Education Archives — Page 52 of 62 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Endorsements 2008: National and state races

October 7, 2008

NATIONAL RACES

President

BARACK OBAMA

This is the most important presidential election of our lives.

The nation is in a state of political and financial meltdown. The war in Iraq drags on, sucking money out of the US Treasury and costing more and more lives. The gap between the rich and the poor has risen to unsustainable levels, global warming threatens to permanently alter the ecology of the globe … and all the Republican candidate offers is more of the same. It’s scary.

The Democrat we proudly endorsed in the California primary isn’t the exact same candidate who’s trying to get elected president today. Barack Obama, like just about all Democrats at this stage of a campaign, has moved a bit to the right. He supported the $700 million Wall Street bailout that’s essentially a huge giveaway to the same people who caused the problem. He talks about promoting "safe nuclear energy" and "clean coal" — oxymora if there ever were any.

Back in February, we noted that "our biggest problem with Obama is that he talks as if all the nation needs to do is come together in some sort of grand coalition of Democrats and Republicans, of ‘blue states and red states.’ But some of us have no interest in making common cause with the religious right or Dick Cheney or Halliburton or Don Fisher. There are forces and interests in the United States that need to be opposed, defeated, consigned to the dustbin of history, and for all of Obama’s talk of unity, we worry that he lacks the interest in or ability to take on a tough, bloody fight against an entrenched political foe."

But Obama remains one of the most inspirational candidates for high office we’ve ever seen. He’s energized a generation of young voters, he’s electrified communities of color, and he’s given millions of Americans a chance to hope that Washington can once again be a friend, not an enemy, to progressive values at home and abroad.

His tax proposals are pretty good. He’s always been against the war. His health care plan isn’t perfect, but it’s at least a step toward universal coverage.

And frankly, the nation can’t afford another four years of Bush-style policies.

The election is a turning point for the United States. It’s about a movement that can change the direction of the country; it’s about mobilizing people in large numbers to reject the failed right-wing policies of Bush and the Republican Party. We’re pleased to endorse Barack Obama as the standard-bearer of that movement.

Congress, District 6

LYNN WOOLSEY

Lynn Woolsey comes from the more moderate suburbs, and she’s far better than Nancy Pelosi, who represents liberal San Francisco. Just look at the bailout: Pelosi wants to prop up the Wall Street banks, and Woolsey wanted to fund any bailout with a modest tax on risky financial instruments. Woolsey richly deserves reelection.

Congress, District 7

GEORGE MILLER

George Miller, who has represented this East Bay district since 1974, is an effective legislator and strong environmentalist. Sometimes he’s too willing to compromise — he worked with the George W. Bush administration on No Child Left Behind, a disaster of an education bill — but he’s a solid opponent of the war, and we’ll endorse him for another term.

Congress District 8

CINDY SHEEHAN

The antiwar leader and Gold Star mom who put George Bush on the defensive is at best a long shot to unseat the Speaker of the House. Cindy Sheehan has only recently moved to the district, has no local political experience, and is taking on one of the most powerful politicians in the United States.

But we can’t endorse Nancy Pelosi, who has consistently supported funding the war (and has refused to meet with antiwar protesters camped out in front of her house). Pelosi pushed the Wall Street bailout and privatized the Presidio.

Sheehan wants a fast withdrawal from Iraq, opposes any bailout for the big financial institutions, and is a voice against business as usual in Congress. This is a protest vote, but a valid one.

Congress, District 13

PETE STARK

After 32 years, Pete Stark has become in some ways the most radical member of the Bay Area congressional delegation. He’s furious with the war and shows no patience for the Bush administration’s nonsense. He is the only member of Congress who admits he’s an atheist. We just hope he doesn’t decide to retire any time soon.

NONPARTISAN OFFICES

Superior Court, Seat 12

GERARDO SANDOVAL

It’s unusual to see contested races for judge in San Francisco. Most of the time, incumbents retire midterm to allow the governor to appoint a replacement, and almost nobody ever challenges a sitting judge. So the San Francisco bench has been shaped more by Republican governors than by the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

So we were pleased to see Gerardo Sandoval, a termed-out supervisor and former public defender, file to run against Judge Thomas Mellon. A conservative Republican appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson in 1994, Mellon has a lackluster record, at best. California Courts and Judges, a legal journal, calls him unreasonable and cantankerous. In 2000, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office sought to have him removed from all criminal cases because of his anti-defendant bias. He needed a challenge, and he’s got one: in the June primary, Sandoval came in well ahead, but because there were three candidates, this contest has gone to a November runoff.

Sandoval has been a generally progressive member of the Board of Supervisors, although we were critical of some of his votes. But he would bring the perspective of a public defender to a bench dominated by former prosecutors and big-firm civil lawyers. Vote for Sandoval.

STATE RACES

State Senate, District 3

MARK LENO

The drama in this race took place back in June, when Leno beat incumbent Carole Migden and former Marin Assemblymember Joe Nation in the Democratic primary. Like most Bay Area Democrats, he’s a shoo-in for the general election. But it’s worth noting that Leno has an extensive record in the Assembly and has demonstrated an ability to get things done. Long before the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage the law of the state, Leno got both houses of the Legislature to approve marriage equality bills (which the governor then vetoed). He got the Ellis Act, that terrible law that allows landlords to evict all their tenants and sell their buildings as condos, amended to protect seniors and disabled people. And while we were worried in the spring that Leno might be too close to Mayor Newsom when it came to local endorsements, he’s shown both independence and progressive leanings. He has been a strong, visible and effective backer of Prop. H, the Clean Energy Act and has endorsed Mark Sanchez for supervisor in District 9, breaking with Newsom (and the moderates) who backed Eva Royale. We expect Leno will go on to a stellar record in the state Senate and we’re happy to endorse him.

State Senate, District 9

LONI HANCOCK

A part of Berkeley politics since she first ran successfully for city council in 1971, Lori Hancock has spent the past six years in the State Assembly. She defeated Wilma Chan in a heated primary for this State Senate seat and faces little opposition in November. She’s one of the most experienced progressives in California and has a solid grip on the state’s budget issues. We wish she wasn’t so willing to back more moderate candidates for local office, but we’re happy to see her move up to the senate.

State Assembly, District 12

FIONA MA

Fiona Ma has been a pleasant surprise. We didn’t support her for this post two years ago, but she’s become a leading advocate of high-speed rail, a foe of plans to privatize the Cow Palace, and a visible, out-front backer of the Clean Energy Act. We hope she continues to evolve into a progressive leader in Sacramento.

State Assembly, District 13

TOM AMMIANO

The only problem with Tom Ammiano moving up to Sacramento is that we’ll miss his presence at City Hall. Ammiano’s record is stellar — although he was once nearly a lone voice for progressives on the Board of Supervisors, he’s become one of its most effective members, with a long list of groundbreaking legislation. Ammiano authored the city’s domestic partners law. He created Healthy San Francisco, the universal health care program. He sponsored the 2001 and 2002 public power measures. He created the Children’s Fund and the Rainy Day Fund, which is now saving programs in the public schools.

He’s also responsible — as much as any one person ever can be — for dramatically changing the climate of San Francisco politics. Ammiano’s 1999 mayoral challenge to incumbent Willie Brown brought the progressives together in ways we hadn’t seen in years, and the district-elections measure Ammiano authored brought a completely new Board of Supervisors into office a year later.

We’re happy to see Ammiano move on to Sacramento.

State Assembly, District 14

NANCY SKINNER

Nancy Skinner won the June primary for this seat, and while we supported her opponent, Kriss Worthington, we acknowledged that she would make an excellent assembly member. Skinner has plenty of experience: she was on the Berkeley City Council from 1984 to 1992 and has founded and run a nonprofit that helps cities establish sustainable environmental policies. She understands state budget issues, is a strong advocate for education, and will hit the ground running.

>>More Guardian Endorsements 2008

Project Censored

September 30, 2008

› amanda@sfbg.com

The daily dispatches and nightly newscasts of the mainstream media regularly cover terrorism, but rarely discuss how the fear of attacks is used to manipulate the public and set policy. That’s the common thread of many unreported stories last year, according to an analysis by Project Censored.

Since 1976, Sonoma State University has released an annual survey of the top 25 stories the mainstream media failed to report or reported poorly. Culled from worldwide alternative news sources, vetted by students and faculty, and ranked by judges, the stories were not necessarily overtly censored. But their controversial subjects, challenges to the status quo, or general under-the-radar subject matter might have kept them from the front pages. Project Censored recounts them, accompanied by media analysis, in a book of the same name published annually by Seven Stories Press.

"This year, war and civil liberties stood out," Peter Phillips, project director since 1996, said of the top stories. "They’re closely related and part of the War on Terror that has been the dominant theme of Project Censored for seven years, since 9/11."

Whether it’s preventing what one piece of legislation calls "homegrown terrorism" by federally funding the study of radicalism, using vague concerns about security to quietly expand NAFTA, or refusing to count the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war, the threat of terrorism is being used to silence people and expand power.

"The war on terror is a sort of mind terror," said Nancy Snow, one of the project’s 24 judges and an associate professor of public diplomacy at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Snow — who has taught classes on war, media, and propaganda — elaborated: "You can’t declare war on terror. It’s a tactic used by groups to gain publicity and it will remain with us. But it’s unlikely that [the number of terrorist acts] will spike. It spikes in the minds of people."

She pointed out that the number of terrorist attacks has dropped worldwide since 2003. Some use the absence of fresh attacks as evidence that the so-called war on terror is working. But a RAND Corporation study for the Department of Defense released in August said the war on terror hasn’t effectively undermined Al Qaeda. It suggested the phrase be replaced with the less loaded term "counterterrorism."

Both Phillips and Snow agree that comprehensive, contextual reporting is missing from most of the coverage. "That’s one of my criticisms of the media," Snow said. "They spotlight issues and don’t look at the entire landscape."

This year the landscape of Project Censored itself is expanding. After talking with educators who bemoan the ongoing decline of news quality and want to help, Phillips launched the Truth Emergency Project, in which Sonoma State partners with 23 other universities. All will host classes for students to search out untold stories, vet them for accuracy, and submit them for consideration to Project Censored.

"There’s a renaissance of independent media," Phillips said. He thinks bloggers and citizen journalists are filling crucial roles left vacant by staff cutbacks throughout the mainstream media. And, he said, it’s time for universities, educators, and media experts to step in and help. "It’s not just reforming the media, but supporting them in as many ways as they need, like validating stories by fact-checking."

The Truth Emergency Project will also host a news service that aggregates the top 12 independent media sources and posts them on one page. "So you can get an RSS feed from all the major independent news sources we trust," he said. Discerning newshounds can find reporting from the BBC, Democracy Now!, and Inter Press Service (IPS) in one spot. "The whole criteria," he said, "is no corporate media."

Carl Jensen, who started Project Censored in 1976, said the expansion is a new and necessary phase. "It answers the question I was always challenged with: how do you know this is the truth? Having 24 campuses reviewing all the stories and raising questions really provides a good answer. These stories will be vetted more than Sarah Palin."

Phillips said he hopes to expand to 100 schools within the year, and would like the project to bring more attention to the dire need for public support for high quality news reporting. "I think it’s going to require government subsidies and nonprofit organizations doing community media projects," he said. "It’s more than just reforming at the FCC level. It’s building independent media from the ground up."

Phillips likens it to the boom in microbrewed beer and the spread of independently-owned pubs: "If we can have a renaissance in beer-making, following established purity standards, then we can do it with our media, too." But for now, we have Project Censored, whose top 10 underreported stories for 2008 are:

1. HOW MANY IRAQIS HAVE DIED?

Nobody knows exactly how many lives the Iraq War has claimed. But even more astounding is that so few journalists have mentioned the issue or cited the top estimate: 1.2 million.

During August and September 2007, Opinion Research Business, a British polling group, surveyed 2,414 adults in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces and found that more than 20 percent had experienced at least one war-related death since March 2003. Using common statistical study methods, it determined that as many as 1.2 million people had been killed since the war began.

The US military, claiming it keeps no count, still employs civilian death data as a marker of progress. For example, in a Sept. 10, 2007, report to Congress, Gen. David Petraeus said, "Civilian deaths of all categories, less natural causes, have also declined considerably, by over 45 percent Iraq-wide since the height of the sectarian violence in December."

But whose number was he using? Estimates range wildly and are based on a variety of sources, including hospital, morgue, and media reports, as well as in-person surveys.

In October 2006, the British medical journal Lancet published a Johns Hopkins University study vetted by four independent sources that counted 655,000 dead, based on interviews with 1,849 households. It updated a similar study from 2004 that counted 100,000 dead. The Associated Press called it "controversial."

The AP began its own count in 2005 and by 2006 said that at least 37,547 Iraqis had lost their lives due to war-related violence, but called it a minimum estimate at best and didn’t include insurgent deaths.

Iraq Body Count, a group of US and UK citizens who aggregate numbers from media reports on civilian deaths, puts the figure between 87,000 and 95,000. In January 2008, the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government did door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000 households and put the number of dead at 151,000.

The 1.2 million figure is out there, too, which is higher than the Rwandan genocide death toll and closing in on the 1.7 million who perished in Cambodia’s killing fields. It raises questions about the real number of deaths from US aerial bombings and house raids, and challenges the common assumption that this is a war in which Iraqis are killing Iraqis.

Justifying the higher number, Michael Schwartz, writing on the blog AfterDowningStreet.org, pointed to a fact reported by the Brookings Institute that US troops have, over the past four years, conducted about 100 house raids a day — a number that has recently increased with assistance from Iraqi soldiers.

Brutality during these house searches has been documented by returning soldiers, Iraqi civilians, and independent journalists (See #9 below). Schwartz suggests the aggressive "element of surprise" tactics employed by soldiers is likely resulting in several thousands of deaths a day that either go unreported or are categorized as insurgent casualties.

The spin is having its intended effect: a February 2007 AP poll showed Americans gave a median estimate of 9,890 Iraqi deaths as a result of the war, a number far below that cited in any credible study.

Sources: "Is the United States killing 10,000 Iraqis every month? Or is it more?" Michael Schwartz, After Downing Street.org, July 6, 2007; "Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda Genocide, Cambodian killing fields," Joshua Holland, AlterNet, Sept. 17, 2007; "Iraq conflict has killed a million: survey," Luke Baker, Reuters, Jan. 30, 2008; "Iraq: Not our country to return to," Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008.

2. NAFTA ON STEROIDS

Coupling the perennial issue of security with Wall Street’s measures of prosperity, the leaders of the three North American nations convened the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The White House–led initiative — launched at a March 23, 2005, meeting of President Bush, Mexico’s then-president Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin — joins beefed-up commerce with coordinated military operations to promote what it calls "borderless unity."

Critics call it "NAFTA on steroids." However, unlike NAFTA, the SPP was formed in secret, without public input.

"The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement," Laura Carlsen wrote in a report for the Center for International Policy. "All these would require public debate and participation of Congress, both of which the SPP has scrupulously avoided."

Instead the SPP has a special workgroup: the North American Competitiveness Council. It’s a coalition of private companies that are, according to the SPP Web site, "adding high-level business input [that] will assist governments in enhancing North America’s competitive position and engage the private sector as partners in finding solutions."

The NACC includes the Chevron Corporation, Ford Motor Company, General Electric, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Merck & Co. Inc., New York Life Insurance Co., Procter & Gamble Co., and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

"Where are the environmental council, the labor council, and the citizen’s council in this process?" Carlsen asked.

A look at NAFTA’s unpopularity among citizens in all three nations is evidence of why its expansion would need to be disguised. "It’s a scheme to create a borderless North American Union under US control without barriers to trade and capital flows for corporate giants, mainly US ones," wrote Steven Lendman in Global Research. "It’s also to insure America gets free and unlimited access to Canadian and Mexican resources, mainly oil, and in the case of Canada, water as well."

Sources: "Deep Integration," Laura Carlsen, Center for International Policy, May 30, 2007; "The Militarization and Annexation of North America," Stephen Lendman, Global Research, July 19, 2007; "The North American Union," Constance Fogal, Global Research, Aug. 2, 2007.

3. INFRAGARD GUARDS ITSELF

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have effectively deputized 23,000 members of the business community, asking them to tip off the feds in exchange for preferential treatment in the event of a crisis. "The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does — and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials," Matthew Rothschild wrote in the March 2008 issue of The Progressive.

InfraGard was created in 1996 in Cleveland as part of an FBI probe into cyberthreats. Yet after 9/11, membership jumped from 1,700 to more than 23,000, and now includes 350 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies. Members typically have a stake in one of several crucial infrastructure industries, including agriculture, banking, defense, energy, food, telecommunications, law enforcement, and transportation. The group’s 86 chapters coordinate with 56 FBI field offices nationwide.

While FBI Director Robert Mueller has said he considers this segment of the private sector "the first line of defense," the American Civil Liberties Union issued a grave warning about the potential for abuse. "There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate TIPS program, turning private-sector corporations — some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers — into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI," it cautioned in an August 2004 report.

"The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment," Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, told Rothschild.

And they are privileged: a DHS spokesperson told Rothschild that InfraGard members receive special training and readiness exercises. They’re also privy to protected information that is usually shielded from disclosure under the trade secrets provision of the Freedom of Information Act.

The information they have may be of critical importance to the general public, but first it goes to the privileged membership — sometimes before it’s released to elected officials. As Rothschild related in his story, on Nov. 1, 2001, the FBI sent an alert to InfraGard members about a potential threat to bridges in California. Barry Davis, who worked for Morgan Stanley, received the information and relayed it to his brother Gray, then governor of California, who released it to the public.

Steve Maviglio, Davis’s press secretary at the time, told Rothschild, "The governor got a lot of grief for releasing the information. In his defense, he said, ‘I was on the phone with my brother, who is an investment banker. And if he knows, why shouldn’t the public know?’<0x2009>"

Source: "The FBI deputizes business," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Feb. 7, 2008.

4. ILEA: TRAINING GROUND FOR ILLEGAL WARS?

The School of the Americas earned an unsavory reputation in Latin America after many graduates of the Fort Benning, Ga., facility turned into counterinsurgency death squad leaders. So the International Law Enforcement Academy recently installed by the Unites States in El Salvador — which looks, acts, and smells like the SOA — is also drawing scorn.

The school, which opened in June 2005 before the Salvadoran National Assembly approved it, has a satellite operation in Peru and is funded with $3.6 million from the US Treasury and staffed with instructors from the DEA, ICE, and FBI. It’s tasked with training 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement agents in counterterrorism techniques per year. It’s stated purpose is to make Latin America "safe for foreign investment" by "providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime."

ILEAs aren’t new, but past schools located in Hungary, Thailand, Botswana, and Roswell, N.M., haven’t been terribly controversial. Yet Salvadoran human rights organizers take issue with the fact that, in true SOA fashion, the ILEA releases neither information about its curriculum nor a list of students and graduates. Additionally, the way the school slipped into existence without public oversight has raised ire.

As Wes Enzinna noted in a North American Congress on Latin America report, when the US decided it wanted a training ground in Latin America, El Salvador was not the first choice. In 2002 US officials selected Costa Rica as host — a country that doesn’t even have an army. The local government signed on and the plan made headlines. But when citizens learned about it, they revolted and demanded the government change the agreement. The US bailed for a more discreet second attempt in El Salvador.

"Members of the US Congress were not briefed about the academy, nor was the main opposition party in El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí-National Liberation Front (FMLN)," Enzinna wrote. "But once the news media reported that the two countries had signed an official agreement in September, activists in El Salvador demanded to see the text of the document." Though they tried to garner enough opposition to kill the agreement, the National Assembly narrowly ratified it.

Now, after more than three years in operation, critics point out that Salvadoran police, who account for 25 percent of the graduates, have become more violent. A May 2007 report by Tutela Legal implicated Salvadoran National Police (PNC) officers in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006.

El Salvador’s ILEA recently received another $2 million in US funding through the congressionally approved Mérida Initiative — but still refuses to adopt a more transparent curriculum and administration, despite partnering with a well-known human rights leader. Enzinna’s FOIA requests for course materials were rejected by the government, so no one knows exactly what the school is teaching, or to whom.

Sources: "Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America," "Community in Solidarity with the people of El Salvador," Upside Down World, June 14, 2007; "Another SOA?" Wes Enzinna, NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008; "ILEA funding approved by Salvadoran right wing legislators," CISPES, March 15, 2007; "Is George Bush restarting Latin America’s ‘dirty wars?’<0x2009>" Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet, Aug. 31, 2007.

5. SEIZING PROTEST

Protesting war could get you into big trouble, according to a critical read of two executive orders recently signed by President Bush. The first, issued July 17, 2007, and titled, "Blocking property of certain persons who threaten stabilization efforts in Iraq," allows the feds to seize assets from anyone who "directly or indirectly" poses a risk to the US war in Iraq. And, citing the modern technological ease of transferring funds and assets, the order states that no prior notice is necessary before the raid.

On Aug. 1, Bush signed another order, similar but directed toward anyone undermining the "sovereignty of Lebanon or its democratic processes and institutions." In this case, the Secretary of the Treasury can seize the assets of anyone perceived as posing a risk of violence, as well as the assets of their spouses and dependents, and bans them from receiving any humanitarian aid.

Critics say the orders bypass the right to due process and the vague language makes manipulation and abuse possible. Protesting the war could be perceived as undermining or threatening US efforts in Iraq. "This is so sweeping, it’s staggering," said Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official in the Justice Department who editorialized against it in the Washington Times. "It expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population."

Sources: "Bush executive order: Criminalizing the antiwar movement," Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, July 2007; "Bush’s executive order even worse than the one on Iraq," Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, Aug. 2007.

6. RADICALS = TERRORISTS

On Oct. 23, 2007, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed — by a vote of 404-6 — the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," designed to root out the causes of radicalization in Americans.

With an estimated four-year cost of $22 million, the act establishes a 10-member National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, as well as a university-based Center of Excellence "to examine the social, criminal, political, psychological, and economic roots of domestic terrorism," according to a press release from the bill’s author, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Los Angeles).

During debate on the bill, Harman said, "Free speech, espousing even very radical beliefs, is protected by our Constitution. But violent behavior is not."

Jessica Lee, writing in the Indypendent, a newspaper put out by the New York Independent Media Center, pointed out that in a later press release Harman stated: "the National Commission [will] propose to both Congress and [Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff initiatives to intercede before radicalized individuals turn violent."

Which could be when they’re speaking, writing, and organizing in ways that are protected by the First Amendment. This redefines civil disobedience as terrorism, say civil rights experts, and the wording is too vague. For example, the definition of "violent radicalization" is "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

"What is an extremist belief system? Who defines this? These are broad definitions that encompass so much…. It is criminalizing thought and ideology," said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center in Portland, Ore.

Though the ACLU recommended some changes that were adopted, it continued to criticize the bill. Harman, in a response letter, said free speech is still free and stood by the need to curb ideologically-based violence.

The story didn’t make it onto the CNN ticker, but enough independent sources reported on it that the equivalent Senate Bill 1959 has since stalled. After introducing the bill, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), later joined forces with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a report criticizing the Internet as a tool for violent Islamic extremism.

Despite an outcry from civil liberties groups, days after the report was released Lieberman demanded that YouTube remove a number of Islamist propaganda videos. YouTube canned some that broke their rules regarding violence and hate speech, but resisted censoring others. The ensuing battle caught the attention of the New York Times, and on May 25 it editorialized against Lieberman and S 1959.

Sources: "Bringing the war on terrorism home," Jessica Lee, Indypendent, Nov. 16, 2007; "Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act," Lindsay Beyerstein, In These Times, Nov. 2007; "The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," Matt Renner, Truthout, Nov. 20, 2007

7. SLAVERY’S RUNNER-UP

Every year, about 121,000 people legally enter the United States to work with H-2 visas, a program legislators are touting as part of future immigration reform. But Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) called this guest worker program "the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery."

The Southern Poverty Law Center likened it to "modern day indentured servitude." They interviewed thousands of guest workers and reviewed legal cases for a report released in March 2007, in which authors Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds wrote, "Unlike US citizens, guest workers do not enjoy the most fundamental protection of a competitive labor market — the ability to change jobs if they are mistreated. Instead, they are bound to the employers who ‘import’ them. If guest workers complain about abuses, they face deportation, blacklisting, or other retaliation."

When visas expire, workers must leave the country, hardly making this the path to permanent citizenship legislators are looking for. The H-2 program mimics the controversial bracero program, established through a joint agreement between Mexico and the United States in 1942 that brought 4.5 million workers over the border during the 22 years it was in effect.

Many legal protections were written into the program, but in most cases they existed only on paper in a language unreadable to employees. In 1964 the program was shuttered amid scores of human rights abuses and complaints that it undermined petitions for higher wages from US workers. Soon after, United Farm Workers organized, which César Chávez said would have been impossible if the bracero program still existed.

Years later, it essentially still does. The H-2A program, which accounted for 32,000 agricultural workers in 2005, has many of the same protections — and many of the same abuses. Even worse is the H-2B program, used by 89,000 non-agricultural workers annually. Created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, none of the safeguards of the H-2A visa are legally required for H-2B workers.

Still, Mexicans are literally lining up for H-2B status, the stark details of which were reported by Felicia Mello in The Nation. Furthermore, thousands of illegal immigrants are employed throughout the country, providing cheap, unprotected labor and further undermining the scant provisions of the laws. Labor contractors who connect immigrants with employers are stuffing their pockets with cash, while the workers return home with very little money.

The Southern Poverty Law Center outlined a list of comprehensive changes needed in the program, concluding, "For too long, our country has benefited from the labor provided by guest workers but has failed to provide a fair system that respects their human rights and upholds the most basic values of our democracy. The time has come for Congress to overhaul our shamefully abusive guest worker system."

Sources: "Close to Slavery," Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds, Southern Poverty Law Center, March 2007; "Coming to America," Felicia Mello, The Nation, June 25, 2007; "Trafficking racket," Chidanand Rajghatta, Times of India, March 10, 2008.

8. BUSH CHANGES THE RULES

The Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice has been issuing classified legal opinions about surveillance for years. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) had access to the DOJ opinions on presidential power and had three declassified to show how the judicial branch has, in a bizarre and chilling way, assisted President Bush in circumventing its own power.

According to the three memos:

"There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it";

"The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II," and

"The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations."

Or, as Whitehouse rephrased in a Dec. 7, 2007, Senate speech: "I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them. I get to determine what my own powers are. The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is. I tell the Department of Justice what the law is."

The issue arose within the context of the Protect America Act, which expands government surveillance powers and gives telecom companies legal immunity for helping. Whitehouse called it "a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August at the behest of the Bush administration."

He pointed out that the act does not prohibit spying on Americans overseas — with the exception of an executive order that permits surveillance only of Americans whom the Attorney General determines to be "agents of a foreign power."

"In other words, the only thing standing between Americans traveling overseas and government wiretap is an executive order," Whitehouse said in an April 12 speech. "An order this president, under the first legal theory I cited, claims he has no legal obligation to obey."

Whitehouse, a former US Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s governor, and Rhode Island Attorney General who took office in 2006, went on to point out that Marbury vs. Madison, written by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803, established that it is "emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

Sources: "In FISA Speech, Whitehouse sharply criticizes Bush Administration’s assertion of executive power," Sheldon Whitehouse, Dec. 7, 2007; "Down the Rabbit Hole," Marcy Wheeler, The Guardian (UK), Dec. 26, 2007.

9. SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT

Hearing soldiers recount their war experiences is the closest many people come to understanding the real horror, pain, and confusion of combat. One would think that might make compelling copy or powerful footage for a news outlet. But in March, when more than 300 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan convened for four days of public testimony on the war, they were largely ignored by the media.

Winter Soldier was designed to give soldiers a public forum to air some of the atrocities they witnessed. Originally convened by Vietnam Vets Against the War in January 1971, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians described their war experiences, including rapes, torture, brutalities, and killing of non-combatants. The testimony was entered into the Congressional Record, filmed, and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iraq Veterans Against the War hosted the 2008 reprise of the 1971 hearings. Aaron Glantz, writing in One World, recalled testimony from former Marine Cpl. Jason Washburn, who said, "his commanders encouraged lawless behavior. ‘We were encouraged to bring ‘drop weapons,’ or shovels. In case we accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body and pretend they were an insurgent.’<0x2009>"

An investigation by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian in The Nation that included interviews with 50 Iraq war veterans also revealed an overwhelming lack of training and resources, and a general disregard for the traditional rules of war.

Though most major news outlets sent staff to cover New York’s Fashion Week, few made it to Silver Spring, Md. for the Winter Soldier hearings. Fortunately, KPFA and Pacifica Radio broadcast the testimonies live and, in an update to the story, said they were "deluged with phone calls, e-mails, and blog posts from service members, veterans, and military families thanking us for breaking a cultural norm of silence about the reality of war." Testimonies can still be heard at www.ivaw.org.

Sources: "Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan eyewitness accounts of the occupation," Iraq Veterans Against the War, March 13-16, 2008; "War comes home," Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison, and Esther Manilla, Pacifica Radio, March 14-16, 2008; "US Soldiers testify about war crimes," Aaron Glantz, One World, March 19, 2008; "The Other War," Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian, The Nation, July 30, 2007.

10. APA HELPS CIA TORTURE

Psychologists have been assisting the CIA and US military with interrogation and torture of Guantánamo detainees — which the American Psychological Association has said is fine, despite objections from many of its 148,000 members.

A 10-member APA task force convened on the divisive issue in July 2005 and found that assistance from psychologists was making the interrogations safe and the group deferred to US standards on torture over international human-rights organizations’ definitions.

The task force was criticized by APA members for deliberating in secret, and later it was revealed that six of the 10 participants had ties to the armed services. Not only that, but as Katherine Eban reported in Vanity Fair, "Psychologists, working in secrecy, had actually designed the tactics and trained interrogators in them while on contract to the CIA."

In particular, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, neither of whom are APA members, honed a classified military training program known as SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape] that teaches soldiers how to tough out torture if captured by enemies. "Mitchell and Jessen reverse-engineered the tactics inflicted on SERE trainees for use on detainees in the global war on terror," Eban wrote.

And, as Mark Benjamin noted in a Salon article, employing SERE training — which is designed to replicate torture tactics that don’t abide by Geneva Convention standards — refutes past administration assertions that current CIA torture techniques are safe and legal. "Soldiers undergoing SERE training are subject to forced nudity, stress positions, lengthy isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, exhaustion from exercise, and the use of water to create a sensation of suffocation," Benjamin wrote.

Eban’s story outlined how SERE tactics were spun as "science" despite a lack of data and the critique that building rapport works better than blows to the head. Specifically, he said, it’s been misreported that CIA torture techniques got Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah to talk, when it was actually FBI rapport-building. In spite of this, SERE techniques became standards in interrogation manuals that eventually made their way to US officers guarding Abu Ghraib.

Ongoing uproar within the APA resulted in a petition to make an official policy limiting psychologists’ involvement in interrogations. On Sept. 17, a majority of 15,000 voting members approved a resolution stating that psychologists may not work in settings where "persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the US Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights."

Sources: "The CIA’s torture teachers," Mark Benjamin, Salon, June 21, 2007; "Rorschach and awe," Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007.

“Our gay daughter”

September 23, 2008

The new No on Prop. 8 commercial is here, and many are hoping that it will turn the tide against the heinous anti-marriage prop — especially in terms of fundraising. Despite Brad Pitt and the Spielbergs (who each contributed 100k recently) the No on Prop 8ers haven’t raised as much funds as the horrid clock-backwarders.

You can contribute to to keep this ad on the air here — or if cash isn’t at hand, you can get involved here. And please vote! I’ve heard people say that their vote doesn’t count in San Francisco, citing the Presidential race. BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE! There are several crucial local and state props on the November ballot that need your voice.

I know same-sex marriage isn’t at the top of many homo-radicals’ agenda, and sure I’d rather see the money go toward universal healthcare and education (and the elimination of a penalty for being single), but this is a general rights issue now, I think …

PS — has anyone else been tickled by the wedding announcements in the Bay Area Reporter? Some of them are hilarious — like the ones that describe what the couples’ beloved dogs were wearing at the ceremony — but also touching. I realize when reading them that we homos have so few descriptive windows onto other geigh peoples’ lives: we mostly meet in (mostly, unfortunately) spaces of assimilation, bars and clubs and online and such, where the curious quotidian details of our existence get no airing … perhaps this is why the obituaries have been so popular? Because they’re actually about real gay homos’ real lives, not just those who are promoting something? Of course, the thing with the obituaries is tied up with everyone’s shared health issue fears (even the BAR ran a triumphant “No Obituaries!” headline when effective AIDS meds started to take hold), but still … it’s nice to find out more about people before they’re dead!

PPS –oh hey, this just in: Lindsey Lohan’s finally officially gay. Hey mama Dina — when you gonna contribute to No. on 8?

A planning primer for the supes

September 17, 2008

EDITORIAL The Eastern Neighborhoods Plan, which comes before the Board of Supervisors this month, is more than a set of rezoning and fee proposals. It’s a blueprint for how San Francisco sees its future as a city. When the supervisors are done with it, the plan will either preserve and expand the city’s affordable housing stock and protect blue-collar jobs, or it will usher in a vastly expanded land rush for developers who will wipe out small businesses that employ local residents and build tens of thousands of high-end condos for rich single people who work in Silicon Valley.

The stakes couldn’t be higher — and not just for the Mission, Potrero Hill, South of Market, and Dogpatch districts, but for the entire city. Because if the supervisors can’t get this right, the pattern will be set for development that will profoundly change the demographics (and politics) of this city.

The language the board will wrestle with is complicated, but the fundamental concepts are simple. And that’s where the discussion needs to start. For example:

• Affordable housing can’t be a token concession; it has to be the heart of the plan. The city’s own general plan states that 64 percent of all new housing built in San Francisco should be made available at below market rates. That’s because the vast majority of the people who need housing in this city earn far less money that it takes to buy a market-rate unit. Even with the nationwide housing slump, new condos in the city start at $500,000 for a tiny studio or one-bedroom unit; places big enough for families cost a lot more. Even families with two wage earners who have decent, unionized jobs (like teachers, firefighters, and bus drivers) can’t afford the lowest-end market-rate homes.

Most discussions of affordable housing seem to start with the premise that forcing developers to set aside maybe 25 percent of their units for below-market sale is some sort of a victory. That’s nonsense. If 25 percent of the units in the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan are affordable, that means 75 percent will go to very rich people — and a city in which 75 percent of the population is rich while most of the people who work in the city’s major industries can’t afford to live in town is not a sustainable city.

The supervisors should set affordable housing at 64 percent — that is, compliance with the general plan — as a bottom-line goal. Any aspect of the plan that doesn’t advance that goal needs to be examined and changed. If the evidence shows that to be an impossible standard, let’s negotiate down from there instead of taking the city’s anemic affordability levels and trying to bump them a few points up.

For example, the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition has suggested that any height or density bonuses should be used for 100 percent affordable housing. Sup. Tom Ammiano is carrying that amendment to the plan, and it needs to be approved.

• Developers have to pay to build new neighborhoods. You can’t just toss 40,000 new housing units into the eastern neighborhoods and expect to have a decent community. Neighborhoods needs parks and schools and bus lines — and the area targeted for this level of development has nowhere near the level of infrastructure it needs to handle the proposed housing influx.

So the developers who want to make money building housing also have to pony up for the public works and amenities that will make the plan viable. City officials estimate that the area needs $400 million worth of new infrastructure. The development fees currently proposed would cover less than half that. The ratio just doesn’t work: either the money is set aside — up front — to pay for neighborhood services and improvements, or the supervisors should reject the entire plan.

• Blue-collar jobs can’t be sacrificed for more millionaires. The Planning Department admits that the current proposal will destroy hundreds of jobs in what’s known as production, distribution, and repair — jobs that offer decent wages for people who don’t have an advanced education. The city desperately needs those jobs. If the plan envisions new industries to replace the PDR facilities, those industries have to offer similar employment opportunities.

Residents of the eastern neighborhoods aren’t opposed to new development. But everyone in town ought to be fighting a developer giveaway that brings the city nothing.

Does Vampire Weekend suck?

September 17, 2008

In terms of the Internet music hype cycle, seven months is an eternity. So while last winter the controversy surrounding Vampire Weekend — four mild Columbia alums who make a crowd-pleasing brand of Afro-pop punk — threatened to hold the Web hostage, more recently the discussions of privilege and charges of cultural appropriation that marked the backlash have all but disappeared. The quartet of Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, Rostam Batmanglij, and Christopher Tomson had managed, albeit briefly and in coded terms, to get indie rockers talking about two subjects they, and Americans in general, tend to talk around: race and class. In anticipation of the group’s performance at Treasure Island, we wanted to recap some critics’ takes on the band’s approach, to get people thinking about the cultural roots of the recent Docksider resurgence.

"BLOOD SUCKING GEEKS" BY ROBERT CHRISTGAU IN ARTICLES BLOG

www.najp.org/articles/2008/02/blood-sucking-geeks

AFRO-POP CO-OPTERS? The dean of American rock critics — Xgau to you — is unusually crotchety here, drawing on his extensive knowledge of African music to take down every style writers link the band to.

IVY LEAGUERS? Xgau acknowledges it, sure, but he’s got a lot of misconceptions about Afro-pop to correct. He does, however, anticipate the "psychological mechanism" that underpins the whole backlash. Despite everything, Afro-pop sounds happy, and the young are predisposed against upbeat music for its perceived shallowness, whether it comes from the global south or is an effect of Ivy League privilege.

GRACELAND COMPARISON? He drops the G-bomb only to note its ubiquity, then goes on to point out that the South African mbaqanga the Paul Simon album draws on is "much heavier than anything in Vampire Weekend unless you count their punky stuff, which isn’t African at all."

THE JAMS? The piece is really more of a rockcrit corrective than a consideration of VW’s music itself — here and in his later Consumer Guide review of the combo’s debut, he lets Pitchfork‘s Scott Plagenhof fill us in: "off-kilter, upbeat guitar pop," with "not just the touches of African pop but the willingness to use space and let the songs breathe a bit" and "detail-heavy, expressive" lyrics.

"PLEASE IGNORE THIS BAND" BY JULIANNE SHEPHERD IN VILLAGE VOICE, JAN. 22

www.villagevoice.com/2008-01-22/music/please-ignore-this-band

AFRO-POP CO-OPTERS? J-Shep recognizes that the conventional critic’s wisdom on the band "focuses on blind Afro-pop jacking and sartorial missteps," but sees the band’s real fault as a kind of essential anal attention to detail, making their songs feel "claustrophobically ordered."

GRACELAND COMPARISON? Namedrops in passing "Graceland rhythms" when describing VW’s blog-breakthrough single, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" — for Shepherd this affiliation is only slightly more consequential than their strong preference for Oxford shirts.

THE JAMS? The band so repeatedly work over their influences and presentation that eventually there’s "nothing left but space and simplicity and precious little conflict."

VAMPIRE WEEKEND REVIEW BY NITSUH ABEBE FOR PITCHFORK

www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/48053-vampire-weekend-vampire-weekend

AFRO-POP CO-OPTERS? Abebe sets us up with a series of African reference points: "Mansard Roof" ‘s keyboard tone recalls "old West-African pop," Koenig’s guitar has a "clean, natural tone you’d get on a record from Senegal or South Africa." He goes on to implicitly dismiss the idea of appropriation — the outfit plays those suggestive sounds "like indie kids on a college lawn, because they’re not hung up on Africa in the least."

IVY LEAGUERS? "Ivy League" makes a single appearance in the text, evoked as an easy target for haters, but considerations of VW’s education leave a stamp on Abebe’s thinking here: Abebe claims Koenig’s background allows him the insight to "summon up the atmosphere of kids whose parents use "summer" as a verb.

GRACELAND COMPARISON? According to Abebe, Simon "never sounded this exuberant."

THE JAMS? Despite listeners bringing their baggage to the band, it returns "nothing but warm, airy, low-gimmick pop, peppy, clever, and yes, unpretentious."

"VAMPIRE WEEKEND ‘CAPE COD KWASSA KWASSA’ " BY ERIC HARVEY IN HIS BLOG, MARATHONPACKS

www.marathonpacks.com/2007/11/vampire-weekend-cape-cod-kwassa-kwassa

AFRO-POP CO-OPTERS? This is Harvey’s focus, and he kills it with a supersophisticated reading that manages to reference the classic ethnographic text "The Masai on the Lawn." Ultimately, Harvey’s less worried about VW’s so-called "indie-style colonialism" — from his perspective, the band knows exactly what they’re doing by playing with such charged ideas — than he is about how intentional the provocation is.

IVY LEAGUERS? The blog post — dated a month after the release of the band’s debut single, "Mansard Roof" — makes one mention of this, a good indication of the extent to which the unit’s bio had saturated the blogosphere. Harvey, a graduate student, has the most nuanced understanding of how VW’s privilege inflects their coy performance of "clueless bougie cosmopolitanism."

GRACELAND COMPARISON? Harvey suggests that VW is canny enough not to make "sappy pap that’s impossible to fuck to in your parents’ beach house."

THE JAMS? Harvey’s approach implicitly rejects the blogospheric pressure to confuse what the music means socially with its sonic qualities.

Vampire Weekend plays 5:55 p.m., Sun/21, on the Bridge Stage at the Treasure Island Festival.

Vicious circle

September 16, 2008

› sarah@sfbg.com

The Mission District has been swarming with police officers lately. They were present and visible in large numbers in recent weeks in an effort to stem a recent tide of mostly drug- and gang-related killings in the heavily immigrant neighborhood.

"When 14, 15, and 13-year olds are running around with guns, we have a serious problem," San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong said at a recent press conference as she urged the community to call 911, or the police department’s anonymous hotline, to report suspected shooters.

"All these people come from families, and these family members may hear or know something, or see a change in behavior," Fong said.

But community advocates warn that Fong’s boss has made it less likely that immigrants will talk to the police. Since Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recent decision to notify immigration authorities the moment the city books undocumented juveniles accused of committing felonies, fear that the Sanctuary City laws are eroding may be driving the very sources Fong needs deeper into the shadows.

Shannan Wilber, executive director of Legal Services for Children, told us that the new policy is already having an impact.

"It’s a warning sign that no one is safe, that people can’t go to Juvenile Hall and pick up their kids, because they’ll be swept up by ICE, too," Wilber told us. "People are saying, ‘We don’t feel safe reporting a crime we witnessed or were a victim of.’<0x2009>"

Mission Captain Stephen Tacchini told the Guardian last week that he’s not hearing that the community is clamping up because of the mayor’s newfound willingness to send juveniles to the feds for possible deportation. But he acknowledged that he doesn’t know the immigration status of folks who talk to the police at meetings and on the street.

"How many undocumented aliens come forward and assist us?" he asked. "Well, it’s possible they use the anonymous tip line."

PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY?

In an Aug. 8 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Newsom wrote, "the underlying purpose of the sanctuary-city policy is to protect public safety."

First signed into law in 1985, the city’s sanctuary ordinance designated San Francisco a safe haven for immigrants seeking asylum from war-torn El Salvador and Guatemala. The city extended the policy to all immigrants in 1989, saying it would not use resources or funds to assist federal immigration law enforcement, except when required by federal law.

Over the years, the city’s sanctuary legislation was amended to allow law enforcement to report felony arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants. City officials, however, came to believe that state juvenile law prevented them from referring undocumented juveniles to the federal authorities.

The city’s decision not to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement about undocumented juvenile felons came under the media spotlight this summer when someone leaked to the Chronicle that the city had used tax dollars to fly undocumented Honduran crack dealers home. Some convicts were sent to group homes in San Bernardino County, and the city was left empty-handed and red-faced when a dozen ran away.

When the Chronicle articles hit, Newsom, who had just filed to explore a run for governor, claimed that the city could do nothing — the courts had jurisdiction over undocumented juvenile felons.

But the next day, Newsom did an abrupt about-turn.

"San Francisco will shift course and start turning over juvenile illegal immigrants," Newsom said. "We are moving in a different direction."

But the public was left in the dark about how far this new direction would veer until Sept. 10, when Siffermann unveiled details at a Juvenile Probation Commission meeting.

Community-based organizations and immigration rights attorneys complained that the policy ignored all but one of the recommendations they made in July and August to Siffermann, city administrator Ed Lee, and Kevin Ryan, a fired former US Attorney whom Newsom tapped to head the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in January.

Angela Chan of the Asian Law Caucus warned the commission that the policy, which has already resulted in 50 juveniles being referred to ICE, may result in the deportation of young people who had not committed any crime, or whose felony charges were dropped.

Community organizer Bobbi Lopez asked commissioners, "Why do we have a political will to demonize these kids who have been trafficked into this country?"

And Francisco Ugarte, a lawyer with the San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network, said the policy is akin to "rounding up all of Wall Street because there are bankers involved in insider trading."

The commission decided to form an ad hoc committee to review the policy, but the immigrant advocates and attorneys we contacted expressed little hope of change, given the impending presidential election and Newsom’s gubernatorial ambitions.

Some went so far as to suggest that the Joseph Russoniello, who opposed churches and synagogues offering sanctuary to Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the 1980s, and became the US Attorney based in San Francisco in January 2008, had drafted the mayor’s new policy.

Patti Lee of the Public Defender’s Office noted that the Mayor’s Office did not discuss the policy changes with her office, the courts, the prosecutors, or the people involved in immigration litigation.

Claiming that 99 percent of kids arrested in the city are not violent felons, Lee said, "They are mostly engaged in drug sales to survive and to send money back to their families."

Probation chief Siffermann defended the new policy direction. "Just because ICE is notified about suspected undocumented juvenile felons doesn’t mean they will be deported," Siffermann told us. "I know there’s a fear that this will open an automatic trap door to horrendous facilities and poor conditions, but this is not about dropping kids off in the middle of nowhere. What we are talking about includes outreach for families with adolescent members on the road to a delinquent involvement, whose actions call attention to the entire family situation."

Reached by phone, Russoniello told us, "If the city had scrupulously followed the ordinance as it’s written, there would not have been this controversy."

POLITICAL AGENDA?

Russoniello claimed that ICE’s first concern is people engaged in criminal activity, and agreed that in some cases, petitions may not be sustained against juveniles referred to ICE.

"But ICE may determine that the person is a member of a gang or engaged in regular criminal behavior," Russiniello added.

Russoniello also told us that the city is probably looking at its past files on undocumented juvenile felons to determine its own liability.

"Certainly, if people who are now adults were committing heinous crimes as juveniles, people are going to be wondering why they weren’t deported," Russoniello said, alluding to a June 22 triple homicide in which three members of the Bologna family were shot while returning home from a picnic.

Allegations emerged in July that the prime suspect in that killing, Edwin Ramos, 21, was an undocumented MS-13 gang member who committed felonies and went through the city’s juvenile system, but was never referred to ICE. That further embarrassed Newsom.

Kris Kobach, a one-time counsel to former US Attorney General John Ashcroft and the current Kansas Republican Party chair, is representing several surviving members of the Bologna family, who filed suit against the city claiming its sanctuary policies were a "substantial factor" in the slaying and blaming the Juvenile Probation Department for adopting "official and unofficial policies."

Russoniello claims that a review of monthly records that JPD has kept since 2004 show an uptick in alleged juvenile Honduran felons, and that this should have been a tip-off. "Are people gaming the system, or are organized groups taking advantage of the city’s leniency?" Russoniello asked.

Noting that 30 percent of these so-called teens were in fact adults and that significant numbers of gang members are "illegal aliens," Russoniello claims that the spur to shift policy was the city’s attempt to transport people back to Honduras in December 2007, which was brought to his attention in January, when he took office.

"We attempted to remedy it quietly, without much success," Russoniello recalls. "The city decided to send people to group homes. If you want to find a political agenda, look to the Mayor’s Office."

Calls to Ryan remained unanswered as of press time, but mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard e-mailed us that Newsom ordered a new policy direction May 22 "because he felt the old policy violated the intent of a sanctuary city, which is to promote cooperation by undocumented residents with law enforcement, not to harbor criminals."

The city attorney issued an opinion authorizing notification on July 1, Ballard wrote. Notification began July 3, and written protocols were publicly presented Sept. 10.

As for Russoniello’s comment about political agendas, Ballard retorted, "This isn’t about politics, it’s about public safety. In order to preserve the sanctuary city policy, we need to ensure that it complies with state and federal law so that it is not vulnerable to attack."

A safe sanctuary city

September 16, 2008

› news@sfbg.com

OPINION Amid a sea of reporters, I sat in a community meeting in the Mission District last week as city officials struggled to address the rash of homicides that have occurred in the past two weeks. As we listened to the endless chatter, I was greatly dismayed because we were avoiding the elephant in the room — the complete lack of trust between the police department and our communities of color.

I fear that that the relationship between communities of color and the police department has deteriorated beyond repair — in part because of the San Francisco Chronicle‘s xenophobic and inflammatory headlines.

It has been two months since the Chronicle began its skewed campaign of blame, pointing the finger at SF’s Sanctuary City laws as responsible for the rise in crime in San Francisco. The paper limited its coverage to the most extreme cases, such as undocumented homeless youth forced to traffic in narcotics. The stories failed to mention that immigrants are statistically less likely to become involved in crime — and when victimized, are less likely to report the crime.

Now we have gutted our sanctuary-city status with a new policy — one requiring police and probation officers to report detained youth to immigration officials if they even suspect that the detainees are undocumented. There are already reports that the police are arbitrarily stopping and ticketing young Latino males for trivial infractions such as "rosaries obstructing car views" as part of their Violence Prevention Traffic Unit work.

This new policy mandates that we refer immigrant youth charged with felonies to deportation proceedings prior to determining their innocence. What happened to due process?

As a community organizer, I have seen firsthand the tragedy inflicted on families when city officials send students in San Francisco public schools to deportation before determining their innocence or guilt. This regressive policy avoids any input from those most qualified to give it — the district attorney and the public defender.

Here’s the irony of it all — further attacks on the Sanctuary City policy will not produce a safer San Francisco. Indeed, wives and girlfriends in our immigrant communities will be less likely to report incidents of domestic violence for fear their loved ones (or themselves!) will be summarily deported. Conscientious neighborhood residents will be less likely to report vandalism or other youth mischief for fear that children in their community will be spirited away overnight by immigration authorities. And what about homicide? Undocumented people witnessed the murder of a youth and a father in the last two months, but have refused to come forward out of fear that the police will report them to immigration authorities.

Immigrants already live in the shadows of this great nation. They are the economic backbone of California — washing our dishes, picking our produce, and generally subsidizing all of our lifestyles. Police collaboration with immigration officials will force an already exploited population further underground, and engender even greater distrust of those institutions purporting to serve and protect them. *

Barbara "Bobbi" Lopez is a community organizer with the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and a candidate for Board of Education.

Editor’s Notes

September 16, 2008

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The Democrats, who control both houses of the state Legislature, lost badly on the state budget. They caved in, they sold out — and the worst part is, they had very little choice.

The state can’t keep running forever without a budget. I think we could have gone a little longer, and the Democrats could have turned up the public pressure a bit more, but in the end, it probably wouldn’t have mattered a bit. A small number of anti-tax Republicans from very conservative districts now control the entire state budget process.

And the worst part of that is, I’m not sure we can change that. So I’m thinking we should try something else.

Just about everybody knows by now that California is one of only three states that requires a two-thirds Legislative majority to approve a budget. The state Constitution also requires a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. So unless the Democrats can take control of both houses by a 67 percent majority, the GOP can exert a veto over any attempt to close a budget deficit with anything but deep, draconian cuts.

And the Republicans who hold sway aren’t the moderate types who might want to negotiate. One reason the Democrats control both the Assembly and the Senate is that they’ve been experts at drawing legislative lines, shoving large majorities of Republicans into a small number of districts. That means more Democrats in Sacramento — but it also means that many of the Republicans represent areas where there’s little chance a Democrat can challenge them — and where the voters will rebel against any representative who raises taxes.

"The Republicans have no incentive ever to raise taxes," Assemblymember Mark Leno explained to me recently. "They all fear that if they vote for a tax increase, they will lose their seats. And history shows that they are right."

That’s why the polls show an overwhelming percentage of Californians want better schools — but the state budget will take billions away from education, putting the next generation of Californians at risk.

So the buzz in more progressive circles in Sacramento is starting to focus on a constitutional reform that would eliminate the supermajority for budget approval. But that would only be meaningful if we also scrapped the two-thirds rule for new taxes — and that’s going to be a tough sell. I can see the money flowing by the tens of millions into a campaign to keep legislators from raising taxes. And given the fact that the public in general doesn’t trust the Legislature, it’s possible that battle will be lost.

Over and over, starting with Proposition 13 in 1978, California voters have approved anti-tax measures. I hope we can turn that tide around, but I think we also need a backup plan.

See, it doesn’t take a supermajority to give cities and counties the right to raise taxes on their own.

Leno, for example, has a bill that would allow cities to impose their own car taxes. In San Francisco, we’re talking big money, $50 million or so — enough, perhaps, to blunt the impact of the state’s cuts to public schools and public health. It might be easier to push for the passage of that sort of measure than for statewide Constitutional reform.

Let cities pass their own income taxes. Let counties impose oil-severance taxes. Amend Prop. 13 to allow higher taxes on commercial property.

Then maybe San Francisco and Berkeley and Los Angeles will wind up with better schools and parks and streets and hospitals, and Orange Country and the other anti-tax havens will see their public services collapse as the state keeps cutting. Maybe after a while they’ll get the point.

The buzz on urban bees

September 10, 2008

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY One would hardly even notice there was a beehive in the garden behind the Mission District’s Kaliflower Collective, except for the winged traffic shuttling industriously between the four-tiered bee box and the fruit trees flowering just overhead.

It’s not easy to imagine, given the scant handful of visible bees, that as many as 50,000 bees might be contained within the modest hive which, at less than two feet square and about three feet tall, looks as innocuous and unthreatening as a stack of closet organizers. It’s also hard, in this tranquil setting, to fully appreciate the crisis situation of colony collapse disorder (CCD), which has been quietly decimating honeybee populations nationwide since 2006. Some beekeepers report up to 90 percent losses. Since bees are responsible for pollinating a wide variety of urban plants — from fruit trees to garden veggies, from clover to cactus — beekeeping is more than a curious hobby. It’s an essential link in the chain of life as we know it.

The even-keeled behavior of San Francisco’s backyard bees is appreciated by most urban beekeepers. Roger Meier, a Castro District-based beekeeper whose home-produced honey appears in several local markets under the label Mint Hill, admits that despite their proven usefulness in city settings, the idea of kept bees can cause some consternation among the uninitiated. Swarming bees in search of a new hive (such as a recent incident in the Mission reported on SFist.com) is cited as a cause for alarm by nervous neighbors.

"It’s pretty frightening to wake up and find a big swarm of bees in your backyard if you don’t know much about them," Meier says. His neighbors have come to appreciate his honey-making habit over the years, not to mention their own well-pollinated apple trees, which he calls "happy with fruit." That Meier, like most experienced beekeepers, actively maintains his hives to prevent swarming also helps keep potential public relations problems in check.

Since swarms mainly occur when a hive gets overcrowded, Meier and his fellow apiculturists monitor the population growth of each hive and split their broods into empty bee boxes when necessary — a process known as "forced swarming." Despite these precautions, swarms can occur, but people are urged not to panic or reach for the Raid. Instead, the San Francisco Beekeepers Association offers removal referrals on its Web site, www.sfbee.org, and many urban beekeepers are happy to inherit a new brood.

Peter Sinton, president of the association, estimates there to be around 60 active beekeepers in a club with a membership of 171, a number that seems initially low until you consider that most beekeepers run multiple hives. Kept bees can be found across the area in backyards, rooftops, community gardens, the Alemany Farm, and the Crystal Springs watershed. Spreading the bee population over far-flung neighborhoods is one way to ensure the continued survival of diverse flora and means that even if the beekeeper loses one or two hives to infestation, infection, or CCD, there will be some survivors.

It’s not just a passion for pollination that brings nascent beekeepers into the fold. Nancy Ellis, animal exhibit coordinator at the Randall Museum, began her journey into apiculture when she became responsible for the upkeep of the museum’s exhibit hive. Nearly nine years later, she cares for four hives in various locations and bottles her honey harvests under the label Bee Bop. She waxes somewhat rhapsodic on the unique benefits of honey: "It’s bactericidal, like Neosporin," she explains, "and its chemical makeup keeps it from spoiling or getting moldy." Another unique benefit of honey is its reported effect on sufferers of pollen allergies, whom Ellis encourages to take a small dose of locally-produced honey per day to "inoculate" themselves against the allergens present in surrounding flora.

But it’s not just the medicinal that lures folks into apiculture. Suzi Palladino, youth program and compost education manager at the Garden for the Environment, cites her interest in urban sustainability and self-sufficiency as key to her forays into apiculture. Peter Sinton refers to the meditative state his beekeeping encourages.

"Handling bees is like tai chi," he says. "Do it with calm and grace, and bees usually do not get riled up."

Palin’s veto power

September 8, 2008

By Sarah Phelan

So, maybe the pen IS mightier, after all? Palin’s budget vetoes.

Forget about using Wikipedia to find out the truth about GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin.

As online reports have noted, a sockpuppet called “Young Trigg” scrubbed the entry for Alaska’s first female governor the day before McCain publicly announced his VP pick.

That story should be a wakeup call for those tempted to rely on doctored or poorly researched online articles, in trying to find out who Gov. Sarah Palin really is.

The good news? There are plenty of other online resources that provide valid insights into Palin’s political priorities.

Consider, for instance, Governor Palin’s vetoes of Alaska’s FY 08 and 09 capital budget.

This shows that Palin vetoed a $350,000 statewide school substance abuse education and prevention program.

She also vetoed funding for wireless access and laptops in Alaskan community schools, including those in the North Pole district. (Guess Santa can spring for those, right?.)

And she eliminated funding for several native community projects, including the Kluti Kaah community recreation and learning center in the Interior Villages, the Jilkaat Kwaan cultural heritage center and Bald Eagle observatory in the Southeast Islands, and the Ilisagvik College Workforce Development program in the Artic.

Palin also vetoed a snow fence in the Bering Straits, a Zamboni blade sharpener for the Homer Hockey Association, statewide boy scout camp upgrades.

Oh, and she vetoed the Anchorage Police Department’s $17. 5 million request to expand its headquarters, for the second year in a row, along with a number of fire department’s requests for emergency safety equipment.

This summer, Alaskan lawmakers argued for a robust capital budget, which they said would help build the state and boost its economy. But Palin disagreed, saying she wanted to limit spending to public safety, health and infrastructure, and angering some representatives, by not giving them a chance to defend programs which either fell entirely victim to, or were halved, as Palin made $268 million worth of cuts, leaving Alaska with a $3.6 capital budget.

Here are Palin’s views on the line-item veto, taken from KTUU’s site.

“Well, you know, that’s the beauty of our system here — is checks and balances, provide for that tool to be used, if they deem that necessary, those who hold the purse strings and that’s the lawmakers if they want to override,” Palin said.

In addition to vetoing a $100,000 KTOO Government Transparency Project, Palin also axed a $50,000 community development center’s video project that was to have been called, “Alaska Teen Talk Show.”

The project aimed to produce pilot talk shows written and produced by the students, with students advised to audition several prospective hosts, rating each one on poise, intelligence, personality and looks.

“You should ultimately base your choice on a host’s familiarity with your show’s theme,” states the application.” If you hire the most attractive but vapid interviewer to host a political talk show and they don’t know anything about the presidential race, viewers will know it and change the channel.”

Sadly, I’m not at all convinced that viewers do change channel, just because a good-looking host is vapid. And while I don’t know why this particular project didn’t get funded, I can’t help imaging that whoever wrote this grant application must be wishing that they’d chosen some other example, when applying for this grant.

JROTC is not a choice

August 19, 2008

OPINION To hear proponents of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) talk, it’s a matter of personal choice for 14- and 15-year-olds to sign up for the Pentagon’s military recruitment program, which is being phased out of San Francisco’s public schools June 2009. The San Francisco Board of Education also recently voted to remove physical education credit from the program this school year. It had to: the retired military officers who teach the course don’t meet the educational standards of state law, and the course doesn’t meet state physical education standards.

Supporters of JROTC are taking the issue to the November ballot. Their initiative, albeit non-binding, would put San Franciscans on record as in support of the military program.

As Democratic clubs and other political organizations begin their endorsement process, progressives need to understand the importance of defeating this initiative. It’s not a harmless measure. If it passes, the new school board can use it to reinstate JROTC. If it loses, it’s less likely the board will change its course. Thankfully, last week the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) voted overwhelmingly not to endorse the measure.

JROTC is not summer camp or a harmless after-school activity. It is one more way the military finds bodies for its illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Denisha Williams can tell you that. The African American high school senior in Philadelphia told the City Paper that she left JROTC and opted out of the military having her contact info. It hasn’t made any difference: “I have received phone calls, e-mail, three letters and a 15-minute videotape. I even received a phone call from a female recruiter asking if I was still interested in the Navy. I told her I wasn’t and hung up. A week later I received another letter and the tape.”

Capt. Daniel R. Gager, commander of the US Army recruiting station in south Philadelphia, said he and other recruiters were ordered by the US Recruiting Command to put more time and energy into recruiting high school upperclassmen such as Williams.

In San Francisco, at least 15 percent of the cadets have been placed in the program without their consent. It seems the military will do whatever it takes to get in front of our youngsters in our public schools.

Pressuring kids to join the military is wrong. International law says kids under 18 should not be recruited at all, and the ACLU agrees (see www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen). Recruiters in every high school and at every mall in this country break that law every day.

Nationally about 40 percent of JROTC kids end up in the military. In San Francisco, proponents claim only 2 percent go on to military careers. They are wrong. According to the school district, no tracking of JROTC students is done.

Please work to defeat Proposition V, the pro-JROTC initiative.

Mark Sanchez and Tommi Avicolli Mecca

Mark Sanchez is President of the San Francisco Board of Education and an eighth grade science teacher. Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical queer activist and writer whose regular columns appear at beyondchron.org.

Feed our elders well

August 19, 2008

› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Conventional wisdom is that it costs more to eat well, but Alameda County Meals on Wheels has found real value in switching from processed foods to the kind of fresh, local, sustainable fare being touted at the upcoming Slow Food Nation conference, which begins Aug. 29 in San Francisco.

Bay Area Community Services (BACS), the nonprofit that manages Meals on Wheels, has been struggling with a perennial budget deficit, rising fuel and food costs, and a waiting list of 200 seniors eager to join the program.

Even though the easy, heat-and-serve method is the national model for feeding large amounts of people cheaply, BACS was finding that trying to supply 1,200 people a day with meals in their homes and at 21 different congregate sites through a contract with a food processing company just wasn’t working.

"Our solution to the problem was a social enterprise kitchen," Jenny Huston told the Guardian. The 20-year veteran chef and educator is director of Culinary Social Enterprise at BACS. She and her boss, executive director Kent Ellsworth, took the program in a new direction. They went "farm to table," meaning they stopped serving frozen food and started serving meals made with fresh meat, dairy, fruits, and vegetables, and they did it by establishing a culinary arts training program with a curriculum based on the day-to-day work of preparing the Meals on Wheels fare from scratch.

"If you have a structural deficit, why are you spending more money on food?" Huston pondered, asking herself the question many critics might raise. "Sure," she said, "processed stuff is much cheaper, but you’re not seeing the full cost."

What is that full cost? That’s a hot topic for the Slow Food Nation forums, such as how far an avocado travels to become guacamole in Maine. Beyond aligning meals with produce that’s locally available, Huston and Ellsworth are attuned to what happens to a community when its most vulnerable populations — children, seniors, and the disabled — stop eating well.

"Good foods are not the privilege of people who have money. It’s the right of everybody," Ellsworth told the Guardian. "When we buy wholesale, local, and fresh, we get a better product for a good price. It’s the right way to do business."

But raw ingredients require more kitchen work. By partnering with a number of organizations, including the Pleasant Valley Adult School and Oakland Adult and Career Education Program, BACS was able to find budding cooks though a free, 12-week job training program.

They also connected with Community Alliance for Family Farms, a network of local growers and distributors who could provide up to 350 pounds of each raw ingredient a day. Just a few months into the new program, a typical Meals on Wheels lunch now includes all local milk, 10 percent local meat, and 19 percent local produce — and it’s made from scratch by workers who are learning enough food preparation skills to qualify for entry-level kitchen jobs.

And they’re doing it for just pennies more a day. "Our food cost has only gone up five cents per meal since we’ve gone farm to table," Huston said. Yet donations since April have increased 25 percent — about $20,000 — meaning that people who were once asked to give a dollar or two for their lunches are voluntarily giving more for better food.

Though the Meals on Wheels budget gap hasn’t disappeared, Huston likens it to the first few months of any business, when turning a profit is elusive. They’re hoping to expand catering services and market the meals to other day and residential programs.

At the Aug. 14 graduation dinner, Ellsworth announced that a foundation had approved a $200,000 program investment loan to purchase new equipment, remodel their kitchen, and grow the school. It was welcome news for the first class of five cooks. Reflecting on the experience, Geri Haas said, "It was really nice going there, knowing I was relied upon to provide fresh food for our elders."

Orlando De’Aguero, another graduate, announced that he got a job with a local organic food preparation company, eliciting cheers from the gathering of friends, family, and fellow classmates. He said, "I wouldn’t have traded the three months I had here for anything at a culinary school."

Dirty secrets under the big top

August 12, 2008

› steve@sfbg.com

The circus has come to town. Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the largest and most profitable show of its kind in history, is in Oakland this week, and will be headed to San Jose next week. Spectators will see trapeze acts, clowns — and animals, particularly elephants, performing the trademark stunts that are considered the highlight of the event.

But the show may soon be over.

Ringling Bros. has been battling with animal welfare advocates for a generation or more, and a landmark federal lawsuit headed to trial in October could finally answer the question of whether rough, regular treatment of endangered Asian elephants by circus handlers constitutes illegal animal abuse.

At stake is the future of performing animals in circuses, particularly this 138-year-old global institution. Circus officials say that if the court prohibits the use of tools like leg chains and the ankus (an elephant training tool that activists call a bull hook and handlers call a guide), they’ll stop touring with elephants — a feature that they admit is their biggest draw.

The case, originally filed eight years ago by three national animal welfare groups and former Ringling Bros. elephant handler Tom Rider, has unearthed a treasure trove of damning inside documents from both Ringling Bros. and the US Department of Agriculture, the agency that regulates circuses and ensures their compliance with the Endangered Species and Animal Welfare acts.

Among the allegations are claims of repeated injuries to elephants by ankus-wielding handlers, efforts to conceal animal abuse from the public and government regulators, the preventable deaths of three baby elephants, prevalence of tuberculosis (the same strain contracted by humans) in elephants and handlers, and a pattern of high USDA officials overriding the enforcement recommendations of agency investigators and ignoring evidence of abuse.

"Ringling Bros. engages in these unlawful activities by routinely beating elephants to ‘train’ them, ‘discipline’ them, and keep them under control; chaining them for long periods of time; hitting them with sharp bull hooks; ‘breaking’ baby elephants with force to make them submissive; and forcibly removing nursing baby elephants from their mothers before they are weaned, with the use of ropes and chains," reads the federal lawsuit filed by American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Animal Welfare Institute, the Fund for Animals, and Rider. It will be heard in US District Court in Washington, DC, starting Oct. 7.

Despite its major implications, the case has drawn surprisingly little media attention. But it’s a remarkable story, full of juicy documents, an abundance of YouTube video footage that appears to show Ringling Bros. animal abuse — along with Ringling Bros.’ role in derailing the career of a prominent Bay Area television news anchor and the intriguing involvement of shadowy CIA operatives.

Critics say Ringling Bros.’ extensive advertising makes media outlets pull punches, but another reason the circus has avoided bad press may lie with other Ringling lawsuits that contain some astounding revelations of how the circus — or more specifically, circus owner Kenneth Feld and his Feld Entertainment, the world’s largest live entertainment company — treats those who seek to expose its secrets.

DIRTY CIRCUS TRICKS

Power and illusion have always been mainstays of the circus, ever since P.T. Barnum reportedly said, "There’s a sucker born every minute." Elephants and other exotic animals have always been important features of the show as well, going back to the 1860s when James Anthony Bailey displayed Little Columbia, the first elephant ever born in a circus.

The nation’s three largest circuses — Barnum’s, Bailey’s, and the Ringling Brothers‘ — gradually merged into one by 1919 and enjoyed growing popularity until entering into a period of decline during the Great Depression. That decline continued through the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944, when more than 100 people died inside a Ringling Bros. tent, and into the 1950s, when television became popular.

But music promoter Irvin Feld began to turn the circus around in the late ’50s, bringing in new acts and increasing the circus’s profitability. In 1967 he bought the company and later passed control of the circus to his only son, Kenneth, who has prospered along with the show.

Kenneth Feld made Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans in 2004, with a reported net worth of $775 million. Feld Entertainment made the Forbes list of the nation’s top companies in 2000, ranking 404th with a reported annual revenue of $675 million and profits of $100 million.

Feld also owns and operates such shows as Disney on Ice, Disney Live, High School: The Musical, and the Siegfried and Roy tiger-taming act.

But all is not well in the Feld empire.

When Feld had a falling out with his top lieutenant, Charles Smith, in 1998, Smith filed a wrongful termination lawsuit that exposed the nefarious inner dealings of "The Greatest Show on Earth," including alleged animal abuse, public health threats, and the use of a top former CIA official to spy on, infiltrate, and sabotage animal welfare activists and journalists.

Among other things, the case brought to light charges that some of the elephants have been exposed to or have contracted tuberculosis.

Joel Kaplan, a former private investigator who worked for Feld, alleged in a deposition in the Smith case that TB was a serious problem among the pachyderms. "I think it’s immoral to have elephants traveling in every arena in the country with tuberculosis," noted Kaplan, who filed his own lawsuit and settled for $250,000. He stated that he had been told by a Ringling Bros. veterinarian that "about half of the elephants in each of the shows had tuberculosis and that the tuberculosis was an easily transmitted disease to individuals, to human beings."

Also included in the case was a deposition by Clair George, the No. 3 person in the CIA until 1987, when he was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-contra scandal (he was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992). George admitted to working for Feld and conveyed chilling tales of sabotage, including the case of freelance journalist Jan Pottker, who wrote a 1990 magazine profile of the Feld family which included allegations that Irvin Feld maintained a longstanding homosexual relationship outside his marriage.

To deter her from writing a book about the Feld family, George outlined a scheme to have one agent befriend her and another seduce her, spy on her progress, feed her conflicting information, and even get her a book deal on another project to divert her, with a $25,000 advance allegedly paid by Feld.

"I undertook a series of efforts to find out what Pottker was doing and reported on the results of my work to Mr. Feld," George wrote in a sworn affidavit. "I was paid for this work by Feld Entertainment or its affiliates. I prepared my reports in writing and presented them to Mr. Feld in personal meetings."

Amy McWethy, a spokesperson for Feld Entertainment, refused to discuss the cases or their implications.

The statements of George and Kaplan describe secret bugging and phone tapping, bribes and clandestine cash settlements to silence critics (including Smith, who settled his lawsuit for $6 million), and infiltration of groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

"As part of my work for Feld Entertainment," George wrote in his affidavit, "I was also asked to review reports from [Feld executive vice president] Richard Froemming and his organizations based on their surveillance of, and efforts to counter, the activities of various animal rights groups."

National security reporter Jeff Stein (now with Congressional Quarterly) wrote the definitive account of Feld’s alleged black ops for Salon.com ("The Greatest Vendetta on Earth," 8/30/01), and was also allegedly targeted for surveillance and retribution, according to a story in the May/June 2002 issue of Columbia Journalism Review ("Investigations: The scary circus," by Jay Cheshes).

Stein’s original stories were followed up by 60 Minutes in May 2003, which essentially repeated the allegations.

The next year, KTVU anchor Leslie Griffith got onto the circus story, doing lengthy, investigative reports on the animal abuse lawsuit revelations for KTVU in 2004 and 2005, just as Ringling Bros. was coming to town.

Then Griffith left the station — at least in part because of the backlash she says she felt from both her corporate bosses and Ringling Bros., whose internal documents reveal an aggressive strategy to counter negative media coverage.

A training manual made public as part of the lawsuit outlines how the circus responds to reporters:

"Immediately upon learning about negative stories about Ringling Bros., the Animal Issues Department will put in place the [Rapid Deployment Force]," it states. "The Animal Issues Department will directly contact the editor/news director…. Armed with videos, literature and other information, the Animal Issues Department Head will demand a retraction or equal time and will work in concert with the grass roots campaign…. If the editor/news director refuses the request, Legal will be informed to determine what recourses exist."

Griffith says it was after KTVU was targeted by this effort that she was barred from doing any more circus stories and her relationship with the station began to deteriorate. "All of a sudden my hair wasn’t good enough, my makeup wasn’t good enough — after 25 years of doing the news."

Officially Griffith and KTVU parted on good terms with mutual statements of respect. Even today, KTVU general manager Tim McKay (who was station manager when Griffith left) speaks highly of Griffith, telling the Guardian, "Leslie worked here for a number of years and did a fantastic job."

McKay said he didn’t know about any contact from Ringling Bros. or Griffith being told to back off the circus stories (he said he would check and get back to us, but didn’t as of press time), saying only, "We stand behind the stories as they aired. There was a whole lot of attention given to their accuracy."

But it’s clear that Ringling Bros. was aware of and upset by Griffith’s work. In 2005 Ringling Bros. attorneys argued in court against efforts by the ASPCA and the other lawsuit plaintiffs to obtain financial records and veterinary records on the Ringling elephants, telling the judge: "To shovel this stuff into the public record and try to draw inferences from it, or put it in out of context, lends itself to all sorts of abuse, the very kind of abuse that we contend took place on the San Francisco television station last week."

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Ringling to turn over the documents, but kept many (mostly the financial documents) under protective seal, keeping their contents hidden from the public.

Griffith, who won dozens of major journalism awards over her 25-year career, says the public suffers when journalists are muzzled. "If they took anything from me," she said, "it was my bully pulpit."

ELEPHANTS AND TB

If Griffith still had that bully pulpit and the ability to freely use it, she told us she’d be talking about mycobacterium tuberculosis in elephants. After doing extensive research into the issue — interviewing top experts and traveling across the country to review voluminous court files — Griffith has come to believe Ringling Bros. Circus poses a serious threat to public health.

"You can talk about the [animal] abuse, but with a worldwide epidemic brewing, I’d say the story is the tuberculosis," Griffith told us. She has been writing periodically on elephants and TB on her blog (lesliegriffithproductions.com), the Huffington Post, and prominent news sites such as Truthout, which published her piece, "The Elephant in the Room," a year ago.

"There are several alarming issues for epidemiologists: drug resistance, inability to diagnose if an elephant has been cured, and disease spreading to handlers who work with them and to the public who attend circus performances," Griffith wrote in the article, relying on public documents and experts on both the circus and infectious disease.

Griffith’s star source has been San Francisco–based epidemiologist Don Francis, who helped discover the HIV virus and became the first director for the Center for Disease Control’s AIDS Laboratory. The Guardian talked to Francis, who has reviewed Ringling documents and concluded that the elephants do indeed pose a threat to public health. He told us he’s particularly troubled by records that appear to show elephants being treated with multiple drugs, meaning they could have multidrug-resistant TB (MDR TB), "which really scares me." Ringling denies that any elephants have MDR TB, for which there is essentially no cure.

But Francis remains concerned. "A trumpeting elephant could definitely aerosolize this stuff," Francis told the Guardian — and that would keep small particles of the virus airborne long enough for them to be inhaled by handlers or circus crowds. Children and those with weak immune systems, such as people with HIV, would be especially susceptible to contracting TB from these particles.

Although Francis said he couldn’t say whether any circus attendees have been infected with TB from elephants — and we’ve been shown no evidence that anyone’s ever contracted TB from attending a circus — he sees no basis for Ringling’s claims that the elephants are safe. "I don’t know that anyone has asked the question. I’m not sure anyone has ever tied it together," Francis said.

Both Griffith and Rider maintain that all of Ringling’s elephants have been exposed to TB at one time or another and that the standard annual process used to test for infection — trunk washing — is inadequate to determine if they are carrying and transmitting the virus.

"Every elephant traveling with Ringling has been exposed to TB, and many of them have TB," Rider, a former Ringling elephant handler, told us.

In fact, Kaplan testified in court that he was asked "to find a physician who would test the people in the circus to see if they had tuberculosis but who would destroy the records and not turn them in to the Centers for Disease Control," as the law requires.

Ringling and USDA documents unearthed by the lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests show that at least eight elephants tested positive for TB and that many others have been exposed to them. Ringling veterinarian Danny Graham told the Guardian that two non-traveling elephants are currently being treated for TB, but couldn’t say how many have tested positive in the past.

Yet Ringling officials maintain that active tuberculosis is not a problem in the circus, that their diagnosis and treatment regimens are adequate to protect the health of the elephants, circus employees, and the public, and that no elephants that tested positive for TB have then performed in front of the public.

Graham said the trunk wash, which detects when a TB infection has shed out of the lungs and can be transmitted, is an effective indicator of whether an animal is contagious. "Shedding is when it can be passed to other elephants," she told us. "What our trunk washes look for is a shedding of the bacteria."

Yet Ringling records show at least one case in which the necropsy on a dead elephant, Dolly, showed TB in the lungs even though the trunk wash results were negative.

A Ringling FAQ sheet on "Tuberculosis in Elephants," by Dr. Dennis Schmitt, chair of veterinary services for Ringling’s Center for Elephant Conservation, admits that humans and elephants get the same kind of TB. "However there has been no proven case of tuberculosis bacterium being transmitted from elephants to humans," he writes.

He uses a similarly legalistic, underlined approach on questions of whether humans can contract TB from elephants and whether there have been studies indicating so, saying neither has been "proven." And he flatly denies that any elephants have MDR TB.

Two Ringling officials interviewed by the Guardian — Graham and Janice Aria, director of animal stewardship training — went further than Schmitt and flatly denied that any elephants that tested positive for TB ever performed.

"None of the elephants in our traveling unit have ever tested positive for TB," Aria told the Guardian. "No, none of our traveling elephants have ever tested positive for TB," Graham said in a separate interview.

THE USDA INVESTIGATES

But Ringling veterinary records unearthed in the latest lawsuit cast some doubt on the claims of circus officials. Three of the seven elephants that traveled with Ringling Bros. Blue Unit to Oakland — Juliet, Bonnie, and Kelly Ann — appeared in one redacted veterinary document, marked as exhibit "FELD 0021843."

Kelly Ann’s entry includes this notation: "Moved from CEC to Blue Unit. Just finished TB treatment." Juliet was listed as "currently being treated for presumptive TB" and Bonnie had "blood drawn for Tb Elisa," an expensive TB test that often follows a positive reading in the trunk wash test. Documents connected to a 1999 USDA inspection also list Kelly Ann and "Juliette" among 10 elephants administered drugs for treating TB.

Asked whether Kelly Ann has ever undergone TB treatment and informed of the document, Aria told the Guardian, "From my knowledge, that is not true."

McWethy, the Feld corporate communications manager who arranged and monitored our interviews with Aria and Graham, initially said she was not familiar with the document, and even if she was, "the court requested that the parties not discuss the specifics of the suit." In actuality, the judge has not issued a gag order in the case, and plaintiffs spoke freely about details of the case.

Later, after she reviewed the document at our request, McWethy confirmed that Kelly Ann had been exposed to TB in 1999 and that the circus decided to treat her for the disease. "But she’s never tested positive," McWethy said.

In June 2001, the tuberculosis issue was enough of a concern to the USDA that the agency initiated what one official document called an "investigation regarding allegations that Ringling was using known TB-infected animals in circus performances." But information on the results of that investigation was redacted by the USDA from later documents.

In a 2003 report written by the three plaintiff groups in the latest lawsuit, "Government Sanctioned Abuse: How the United States Department of Agriculture Allows Ringling Bros. Circus to Systematically Mistreat Elephants," they conclude: "Although tuberculosis is an extremely contagious disease, and Ringling’s elephants are publicly exhibited throughout the country, including elephants that go in and out of both the breeding and retirement facilities, the public has been kept completely in the dark about this investigation, the agency’s decision to ‘override’ the conclusions of its own inspectors and investigators, and the reasons this investigation was closed with no further action."

WATCHING THE CIRCUS

Feld — the man and his company — are big contributors to top elected officials of both major parties. Campaign finance records show that since 1999, Feld has given at least $104,900 to Republicans and $35,150 to Democrats on the federal level and in his home state of Maryland.

Benefiting disproportionately from Feld’s largesse are members of the House Agriculture Committee (which oversees the USDA). The contributions include almost $10,000 to former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Tracy), $6,500 to the campaign and committees of Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia (the committee’s ranking Republican), and $6,500 to Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.). Representatives from the two states where Ringling Bros. bases its animals off-season, Texas and Florida, also took in $13,300 and $28,000 respectively, more than those from other states. Animal welfare advocates say Feld’s wealth, power, and political connections have caused the USDA to go easy on Ringling Bros.

"This cozy relationship between the USDA and Ringling Bros. is going to be exposed during the trial," Tracy Silverman, the attorney for Animal Welfare Institute, told the Guardian.

Plaintiffs will make an example of the death of a four-year-old elephant named Benjamin, who drowned in a Huntsville, Texas, pond July 26, 1999 after refusing to heed trainer Pat Harned’s commands to get out. That death came a year after another baby elephant, two-year-old Kenny, died after being used in three circus performances in one day, despite warnings from veterinarians that he was severely ill.

"The United States Department of Agriculture’s final ‘Report of Investigation’ concerning the incident concluded that Benjamin’s trainer’s use of an ‘ankus’ on Benjamin ‘created behavioral stress and trauma which precipitated in the physical harm and ultimate death of the animal.’ On information and belief, the routine beatings of Benjamin were a contributing factor to his death," the animal welfare groups wrote in the lawsuit.

The USDA investigator recommended Ringling Bros. be charged with vioutf8g the Animal Welfare Act, yet the USDA’s General Counsel’s Office overrode those conclusions and issued its own: "Suddenly, and without any signs of distress or struggle, Benjamin became unconscious and drowned." Ringling and USDA officials say the animal died of a previously undetected cardiac arrhythmia, and the final report omitted any mention of the ankus or behavioral stress.

Animal welfare activists and lawyers say this is just one of many examples of senior USDA officials overriding recommendations of front-line investigators and veterinarians, then blocking access to reports and other evidence that might support or disprove the final conclusions. Indeed, the lawsuit identifies more than a dozen such examples.

USDA spokesperson Jessica Milteer told the Guardian she couldn’t comment on specific examples, but said supervisors are ultimately responsible for interpreting field reports. "Things are pretty much done on a case-by-case basis. We try to work with a facility to come into compliance."

But she said that it’s not true the USDA goes easy on Ringling Bros. because of its power or political connections. She said there are currently two open investigations into Ringling Bros. (she would not provide details) and that facilities like Ringling get annual inspections unless they’re found to have problems or risk factors.

"Since 2005 Ringling has been inspected 52 times," Milteer said, indicating the USDA is indeed concerned about some of the things it has observed at Ringling Bros.

USE OR ABUSE?

Aria, the Ringling trainer, said banning the use of the ankus "would not allow elephants to travel anymore." Feld and other top officials have made similar public statements. She bristled when hearing the ankus referred to as a bull hook. "We call them guides," she told the Guardian. "It is used to reinforce a verbal cue."

Aria and McWethy dismissed videos that appear to show handlers inflicting violent blows on elephants, saying they are often selectively edited and spliced in with footage of non-Ringling elephants and handlers. Activists insist this isn’t true and that much of the footage clearly shows abuse at Ringling Bros. For example, one video shows a person identified as a Ringling Bros. elephant handler striking violently at an elephant after saying on camera that he never does so. Another shows Ringling elephants being paraded through a town and one slow elephant being sometimes pulled along by an ankus behind the ear, with a closeup then showing a bloody puncture wound in the spot.

"From the videos I have seen, so much of it is repackaged and old stuff that doesn’t apply to us at all, not at all," Aria told us.

Graham, who worked for Ringling for the two years she has been a veterinarian and who interned with the circus before that, said she visits the elephants at least once a week and "I have never seen a trainer use an ankus inappropriately." Further, she said, she has never seen an injury she thinks was caused by the ankus: "If I see anything, it’s generally superficial abrasions."

Rider and animal welfare activists say the hook on the ankus is used to inflict pain on the sensitive parts of an elephant, mostly behind their ears or on the backs of their legs, as a negative stimulus to encourage the animals to perform tricks or obey commends. If it was simply a "guide," they say, it wouldn’t need a hook.

But Aria said the ankus is akin to a leash, a means of keeping the elephants near them. "It’s a ‘come-to-me’ cue," she told us. "This comes from decades and decades of use."

Sorting out whether such traditions are actually a form of animal abuse is the purpose of the fall trial.

"The circus is really good at creating the illusion of the happy performing elephants," Kathy Meyer, an ASPCA attorney who has been handling the case from the beginning eight years ago, told us. But she said that it’s clear from the documents, videos, testimony, and common sense that the ankus is often used to inflict pain, which is prohibited under federal animal welfare rules, particularly those governing endangered species, which allow Ringling to have elephants only for conservation reasons.

"So we’re asking the judge to enjoin them to stop them from using these practices," she said.

Many veterinarians and wildlife experts agree that it’s not possible for elephants performing in circuses to be treated humanely. The Amboseli Trust for Elephants last year released a letter signed by 14 leading elephant researchers, with almost 300 years of combined experience working with elephants in the wild, arguing for an end to the practice.

"It is our considered opinion that elephants should not be used in circuses. Elephants in the wild roam over large areas and move considerable distances each day. They are intelligent, highly social animals with a complex system of communication…. Elephants in circuses are bought and sold, separated from companions, confined, chained, and forced to stand for hours and frequently moved about in small compartments on trains or trucks. They are required to perform behaviors never seen in nature," they wrote.

Aria said she didn’t agree with those conclusions, saying she looks out her office window every day: "I see elephants and get to see them all day doing the most amazingly athletic things." And she said only those with a propensity to perform are taken on the road, which is about one-third of their 53 elephants. "You can separate the ones who want to do it from the ones who don’t want to do it," said Aria, who joined Ringling Bros. as a clown in 1972. Later, she earned a bachelor’s degree in special education and worked as a teacher during the ’90s. She was named to her current post in 2006.

"All the elephants here are happy and thriving," Aria said, noting there are only about 35,000 Asian elephants still alive and that many, in places like Sri Lanka where she has visited, are regularly abused and killed. "Good for the Feld family that they support elephants from their births to their deaths."

PRESERVATION OR EXPLOITATION?

The path to the courthouse has been long and difficult, with Feld getting a similar earlier case dismissed and this one moving to trial only after threats and stern warnings by Judge Sullivan against any more stall tactics by the defendants.

"It’s been very difficult to get to this point," Meyer, the ASPCA lawyer, said, adding that that just being able to have their day in court is already a huge victory. "To have this issue aired in a public forum will be helpful for educating the public."

Silverman said she was most shocked by documents obtained by the plaintiffs — and introduced as part of the case — showing elephants chained up to 100 hours at a time, for an average of 26 hours when traveling between shows. "In no way did I imagine the bulk of the evidence that would support our claims," Silverman said. "These animals live their lives in chains."

In addition, many members of the public might not be aware that Ringling Bros. obtains its elephants under the Endangered Species Act for the purpose of protecting and propagating an endangered species, and the ESA contains strict rules against physical abuse of those animals.

"There’s no humane way to have a circus with elephants because it has to travel year-round," Rider told the Guardian. "If you take away the chains and the bull hooks, an elephant isn’t going to do anything."

Rider, who worked with Ringling elephants for more than two years, "saw several of the other elephant handlers and ‘trainers’ routinely beat the elephants, including baby elephants, and he saw then routinely hit and wound the elephants with sharp bull hooks," according to the lawsuit.

Ringling officials such a trainer Aria contend the elephants are well-cared for. Yet she also admits that the elephants are the key to the Felds’ lucrative business empire.

"They are our flagship animal," Aria said. "People come to the circus to see the elephants."

As such, a ruling that goes against Ringling could financially cripple the company, which is why animal welfare advocates say Feld has taken such an aggressive stance with his critics, harassing, threatening, and sabotaging them. As Silverman said, "You see that with Leslie Griffith, and it’s that kind of thing that they do all over the country."

PG&E grantees: Revealed

August 10, 2008

By popular demand, here’s some highlights from PG&E’s 2007 charitable giving. If you want to see the complete list, look at pages 58-90 of this PDF. That document also includes the dues they pay to belong to certain organizations which tend to have certain sway with certain politicians and voting blocks. Example: a whopping $325,000 to belong to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. Who shows up at the first public hearing on the Clean Energy Act, to argue — with PG&E talking points — against putting it on the ballot? The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

PG&E also paid $90,000 to the Committee on Jobs, $92,500 to the Bay Area Council (on top of the $40,000 gift they also gave the group — which has also shilled for them at public meetings), and $26,500 for BOMA

There are some other interesting grants to note. For example, Slide Ranch got $5,000. Who’s on the board of Slide Ranch? Francesca Vietor, who’s up for possible appointment to the SF Public Utilities Commission.

Most of the grants are pennies to PG&E, but a couple nudge up into significant chunks of change. Over a million each went to the Foundation for Environmental Education and the National Energy Education Development Project.

See some other familiar faces, after the jump:

Lawsuit challenges high-speed rail project

August 8, 2008

428-rail.web.jpg
Four environmental groups and two cities today filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court challenging the California High Speed Rail Authority’s recent decision to lay track over Pacheco Pass, rather than going with the Altamont Pass option preferred by the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit isn’t likely to directly affect this November’s Proposition 1, the $10 billion bond measure that would allow work to begin on the San Francisco-Anaheim high-speed rail project. Yet the language in the bond measure could be updated to include new fiscal oversight and other provisions if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs Assembly Bill 3034, which this week broke through a logjam in the Assembly and appears likely to win Senate approval next week.

The lawsuit was filed by the Planning and Conservation League, Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, California Rail Foundation, Bay Rail Alliance, and the cities of Atherton and Menlo Park.
A press release from CRF says, “The environmental and transit groups advocate a well-planned, cost- effective, and environmentally sensitive high-speed rail system in California. They want high-speed trains along the Altamont route, to help commuters from the Central Valley and Sacramento, who currently clog up Interstates 80 and 580. This route would divert millions of regional trips annually to electrified rail, yielding extremely significant air quality, greenhouse gas reduction, and energy savings benefits.”

CHSRA staffers and board members argued that Pacheco was a cheaper, faster route that eliminated the need for a costly and logically difficult bay crossing to reach San Francisco. South Bay political leaders also threatened to oppose the project if Altamont was chosen. Yet CHRSA is also working on a regional rail connection over Altamont that would eventually tie into the high-speed rail system, which is at least a decade away from being operational.

Clean Energy Act makes ballot

July 29, 2008

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The San Francisco Clean Energy Act isn’t the only charter amendment on the November ballot, but it’s already shaping up to be the political lightning rod of this fall’s election.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. sent out mailers opposing the measure even before the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 on July 22 to place it on the Nov. 4 ballot. Mayor Gavin Newsom also announced his opposition to the act moments after Assemblymember Mark Leno, former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal, and a cadre of progressive supervisors announced their support for it on the steps of City Hall.

Authored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, the Clean Energy Act requires San Francisco to fulfill 51 percent of its electricity needs through renewable sources by 2017. That requirement rises to 75 percent by 2030, and to 100 percent, “or the greatest amount technologically feasible or practicable,” by 2040.

The SF Clean Energy Act also mandates that a feasibility study be undertaken to look at the best way to provide clean, green energy, which could lead to PG&E losing its stranglehold on energy if the study finds public power to be the best option.

Explaining the importance of mandating a feasibility study, Mirkarimi said, “Otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

Supporters say it is important for San Francisco to set up a model that others can follow. “As goes San Francisco, so goes the state of California, and so goes the nation,” Peskin said at the July 22 rally, just before the Board voted to place the act on the ballot. “This is a time when people can change the destiny of the planet.”

Moments after that rally ended, Mayor Newsom took a minute to explain his opposition.

“We have other things we should be focusing on,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference at the War Memorial Building to announce housing bonds for veterans. “Let’s call it what it is. It’s a power takeover of PG&E,” he said.

But the elected officials and myriad organizations who showed up at City Hall to support the Clean Energy Act say that public vs. private power is not the main issue.

“The public power considerations have been drafted in a thoughtful and reasonable way,” Leno told the crowd. “It would involve study after study after study, and testimony from experts.”

Leno noted that 42 million Americans have public power, and if San Francisco did turn to public power, it would be embracing something as American as mom and apple pie. “Unlike their private power company counterparts, public power systems serve only one constituency: their customers,” Leno said.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval opined that government is better able to assume renewable energy risks. “The private industry is not going to take that risk,” Sandoval said. “It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.

Others warned the audience not to be swayed by PG&E’s anti–Clean Energy campaign, which Newsom’s chief political consultant Eric Jaye is working on.

“This is not some crazy takeover scheme,” Leal said. “It’s about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their rate payers.”

The Clean Energy Act has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, San Francisco Tomorrow, ACORN, the San Francisco Green Party, the League of Young Voters, Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, the San Francisco Green Party, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education and a supervisorial candidate in District 9, described showing “An Inconvenient Truth” to the eighth-grade science class he teaches. “What can I say to my kids — we don’t have the policies in place to mitigate the damage they see?”

The Sierra Club’s John Rizzo noted, “This act insures that San Francisco is at the center of this economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young Voters stated that “PG&E is not investing $1 in renewable energy beyond state mandates, and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.”

Summing up SF’s historic rally for clean energy

July 23, 2008

By Bruce B. Brugmann and Janna Brancolini (Scroll down for Jean Dibble’s photo essay of the rally and comments by the speakers)

It was a historic rally Tuesday on the City Hall steps to kick off the third initiative aimed at bringing clean energy and public power to San Francisco.

As our photo essay shows, there was a formidable and diverse array of politicians and environmental and social justice organizations lined up with their signs and speeches to support the measure.

Five supervisors, including the board president, spoke at the rally (Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Tom Ammiano, Bevin Dufty, and Gerardo Sandoval) and then went into a board meeting in City Hall and hours later voted with two other colleagues (Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly) to put the pioneering initiative on the November 2008 ballot. The vote was 7-4, with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Michaela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Jake McGoldrick voting against. The rally and the vote were cannon shots heard round the city, the state, and the nation.

Susan Leal, former general manager of the SF Public Utilities Commission, made her first public appearance since her dismissal by Mayor Newsom, at the urging of PG&E, for her moves toward public power. The Sierra Club, which fought the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park a century ago and still wants to tear the dam down, was standing tall with the group (John Rizzo).

All in all, it was one of the most impressive starts to a tough initiative campaign that i have seen in 42 years of covering City Hall for the Guardian. More: having covered the clean energy/public power beat since l969 and our first expose of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal, I think this initiative and this emerging campaign has an excellent chance of winning in November. Remember: when the public power movement revved up in the late l990s, it faced a PG&E-friendly mayor (Willie Brown), a PG&E friendly City Attorney (Louise Renne, whose husband worked for a downtown law firm getting big PG&E money) and a PG&E-friendly Board of Supervisors (only Tom Ammiano and the late Sue Bierman were pro-public power) and had to go around City Hall by going the route of a Municipal Utility District (MUD) ala the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (MUD). This time around, the board turned against PG&E and the city attorney’s office drafted the initiative for the board president and an emerging mayoral candidate.

The November ballot is filled with the juicy issues that bring out the voters: Obama, seven supervisorial races, and a raft of good initiatives aimed at dealing with major city problems (an affordable housing plan, two new tax plans focused on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, a big bond act to rebuild San Francisco General hospital, and the green energy and public power plan.) This time around, clean energy and public power are in the news and the media carried the story widely. PG&E is more worried than ever before and is already launched an early carpet bombing campaign and setting up astroturf and greenwashing operations allegro furioso. And their operatives are out and about and lurking everywhere. On guard!

The Jean Dibble photo essay

Julian Davis, campaign chair, leads off the event and introduces the speakers.
The group stretching across the steps from left to right: representatives from the SF Green Party, the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash Network, the Sierra Club, Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, Julian Davis of San Francisco Tomorrow, John Rizzo of the Sierra Club (speaking), Mirkarimi,
Sierra Club, Green Action, Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash, League of Young/Pissed Off Voters, more Sierra Club, Global Exchange, Power Vote, and League of Young Voters. (Not pictured in this photo were some l5 people from ACORN.

Another overview of the group with Davis at the microphone.

Assemblyman Mark Leno: “Jimmy Carter predicted 30 years ago that by 2000 we could be down from 40 per cent dependence on foreign oil to 20 per cent dependence. We didn’t listen. Instead we were up to 60 per cent by 2000 and now we’re pushing 70 per cent…This measure will take our fate out of PG&E’s hands and put it into the hands of our communities, who have a profound stake in providing clean, sustainable, reliable, and reasononably priced electric services.”

Former PUC General Manager Susan Leal: “This initiative is about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their ratepayers…It’s 167 miles (from San Francisco) to Hetch Hetchy (valley.). The first 140 miles of movement is cheaper than the last 27 miles because PG&E controls it. There’s an economic piece and an environmental piece. We have the technology–geothermal and solar trough. How are you going to move that power? We aren’t going to be able to make it (financially) because PG&E jacks up the rates on the last 27 miles. In 20l5 they’re jacking them up again…this is taking back what is ours.”

Sup. Ross Mikarimi, co-author of the initiative: “This is not a ‘hostile’ take over,”he said. This is a “meaured way to make the city l00 per cent green and clean in 20 years. This act mandates a feasibility study on how we can provide green and clean energy…otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

Sup. Aaron Peskin, board president and co-author of the measure: “It’s a very profound thought. This is a time when people (and San Francisco) can change the destiny of the planet…As goes San Francisco, so goes California. As goes California, so goes the nation.”

Sup. Tom Ammiano, author of two previous public power initiatives: “This issue has a sordid history….500 missing ballots (in the first election), where did they go? …It involves environmental justice. Some have called the (green movement) the Queenhouse effect.” He then said PG&E is avaricious, immoral, and takes homophobic measures. “It wants to shoot the messenger.” He concluded, “This is our time. We’re going to win. We’ll keep the lights on for years.”

Sup. Bevin Dufty: PG&E’s utility undergrounding system is “an example of PG&E mismanaging things.” He said people in his district were without electricity for 24-48 hours. “This is a referendum for change.”

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval: “As we’re leaving office, a lot of us want this to be our crown jewel. ..Government works. Government works well because government is better able to assume risk. There is still a lot of risk in renewwable energy, investments, and so on. The private industry is not going to take that risk. It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.”

Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, said that children in our schools were affected by the ramifications of PG&E’s monopoly.

John Rizzo of the Sierra Club: “(Al) Gore said the future of civilization is at stake. Gore’s challenge is a moral one–one that we’ve embraced in San Francisco.” He said that “renewable energy and the green movement will change the world’s economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

Another overview photo.

Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters: She warned of PG&Es propaganda campaign claiming to be green. “Take a step back and think about where they’re investing. PG&E is not investing one dollar in renewable energy beyond state mandates and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.
PG&E is one per cent solar, one per cent wind, and 98 per cent hot air.”

Nicholas Perez, my l4-year-old grandson from Santa Barbara, attended the rally with his dog Charlie.
Early on, as the speakers warmed up on PG&E, Charley summed up PG&E’s position eloquently. He made a timely deposit on the sidewalk in front of the rally. (Nicholas cleaned it up quickly.) Much more to come,

B3, still watching the fumes from the Potrero Hill power plant from my office window at the bottom of Potrero Hill, courtesy of PG&E and Mayor Gavin Newsom

P.S. Incidental question: how can Newsom pretend to be the “green” mayor and be the “green” candidate for governor when he buckles under to PG&E so ignominously? He’s buckled twice to PG&E, first by flip flopping on the Potrero Hill peakers, then on coming out so strong and so quickly against the Clean Energy Act initiative.
Brugmann’s Law: you can’t be a “green” mayor or a “green” anything if you knuckle under to PG&E on the big green issues.

P.S.: A tip of the Potrero Hill martini glass to the seven supervisors who defied PG&E and voted for clean energy: Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Bevin Dufty, Tom Ammiano, Gerardo Sandoval. Sophie Maxwell, and Chris Daly.
The opposition four will be known from now on as the PG&E Four (Sean Elsbernd, Carmine Chu, Michaela Alioto-Pier, and (gulp) Jack McGoldrick). Jake? Jake? What happened to you? Can you please explain? It’s not too late to change your position.

Red ink stains green rhetoric

July 15, 2008

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Environmentalists are pondering the state’s seemingly schizophrenic approach to fighting climate change after a recent state report encouraging increased use of mass transit came out at the same time that the governor’s budget proposal denies the state’s public transportation fund more than $1 billion.

The California Air Resource Board’s June 26 Draft Scoping Plan to combat global warming, released pursuant to Assembly Bill 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is at least the second major report this year to recommend expanding public transit. But the governor’s latest spending plan redirects that sizeable chunk of money — gasoline tax revenue that voters who approved Prop. 42 in 2002 directed toward transportation projects and agencies — to help reduce the state’s $17 billion budget deficit.

"There’s a lot of misallocation of resources going on," said Tom Radulovich, executive director of the San Francisco nonprofit Livable Cities. "The governor on the one hand wants to say, ‘You should all ride mass transit.’ But on the other hand, he is taking away [transit] support from the state budget."

The governor’s press secretary, Aaron McLear, said the budget proposal spares transit from cuts faced by other programs during these tough economic times.

"Funding for public transportation stays level in the governor’s budget proposal. That’s in the face of a $17 billion deficit. The fact that it remains level is better than a lot of cuts we’ve had to make," McLear said. "We wish we could increase it, because it certainly is something the governor believes in. But again, the state is facing a $17 billion shortfall. We can only spend the money that we have. There will have to be some tough decisions to be made."

The CARB plan calls for California to lead by example by encouraging state employees to take advantage of public transportation during their commutes. It notes that transportation accounts for 38 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, most of which comes from cars and trucks, and that curbing these emissions is critical to reaching California’s goal of reducing total emissions by 30 percent over the next 12 years.

"Overall I think this is headed in the right direction. For better or worse, this really does put California ahead of any other state if we fully implement this plan. Of course, having a good plan does not guarantee that it will be implemented, but this is a very serious attempt," said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, of the state’s global warming plan.

Yet he also said that reaching the plan’s ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gases means people will have to drive less and use transit more, and that local governments will need to stop approving urban sprawl projects.

"The easy answer that most Americans would rather have is to keep driving just as much as always, but have alternative fuels. And that just is not going to work. AB 32 has a major land use change component. Is it enough? No, it is not. But it is at least an acknowledgment of what we have to do," Metcalf said. "Overall I’m pretty impressed, but they’re not proposing enough land use change and they’re not proposing transit funding increases. They are still unwilling to face facts about the role of the automobile and climate change."

Yet instead of increasing funds for mass transit, the governor has redirected billions of public transportation dollars into the general fund, maintaining status quo transit funding in the face of increased gasoline prices and the new climate change mandate. At the same time, billions of dollars have been allocated to highway expansion programs, exacerbating the global warming problem.

"Anybody’s budget should be a reflection of their values, whether it’s an individual or an agency," said Carli Paine, transportation program director for the Transportation and Land Use Coalition. "The state is saying, ‘We value public transportation as a climate friendly choice.’ Yet when it comes to expressing those values in the budget, we say, ‘It doesn’t matter that much,’ so we’re actually undermining those original statements."

The governor’s revised state budget allocated $306 million to the State Transit Assistance Program, the state’s source of funding for mass transit operating costs such as maintenance, drivers, fuel, and mechanics.

This is the same amount that was allocated last year, even though transit ridership is the highest it has been in more than 50 years, according to a June report by the American Public Transportation Association. And factor in that crude oil is about $140 per barrel now compared to about $73 per barrel this time in 2007, according to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. "The budget is kicking transit in the teeth when it needs it [money] the most," Radulovich said.

The $306 million allocated to the State Transit Assistance Program comes from funds generated by Prop. 42, the voter-approved gasoline tax measure. But Paine said the STAP should also be entitled to what is called "spillover" money. Spillover refers to additional funds generated when the price of gas rises faster than inflation on other goods, leading to unusually high revenue from the tax.

The governor’s budget predicts $1.77 billion in spillover for the 2008–09 fiscal year, but he decided to put the money toward shrinking the deficit instead of funding public transportation. The current fiscal year was the first time since the proposition passed that the spillover did not go toward public transportation.

Radulovich said he believes the state is hesitant to fund mass transit — even though it recognizes the importance of reducing the number of cars on the road — because building more roads and freeways leads to more expansion and urban sprawl.

"Sprawl makes a lot of people a lot of money," he said, including oil companies, car companies, homebuilders, construction firms, and trucking companies. "These are political questions, not policy questions. The policy answers in many ways are very clear. The question is whether there is the political will to deal with it, and that’s what we’re going to find out."

Radulovich said this reality is why many California business groups support outward expansion and put pressure on the government to fund highways over mass transit. The Bay Area Council, for example, pushed aggressively for highway expansion during the last budget cycle.

Paine said she believes political pressure also comes from structural flaws in the state’s budget system.

"It’s the legacy of Prop. 13, which really froze the income our state received from [property] taxes," she said. "Public entities that are committed to social services, such as education, are still receiving property taxes at levels that are decades behind what they used to be." This puts a strain on the state’s general fund, and money has to be diverted from the mass transit account to relieve the burden generated by California’s low income tax levels, Paine explained.

Paine said a new budget proposal has been submitted to the California legislature that would restore hundreds of millions of dollars to the mass transit account for the 2008-09 fiscal year by generating additional revenue for the general fund. She said that since 2000, more than $3 billion of mass transit money has been redirected to the general fund, and the number will exceed $4 billion if the governor’s current proposal goes through.

"This isn’t just a problem this year — it’s a chronic problem. And public transportation is chronically being leaned on for relief," she said. "It’s just not a sustainable system."

TRANSIT FUNDING 101

Carli Paine of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition explained the finer points of California’s complicated system for funding — or not funding — improvements to the public transit system. Transit’s main account is called the State Transit Assistance Program. This money is flexible, but is mostly used for transit operations (maintenance, operations, fuel, mechanics, drivers, and so forth). Sometimes, though, it is used for capital projects (such as buying new tracks or replacement cars).

The STAP is the largest portion of the public transportation account, and the funding is critical. As Paine put it, "If you can’t even operate the system that you have, it doesn’t help much to have money to lay new tracks." The STAP is therefore often the focus of discussions about transit funding.

Prop. 42, which directs California’s gas tax to transportation projects, funds the STAP, although not all Prop. 42 money goes there. For example, 25 percent of Prop. 42 revenue goes to a special account for transit capital projects.

Prop. 1B is another big source of transit funding. It is the 2006 measure that allowed California to sell $19.9 billion worth of bonds to fund transportation programs. Only about $4 billion of that was allocated to public transportation, with the lion’s share of the money going toward new freeway projects.

This is where things get a little complicated.

California originally had a sales tax on all goods except gasoline. In the 1970s, voters passed Prop. 42, which decided that it would be more equitable to reduce the sales tax rate by a fraction of a percentage point, but expand the sales tax to include gasoline.

This was expected to be revenue-neutral for the state, so it wouldn’t cost people more. That was true unless gas prices rose quicker than the cost of all goods, which it eventually did.

Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan argued that it was important to return the extra revenue to public transportation because when gas prices rise, more people use public transit. As a result, this "spillover" has been set aside for transit expansion.

Last year was the first year in which the spillover was diverted to the general fund instead of being given to the STAP. It was redirected to help close the state deficit, and the 2008–09 budget proposes doing the same thing this fiscal year. (Janna Brancolini)

All or nothing

July 8, 2008

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com

Dear Andrea:

When my husband and I first married, he was into S-M. I was very inexperienced, while he … well … wasn’t. Things were interesting for a while until he repeatedly breached our full-disclosure agreement and saw other people behind my back, but came clean about it later. There was also an issue with anal sex (he’s hurt me too many times). We’ve been completely out of the scene for several years and are enjoying a much closer connection. However, three kids later sex is very boring, planned, and short.

I’d love to have fun with him again, but he’s so sex-crazy I’m afraid of re-opening the door to trouble. He still uses a lot of nasty porn and Web sites where he exchanges e-mails with subs. I don’t like this, but I understand that he’s got to have an outlet. He’s a pretty all-or-nothing kind of guy. Also, I think that he isn’t sure how to approach me anymore after having three children. Who feels sexy with baby puke on their sleeve and no shower? Is there any hope for us? Also, he refuses to go into therapy or ask for help because he doesn’t want to be judged.

Love,

Want Something

Dear Want:

You may be surprised to hear this, but for a couple who not only have such disparate experience levels and requirements but also three small children, you seem to be doing pretty well. Any number of issues casually glanced on in your letter could easily have doomed you — yet you persevere and even feel closer than when you were doing all that kinky stuff? You’re OK.

The S-M obscures things a bit, but the core issues here are no different from ones we discuss in classes (rather imprecisely titled "Is There Sex After Motherhood?") I’ve been teaching at a local nice-moms-and-their-babies education center. The baby puke, for instance. One of the most disheartening things I heard while awaiting my own babies was, "Oh, I didn’t change my clothes for six months. I just wore this ratty old T-shirt full of holes and spit-up." (This from a lovely friend who was only telling me the truth as she’d lived it.) "Forget it, then," I thought. "If it’s going to be like that, I’m not doing it."

And it wasn’t like that, of course, not for me — and it shouldn’t be for you. One needs to do whatever it takes not to sink to that barely human state where you figure, what the hell, why bother showering when you’re just going to get dirty again? Get enough T-shirts so there’s always a clean one! Drag everybody into the shower with you, get up at 5 a.m., pay a neighbor to watch the kids for half an hour, whatever works. Get enough time to look and feel decent. We’re not talking about a hot-stone massage, Yummy Mummy makeover here. Grooming enough to bear the sight and smell of oneself shouldn’t be too high a bar.

I would like to launch into some ways you two could get back to breaking out the whips and chains and stuff, but I worry. Does he really need to have it all? Is he really insisting on nothing if he can’t? I’m hoping a guy starved of all but virtual kink for a couple of years may be more amenable than he used to be to a scaled-down version of "hell-bent for leather." Maybe "leaning toward Naugahyde"?

I do believe he doesn’t know how to approach you anymore, so here’s the obvious suggestion: you approach him, but only after ensuring that you won’t end up with him holding the power, reins, flogger, modem, and lube again, which he didn’t use enough of anyway. Take this opportunity to decide which games you liked, which might do, and which are untenable. Given the scarcity conditions that follow the introduction of many small children into the marital equation, I would also suggest that the whole "other partners" thing is right out. In order to get beyond the dreary status quo (although I do have to put a good word in for the parents-of-small-children quickie while I’m here), you’ll need to plan. You’ll also need to throw some childcare money at the problem (what my husband and I refer to, just to annoy people, as "paying young women for sex"). This is all stressful and expensive enough already, so no way will you want to pay for babysitters for his nights out without you. Save your cash for kinky-sex dates.

Obviously, all this depends on him not being so crazy, sex- or otherwise, and that "some but not all" actually is an option. I’m hoping that after a few years of deprivation and with the added motivation of keeping a beloved family intact, he can embrace moderation. Tell him it’s like the French model of eating, you know? A little + a little + a little = plenty.

Love,

Andrea

Andrea is home with the kids and going stir-crazy. Write her a letter! Ask her a question! Send her your tedious e-mail forwards! On second thought, don’t do that. Just ask her a question.

Andrea is also teaching two classes: "You’ve Really Got Your Hands Full" — a realistic look at having twins — at Birthways in Berkeley.

The gruesome twosome

July 8, 2008

HORROR SEQUEL If you know Monsturd, you love Monsturd. If you don’t know the 2003 horror comedy by San Francisco filmmakers Rick Popko and Dan West, imagine a tiny town menaced by a mad scientist-created shit monster, with clueless cops, a no-nonsense FBI agent, and a climax that unfolds around a chili cook-off.

Doesn’t appeal? Don’t read on. But fans of homespun exploito-stravaganzas will want to know that Popko and West have finally finished Monsturd‘s sequel (the making of which I chronicled in "Blood Brothers," [05/30/06]). It’s called Retardead, and it returns to that same tiny town soon after the events of Monsturd. This time, the stakes are both higher (zombies!) and lower (zombies spawned from special education students!), and there’s way more of everything: gore, off-color jokes, cursing, and totally random moments, like an LSD freak-out scene, an exploding helicopter, second-unit footage contributed by horror fans across the country, a saucy appearance by dance theatre troupe the Living Dead Girlz, and a cameo by Jello Biafra.

Popko and West, who reprise their Monsturd roles as goofy deputies, realize they’ve created something rather crazy — and with all the technical problems they encountered in Retardead‘s post-production (from editing on outdated software to the disasters they overcame while working on the film’s first batch of DVDs), are now a little crazy themselves.

"The movie’s cursed — I think it’s karma because of the title," Popko theorized. "The karma gods are like, we’re gonna let you have this movie, but it’s gonna cost you in terms of pain and suffering all the way through till the very end. Monsturd took us two years, and we thought that was forever. And here we are five years after starting Retardead, and we’re finally seeing the end of the tunnel."

Though the movie is completed, "we’re still kind of shell-shocked," West said. "We still have the premiere to go through, and we don’t trust this thing. If it can fuck with us, it will fuck with us. It’s like the Frankenstein monster that has its own life, and we’re its bitch."

For better or worse, the monster is at last ready to terrorize audiences. West is excited: "The movie’s good. I love the movie. It’s weird, it’s 10 times better than Monsturd — cinematically, it’s much better. The special effects are just insane. We love the weird factor of this one. We were able to get our sense of humor and get a lot of non sequiturs in there. We love that stuff."

"I love how different it is," Popko agreed. "Dan and I are big fans of the horror genre, and the comedy genre, and there are a million friggin’ zombie movies out there. We didn’t want to fall into that trap of just being another zombie flick. So the thing I’m most proud of with Retardead is that this is gonna be a different experience. Yes, it is a zombie movie, but it’s like no other zombie movie that has ever been made before."

After the premiere — at which they’ll pass out barf bags in homage to their idol, Herchell Gordon Lewis, who did the same for 1963’s Blood Feast — the duo hopes to self-distribute their film over the Internet. They are also already planning a third collaboration, "a movie about making a sequel," West revealed, which will likely include pirates, Satanists, space vampires, "a werewolf thing," and more Biafra.

In the meantime, the pair hopes to greet a raucous crowd this weekend at the Victoria Theatre. "Ideally we’d like to see audiences going wild and crazy at a few of these key scenes that we’ve got in there that will hopefully surprise and shock people," Popko said.

"Specifically, that vomit scene," West chimed in, and the codirectors chuckled with delighted pride.

RETARDEAD

Fri/11–Sat/12, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Sun/13, 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., $10

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

(415) 863-7576

www.victoriatheatre.org, www.4321films.com

Local Heroes

July 5, 2008

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon

Del Martin, left, and Phyllis Lyon

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon have lived active lives — although “activist” would be the better word. One, the other, or both have been founding members of the Daughters of Bilitis, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, and Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. Martin, 87, was the first lesbian elected to a position in the National Organization for Women, where she was also the first to assert that lesbian issues are feminist issues. Lyon, 83, edited the Ladder, the first magazine in the United States devoted to lesbian issues. And together, it seems, there’s little they haven’t done, from coauthoring books to becoming the first gay couple in the nation to legally marry on Feb. 12, 2004, almost 50 years to the day they first became a couple.

Deemed void later that year, their marriage was reconstituted this June when the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is, in fact, legal. Once again, Martin and Lyon were the first in line to tie the knot.

But gay marriage wasn’t the right they were fighting for when their relationship began back in 1954. “We had other, bigger issues. We didn’t have anything in the ’50s and ’60s,” Lyon recalls. “We were worried about getting a law passed to disallow people from getting fired or thrown out of their homes for being gay.”

Even something as simple as having a safe space to congregate was elusive. Before the mid-1950s, the only organizations that dealt with gay issues were run by and focused on men. So Martin and Lyon, along with a few other lesbian couples, founded the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955. “We would meet in homes, dance, and have drinks and so on, and not be subject to police raids, which were happening then in the gay and lesbian bars,” Lyon said. Those informal get-togethers eventually became the first lesbian organization with chapters nationwide.

They say their activism isn’t something that was sparked by their gender and sexuality, but came from being raised in politically conscious homes — Lyon in Tulsa, Okla., and Martin in San Francisco. When they met, working at the same company in Seattle, “both of us were already politically involved,” Lyon says.

“Really, ever since we were kids,” Martin adds. “You followed elections. You followed things like that. We wore buttons for Roosevelt. We couldn’t send money because we didn’t have any.”

“And then when we both moved in together, in San Francisco, the first thing we did was get involved with Adlai Stevenson,” Lyon says. They quickly got to know the major Democratic movers and shakers in the city, like the Burton family and later Nancy Pelosi, whom they would eventually turn to when there were gay issues that needed a push.

“We didn’t come out to everybody, but we came out to Nancy and the Burtons,” Lyon says.

These days age has tamped down the physically active part of their political activism, although they still donate money and were ardent Hillary Clinton supporters during this year’s Democratic primary race. They’re now backing Barack Obama over John McCain, though Martin expressed reservations. “I’m waiting to see how he handles the question about women and women’s rights. I’m not satisfied yet.”

Amanda Witherell

Local hero

Alicia Schwartz

Alicia Schwartz

Whether she’s demanding sit-down time with the mayor to discuss asbestos dust at Hunters Point Shipyard, offering to debate former 49ers president Carmen Policy over the need to develop 50 percent affordable housing in the Bayview, or doing the cha-cha slide on Third Street to publicize the grassroots Proposition F campaign, which fought the Lennar-financed multimillion-dollar Proposition G on the June ballot, Alicia Schwartz always bubbles with fierce enthusiasm.

“I absolutely love my job,” says Schwartz, who has been a community organizer with POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) for four years.

Born and raised in Marin County, Schwartz graduated from the University of California, San Diego, with a degree in sociology and anthropology before returning to the Bay Area, where she is enrolled in San Francisco State University’s ethnic studies graduate program and works for the San Francisco–based POWER.

“It’s an amazing organization full of amazing people, united for a common vision, which is ending oppression and poverty for all,” says Schwartz. “In cities, the priorities are skewed to benefit folks who are wealthier and have more benefits. But the folks who keep the city running are not recognized or are suppressed.”

Prop. F wasn’t Schwartz’s first campaign experience. She had previously organized for reproductive justice, for access to health care and sexual-health education, and against the prison-industrial complex.

But it was the most inspirational campaign she’s seen so far.

“I saw the Bayview transformed,” Schwartz explains. “I saw people who’d lost faith in politicians come to the forefront and fight for the future. And I saw people across the city rallying in support, too.”

Schwartz acknowledges that Prop. F didn’t win numerically.

“But practically and morally, and in terms of a broader vision, Prop. F advanced the conversation about the future of San Francisco, about its working-class and black future,” Schwartz says. “Clearly, that fight isn’t over. It’s just beginning.”

Schwartz says she believes that the other success of Prop. F is that it raised the question of who runs our cities.

“And I think it was a huge victory, even being able to accomplish running a grassroots campaign, with no money whatsoever and where we had to up the ante, in terms of getting to know some of the political establishment.”

Most of all, Schwartz says she appreciated being able to work with people who hadn’t been part of POWER.

“And I appreciated being able to advance a set of demands that a broad range of people could support, while keeping the Bayview and its residents at the forefront,” she says.

While that particular campaign may be over, the battle for Bayview–Hunters Point continues on many fronts, says Schwartz.

“Are we going to allow it to be run by developers who don’t have our best interests at heart and who fool us with payouts and false promises?” she asks. “Are we going to allow San Francisco to become a place where people can’t afford to live, but surely have to come to work?”

Amanda Witherell

Local hero

James Carey, Daniel Harder, and Jeff Rosendale

From left, Daniel Harder, James Carey, and
Jeff Rosendale

It would be unfair to give any one person credit for stopping the state’s foolish plan to aerially spray synthetic pheromones to eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM). Thousands were involved in that struggle.

But there are at least three individuals we can think of who successfully fought the state with science, a tool that too often is used to dupe, not enlighten, the public.

They are James Carey, a University of California, Davis, entomology professor; Daniel Harder, botanist and executive director of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum; and Jeff Rosendale, a grower and horticulturalist who runs a nursery in Soquel.

Together and separately, this trio used experience, field observation, and fact-finding tours to make the case that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) would court disaster, in terms of lost time, money, and public goodwill, if it went ahead with the spraying.

And they did so at a time when UC, as an institution, remained silent on the matter.

“I felt like I needed to do this. No one was stepping up from a position of entomological knowledge,” says Carey, whose prior work on an advisory panel working with state agencies fighting the Mediterranean fruit fly between 1987 and 1994 led him to speak out when the state sprayed Monterey and Santa Cruz counties last fall.

Carey says the signatures of two UC Davis colleagues, Frank Zalom and Bruce Hammock, on a May 28 letter to the US Department of Agriculture also helped.

“All of us are senior and highly credentialed scientists,” Carey notes, “so our letter was taken really seriously by the agriculture industry.”

Rosendale and Harder had taken a fact-finding tour last December to New Zealand, which has harbored this leaf-rolling Australian bug for more than a century, to find out firsthand just how big of a problem the moth really is.

“We wanted to get the best information about how they were dealing with it, and what it was or wasn’t doing,” Rosendale recalls. What he and Harder discovered was that New Zealand had tried using organophosphates, toxic pesticides, against the moths — but the chemicals killed all insects in the orchards, including beneficial ones that stopped parasites.

“When they stopped using organophosphates, the food chain took care of the LBAM,” Rosendale says.

Like Carey and Rosendale, Harder believes that the state’s recently announced plan to use sterile moths instead of pesticides is a lost cause. He says it’s impossible to eradicate LBAM at this point because the pest is already too widespread.

“It’s not going to work, and it’s not necessary,” Harder says.

And now, Glen Chase, a professor of systems management specializing in environmental economics and statistics, says that the CDFA is falsely claiming that the moth is an emergency so it can steal hundreds of millions from taxpayer emergency funds.

“The widespread population of the moth in California and the specific population densities of the moth, when analyzed with real science and statistics, dictate that the moth has been in California for at least 30 to 50 years,” states Chase in a July 15 press release.

The state has put spraying urban areas on hold, but the battle isn’t over — and the scientists who have gone out on a limb to inform the public are still on the case.

Sarah Phelan

Local hero

Queer Youth Organizing Project

From left, Fred Sherburn-Zimmer,
Josue Arguelles, Jane Martin, Vivian Crocket,
Justin Zarrett Blake,
Joseles de la Cruz, and Abel-Diego Romero

The queer-labor alliance Pride at Work, a constituent group of the AFL-CIO, added a youth brigade last year, and it’s been doing some of the most inspired organizing and advocacy in San Francisco. The Queer Youth Organizing Project can marshal dozens of teen and twentysomething activists with a strong sense of both style and social justice for its events and causes.

Founded in March 2007, QYOP has already made a big impact on San Francisco’s political scene, reviving the edgy and indignant struggle for liberation that had all but died out in the aging queer movement. Pride at Work has also been rejuvenated and challenged by QYOP’s youthful enthusiasm.

“It really is building the next generation of leaders in the queer community, and man, are they kick-ass,” says Robert Haaland, a key figure in both Service Employees International Union Local 1021 and Pride at Work. “Pride at Work is now a whole different organization.”

QYOP turned out hundreds of tenants for recent midday City Hall hearings looking at the hardball tactics of CitiApartments managers, an impressive feat that helped city officials and the general public gain a better understanding of the controversial landlord.

“They have a strong focus on tenant issues and have done good work on Prop. 98 and some tenant harassment legislation we’ve been working on,” says Ted Gullickson, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union. “They really round out the coalition between tenants and labor. They do awesome work.”

In addition to the energy and numbers QYOP brought to the campaign against the anti–rent control measure Prop. 98, the group joined the No Borders encampment at the Mexican border in support of immigrant rights and turned a protest against the Human Rights Campaign (which angered some local queers for supporting a workplace rights bill that excluded transgenders) into a combination of pointed protest and fun party outside the targeted group’s annual gala dinner.

“It’s probably some of the most interesting community organizing I’ve seen in San Francisco,” Haaland says. “It’s really made a difference in our capacity to do the work.”

As an added bonus in this essentially one-party town, QYOP is reaching young activists using mechanisms outside the traditional Democratic Party structures, an important feature for radicalized young people who are wary of partisan paradigms. And its members perhaps bring an even stronger political perspective than their Party brethren, circulating reading lists of inspiring thinkers to hone their messages.

Haaland says QYOP has reenergized him as an activist and organizer: “They’re teaching me, and it’s grounding me as an activist in a way I haven’t been for a long time.”

Steven T. Jones

Charo gives a pluck

June 24, 2008

› culture@sfbg.com

My first exposure to Charo was in a high school–era Christmas gift from my parents, The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste. There she was: strawberry blonde Pebbles hair framing a face that defined pert, a guitar poised scepter-like, and an impressive décolleté shrink-wrapped in enough sequins to cover all of Carnaval.

I think Charo would laugh at being included in such a Who’s Who, which also included Liberace and Chesty Morgan. The singing, dancing, and "cuchi-cuchi!" spouting Castilian sex kitten that pratfalled with the best of 1970s television, the Vegas institution who wound up in that sub-A list purgatory The Surreal Life, is the Charo America knows and loves. But according to this 40-year show biz veteran, the other Charo — a classically trained musician with serious Spanish guitar chops — is just getting warmed up. A Pride celebrity grand marshal, she’ll be riding on a parade float full of Charo look-alike drag queens, followed by a show at the Herbst Theatre.

SFBG How does it feel to be coming back to San Francisco after three years?

CHARO I call it Planet San Francisco because it’s different from everything else in this country. And I am honored and very glad [to be a Pride grand marshal], due to the fact that all my life I have detested oppression, dictatorship, and discrimination. ‘Cuz, you know, my early learning years were under the fear and dictatorship of [Gen. Francisco] Franco. I was surprised when I came to America that people used such titles as black, fag, skinny, Catholic, yellow. None of this exist in my education.

[Being a grand marshal] is also perfect timing because I am introducing my new single, "España Cani," as remixed for the dance clubs! It’s the best thing I have done in my career, and it’s just destined to make people live for 10 minutes and feel the passion of flamenco. That will be playing on the float with my flamenco dancers dancing around, and I will be with several look-alikes.

SFBG Are they going to be the same drag queens you judged at the Trannyshack Charo night back in 2005?

CHARO That was a hot-hot-hot evening! But I think this time they will be different. I think that one is better-looking than I am, and I am pissed off because that means I have to have to put a lot of push-up to have bigger tits. And he’s a 30-year-old boy!

SFBG Your publicist told me that you lost a Charo look-alike contest in Puerto Rico.

CHARO That was the lowest point in my career [laughs]. I made a big mistake since I dressed like a look-alike. I had a big, big wig instead of my natural hairdo, and instead of dancing like me I tried to copy them. The idiot judge said, "Number 3" — which was me — "needs more practice!"

SFBG What can we expect from your new show at the Herbst?

Charo: The show is faaabulous. I am going to play as much [guitar] as the audience can take of the new me. I will do it until they ask me to stop. I am a musician in high heels [laughs]. I even sleep with high heels, in case I have to run and the fire department guys can’t find me. I am 5 feet 3 inches, and I wear heels all the time. But the bottom line is that I am a musician. I am an entertainer number second.

SFBG When you started making TV appearances it was all "cuchi-cuchi!" all the time.

CHARO Yes. When I was on Johnny Carson and he starts talking to me in English, I just kept saying "cuchi-cuchi" to survive. And the rating was so big that I keep coming back. But the TV producer said if you want to play guitar, do it in your own time.

SFBG On a few of the episodes of The Love Boat your character April Lopez plays guitar for the passengers, no?

CHARO I went to producer Mr. [Aaron] Spelling and said, "OK, in this episode can I play a little of the guitar?" And he said, "OK, but don’t be too good. Don’t destroy the character of April, because April is a wetback and she’s not supposed to know so much music."

SFBG It’s just so funny because here’s Madonna trying to play guitar on tour and she’s pretty terrible, but right of out the gate you were a classically trained guitarist who could also write hit dance singles.

CHARO [Laughs]. Yes, Madonna used to be my neighbor. But then she moved to England. I would be very happy — and this is not bragging, because I like Madonna — to say to her how to play the guitar. I think I could help her with "La Ilsa Bonita."

THE RETURN OF CHARO AND HER LAS VEGAS SHOW

Sun/29, 8 p.m., $40–$100

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF.

(415) 392-4400, www.koshercomedy.com/charo

Obama contingent can’t campaign at Pride

June 18, 2008

By Mara Math

An official contingent of Barack Obama supporters will be marching in the Pride Parade next weekend — but they’ve been told not to wear campaign buttons or t-shirts and not to carry campaign signs.

An internal email from Rebecca Prozan, a member of Obama’s national LGBT leadership committee, went out June 15th asking participants in the Obama contingent at this year’s parade to “refrain from wearing campaign-related materials in the march . . . to make sure the parade does not lose funds as a result of our participation.”

That surprised a lot of activists: The parade has always had its share of political campaigns. And some worried that the Obama camp, which has so far refused to support same-sex marriage, wanted to keep its distance from the community.

But the decision actually came from the Pride Foundation, which runs the parade. Pride argues that allowing direct promotion of one particular candidate would interfere with the group’s tax-exempt status and would violate the conditions of a $77,000 annual grant from Grants for the Arts, which administers the city’s hotel tax funds. And because of the group’s tax-exempt status,

In fact, Brendan Behan, Pride’s community mobilization specialist, told us that “Obama contingent participants can wear T-shirts of Obama as a senator from Illinois, but not as a presidential candidate.”
As a nonprofit education group with a 501 c tax exemption, Pride can spend a tiny fraction of its budget on lobbying or campaigning. The city’s rules also prohibit allowing unequal access to any one party or lobbying group.

It’s hard to make the unequal-access point stick, since queer supporters of John McCain could also march in the parade. But Pride Executive Director Lindsey Jones put it this way: “They have equal access to not campaign.”
Jones, who has been at the helm for five years, told us she didn’t recall any active campaigning at the parade. “We only have four years of notes in our records,” she said. “Maybe it’s happened in the past, but we’re all fallible.”

Sup. Tom Ammiano told us that the rules have been in place for years, but people have always found ways around them. “The first time I ran for School Board, we’d made a big school bus and they told us we couldn’t use it because I was a candidate,” he said. “So we made a big fuss and in the end the put us last in the parade.”
In other years, he said, “supporters of a candidate can just march along on the sidewalk. And sometimes they slip in and join you, and it’s not a big deal.”

Attorney Randy Shaw, founder of the nonprofit Tenderloin Housing Clinic, told us he thinks Pride’s stance is misinterpretation of the law: “Clearly, no public funds can go toward sponsoring a political activity. But funds are sponsoring security, bathrooms, publicity, insurance etc.— participants are not being “subsidized.”
In fact, he said, “event organizers have no ability to enforce such a restriction, so it clearly is not covered by city restrictions on the use of public funds.”

Jones disagrees: “When the Obama campaign questioned our guidelines, it was the first time we’d had a significant challenge to those guidelines, so I had people doing research, and the City Attorney affirmed our interpretation.”
“There’s a difference between having a standard guideline that we inform people about, and it’s another whether we follow it,” Jones was quick to add. “It’s not an expectation of Grants for the Arts that we have an entire enforcement squad.”

Prozan has a similar view. “If someone shows up to march in an Obama ’08 shirt,” she told us, “I’m not going to tell them to take it off unless they’re sweating.”

“To me it’s an issue of freedom of speech, what some people would call a Constitutional issue,” says activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca, an original member of Gay Liberation and a queer activist for almost four decades. “This is really discouraging coming from a community that in the past has itself been the victim of attempts to restrict its freedom of speech. Is $77,000 worth selling out for?”

To the question of whether the gain is worth the strain, Jones responds, “It’s the responsibility of the community to make the changes they want to see.” The Parade is 38 years old, she notes, and began as a gathering of 200 people; today, thanks to community demand, it has 20 stages and more than three-quarters of a million attendees.
The Parade has only had Grants for the Arts funding for 10 years. “If we come to feel that we need to forego that $77,000–that’s how Pride changes. Every conversation we have, including this interview, changes Pride.”

She urged those interested to “Pick up the phone and call me.”

You can also email her at info@sfpride.org

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Education

BARACK OBAMA

LYNN WOOLSEY

GEORGE MILLER

CINDY SHEEHAN

PETE STARK

GERARDO SANDOVAL

MARK LENO

LONI HANCOCK

FIONA MA

TOM AMMIANO

NANCY SKINNER

1. HOW MANY IRAQIS HAVE DIED?

2. NAFTA ON STEROIDS

3. INFRAGARD GUARDS ITSELF

4. ILEA: TRAINING GROUND FOR ILLEGAL WARS?

5. SEIZING PROTEST

6. RADICALS = TERRORISTS

7. SLAVERY’S RUNNER-UP

8. BUSH CHANGES THE RULES

9. SOLDIERS SPEAK OUT

10. APA HELPS CIA TORTURE

OTHER STORIES IN THE TOP 25

PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY?

POLITICAL AGENDA?

DIRTY CIRCUS TRICKS

ELEPHANTS AND TB

THE USDA INVESTIGATES

WATCHING THE CIRCUS

USE OR ABUSE?

PRESERVATION OR EXPLOITATION?

Local hero

Local hero

Local hero