Education

Sit-in at Lakeview elementary raided, free classes continue, rally at 5pm

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This post has been updated

A sit-in at Oakland’s Lakeview Elementary School ended early this morning as police from the Oakland School Police force entered the school building, making two arrests.

The dispersal was calm by all accounts, although protesters say that officers threatened to use chemical weapons to disperse the crowd, which included young children.


Officers from the Oakland School Police force, the Oakland Housing Authority Police force, Oakland Police Department, and California Highway Patrol were deployed to end the protest, according to a statement from OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith.

“There were children there, parents and teachers and a few occupiers,” said Lola, an organizer with Occupy Oakland who was supporting the sit-in on 4am security duty when police arrived.

There were 20-25 sit-in participants present when police arrived, according to Lola and another Occupy Oakland participant who was on the scene, Alyssa Eisenberg. “There were at least 15 police cars when I drove up,” Eisenberg said.

“The officers were saying, we’ve given you notices now we’re going to give you 15 minutes to leave. Then they gave an official dispersal order and they said, ‘If you do not disperse we’ll use chemical agents against you,’” Lola recounts.

Oakland parents, teachers, elementary school-aged children and supporters had been demonstrating at the school for 17 days. The school is one of five marked for closure by the Oakland School Board, a move that parents and teachers opposed.

The demonstration consisted of a free day camp for children called the People’s School for Public Education, a community garden, and a 24-hour sit-in involving half a dozen tents on the school property.

As protesters left the school, “it was very calm,” Lola said. “All the people that were there left willingly except two,” a parent organizer and an alum of the school who sat in a classroom rather than leave when police arrived. The two were cited for trespassing and released.

Police then erected a new fence outside the public school, and demonstrators went to a park across the street with the goal of continuing to teach free classes to children.

“Officers wouldn’t let [National Lawyers Guild] legal observers or journalists into the building,” said Lola, describing these observers standing on concrete structures outside the gates of the school in order to see what happened.

Organizers have planned a rally in protest of the raid and the ongoing school closures. They plan to meet today at 5pm outside of Lakeview Elementary.

“People who were occupying said this isn’t the end, they have more direct action civil disobedience plans,” Lola said.

Undocumented youth hold ‘graduation’ at Civic Center

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“I’m undocumented and unafraid, queer and unashamed!” Javier Hernandez declared as he took the stage in front of City Hall June 30.

He was one of hundreds of undocumented students from across the western United States who showed up in Civic Center Plaza to celebrate undocumented immigrant youth and students.

During the ceremony, students, dressed  in caps and gowns, told their stories. Many involved a struggle to get through school while unable to work, and uncertainty and fear about their own fate and that of their families. 

Angela Davis spoke in support of the students.

Later, Pomp and Circumstance played as the students marched down the aisles, each taking a turn on stage to say speak their names and their undocumented status, followed with a bold “and I’m unafraid!”

“Our core message today was to celebrate how far the undocumented movement has come,” said Blanca Vazquez, a senior at San Francisco State studying child and adolescent development. “It’s been 10 years since the DREAM Act was first proposed.”

Many protesters were made more hopeful by President Obama’s recent “deferred action” Department of Homeland Security policy directive, calling on officers to defer the depaortaton of many undocumented youth.

“This is a huge win for our communities,” Hernandez said to a cheering crowd, “and you made it happen!”

For Vazquez, the directive is an important step, but there is still much to be done. She participated in a sit-in at Obama campaign offices last week. On day two of the sit-ins, Vasquez said, Obama issued his policy directive.

Vazquez said the group wanted an Executive Order, not a policy directive. They stayed to continue the sit-in, but after the policy directive passed security guards at campaign office stopped allowing them to eat or go to the bathroom. After enduring those conditions for a day, the students stopped the occupation.

Vazquez promised they would be back, however, if “Obama doesn’t implement the policies he promised.”

A video made by immigrant youth in support of the “(und)occupation” of the campaign offices points out that although the policy directive allows DREAMers to apply for deferment and work permits, it does not guarantee either and denied applications can lead to the start of the deportation process. 

One speaker said the was grateful for the directive and hoped to get a work permit, especially after living in fear of deportation her last year of high school. But as an 18-year, she said she was still worried at the prospect of being left alone if her parents are deported to Indonesia. 

“Deportation is not just a Latino issue!” the young woman, a member of Asian Students Promoting Immigrant Rights through Education, reminded the crowd. 

Hernandez was among dozens who emphasized the intersections between undocumented and queer movements. 

“We want to find a way to bridge communities affected by homophobia and xenophobia,” Hernandez said. “It’s the same struggle.” 

Occupy brings the noise to the Canadian consulate for Quebec students

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Activists with Occupy San Francisco, Occupy Education Northern California and other groups staged a small demonstration outside the building that houses the Canadian consulate to express solidarity with student strikes in Quebec.

Protesters brought pots and pans to the building at 580 California, banging them in tribute to the casserole marches that have characterized the Quebec strikes.

Students in Quebec province have been on strike since February. School has let out for the summer, but the uprising shows no sign of stopping- in a massive demonstration June 22, some reports showed 100,000 marching in the streets of Montreal, and recently teachers have pledged to join students. 

“Last Friday, they had 100,000 people in the streets,” cried Stephan Georgiou, a former CCSF and UC Berkeley student. “The students of Quebec have continued to take to the streets despite Bill 78.”

Bill 78, passed as an emergency measure May 18 by the National Assembly of Quebec, forbids protests on or near school grounds, requires that march organizers submit their route to police in advance of demonstrations, and attempts insure that all classes resume in late summer.

Security guards allowed two protesters into the building and representatives from the consulate came to the lobby to receive a list of demands written by the group, which included the release and dismissal of charges against imprisoned students, the repeal of Bill 78, and “the end of all austerity measures for students, because education is a human right.”

Protests in Quebec began over proposed tuition hikes, and at yesterday’s rally, students from area high school and colleges told stories of their student loan debt during the rally.

“I was a senior in high school in the 2011/2012 school year. I applied to SF State,” said Hannah Stutz, 17. “My parents are currently in debt, so I needed to apply for financial aid.”

With a loan offered by FAFSA, Stutz said, “I was awarded $70 if I take out a $30,000 loan.”

“I’m a single father, I have yet to graduate college, and I’m $60,000 in debt,” said another protester.

Last March, US total student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion.

“It’s approaching the amount of the bank bail outs,” said one protester. “They should have just bailed out all the student debt. The money would have gone to the banks anyway.”

Indeed, activists and polticians have thrown around the idea of widespread student loan debt forgiveness, as well as a debt strike– simply refusing to pay.

“The average debt people graduate with is now $25,000,” said Beezer de Martelly, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, “and we all know how quickly these prices are escalating.”

“On November 9, we were beaten in exchange for trying to keep dept down for future generations,” she said, recalling Occupy Cal protests against tuition hikes during which students were notoriously beaten by police.

“There is a large group of students here in California planning on forming our own student union,” said Georgiou.

After leaving the building’s lobby, satisfied with proof that the consulate had faxed the group’s demands to Canadian Premier Jean Charest, Occupy CCSF organizer Janice Suess thanked the crowd for coming out.

“Not only are we in solidarity with the students in Quebec,” said Suess, “but we’re building our own movement here.”

Lakeview sit-in supporters protest school board meeting

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Supporters of a sit-in at Lakeview elementary school and others protesting cuts from the Oakland Board of Education protested at the board’s meeting June 27 and held a “People’s Board of Education Meeting” discussing their vision for Oakland schools.

Much of the protest focused on cuts to the district’s budget for special education students. The cuts came as the school board faces statewide cuts to public education, the end of a bout of federal stimulus money, and a last-minute budget shortfall.

After passionate public comment, the board reversed their their previous decision to approve $1.7 million in special ed staffing cuts.

The cuts would have eliminated some Program Specialist positions. $2 million in cuts in transportation for special ed students still stand.

This comes weeks after special ed teachers and parents were surprised to learn of proposed cuts to special ed to make up for a budget an accounting error that the board discovered just weeks before the budget deadline.

“The timing of these proposals, the lack of staff and community input and the ever-changing information about the relevant budget numbers make these proposals especially troubling,” Cintya Molina, chair of the Community Advisory Committee for special education and mother of a special-needs second grader, said as part of the meeting’s public comment period.

Special education funding advocates partnered with organizers at the Lakeview School sit-in to show up in force at the board meeting, demonstrating a coalition of Oakland parents and teachers opposed to the cuts to schools in the 2012/2013 budgets.

Lakeview is one of five elementary schools that the board voted to close last fall.

A sit-in protesting Lakeview’s closure began June 15. Parents and teachers have organized a free summer program, the Peoples School for Public Education, on the school grounds. Some parents and teachers also sleep in a handful of tents each night to assure that the sit-in continues.

The decision to engage in civil disobedience came after months of work on the part of a coalition of concerned parents and teachers under the banner Save Oakland Schools.

“I probably spent 20 hours a week meeting, talking, emailing, researching, sending it, forwarding, board meetings,” recalls Joel Velasquez, one of the main parent organizers of the sit-in. “This is something that has been ongoing.”

But at a town hall meeting towards the end of the school year when parents had grown desperate, Velasquez said, the plan for a sit-in began to materialize.

“There was a moment where we went around and introduced ourselves and talked about what we were going to do. And I got really emotional; it was a tough moment for me.  And I said you know what, I don’t know what everybody else is going to do. And I’m not telling you what to do. But this is what I’m going to do. On the last day of school, I’m not going to leave. And I hope that people join me,” said Velasquez.

The Peoples School for Public Education teaches an average of 20 kids per day.

Julia Fernandez, a high school math teacher who taught at Castlemont High last year, has enrolled her 2- and 4-year-olds in the camp, as well tabling outside the school and helping with organization.

She says her children are too young for elementary school, but she’s worried about providing an education for them when they reach school-age.

“The public schools are working worse and worse,” Fernandez said, “because we’re moving all these resources from them. I think that affects the school where my kids would go. It’s likely that it’s going to probably be closed or turned into a charter school.”

One of the school’s slated for closure, Lazear elementary, will instead be turned into a charter school.

“I really have a passion about teaching students to learn skills that they’re going to be able to use to be productive people for our community. And to see how that’s been taken away, its very upsetting to me. I want to put a lot of energy into fighting against it,” Fernandez said.

Protesters at Lakeview plan to continue the sit-in indefinitely.

Public teacher in a public hospital

Andrew Lam
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By Sasha Cuttler

OPINION San Francisco Unified School District teachers and Department of Public Health nurses are going through difficult times. Despite years of service reductions, layoffs, and ceaseless budget pressures, teachers continue to educate San Francisco’s young people while nurses care for the sick and injured.

One week before the end of this school year, Balboa High School math teacher Ruth Radetsky was found unconscious after flying over the handlebars of her bicycle. She was brought to San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, where she was treated for broken ribs, scapula, and cracked vertebrae. Although she suffered a concussion, she avoided a more severe head injury because she wore her bicycle helmet.

After being stabilized in intensive care unit and transferred to the step-down unit, Ruth was instructed by nurses to call for help before trying to get up. She was afraid of the pain but understood the importance of regaining mobility. Her injuries and the side effects of the pain medication put her at high risk for falling. Noting how busy the nurses were, however, Ruth felt badly about having to “bother” the staff.

Ruth and the nurses at SFGH who cared for her have a lot in common. Both education and health care rely upon appropriate ratios: teachers to students and nurses to patients. Students and patients alike benefit from these ratios. Despite the need for enough human resources, adequate staffing depends on other factors as well.

Ruth explained how a reduced class size is not enough. In one of her classes, nearly half of the students had learning needs that required preferential seating. Not everyone can sit in the front seat. Nurses with a floor full of patients who need close observation because they are experiencing delirium tremens, traumatic brain injury, or even a mass casualty event have to do similar triage. In both cases, maintaining the minimum staffing may be inadequate — which is why nurses and teachers need support to achieve quality education and healthcare. And UCLA researchers have demonstrated that lower nursing staffing in hospital wards is associated with increased patient mortality.

While researchers argue about the effect of increased class size and nurse-patient ratios, teachers and nurses in the public sector struggle to maintain professional standards of education and care. Ruth is worried about the effects of teacher layoffs on her students. At the same time, the nurses who cared for her at San Francisco General Hospital are being told that layoffs could result if wages and benefits and staffing aren’t reduced. In both professions, staff is concerned about maintaining adequate services with fewer resources.

Teachers and nurses in the public sector continue to be predominately female. Perhaps because of traditional gender roles, teachers and nurses tend to be apologetic about taking a stand for their own working conditions. Unlike an assembly line worker, a teacher or nurse’s profession is all about people, not things. It is only logical that too many students make it difficult for each to receive the amount of support needed. It’s dangerous for nurses to not have enough time for patient assessment and care.

Teachers such as Ruth Radetsky and the nurses who cared for her embody the very best of public education and health. San Francisco Unified teachers and Department of Public Health nurses should not have to apologize for upholding high standards and demanding a professional environment to teach the young and care for all of San Francisco.

Sasha Cuttler, RN Ph.D, is a nurse and activist in the SEIU Local 1021 RN chapter. He has been friends with Ruth Radetsky for more than 25 years.

No more fast food: Slow Sex Symposium proposes a love beyond capitalism

Andrew Lam
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No more fast food: Slow Sex Symposium proposes a love beyond capitalism

After a hectic Pride weekend, it’s about time to slow down. A Sat/30 performance-workshop (part of this week’s stellar This Is What I Want performance art fest — read Guardian theater critic Robert Avila’s enlightening interview with artistic director Tessa Wills here) should fit the bill nicely. Introducing “Slow Sex Symposia” and its curator, internationally-acclaimed writer and dancer Doran George. George is planning an afternoon exploration into alternative sexual practices, lifestyles, and unique relationships. Slow sex is a term the artist coined to serve as counterpoint to today’s fast-paced, commercialized notions of sex. Last week, George and I spoke about what it was like to work with a blockbuster lineup of artist, “the economics of queer desire,” and a childhood solo of  “Yankee Doodle.”

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Tell us about the slow sex movement. What makes it important?

Doran George: Slow sex is not a movement as far as I know. It’s a term that I coined for the symposium because I like the idea that communities of alternative sexual practice are engaged in the long-term process of cultivating a culture of sex that takes time, in contrast with the immediacy of practicing conventional ideas about sex. 

Setting up a good SM scene, negotiating non-monogamy, negotiating racist ideas about the sexuality of non-white bodies while still claiming the space for pleasure, these all take time. There is also a parallel [between slow sex and] the slow food movement, in the sense that I believe the radical pleasure community provides a model of sexual practice that is more nourishing, [similar to how] slow food is better than its fast equivalent. 

>>FOR MORE ON THE FESTIVAL, READ “ECONOMIES OF DESIRE”: ROBERT AVILA’S INTERVIEW WITH THIS IS WHAT I WANT‘S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

SFBG: In your artist statement you reference accessibility to touch, conceptualizing new models of relationships, and the complexities of race in the sex industry. Can the slow sex movement move into mainstream and can queer forms of thought (around sex) be integrated into popular culture?

DG: There are many examples of alternative sexual practice entering mainstream culture. Unfortunately most of them are bitterly disappointing. Mainstream culture constantly needs new images and ideas to make it seem exciting, but at the same time it is usually committed to sustaining convention. Take Madonna’s use of SM imagery in the late 20th century as an example. Although some of the aesthetics were tantalizing, the bodies and constructions of gender were incredibly conservative. There were no sexy butch leather dykes on Madonna’s stage or in her videos. 

I think this is partly because the real power of alternative sexual culture is located in the fact that it is something you have learn and practice — it often entails carefully unpicking and rethinking relationships.. All of this takes careful work that is difficult for the fast consumer culture to contend with. In this sense I’m not sure that existing structures for the production and distribution of mainstream culture are very well designed for alternative sexual culture because radical sex depends upon local economy rather than global corporations. 

SFBG:  You are working with a blockbuster cast of queer artists, sex educators, and performers. What was it like working alongside all these influential queer people?

DG: I first heard about radical sex culture when I was in the fourth year of my dance training, nearly 20 years ago. Rachel Kaplan came to my dance academy and gave me a copy of More Out than In which was writing that came out of 848 space about the intersection between art, sex and community. 

A few years later I came to San Francisco from London with an artist’s grant to research diverse sexual cultures. It was 1999 and I was refusing to use gendered pronouns and regularly getting harassed on those big red buses for looking like a freak. When I first arrived in the Bay Area I felt like a queen. Susan Stryker showed me the hot-spots of transgender history and bought me my first\-ever burrito in the Mission. Pat (now Patrick) Califia and Matt Rice took me out for sushi. Annie Sprinkle gave me a pin badge that said “metamorphosexual” on it, and I met with Carol Queen and a host of other San Francisco folk. 

I was overwhelmed by the culture that had emerged in this city, the ideas and practices that people had pioneered, and the history that was being recorded. Returning to the UK I carried on making my own dance works that were influenced by the knowledge I had gleaned from people in the Bay. Being able to create a symposium that looks at how the unique sex culture of San Francisco has informed and been informed by the practice of art is therefore my own way of honoring the people and the gifts I was given as a young queer artists. 

SFBG: What does the term “the economics of queer desire” mean for you?

DG: I’m interested in how conventional economies of desire are queered, or how the queer dimensions of economies of desire become visible. Someone said to me recently that the extra-marital affair is the straight way to play. It made me laugh and struck me as a beautiful queering of heterosexuality, although Carol Queen’s Bend Over Boyfriend is still my all time favorite queering of straight sex.

SFBG: Where does art, desire, and sex intersect in your opinion?

DG: I don’t think that art, desire, and sex ever don’t intersect. Artistic practice has been involved in representing ideals of gender, desire and sex for centuries, and they inform the way that we practice sex. The symposium provides two different frames in which to think, one of them is

performance, and the other is sexual practice, but in reality these things are not separate. Having two frames is useful because it helps to start a conversation by giving us two different ideas to talk about: Performers make their work to represent or express something, and sex radicals do their practice to connect with people erotically (in all the different dimensions that the erotic can exist).

SFBG: How should attendees of the Slow Sex Symposia expect to walk away feeling? 

DG: I hope that attendees will walk away thinking about their feelings, and feeling about their thinking! I also hope their thinking and feeling moves in lots of different directions. My desire for the symposium is that it will provide a space for discourse about sexual and artistic practice to proliferate. A strong culture is one that can contend with diverse opinions being voiced.

SFBG: I enjoyed reading your bio on the This is What I Want website. You are quite an accomplished artist and scholar. Can you tell us something about yourself most people don’t know?

DG: My first major stage performance was a solo rendition of “Yankee Doodle” at the age of nine in the scout gangshow at the amateur dramatic theatre in a working class hosiery town in the British midlands. I don’t think the audience or I ever really recovered! 

Slow Sex Symposia 

Sat/30 noon-4pm, free with reservation

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.theoffcenter.org

Poverty Scholars Unite

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This post has been updated. RYME orientation is July 3, not June 27.

July 3 will begin another session of Poor Magazine’s revolutionary youth media education program, or RYME.

Poor Magazine was founded in 1996 as a way to bring together poor people to produce media, teach and learn, and create community. From their space in the Mission, they have launched the printed Poor Magazine, Poor News Network TV and Poor Radio, published dozens of books at Poor Press, and hold programming throughout the year.

One such program is People Skool, sessions for and by the people. Poor rejects status indicators like degrees and job titles in favor of expertise based on experience. People are esteemed as Indigenous Scholars, Poverty Scholars, Youth Scholars, and Mama Scholars share their knowledge at People Skool.

The RYME session is “a multi-generational , mutli-lingual skool,” according to Tiny Gray-Garcia, Poor Magazine’s co-founder.

The program will “teach our children and families back their stolen indigenous languages through art and project based learning– this summer we will be teaching media, radio, music, art and journalism with a focus on eldership, indigenous herstories and histories ” Gray-Garcia said in an email.

Tuition for the program is based on ability to pay, and can range from $90 – 500. There are full scholarships and stipends provided for youth in poverty.

At tomorrow’s orientation, youth can learn about the program, which runs through July 31, and a “healthy homemade lunch” with “vegan and meat options provided” will be served, Gray-Garcia said.

Revolutionary Youth Media Education orientation/registration

July 3, 4pm, free

Poor Magazine

2940 16th St., #301, SF

www.racepovertymediajustice.org

Youth scholars from last summer’s RYME program conduct interviews outside City Hall

The cost of shorter school days

Zelda Bronstein
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The cost of shorter school days

Everyone agrees that Jerry Brown is taking a huge gamble, putting big automatic education cuts in his budget in the hope that he’ll convince voters to approve his tax hikes in November. It may be a wise political move: Most voters in California seem to support education spending, even if they still (wrongly) think the state wastes too much money on other services. And they seem to like teachers, even if they think (wrongly) that most other public employees are overpaid and get overly generous pensions. In other words, if you ask voters whether the state needs more money in general, you might get a No — but if you ask whether schools should be cut even further, you might get a better answer.

Still: If this thing goes down, California’s got a disaster on its hands. Already, local school districts are making deep cuts in budgets that were already way too small. And since everything else is already gone, the main thing on the block is the length of the school year.

It used to be 180 days. Now it’s down to 176. And it could go as low as 160. That’s terrible for students — you really can’t eliminate class time and not harm education. It’s also really bad for working parents who have kids too young to be left alone (and some of us have good reason to believe that even high school students shouldn’t be left alone at home all day with nothing to do except get in trouble).

What do parents do when there’s an unexpected furlough day that isn’t a work holiday? How about if there are suddenly 20 (twenty) furlough days, four full weeks of additional time that the kids aren’t in school?

Well, if it’s a day or two they take time off from work if they can — costing both worker and employer money — or they pay someone to watch the kids, costing the worker money. This isn’t trivial for any of us, and it certainly isn’t trivial for low-income families. It means some kids will be home alone, which is fine for the Model Middle Schooler, but really, how many of them do we know?

And Jesus — nobody gets four weeks of paid vacation time. It’s already costing parents a fortune to put kids in summer camp for eight or ten weeks; add four more and I don’t know what people will do.

So basically, furlough days are a tax on working parents (and their employers). Which means it’s a regressive tax that his hardest on those least able to pay. And that’s assuming the tax plan actually passes — if it goes down, expect the furlough days to go up — and the hidden tax burden on working parents to get worse.

Then there’s class size, which is going up now, and could go up a lot more. I’ve volunteered in the SF public schools and I’ve seen the difference between a classroom of 20 kids and a classroom of 30, and it’s huge. At the K-3 level, more than 20 students in the classroom seriously hinders learning. Even in 5th grade, 30 kids is too many for one teacher.

I realize there’s not a lot left to cut in the state budget (although I think I could shift enough money from the prison system to fully fund the schools, but that’s not even on the table). K-12 education is a huge ticket and is going to have to take big hits.

And again: As a political move, threatening to hack the legs out from under the state’s education system will probably bring in some votes in November. But I agree with Calitics — it’s a really scary bet.

Eat your veggies and join a union

Zelda Bronstein
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Mom and the AFL-CIO have an intriguing new message for America’s working people: “Eat Your Veggies  – and Join a Union.”

Many moms know, of course, that unionized workers are paid better than their non-union counterparts, have better benefits, better working conditions and stronger voices in what goes on at their workplaces, as well as in off-the-job political activities.

And now comes a Duke University study  –  “Unions – They Do a Body Good ” – which suggests, as the AFL-CIO notes, “that labor unions also are good for your health.” It would indeed be difficult to effectively argue with that conclusion, whether you are pro or anti-union.

 The Duke study was based on a sampling of more than 11,000 full-time union and non-union workers who answered questions about their general health. It showed that , whatever the reason, there are many more unionized workers who consider themselves healthy than there are non-union workers who say they’re healthy.

On the surface, the numbers might not seem significant – 85 percent of unionized workers said they were in good health compared with 82 percent of non-union workers. But that 3 percent gap between 82 and 85 percent represents 3.7 million workers – 3.7 million more healthy union members than healthy non-members.

But why so many more healthy union members? The study’s lead author, doctoral student Megan Reynolds, speculates – correctly I think – that the generally higher pay and benefits earned by union members “help hold off the anxiety that comes with trying to pay rent and feed a family on basement-level wages.”

She notes that  “decent employer-paid health insurance means you’re seeing the doctor when needed. Paid vacation means your body and soul are getting a rest now and then. Grievance procedures and increased job security help you breathe a bit easier.”

Reynolds and co-author David Brady, a Duke sociology professor, believe their study  clearly illustrates “that union membership is another factor – like age, education level and marital status – that affects a person’s health.”

The AFL-CIO, and hopefully your mom, agree. Veggies are indeed good for you, and so are unions. The likelihood of better health for union members should give union organizers a compelling new pitch to make in their attempts to sign up new members.

Better pay, better benefits, a stronger voice on the job and elsewhere – and better health. What more could a worker or a mother ask?

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes

Taxes and pension reform

Zelda Bronstein
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Taxes and pension reform

Our friends at CalBuzz, who are almost always right, have a point when they say that the right wing is going to use the lack of comprehensive pension reform against Jerry Brown’s tax measure in the fall. That’s unless the Legislature does something productive in August, which is always a challenge.

But whenever I hear this kind of analysis, I think about some of the political campaigns I’ve seen — the tobacco tax is an excellent example — and I wonder: Will it really make a difference?

No matter what the Leg does, Joel Fox and company are going to raise a ton of money and attack the tax plan — and no matter what happens in August, they’ll use public employees, and public employee pensions, as a flash point.

Brown could propose eliminating every dollar of pension spending tomorrow — and he’d wind up in court, because a lot of this is mandated by contracts. But even if he could get away with it, the righties would still harp about pensions. Because even if we weren’t paying modest pensions today, we used to — and in these campaigns, the facts don’t matter at all. See: Prop. 29. The truth is irrelevant when this much money is involved.

I guarantee the anti-tax groups will find some overpaid public employees and a couple of folks who spiked their pensions and they’ll plaster it all over the airwaves. And the fact that Brown and the Democrats in Sacramento are working 23 hours a day to try to craft a reform plan won’t matter a bit. Even if the reform plan passes, it won’t be enough for these clowns — and if they can outspend Brown’s side by 5-1, well … start holding bake sales for your local public school.

And by the way, who’s going to put up a lot of the money for the Jerry Tax Plan? Public-sector unions.

My point is not that Brown and the Legislature should ignore pension reform (although, as Calbuzz also notes, public-employee pensions aren’t the major cause of the state’s fiscal problems). I know it’s a huge political flashpoint, and the Righties have done an exceptional job at blaming union members for just about everything wrong with the state, and most people now believe that pensions are bankrupting us all and saddling our kids (who will work nonunion jobs with no pensions) with mountains of debt.

(Wait a second. Two wars? More than a trillion dollars wasted? The repeal of the CA vehicle license fee? Prop. 13? But never mind that; the debt’s coming from pensions.)

The missed opportunity here, and the move I wish Brown had been willing to make, was to combine the two in the same package, to wit:

We’re going to ask the public employees, who have already taken tens of millions in pay cuts and furloughs and suffered huge layoffs, to suffer even more and give up part of their pension package. And we’re going to ask everyone who benefits from the Bush tax cuts and all of the corporations who benefit from loopholes in the state code to take a proportional haircut.

Proportional — that is, if a union worker who gets a (typical) $30,000 a year pension has to pay 15 percent more of his or her paycheck a year into the pension fund, then a hedge-fund manager who makes $50 million a year has to pay 15 percent more of that paycheck to help fund for education and public services.

Everyone suffers, equally. Come on, Jerry — put that on the ballot and make Joel Fox fight it.

Students, parents, teachers march in support of Lakeview sit-in

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More than 100 gathered outside Oakland City Hall for a rally and march June 23 to celebrate the sit-in at Lakeview Elementary School. The school is one of five that the Oakland School Board voted to close last fall, in a move that would save the city $2 million per year. 

The school’s unofficial reopening was initiated by Lakeview parents, and since has been organized and led by Lakeview parents and teachers. Organizers have also run a People’s School for Public Education, with more than 20 elementary-age children enrolled. Classes ran for the past week from 9am to 3pm and include music, art, gardening, social justice, and PE. A daily picket and rally was held to support the sit-in and the Peoples School at 5pm.

Organizers may extend the people’s school for another week.

The children and students involved in the effort led the march yesterday, which left from City Hall around 1pm. Protesters marched to the school, where they held a community barbecue.

At an Oct. 26 Oakland School Board meeting, the board voted to close Lakeview, along with four other elementary schools, at the end of the school year. The Save Oakland Schools campaign has been working to stop these closures. Lakeview officially shut its doors at the end of this school year, but with the ongoing sit-in, organizers hope to keep it open as long as possible.

The city plans to use the school’s building for administrative offices.

Speakers at the rally included parents and teachers of Oakland elementary school teachers. 

On the march, demonstrators chanted “Whose schools? Our schools!” and “Education is a right! For our children we will fight!” In reaction to police at the kid-led march, some chanted “their kids! They’re cute! Get those guns up off your suit!”

“The Lakeview sit-in demands a stop to all school closure, or the resignation of Tony Smith, superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District. The Sit-In at Lakeview is held in solidarity with all parents and teachers struggling to demand quality public education across the country,” according to a press release.

The now week-long action is the result of collaboration between Occupy Oakland and its various offshoots and the parents and teachers of Lakeview, as parents and teachers lead the efforts.

Photo via Justin Beck

Free classes for all

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Free classes for all

Why should you need an expensive libereral arts education to ponder the question of realism, or pricey equipment to take a film making class? You don’t- the University of the Commons (UOTC) dove into its schedule of free, open to all classes a few weeks ago, and the effort is growing.

In a panel discussion at the summer session’s launch June 2, speakers placed the school in a radical context, mentioning other efforts such as D-Q University and Black Panther liberation schools like the Oakland Community School. 

The group’s mission statement says that the UOTC “aims to inspire participants to evolve more equitable and just societies and live more empowered and fulfilling lives.” The school isn’t accredited and students won’t get any formal acknowledgment of having taken classes there. 

It does, however, have some system-approved teachers. Dr. Barbara-Ann Lewis, who is teaching a class called Science Literacy to any and all who show up, is no newbie. She received her PhD in Soil Science from UC Berkeley in 1971, worked as a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory for seven years, and then taught environmental engineering at Northwestern for another 27. Since then she worked a stint as a violin-maker (“it’s good to have a trade,” she told me).

So what’s a pro like Lewis doing in a place like this? For her, its almost civic duty. “I want to teach the public,” she said. “The public votes, but has no idea about some of the real science behind the environmental issues.”

But in many of her university classes, “I had the standard students. They pay tuition, they come in, they don’t know too much about what’s going on in the world. They’ve lost their curiosity.”

She found students with that curiosity in her experience teaching with the Free University of San Francisco last year, Lewis says. “I had an 18-year-old and I had a 50-year-old in the class, lots of kinds of people, who all wanted to learn.”

Warren Lake of the San Francisco Free School, a similar effort that teaches free classes in the city, attended the launch in hopes of joining forces in some way with the UOTC. The Free School, Lake says, started with free yoga classes and has naturally offered movement, dance and other “right-brain pursuits,” compared to the UOTC’s heady academic offerings. Lake sees the Free School as “both a place to incubate teachers and for students to get together.” But when it comes to transferable skills and help along career paths, the picture is more complicated.

The Free School has been around for a few years now, and Lake says the accreditation issue is something he’s “thought about a lot.”

“There are different ways to show expertise,” said Lake. “Making a documentary or writing a book can often work as well as a college degree for showing you are interested of invested in something. There are different ways to market the experience.”

The University of the Commons is a great effort. But it brings up some questions. Who is it for? People who want an education but can’t afford one, now that the cost-free California community college system is a thing of the past? People who are already pretty well educated but always enjoy learning, not to mention generally fulfilling experiences? Students who want to supplement un-creative traditional schooling? People looking for friends and community who enjoy some learning on the side? Real change, liberation?

A Guardian article on a similar effort last year- the San Francisco Free University- pointed out that their effort was promising, admirable, and potentially very beneficial. It was also very white.

June 18, the pretty white- though, as members pointed out, also pretty female and queer- UOTC collective spent the majority of their meeting talking about “diversity and outreach.” They talked about teaching ethnic studies and women’s studies courses that are being cut out of public university curriculum. They talked about ideas for partnerships with organizations around the city that work with different groups, asking to see what kinds of free classes people there might want to participate in or teach. They talked about resources for classes in Mandarin and Spanish. They hope to plug in to existing efforts, and they hope to grow.

As of now, the classes range in the attendance. The students of Occupy U, a class discussing what worked and what didn’t in recent social justice efforts that focuses on Occupy, is about 11 mostly activist types, while From Mahler to the Music Video, a class tracing the history of music, has about 70 students that the instructor John Smalley says includes everyone from “professional musicians to homeless people.”

Next week will be the third week of classes, but you can still join in, although it might be a good idea to contact the instructor beforehand.

Science Literacy w/ Barbara-Ann Lewis

Tuesdays 5:30-7:30pm, Modern Times, 2919 24th St., SF

Responsive Cinema w/ Rand Crook

Tuesdays 7-9pm, the Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF

Intro to Western music: from Mahler to the music video w/ John Smalley

Saturdays 11am-1pm, Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room B, Main San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin, SF

History in digital culture w/ Molly Hankwitz

Sundays 6-8pm

Mutiny Radio Café, 2781 21st St

Occupy U w/ Stardust

Sundays 6-8pm, Modern Times, 2919 24th St., SF

www.uotc.org/wordpress

Our Weekly Picks: June 20-26

Andrew Lam
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THURSDAY 21

SF Symphony Presents: Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

This’ll be dark and delicious. Young British filmmaker Nick Hillel’s innovative, sculptural projections have appeared in videos for the Beastie Boys, Baaba Maal, Cirque du Soleil, and Matthew Herbert. He’s set to direct and design the SF Symphony’s semi-staged performance of composer Bela Bartok’s wickedly gorgeous 1911 mini-opera setting of the Bluebeard legend: a young bride wanders through her older husband’s nightmarish castle, discovering seven rooms that include a torture chamber, a gleaming treasure, a lake of tears, and, finally, her own horrible fate. Somehow this is not a downer! Probably because the music’s so entrancing — here voiced by mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and bass-baritone Alan Held — and the tale so engrossing. Plus you get awesome pianist Jeremy Denk performing Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto #1 and a clubby afterparty on Fri/22 with John Vanderslice and Magik*Magik Orchestra. No lake of tears here. (Marke B.)

Thu/21-Sat/23, 8pm, $35–$145

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

www.sfsymphony.org

 

FRIDAY 22

“David Shrigley: Brain Activity”

Glasgow-based artist David Shrigley’s signature cartoons are hilariously deadpan: crude drawings and doodles; short stories filled with crossed-out corrections; a “Lost Pet” poster, taped to a tree, seeing a certain pigeon (“Normal size. A bit mangy looking.”) He’s also an animator, spoken-word performer, photographer, music-video director, occasional DJ, and taxidermist — witness the “I’m Dead” image, featuring a stiffly obedient Jack Russell, being used to promote “Brain Activity” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (“Is this the sickest art show ever?” tut-tutted the Daily Mail). This is the only stateside stop for “Brain Activity,” so don’t miss the chance to witness, and chuckle at, the work of this offbeat art star. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sept. 23

Opening tonight with performance by Blasted Canyons, 8-10pm, $12–$15

Artist lecture Sat/23, 2pm, free with gallery admission ($8–$10)

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

 

“Mission in the Mix”

Talk to anybody who has ever sat through an evening of hip-hop, you are likely to hear: “It was so much fun.” Talk to somebody dancing in a hip-hop group, same thing: “so much fun.” In some ways the yearly “Mission in the Mix” is a kind of preview of the big hip-hop fiesta in November, to which dancers fly in from who knows where. But, Micaya, the soul force behind that event, has always stressed her love for the local dancers who might not necessarily be ready yet for the big tent. So this is her chance to make them shine in a more intimate but no less rollicking environment. (Rita Felciano)

Through June 30; Fri-Sat, 8pm, Sun, 7pm, $17

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St. SF

(415) 826-4441

www.dancemission.com

 

Royal Headache

Musical debates can give you a…total migraine. With the US release of the self-titled album from Australia’s Royal Headache earlier this year, finding out about the band now is like coming into an argument halfway. Having built up a reputation through its live performances, the band — whose members are named Law, Joe, Shorty, and Shogun — is at the center of Sydney’s burgeoning garage rock scene, combining additional powerpop and R&B. The key element, though, is the naturally soulful voice of singer Shogun, alternately hailed as either a rock’n’roll messiah or the unwelcome return of Rod Stewart. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Yi, Synthetic ID

7pm, $8

1-2-3-4 GO! Records

423 40th St., Oakl.

www.1234gorecords.com

 

Death to All

Seven members of the pioneering death metal band Death are uniting to embark on a seven-stop tour beginning in San Francisco. The band’s first album Scream Bloody Gore, released 25 years ago, is widely considered to be the first true death metal album. This tour comes 11 years after the death of founding member Chuck Schuldiner due to brain cancer, and is intended to celebrate his life as well as to raise awareness and money for Sweet Relief, a nonprofit organization that helps foot medical bills for musicians. Never before has shredding, head-banging brutality been so morally sound. (Haley Zaremba)

With Gorguts

9pm, $32

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

Horse Meat Disco

Honey Soundsystem has good reason to be proud. Its parties — focused more on quality music than marketing to a stereotype — have been an energizing force for and beyond the SF gay community. Now Honey is starting off a packed Pride weekend by bringing out London’s Horse Meat Disco. Boldly called “without a doubt the most important disco club night in the world” the collective shares Honey’s expansive take on the genre, releasing borderless mixes as likely to feature edits of Talking Heads and Mungolian Jetset as Sylvester. The night also features the return of DIY synth wiz Gavin Russom, not in a DJ set, but with his live ensemble, the Crystal Ark.(Prendiville)

With Poolside (live), Honey Soundsystem DJs

9pm Doors, $17 Advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com


SATURDAY 23

Bicycle Music Festival

Though LovEvolution may have be out-Darwined by the War on Fun, we (gosh darn) still have Bicycle Music Festival providing ambulatory audio in our city streets. The fest, split between two free outdoor locations, is completely pedal-powered — attendees morph into volunteers when they grab saddles and lend their quad muscles to the generator cause. This year, festival co-founder Shake Your Peace! makes its triumphal return, attendance may hit 1,000, and Birds & Batteries, Rupa and the April Fishes, and Major Powers and the Lo-Fi Symphony will be among those taking the stage. Catch the thrilling cross-city processional at 5pm to see members of Jazz Mafia roll through intersections without missing a beat. (Caitlin Donohue)

Noon-11pm, free

Noon-5pm: Log Cabin Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF

6-11pm: Showplace Triangle, Irwin and 8th St., SF

www.bicyclemusicfestival.com

 

Mark Gardener

A mainstay of Britain’s legendary early-’90s shoegaze scene, Ride embraced the Beatles-on-drugs songbook, turned its guitars up to 11, and filtered the result through a viscous, Phil Spectorian cloud of pink noise. Now, 15 years after Ride’s disbandment, the band’s vocalist and guitarist Mark Gardener is coming stateside to honor the 20th anniversary of its sophomore effort, Going Blank Again: an album equally indebted to the Stone Roses’ jangly pop, and Kevin Shields’ shapeshifting production dynamics. Those of you jonesing for another My Bloody Valentine reunion appearance, take note: this is the show of the weekend to seize upon. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Sky Parade, Silent Pictures, DJ Dennis the Menace

9:30pm, $15

Cafe du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com


MONDAY 25

Friends

Friends will be friends. But only the best of them will house your ass after a bedbug infestation — or so the story of Bushwick, Brooklyn’s dynamo five-piece, Friends, goes. Frontperson Samantha Urbani opened her home to future bandmates Lesley Hann (bassist) and Oliver Duncan (drummer) after the two were hit with a bout of the six-legged bloodsuckers, and jamming ensued. Tapping Matthew Molnar and Nikki Shapiro to round out the lineup, Urbani and friends instantly honed in on a funky, tropical, soul-tinged, and totally danceable kind of pop music. Friends — formerly known as Perpetual Crush — hit the ground flying in 2011, releasing much buzzed about singles “Friend Crush” and “I’m His Girl.” Debut full-length album Manifest! is out now — just in time to have a summah. (Julia B. Chan)

With Splash!, Young Digerati

9pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th, SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com


TUESDAY 26

“Jurassic Live: Dino Action Show”

The T.rex is coming! The velociraptors are here! All the way from Austin, Tex., Old Murder House Theatre — producers of Aliens on Ice … I highly recommend YouTubing it — brings its latest blockbuster homage to the Children’s Fairyland Theatre. This venue usually excludes grown-ups without kids in tow, but this interpretation of 1993’s Jurassic Park is “intended for mature audiences,” which I hope means plenty of stage blood during the “clever girl” scene. Also in store: cardboard-and-duct-tape reptiles, DIY contraband-toting devices disguised as shaving-cream cans, a bewigged dude playing Laura Dern, and more. Eat your heart out, Spielberg! (Eddy)

8:30pm, $20

Children’s Fairyland Theatre

699 Bellevue, Oakl.

www.oldmurderhousetheatre.com

 

The Hundred in the Hands

This glammed-out electro duo from Brooklyn produces dreamy pop songs with a shimmery disco tinge. Vocalist Eleanore Everdell is classically trained, her background in opera leading not to overpowering vibrato but instead to lush vocal stylings that add a warm depth to their dance-friendly tracks. Keyboardist and programmer Jason Friedman brings his art school education to the band’s online publication THITH ZINE, which highlights their favorite music, art, and design. The zine’s DIY foundation compliments the raw feel of the duo’s catchy homemade beats. Named after the Lakota Nation term for a battle resulting in the slaying of 100 members of the opposing army, the Hundred in the Hands promise to deliver a powerful, take-no-prisoners performance. (Zaremba)

With Silver Swans, Teenage Sweater

8pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

KWJAZ

Often associated with the “hypnagogic pop” movement that’s put the blogosphere into overdrive (think chillwave, but artier/weirder/more “washed out”) SF’s own KWJAZ has taken the cassette-fetishist subculture by storm. Churning out a gloriously hazy brand of jam-based pop, mastermind Peter Berends specializes in a more drawn-out approach than most of his peers; KWJAZ’s self-titled debut, released this year on the hipper-than-thou Not Not Fun Records, consists solely of two extended tracks, jazzily oozing from one murky, spliffed-out groove to the next. Pink Floyd for Hype Williams fans? Ariel Pink for the Soft Machine crowd? Bear witness, and decide for yourself. (Kaplan)

With Aloonaluna, Aja

9pm, $5

Hemlock

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

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A poly push?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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A poly push?

culture@sfbg.com

QUEER ISSUE Is San Francisco’s polyamorous community experiencing a renaissance? Pepper Mint, organizer of the recent sex education conference Open SF (www.open-sf.org), suspects the non-monogamous in the Bay Area have finally reached a critical mass. His proof? Over the weekend of June 8, OpenSF was attended by over 500 of the poly-curious and practicing.

It might be, however, that they’ve finally found something to relate to. Sonya Brewer, a somatic psychotherapist, OpenSF lecture facilitator, and queer woman of color, has been a practicing polyamorist for 15 years. Brewer pegged the high attendance numbers on Mint’s efforts to diversify the conference and include sexual minorities and other oppressed groups on its planning committee.

Those values were reflected in the conference’s keynote address, delivered by trans-identified sex educator Ignacio Rivera and transgender health educator and social justice activist Yoseñio V. Lewis. The two hosted a lecture entitled “Kink, Race, and Class,” which sought to inspire dialogue about how social forces play into the world of kink. It was one of the many unique talks over the weekend that both celebrated and critiqued the diversity and spread of the polyamorous community.

Looking over the list of lectures for the weekend — “Sex Work and Non-Monogamy,” “Fat Sluts, Hungry Virgins,” and “Trans Queering Your Sex,” to name a few — it was hard to decide which talks to attend.

I settled on two: Kathy Labriola’s “Unmasking the Green-Eyed Monster: Managing Jealousy in Open Relationships” and the Maggie Mayhem-led “Second Generation Poly.” Labriola’s hour-long talk examined jealousy from an anthropological perspective, highlighting it as a universal experience that manifests itself depending on one’s cultural upbringing. The bad news? Jealousy is unavoidable. The good news? It’s a learned behavior, and you can learn to manage it. Labriola provided us with a handy checklist to use in determining whether insecurities are based in fact or freak-out.

“Identify a situation that makes you jealous and ask the questions,” Labriola advised. “One, [do] I have a resource I value very much and I’m fearful of losing? Two, [does] another person wants that resource.? Three, [do] you believe you are in direct competition for something you want? Four, [do] you believe if push comes to shove you will lose out?” Unless you answered yes to all four, she counseled, your jealousy can be worked through.

Mayhem, dressed in a fluorescent orange space suit (a representation of her “out-of-this-world” situation, she said) sat on a panel with her partner in life and in porn Ned (www.meetthemayhems.com) and his polyamorous family: his father, and his father’s second partner — a non-hierarchical term, Maggie was quick to clarify. Maggie and her family discussed negotiating boundaries at sex parties, raising children with more than two parents, and the stigma parents of sex-positive offspring can encounter.

Given the general focus of Open SF, Maggie’s key advice had resonance: “Be the author to your own happily ever after,” she told us.

They call it gunpowder

Andrew Lam
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They call it gunpowder

news@sfbg.com

At needle exchange sites around San Francisco, fliers are handed out to intravenous drug users warning them about a new and very potent form of heroin thought to be responsible for a dramatic increase in recent overdoses.

“Gunpowder heroin,” as it’s often called on the street, began infiltrating the city’s illegal drug market back around February, according to widespread reports from various needle exchange participants. Yet public officials appear to be in the dark about the epidemic, partly because budget cuts have created long backlogs for toxicology tests and partly due to indifference about the safety of drug users.

The reports were gathered by the Drug Overdose Prevention and Education Project from their network of needle exchange programs and analyzed by Project Manager Eliza Wheeler. She noticed the trend in April, and a flood of reports followed through May. It soon became clear that she was witnessing a potentially deadly spike in heroin-related overdoses.

“The whole city is reporting strong stuff,” Wheeler told us. “People are overdosing left and right.”

From January through May, 99 heroin-related overdoses were reported. The largest number of overdoses occurred in May with a staggering 40 reports. Wheeler says that an average month has 12 overdoses.

While those directly involved with San Francisco’s drug-using population seem to know all about the increase in overdoses, city and hospital officials seem to know nothing about it.

After checking with local police precincts in drug zones such as the Mission and Tenderloin, SFPD spokesman Sgt. Michael Andraychak told us officers haven’t come in contact with a strong batch of heroin and they are unfamiliar with the term “gunpowder heroin.”

According to Tenderloin Police Captain John Garrity, undercover and street officers only test controlled substances for positive or negative results. They do not test the drugs’ potency or chemical make-up. Garrity told us that the cops haven’t dealt much with opiate-related overdoses since the widespread availability of naxolone, an opiate overdose antidote commonly known by its brand name Narcan.

“We don’t see the overdoses anymore,” Garrity told us, “not for the last 20 years, not since Narcan came out.”

SF General, St. Mary’s, and St. Francis hospitals all say their emergency rooms haven’t seen an increase in heroin overdoses either and are also unfamiliar with the term “gunpowder heroin.”

It seems the city is content with letting nonprofit needle exchanges and programs like the DOPE Project deal with its opiate-using population. Although the DPH does fund and collaborate with many service providers, it rests the bulk of the responsibility on the drug users themselves.

While needle exchange programs combat blood borne diseases like hepatitis C and HIV, which can be contracted through sharing needles and other paraphernalia, DOPE attempts to educate users and prevent fatal opiate overdoses. The DOPE Project, funded through DPH, works with needle exchange programs to provide opiate users with a take home prescription of naloxone, which can be administered from a nasal spray or injected from a vial. At the exchange, if a returning drug user is re-supplying naxolone, he or she is asked “Did you lose it or use it?” If it was used, a report is made.

All the reports gathered by the DOPE Project are of overdose reversals, none of the reports are fatal, thanks to widespread availability of naxolone and the drug using population who use it. That doesn’t mean people haven’t died. In fact, a rash of fatal overdoses is rumored to have occurred. The suspected culprit: gunpowder heroin.

“There’s a new batch of heroin in town—people are dying,” says Johnny Lorenz, community activist and member of San Francisco Drug Users Union, a members-based organization advocating drug-friendly policies and giving a voice to drug users, who say they are often marginalized and seen as not caring about their community.

Lorenz, a former heroin addict, says a friend recently died from heroin-related causes. Whether it was gunpowder heroin that actually caused his death is unknown.

Wheeler and Lorenz say many people have died from the extra-strength heroin, yet no official records have turned up. The Medical Examiner’s Office hasn’t noticed an increase in heroin-related deaths, but Administrator Bill Ahern admits it was 90 days backlogged on toxicology reports.

The police and medical examiner’s lack of knowledge doesn’t surprise Mary Howe, executive director at Homeless Youth Alliance. She says heroin-related overdoses are indeed a real problem, and she personally knows heroin users who have recently died from overdose, but “unless you actually care about helping drug users you wouldn’t know.” And to receive a toxicology report from the medical examiner’s office takes a couple months, adds Howe.

Wheeler and others are currently waiting on toxicology reports to find out what exactly is in the heroin making it so strong. Without a toxicology report there is no way to be certain about the cause of death or the makeup of the drug.

According to SF Medical Examiner’s 2009-2010 annual report, nine out of the 141 people that died from narcotic analgesics related deaths were found with traces of heroin, down from previous years. However, finding out if heroin is the cause of death can be tricky. According to the report, the unique metabolite that identifies heroin, 6-monoacetamorphine, is very short lived and can metabolize in the body while the person is dying—leaving only traces of morphine or codeine.

Worse, a drug user buying heroin off the street will never know what exactly he or she is shooting.

“No one ever knows what’s in the heroin,” says Lorenz, adding that the label “gunpowder” has become a loose term for a stronger heroin. Lorenz, who spent the majority of his 20s doing heroin, remembers that gunpowder heroin at one time used to be a specific reference to a higher grade heroin from Columbia, off-white or grayish in color and crystal-like—resembling gunpowder.

Others say gunpowder heroin is black tar heroin mixed with fentanyl, a synthetic opiate that can be up to 100 times stronger than morphine. Some disagree entirely and say the overdoses aren’t specific to any one type of heroin.

“Whatever people are calling it—it is strong,” says Wheeler adding that people rarely overdose from of a bad batch of heroin; they overdose from a good, strong batch. “In a world where the drug supplies are unregulated, this is what happens.”

If it is black tar heroin mixed with fentanyl, that could explain why hospitals aren’t reporting an increase in overdoses, says Jan Gurely, doctor at a local homeless clinic. She suggests that the people aren’t making it to the ER’s—they are only making it to the morgues.

“‘Gunpowder is very dangerous,” says Dr. Gurely. “It takes a phenomenal amount of antidote vials to reverse the overdose.”

Naxolone unbinds every molecule of heroin from receptors in the brain, reversing an overdose. The problem with naxolone is when too much is administered the overdose victim goes into withdrawal and comes to sick and vomiting. With a normal heroin overdose only half a vial is needed, but multiple vials are needed when dealing with gunpowder, she adds.

“A person could die on you with a vial in your hand,” Dr. Gurely said. “Most people don’t walk around with six or seven vials of Narcan.”

Pauli Gray believes the type of heroin causing a rash of overdoses and deaths is indeed heroin mixed with fentanyl. However, he doesn’t think it is a pure form of the prescription narcotic, but a homebrewed batch. Gray works for the Syringe Access Services program at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and also works directly with Eliza Wheeler and the DOPE Program.

“It’s called gunpowder and it’s all over the place,” Gray said, adding that heroin users are now actively seeking the extra-strength street drug. “When they hear dealers yelling ‘gunpowder’ they run and buy it,” he said. The street value has skyrocketed. Normally, a gram of heroin sells for $30, gunpowder is selling for $80 a bag, says Gray, and the bag can weigh as little as a quarter of a gram.

Gray says users have learned to shoot up very small amounts of the drug, although rumors of fatal overdoses are rampant. The other day he saw the drug for the first time. It smelled like vitamins and when cooked up it has small black flecks floating around, he says.

“People are selling it everywhere,” Gray said. “It’s really scary. We’re in overdrive.”

Suspended state

Andrew Lam
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Suspended state

news@sfbg.com

In May, a rip appeared in the social safety net that catches many of the people whose careers have been derailed by the continuing economic crisis when Californians lost eligibility for federal relief money under the Fed-Ed portion of the federal unemployment insurance extension program.

The news of the funding loss came to program recipients in a letter from the California Employment Development Department (EDD). According to data obtained from the EDD by the Bay Guardian, 1,994 San Franciscans were among the more than 92,000 people statewide who were cut from the unemployment roles earlier then expected, as the maximum length of benefits was reduced suddenly from 99 weeks to 79 weeks.

A nuance in the legislation that regulates state-by-state eligibly for Fed-Ed caused California’s early exit from the program, while individuals in other states with lower unemployment rates and stronger employment prospects remain eligible for longer coverage. New York state, with an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent, 2.4 points lower then California’s rate, continues to receive Fed-Ed funding.

Ironically, that’s because the recession has lingered longer here than elsewhere, and unemployed Californians are now being punished for being stuck for so long in such a slow economy.

“In order for a state to qualify for the Fed-Ed extension program you have to have a high unemployment rate and certainty California does have a high unemployment rate,” EDD Deputy Director Loree Levy told us. “It is just not 10 percent higher than what it has been over the last three years, and that is a requirement of the program. So the good news is that California’s economy is improving. It is unfortunate news for a lot of the long-term unemployed individuals who will now be doing without these extension benefits.”

In San Francisco, the economy is definitely improving. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that the San Francisco metropolitan area, which includes San Francisco and San Mateo counties, saw the second highest 12-month rise in employment nationally, creating more than 25,000 jobs, a 2.7 percent leap in employment. This big jump, the second highest nationally, reduced the city’s unemployment rate to 7 percent in April, leaving San Francisco a rare rose in a sea of briars.

But that’s little consolation to people in industries that have yet to recover, from construction to education to other government jobs.

While the city’s economy has been buoyed by tourism, technology, and a segment of pre-existing affluence that has weathered the economic crisis, the statewide the picture is much different. The state’s “improving economy” left more than two million Californians unemployed in May, 10.9 percent the state’s workforce.

When statewide unemployment ticked up slightly in April, the state’s three-month average registered as 8 percent higher than the three-year average, missing by a statistical sliver the federal program’s threshold 10 percent increase. This triggered the BLC, which tracks unemployment across the nation, to notify the California EDD that funding of the Fed-Ed program would cease.

The trouble with this metric as a benchmark for benefits dispersion is when discouraged workers self identify as having stopped looking for a job, they are no longer included in the unemployment figures used by the BLS to determine Fed-Ed eligibility. If a fraction of these workers had identified themselves as seeking work, the Fed-Ed relief would have continued to flow into California.

If the state edges back across that threshold in the coming months, Fed-Ed money will flow into the state again, but those recently cut from the unemployment roles who did not exhaust their Fed-Ed eligibility time will not qualify to be re-added to the program.

The program’s loss could have a significant impact on the state’s economy going forward.

“In the three years since Fed-Ed was passed, more than 912,00 people in California have relied on the benefits,” Levy says. “That has brought $5 billion of federal funds into the ailing state economy. It has had a tremendous impact on the economy and when you add in a multiplying effect from money spent out there from these benefits on local businesses, it can be almost a $10 billion effect on the economy.”

As the economic crisis drags on, federal stimulus and relief programs that were planned with a short downturn in mind dry up, a political climate of austerity in government spending has taken its place. Individuals caught in the fallout of the economic crisis increasingly find themselves with nowhere to turn.

Only one out of three unemployed workers statewide currently receive any unemployment benefits, and before the end of Fed-Ed, a staggering 700,000 people who had been receiving benefits during the economic crisis exhausted the previous maximum 99 weeks without finding work.

“What happens when we require people to go out and get jobs when there are no jobs? That’s a nightmare. People are being cut off with no place to turn,” Princeton professor of economics Paul Krugman said at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco last month. “Benefits that are emergency benefits should not depend on some arbitrary timeline for the individual but for the duration of the emergency. If we have a flood, you don’t say ‘We are only going to help flood victims for three days.’ We help them until the flood recedes.”

Of those Californians who still do receive an unemployment check, over half have been out of work for more than six months, the period at which normal state funding ends and federally emergency extension programs take over. The remaining federal unemployment extension program enacted during the economic crisis — the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program — is set to phase out on Dec. 23 of this year. That is bad news for Californians locked out of the labor market who have exhausted the normal six months of state funded benefits.

Responding to the release of May’s week jobs report, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-SF) said the report, “Makes clear that we have more work to do to restore security and opportunity for the middle class. The time is now for Republicans to join us in moving forward on behalf of the middle class.”

Without the renewal by Congress of federal unemployment extension deep in the presidential election cycle, another larger surge in people booted from the unemployment roles will be locked in competition for the state’s paltry offering of new job creation — a punishing musical chairs game with real life stakes.

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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yael@sfbg.com

THURSDAY 14

Solitary confinement at Pelican Bay, Audre Lourde Room, Women’s Building, 3548 18th St., SF; www.womensbuilding.org. 6:30pm, free. This panel discussion on the use of solitary confinement in the criminal justice system comes soon after a class action lawsuit challenging solitary confinement in California prisons. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the lawsuit, Ruiz v. Brown, May 31 on behalf of prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison. The plaintiffs have spent between 10 and 28 years in solitary confinement, generally spending at least 22 hours per day alone in windowless cells, and often denied letters, visits, any sunlight, or time spent outdoors. Many of the plaintiffs also participated in last year’s hunger strikes against inhumane conditions in prison, including solitary confinement. This lawsuit may be the crucial next step in their fight.

FRIDAY 15

India to Ireland, Sports Basement, 1590 Bryant, SF; www.indiatoireland.org. A brother and sister who rode bicylces12,000 km from India to Ireland are back with photos and stories. See what they saw and hear the tales at this fundraiser for Room to Read. The international nonprofit works “to promote literacy and gender equality in education by establishing libraries, constructing classrooms, publishing local-language children’s books, training educators and supporting girls’ education.”

SATURDAY 16

Art, culture and resistance, Redstone building, 2940 16th St., SF; www.norcalsocialism.org. 6pm, $5-10 suggested donation. What’s the music of today’s social justice movement? If it’s anyone, it’s The Coup, and frontman Boots Riley. Riley has written and performed powerful and revolutionary music for decades, from hip hop edutainment concerts that promoted efforts like the Women’s Economic Project Agenda and Copwatch to traveling guerilla hip hop concerts in protest of Prop 21 in 2000. Recently, he’s been organizing with Occupy Oakland. In July, he’ll be teaching a workshop at the Socialism 2012 conference in Chicago; the next month his book, Lyrics in Context, will be released. On Saturday he’ll discuss a tradition he helps to keep alive in Oakland: how art and resistance work together. Refreshments and mingling to follow.

Juneteenth festival, parade starts at African American Arts & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton St., SF; www.sfjuneteenth.org. Parade at 11am, festival runs through June 17. Start summer off right with the biggest Juneteenth festival on the West Coast. Juneteenth commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery and celebrates African American heritage, and this year will mark the 62nd annual Juneteenth in the Fillmore District. The two-day festival kicks off with a parade, followed by a family-friendly weekend complete with a classic car and motorcycle show, basketball games, fashion show, petting zoo, pony rides, live entertainment, community info booths and health fair, and more.

SUNDAY 17

African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement, Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph, Oakl; www.marxistlibr.org. 10:30am-12:30pm, free. Despite growing up in a United States that still had Jim Crow laws, African Americans fought in wars throughout the 20th century. When many of them returned and joined in civil rights and black liberation movements, however, they risked their lives once again. Perhaps best known is Medgar Evers, civil rights leader and World War II soldier who was assassinated by a Ku Klux Klan member in 1963. This event will explore the many veterans who joined civil rights struggles, their reasons for doing so, and how, in many cases, experiences in military service prompted involvement in the struggle back home. It will also feature a screening of the documentary Negroes With Guns, which follows the life of Army and Marine Corps veteran Robert F. Williams, who later took up arms against violent racist groups like the KKK as part of his work with the Black Armed Guard.

Occupy Caravan takes off to the National Gathering

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Occupy Caravan takes off to the National Gathering

This looks familiar!

Jan. 17, we proposed Occupy Nation, an idea that those energized and organized by Occupy come together on July 4, 2012 for a national gathering to get some planning done. We also proposed that the journey across the US be a part of the action, and that people get together in vans for a freedom-ride inspired experience. Well, it’s happening- although, of course, it wasn’t all our idea. But they are using our cover art!

The Occupy Caravan is an ever-expanding crew of people getting together for a two-week journey across the US. There are two starting points, Los Angeles and San Francisco- and the San Francisco caravan is taking off June 11. The caravans will stop at Occupy sites along the way for protests, education and entertainment, before arriving in Philadelphia for the June 30 Occupy National Gathering.

The poster declares, “bring tents!” But according to an Occupy Caravan organizer known as Buddy, sleeping arrangements that won’t risk police meddling are planned at every stop.

“We have a bunch of secure and fun locations- there’s a slumber party at one, a march and then staying at a church at another, a supporter’s camp ground where we can park the RVs,” said Buddy.

“We’re not risking people getting arrested,” he said. “Everything is legal and nonviolent.”

In theory, anyone who wants to can show up, on foot or with a vehicle, and join the caravan. But if you want to secure a spot, according to Buddy, it’s best to sign up online beforehand.

“We’re getting 30 to 50 calls and emails a day about rides,” Buddy told me of the last chaotic week before the trip launches.

The National Gathering isn’t the only nationwide Occupy plan for this summer. It isn’t the only one in Philadelphia either. Or for the July 4 weekend. There’s also the 99 Percent Declaration, billed as a “Continental Congress 2.0”

It looks like these big get-togethers are part of the form Occupy will take this summer. What with a big and chaotic May Day, an even more tumultuous anti-Nato convergence in Chicago, and continuing home defenses, occupations of public spaces, and innumerable local actions across the country, the Occupy movement is in a very different state than it was in the winter when the Gathering and the Caravan were in their beginning planning stages.

“The movement has grown,” Buddy told me. “It’s less than a year old. It was an infant early on, and grew very quickly, but its getting stronger. We’re going back to the simply core message of economic equality and justice.”

After the National Gathering, the caravan will join the Occupy Guitarmy for its “99 Mile March” to New York. The Guitarmy is a travelling group of musicians that bills itself as “the world’s first open source band,” best known for its march on May 1 in New York City, led by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.

As we said in the Occupy America proposal: “The important thing is to let this genie out of the bottle, to move Occupy into the next level of politics, to use a convention, rally, and national event to reassert the power of the people to control our political and economic institutions — and to change or abolish them as we see fit.” One thing is clear: Occupy hasn’t given up yet.

Dream not deferred

Andrew Lam
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Dream not deferred

yael@sfbg.com

On Monday, June 4, students at the Meadows-Livingstone School rehearsed for their annual end-of-the-year performance. It was bleak and rainy out, but the small, essentially one-room schoolhouse that houses the private elementary school was bursting with energy.

Twenty kids, first through sixth graders, were practicing: they sang Wade in the Water and a welcoming song in Swahili. During The Greatest Love of All, a seven-year old crooned her solo: “People need someone to look up to, I never found anyone who fulfilled my needs.” But then the kids broke out into the Neville Brothers’ Sister Rosa, (“Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark! You started our freedom movement!”) and then a rap about Malcolm X.

At this school, located at Potrero and 25th streets, those needs are fulfilled.

This end-of-the-year performance will showcase what the children have learned all year in an elementary school education built around lessons on African and African American history and culture. As Gail Meadows, the school’s founder and principal, puts it: “We have an Afro-centric school. We have a classical African Civilization class, and have books, videos, games, focused on African Americans. The kids learn African songs, they learn African American field songs.”

Meadows says is offers more than the cursory black history that is usually taught: “At most schools, you’ll learn about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, and that’s it.”

All of the children at Meadows-Livingstone are of African descent. “We’re not nationalists,” Meadows says. “The kids understand the world is of many colors, and you can’t live in this world by yourself.”

But spending some crucial elementary school time specifically for African Americans, Meadows believes, does wonders for her students’ abilities to navigate that world.

As Meadows tells it, she’s motivated partly because she didn’t get the same experience as a child. “I lived in a small campus town and went to an all-white school. My mother used to say that she had to undo everything that was done.”

Her education included books shaped by her parents to include black children (“They would search tirelessly for children’s books representing people of color, or they would just change the stories”) and distrust of television (“My father would say, why watch something that doesn’t validate you as a child?”). At her school, she recalls being in “a play that included a line, ‘Don’t drink coffee. It will make you black, and that’s bad.'”

For children in San Francisco today, Meadows says this feeling of belonging is as important as ever. “There’s an exodus of people of color out of San Francisco,” she says. “That means children of color are in classrooms with people who are not educated about African American culture. And they’re educated by a media that gives them a skewed view of who they are.”

This lack of education can often lead to racist bullying. a large reason why many students transfer to Meadows’ school.

“There are students that transfer into my school after having bad experiences, and they don’t know how to confront the person who said something offensive to them,” says Meadows. “In my school they learn to confront. An angry confrontation isn’t productive. It should be direct, they should be able to explain, here’s the real story about that stereotype.”

This education helps when kids leave the Meadows-Livingstone school for middle schools across the city.

“People ask them questions like, are you in a gang? Do you have a house? All these stereotypes they’ve read about, all of a sudden they’re right there,” Meadows says. “If you know who you are, you can live through that. Its easier.”

At a recent visit to the school, some students described their own experiences.

“Sometimes, when I was at my old school, they talked about blacks badly,” said one student. “They said they were stupid and dumb. And I still didn’t believe it, but now I learned about my heritage and I learned that we’re stronger and we have more spirit.”

Or, as he said, “Black power makes me feel strong.”

A 12-year-old who would be leaving the school soon told me a story of how the school influenced. “One of the kids in my neighborhood, he said, ‘We’re all niggers,'” he explained. “I said, ‘No we’re not. We’re regular black kids.'”

As another child put it, “Black power means that you have strength and nobody can push you around, like, like you’re just a little duck and everyone else is a coyote.”

From a long line of teachers, Meadows’ life work has been dedicated to educating and empowering young people. She taught her first class at age 10, before studying education at Kansas State University. She was teaching at Montessori schools when she decided to start her own.

Meadows-Livingstone school came out of a wave of alternative education informed by 1960s liberation movements. The Black Panther party, a part of the history that the children Meadows-Livingstone learn, had a 10-point platform laying out the ways that racism intersects with inequality in education, along with housing, treatment by the justice system, and other facets of society.

Point five says, “We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”

Meadows-Livingstone continues this part of the Panther legacy, and not just ideologically.

“At one point in our school we had maybe 15 kids whose relatives had been Panthers,” says Meadows.

“We have a grandfather who brings fruit every week,” she says, continuing the spirit of the Free Breakfast Program. “And he was a Panther.”

The children also learn about prominent Panthers. “They play a Panther tag game, and they would cry if they couldn’t be Angela Davis or Huey P. Newton,” she said.

On Fridays, the children read poetry. “They really like to recite poems written by African Americans, it gives them hope. They’re stuck on Langston Hughes, they like Gwendolyn Brooks too.”

The school costs $700 a month, but many of the students are subsidized by The Basic Fund, a private foundation.

Meadows also uses partnerships with city institutions to enhance the curriculum. The children spend time every week swimming at Garfield public pool on Treat Street, and playing tennis, and partnering with Acrosports for tumbling lessons. The swimming lessons hold a particularly strong symbolism, as generations of African Americans in Jim Crow states were denied opportunities to swim.

Tributes to Black historical figures decorate the school’s walls. Children’s art on “Black Inventors” and “Louis Armstrong, the king of jazz” are displayed, along with a large version of the iconic photograph of John Carlos and Tommie Smith doing the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics.

When asked about Malcolm X, 20 hands shot up to talk about a figure important to their studies.

As one child explained it: “Malcolm X, he said if somebody’s hits you or hurts your family, he’s not going to turn the other cheek. He’s going to fight back. He’s like, you hurt my family, I’ll hurt yours. Martin Luther King, he said if a white person hits you, don’t fight back, make peace.”

“That’s nonviolence” another chimed in.

When listing their personal heroes, many kids included King and Malcolm. “Muhammad Ali, Yele, and you, Gail!” one exclaimed, the middle hero referring to the school’s drumming and African Civilization teacher, Akinyele Sadiq.

In the summer, most of the students go off to Camp Winnarainbow, the hippie-circus camp that Meadows calls “almost like an extension of our school.” Many of the children have parents who attended the school, and when I ask if they’re excited to graduate, all the kids frown and one says, “I don’t want to leave!” Others are more calm at the question. The school provides a safe haven for bullied kids and a source of ethnic pride. One 12-year-old tells me that when he goes to middle school next year, he’ll make new friends but, “I won’t follow them if they do something bad.” He sighs when I ask if he will be sad to leave. “Yeah,” he says, “But we all have to move on.”

Mayor Lee’s priorities are wrong

Andrew Lam
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By Margaret Brodkin

OPINION There was much back slapping at City Hall last week as officials congratulated themselves on what was described as a welcome “philosophical shift” in San Francisco politics.

The beneficiary of the acclaim and virtual political consensus was Mayor Ed Lee’s proposed budget, the largest in history — including an unexpected windfall of new revenue. The budget’s signature element, described in glowing terms by the San Francisco Chronicle’s C.W. Nevius and warranting its own special mayoral press conference, is the expansion of the police and fire budgets — an $82 million increase over two years.

Amid last week’s ovations was an unsettling silence from voices normally willing to cut through obscure numbers and rhetoric. Not one official commented that the best way to ensure public safety is to build strong children, families, and communities.

The cumulative impact of the devastating state budget and years of inadequate funding on families and children should not permit celebration. In light of millions in unanticipated revenue, politicians should not be satisfied with addressing urgent needs simply by sparing a few city departments from cuts, as appeared to be the case. Here’s what they should be thinking about:

• Our schools face the worst budget cuts ever, with SFUSD preparing to lay off 400 employees, reduce the already-too-short school year, increase class size, eliminate most school bus lines and all high school after-school programs, and under-fund everything from food to special education.

• Our childcare system is being gutted by the state, with $20 million in losses this year on top of $9 million from last year. This will impact thousands of families and result in the closure of centers and family childcare homes. Many fewer parents will be eligible for childcare subsidies (no one with two kids earning more than $37,500 a year will qualify) — pushing parents out of work and onto “welfare,” and children out of quality care and into unsafe settings.

• Support systems for children with disabilities are being eliminated and reduced through simultaneous cuts in multiple agencies.

• Young people entering community colleges or state universities face years of uncertainty — including whether their campuses will even exist. Already, the majority of SF students who enter City College are unable to graduate — stymied by costs, lack of educational support, or the inability to get classes they need.

It appears that little of the new millions will address these problems. The mayor’s budget does not even fully fund the voter-approved Public Education Enrichment Fund, passed in 2004 to provide essential services to public schools and preschools. Funding falls short by more than $10 million. Providing schools the funds to which they are legally entitled is the least we can do when the city lands millions in new resources.

Let’s be clear: crime is at historic lows — and has gotten that way with 200 fewer officers than the mayor is now advancing. There is little rationale to suddenly swell the ranks, at a cost of $140,000 per officer. The Fire Department’s inefficiencies have been well documented by city budget experts, and many cost-saving recommendations have yet to be implemented.

Before signing off on a budget they have not yet discussed in public (as it appeared to last week), the Board of Supervisors must evaluate fiscal options in full view. Private meetings with the mayor are no substitute for a robust debate now that the revenue facts are known. This is the city’s first two-year budget, and its policy direction will impact us all for years to come.

What looks to Nevius like a positive “drama-free, signature moment” for San Francisco, looks to many advocates for children and families like an abdication of responsibility.

Margaret Brodkin is a former executive director of Coleman Advocates for Children, director of the Department of Children, Youth and their Families and New Day for Learning, and a veteran of numerous budget processes

Summer of Peace events kick off in Oakland

Sasha Cuttler
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Summer of Peace events kick off in Oakland

By Natalie Orenstein

Oakland has garnered more attention in the last year for police violence than it has for peace, but a group of activists is hoping to highlight the city’s nonviolence initiatives and traditions later this month during the kickoff for the three-month global Summer of Peace celebration, starting June 22-23 at Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center.

The Summer of Peace was designed as an “effort to create a critical mass of consciousness,” said Jane Elin, the event manager for the Oakland festival.

A few “anchor events” will be sponsored by the Shift Network, a global peace organization based in Petaluma, but international activists and organizations will hold corresponding celebrations throughout the summer, said Production Manager Bill McCarthy. Soon, with hosts able to post events online.

The Voices for Peace festival, about a year in the making, will kick off with a benefit concert on June 22 from 7:30pm to 10:30pm, featuring Maria Muldaur and Friends, Country Joe McDonald, the Vukani Mawethu Choir, and a slew of other performers. At a conference starting at 9am the next day, speakers including peace advocates Marianne Williamson, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and James O’Dea will address peace-building efforts in a variety of spheres. 

More practical components of the conference, such as a seminar on nonviolent communication, “offer tools and awareness – something you can walk away and use,” Elin said. But the general goal of the summer-long effort is to find ways to connect activists, and to keep peace-building in the global consciousness, she said.

“One of the things we’re doing is having people make a pledge during the summer,” McCarthy said. Participants will decide how many “acts of peace” they will commit to on a weekly basis, then share them online.

If all this sounds a bit vague, that actually part of the intention. One goal of the project is to highlight the diverse range of “pathways” one might take to finding personal peace or advocating for peace locally or abroad, said Philip Hellmich, “director of peace” with the Shift Network..

“We’re using ‘peace’ in multiple contexts,” Hellmich said. “We want to acknowledge and celebrate, as well as accelerate, the ways it’s happening.”
Hellmich pointed to a recent study that found more lawyers now do yoga than play golf as an example of people searching for inner peace, an “essential component” of working toward peace on a larger scale, he said.

“There’s been an exponential growth in peace-building. In 1985, only a handful of colleges had peace and conflict resolution programs, and now there are hundreds,” Hellmich said. “This isn’t your parents’ protest movement. It’s about all the different ways emerging to create a culture of peace. We want to move away from the typical polarization that happens: us versus them, Democrats versus Republicans, hawks versus doves. It’s a more sophisticated and nuanced approach.”

Those who want to participate without leaving the house can tune in to a series of interviews on a webcast throughout the summer, and call in with thoughts and questions. Each week of this “telesummit” will focus on a different theme: forgiveness, education, the science of peace, arts and culture, business and economics, and even peace in the military. There are big names on the program for this as well, from Alice Walker to Olympic gold medalists.

All profits from the ticket sales at Voices for Peace will go to Urban Peace Movement, an Oakland organization that aims to combat conditions that lead to violence in the city. The suggestion to hold the opening celebration in Oakland came from one of the Shift Network’s 27 Peace Ambassadors, and the event coordinators quickly warmed to the idea.

“Obviously, the city of Oakland has had its share of having to deal with conflict and violence,” McCarthy said.
“This will highlight peace-building activities and organizations in the city, and let the city shine,” Elin said. “It’s a place that needs more support.”

The morning before the concert, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, United Nations Association of the East Bay President Jerry Weber, and Shift Network representatives will gather in Willie Wilkins Park to install a Peace Pole. “May Peace Prevail on Earth” will be written in several languages on the handcrafted Peace Pole, a tradition that began in mid-century Japan.

The permanent monument – and the entire weekend’s festivities – will “designate the city as a place of peace,” McCarthy said.

Dick Meister: Make it a truly happy graduation day

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By Dick Meister

 

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

It’s that grand time of the year for high school and college seniors. Time for graduation. Time for them to enter the world of full-time work.  Conventional wisdom insists their education will enable them to find good job opportunities and financial rewards.

 A new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows, however, that recent graduates are generally having far more problems with the job market than conventional wisdom would  suggest.

 The basic economic facts make that all too clear. Consider these EPI findings :

*About one-third of high school graduates aged 17 to 20 are unemployed and more than half are underemployed – involuntarily working only part time or holding jobs that don’t require skills they’ve learned in school. The rates for African-American and Latino graduates are particularly high.

*As for college graduates, about 10 percent of them are jobless, about one-fifth of them underemployed.

College and high school graduates alike may find that their lack of on-the-job experience will cause employers to bypass them, regardless of their academic background.

Even if they do manage to find full-time jobs, graduates’ lack of seniority, as the EPI studies note, “makes them likely candidates for being laid off when the firm falls on hard times.”

Graduates aren’t the only young workers unable to find secure jobs. The unemployment rate for workers under 25, whether graduates or not, has remained at about 16 percent, or twice the rate for workers generally. That’s higher than it has been in nearly 30 years.

Unemployment is but one of the serious economic problems facing graduates. Wages for the jobs that are available to them have been steadily declining to barely adequate levels. For instance: In 2011 wages paid college graduates aged 21 to 24 averaged only about $17 an hour or roughly $35,000 for the year.

Between 2000 and 2011, college graduates’ pay dropped an average of more than 5 percent, less than 2 percent for men, 8.5 percent for women. High school graduates’ pay overall dropped by about 11 percent.

There are state and federal assistance programs that could help poorly paid graduates. But the programs often don’t cover young workers because the workers do not meet such eligibility requirements as having previously had significant work experience.

Many of the college graduates have the added burden of trying to pay back college loans. As the EPI report notes, “The cost of higher education has grown far more than median family income, leaving students with little choice but to take out loans” which they may spend years trying to repay.

What’s needed above all – and needed quickly – are government policies that, as EPI economist Heidi Shierholz says, are new policies “that will generate strong job growth overall, such as fiscal relief to states, substantial additional investment in infrastructure, expanded safety net measures, and direct job creation programs in communities particularly affected by unemployment.”

She’s right. Such government action will be essential if the promise of their education is to be fully realized by the young people who are about to graduate from America’s high schools and colleges, if all young Americans are to reach their full potential, and if the nation is to reach true prosperity.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

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