happen because these are big, complex systems.”

Wiener sees it differently. His bill to modify the city’s CEQA interpretation would make it harder to file multiple project appeals — and he thinks that’s a good thing: “There are people who want to the option to be oppositional and to just have something in their hip pocket, even if it has no merit.”

Yet activists fighting the measure say it also makes it easier for projects to slide through without proper public or environment scrutiny. For example, the city originally exempted the controversial Beach Chalet artificial turf project in Golden Gate Park from doing an Environmental Impact Report, which eventually found significant impacts to wildlife, drainage, and from bright artificial lights.

There are some who worry that the Land Use Committee will be more friendly to market-rate developers under Wiener’s leadership.

“I’m really concerned with the direction the city is going on land-use issues, particularly with him now chairing the Land Use Committee,” Tom Temprano, president of the Harvey Milk Club, told me. “It’s about the future of the city and who it’s being built for.”

Peter Cohen of the Council of Community Housing Organizations notes that Wiener’s focus during “affordable housing” discussions has been on middle class homeowners: “I’m interested to see if he pushes that narrative, that we’re not doing enough for the middle class, because it is a bit of a zero sum game with housing and land use.”

Radulovich said Wiener may not be critical enough of projects that seek more than their zoning entitles them to, a growing problem in San Francisco that has set precedents for more intensive development and made it difficult to analyze cumulative impacts of the decisions: “Having a Land Use chair that going to move those things along will allow planning by exception.”

Between watching out for Wiener’s legislation and tracking the development projects that seem to keep springing out of nowhere, progressive activists are busy.

“He’s very busy. He’s amazingly prolific legislatively. I can’t keep up with him and I don’t know what his agenda is,” said Sue Vaughan, who works with the Sierra Club and sits on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Citizens Advisory Council. “It just seems like everything he focuses on disempowers the voters and empowers the [wealthiest] 1 percent.”

POLITICS AND PERSONALITY

Even his critics have positive things to say about Wiener. “He’s a nice guy, and I have to give him credit for going out of his way to work with us,” Temprano said, praising Wiener’s advocacy on queer, nightlife, and small business issues and saying, “He’s a really good legislator.”

“That said, we have a fundamentally different approach to politics,” Temprano said. “A huge bone of contention is his handling of public space, including the nudity ban and removing the public benches” in the Castro.

Temprano criticizes Wiener for allowing social services to be slashed while local corporations get tax breaks and focusing more on the convenience of those middle class and above than the needs of those on the bottom, often by presenting “false choices,” as Wiener did in opposing free Muni for youth by saying that increasing efficiency in the system was more important.

“The folks who have more basic needs are being pushed out of this city,” Temprano said. “There are just so many needs right now, and so many of them come down to funding for social services and other things…We should be starting to re-fund programs that have been slashed in recent years.”

Wiener has served on the Budget Committee throughout his tenure on the board, presiding over the rollback of city services and maintaining of historically low levels of business taxation.

In fact, Temprano said Wiener’s engaging personal style and points of agreement with progressives make Wiener more effective in sometimes pushing issues that are hostile to progressive values. “It’s occasionally difficult to play hardball on some of these other issues,” Temprano said, noting that Wiener doesn’t seem to have a problem switching gears and playing hardball in undermining progressive reforms, something that requires those of the left to be ever-vigilant and take advantage of Wiener’s open-door policies. “We need to be incredibly vocal and incredibly organized.”

Adds Radulovich: “There’s something about him that’s refreshing. He’s different than the moderates of the past…He’s a moderate, but he’s the new generation of moderate.”

In fact, Radulovich said that progressives could learn lessons from Wiener in terms of broadening their base and reaching across the aisle on certain issues that needn’t be as polarizing as they often are in San Francisco, even around such emotional issues as growth and development.

“If you do anything differently, you get kicked out of the progressive camp,” Radulovich said, half-jokingly adding, “If you had an original idea since 1978, you’re suspect.”

In fact, Radulovich compared Wiener to a former supervisor who is his political opposite: “Scott is effectively driving the conversation in proposing things. Chris Daly used to do that.”

Peskin said that Wiener’s legislative success so far has less to do with his skills and strength than it does with the weakness of the progressive movement over the last two years.

“He’s only one supervisor, and it’s just that his colleagues need to stand up and start questioning his legislation. He backs down when people rise to the occasion,” Peskin said, noting that progressive activists may have become complacent after a decade when progressives had a majority at the board. “It’s a big wake-up call for activists and everyday folks in San Francisco who have not had to go down to City Hall to stop bad things from happening in 10 years.”

Peskin doesn’t buy the arguments that Wiener’s politics are nuanced and hard to pin down, saying he predictably supports those with money and power and undermines the average citizen in just about every vote. “He’s fundamentally a very ideologically conservative person,” Peskin said. “He’s radical in his conservatism.”

RENTERS PLIGHT

Wiener is now in the middle of a fight that pits the progressives and the two-thirds of city residents who rent their housing against the homeowners and real estate interests that have long sought to make it easier to turn housing units into condos.

The bill that created this controversy, which Wiener co-sponsored with conservative Sup. Mark Farrell, is a one-time amnesty that would allow some 2,500 TIC units to bypass the city’s condo lottery (limited to 200 conversions a year) and to become condos. Wiener says it’s aimed at helping TIC owners stuck in limbo with mortgages they can’t refinance.

“In my view, we need housing stability for everyone, and that includes tenants and it includes homeowners,” Wiener said. “We’ve seen in the foreclosure crisis that tenants aren’t the only ones who can have unstable housing. And right now, we have many TIC owners who bought…thinking that it was going to take five-seven years to win the lottery because that’s how it used to be, but now it’s 15 or 20 years.”

That, of course, is because so many former rental units were turned into TICs that the conversion list keeps growing. When TICs become condos, the property becomes worth more and easier to refinance.

“The financing for TICs is worse than it’s ever been,” Wiener said, noting that many TIC owners are underwater. “So the people in the TICs are really hurting. And if they lose their TICs, it’s not like they’re going away, they’re going to compete for rental units.”

But San Francisco Tenants Union head Ted Gullicksen said the courts have steadily eroded San Francisco’s ability to safeguard rent control and prevent apartments from being turned into TICs and condos. “If we make it easy for them to become TICs, we will have lost the only weak defense we have against conversion,” he said.

Gullicksen said the one-time offer will just lead to more TICs — and more evictions. “They’re saying if the line gets too long, don’t worry, we’ll deal with it,” he explained.

Gullicksen also disputes the argument that financing for TIC is difficult. The market slowed down after the fiscal crisis of 2008, “but in the past 8-12 months, they have begun to skyrocket again,” he said.

Gullicksen acknowledged that Wiener has a history of supporting pro-tenant legislation, particularly during his time on the DCCC when tenant groups were at war with Wiener’s predecessor, Bevan Dufty, and then-Mayor Gavin Newsom. But he said that Wiener changed after progressives took over the DCCC and he prepared to run for supervisor in a district that has gentrified, largely because of apartments being converted to TICs and condos.

“He made the decision that he was not going to be with progressives and to ally himself with the conservatives, moderates, and real estate people,” Gullicksen said.

Wiener disputes the characterization, saying that he strongly supports rent control and tenants, even though he also supports TICs and other home ownership opportunities.

COURTING CONTROVERSY

A Guardian analysis of legislation from the past two years shows Sup. David Chiu edging out Wiener in total legislative initiatives, 153-119, with the rest of their colleagues in double digits. But while Chiu has authored more ordinances and charter amendments (49) than Wiener (33), it is Wiener that has taken on the toughest fights and found himself at the center of big controversies far more often.

“I enjoy policy and I like legislating. We have a limited time here at City Hall as members of the Board of Supervisors, and I think you have to take the bull by the horns and pursue the policies that you think are important to the city, so I started doing that pretty quickly after taking office,” Wiener said. “I also think you have to be willing to take risks, so I’ve been willing to take on legislation that maybe others wouldn’t touch, or that others thought was too hard.”

Radulovich noted: “He’s not a cautious legislator, but he is a careful legislator. He’s not afraid of starting a fight, particularly with progressives. A lot of progressives are like, ‘If Scott Wiener is for it then it must be bad.'”

Vaughan is one of those activists who said she’s eventually learned not to trust Wiener or his legislation: “We’ve been galvanized and we feel like we have to watch what he’s doing very carefully.”

Like many progressive activists, Radulovich said he likes Wiener and respects his political skills, but he doesn’t see Wiener as sharing his political values: “His agenda is much more pro-business than mine, more about promoting laissez faire capitalism.”

Rafael Mandelman, who was elected to the City College of San Francisco board last year after losing to Wiener in the D8 race two years earlier, said he has been impressed by his former adversary.

“It’s unquestionable that he’s super hard-working, super dedicated, probably the most effective member on the Board of Supervisors,” Mandelman said. “He takes on controversial issues, and in some ways he courts controversy, but he generally leave people with good feelings.”

Mandelman differs from Wiener politically on issues like CEQA reform and historic preservation standards. “On the other hand, he has taken some principled stands against some big players,” Mandelman said, citing Wiener’s battles against the Academy of Art on student housing and the Hospital Council on TIDF.

Wiener rejects the accusation that he’s not engaged enough with the community or his critics. “I think that’s made up. And really, it’s a different way of saying, ‘I don’t agree with your legislation,’ therefore I’m going to say you didn’t take enough input ahead of time,” Wiener said. “I’ve had legislation where I had more than a year’s worth of meetings with different stakeholders before I introduced it.”

“Even on the nudity legislation, I had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of communications with constituents before introducing it, between Facebook, email, on the street, in the cafes, talking with people on both sides. I know some folks say I should have had a town hall meeting on it, but that’s just one way of communicating with people,” Wiener said. “I’m communicating with constituents seven days a week, in many different ways. So I think that criticism is unfounded.”

TRANSIT AND NIGHTLIFE

Part of Wiener’s power comes from having carved out unique niches for himself, including in two realms not traditionally occupied by fiscal conservatives: public transit and nightlife issues.

“Scott Wiener has been a tireless champion of nightlife issues since the beginning. One of his very first actions in office was to call for an economic impact study to better understand the entertainment industry’s contribution to the City’s economy,” said Guy Carson, the owner of Cafe du Nord and a founding board member of the California Music and Culture Association.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum gives Wiener lots of unqualified credit for his leadership on transportation issues. “We’ve been really impressed with what a strong grasp he has of the city’s transportation needs, and he’s been willing to push in certain areas behind the scenes,” she said, contrasting the grandstanding that most politicians do on transit issues with Wiener’s more substantive position. “He comes in with a lot more policy understanding, and it’s clear he really rides Muni regularly.”

But even on transportation issues, some progressives fault Wiener. “We need to be really concerned about transit equity in this city, and that’s something I’d like to see more from him on,” Temprano said, calling on Wiener to show as much concerns for the needs of low-income communities that truly rely on Muni as he does with the needs of better-off Castro residents. “I’m always fighting with the MTA because they’re not doing a good enough job on Muni,” Wiener said. In fact, Wiener said he’s in contact with that supposedly independent agency almost every day, pushing them to make changes he wants: “To its credit, MTA does care about what the mayor and the supervisors think, and I give them a lot of credit for that because they could take a more blow-off kind of attitude with me, and I haven’t seen that, at least in my interactions with them.”

Wiener said his relationship with MTA head Reiskin is “very positive. I mean, I push him, but we have the kind of relationship where I can be very frank and tell him when I think he’s wrong, and he can be very frank and tell me when he thinks I’m wrong.” Reiskin agrees that his relationship with Wiener is a good one, because of Wiener’s hectoring as much as in spite of it. “My relationship with him is very good. He’s someone who really cares about the transportation system, particularly Muni, and he understands the importance of Muni to the city,” Reiskin said, praising Wiener for his willingness to get personally involved in the struggle. “He’s extended some political capital for it.”

Yet on the TIDF fight, the capital Wiener extended split the progressive movement and burnished his arguments that he’s independent from downtown, so the net result of that losing fight only served to strengthen Wiener politically. “There were no conversations on the front end, I can tell you that. It was sprung on us,” said Cohen, whose CCHO ended up partnering with the business community against transportation activists to defeat the measure. “It did not have to become as adversarial as it was and that was really disheartening. It’s hard to think that it wasn’t intentional.” Reiskin also said that issue was mishandled by his agency. “We failed in that process,” he said. “The fact that we’re pitting improving transportation against social services is not good.”

Yet both Wiener and Shahum cast it as a fight worth having. Wiener said they discussed dropping it when it was clear the votes weren’t there: “My gut was already telling me let’s do the vote, and she said, ‘You know, people need to say where they are on this.’ So we agreed to move it forward.”

And that was a vote he cited when I questioned him about his pro-business agenda. “You always have to be willing to disagree with your allies,” Wiener said. “So people say, ‘You always do what the Chamber of Commerce says,’ but that’s not true. I think I was number five on their scorecard this year because I supported CCA, I supported classifying banks as formula retail, and they scored on the TIDF.”

But Wiener denies there was any political calculation on the TIDF vote, and he cast that vote as a lesson in political organizing. “We have not been organized enough in term of building political power for pro-transit policies, whether it’s pedestrian safety or public transportation. We know that we’ve systematically underfunded Muni, we know that Muni does not do well in funding battles, it doesn’t have effective lobbying for it,” Wiener said.

“We had an all-star cast of public transit advocates up against the Chamber and it was a mismatch, so we need to build up much more institutional capacity for transit advocacy. That’s what we’re learning.”

Ed Lee’s State of the City: What evictions? What displacement?

Zelda Bronstein

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January 28, 2013

196

Ed Lee’s State of the City: What evictions? What displacement?

Mayor Ed Lee punctuated his State of the City speech with a nice little quip: “Every San Franciscan deserves a clean, safe place to call home.” I agree.

So why, in a speech lasting more than an hour, did the mayor not once mention that thousands of San Franciscans are facing the loss of their homes — and will be forced out of the city — because of the same policies that he’s proudly promoting?

These things are always self-congratualtory and full of the requisite bullshit. But Lee’s description of the State of the City was nothing more than a fantasy to the two-thirds of San Franciscans who live in rental housing, many of whom are living with an unacceptable level of insecurity. Much of the city’s rental stock — and the effectiveness of rent control — is at risk at speculators are buying up properties, tossing the tenants out with the Ellis Act, and converting them to tenancies in common. This is a massive civic crisis, brought on in part by the boom in tech jobs and the consequent boom in high-paid young people who want to live in a city that has virtually no vacant housing.

We saw this before, under Mayor Willie Brown; we called it the Economic Cleansing of San Francisco. It was awful, and it’s happening again.

But you wouldn’t know that to hear the mayor completely ignore the issue.

Oh, Lee gave it a toss-off line; gee, the rent is too high, but we can’t ignore the laws of supply and demand. Gee, we’re going to build 45,000 new housing units, and that will fix everything.

But Lee, of all people, ought to know that housing in San Francisco has never followed the laws of supply and demand. This is a highly irregular market, because demand is essentially unlimited. Housing fills us as fast as you build it. And none of the new housing that’s currently under construction or in the pipeline will be affordable to current SF residents who live in rent-controlled units and are at risk for eviction.

When you’re evicted under the Ellis Act in San Francisco today, to make room for someone with more money, you wind up having to leave the city. That’s the bottom line. And everywhere you turn, tenants are facing that ugly prospect.

The mayor spent much of his time talking about jobs. That’s fine; he’s proud that the unemployment rate in the city has fallen to 6.5 percent, but he insists he won’t rest until everyone has a job. Actually, most economists would say that’s impossible; capitalism, by its nature, exists with a structural unemployment rate that rarely falls below 4 percent. In fact, 4 percent is generally considered “full employment.”

More important, the overall rate is 6.5 percent, but it’s way higher for people without college degrees, for youth, and for African Americans. (It’s above 50 percent for transgender people.) The tech boom isn’t providing jobs for all of the unemployed current San Francisco residents; a lot of the jobs are going to people who don’t live here and are moving here for employment. They are putting pressure on the existing housing stock. That always leads to displacement.

None of this is to say that tech jobs are bad or that we shouldn’t have companies that pay high wages locate in San Francisco. What it means is that the city first has to protect its existing vulnerable populations — and that’s not happening.

I would encourage Mayor Lee to talk to the Housing Rights Committee, or the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, or any of the other tenant lawyers who are fighting desperately every day to state off evictions. He’d get a very different picture of the state of the city.

New steps

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January 16, 2013

0

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER/DANCE Choreographer Mary Armentrout’s itinerant, site-specific performance installation, reveries and elegies, passed through CounterPULSE last weekend. A post-solstice meditation on dislocation and flux, it was also the harbinger of a striking new season at the SOMA performance incubator. In fact, reveries and elegies, true to its theme of displacement, can be considered the odd one out among programming whose defining structure is the duet.

A broad range of interpretation and subversion of that basic form comprises CounterPULSE’s Queer Series, running January through March and showcasing new work from artists as diverse and far-flung as New York’s Faye Driscoll, the Minneapolis-based BodyCartography Project, San Francisco’s Annie Danger, Berlin-based American Jeremy Wade, and conjoined local choreographic dynamo Jarry (aka Jesse Hewit and Laura Arrington).

If you’ve followed the vicissitudes of programming at CounterPULSE even intermittently, a glance at this year’s calendar prompts a double take for the careful concentration of work and the thematic consistency it evinces, in addition to its impressive international lineup. The rigorous queering of the duet structure underlined by the series, for instance, comes further elaborated through complimentary work like DavEnd’s well-received 2012 debut, F.A.G.G.O.T.S.: the Musical! (which turns on a duet of sorts with a wall mirror) as well as some rich auxiliary events.

The latter include a talk on gender by Judith Butler (on February 16) and, on February 28 (the eve of Danger’s genuflection to sexual healing and empowerment, The Great Church of the Holy Fuck), a screening of Community Action Center (2010), the aesthetically and politically astute, 69-minute, queer, trans, women-centered celebration/subversion of 1970s porn by A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner. (That program includes a post-screening Q&A with Steiner, whose film was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art).

The duet form (and the act of reimagining it) is an apt metaphor for the programming model behind the season too, which represents something of a departure from business as usual.

CounterPULSE’s Julie Phelps, central in the development of the season and currently serving as interim artistic and executive director for Jessica Robinson Love (who is on sabbatical), explained that the Queer Series and the season as a whole had emerged from some serious rethinking at the organizational level.

“We were sort of primed to embark on this new season, which [comes directly] after our strategic planning process, where we really identified who we are, how we do what we do, and what limits we still have on our impact.”

Phelps says one limit they identified was a single-minded commitment to the bottom line that was keeping certain kinds of work almost permanently out of reach — for example, much work by touring artists from out of the state or country, for which there is relatively little foundational money available for tapping.

“We’re actually, financially, a very conservative organization,” says Phelps, “which has brought with it a lot of stability — very important especially in the young years of an organization, but ultimately stopping us from taking risk on vision. We were always on a break-even model. Either it needs to be some mix of foundation support or some other kind of funding with some tickets sales. The bottom line always has to equal zero. So we’ve been pushing ourselves to think bigger about the types of risks that we can take.”

That’s far from inviting recklessness, Phelps stresses, but it does mean modifying notions of financial success and failure, bringing them in line with an artistic spirit of experimentation and what might be thought of as the useful flop.

“Actually, failure is just as valid a result as success,” says Phelps. “When we had been building failure out of every income model we had, we’d also been building out risk from some of the artistic selections, and from the way we were making artistic selections. We’ve really only just recently moved into curating in the first place. Before we were like, we have a space, if you want to do a show, come ask us and we’ll work it out. [In this] season, every artist was someone we approached and worked with, found out ways that they could intersect with CounterPULSE, what was financially viable for us and for them, what was artistically interesting for us and for them — actually build something from the inside out, instead of the outside in.”

Despite the considerate design in the program, Phelps calls it more art than science and insists it’s all “still a very organic process,” noting that the queer label is at least partly one of sheer convenience.

“I mean, ‘queer’ is basically the only banner that you could fly over that season, and only because it is so indistinct — because actually each of these works is hugely different. So there’s still a patchwork element to it, but it’s a little bit more deliberate [than usual],” she explains, laughing at the metaphor carrying her away. “At least the patches were picked out, and the fabric was cut to shape before they were added to the quilt this time.” *

www.counterpulse.org

Editor’s notes

Andrew Lam

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January 8, 2013

12

tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITOR’S NOTES Everybody’s talking about the new data on the price of housing in San Francisco, which is in part because everybody talks about the price of housing in San Francisco anyway and in part because the figures are just so alarming. The figures show that the median rent in San Francisco is $3,100 a month — and while it’s hard to know exactly what that means, since some three-bedroom and larger units are in the mix, most San Francisco rentals are smaller, and I’m hearing tell of people paying more than $2,000 for a studio.

Insane. This hurts everyone, particularly small businesses. The much-reviled payroll tax doesn’t really affect the bottom lines of most businesses, but the cost of housing absolutely does, since it drives up the cost of employing people. High rents are way worse for business than high taxes. I don’t get why all the downtown types refuse to see that.

At any rate, I was listening to KQED’s Forum this morning, and the guests, including an economist from Trulia, the real-estate analysis outfit, kept talking about the “healthy” housing market. Again: Insane. This housing market is about as unhealthy as any capitalist market anywhere in the country. It’s increasing the wealth gap, impoverishing thousands, forcing vast amounts of displacement and making the city less diverse. In what economic universe is that “healthy?”

When I write about this sort of stuff, my beloved trolls all say that’s just how markets work and that any form of regulation (say, rent controls on vacant apartments) just makes things worse. (Not true — see Berkeley in the 1980s.) But it all raises a fun question, and gives me a chance to make a very immodest proposal that is no more outrageous than the existing situation for people who want to live in San Francisco.

Maybe we should take housing in this city out of the private market entirely, regulate it like a public utility — and assign it by seniority.

Remember the college housing lottery? First year, you got stuck with a small dorm room, just like everyone else. You lived with it, and with the roommates they assigned you; rich student, poor student, we all lived in the same place under the same conditions.

Sophomores had a little more choice, and by senior year you could pick the best housing on campus. Nobody complained about unfairness; that’s just how the deal worked.

So imagine if everyone who first arrives in San Francisco (or graduates here and enters the job market) had to live in a small SRO or mini-studio. Twitter executive, nonprofit worker, unemployed person — all of us start out with the same housing conditions.

After you’ve stuck around a while, demonstrating a commitment to the community, you move up — say, after five years you get a one-bedroom apartment, after ten you get a flat, and after 20 years you get a house of your own. People who start families would get more space, but on the same type of schedule. Everyone pays the same monthly rent for the same size place, and eventually, after time, vests into home equity.

What should cities encourage? Stability, community involvement, respect for elders … all of those things fit into this plan. People who might otherwise never meet each other would be thrown into living in the same places; high-paid professionals would learn what life was like for working stiffs (and vice versa).

It’s an eminently fair way of allocating a scarce resource. Anyone have a better idea?

Measuring displacement

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December 26, 2012

116

EDITORIAL You can’t build much of anything substantive in San Francisco without doing an environmental impact report. You can’t pass significant legislation without doing an economic impact report. But the most important issue facing San Francisco today is largely ignored by those studies — and is only rarely even discussed as part of the city’s economic development and planning policies.

At a press conference and rally Dec. 19, housing activists decried the huge upswing in evictions in San Francisco this year. At least 26 buildings are facing Ellis Act evictions — where every tenant must go so the landlord can sell the place vacant — “and those are just the ones we know about because a tenant has sought help,” said Housing Rights Committee organizer Tommi Avicolli Mecca.

In every case, longtime San Franciscans — many of them low-income, disabled, families, or people of color — are being displaced from their homes, and probably from the city. Nobody at City Hall even measures the full numbers year by year, but the Tenants Union reports that Ellis Act evictions have tripled since 2011.

These aren’t just random acts by individual property owners; they’re part of a much larger trend created by city policies. And they ought to be tracked, measures — and mitigated — the same way environmental or economic impacts are.

Let’s call it a Displacement Impact Report.

The outline could be exactly the same as an EIR. A designated city official, either in the City Planning Department or working for the city’s economist, would analyze every piece of legislation and every proposed development of more than a certain size to determine if it “could lead to significant displacement of existing San Francisco residents.” If the answer is no, the project or bill gets a green light to move forward; if the answer is yes, the sponsor, or the city, has to prepare a DIR.

A DIR would look, for example, at the impact the Twitter tax break would have on Ellis Act evictions. Not an impossible task at all — environmental and economic consultants do this sort of work all the time. You look at how many jobs the tax break will create, how many of those jobs will go to people who are not current SF residents, how much they’ll be paid — and what the residential vacancy rate is for apartments and houses in the range they can afford. Add into the mix current plans for housing construction in that range, and plans for low-income housing for people who might be displaced.

Historical data could easily create models for how many new highly paid employees it takes to create one individual or family displacement. It would be at least as accurate as a lot of the economic and environmental models used every day in city and regional planning agencies.

If an environmental impact report turns up significant and unavoidable effects, the project sponsor is required to look at mitigations — and decision-makers can be held accountable for whether that happens. For example, a tax break that is expected to lead to the displacement of 50 low-income San Franciscans would have to be accompanied by the construction of 50 new permanently affordable rental units, or the creation of rent subsidies adequate to protect the vulnerable populations facing the loss of their homes.

Politicians and business leaders routinely complain that some legislation will lead to job losses — but the loss of people’s homes isn’t in the mix. It should be.

Someone on the Board of Supervisors ought to draft and introduce a bill adding DIRs to the list of requirements before major policy and development changes are approved. It could be the most important bill of 2013.

Was it a great year?

Zelda Bronstein

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December 19, 2012

149

At noon Dec. 19, a group of about 50 housing activists led by the Housing Rights Committee gathered at 18th and Castro, next to the giant Shopping Season Tree, to discuss the wave of evictions tenants are facing at the end of 2012. Tommi Avicolli Mecca held up a list of 26 buildings that are currently being clear of tenants under the Ellis Act, a state law that allows landlords to evict all their tenants and sell the property as a single-family home or tenancies in common. With him was a long line of tenants who are facing holiday homelessness thanks to landlord greed.

“There are too many tenants being evicted to fit in front of the tree,” he said.

We heard story after story: A man living with AIDS facing the loss of his home after 17 years. A family being forced out after 18 years. Seniors, kids, disabled people … all of them almost certainly displaced from San Francisco.

“San Francisco is becoming a city of the rich, and we are being pushed aside,” said Lisa Thornton, who works at Rainbow Grocery and is losing her home.

“This,” Mecca said, “is an epidemic of evictions.”

And we all know why: As the second tech boom roars in to San Francisco, high-paid young workers are able to afford to buy TICs or single-family homes, and long-term rent-control-protected tenants simply can’t compete. It’s not a pretty pciture.

So I almost barfed when I say Randy Shaw’s glowing paen to Mayor Ed Lee. “San Francisco had one of its greatest years in 2012, as the city’s job growth and vibrancy outpaced nearly everywhere else,” he wrote.

Oh, gee, he says, there are some problems:

Few want San Francisco to become a city where only the rich and subsidized poor can live. But these same fears were felt in the 1980’s. When I was moving to San Francisco in 1979, the lines for vacant apartments were just as long and the competition for vacant units as fierce as what we read about in 2012. We couldn’t believe we had to pay $375 for a Mission one bedroom apartment, a rate that is less than half the cost of an SRO room without private bathroom today. San Francisco has long been an expensive city that keeps getting pricier.

So what — because we were worried about displacement in the 1980s means we shouldn’t be worried today? Those worries were real — gentrification of San Francisco neighborhoods has been rampant for decades. It’s changed the city, for the worse.

In the 1980s, Shaw was part of a broad coalition that fought to get rent control laws and eviction protections and limits on condo conversions. Now he’s acting as if none of that was worth the fight, as if protecting affordable housing wasn’t, and isn’t, the most critical issue in the city today.

A great year? Fantastic vibrancy and job growth? Not if you’re one of the growing numbers of people who are losing their homes to Ed Lee’s vision of economic development.

Freedom fighter: SF underground art icon Xara Thustra

Sue Vaughan

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December 5, 2012

0

Freedom fighter: SF underground art icon Xara Thustra

Since the late 1990s, Xara Thustra’s art has been inseparable from resistance and community in San Francisco, providing many of the signature visual images of the anti-displacement and anti-war struggles of the era. His work first appeared as graffiti in the streets of the city during the height of the first dot-com boom and soon grew to include artistic collaboration with and in support of neighborhood organizations, like the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition and the Coalition on Homelessness.

As his work evolved over time from agitprop street art into elaborate performance and filmmaking, Xara has collaborated with countless others on many now-legendary art events like the Anti-Capitalist Fashion Show, the 949 Market Squat, and the band Manhater, while contributing stunning murals to Clarion Alley Mural Project and the Mission Neighborhood Health Center (with Kyle Ranson). Xara appeared in the 2002 Bay Area Now show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but has since resisted overtures from the art world, and preferred to instead make work in spaces like Adobe Books, Needles and Pens, and, still, in the streets.

Thu/6 at a presentation of new work at Needles and Pens, Xara and friends will celebrate the release of the self-published, 500-page book, Friendship Between Artists is an Equation of Love and Survival. It’s an epic photo documentation of the past 15 years of his work and collaborations in San Francisco.
Note: this interview took place between Erick Lyle (in Brooklyn) and Xara Thustra (in the Redstone Building) over Skype …

San Francisco Bay Guardian So, let’s talk about the book. I’ve read it twice this week — two four-hour sessions, straight through. Its pretty heavy shit.

Xara Thustra It’s deep. The book is deep.

SFBG As long as we’ve known each other, you’ve always been pretty quick to move on to the next thing. There’s a lot of self-reinvention in your work, not a lot of looking backward. I’m curious why it was then that you wanted to make this retrospective book now and bring all this material together from the past 15 years?

XT Well, it really doesn’t have much to do with the public. I had a pile of documentation that I had collected by throwing things that were mine into a box. I don’t know how much I really want to say about it in an article but the reality of it was that I was evicted about five times, and I kept moving and just throwing stuff in a box, and the box kept coming with me. That’s the stuff that didn’t get thrown out, those pictures.

Mostly, for me, though, it was that if I didn’t make a book out of that stuff then no one would know I did it, because, like you said, I keep moving on.

SFBG Was this the stuff you most wanted to intentionally save, or just what happened to be left over when you had a chance to look at it all?

XT This was just stuff that was saved, period. A lot of stuff was not saved. It’s interesting because [the book] seems like the whole ball of wax, but it really just is the cherries of individual moments — some of the nicer stuff to look at during those happenings. But, really, I’m not very focused on the book right now. I’m working on art show for the book release and I’m more interested in the art show right now.

SFBG OK. What is the art show at Needles and Pens about, then? How does that material for the book release show relate to the book?

XT The book is giving me footing to stand on to continue to speak to the public. Hopefully it creates a platform to show people that I am conscientious about my work and that it’s a daily practice. The residue of that daily practice is in visual form.

For Needles and Pens, I’m working on something about the Valencia Street corridor and its relationship to death from poverty in the streets. That’s the art show I’m working on.

SFBG That’s mostly what I think about these days when I am on Valencia Street. I wonder how you’re approaching that.

XT Well, jeez! [Laughs.] I don’t want to give the show away! That is the backstory of the show, and I just blurted that out. I don’t normally provide even that much information. But I’ll say their relationship will be seen through sugar coating and pretty colors [laughs].

SFBG It seems to me that now more than ever, public streets in SF really are a battleground. That’s something you and I have related to for the last 15 years in what we do. This book starts with pictures of the streets, like establishing shots in a movie, and the narrative that follows threads in and out of the streets. The things you see in the interiors are always situated specifically in the context of this city and, particularly, its streets: homeless guys and cops harassing them and graffiti and protests.

But the streets themselves feel a lot different to me now than when you started out doing work in the streets. Art in the streets is different, too. I wonder what your perspective is on how the streets feel now?

XT I would say I am not necessarily relating to the streets but more like being the streets. [Repeats like a mantra.] Being the streets, being the streets, being the streets … not that you were saying anything much contradictory to that. But, I am only looking at reality and the streets, how they are right in front of me in the present and not in relationship to anything.

Every street in SF is pretty different in a lot of ways. There are so many different realities in SF. But if we want to talk about the bougie rich folks, walking all over people — that’s happening on a lot of streets. The number of streets where that is happening has risen, and the number of streets where there’s good culture … Well, I can’t just say “good culture.” But as for culture that is deeply related to art, and the soul, and history, and kids, and love, and all that shit — yeah, those streets are dwindling.

I have to give it to the people who are able to utilize the Valencia corridor for their eating places. They are healthy, good-looking people. You can’t argue that! They’ve got the teeth and all that shit. They look great! [Laughs.] So you can’t really say nothing bad about them.

SFBG Yeah, but I guess I’m thinking about how it feels different to even put art in the streets now than it did during the first dot-com boom.

XT The demographics of the audience have switched so much to just being privileged people, period. When you are showing stuff to privileged people, they already have so much stuff to look at, so much stuff to choose from and their relationship to it is not the give and take it could be. It’s seen through a commercial lens.

Here’s one way to explain it: if I write the words “None Profit” on a wall in SF, it could easily be seen to be about folks here getting rich and getting money but still not profiting in some way. You’d be making a commentary. Write “None Profit” on the wall in St. Louis or Philadelphia and people walk by and feel like, “Yeah, no shit. Why you shitting on me?” The same words mean different things to different audiences.

SFBG The book features photos of performance in the streets, too. And in empty lots, in squatted abandoned buildings. Or smashed into a corner at Adobe Books — even crammed into a hallway in a house. In some ways, the book’s narrative is to me almost about this search for space in the city. It’s not necessarily a literal search for space, because we could, I suppose, be doing events any night of the week in a bar or something like that.

Even in the Bay Area, there is still space, per se. But it’s a search for a freer space. A non-commodified, less controlled space where perhaps we could be our true, authentic selves. What then is the relationship to this search for space in your work?

XT What’s my relationship to space? I could go for a lot of space! [Laughs.] Space that is lawless and fun and freedom-oriented and sustainable and nice! It’s just such an enormous issue. You and I ran in squats together to try to envision what we though would bring about community. Why did we have to squat a building to get that? It’s just ridiculous.

SFBG I think it’s been maybe 10 years since we sat down and did an interview like this together. At that time it seemed like you were moving past graffiti being your main focus. You were about to appear in the Yerba Buena Now show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but you were not excited about that either. You weren’t feeling like the museum was a real place to make art, and were wondering what for you is a good place for art.

Again, there is the search for a specific type of space. How are you feeling about that search for the right spaces to make art in today?

XT Well, there’s a lot in there, but first of all, graffiti has never NOT been my focus. It’s actually unfortunate how ridiculous of a main focus it has been for me. It’s like the only thing there is — being able to publicly express yourself freely. And I’m not saying that’s all that graffiti is. Sure, you’re taking advantage of people and being a vandal a little, too. But it also relates to what you are saying about space, because graffiti is about space.

SFBG Do you still get offers from museums or more traditional art world venues?

XT Not much right now. I’m fixing to try to get more offers by pushing in that community a little bit. If anybody wants to know, its basically true that if people call you and you don’t answer, and then people call and you tell them to go fuck themselves or whatever, and then they stop calling. So, yeah, I’m not getting too many offers!

SFBG I’m wondering, if you’re more interested now than you once were in doing shows in those environments, is it because there are different things you feel you can say there than, say, in the streets? What would you be looking to do?

XT I’m just trying to step up. In terms and space and the artwork I am interested in doing, I’ll take any stage I can get right now. Right now, I have this show at Needles and Pens and I ask myself first what is interesting to say in that space, and that’s what I always ask myself.

SFBG Where did the title of the book [Friendship Between Artists is an Equation of Love and Survival] come from?

XT I went and showed the book to my friend, Peter Plate, who is a writer and that’s the title he came up with. It’s a romantic title. There are a lot of ways to relate to it but its important to say that a lot of people’s energy and hard work went into the book. Other people’s photographs, too. The majority of the book, I have something to do with it in some manner, but people have been relating to it in their own personal ways and that’s nice.

SFBG And there are people in there that have since died. It’s a lot.

XT Yeah, that’s true. There is a storyline to it in that way, too.

SFBG One thing I got out of it, was that it seemed that as the narrative of the book progresses, the art moves away from being in support of protest or being literally protest art, and moves into efforts to instead embody a different, freer world.

XT Yeah, I think you’ve said it really well. It’s not a finished conclusion of mine, or anything. But just in terms of time and energy, if I’m going to spend my time and energy fucking with people for change, I think that’s the way to go. But trying to embody freedom and learn how to be healthy and enjoy your mental state on a daily basis … that still goes hand in hand with trying to support organizations and people that are doing the logistical paperwork to fight the system.

SFBG The book’s title, the riff on love and survival, makes me think about how you’ve always been somewhat known for serving meals at your shows. When we were having that talk about Yerba Buena, I remember you were upset then because you wanted to do a big feeding of free food in the museum and they were not interested in allowing that at all. What is the importance of free food in your work?

XT [Laughs.] Uh, it’s actually, like, this cultural thing that people have been doing for years that has been lost on whatever the culture is right now. If you really want people to come and have a good time, there should be dinner there. It creates a vibe, where everybody is eating food and they’re eating the same food and they have different conversation relating to that. It creates warmth.

These days in this city that has shifted, as well, because free food is not really a necessity for people who are coming out to art shows or going to parties or whatever. But it still exists in my work.

SFBG Speaking of the changing demographics in the streets and at art shows, then, let’s talk about Clarion Alley. The Clarion Alley Mural Project just had its 20th anniversary. I think many of us have been thinking about the weird way that murals we have done there as a community to celebrate our lives and community and resistance have ironically ended up being so well-loved and such an attraction to the very people who are moving here to displace us.

It’s something people are starting to think about but it seems like no one really knows what to do about it. Someone told me you suggested that we actually just black out the murals in the alley in protest. I wanted to ask you about that.

XT Yeah, for me, I say buff it. Period. Just drop it. It’s really sad, it’s a terrible way to look at it, and it would be a lot to walk away from, to walk away from those murals. But who knows? It wouldn’t be the worst idea to say something like that, to say that as a group and as a community, we should buff that shit and split and move somewhere else. If we’re not having a conversation about it, then the conversation is just being run by other people, right?

SFBG Yeah. I can see that. It seems nihilistic to me to just self-erase like that, though. On the other hand, the murals themselves have become almost strictly commemorative.

XT Yeah, what happened at the anniversary party wasn’t a celebration of a community that lives here at all. This year it was part of a funeral. People come there to see their folks and relate to the dead. That’s no big deal. We’re all good hard-living people and we’ve moved on and we’re doing interesting shit. But it might not be right here in this neighborhood or within the city walls even right now. It’s in the cracks and on the edges for now. But we’ll see. Personally, I’m looking for Ditter to come out!

SFBG Ditter? What’s that?

XT Ditter! The thing that’s going to replace Twitter! Because you know something’s going to come, right? They think it won’t, but we saw a lot of suckers straight up sad last time this shit crashed. [Laughs.] The next time the crash comes, I just hope it’s not too hard, because all these healthy, good-looking people are basically just MEAT, walking around! Meat! Better hope that economy stays up, y’all!

SFBG [Laughs.] Oh shit! The free food at Xara’s show … “IT’S PEOPLE!” Well, here’s to Ditter … and whatever is next!

Check out Erick Lyle’s review of Friendship Between Artists here.

XARA THUSTRA BOOK RELEASE AND SOLO SHOW
Thu/6, 7-9pm, free
Needles and Pens
3252 16th St., SF
www.needles-pens.com

Twitter, tax breaks and the New York Times

Zelda Bronstein

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December 3, 2012

86

Twitter, tax breaks and the New York Times

Just about everyone who watches news media is calling it the Story of the Week, and it’s probably going to be one of the top stories of the year, my (informal) nominee for a Pulitzer: Louise Story at the New York Times exposes how corporate America shakes down state and local governments — who often get little in return. The biggest perp over the years has been the automotive industry, which Story says first perfected this kind of blackmail (though Southern Pacific Railroad did pretty well in its day). But now just about every big company tries to demand a tax break or threatens to leave town.

In in the end, there’s no evidence that tax breaks, or the lack of tax breaks, is the most important factor in corporate relocations. There’s even less evidence that all these billions of dollars in public money actually help create jobs, pay for themselves, or are the best way to invest in economic development:

One corporate executive, Donald J. Hall Jr. of Hallmark, thinks business subsidies are hurting his hometown, Kansas City, Mo., by diverting money from public education. “It’s really not creating new jobs,” Mr. Hall said. “It’s motivated by politicians who want to claim they have brought new jobs into their state.”

It’s hard to imagine any sane person reading all the way through the story and now wanting to feel like this poor guy:

“I just shake my head every time it happens, it just gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” said Sean O’Byrne, the vice president of the Downtown Council of Kansas City. “It sounds like I’m talking myself out of a job, but there ought to be a law against what I’m doing.”

Story even weighs in on San Francisco’s deal with Twitter, which, she notes, was hardly a struggling startup at the time:

Twitter was not short on money — it soon received a $300 million investment from a Saudi prince and $800 million from a private consortium. The two received Twitter equity, but San Francisco got a different sort of deal. The city exempted Twitter from what could total $22 million in payroll taxes, and the company agreed to stay put. The city estimates that Twitter’s work force could grow to 2,600 employees, although the company made no such promise. … Like many places, San Francisco has been cutting its budget. Public parks have lost about $12 million in recent years, though workers at Twitter will not lack for greenery. The company’s plush new office has a rooftop garden with great views and amenities. Enjoying the perks, one employee sent out a tweet: “Tanned on Twitter’s new roof deck this morning as some dude served me smoothie shots. This is real life?”

Randy Shaw, who loves and worships Twitter and the tax break it demanded, takes the Times to task on this section, arguing that Story got the deal wrong. Actually, neither of them has the true story — what Twitter was most freaked about was the prospect that the city’s payroll tax might apply to the huge wealth in stock options it will be dispensing when it goes public. That’s about a $40 million tax break.

So what if the city just said that it wasn’t going to tax stock options as payroll? Wouldn’t that have satisfied Twitter — without the city giving up payroll taxes on a large swath of mid-Market and surrounding areas? Could we instead have used some of that payroll tax money to protect the vulnerable small businesses that are getting forced out by the Twitter tech boom?

In the end, considering the pluses and minuses (displacement of existing small businesses and their jobs is a minus), will this dead really help create net new jobs for unemployed San Franciscans? (At least automotive manufacturing jobs are unionized and people without advanced degrees can qualify.)

I bet when the numbers are all crunched a decade from now, we’ll learn that this local tax break, like the others Story discusses, did nothing good for San Francisco.

The fallout from Twitter continues

Zelda Bronstein

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November 9, 2012

80

San Francisco has never been able to do big-scale economic redevelopment without displacement of existing residents and businesses, and the “revitalization” of mid-Market is turning out to be another case in point. Rents are going up all over the neighborhood (as well as other parts of Market Street) as the second tech boom roars into San Francisco. And now it’s having an impact on a community-based theater-development plan — and potentially on even the more established theaters in the area.

According to J.K. Dineen (the best real-estate reporter in town) at the Business Times, a proposal by the North of Market Neighborhood Improvement Corp. and American Conservatory Theater to turn a stretch of boarded-up storefronts into an arts and performance center with housing and retail is falling apart — because one of the property owners has decided that the parcel is too valuable now.

You can’t get the whole article without subscribing (which I do, mostly to read Dineen’s stuff), but the summary is here.

Basically, a Texas landlord was willing to sell the property a year ago at a price the folks at ACT could afford — but now that the Twitter tax break has driven up real-estate values, the Lone Star Fund is having second thoughts and has dropped out of negotiations. So a plan that Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Jane Kim were supporting that had the potential to do something good that wasn’t just tech jobs in Mid-Market isn’t going to happen.

The director of ACT is nervous:

In a letter to Mayor Lee, A.C.T. Executive Director Ellen Richard said she is worried that as companies such as Twitter, Square and Dolby relocate to Mid-Market, the arts groups that have long been housed in the neighborhood will be priced out. “If a sizable organization like the A.C.T. can’t afford these new market rents, then what chances do smaller organizations have?”

Not much.

Vote early and often

Zelda Bronstein

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November 6, 2012

1

The most expensive, ugliest, longest and most money-dominated election in my memory is finally winding down, and unless something really weird happens, Obama’s going to win another term. It’s likely the Democrats will control the Senate and the GOP will retain a narrow edge in the house, meaning four more years of gridlock (and possibly the end of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s career).

But the real message will be the role of big money — not just ordinary big money, but billionaire money — in California and San Francisco elections.

The state ballot has become a billionaire playground, with four of the ten initiatives created, written, put on the ballot and funded by stinking rich individuals who have their own personal and political agendas. In San Francisco, billionaires Ron Conway and Thomas Coates are trying to buy the District 5 election. An Arizona group linked to the Koch brothers is trying to shut down Prop. 30 (and leave the state in fiscal disaster).

And I’ve never seen as much real-estate money go into one supervisorial district.

We know both presidential campaigns are billion-dollar operations, and a lot of the same bad money is going into each of them. But on the local level, it’s a very different situation. There’s a concerted campaign here to drive progressives out of local office and install people more friendly to landlords and developers — at a time when the city’s going to be facing the greatest displacement pressure since the first dot-com boom. You don’t see the Association of Realtors putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into local races very often; there’s an opportunity here and they see it and they want to weaken tenant protections so they can make more money.

One of the best arguments in favor of district elections is that money doesn’t necessarily buy electoral success. In a district with roughly 30,000 voters, it’s possible to practice old-fashioned grassroots retail politics, to win by knocking on doors and going to house parties and meeting people. It’s not all about TV ads. And if that holds up with this election, Sup. Eric Mar — with a far superior field operation — will survive the blistering assault he’s under in District 1. If David Lee — who has taken the Mitt Romney approach and refused to speak to reporters (they might ask him a question or two about his inaccurate campaign dirt) — wins, it will be the greatest blow to democracy in San Francisco that we’ve seen in years.

On the other hand, if the D1 voters reject all that money and sleaze and Mar wins — and if the District 5 voters reject the billionaire money and someone other than London Breed wins — San Francisco will be sending a profound message: We don’t want your dirty money here, and our votes are not for sale.

Polls are open until 8. Vote early and often.

Economic cleansing, part two

Andrew Lam

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October 30, 2012

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EDITORIAL Over the next two years, tens of thousands of San Franciscans will face the loss of their homes. If the current tech boom is anything like the last one, the impact on the city will be the economic equivalent of a massive earthquake, with displacement transforming entire neighborhoods and low-income tenants, artists, writers, musicians, small merchants, cheap restaurants, and nonprofits getting chucked aside to make way for an influx of wealthier people and the businesses that serve them.

That’s why the supervisorial races are so critically important — and why groups like the Association of Realtors, which wants to limit tenant protections, is throwing such a huge amount of money into two district races.

San Francisco in the late 1990s was a terrible place for anyone who wasn’t making a lot of money. Housing prices quadrupled in just a few years. Evictions doubled and tripled as dot-com money flowed in and young white people with pockets full of cash forced older, low-income people out of “hip” neighborhoods like the Mission, Soma and Bernal Heights. Families were driven out of town. Community-serving businesses and nonprofits were displaced as landlords sought higher-end tech companies who paid wildly inflated commercial rents. In a famous essay, writer Paulina Borsook denounced “how the Internet is ruing San Francisco.”

We called it “economic cleansing.” And it’s starting to happen again.

When reporters talk about candidates like David Lee, who’s challenging Sup. Eric Mar in district 1, supporting “rent control,” they’re missing the point. Nobody running for office in this city is going to call for a repeal of the city’s weak rent-stabilization law. Even the realtors aren’t talking about that.

And for good reason: Rent control only applies to units built before 1979 and applies only to the current occupant. Once the place is vacated, for whatever reason, rents can go up to market rate. And market rate in this city is far beyond what most people who work in San Francisco can pay.

Meanwhile, it’s perfectly legal under state law for a landlord to clear every tenant out of a multi-unit building and sell the place to buyers who want tenancies in common — a backdoor way of doing a condo conversion. It’s the worst kind of class struggle, often pitting working-class renters against somewhat better-off people who want to buy but can’t afford a single-family home.

So rent control isn’t the issue; it’s eviction protections, condo conversion limits, rent subsidies, affordable housing funding, taxes and fees that discourage speculation, and other policy measures that seek to protect and preserve vulnerable communities — before allowing any new development.

Mayor Ed Lee has made it clear whose side he’s on in this coming battle for the city’s future. He’s about bringing in tech companies, cutting their taxes, and hell with the consequences. He’s doing it in the name of “jobs,” although seriously: How many unemployed young people in Southeast San Francisco who lack college degrees is Twitter going to hire? And what exactly are the new tech giants doing to help the public schools and City College? (Very, very little).

No, Lee’s creating jobs for people who don’t live here, who will force out people who do. Just as his old pal Willie Brown did during the last boom.

And the only possible check is a progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors that can attempt to control, at least a little bit, the insanity of the next gold rush and make sure that there’s still at least some chance for an economically diverse San Francisco.

The realtors have poured close to $100,000 into Districts 1 and 5, supporting David Lee in D1 and London Breed in D5. The Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth, a real-estate industry front group, has spent another $68,000 helping Lee. The people who stand to make the most off a real-estate boom that will hurt the poor, the seniors, and the working class have made it clear where they stand.

Remember that when you vote Nov. 6.

SF Stories: Tiny

Andrew Lam

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October 16, 2012

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46TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL I have a Vision..(Too!)

of poor people-led revolutions and clan mothers wit solutions including the many colored, many spirited, humble people who still remain in San Francisco even though we are systematically incarcerated, profiled, shot or just hated Used by akkkademic institutions, Nonprofiteering, complex over-funded government collusions — From gang ijunctions to sit-lie laws —

Arresting poor folks of color for no just cause

From Ambassador security guards to Stop ‘ n’ Frisk-

using code words like”cleaning up streets”

so frisko is only for the white ‘ n’ Rich The Afrikan population Out-migration caused by Negro Removal, Redlining, Re-Devil-opment and Lennar displacement La Raza en la mission replaced, displaced by condominiums and Eastern Neighborhood Plans, making room for wheatgrass juice and gourmet coffe stands-

And then let’s go back to the Original removal — !st Peoples of the Ohlone Nation — rarely remembered, considered, spoken about or even named..

Caring for Pachamama, mother Earth in a good way, by the teachings of our ancestors every day

So where does this leave us folx who refuse to be cleaned out, incarcerated, profiled or Wheat-grasserated…

We still here, aqui estamos y no nos vamos —

You can’t Frisk, me, Injunct me or incarcerate me cuz let me be clear.

I am staying in my hood, on my corner

and gonna stay seated in my newly gentrifuked park

.. and to Google buses, condominium, devil-opers and un-conscous new-comers,

we will be a thorn in your side for life and up-end your corporate, money-driven hustle

with our feet, our love, our actions …and our ancestors at our side…

“Where we supposed to go, us po’ folks born here, raised here?” said Vietnam vet, disabled, poverty skola and panhandler reporter at POOR magazine, Papa Bear, arrested three times in one day under Sit-lie. “Going to Hell,” thats my vision (of the city) — when they killed the black community — the soul of this city was gone,” said Tony Robles, PNN co-editor, poet, author and organizer and revolutionary son of San Francisco natives of Manilatown. “I don’t care if I’m the last Mexican in the Mission,” said Sandra Sez, indigenous warrior mama and organizer born and raised in the Mission District.

I was born in the back seat of a car, dealt with houselessness and criminalization since I was 11. Ended up in the Bay Area when I was 14. Can’t say San Francisco is my town. But I have had the blessing of meeting and being in family with some of the most powerful revolutionaries from both sides of this beautiful bay. From the I-Hotel resistance to Mission Anti-displacement Coalition to HOMIES to PODER, from The Bay View Newspaper, Idriss Stelley Foundation to the Coalition on Homelessness. Me and my houseless mama along with other landless revolutionaries launched revolutionary projects, POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE, PeopleSkool, the Po Poets/Poetas POBRE’s , the welfareQUEENs and Theatre of the POOR, to name a few.

I have also been houseless, incarcerated, evicted, profiled, poverty-pimped, gentriFUKed and welfare deformed in the Bay. I have seen beauty and felt resistance in this place in ways I don’t believe would have been possible anywhere else. And yet now it seems like the struggle is just to remain.

Should one fight to stay in a party that no longer includes most of your friends? Neighborhoods filled with people you don’t know and don’t want to know. Schools stripped of their color and cultures. Corporate streets filled with shiney white buses for people who can’t put their deliecate feet on a public bus. Bike lanes filled with $3,000 bicycles and coffee shops that only sell $4 cups of coffee and $3 vegan donuts.

My humble vision for SF includes reparations for black peoples in the Bay View, giving back stolen vacant land to Original Peoples, makng the more than 30,000 empty units in San Francisco available for poor, houseless, and foreclosed on peoples to live in. For landlords to rent at least one apartment per building to families in poverty at reduced or no rent, for doctors and dentists to see at least three patients per practice for a sliding scale starting at $0 — and for people to not question “where their money is going” when they give 50 cents to a panhandler/street newspaper vendor while never questioning where their tax dollars go to politricksters and CEOs of corporations. For the SFPD to arrest, profile, and harass drunken white people who spill out of Bay to Breakers and Golden Gate Park concerts with the same voracity that they do poor youth of color — cause then maybe it would actually have to stop.

And finally for all racist, classist laws that target us poor folks, like sit-lie, gang injunctions and stop and frisk be repealed for their flagrant and disgusting unconstitutionality so that public space will remain truly public and people might truly be free.

Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, is a founder of POOR Magazine.

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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October 5, 2012

0

Thursday 4

Reject Cordileone St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1111 Gough, SF; tinyurl.com/cordileone. 1:30pm, free. The new San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has caused a stir. The guy was the major force behind Prop. 8, which banned gay marriage in California. As Bishop of Oakland, he led “pro-life boot camps” that trained hundreds of high school youth to fight against reproductive rights. And that was after he was Bishop of San Diego, a Diocese he left as they dealt with lawsuits following 150 claims from sexual abuse victims. Back in San Diego, the man was arrested for a DUI last month. Come on, The Pope! This guy? A group will be protesting his installment ceremony, letting him know right off the bat that he is bringing his hatred to the wrong city.

Friday 5

Upheavals in the Middle East South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis, Berk; speakout-now@gmx.com. 7pm, $5 requested donation. What caused the civil war in Syria, what’s happening with it now, and is intervention from the United States and other countries affecting the crisis? Learn the answers to these questions and more from- Dr. As’ad Abukhalil, professor of political science at Cal State Stanislaus and writer at angryarab.blogspot.com.

Feminist Vigilante March 19th St. and Telegraph, Oakl; Facebook: Feminist Vigilante Gangs. 7pm, free. As the Guardian feminism panel made abundantly clear, we’re in dire need of roving feminist gangs. As rapes go unsolved and sexual assault unpunished — by a justice system that is itself oppressive and police officers that, themselves, commit rape and sexual assault — it’s time to take back some power from the patriarchy. At the first feminist vigilante march in Oakland, people took that message to the streets. There was fearlessness, and there was glitter. Join them again Friday.

Saturday 6

Affordable housing day citywide, SF; www.affordablehousingdaysf.com. 1-4pm, free. We all love San Francisco, but with exorbitant housing prices that just keep rising, our neighbors keep leaving by droves. But many organizations love the city and its diverse residents so much that they’ve done something about this displacement, fighting for affordable housing throughout the city. What are affordable housing developments, what do they look like, and how can you learn more about obtaining it? Come to affordable housing day to find out. Neighborhood organizations throughout the city will be giving tours of affordable housing in their area, including SoMa, the Richmond, the Mission, the Excelsior, Bayview and the Western Addition.

United in Anger Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.othercinema.com. 8:30pm, $6. It’s the West Coast debut of United in Anger, a documentary about the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP. The legendary group used fearless direct action tactics to put AIDS on the national agenda and support those surviving it. The documentary is based on an oral history project carried out to help preserve the stories of those who fought in the movement. This screening is presented by current local ACT UP chapter member Cyd Nova, and a portion of the proceeds go to the group.

Monday 8

My heroes have always killed colonizers Eric Quezada Center, 552 Valencia, SF; www.politicaleducation.org. 6-9:30pm, free. A night of celebration for Indigenous Peoples Day. The movement to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Columbus Day takes back the day for the Native Americans who lived in what is now the United States instead of the colonizers who perpetrated genocide against them. This night of poetry, music and storytelling is in the spirit of remembering and honoring the power of those who fought back against the genocide of Native Americans.

Promises, promises in district 5

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October 3, 2012

6

Poor Magazine is not known for their love of politicians. Tiny Gray-Garcia, Poor Magazine co-founder and host of last night’s District 5 supervisor debate, let attendants know in her introduction that she considers politicians “politricksters” who can’t keep promises.

At the table were Sup. Christina Olague, Julian Davis, Thea Selby, London Breed, and Andrew Resignato.

“No one pays attention to this neighborhood. We want to be part of the picture,” said Martha Hollins, president of the tenant’s association at Plaza East. “We have people come and stay for a minute. They promise our children so much, especially our teens. And promises are never kept.”

Selby and Resignato called themselves the true grassroots candidates. Davis promised that “my City Hall office will be an organizing office. I will always have an open door.” Olague and Breed said that while others may talk the talk, they would be willing to put in the work to truly implement their promises.

Breed’s vow to be an accesible supervisor seemed most convincing to the debate audience. She grew up in the neighborhood and talked about experiencing the violence first hand as a child; now, she said, “I’m attending the funerals of kids who are my friend’s kids.”

She said that groups like Mo’ Magic and the Community Response Network know how to prevent violence, and they need more city resources. These groups need the support to get the money they need quickly, Breed said, “they same way we have a rapid response to Twitter and the America’s Cup.”

Breed declared her plans to give residents of public housing preference for city jobs.

When POOR Magazine’s Bruce Allison suggested that property owners pay a tax on vacant properties and the money be used to fund affordable housing, Davis called it a “fantastic idea” and Olague invited Allison to stop by her office to talk about implementing it.

Many audience members said that, with the exception of Breed, they had never seen the candidates before, and predicted that they were only feigning interest in the needs of the neighborhood to get elected.

It’s a community with plenty of reason to distrust government. The city of San Francisco built Plaza East and other Western Addition housing only after destroying neighborhoods and failing to adequately relocate families as part of a redevelopment project that began in the 1950s and lasted for decades.

Housing were razed, residents were forced out. Some were relocated in the neighborhood, but most were displaced.

“Some of us were blessed enough to get back here, but what’s here?” asked one commenter. She said that youth lack access to computers to do their homework and apply to jobs, parents lack childcare, and seniors lack programs and care.

“Ross, when he was supervisor, he came down here and worked with us,” said Mario Rogers, son of the late legendary anti-displacement activist Mary Rogers.
Rogers said the level of violence was such that his kids were scared to leave their houses. “Our kids can’t go outside and play,” he said.

When asked how they would deal address violence in the district, the candidates responded with grand promises about creating jobs, closing the racial achievement gap, and redirecting city money for the neighborhood.

After the debate, Hollins said she was impressed with many of the candidates answers.

But whoever wins, said Hollins, “we don’t stop here.”

“We have to keep making these people stick to what they’re saying tonight. Don’t let them rest. It has to keep going.”

Endorsements 2012: San Francisco races

Andrew Lam

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October 2, 2012

45

San Francisco races

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

DISTRICT ONE

ERIC MAR

In the fall of 2011, Supervisor Eric Mar introduced legislation banning the sale of toys as part of a fast-food meal promotion — and instantly, Mar and his colleagues became the target of national jokes. Right-wing radio went nuts. The Chronicle lampooned him. Even the Daily Show did a segment teasing him and suggesting that parents could control their kids’ nutritional intake just fine.

Lost in the media furor was the fact that a lot of parents — and much of the activists fighting the epidemic of childhood obesity — loved the law. And McDonald’s responded by ending free toys in its San Francisco happy meals. Also lost was the fact that Mar was, generally, a hard-working, serious-minded supervisor who has pushed for tenant and senior protections, better transit, and help for small independent businesses. He’s been a leader in the fight against chain stores and the malling of San Francisco.

His race for re-election is also one of the defining contests in San Francisco this fall.

We endorsed Mar with enthusiasm four years ago, and for most of his term, he’s done a fine job. But in the past few months he’s started to waver on key issues. He voted the wrong way on 8 Washington (condos for millionaires on the waterfront), and it was a struggle to get him to support Mike Hennessey over Ed Lee for mayor. He went completely south on the Sept. 25 vote giving the mayor complete control of the successor to the Redevelopment Agency. He voted in favor of a ban on recreation vehicles parking on city streets — a direct attack on homeless people. He’s been less-than dynamic on promoting new revenue sources. He’s siding more and more with the mayor and is no longer the reliable progressive vote he once was. And guess what? All of those pro-development, pro-mayor votes are now paying off for him — we hear Rose Pak, a key supporter of 8 Washington, is now out raising money for Mar. Ick.

But so far, Mar’s still rock solid on tenant issues — he helped create owner-move-in eviction protections for families with kids. He’s a strong support of bus rapid transit on the Geary corridor. He supports Clean Power SF (and eventual municipal ownership of the power grid). He has the support of every progressive elected official and organization and, for all his occasional bad votes, his re-election in a district that is not by any means the most left-leaning in the city is a high priority.

Mar’s opponent, David Lee, is the candidate of downtown, the landlords, and the cops. He has the support of Senator Dianne Feinstein, former Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Police Officers Association, Plan C, and just about everyone else in town who has sought to undermine progressive politics and legislation.

As executive director of the Chinese-American Voter Education Project, Lee has taken millions of dollars (including huge contributions from downtown interests, while refusing to provide a full breakdown) and used about a third of it on his $90,000 annual salary and that of his wife, Jing, according to federal disclosure records. While he claims to have registered 100,000 voters — claiming to highly value voting while sometimes failing to do so himself, according to election records — Lee’s more public role has been to repeatedly and deceptively go after the ranked-choice voting system and take other moderate stands in media interviews.

Lee served as a member of the Recreation and Park Commission since 2005, presiding over the controversial privatization schemes that have alienated so many San Franciscans that there is an unprecedented level of opposition to this year’s proposed parks bond.

Lee refused to come into the Guardian for an endorsement interview, or even to respond to our repeated calls with questions about his background and the false charges he’s been leveling at Mar.

They include the accusation that Mar is being backed by well-funded “special interests” because he has the support of labor.

With David Campos and John Avalos unopposed, and District 5 a fractious mess, much progressive energy is focused on Mar’s re-election. If Lee wins, it will be a huge setback to the progressive movement. We’re nervous about Mar, given his recent votes—but we’ll endorse him for another term.

DISTRICT 3

1. DAVID CHIU

We haven’t always been happy with David Chiu. After being elected as a progressive — and getting elevated his first week in office to board president — he started slipping into the moderate, sometimes squishy center. He supported the Twitter tax break (approving it before the company even presented a community benefits plan). He helped put Ed Lee in the Mayor’s Office, and was the swing vote approving the Parkmerced overhaul that drew strong opposition from tenant groups. He’s tried to water down efforts by Sup. David Campos to close loopholes in the city’s health-care law. He allowed the mayor to escape the real debate that was part of the voter-approved “question time.”

In his second term as president, he appointed some of the more conservative supervisors as committee chairs. In our endorsement interview, Chiu said he doesn’t believe those appointments have effected legislation — but Sups. Mark Farrell and Elsbernd have been actively sabotaging progressive appointments and initiatives on the Rules Committee, and Chu chairs the powerful Budget and finance Committee.

But on some issues, he’s been not only a good vote but a leader. He played a key role in trying to stop the 8 Washington project. He’s raised concerns about other waterfront development. He’s also in the forefront of the fight to make sure that neighborhoods get their fair share in the CPMC deal and that St. Luke’s remains a viable health-care option in the southeast part of the city.

Chiu has passed good environmental legislation, including streamlining the process to start urban agriculture projects and saving paper by limiting distribution of telephone books. He fought for the language access ordinance and the rights of immigrant parents in school board elections.

We wish Chiu weren’t so quick to compromise, particularly with the mayor. But none of his competition, including opera singer and perennial candidate Wilma Pang, have presented a stronger alternative. Chiu’s not perfect, but we support him for District 3 supervisor.

DISTRICT 5

1. JULIAN DAVIS

2. JOHN RIZZO

3. THEA SELBY

WE HAVE WITHDRAWN OUR ENDORSEMENT OF JULIAN DAVIS. MORE INFO HERE.

We hold this truth to be self-evident: District 5 is the heart of progressive San Francisco, the most left-leaning district in the city. The supervisor who represents the Haight, Western Addition, and Inner Sunset has to be a reliable part of the progressive community, someone who can be counted on to vote the right way pretty much 100 percent of the time.

That’s what we’ve had since the return of district elections in 2000. Matt Gonzalez was a Green Party member who (other than one unfortunate vote on school funding) held down the board’s left flank. Ross Mirkarimi, who on occasion clashed with his progressive colleagues, never went south on a single issue. We’re looking for a strong, progressive leader here, someone who can break new ground and launched dramatic new programs and ideas. But just as important, we’re looking for someone the left doesn’t have to worry about, someone who, when John Avalos or David Campos proposes a good piece of legislation, will always be in the yes column, and who, when the conservative supervisors propose something awful, will always be voting no. This isn’t a swing district; when the tenants and labor and the environmentalists and the people who support taxes on the rich and the housing advocates and the human-services community and the rest of the often-fractious but generally together progressive coalition are trying to count to six votes, they shouldn’t have to worry about where the D5 supervisor falls.

The supervisor from this district needs to be ready to defy the mayor when he’s wrong (which, sadly, is a lot of the time).

We wanted that person to be Christina Olague. A longtime community activist appointed by Gonzalez to the Planning Commission, Olague was for years part of the coalition that fought against the brutal displacement and economic cleansing that was the administration of Mayor Willie Brown. She was one of the most reliable voices on the commission, a rare vote for sanity in a time of madness.

We were pleased Mayor Ed Lee appointed her for Mirkarimi’s seat. And then she quickly let us down.

Olague voted in favor of the 8 Washington project. She worked with Sup. Mark Farrell, probably the most right-wing member of the board, to undermine ranked-choice voting. She voted to reappoint Mike Antonini, a Republican who is downtown’s best friend, to the Planning Commission. You can argue any of those votes, but the fact is, the two strongest progressive on the board — Avalos and Campos — were on the other side every time.

She’s also aligned herself with Brown, Lee, and Rose Pak, who have raised more than $50,000 for her re-election. She seems not to recognize that, as the next tech boom rolls in, city politics will be defined by a profound class struggle — and Brown, Lee, and Pak will be on the wrong side. It’s sad to say this after all of her history, but Olague isn’t the person to represent District 5 for the next four years.

There are a wide range of strong challengers — and while none of them are perfect, they present credible alternatives to Olague. Our choices are Julian Davis, John Rizzo and Thea Selby.

John Rizzo, as a leader in the local Sierra Club, has been part of the progressive coalition for years. As the president of the Community College Board, he’s been one of the reformers trying to keep that institution alive after more than a decade of corruption and mismanagement. He’s particularly strong on environmental issues, and would be a worthy successor to Mirkarimi, who engineered bills like the ban on plastic bags that put San Francisco in the forefront of the urban green movement.

Rizzo has to deal with the fact that he was at the helm when City College faced the greatest crisis in at least half a century. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that even the reformers didn’t realize how much trouble was at hand and didn’t take greater steps to head off the crisis.

But Rizzo’s got the seasoning and the agenda to be a solid supervisor.

Thea Selby’s not as much of a lefty as Rizzo, but she’s a neighborhood and small-business advocate who got involved in politics organizing the Lower Haight after a spate of shootings outside her doorstep. She’s good on land-use issues and, while she unlikely to win, could have a political future if she stays active.

The other strong candidate in the race is London Breed, director of the African American Art and Culture Complex. She’s the only major candidate born in the district; she grew up in a housing project, living with her grandmother while many of those around her wound up in prison or dead. She’s a smart, compelling candidate with a tremendous amount of personal charm. She served on the Redevelopment Commission, voting the wrong way on the Lennar project, and is now on the Fire Commission.

The problem with Breed is that she’s too conservative for the district. She supported the ridiculous sit-lie law (and still defends it). She has the support of the Police Officers Association. She’s raised a ton of money, in part because the landlords like her. We do, too — but not as the D 5 supervisor.

The mayor has made the re-election of his appointee a high priority, and the outcome of this race will be in part a referendum on the power structure at City Hall. We’re going with Rizzo, and Selby.

SUPERVISOR, DISTRICT 7

1. NORMAN YEE

2. F.X.CROWLEY

3. JOEL ENGARDIO

You don’t expect to get a left-leaning supervisor from D.7, which is almost certainly the most traditionally conservative part of the city. For eight years, it’s been represented by Sean Elsbernd, a smart, effective, and honest advocate for homeowners and businesses who was wrong on most of the issues but trustworthy and accessible.

This time around, there’s a chance that D7 could move into the swing column; two candidates who would vote with the progressives at least some of the time are in strong contention.

Our first choice is Norman Yee, president of the school board and executive director of Wu Yee Children’s Services. Yee already has eight years experience in local government, and — while he, like all the D7 candidates, talks about public safety and quality-of-life issues, he also told us he’s “not opposed to taxes.” He’s supporting the City College parcel tax, Prop. A, and is open to looking at other revenue measures, including possible parking-lot taxes to pay for Muni.

He’s a little shaky on housing. While he called for an audit of all vacant city land to seek sites for new affordable housing, he supports tenancies in common and has no idea how the city can meet its General Plan housing goals. He’s working with campaign consultant Enrique Pearce, who is part of the more sleazy side of the mayor’s operation, and that gives us cause for serious concern. But on balance, he’s our first choice.

Crowley, who just stepped down as the head of the Theatrical Stage Employees Union, is an old-San Francisco kind of guy, a graduate of St. Ignatius who’s lived his entire life on the West side of town. He served on the Public Utilities Commission, where he was never much of a supporter of public power, is still dubious on Clean Power SF, doesn’t want to support much in the way of increased density west of 19th Avenue (except at ParkMerced) and is hardly going to be a progressive leader on the board.

He has a strong labor background, which cuts both ways: He’s likely to be horrible on development issues and will listen to the building trades people, but will also listen to SEIU on the city budget. Not our first choice — but he’s far better than Mike Garcia, who was a bad vote on the Ethics Commission and the Board of Appeals and is much more of a traditional pro-business, cut-taxes-and-regulations candidate. Garcia’s got the support of Elsbernd and will have plenty of downtown money, so we’re willing to go with Crowley as an alternative.

Engardio, a former writer for SF Weekly who once worked for the ACLU, is surprisingly conservative — he’s a low-tax, high-police-presence candidate whose positions, on paper, are as far to the right as almost anyone in the race. But he’s independent, is unlikely to win, and listing him as number three might help one of the other candidates edge out Garcia.

DISTRICT 9

DAVID CAMPOS

We could easily argue that Campos is the best member of the Board of Supervisors. He’s hard-working, pays attention to details, understands policy and politics and is one of the two most reliable progressives on the board. (It’s interesting that Campos and John Avalos, the two supes who refused to moderate their stands or compromise with the likes of Rose Pak, are now running unopposed; their constituents seem to like consistency and honesty.)

Campos is respected by his political opponents and trusted by his allies. He’s shown considerable legislative skill, managing to guide Clean Power SF through the board with a veto-proof majority. He’s been a strong advocate for Healthy SF and is trying to close the loophole some businesses use to exploit it. He’s been an outspoken voice for immigrants. We see a bright future of Sup. Campos, and we’re happy to endorse him for another term.

DISTRICT 11

JOHN AVALOS

At a time when the progressive movement of San Francisco has been hobbled by self-inflicted wounds and downtown’s divide-and-conquer strategy, John Avalos has stepped into an important leadership role. When we needed a mayoral candidate last year to represent progressive values in a large field of political moderates, Avalos was there, leading a strong second-place finish that showed the San Francisco Left is still a force to be reckoned with.

Earlier this year, it appeared that Avalos might have to endure a tough challenge by moderate union rep Leon Chow, who ended up dropping out of the race after media reports showed that he didn’t really live in the district. With a walk to reelection, Avalos was freed up to represent progressive San Francisco interests at the bargaining table opposite the Mayor’s Office and business community on two of this year’s highest profile struggles: reforming the city’s business tax and creating an Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

In both cases, Avalos needed to play political hardball and practice some risky brinksmanship, threatening to place competing measures on the ballot right up until the end. The resulting compromises that he helped forge, Propositions C and E, include tens of millions of dollars in new revenue that Mayor Ed Lee opposed, which will help save city programs and keep working class San Franciscans from being forced out of the city.

Avalos is a classic district politician, focusing much of his energy on advocating for the needs of Excelsior and other District 11 residents. But he has also become an important citywide leader, and he has our full support.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD

CHRIS JACKSON

RAFAEL MANDELMAN

STEVEN NGO

AMY BACHARACH

Every one of the 11 people running for Community College Board trustee — incumbents and challengers alike — agrees that the system is a godawful mess. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges has warned San Francisco’s largest educational institution that it will withdraw accreditation in 2013 if City College doesn’t make dramatic changes in its financial and governance structures. A school that serves 90,000 people and is critical to the city’s immigrants, job-seekers, and business community is facing the worst crisis in its history, with the unthinkable prospect of shutting down looming on the horizon.

That said, we need to add a bit of perspective here: City College is going to survive. The board has already hired an outside trustee to monitor its compliance with WASC’s recommendations, and by next spring, WASC is going to approve the school’s accreditation.

But along the way, the district is going to have to make some major changes that could shift its essential mission and alter the role City College has played in the community. Put simply, WASC and the state agency that oversees community colleges want City College to become more of a traditional junior college, designed to prepare students for transfers to four-year institutions, at the expense of adult education, English as a second language, and job training. The people who will decide the district’s fate want fewer teachers, fewer campuses, more administrators, and higher financial reserves — even if that means serving a smaller number of students.

It’s going to be tricky: School officials will have to thread a sharp political needle to emerge without lasting damage. And the question for the voters is simple: Who is best qualified to make sure that the school meets the WASC requirements — without gutting everything that’s important about the San Francisco Community College system?

We approach this with a couple of observations. The problems at City College aren’t new — they’re the result of many years of incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, secrecy, and lack of accountability that was driven by the elected board and infected every aspect of college operations, culminating in a scandal that resulted in felony charges against the chancellor. For more than a decade, a board majority that at best ignored and at worst empowered bad administrators and worse decisions ruled the college like a private fiefdom. Natalie Berg, who is running for re-election, was neck-deep in the sleaze. Milton Marks, who died in August, was often the only voice for honesty and sanity.

In the past few years, Marks found some allies as John Rizzo, Chris Jackson, and Steven Ngo joined the board, and since 2009, the reformers have had a clear majority. They haven’t been perfect, by any means — and it’s hard to deny that they were at the helm when the crisis hit, and could and should have move earlier to avert it. But they’ve at least made a credible effort to dig the school out of its mire.

Along the way, they’ve had to cut the budget by 20 percent — and made conscious decisions to preserve a professional teaching force and a broad mission, even if that meant laying off administrators and accepting lower-than-normal levels of reserves. Right or wrong, those were honest policy moves — ones that happen to conflict with what the state and WASC currently want.

It’s tempting (particularly when WASC complains about board dysfunction, which actually means that the members sharply disagreed, for very good reasons, on a lot of issues) to call for throwing out all the incumbents. But that’s a mistake; two incumbents are on the right side of the reform battles and have a vision for the school’s future. We’re also endorsing two challengers who offer a valuable fresh perspective.

Chris Jackson, a researcher with the San Francisco Labor Council, is running for his second term. He’s the only board member who voted against hiring a special trustee to oversee the districts WASC compliance — and he raised valid points about the trustees role and authority. He’s been a strong supporter of the reform agenda, and while he needs to understand that resisting the WASC demands entirely is a recipe for disaster, and that the board needs to accept greater fiscal discipline even if it means cutting programs he supports, Jackson’s voice is needed as the board moves forward.

Rafael Mandelman is a lawyer who’s been involved in progressive politics in the city for years. He’s an honest, principled activist respected by people across the political spectrum. He told us he has no illusions about the challenges ahead — or about challenging everyone, including his allies on the board, if that’s what it takes to save City College. “Short term,” he told us, “it’s all bad” — and he has the clear eyes and integrity to make the painful decisions. In a bitterly divided board, he may be something of a peacemaker, since nobody on any side doubts his intentions.

Steven Ngo, a civil rights lawyer, has been an exceptional board member, someone who respects and supports the district’s broad mission but has no illusions about the financial problems. He’s been complaining for years about the lack of centralized accounting systems, about the district’s lack of control over employee health spending — and about absenteeism among some board members, which has been a serious problem. He’s talking about fixing the basic problems first, including a system of internal governance that is so diffuse it often seems nobody knows who’s in charge.

Amy Bacharach, a policy researcher for the state court system, knows the value of education — she went from high school dropout to Ph.D. in 20 years. She agrees that the district shouldn’t abandon its commitment to adult education, ESL, and non-credit classes, but also agrees with WASC that the governance system is far too loose and that the board needs to centralize decision-making. She has progressive values and a clear head for what needs to be done, and would be a strong ally for Jackson, Mandelman and Ngo.

We also liked William Walker, the current student trustee, who has lots of great ideas and knows more about the district than almost anyone but as a student with a job and a role on the board, he isn’t running much of an effective campaign; he has a future in local politics, and ought to run again in two years when he has less on his table. Hanna Leung offered some solid ideas and was also a strong candidate.

But right now, in this race, at this time, we’re backing Jackson, Ngo, Mandelman, and Bacharach.

BOARD OF EDUCATION

SANDRA FEWER

JILL WYNNS

SHAMANN WALTON

MATT HANEY

It’s safe to say that nobody else in town is endorsing this particular slate of candidates. But it reflects our complicated and nuanced perspective on the state of the San Francisco public schools.

It’s important — critically important — to recognize that the local schools have improved dramatically over the past few years. When you see the actual data, it’s almost a miracle — at a time when the district has lost almost 20 percent of its state funding, when schools are begging parents to donate pencils and paper because there aren’t enough basic supplies to make it through the year, student achievement is up by almost metric. SFUSD is the best performing large urban district in California. There are more good schools and fewer failures. Test scores continue to creep upward. The racial achievement gap, while still unacceptable, is narrowing. Enrollment at the elementary level, once in sharp decline, is growing as faith in the schools improves.

The administration of outgoing Superintendent Carlos Garcia was refreshingly open; the gag orders and repressive programs of his predecessor, Arlene Ackerman, are gone. Garcia’s anointed successor, Richard Carranza, is following the same track. And the often fractious board is working together remarkably well.

That said, there are serious issues facing the district. The bitter fight over layoffs this spring has left the board, the administration, and the teachers union on terrible terms. The student assignment process, the budget, school transportation, the meal programs, the future of honors tracking, and immersion programs all present massive challenges. And in the middle of all of this are 55,000 students and their families, who can’t afford to wait around while the elected officials and administrators figure out what to do.

That’s why we’re endorsing a mix of veterans and newcomers, people who aren’t always on the same page politically but who share a commitment to public education and who offer both institutional memory and new ideas.

For the record: We have immense respect for the teacher’s union, the United Educators of San Francisco, and we (properly) take what the union says very seriously. It’s rare that we disagree. But the union has taken one issue — the vote to skip seniority and preserve the jobs of 70 lower-seniority teachers in a handful of underperforming schools — as the single litmus test for this election. That’s meant opposing all the incumbents — even if it means endorsing candidates who have opposed much of what the union stands for and who are otherwise unqualified for the job. We recognize the importance of seniority and the problems with that vote, but it’s only one of the many factors we considered in our decisions.

There’s nobody in this race we consider a flawless advocate for progressive school policies and reform. But four people are going to win, and we’re going with the best four.

Sandra Fewer was elected four years ago as the consensus candidate of the entire San Francisco left, and in some ways, she’s lived up to her promises. She’s been a leading advocate for restorative justice in the school disciplinary system, got ethnic studies added into the high school curriculum, and has made LGBT issues a priority (including training for gym teachers on trans youth). She was on the right side of the JROTC vote and is a strong advocate for students of color. She’s well informed and does her homework.

She also led an embarrassing and unproductive effort to keep Margaret Brodkin, an eminently qualified candidate, off the board two years ago, hurting her credibility in a lot of circles. She infuriated the teacher’s union by joining the majority on the skipping vote. Still, Fewer’s been a valuable voice on the board and deserves another term.

Jill Wynns is often at odds with Fewer and other progressives. She was utterly wrong on JROTC, pushing to preserve a military recruitment program in the public schools. She supported the horrible superintendent Arlene Ackerman all the way to the bitter end, damaging the district’s reputation (and her own). She’s been on the board for 20 years and there are a lot of people, many of them our friends and allies, who say it’s time for her to retire and make room for new blood.

If this were a one-person job, we wouldn’t be supporting her.

But Wynns has immense institutional memory, she cares deeply about the district and its students, and she represents a PTA-parent constituency that deserves a voice on the board. She’s serving as the president of the California School Boards Association, and has moved that conservative organization a few millimeters to the left. We don’t always agree with Wynns, but we’re supporting her re-election.

There are a number of credible challengers this year. Shamann Walton and Matt Haney are our favorites.

Walton, who runs a workforce-development agency in Bayview Hunters Point, is a product of the public schools in San Francisco and Vallejo, a former public school teacher in Vallejo, and a parent of kids who went through public schools. He told us he wants to see if the district can leverage state and federal job-training money to expand educational opportunities. He supports restorative justice and would be a voice for African American kids. He would need to learn more about the district budget and district operations, but he’s a bright, engaging person who can quickly come up to speed. He has the support of the Coleman Action Fund, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano and Sups. Eric Mar, David Chiu and John Avalos.

Haney, the executive director of the UC Students Association, has a Masters Degree in education and a strong background in educational policy issues. He’s focused on bringing more resources into the district, talking about new parcel taxes and fees on big private developers to fund the schools. He’s familiar with a wide range of district issues, from the core curriculum requirements to the honors-track debate as well as transportation and school food and would have a short learning curve.

We also liked Sam Rodriquez, Gladys Soto and Kim Garcia-Meza, who offer creative ideas and would probably make fine board members. And we recognize that incumbent Rachel Norton has been a powerful and effective advocate for special-needs kids and a proponent of healthier school food.

But our four choices reflect the balance we see as the best hope for continuing the progress the district has made while making the dramatic improvements the students and teachers still badly need.

San Francisco ballot measures

Happy Birthday Occupy

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September 16, 2012

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Occupy celebrates its one-year anniversary Monday, and many of the groups who have gotten involved over the past year will be going all out. These groups’ goals– including ending unjust foreclosures, fighting displacement of queer people and homeless people, and taking back power from banks and the one percent– are a lot to achieve in one year. But they’ve made great stride. They’ll celebrate, and commit to another year of action, on Monday.

Occupy Bernal, Occupy Noe and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment will put the pressure on banks that continue to foreclose on San Franciscans despite widespread evidence of fraud and a city resolution calling for a moratorium on foreclosures. At noon, they will hold a rally highlighting the ways that the foreclosure crisis disproportionately affects seniors, veterans and disabled people- find them at 401 Van Ness. At 3pm they will rally One Market Plaza, the officers of Fortress Investment Group board co-chair Peter Briger, infamous amongst the “foreclosure fighters” for his role in selling off distressed home mortgage debt.

In the Castro, Community Not Commodity, the coalition that formed around an Occupride march protesting the corporate takeover of the Gay Pride Parade and continues to fight “increased rent, foreclosures and evictions, and the displacement of queer and homeless youth.” They will meet up at 2pm at 18th and Castro for a speak-out, followed by a march on the banks at 3 and a sit-in protesting sit-lie at Harvey Milk Plaza.

Also at 2pm, Occupy Oakland is throwing a street party. They’ll converge at Embarcadero and Market at Justin Herman Plaza (renamed Bradley Manning Plaza by the people from Occupy San Francisco, whose encampment stood there for three months last fall.) Organizers advise: stay tuned for Oct. 10, the one-year anniversary of Occupy Oakland.

But Occupy San Francisco didn’t start at Justin Herman Plaza. It started Sept. 17, 2011 at 555 California, outside the building that houses the Bank of America west coast headquarters along with Goldman Sachs offices. It’s there that everyone will converge at 5pm for a raucous casserole-style march with the Brass Liberation Orchestra, followed by guerilla movie screenings, food to share, and a debt burning: “bring dept papers (BYOD) to burn symbolically,” say organizers.

Can’t wait for tomorrow? Occupy SF hosts a day of poetry and speakers at Justin Herman Plaza today. The Human Be In, the unpermitted music and skillshare festival that brought hundreds to play music, teach workshops, and “transform space” in a dusty spot near Ocean Beach yesterday continues through tonight. Occupy Bay Area United is also throwing a rally and teach–in focused on corporate greed starting outside 555 California at 7pm.

Occupy is dead! Long live Occupy!

Alerts

Andrew Lam

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August 21, 2012

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WEDNESDAY 22

Lockout ruling victory march Castlewood Country Club, 707 Country Club Circle, Pleasanton; www.endthelockout.org. 5-6pm, free. Castlewood Country Club workers have been out of work and replaced by low-paid, non-union workers for two years. They haven’t stopped fighting to get their jobs back, and on Aug. 17, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the lockout is illegal and Castlewood Country Club must reinstate their jobs. Come march for victory for the workers. Also, come march for support on the road ahead, as the country club will likely appeal or delay the process.

FRIDAY 24

Heal the Streets graduation celebration Nile Hall, Preservation Park, 668 13th St., Oakl; www.ellabakercenter.org. 5-7pm, free. "If we truly want to address violence, we must engage youth impacted by it so they can heal, have positive alternatives, and take action." That’s the philosophy of the Ella Baker Center’s Heal the Streets program, where young people spend 10 months in theater workshops and conversation, coming up with practical and creative ideas. Friday, they will be graduating from the program, presenting their theater piece and their findings. Come celebrate with them.

SATURDAY 25

American Indian market and pow wow 56 Julian, SF; www.friendshiphousesf.org. 10am-6pm, free. This eighth annual street festival features a pow wow, dance, hand drum contest and dance contests (both with cash prizes), and vendor booths with arts and crafts and food. In 1953, Congress passed a resolution to seize more than a million acres of American Indian land. This resulted in massive displacement and movement of Native Americans to major cities, including the Bay Area. To provide support and a community center, Friendship House was founded in San Francisco. Now, it still provides several programs, including this annual street festival.

SUNDAY 26

National day of action for women’s rights 24th and Mission, SF; www.defendwomensright.org. 12pm, free. On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment passed, finally giving women the right to vote. This year, attacks on women spread throughout the country. The day before the Republican and Democratic national conventions, protests will be held in several cities nationwide to show that the people will not tolerate attacks on reproductive rights. Women Organized to Resist and Defend asked dozens of women why they will be marching, and the answers, shown in photos on their website, range from "to shut down sexual assault" to "women’s health is not secondary" to "ICE and homeland security perpetuate violence against women." Will you march?

Shifts in feminism in Japan’s anti-nuke movement Omiiroo Gallery, 400 Franklin, Oakl; nonukesaction.wordpress.com. 6pm, free. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, a movement of Japanese parents who no longer trusted the government’s word that the nuclear industry was safe took root. Parents formed study groups on radiation and used their own Geiger counters at home and at their children’s schools. Mari Matsumoto, a Tokyo writer who was in the middle of it, focuses on feminism and reproductive labor in the context of nuclear radiation. She will be speaking at this event, along with a screening of the film "How nukes got to Japan." The event is a potluck, and seating is available, but organizers recommend you bring a pillow to sit on the floor in case it runs out.

MONDAY 27

Eyewitness from Tahrir Square Audre Lorde Room, The Women’s Building, 3543 18th St., SF; www.occupyforumsf.org. 6pm, free. Gihan Abou Zeid had years of experience working to end violence against women and coordinating with various UN efforts before she became involved in the Egyptian Revolution. She has since helped to found Mayadin Al-Tahrir (Liberation Places), an effort to bring the liberation that was found in Tahrir Square to new places all over Egypt. After the successful ousting of Hosni Mubarak, many women have continued to protest sexual assaults and other violence. Zeid will speak on women’s experiences in the revolution and the ongoing fight for gender justice.