Elections Archives — Page 4 of 37 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Is Larkin Street Youth Services using public funds to fight a union organizing drive?

Sasha Cuttler

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May 16, 2013

Larkin Street Youth Services does great and important social work with homeless youth in San Francisco, for which it receives generous support from city taxpayers, as well as federal grants. That’s why its employees and some prominent local officials are questioning the organization’s aggressive, deceptive, and anti-union resistance to the request by a majority of its 88 employees to be represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1021.

A majority of employees submitted an organizing petition on April 8, asking LSYS Executive Director Sherilyn Adams to honor the request and recognize card check neutrality, as other local city-supported nonprofits have done, such as Tenderloin Housing Clinic. But SEIU organizer Peter Masiak said Adams refused to even discuss it, leading the National Labor Relations Board to set a mail-in ballot election that begins May 21.

“That was two months she was able to buy by forcing this election,” he told us.

Adams and LSYS management have used that time to try to undermine the organizing effort with staff meetings and mailers that criticize SEIU in particular and the labor movement in general, using misleading scare tactics about the costs of organizing.

“In my view, if employees become represented by a union, our organization will be significantly impacted, and not for the better,” Adams wrote in an April 23 email to staff announcing the NLRB election. LSYS management has also posted flyers with inaccurate information on the costs of joining the union and dated information about a contentious contract impasse between Local 1021 and its workers that has [since been settled. CORRECTION: Local 1021 workers rejected that settlement, with negotiations scheduled to restart May 21].

“They have been engaged in an anti-union campaign and hired outside counsel to fight this,” Masiak told us, noting how inappropriate such actions are for an organization that gets the vast majority of its funding from government grants. “I think it’s a misuse of these funds.”

Some public officials agree, including Assembly member Tom Ammiano and Sup. John Avalos, who have written letters to LSYS criticizing the tactics and urging Adams to recognize the union.

“Their desire to have a voice on the job and develop professionally in a supportive environment should be celebrated by LSYS management,” Ammiano wrote to Adams on April 30, noting his long history of advocating for increased city funding of the organization. “Unions are an important voice for employees regarding salary, benefits, working conditions, and many other issues. I strongly encourage you to accept card check recognition, to remain neautral during your employees’ organizing efforts, and not to use public funds on anti-union attorneys or consultants, so that your employees may make their own decision on whether or not to form a union.”

Eva Kersey, who works in LSYS HIV-prevention programs and helped organize the union drive, said it was driven by concerns about low wages, poor benefits, and the belief that “we don’t have a meaningful voice in how our programs are run,” she told us.

Kersey said she was disappointed at how management has reacted to the organizing drive. “What was most surprising is the general lack of respect we’ve gotten as workers and an organizing committee,” Kersey said, citing belittling management statements about how employees were being manipulated by the desperate union. “We’ve put a lot of work into this and put ourselves out there in a lot of ways.”

But Kersey believes support for the union has only grown and that LSYS employees — who are used to cutting through the bullshit they hear from troubled teens — haven’t been swayed by the speeches, flyers, and emails from management.

“I don’t think they’re very effective. They’re pretty one-sided,” Kersey said.

Adams did not return our calls for comment, but had LSYS spokesperson Nicole Garroutte respond by asking for questions in writing, and we provided a list raising the issues and concerns expressed in this article. She didn’t answer the questions directly but offered this prepared statement: “Thank you for your interest in Larkin Street and, in particular, the election process that is currently underway. Out of respect for all of our employees and to help ensure a fair and independent process, we will confine our response to reaffirming the high degree to which we value our staff and the faith that we have in their ability to make informed individual decisions regarding the election. We recognize that there are expected differences of opinions regarding the preferred labor-management model, but we are confident that we all share a mutual passion for our mission and, most importantly, for assisting to our fullest potential the vulnerable clients we serve. We would be happy to talk further after the election process is concluded.”

Masiak said the ballots will be mailed out May 21, they must be returned by June 5, and they will counted June 6.

Cryin’ wolf

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May 16, 2013

128

This has been a wretched stretch of brutal press for Barack Obama lately. Battered over and over by revelations of IRS malfeasance, aggressive assaults on press freedom at the AP and Benghazi ad infinitum, the hits keep on coming, amplified by the dual forces of the “Conservative Entertainment Complex” (as exemplified by this great pundit) and a “liberal media” that has realized that Internet hits are their most likely saving grace and revenue stream. It has reached such fevered pitch that the media is making a chilling analogy commonplace!

Thing is, once you get out of the fever swamps of the Internet, where seething Caucasian retirees amped up on Fox n Metamucil dominate debates with wildly incoherent snatches of reactionary-babble that sound like bizarre code to the unintiated, nobody–and I do mean NOBODY–gives a rodent’s anus about any of this. Be it at the laundromat, the gym, the coffee shop, kid’s schools, diner—general talk in my neck of the woods is a smorgasbord of the usual celeb/weather thing. And why?

Not just because none of this impacts anyone directly (certainly not as directly as this, which affects everyone that breathes, namely everyone alive), but in reality, because the Republican Noise Machine’s ceasleless elevation of every Obama falter/failure to a matter of the utmost urgency (requiring Obama’s removal) has rendered the public and even a fair amount of the blogosphere numb to their unending pounding. Benghazi–a bloody mess of a tragedy that left four Americans dead has actually been called by one of the GOP’s most repellant figureheads as more significant than 9/11. Another has called for impeachment. As the same level of outrage never existed during the Bush years (and similar attacks that left 60 people dead), this is transparent nonsense. Not to mention the hearings themselves over Benghazi, which deliberately leave out testimony from any key players that might deviate off script.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3HTaJJugwc

Of greater importance would be the IRS and AP scandals. But even these are revealed to be borderline ridiculous–the IRS didn’t single out only Tea Party groups and the AP’s claim of political persecution is no more than an attempt to deflect a legitmate inquiry into a serious security breach. Let’s get real: Using the IRS to persecute one’s opponents is serious beyond serious–but when the campaign finance laws have been upended, the IRS making legitimate inquiries into an organization’s status is to be expected.

The real issue at hand here is that for over 20 years, the Republican Party has molehilled into mountains every story that they thought would sway public opinion. And it tends to crest at the same time as well–right after a Democratic incumbent shocks them by trouncing a challenger, as was also the case in 1996. Never mind that the kitchen sink was thrown at both Clinton and Obama, whose policies themselves could barely be described as genuinely progressive, the only thing that mattered was wrecking their approval ratings in time for midterms or for the next presidential election–and as the Democrats gained seats in 1998 and their dreadful candidate outpolled the Republican in the popular vote in 2000, it really doesn’t work.

But they’ll cry wolf forever, because at this point “conservative politics” are a lucrative racket. And by playing this bait and switch game, the public tunes out even the things that are critical to them. So, “Benghazi” and the others replace “ACORN” or “Jeremiah Wright” for a spell and then roll back into the sea of noise like so many barking seals. But as the media lock that existed 15 some years ago disappears, these stories will hopefully carry less gravity in the future and pass along with the embittered folks whose panic over cultural changes has turned them into easy marks. Can’t come fast enough for me.

Campos to Pride: City funding requires transparency, meeting about Manning decision

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May 15, 2013

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Campos to Pride: City funding requires transparency, meeting about Manning decision

Over the weekend, Pride posted a Facebook note saying that, despite its promises, it would not be holding a public meeting to address its horrible handling of the Bradley Manning for Grand Marshal scandal until after Pride, and that “SF Pride’s decision concerning the election process of Bradley Manning as Grand Marshal being consistent with SF Pride’s long-standing Grand Marshal election policy is firm. Thus, the discussion of that matter is closed for this year.”

People were not very happy about this. Last night a well-attended “mock Pride board meeting” protest was held, with a row of empty chairs symbolizing Pride’s absence of leadership.

Now Supervisor David Campos has issued a stern letter to the Pride Board, citing Pride’s status as a city-funded organization and its failure to operate with transparency, and advising them to meet with the public before the festival at the end of June.

Could Pride get its funding yanked if it continues to, ahem, Stonewall? Here’s Campos’s letter:

To Executive Director Earl Plante, Board President Lisa Williams and members of the Board of Directors of San Francisco Pride:

I am writing to express my concern over the recent actions of the leadership of Pride in the wake of the controversy surrounding the naming of Private Manning as a Grand Marshall for this year’s parade. The decision to rescind this honor is unprecedented and the community has every right to be concerned about the consequences of this abrupt, top-down directive. Most importantly, however, is the obligation Pride has to be accountable, transparent and representative to the diverse LGBT community it serves. As an organization which receives City funding, Pride has a responsibility to operate with transparency and accountability, and to allow for timely appropriate discussions with the community as needed. The failure of Pride leadership to do so in this circumstance is contrary to this responsibility.

Controversy is not a new phenomenon to Pride festivities, nor is it a valid reason for Pride not to fulfill its responsibilities to the broader LGBT community. The recent statement made by Pride that the discussion on this matter is “closed” is disturbing, and may serve to further divide the community and foster long-lasting resentments.

I urge Pride to hold an open community discussion on the matter of Private Manning’s awarding and rescission as Grand Marshall, and ask that this meeting be held as soon as possible and before the June Pride festivities. We must remember that Pride was born as a tribute to the courage of the LGBT community, and walking away from this discussion is contrary to that legacy.

Sincerely,

Supervisor David Campos

Pride Board locks out press, protesters at public comment meeting

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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May 8, 2013

36

Pride Board locks out press, protesters at public comment meeting

“Let the press in! Let the press in!” the crowd of about 50-60 Bradley Manning for Grand Marshal supporters chanted yesterday evening at 7pm, packed into the lobby of the Golden Gate Business Association on Pearl Street, after being denied entrance to the elevator leading to the Pride Board meeting on the fourth floor. A hired security guard held the crowd, which included reporters from KTVU and KQED, back and the elevator doors closed for the last time as “No cameras, no justice!” filled the air.

The word came via the significant police presence outside the building (officers were also posted outside the building’s stairwell) that only 15 people at a time were being allowed into the board meeting, which was held to accept “public comment” on the Bradley manning controversy. The meeting was also supposedly held to address any questions about its official statement, released yesterday afternoon, rescinding Manning’s election as Grand Marshal because he was “not local.”

No one there, it was clear, was getting in.

Safety hazards were cited. Surely, some protesters put forth, the Pride Board knew it would need a bigger space to address the community’s concern — like, say, the LGBT Community Center across the street?

Scene inside the lobby after being denied entrance to the Pride Board public comment meeting

(Blogger Michael Petrellis did manage to get into the sparsely occupied meeting by arriving early and begging to use the bathroom. You can read his report here.)

Among the protesters outside were Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, who spoke eloquently at a previous demonstration defending Manning. (He eventually made it into the meeting, along with a few other high-profile community representatives like Gary Virginia, Carol Queen, Starchild, Lisa Geduldig, and Rainey Reitman of the Bradley Manning Support Network.) Also present outside were members of Code Pink, ACT UP/SF, and the Gray Panthers.

Waiting on the street was attorney David Waggoner, who that day had filed an official discrimination complaint with the city’s Human Rights Commission. The complaint alleges that “the Pride Board syomped on the moral convictions of the grand marshals who voted for Manning. SF Pride — a recipient of City funding — is not allowed to discriminate against people just because they don’t like their moral support of Manning.”

The Pride Board ended its meeting early, and a representative said that it would plan another in a more appropriate — hopefully meaning bigger — venue.

As usual, queer activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca put everything into perspective.

“I know it’s 40 years ago and I’m old, but I was at the first Gay Freedom march in Philadelphia in 1972 — and we were oficially protesting the war in Vietnam. How did we come to this — standing outside the corporate offices of Pride and shouting for them to let a military protestor, from the military itself, into their parade — into our parade?”

As the Manning supporters took to the streets and shouted “You say court martial, we say grand marshal!” from the nearby F-Market stop, Patricia Jackson, convener of the Gray Panthers, added:

“If Pride is about inclusion, how can they shut us out — of the meeting, of the conversation? The only way to heal any divide in a community is to accept that people have different views, and make things bigger than that.”

Pride Board statement: Manning “not local,” controversy “not our mission”

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May 7, 2013

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Pride Board statement: Manning “not local,” controversy “not our mission”

Here’s the official statement just issued by the Pride SF Board about the Bradley Manning grand marshal fiasco, “clarifying” its bizarre rules (“Under longstanding policy, the community grand marshal upon whom the Electoral College votes is defined as ‘a local hero (individual) not being a celebrity'”), and directing the electoral college to vote for one of “two, duly qualified nominees for the 2013 Community Grand Marshal: Bebe Sweetbriar and Associate Justice Jim Humes.”

(Poor singing drag queen BeBe Sweetbriar — despite her incredible productivity, even Pride doesn’t think she’s a celebrity! We still love you, Beebs.)

The statement also engages in a gross bit of condescencion.

“Those that nominated Mr. Manning surely knew that he is not a local, Bay Area community member, and that he should not have been voted on by the Electoral College. His nomination is more appropriately debated and voted on by the public than by a small group, and it could be next year when nominations open…. Taking sides in the controversy concerning Mr. Manning’s conduct is not appropriate for the organization and falls outside its core mission. We apologize to Mr. Manning, knowing that he did not ask to be at the center of a community firestorm, and for any harsh words that may have been said about him.”

Because the core mission of Pride, of course, is not to take a side in any controversy ever. Except gays in the military. And whether the Altoids float should come before or after PFLAG. Tell us, SF Pride: does Bud Light taste great, or is it less filling? We’ll have to wait until the end of time for an answer.

I’ll be asking the Pride Board about this statement tonight at its public meeting (7pm at 30 Pearl St., Fourth Floor). Stay tuned.

“For the past four decades, SF Pride has stood firmly to advance its mission to educate the world about LGBT issues, commemorate LGBT heritage, celebrate LGBT culture, and liberate LGBT people. It remains a considerable honor and utmost commitment to engage the community to recognize those persons who have positively advanced the LGBT liberation movement, representing the full spectrum of contributions to advance full equality for all.

Presenting various categories and criteria for annual parade grand marshal nominees offers SF Pride and the community a broad range of opportunities to recognize and honor a diverse range of individuals and organizations for their achievements on behalf of LGBT people. Grand Marshal Categories include Celebrity, Lifetime Achievement, Organizational, Community, Special Guests, and Pink Brick.

The SF Pride Board recognizes and regrets the recent error in the announcement of Mr. Bradley Manning as the Electoral College’s Community Grand Marshal. The Electoral College was not the appropriate forum for his nomination. The longstanding Grand Marshal Policy provides that one community grand marshal shall be elected by an electoral college composed of Community Grand and Honorary Marshals elected or appointed since 1999. Grand Marshal/Pink Brick Policy, Sections 3.3 and 5.2.3. Under that longstanding policy, the community grand marshal upon whom the Electoral College votes is defined as “a local hero (individual) not being a celebrity.” Grand Marshal/Pink Brick Policy, Section 5.2.3.

Because Mr. Manning is not local, by definition under the Grand Marshal policy, he may not be nominated or elected by the Electoral College as its community grand marshal. The SF Pride Board determined that because the nomination and election had been conducted in the incorrect forum, the election could not be upheld as valid. Mr. Manning might rightfully qualify as a nominee for Celebrity Grand Marshal or another community grand marshal spot, but not as the Electoral College’s nominee, as a matter of longstanding, written policy.

The integrity of the elections process and procedures are important to SF Pride and the community. Those that nominated Mr. Manning surely knew that he is not a local, Bay Area community member, and that he should not have been voted on by the Electoral College. His nomination is more appropriately debated and voted on by the public than by a small group, and it could be next year when nominations open.

Taking sides in the controversy concerning Mr. Manning’s conduct is not appropriate for the organization and falls outside its core mission. We apologize to Mr. Manning, knowing that he did not ask to be at the center of a community firestorm, and for any harsh words that may have been said about him. In the end, SF Pride recognizes that becoming embroiled in the controversy concerning the merit of Mr. Manning’s conduct was an honest mistake. However, because the Grand Marshal/Pink Brick policy precludes Mr. Manning from being nominated for, or elected as a community grand marshal by the Electoral College, SF Pride stands by his disqualification on those unequivocal policy grounds.

Moving forward, in the spirit of fairness and to respectfully honor the contributions of qualified nominees, the SF Pride Board is re-opening the Electoral College’s voting process so that it may select a Community Grand Marshal from the remaining two, duly qualified nominees for the 2013 Community Grand Marshal: Bebe Sweetbriar and Associate Justice Jim Humes. Members of the Electoral College will have until May 16 to re-cast their vote.

Starting on Wednesday, May 8, ballots will be sent to the Electoral College both by email and snail mail. Votes can be cast by either email or postal mail to the SF Pride offices at 1841 Market Street, 4th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103; Att: Electoral Voting. Votes must be cast by 5pm PST on Thursday, May 16. The elected Grand Marshal will be announced by noon the following day, Friday, May 17. The SF Pride Board of Directors appreciates the support of concerned members of the community. These matters have been sorted out towards a fair resolution. We encourage all former Community and Honorary Grand Marshals in the Electoral College to participate in this extended opportunity to select a qualified Community Grand Marshal for the 2013 Parade and Celebration.

Shortly before this statement was released, SF Pride received a complaint filed against it at the San Francisco Human Rights Commission concerning Mr. Manning. This statement is not a response to that complaint, and SF Pride will be responding to that complaint in the proper forum, not in the press and/or at board meetings.”

Don’t vent, organize and “primary” a Democrat near you

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May 2, 2013

5

Don’t vent, organize and “primary” a Democrat near you

By Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

Progressives often wonder why so many Republican lawmakers stick to their avowed principles while so many Democratic lawmakers abandon theirs. We can grasp some answers by assessing the current nationwide drive called “Primary My Congressman” — a case study of how right-wing forces gain ground in electoral terrain where progressives fear to tread.

Sponsored by Club for Growth Action, the “Primary My Congressman” effort aims to replace “moderate Republicans” with “economic conservatives” — in other words, GOP hardliners even more devoted to boosting corporate power and dismantling the public sector. “In districts that are heavily Republican,” the group says, “there are literally dozens of missed opportunities to elect real fiscal conservatives to Congress — not more ‘moderates’ who will compromise with Democrats. . .”

Such threats of serious primary challenges often cause the targeted incumbents to quickly veer rightward, or they may never get through the next Republican primary.

Progressive activists and organizations could launch similar primary challenges, but — to the delight of the Democratic Party establishment — they rarely do. Why not?

Here are some key reasons:

* Undue deference to elected Democrats.

Members of Congress and other elected officials deserve only the respect they earn. All too often, for example, plenty of Congressional Progressive Caucus members represent the interests of the establishment to progressives rather than the other way around.

* Treating election campaigns more like impulse items than work that requires long-term planning and grassroots follow-through.

The same progressives who’ve spent years planning, launching and sustaining a wide range of community projects are apt to jump into election campaigns with scant lead time. Progressives need to build electoral capacity for the long haul, implementing well-planned strategic campaigns with candidates who come out of social movements and have a plausible chance to win on behalf of those movements.

* Assuming that millions of dollars are necessary to win.

Yes, successful campaigns require effective fundraising — but money is often a less significant obstacle than a shortage of commitment and willingness to do painstaking grassroots organizing.

* Self-marginalization by ignoring elections.

Some on the left prefer to stay out of electoral contests while focusing on the next protest demonstration — thus leaving the electoral field to battles between corporate Democrats and Republicans. One sure result: a progressive won’t win.

* Self-marginalization with third-party efforts in partisan races.

In congressional races, Green Party and other progressive third-party candidates have a zero record of success in our lifetimes. In other races with party affiliations also on the ballot (such as governor and state legislature), victories have been almost nonexistent. In such races, the corporate-military complex is not in the slightest threatened by third-party candidates, who rarely get higher than a low single-digit percentage of the vote. In nonpartisan races, by contrast, there are examples of successful and uplifting campaigns by third-party candidates, as with Green Party member Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, California.

By changing just a few words in the Club for Growth’s “Primary My Congressman” manifesto, progressives have a road map for electoral progress: In districts that are heavily Democratic, there are literally dozens of missed opportunities to elect real progressives to Congress — not more of those who go along with the Obama White House as it keeps compromising with Republicans.

Anyone serious about getting genuine progressives elected to Congress next year should be engaged in developing campaigns now. To avoid the impulse-item syndrome, that means identifying key races where progressives have a real chance to win, while remaining mindful that election campaigns should be subsets of social movements and not the other way around.

If there’s a defining issue that now separates the Obama party leadership from social decency, it is the president’s push to cut Social Security benefits. Less ballyhooed but also crucial is his push to cut Medicare benefits and the ever-present danger of cuts to already woefully-underfunded Medicaid. Meanwhile, Democratic leaders are unwilling to seriously cut the enormous military budget.

Any incumbent Democrat who is not serving progressive interests should be weighed as a possible primary target. And the most fruitful primary challenges are beckoning in heavily Democratic districts where there are many progressive voters and incumbents aren’t measuring up.

By that standard, the Congress members who may be vulnerable to a primary challenge include the 44 who tout their membership in the Progressive Caucus but have refused to sign the letter (initiated by Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano) promising not to vote to cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.

A good starting point to consider launching a primary challenge in your area would be to look at those 44 members of Congress who continue to refuse to make such a promise, leaving themselves wiggle room to vote for cuts in three crucial programs of the social compact. To see the list of those self-described “progressives,” click here. (Meanwhile, wherever you live, you can let your Congress member and senators know what you think of proposals for such cuts by clicking here.)

It’s fair to say those 44 members of Congress are among the many Democratic incumbents showing themselves to be more afraid of the Obama White House and the Democratic Party hierarchy than they are of voters in their own districts. Progressives in and around those districts need to do less venting and more organizing.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

Oh look, suddenly Pride is interesting

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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April 28, 2013

28

So. Pride did a thing. After years of being no more politically risky than an bowl of strawberry Jell-O, the Pride committee — or some kind of mole within the Pride committee, according to SF Pride board president Lisa L. Williams’ utterly weird statement about the whole thing — announced that Bradley Manning (a.k.a. Breanna Manning), jailed and pallid hero of the Wikileaks generation, soon to face court-martialling, was to be a Pride Grand Marshall.

An honor usually reserved for washed up TV actresses who once said the word “gay” on CBS prime time in the ’80s and craven politicos with dead eyes and hard hair, the Grand Marshallship has before this stirred up about as much controversy outside the community as the color beige. And yet, on Friday afternoon, the world’s head exploded. (The canny queen who leaked the decision sure knew her press cycles — Wikileaks lives!) When your dad in Detroit calls you almost immediately after the news breaks to ask how you’re covering it, you know its grabbing virtual headlines.

The announcement has since been officially rescinded by Pride in the tone-deafest of ways (LOL at the whole statement, really — especially how the Grand Marshalls “serve to represent the highest aspirations of the LGBT community”: so, um, Cloris Leachman, Cyndi Lauper, Sarah Silverman?), causing even more uproar. And suddenly people are discovering or rediscovering that Pride is a bland yet militant corporate entity that long ago strayed from its politically activist roots even while it claims to represent us all. Facebook is aflame with locals up in arms over Pride’s cowardice in the face of its criminal corporate sponsors, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and its gross media partners like Clear Channel.

I found it pretty serendipitous that this week the Bay Guardian ran an interview with the founder of Gay Shame, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, about her new book The End of San Francisco, which in a personal and emotional way describes the amnesia that keeps gripping SF queer activism when it comes to Pride’s, and the gay community at large’s, utter Borg of assimilationism and sell-outitude. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Mattilda and her organization were protesting all of Pride’s crap — particularly funny was a parade route “Budweiser Vomitorium” where you could “puke up your sponsorship pride” and a notorious anti-Parade during which a huge brass band of queer freaks marched directly into the oncoming Pride parade’s path, causing chaos. Gay Shame was also getting tons of shit for its important antics from people claiming that Pride was already “too political” hahaha.

Mattilda’s in town to read her book; it’s going to be a pretty lively reading now. She shared this searing Glenn Greenwald piece on the Manning debacle in the Guardian, that’s been burning up the Internet. As usual, Mattilda has a double-take that’s enlightening:

“Glenn Greenwald is an extremely eloquent critic of state tyranny, using his training as a lawyer to relentlessly disassemble the hypocritical claims of corporate governmental powerbrokers (even though he still seemed to be supporting Obama when I saw him speak shortly before the “election”). But, at the same time, Greenwald is almost dogmatic in his support for the gay marriage agenda – this seems an unfortunate example of allowing self-interest (he is in a spousal relationship with a Brazilian man) to block self-awareness. In other words, he never makes the obvious connections between his critique of institutional power and the gay establishment’s obsession with accessing that same power through a never-ending obsession with marriage and military inclusion, hate crimes legislation, etc. But, here in this brilliant and scathing piece, he finally seems to be making those connections. Could he become an anti-assimilationist critic, after all?”

I wonder if the same anti-assimilationist energy is striking a lot of queer people over this Manning thing. The fact that these kinds of issues are coming up again at all right now — especially when same-sex marriage is before the Supreme Court and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been rescinded — is extremely interesting. Could an actual protest movement like Gay Shame rise from the embers of assimilation? You bet your sweet Breanna. And check out Monday’s protest outside the SF Pride office, 1841 Market at 5pm. Also this at Pride itself.

I may actually have to go to this year’s parade!

PS Now if we could only get the house-trained “radicals” of the Pride celebration’s Faerie Freedom Village into the street to actually do a thing — that would be something.

On 8 Washington, it’s No, No

Zelda Bronstein

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April 24, 2013

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The November ballot may contain not one but two measures addressing super-luxury condos on the waterfront. And that could pose a serious problem for the developer of the 8 Washington condominium project.

The Board of Supervisors approved that proposed 134-unit complex, which would be the most expensive condos ever built in San Francisco, in June, 2012, but immediately opponents gathered enough signatures to force a vote of the people. The referendum would overturn the increased height limits that developer Simon Snellgrove wants for the site.

That, it turns out, is a popular notion: “If Snellgrove is looking at the same polls we’re looking at, the public is not interested in raising building heights on the waterfront,” Jon Golinger, who is running the referendum campaign, told us.

So Snellgrove is now funding his own initiative — a ballot measure that would essentially approve the entire project, allowing 136-foot buildings along the Embarcadero and giving the green light to start construction on housing for multimillionaires.

The paperwork for the initiative was set to be filed April 23, allowing Snellgrove’s team to begin collecting signatures. They’ll need more than 9,000 valid ones to make the November ballot — and that’s not much of a threshold. If the developer funds the signature-gathering effort — which he’s vowed to do — he’ll almost certainly get enough people who are fooled by the fancy name of his campaign: “San Franciscans for Parks, Jobs, and Housing.”
That, presumably, suggests that there are San Franciscans who are against Parks, Jobs, and Housing, although we don’t know any of them. We just know people who think this particular project provides housing the city doesn’t need without paying nearly enough for affordable units.

At any rate, the campaign manager for this effort, according to the paperwork filed at the Department of Elections, is Derek Jensen, a 20-something communications consultant who was Treasurer of the Lee for Mayor Campaign. The address for the waterfront initiative is listed as 425 Market St, 16th floor –which, by the way, was the same address used by the Lee Campaign. And since it’s right near our office, we took a stroll over to see what the Snellgrove forces had to say.

Well, it turns out that 425 Market is a secure building, and the 26th floor is the law office of Hanson Bridgette, and you can’t get up there unless your name is already in the computer system, which ours was not. The security guard kindly called up to ask about the 8 Washington initiative, and was told there was nobody who could talk about it today, but to check back later.

The person who answered the phone at Hanson, Bridgette had never heard of Derek Jensen. Transferred to voicemail, we left a message for someone named “Lance.” Perhaps that would be Associate Counsel Arthur “Lance” Alarcon, Jr. He hadn’t called back at press time.

The campaign against 8 Washington, on the other hand, has an office at 15 Columbus. First floor. Walk right in the door. The campaign manager is Jon Golinger, who answers his own phone.

At any rate, we can’t figure out what Snellgrove is up to, since his plan makes zero political sense. The referendum needs a “no” vote to block the project. If voters don’t like increased height limits on the waterfront, they won’t like his initiative, either. And if all that this does is confuse the voters, they’ll tend to vote “no” on both measures. If anything, he’s only hurting himself.

Norman Solomon: Nominate Bradley Manning for the Nobel Peace prize!

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April 6, 2013

1

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

The Nobel Peace Prize that President Obama received 40 months ago has emerged as the most appalling Orwellian award of this century. No, war is not peace.

George Carlin used to riff about oxymorons like “jumbo shrimp,” “genuine imitation,” “political science” and “military intelligence.” But humor is of the gallows sort when we consider the absurdity and tragedy of the world’s most important peace prize honoring the world’s top war maker.

This week, a challenge has begun with the launch of a petition urging the Norwegian Nobel Committee to revoke Obama’s Peace Prize. By midnight of the first day, nearly 10,000 people had signed. The online petition simply tells the Nobel committee: “I urge you to rescind the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to Barack Obama.”

Many signers have added their own comments. Here are some samples:

“It is with very great regret that I sign this petition, but I feel it is morally the right thing to do. I had phenomenally high hopes that our President would be a torch bearer for the true message of Peace. Instead he has brought death, destruction and devastation to vast areas of the world, and made us less safe by creating more enemies.” Sushila C., Punta Gorda, FL

“War is nothing to be given a peace prize for.” Brent L., San Diego, CA

“President Obama has clearly demonstrated that he is undeserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. Revoke his prize and give it to Bradley Manning!” Henry B., Portland, OR

“Perhaps a better president than Bush or Romney, but not a Nobel laureate for peace.” Arun N., Woodinville, WA

“I honestly cannot understand how they could bestow that honor on President Obama to begin with; I’m still puzzled!” Cindy A., Phoenix, AR

“Giving the prize to President Obama has degraded the esteem the Nobel Prize once had as a means of recognizing the best of us. It now represents a pat on the back for the thugs that roam freely amongst our governments. That decision has made me question the integrity of all previous nominations, and wonder if the entire Nobel Prize program is nothing but a sham.” Juan F., Arcata, CA

“Continued occupation of Afghanistan and drone strikes across national borders are NOT the actions of a peacemaker. Mr. Obama has defiled the good will of the Nobel prize.” Dudley D., Chicago, IL

“His actions are speaking louder than his words. He has continued Bush’s torture policy and both wars. He has sent armed drones in to remote places and only questionably killed terrorists, but definitely killed civilians. He does not deserve it.” Katherine M., San Diego, CA

“Les espoirs envers Obama étaient élevés, les résultats décevants.” André T., Quebec City, Canada

“A President for Peace? Tell that to the thousands of innocent men, women and hundreds of children that have been killed in drone strikes during the Obama administration. It was laughable that this coveted prize was given to him in the first place but now it is just obscene!” Barlee R., Antioch, CA

“Allowing the Nobel Peace Prize to remain in Obama’s name forsakes the very creed the prize is meant to represent. Please don’t (continue to) be a hypocrite — no way in Hell does that man deserve to be credited in any way for being a peacemaker. I said the same for Bush by the way — so don’t think I’m just some partisan nutcase obsessed with bashing Obama. I simply speak the Truth as often as possible and let the chips fall where they may. Many of us peaceful, compassionate folks would like to have this message droned into your collective heads. Obama is just another puppet doing the bidding of the greedy, mass-murdering global elite.” Greg C., Manhattan, KS

“The peace prize should be awarded to Pfc. Bradley Manning instead.” Robert F., Santa Clara, CA

“This would be an extraordinarily bold move, but it certainly would send a message to the world that peace means peace, not war.” David G., Portland, OR

“I so wish President Obama had lived up to the award he was given. Instead he has chosen to continue and expand the horrors being perpetrated by our country. War is not ever the answer.” Carol G., Goshen, IN

“Droning people to death is not peace.” William S., New York, NY

“Not being George W. Bush was never sufficient ground for this award, and Mr. Obama’s enthusiastic support for the extension of empire, fossil fuels, raw military power, and other violence against the earth and its people is further evidence of its unwisdom.” Scott W., Durham, NC

“One must walk the walk of peace, not just talk the talk of peace in order to earn the Peace Prize.” Paul M., Los Angeles, CA

“Drone Bombs create more terrorists than they kill.” Jay J., Roachdale, IN

“A war criminal is not worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.” Lars P., Afton, WI

“Our President had an unprecedented opportunity to effect a turn-around in foreign policy after the illegal and failed wars of his predecessor. He was hired to do so; but he has squandered the opportunity and has in fact increased U.S. aggression. He does not deserve to be known as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.” Lynn J., Roslyn, PA

“The PEACE prize should be given to those that work toward PEACE, not the ones that only talk about it.” Karen W., Weirsdale, FL

“Take it from Obama and give it to its rightful owner, Bradley Manning.” Rand K., Hotchkiss, CO

“I urge you to rescind the Nobel from this coward who kills children with drones. Are you intentionally making the peace prize a joke or are you just not too bright?” Janet M., Charlottetown, CA

“He’s not as big a war criminal as Kissinger, so you should revoke both.” Earl F., Santa Maria, CA

“This man is a disgrace in the cause of peace. What were you thinking?” Sherrill F., Davis, CA

“Given his actions and policies, Obama is more a Man of Pieces — as in, ‘Blow them to pieces!’ — than he is a Man of peace.” Marcus M., San Rafael, CA

“He’s done nothing to deserve it; and he’s done many things to destroy peace in this world.” Danny D., Shoreline, WA

“This human has killed more after he got the prize.” Thomas P., Lewiston, CA

“He obtained the award on promises he didn’t keep.” Ron B., Bend, OR

“President Obama’s actions have shown that his words were meaningless. The Nobel Peace Prize means little if it’s so easily given away.” Debra J., Pasadena, MD

“As an Obama voter I am deeply disappointed. It was bad judgment to give it to him in the first place.” Tim K., Long Prairie, MN

“Drones are offensive weapons, in every sense of the word.” Richard F., Portland, OR

“As much of an Obama supporter I am, perhaps stripping him of this award would get his attention, nothing else seems to be getting the message across that the American People have had enough of multiple trillion dollar unnecessary wars.” Vern M., Albuquerque, NM

“Obama is a smiling war monger.” Jon M., Wellington, New Zealand

“Under Obama’s leadership our assassination-by-drone foreign policy has increased dramatically, which makes him a war criminal.” Frank S., Bellingham, WA

“As a constituent and two-time voter for Barack Obama, I am dismayed and frightened at the warmongering ways he has displayed as our leader. I urge the revocation of his undeserved Nobel prize.” Samuel P., Colton, CA

“What a good idea! Yes, he has the blood of many innocents on his hands.” Gene A., Athens, OH

“He should have never got it in the first place!” David S., Everett, WA

“I voted for the president in both elections but I do not feel he ever deserved the Nobel Peace Prize! Please rescind it!” Carol H., Michigan City, IN

“Please start with Henry Kissinger before Obama, whose hands are tied.” Bob S., Gibsons, BC, Canada

“Giving him a Nobel Peace Prize is an affront to the deep heritage of true peacemakers who well deserved it. Obama has waged continuous war, torture and other violence since being President. Please revoke it now.” Barry S., Macdoel, CA

“Bush gave us 2 unfunded wars. Will Obama add a few more? Stop wars, drones and killing with other people’s children.” Burt S., Pompton Plains, NJ

“I voted for Obama — twice. I am very sad to sign this petition, but I believe in my heart, what he has done with drones is totally wrong!” Gloria H., Santa Rosa, CA

“Obama’s deeds do not match his words.” Evalyn S., Walnut Creek, CA

“You lost any credibility giving Obama the peace prize. Fix it.” Camilo B., Long Beach, CA

“Obama’s harsh treatment of whistleblowers who are trying to expose the outlandish abuses of the military/corporate state disqualify him from any awards given to peacemakers.” David L., Alamosa, CO

“It’s real sad that the promises that were made by Barack Obama concerning nearly everything have been lost with his sellout to corporate greed. We need a real leader for Peace.” Al B., Ignacio, CO

“I had high hopes for this President when I voted for him. I believed him to be a peace maker, unlike the hawk who was his predecessor. However, there seems to be no effort at peacemaking, at reconciliation, at hope, and killing-by-drone simply leads to more fear and hatred. I fear the day that the government will try to control US with them, too.” Louise A., Greenfield, MA

“You gave him the Nobel Peace Prize too soon. His use of drones and killing of innocent civilians attests to his being anything but a peace-maker.” Rev. Sandy G., San Francisco, CA

“It is not a good example of what peace means when the Nobel Prize is awarded to the leader of a nation engaging in war as a business strategy. Make a statement, please.” Chandra P., Walsenburg, CO

“I, like so many others, gave this man the benefit of the doubt. It has been thrown back in our faces.” Chris C., Harrogate, Great Britain

“He never deserved it and he hasn’t earned it. Yes, please, take it back.” Jackie F., Oakland, CA

“The Nobel Peace Prize should not be awarded to war mongers and war criminals. Therefore, please revoke the Peace Prize you awarded to President Obama in 2009.” Fred N., Pleasanton, CA

“It is with deepest regret we ask for this but our President’s actions have not lived up to the high honor of promoting peace.” GlendaRae H., South Bend, IN

“I don’t think anyone ever understood what Obama was supposed to have done to have deserved the Peace Prize in the first place. And I’m a lifelong Democrat, so my feeling that the Nobel Committee made a mistake is not based in political partisanship.” Steve J., Hermosa Beach, CA

“It appears that preemptive peace prizes work about as well as preemptive wars.” Jaan C., Alameda, C

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

Tech Bubble 2.0

Andrew Lam

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April 2, 2013

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OPINION We all remember the first dot-com bubble, right? Web technology start-ups flocked to San Francisco in the late 1990s. Thousands of would-be entrepreneurs and techies filled up the city. Gentrification of Central City neighborhoods accelerated sharply. Apartment rents jumped, followed by the condo boom. Demand for commercial office space, especially South of Market, quickly grew red-hot. Rents zoomed, and office developers rushed dozens of proposed new projects forward.

The leaders of Mayor Willie Brown’s gutless Planning Department rubber-stamped all they could, and decried the annual limit imposed on their approvals by the 1986 community-activist-sponsored Proposition M ballot measure.

The activists and the mayor put two competing measures on the November 2000 ballot in response. Both lost, but the progressive slate for the Board of Supervisors swept that election, defeating most of the mayor’s candidates.

And then Tech Bubble 1.0 popped. The peak year was 2000. The big dot-com bust, 9/11, and finally the Great Recession all followed.

The city’s office market crashed. Some new office buildings were foreclosed by their lenders. Many approved office developments went unbuilt. Overall office market vacancies approached 20 percent by 2010.

Ah, but here we go again — Tech Bubble 2.0! A new wave of recent technology industry start-ups — like Twitter and Yelp — are joining the growing survivors of Bubble Number 1 — like Salesforce. And San Francisco has become a premiere national media venue for the tech industry.

Thousands of would-be entrepreneurs and techies are again filling up the city. Apartment rents are going through the roof. Gentrification of Central City neighborhoods is accelerating even faster. Demand for commercial office space, still in SoMa, is red-hot again.

But by 2011 so much vacant space was on the market, and so many approved buildings were waiting for anchor tenants to start construction, that there has been room for them all so far. Several new buildings got underway. Mayor Ed Lee strategically took advantage of this market boom to target economic expansion to the Central Market District, the last disinvested zone of San Francisco’s Downtown.

Even today though, city office vacancies still exceed 5 percent. And according to the most recent Planning Department report, more than a dozen already-approved new buildings, totaling more than 4.5 million square feet, are waiting to start construction in the Transbay Transit District, South of Market, and Mission Bay. Another 5 million feet of office space is proposed for more than a dozen more pipeline projects for those areas. Plus another 2.5 million feet is planned for projects on Port property — including the San Francisco Giant’s huge project — that are not even on the Planning Department’s list yet!

How does this total of 12 million square feet of pending new San Francisco office buildings compare to historic demand? Going back to 1986, the amount of new office space actually built — true long-term market demand through the boom/bust business cycles — averages out to about only 750,000 square feet a year. The city’s old-school corporate headquarters dramatically downsized or even moved out of San Francisco — like Chevron and Bank of America — and that’s still ongoing. The new tech industry is mostly replacing them. So these 30+ identifiable current projects would provide a 16-year supply of office space at historic rates.

But even in the face of this evident market glut of future office buildings, the usual civic development hypsters are once again muttering about gutting Proposition M, and radically upzoning Soma for even greater office expansion. Is that who City Hall will listen to this time too?

Bubble? What Bubble? [Pop!]

John Elberling is executive director of the Tenants and Owners Development Corporation.

GOP ‘dark wizard’ and Occupy ‘anti-leader’ to speak in SF on the same day

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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April 2, 2013

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GOP ‘dark wizard’ and Occupy ‘anti-leader’ to speak in SF on the same day

This coming Thursday, a central intellectual figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement will give a talk on “Austerity and its Discontents.” And across the city, at the very same time, powerful anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist will mix it up with an elite group of San Francisco Republicans (yes, they really do exist).

Graeber, an American anthropologist and anarchist who teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, was dubbed “the anti-leader of Occupy Wall Street” in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine article published shortly after a determined band of committed activists staked a claim on Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, kicking off the global Occupy movement. Graeber’s tome on wealth inequality, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, recounts the ages of human history through the lens of the indebted, vis-à-vis their creditors. The book helped give rise to Occupy activists’ famous chant: “We are the 99 Percent!”

Norquist hails from the polar opposite end of the political spectrum. An influential lobbyist who leads Americans for Tax Reform, he was once described as “the dark wizard of the Right’s anti-tax cult,” in the words of Arianna Huffington. The fiery conservative is most well known for his role as keeper of “the Pledge,” which essentially asks Republican lawmakers to swear that they will never, ever vote to raise taxes for any reason.

The Thursday meet-and-greet, billed as “Cocktails with Grover Norquist,” is being hosted by the San Francisco Republican Party – a political body that barely registers as a blip as far as local elections are concerned, but apparently has enough clout to make it worthwhile for a famed operative like Norquist, whose group is based in D.C., to dip into San Francisco for a visit. The cocktail hour will be held at The City Club, a financial district venue. It costs $100.

Just as San Francisco Republicans sip cocktails and discreetly await the chance to engage Norquist in a few moments of powerful face-time, an audience of lefties will gather to hear Graeber’s studious analysis of global austerity measures and anarchist organizing tactics. Billed as a forum that’s free and open to the public, Graeber’s talk is being hosted by the Anthropology and Social Change Department of the California Institute for Integral Studies, located at 1453 Mission Street.

In a recent interview about the round of national budget cuts known as the sequester, Norquist told The Daily Beast: “I’m for the spending cuts. Just let them take effect. … The only thing worse than the sequester would be not reducing spending.”

And here’s Graeber’s take on the underlying economic climate that gave rise to the Occupy movement: “It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. … The economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the ‘third world debt crisis.’ But the global south fought back. … The debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of ‘austerity.’”

Mayor Lee’s mysterious breakfast companions [UPDATED]

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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March 27, 2013

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See an update to this story below. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has been having breakfast with CEOs to seek millions in funding for the America’s Cup, but the identities of those CEOs remain a mystery.

At a City Hall hearing two weeks ago, America’s Cup Organizing Committee chief Kyri McClellan told supervisors that Lee has been “putting an incredible amount of energy” into fundraising to cover city costs for the America’s Cup. As the yacht race draws closer, pressure is building around an anticipated funding shortfall that could deal a blow to city coffers.

McClellan told supervisors that Lee was “holding breakfasts with CEOs” to raise money. Encouragingly, she added, “people are responding.”

So, who are the CEOs? And how much have they agreed to contribute? So far, nobody has disclosed that information.

Shortly after the hearing, the Guardian submitted a public records request to Lee’s office seeking documentation on the fundraising breakfasts and records showing the names and affiliations of the CEOs.

In response, we received several pages from the mayor’s calendar. Entries show that Lee held half a dozen meetings concerning “economic development,” with no mention of the America’s Cup. The mayor had a meeting at Waterbar, a restaurant on the Embarcadero overlooking the Bay Bridge, on the morning of Jan. 25; he had another meeting there Feb. 1; he met at the Hotel Vitale on Feb. 22; met at City Hall on Feb. 28; had breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel on March 1, and had lunch with someone at Original Joe’s on March 4. But there was no information disclosing whom he met with.

After receiving the documents, the Guardian left multiple voicemails with the mayor’s press office asking for the identities of the CEOs. So far, nobody has responded.

The request also yielded a fundraising form that asks prospective donors to “join the 2013 America’s Cup San Francisco Host Committee.”

Donors could opt to become a “Legacy Benefactor” for committing to give or raise $5 million; a “Legacy Partner” for $2.5 million; a “Strategic Partner” for $1 million, a “Civic Champion” for $500,000, or a mere “Member” for $250,000. Donors with questions or who wished “to connect with Mayor Lee” could call Stephanie Roumeliotes, the form noted.

Roumeliotes is a prominent fundraiser and political strategist who provided financial consulting for the re-election campaigns of Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. She was appointed to serve on the Golden Gate Concourse Authority, a part of the Recreation and Parks Department, by former Mayor Gavin Newsom.

A call to the number listed went to SGR Consulting, Roumeliotes’ firm. The receptionist declined to comment or to connect the Guardian with Roumeliotes, saying, “All press inquiries should be directed to the Mayor’s Office.”

UPDATE: We just received a voicemail from Christine Falvey, Mayor Lee’s press secretary, who told us “I don’t have a list of the attendees for those breakfasts. They were hosted by the America’s Cup Organizing Committee.” Which raises more questions, but in any case we placed a call to race organizers and will update again when we know more.

Willie Brown and Ammiano’s pot bill

Zelda Bronstein

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March 26, 2013

35

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s new medical marijuana bill seems pretty straightforward. Almost everyone in the medpot biz thinks there ought to be some sort of statewide regulations for a growing industry that operates in a mish-mash of local jurisdictions with no overall rules. If nothing else, consumer-protection policies ought to be in place. And, of course, the more the dispensaries accept, and follow, reasonable regs, the easier it is to win the mainstream political support necessary to get the feds off all of our backs and ultimately follow Colorado and Washington.

All good, right?

So Ammiano, who has been on this issue for years, is proposing that the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control — which for all its problems has experience regulating mind-altering substances — draft and oversee medpot rules.

But the industry that makes a lot of money off the legalization of medicinal weed is famously fractured — and the politics of Sacramento are often nasty. Add in former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — who has his fingers in all sorts of business opportunities these days — and the story turns downright weird.
Ammiano’s been talking about Califonria and pot for years. He proposed legalization before the other states did, but frankly, this current state Legislature’s never going to have that kind of courage.

But he continues on with the effort. Last year, he tried to put pot under the Department of Consumer Affairs, which clearly didn’t want it; his bill died in the state Senate.

Normally, when new regulations are proposed for an industry, the Legislature holds what’s called a Sunrise Hearing, to bring all the stakeholders into a room and talk about what issues ought to be addressed. So Ammiano a few months back asked for a hearing in the Senate Business, Professions, and Economic Development Committee. No problem, said the chair, Curren Price, a Los Angeles Democrat.

But in February, five days before the hearing was set, Curran called the whole thing off. Turns out that the Governor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office wanted no part of it, so it was hard to round up the essential players. Also, Curran was running for an open LA City Council seat and probably didn’t want the publicity. As Ammiano said at the time, “What’s up with marijuana? You can’t even have a hearing?”

Even without a hearing, he’s moving a new bill, AB 473, which would create under ABC a Division of Medical Cannabis Regulation and Enforcement. The bill is modeled on a successful effort in Colorado that has kept the feds at bay. Washington is also putting marijuana regulation under its liquor control authority.
“We’ve had not one federal intervention,” in Colorado, Matt Cook, a consultant who help write the rules in that state, said.

But just as Ammiano was preparing to line up support for his measure, another bill mysteriously appeared, in the state Senate. A “spot bill” with no actual content, the measure was set as a medical marijuana regulation placeholder. The authors: Senate President Darrell Steinberg and San Francisco’s Mark Leno.

Now: Leno’s been a big supporter of medical pot for years — but the bill wasn’t his idea. “Darrell told me he was going to do something about marijuana regulations, and he asked me if I would join him,” Leno told us.

What Leno didn’t know: Steinberg had been approached and asked to carry a bill by Willie Brown. Brown contacted the Senate president, sources tell us, and said that Ammiano was the wrong person to carry pot legislation.

Why? Who knows. Brown wouldn’t return my calls. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that Brown has been looking for ways to discredit Ammiano since 1999, when the then-supervisor challenged the mayor’s re-election in a legendary write-in campaign that galvanized the city’s left and created the momentum for the complete rejection of Brown’s politics and endorsed candidates a year later, in the first district elections.

And yes: Willie Brown carries a grudge. So it’s possible that he would go out of his way to make sure that Ammiano didn’t get credit for leading the way on what will evenutally be a huge sea chance in how California handles pot.

Now: This sort of thing isn’t viewed very highly in the hallowed halls of the state Leg, where people take their bills — and their history on issues — very seriously. Ammiano was furious, and talked to Steinberg, who (properly) apologized for stepping on his toes. Leno told us he had no intention of undermining his San Francisco colleague, that he had immense respect for Ammiano and all of his efforts, and that he wouldn’t move forward with any bill that didn’t have Ammiano’s input and support.

But it raises the question: Why is Brown even involved in medical marijuana? The only answer I can come up with is that he’s making money off it. Not as a dispensary owner or a grower, but as, in effect, a lobbyist.

When I heard Brown was messing around with the industry, I called Steve DeAngelo, who runs Harborside Health Center, the $22 million a year dispensary in Oakland. DeAngelo’s a promient leader on medical marijuana issues, and has built a respected business that pays taxes to Oakland, provides quality product, and is in many ways a model for what a dispensary should look like.

We talked for a while about Ammiano’s bill, and DeAngelo said he wants to be sure there’s community consensus. “The most important thing is that whatever passes addresses the issues and has broad supoprt in the industry,” he said. He agreed that regulation is needed, but stopped short of endorsing Ammiano’s bill, saying “there still needs to be further discussion.”

Then I asked him if he knew why Brown was talking to the state Senate president, and he told me:

“Willie Brown has been a political advisor to Harborside.”

I asked him if Harborside was paying Brown for his advice. He refused to say.

Okay then. But Brown doesn’t have much of a history of working on this issue pro bono, and is not known for serving as a “political advisor” (or doing much of anything else in the way of work) for free.

What does Brown think about the Ammiano bill? “He thinks,” DeAngelo said, “that it’s important it have a broad base of support.”

Willie Brown is not popular with the voters of California. His history of questionable (at best) ethics was among the reasons the voters approved terms limits for the Legislature. Hardly anyone on the left trusts him. A medical marijuana regulatory bill that has his fingerprints isn’t going to do much for “consensus” or “broad-based support.”

So maybe the best thing Brown could do for his client is stay the hell out of Sacramento.

Last gasp ends the sordid Mirkarimi saga

Sasha Cuttler

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March 18, 2013

167

Last gasp ends the sordid Mirkarimi saga

A San Francisco judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi and his wife, Eliana Lopez, which is likely to be the last step in an ugly and protracted political, legal, and administrative battle stemming from Mirkarimi grabbing Lopez’s arm during an argument on Dec. 31, 2011.

The couple’s neighbors, attorney Abraham Mertens and his wife, Ivory Madison, reported the grabbing incident to police over the objections of Lopez, who had sought advice from Madison and allowed her to film a short but emotional video displaying a bruise on her arm, which became the main evidence against Mirkarimi.

That exploded into a high-profile drama in which Mirkarimi was vilified by the media, charged with domestic violence and witness dissuasion, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor false imprisonment, suspended without pay for six months by Mayor Ed Lee, and finally reinstated to office by the Board of Supervisors in October.

Along the way, the two couples – who are still neighbors, despite Mirkarimi’s efforts to sell his house and move – became increasingly bitter public rivals. Lopez consistently denied being abused and implied to reporters that Mertens and Madison had political motives for breaking her confidence and reporting the incident to police. Mertens and Madison maintained that Mirkarimi tried to dissuade their cooperation with police – an allegation that the long investigation failed to substantiate – and blasted Mirkarimi and Lopez in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed.

Other than that, Madison and Mertens refused to talk to the press as the saga unfolded – a stance they maintained today, with a man who answered the phone at the Red Room website business they run immediately telling us, “They’re not interested in talking.”

But Madison, who went to law school before becoming a fantasy writer, did let loose in June when she submitted a wild, incredible 22-page declaration to the Ethics Commission as part of the city’s effort to permanently remove Mirkarimi on official misconduct charges, purporting to describe the tyrannical way the Mirkarimi ran the household, as Madison claimed she was told by Lopez (which she disputes).

The commission criticized and gutted the declaration, finding that it was prejudicial and contained little usable evidence. Commissioner Paul Renne even dressed down the deputy city attorneys for submitting it, calling it “clearly hearsay, clearly having the intention of poisoning the well of this hearing,” causing Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith to apologize and explain they had little to do with the declaration because Madison had hired a private attorney who helped her prepare it.

The couple and their attorney have threatened to sue Mirkarimi and Lopez for more than a year, and they finally filed the defamation case in January, and it has now been quickly dismissed. Domestic violence advocates and allies of Mayor Lee also threatened a recall election against Mirkarimi, but that also seemed to wither late last year – meaning this is probably the last we’ll hear about this case, at least until Mirkarimi runs for reelection in two years, if he decides to do so.

Asked to comment on the lawsuit’s dismissal, Mirkarimi told the Guardian, “My family and I are very happy and have moved forward, and I hope they are too.” His attorney, David Waggoner, told us, “Hopefully, the dismissal represents the end of what has been a long and painful experience for everyone involved.”

SEIU 1021 employees authorize strike as its clash with the city goes to arbitration

Sasha Cuttler

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March 14, 2013

40

SEIU 1021 employees authorize strike as its clash with the city goes to arbitration

[UPDATE: The two sides reportedly reached a tenative agreement over the weekend]. Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents most city employees in San Francisco, continues to fight both internal and external challenges, with its own staff employees overwhelmingly authorizing a strike just as the union battles the city over pay equity issues.

As we reported last month, SEIU Local 1021 organizers, researchers, negotiators, and other professional staff, represented by Communication Workers of America Local 9404, have been without a contract since last fall and they’re resisting concessions to their pensions and health care benefits that President Roxanne Sanchez and her leadership team are seeking.

After several cancelled negotiating sessions between the two sides (which haven’t met since our story was published), CWA last week called for a strike authorization vote that was approved by 94 percent of voting members. CWA Area Director Libby Sayre and Nick Peraino, a CWA shop steward at Local 1021, say the vote repudiates Sanchez’s characterization that it is a small but vocal group that is unhappy with management.

“We’re very much united in our position and our willingness to do what it takes to get a decent contract,” Peraino told us. Sayre told the Guardian, “There is widespread sentiment they’re being low-balled by management.”

The two sides are scheduled to meet tomorrow (Fri/15), and Sayre told us the likelihood of a strike “depends on what management’s attitude is tomorrow.”

Sanchez and her core leadership team, including Vice President of Politics Alysabeth Alexander (both she and Sanchez are on leave from their jobs at Tenderloin Housing Clinic) and Larry Bradshaw, the vice president for the San Francisco region, last week won decisive re-election victories, indicating they have strong support from members.

Sanchez didn’t return a phone call seeking comment, but Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told us that he expects the dispute with employees to be resolved without a strike. “We have reason to believe it’s a tactic before they come to settle,” he said. He also questioned how many people voted in the election, and Sayre hasn’t returned our call with that follow-up question.

Meanwhile, Sup. John Avalos last week held a hearing before the Land Use and Economic Development Committee on Local 1021’s dispute with the city over a proposal by the Department of Human Resources to unilaterally lower the salaries on new hires in 43 job categories. Such changes were allowed in hard-won contract that the union negotiated with the city last year.

City officials say the salaries are too high based on a survey of similar positions in other Bay Area cities and counties, but the union has cast it as a pay equity issue, noting that the jobs are disproportionally held by women and minorities and they were deliberately increased in the ’80s and ’90s to offset historical institutional sexism and racism.

But pay equity provisions were removed from the City Charter during its 1997 revision, and Avalos has indicated he may sponsor legislation to address the issue. But in the meantime, Daly said appeals to Mayor Ed Lee to weigh in have been ignored and DHR officially submitted its pay reduction proposal to the arbitrator in the dispute on Monday.

So stay tuned, folks, San Francisco’s biggest labor union has a lot of the table right now and we’ll let you know how it turns out.

Workers underpaid by firms renovating fancy mid-Market offices

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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March 8, 2013

52

Union members from San Francisco Carpenters Local 22 were distributing flyers outside a developer’s Bush Street headquarters this week, upset that the company hired contractors who don’t pay union scale wages. “Hurting workers!” The bright orange flyers screamed. “Shame on them!”

The developer is Group I, headed by Joy Ou. In addition to being the CEO of the development firm, Ou is also listed on state licensing records as the principal officer of Construction Studios, Inc., one of the general contracting firms singled out on the flyer. Ou did not return Guardian calls seeking comment.

Group I is conducting office renovations at 988 Market Street, a 1920s-era building located at Sixth and Market streets adjacent to the Warfield Theater. Group I purchased the Warfield office building from David Addington. It is a prominent location: when Mayor Ed Lee ran for election in 2011, his campaign office was headquartered there. The building is also included among mid-Market properties eligible for payroll tax exclusion under a program hashed out in 2011 to revitalize the central Market corridor.

Of the multiple floors under renovation, two will house Benchmark Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in tech startups. Tech startup companies are poised to move in just below. It’s unclear whether these businesses will apply for the payroll tax break.

According to Bill Gerber of Tico Construction Co., a contractor tapped to conduct some of the renovations, the workers he’s hired actually are earning union-scale wages. “Tico is running it as a union job,” he said. “We are paying area wages.”

But Scott Littlehale, a spokesperson for the carpenters’ union, told the Guardian that Gerber never responded when the union asked him if Tico pays area standard wages on all jobs. “What we believe is that the developer in this case, Group I, has not required its contractors to pay area wages all the time on all its jobs,” Littlehale said. “This is a labor market that extends beyond a single job site.”

Under California law, workers employed on city-funded projects must pay the prevailing wage, which is $38.50 an hour for carpenters before benefits are factored in, according to the Department of Industrial Relations. Since 988 Market is not a publicly funded project, it’s not bound to this requirement.

Nevertheless, the idea that construction crews are working for less than the area standard in San Francisco’s burgeoning economic climate – to renovate space for a venture-capital firm that will qualify for a payroll-tax exclusion – raises questions about whether this kind of development is actually helping struggling workers recover from the economic hit of the last several years. Group I stands to make top dollar by renting its office spaces out to tenants heavily invested in the booming tech industry. Meanwhile, San Francisco is becoming increasingly unaffordable for skilled laborers.

Construction gigs are temporary by nature, and Littlehale said many union members earn less than the area median income. “Construction work had been a pathway to fairly stable middle class standards, and that’s under threat,” Littlehale said. “The big picture is: We’re going to hold the folks up the food chain accountable.”

Condo conversion compromise in the works despite Realtors’ resistance

Sasha Cuttler

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March 8, 2013

180

[UPDATED BELOW] Negotiations between tenant advocates and real estate interests (including the political advocacy group Plan C) over the controversial condo lottery bypass legislation haven’t gone well or found common ground. But sources tell the Guardian that Sup. Jane Kim and Board President David Chiu, who has been mediating the dispute, are preparing to introduce compromise amendments that have the support of the San Francisco Tenants Union and other tenant advocates if a deal can’t be worked out with real estate interests.

Details are still being hammered out with advocates and the City Attorney’s Office, so the hearing scheduled for this Monday at the Land Use and Economic Development Committee will likely be postponed until March 25. But the basic deal is to allow the roughly 2,000 tenancies-in-common now seeking to convert into condos to do so in exchange for a long moratorium on new condo conversions, possibly indexed to construction of new affordable housing for the renters who comprise nearly two-thirds of San Franciscans.

The original legislation by Sups. Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener is being strongly backed by both current TIC owners who want the ability to refinance and Plan C and other real estate interests that want to continue converting ever more rent-controlled apartments into condos, rather than abiding the city’s current limit of 200 per year, awarded through a lottery system. The SFTU has strenuously resisted opening up those flood gates, but it’s open to clearing out the backlog in exchange to shutting the gates for awhile (see my story in this week’s Guardian for more on the political dynamics surrounding this issue).

“We’re hopeful that a majority of the board will support amendments which will significantly protect tenants and which will allow a version of the Wiener-Farrell legislation to be approved,” SFTU head Ted Gullicksen told us.

Progressives on the board oppose the legislation as currently written, and the swing votes are thought to be Sups. London Breed (which Plan C supported in the last election in exchange for what it says was her promise to support more condo conversions, an assurance she denies making), Norman Yee (who was brought into the Chiu-mediated negotiations), and Malia Cohen, with just one of them needed to force changes to the legislation.

But the real estate interests – including Plan C, the Association of Realtors (whose government affairs director we left a message for and are waiting to hear back from, and we’ll update below if/when we do), San Francisco Apartment Association, and other downtown-based groups – who are pushing for more condo conversions are likely to strongly resist the amendments. They simply want more rent-controlled apartments turned into condos they can sell, period.

Their perspective is reflected in SF Apartment Magazine, put out by the San Francisco Apartment Association, which every month offers advice to real estate investors and apartment building owners on various ways to buy apartment buildings, evict tenants or increase their rents, and convert the buildings to TICs or condos.

It runs a regular column called “TIC Corner” with the latest tricks for financing acquisitions and getting rid of those pesky tenants. In the November 2012 issue, for example, attorney D. Andrew Sirkin wrote excitedly about a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule that will now allow owners to advertise the sale of apartment buildings as TIC/condo investments, which he said “will dramatically ease the regulatory burden for real estate entrepreneurs wishing to raise money for apartment acquisitions and make it much easier to find investors.”

Another feature story in the magazine, “The ABCs of OMIs,” teaches these investors all the tricks for evicting tenants from their buildings, while “Roommate Roulette” offers advice to owners of rent-controlled buildings for keeping new roommates of existing tenants off the lease so they can charge market rate rents as soon as possible.

And, of course, the magazine is filled with ads for San Francisco apartment buildings that are for sale and just waiting to be cleared of tenants and turned into amazing real estate investment opportunities. Gullicksen says it is this mentality, applied to what even Mayor Ed Lee has called the city’s “precious few rent-controlled apartments,” that has animated the opposition to the Wiener-Farrell legislation. SFTU had planned a rally for Monday called “Stop Rent Control Attack,” which has now been postponed until March 25.

UPDATE 3/11: Sup. Wiener got back to us and said, “I hope we can move to a compromise and I don’t want to prejudge that compromise.” Asked about the concept of approving TICs in the pipeline in exchange for halting on all condo conversions for some number of years, he said, “It’s definitely something to explore, a pause in the lottery, and I’m open to that. But the devil is in the details.”

Happy International Women’s Day: There’s a long way to go

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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March 5, 2013

6

This coming Friday marks International Women’s Day, an event geared toward promoting gender equality across the globe. As women seek greater representation in politics, media, tech and other professional realms, controversies around gender equality issues continue to arise – even in San Francisco, a city nationally recognized for its progressive commitment to equality.

Last week, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee landed in hot water with a comment that led some to question if he was implying that women with kids don’t have the time to serve as elected officials.

A few weeks before that, San Francisco blogger and programmer Shanley Kane shook things up with a widely circulated essay blasting Silicon Valley’s “toxic lies about culture,” in which she paints the start-up world as limiting for women despite oft-expressed ideals of inclusivity:

“What your culture might actually be saying is … We have a team of primarily women supporting the eating, drinking, management and social functions of a primarily male workforce whose output is considered more valuable. We struggle to hire women in non-administrative positions and most gender diversity in our company is centralized in social and admin work.”

And when we dropped by the RSA Security Conference last week at San Francisco’s Moscone Center out of sheer curiosity to hear what the founder of Wikipedia had to say, we learned that even people who strive for an internationally inclusive open-source encyclopedia project are experiencing lopsided gender representation, and struggling to address it.

Jimmy Wales, who started Wikipedia about 12 years ago, asked his audience to “imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of human knowledge” as the foundational goal of the global endeavor, which is headquartered in San Francisco. But despite this lofty objective of global inclusivity, he admitted that Wikipedia is struggling to attract more female participation when it comes to the people who are writing articles for it.

As things stand, the people who contribute entries to Wikipedia are 87 percent male, he said. “We’re not happy about that number,” Wales said, noting that it is reflective of the gender imbalance in the tech community in general. “This is a really important goal for us: To improve female participation,” he added.

Dishearteningly, it seems to follow a broader trend of a lack of female representation in traditional media. A report released a couple weeks ago by the Women’s Media Center included some eye-opening stats:

At the current pace, it will take until 2085 for women to reach parity with men in leadership roles in government/politics, business, entrepreneurship and nonprofits.
By a nearly 3 to 1 margin, male front-page bylines at top newspapers outnumbered female bylines in coverage of the 2012 presidential election. Men were also far more likely to be quoted than women in newspapers, television and public radio. That’s also the case in coverage of abortion, birth control, Planned Parenthood and women’s rights.
Forty-seven percent of gamers are women, but 88 percent of video game developers are male.
The percentage of women who are television news directors edged up from the previous year, reaching 30 percent for the first time.

This may not sound like a lot to celebrate, but come Friday, the ongoing struggle for gender equality might just give you the inspiration to check out some local activities commemorating International Women’s Day, Women’s History Month or just some remarkable female-driven projects in the Bay Area.

Pick up a copy of the Guardian tomorrow and check out our special Women’s History Month event listings, where we’ll highlight everything from a gathering honoring female media professionals, to meet-ups for female coders, to murals painted by women, courtesy of Guardian Culture Editor Caitlin Donohue.

Just ignore the Chamber of Commerce

Zelda Bronstein

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March 4, 2013

35

The Chronicle made a big deal of the fact that the Chamber of Commerce has a “21-point advocacy agenda” that “could weaken” the city’s “boundry pushing legislation and pro-labor policies.”

But really, nobody should even care.

The Chamber’s been pretty irrelevant to local politics for years now, and there’s no way six members of the Board of Supervisors are going to take the backward-thinking group up on its efforts to contract out city services and slow down cutting-edge proposals.

Actually, most of the “21-point agenda” is pretty tame. The Chamber, for example, wants to “Work with city government and advocacy groups to improve the ability of residents and visitors to move efficiently around the City by car, transit, bike and taxis.” And it hopes to “Continue to promote San Francisco’s small businesses through formulating favorable public policies and providing ample networking opportunities.” Wow. Hold the front page.

As for the things that might actually matter, forget it. Contracting out comes up almost every year at budget time; every year, a unified labor community shoots it down. This year will be the same. And nobody’s going to get City Attorney Dennis Herrera to release a public analysis of every piece of legislation before it’s approved.

Herrera’s better than his predecessors, by far, but he’s a lawyer, and lawyers don’t like to share with anyone the advice they give their clients. I often wish Herrera’s office would release more than it does, but unless the supervisors declare that they no longer want confidential advice from their attorney (which has its charm, to be sure, but also some real downsides) then the current policy will continue. Herrera will privately tell board members that there might be legal risks to some of their bills; the elected supervisors will decide whether to take those risks or not.

While I’m always an advocate of open government, the city attorney is not the Supreme Court. In the really bad old days, a city attorney named George Agnost used to routinely shut down progressive legislation by announcing that it was unconstitutional, leaving even conservative members of the board to denounce him. When the supes pass something, it’s a presumptively valid law. If you don’t like it, you can sue. The courts — not the city attorney — decide what’s legal and what isn’t.

And I have no idea where the Chamber’s Jim Lazarus came up with this:

But prior to Herrera and his predecessor, Louise Renne, city attorneys regularly issued public opinions, said Lazarus, a deputy city attorney in the 1970s who lost to Herrera in the 2001 election.

That’s completely untrue. I know; when Agnost was city attorney (in the 1970s and early 1980s) I tried constantly to get copies of his legal opinions. The vast majority were never released. That office was so secretive the city attorney wouldn’t even tell you his name if it wasn’t written on the door. When I pushed the issue, Agnost told me that copies of every non-confidential opinion he’d ever written were available at the public library. I went there. There were exactly three opinions on file, all of them noncontroversial and unrelated to any pending legislation.

Look, we all know that Gavin Newsom pushed the boundries of law when he approved same-sex marriages. But the California Supreme Court, faced with San Francisco’s civic disobedience, changed the law and said marriage was a basic right. And the US Supreme Court is about to do the same thing. Is the Chamber arguing that Newsom was wrong?

The Chamber is yesterday’s news. I don’t even know why we pay attention any more.

Happy Women’s History Month, dammit let’s celebrate

Andrew Lam

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March 1, 2013

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Happy Women’s History Month, dammit let’s celebrate

Officially, the city of San Francisco will celebrate Women’s History Month with a ceremony honoring a female representative from each district on March 19 at the Board of Supervisors’ legislative chambers, followed by a reception at the Public Utilities Building at which the Mayor will proclaim a Woman of the Year. If you can stand the excitement, click here for more info.

Let’s not stop there, shall we?

Obama’s proclamation of this year’s WHM directed people to a carefully curated, perfectly dull website. Are we over Women’s History Month? Does the holiday — officially created in 1987 and proclaimed by the President annually starting in 1994 — amount to mere tokenism, as the Atlantic proclaimed today?

We’re all hanging out waiting for feminism’s fourth wave at this point, and with the Republicans having been roundly shamed in the 2012 national elections, most of the activist ire in this city gravitates towards causes with more traction in 2013. (Though this may be changing. See: local author Rebecca Solnit’s teaser for her upcoming book on the global pandemic of violence against women, which will at the least get the blogosphere roiling.) Call this a positive move towards intersectionality if you will.

But I can’t help but think: they gave us a goddamn month, shouldn’t we use it?

It’d be great if March had as many exciting events as February did for Black History Month, which saw a film festival, library events, four-day food and drink extravaganzas in the Bay Area. Excuses to come together, explicitly, in the name of women are rare — though I don’t even think they have to have a History Month (or International Women’s Day, which is March 8) on them to be amazing.

Check the newspaper on Wednesday for our complete list of recommendations on places to kick for Women’s History Month, and even more XX-chromosoned culture than usually through March. I suggested printing t-shirts for your feminist gang now. For now, here’s a couple cool, not necessarily Women’s History Month-specific ways people are recognizing women’s accomplishments this year:

– Retroactive awesome: last week, the City and the NAACP joined forces to honor 93-year old swing dancer Norma Miller at Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. She’s known as the “Queen of Swing” and now travels the world speaking about her life and jazz culture. She’s danced in everything from the Marx Brothers’ A Day at the Races (1937) to Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992), and shows up in the Ken Burn’s jazz documentary.

– Mirus Gallery is in the final days of “The Looking Glass: Refraction Through the Female Gaze”, in which 17 female artists interpret the female form, messing with the art world’s standard depictions of woman as vessel for whatever the hell conceit the painter/illustrator/sculptor is trying to get across. Kimberly Brooks, Rachel Walker, Mercedes Helnwein, Claire Pestaille, and Casey O’Connell all have pieces in the show.

Through Sat/2. Mirus Gallery, 540 Howard, SF. www.mirusgallery.com

– Mother and head of the SF Fire Department Joanne Hayes-White has been named grand marshall of this year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. Hayes-White made tne news in 2005 when her husband called 911 after she raised lumps on his head with a pint glass, and then again in 2011 when her wages started being garnished for spousal support. Something about supporting her husband and raising her kids just didn’t sit right with her #badass

– Tonight is the First Friday opening of “Titti Trifecta”, an all-female group show at Moco Gallery in Oakland. Expect single mom sculptures, artisanal dildos, and a month-long program of artist talks, feminist film, and DIY sex toy workshops.

Through March 31. Opening reception Fri/1, 7pm, free. Moco Gallery, 371 17th St., Oakl. Facebook: Moco

– International Women’s Day is March 8, but the only women’s demonstration we’ve heard of so far will take place on March 9 at Dolores Park. Women Organized to Resist and Defend (WORD) is organizing this rally and march to bring attention to violence against women. From Ohio to India, this year’s been a doozy, and past anti-violence march turnouts have indicated that people are starting to turn out for their right to be safe. (On a related note, check out this Time photo essay by Sara Naomi Lewcowicz, for which Lewcowicz embedded with a couple who before her lens became the poster children for domestic abuse.)

March 9, noon, free. Dolores Park, 19th St. and Guerrero, SF. www.defendwomensrights.org

Check Wednesday’s newspaper for our full list of woman-y stuff during the month of March — and send any event you’re stoked on to caitlin@sfbg.com

Does Ed Lee think moms can’t be supes?

Zelda Bronstein

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February 26, 2013

40

As I expected, Mayor Lee appointed a new supervisor before the Democratic County Central Committee had a chance to weigh in on a resolution suggesting he appoint a mother. The resolution is moot now; Lee named Katy Tang, an aide to outgoing Sup. Carmen Chu, and my most accounts Tang is a smart young woman with plenty of experience in the district who will likely carry on the more conservative politics of her former boss. She will have to face the voters in November, but in a district where more than half the voters are Asian — and where Chu was popular, and Tang has been out and about on the streets for years — she’s going to be in a strong position to win.

So that should be over, and Rosenthal’s suggestion consigned to the Oh Well, That Was A Nice Idea file, and it would be … except that the mayor made a kinda stupid comment on KTVU. When asked about Rosenthal’s suggestion, he said there were lots of qualifications for office, one of them being “somone who’s going to be spending a lot of their personal time on the weekends.”

Now: I’m sure the mayor didn’t really mean to say that a woman with kids can’t hold a demanding public office, or that women with kids can’t spend time working on the weekends. “I know a dozen female law partners who would scoff at the idea that mothers don’t work at night and on weekends,” Rosenthal told me.

Sup. John Avalos has kids, and does a fine job on the board. Former Sup. Sean Elsbernd had a young family, and nobody ever said he didn’t devote enough time to the district. Sup. Eric Mar has a daughter, and just won a tough re-election race.

It’s absolutely true that none of the four women on the board right now has kids. I think that was sort of Rosenthal’s point. I don’t know; it’s 2013, and maybe I’m reading too much into this, but did the mayor of San Francisco just imply that women with kids don’t have the time to handle the responsibilities of elective office? I hope not.

Look for a quick decision on D4 appointment

Zelda Bronstein

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February 21, 2013

44

Look for a quick decision on D4 appointment

A Democratic Party resolution calling on Ed Lee to appoint a mother to the Board of Supervisors may have driven the slow-moving mayor to fill the seat of departing Sup. Carmen Chu quickly, perhaps as soon as today (Feb. 21), City Hall sources are saying.

Lee appointed Chu to fill the post of Assessor-Recorder vacated when Phil Ting moved to the state Assembly. But he’s been dragging his feet on naming Chu’s replacement.

Alix Rosenthal, a member of the Democratic County Central Committee, has put a resolution on the agenda for the group’s Feb. 27 meeting urging the mayor to name a woman with a family. Her argument:

Political office is often beyond the reach of mothers, because balancing a political life with family and work is often an insurmountable challenge. Appointing a mother to fill the District 4 seat will demonstrate the Mayor’s commitment to stemming the tide of families leaving San Francisco, and it may serve to inspire women with children to be politically engaged, and to run for office themselves in the future.

That, of course, could put the mayor’s allies on the DCCC in a tough situation. Will they vote to urge the mayor to do something he doesn’t want to — or will they vote against, you know, motherhood?

Of course, if the mayor makes an appointment before Feb. 27, the resolution becomes moot.

Rosenthal and some other politically active women are supporting Suzy Loftus, a member of the Police Commission and a mom. But D4 is more than half Asian, and has always had an Asian supervisor, so it’s unlikely the mayor would appoint a non-Asian to the job.

One obvious candidate: Katy Tang, who is now Chu’s legislative aide.

The mayor will want someone he can count on as loyal — and who he’s pretty sure can win an election. His last two appointees to elective office, Christina Olague and Rodrigo Santos, were both defeated the first time they faced the voters.

But at this point, Lee isn’t saying anything. Look for an announcement soon.

SF aims for the history books, filing its same-sex marriage brief with the Supremes

Sasha Cuttler

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February 21, 2013

10

SF aims for the history books, filing its same-sex marriage brief with the Supremes

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his legal team today submitted written arguments to the US Supreme Court in the landmark same-sex marriage equality case it will consider this spring, with the hopes that their phrases and framing of the issue will be echoed in a civil rights ruling that could go down in history.

He argues that Proposition 8 – the California ballot measure that undid the California Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in a case that grew out of San Francisco’s unilateral decision to start marrying lesbians and gay men in 2004 – was unconstitutionally about “asserting the inferiority of same-sex couples….But relegating gay couples to a lesser status simply to brand them as different and less worthy than opposite-sex couples is not a legitimate purpose.”

Herrera, Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart, and the rest of the city’s legal team also take up the notion of the “tyranny the majority” (which I explored in an earlier Guardian story on the issue) in their brief, arguing: “Petitioners’ argument derogates the most important role this Court serves in our democracy: to protect the constitutional rights of minorities from encroachment by an unsympathetic majority. The responsibility to protect individual rights does not transfer to the political process when the dispute happens to be ‘controversial.’ Quite the contrary. In this circumstance more than any other, constitutional rights ‘may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.’ West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 (1943).”

Will the Supreme Court justices borrow any of these words or ideas in their ruling, as they sometimes do in such cases, placing them in history books alongside phrases such as “separate but equal is inherently not equal,” from the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling ending racial segregation, which echoed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that it overturned?

Herrera told us that he couldn’t help but feel that sense of momentousness as he finalized the brief: “You have a sense as to the importance of what you’re working on, and that certainly has an impression on you.”

But he also said that he’s continually had that sense through this “long struggle,” during which he said that he’s remained focused on the LGBT community that he’s fighting to protect. “It’s been frustrating when you see how some folks perpetuate the discrimination that’s gone on too long,” he told us, adding that “to finally see it come to the Supreme Court is momentous.”

And Herrera said that he does hope the Supreme Court issues a broad ruling that finally settles this issue and removes the question of same-sex rights from the political realm and deems them to be an issue of equal protection under the law. “They’ve asked the court to abdicate its responsibility because same-sex marriage is controversial,” Herrera told us, arguing that’s why the Constitution offers equal protections to all citizens, regardless of the passions or societal biases of the moment. “Those constitutional rights are not subject to majority rule.”

You can read city’s full 62-page legal brief here.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam

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February 19, 2013

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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

The Lisbon Traviata New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play, a mix of comedy and tragedy, about the relationship between two opera fanatics.

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 22. Kurt Bodden’s San Francisco Best of Fringe-winning show takes a satirical look at motivational speakers.

BAY AREA

Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Previews Thu/21-Fri/22, 8pm. Opens Sat/23, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 31. Central Works performs Gary Graves’ adaptation of the story-within-a-story from The Brothers Karamazov.

My Recollect Time South Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Fairview, Berk; (510) 788-6415. $12-25. Opens Fri/22, 9pm. Runs Sat/23-Sun/24, Feb 28, March 2, 7, and 9, 8pm; March 1, 8, 9pm; March 3, 5pm. Through March 9. Inferno Theater performs Jamie Greenblatt’s play about the life of former slave Mary Fields.

ONGOING

Dear Harvey New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed/20-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 2pm. There’s always room in San Francisco for milk — Harvey Milk, that is, our very own out-and-proud crusader for equal rights for all, whose election as city supervisor in 1977 and assassination in 1978 galvanized the LGBT movement on a national level. Part history lesson, part memorial tribute, the Patricia Loughrey-penned Dear Harvey offers details of the extent of his influence, mostly in the realm of the political, collected from interviews with over 30 of Milk’s associates and friends. Interspersing testimonials with Bay Area Reporter headlines, fan mail, and projections of Daniel Nicoletta’s candid photos of the era, each member of the ensemble cast assumes multiple roles throughout the piece including Harvey’s activist nephew Stuart Milk, the "Queen Mother of the Americas" Nicole Murray-Ramirez, openly-gay politician Tom Ammiano, former youthful aide and prominent AIDS activist Cleve Jones, Milk’s spitfire campaign manager Anne Kronenberg, and even Milk himself. At its core, Dear Harvey plays out mainly like a talking head-style documentary, the disparate strands of monologue woven together providing a composite image of a single character. But as endearing in many ways that character is, it’s not enough to sustain the overall piece, which never develops its other, often fascinating, characters enough for the audience to feel much of a connection to the stage, no matter how much, personally, they might feel a connection to Milk himself. (Gluckstern)

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

God of Carnage Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 30. Shelton Theater presents Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about upper-middle-class parents clashing over an act of playground violence between their children.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $25-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 5pm). Through March 2. Hold onto your hairpiece, Boxcar Theatre is reprising their all-too short summer run of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and just in case you think you saw it already, be forewarned — you ain’t seen nothing yet. Recast, redesigned, and re-vamped, this outcast-rock musical familiarly follows the misadventures of one Hedwig Robinson (né Hansel Schmidt) with glam, guts, and glitter. But unlike the movie version penned by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as the titular chanteuse, or other staged versions, director Nick A. Olivero splits the larger-than-life, would-be rock sensation into eight different characters, who are each given a solo turn as well as plenty of ensemble harmonizing during the course of the two hour-plus performance. The effect is often electric, and just as frequently hilarious, as when the four female actors playing the role stomp across the stage swinging imaginary dicks in the air to the lyric "six inches forward and five inches back, I got a, I got an angry inch!" Supported by a tight quartet of rock musicians led by Rachel Robinson, and the phenomenal Amy Lizardo as Hedwig’s beleaguered "man Friday" Yitzhak, Hedwig keeps on extending for what appears to be an indefinite run, employing the time-honored Thrillpeddlers’ tradition of rotating cast members and comeback performances, which means you could theoretically go multiple times and never see quite the same show twice. I certainly plan to. (Gluckstern)

Jurassic Ark Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.theexit.org. $15-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 16. Writer-performer David Caggiano’s zany, well-executed solo play centers on a Christian televangelist who is unwaveringly bent on making a big-budget movie about a cowboy-like Biblical Noah, his Ark, and the largely lovable dinosaurs callously left out of the story — a project he sees delivering a decisive blow to the Darwinians, while turning cineplexes across the land into celluloid cathedrals. Brother Dallas and his proselytizing pitch eventually find receptive ears in a trinity of movie-industry heavies, whose collective business acumen demands a few changes to the script. Meanwhile, the intoxicating power of it all leads to a lapse in Brother Dallas’s righteousness and a scandal reminiscent of Hugh Grant’s career. Dallas rebounds from this bout with the Devil and sees his movie made — but surely only he is unaware that the Devil keeps a Hollywood address. Smartly directed by Mark Kenward, this low-frills production relies almost exclusively on Caggiano’s sturdy ability with quick-change characterizations (couched in Dylan West’s modest lighting design and a suggestive soundscape by sound editor–musician John Mazzei). The fitful satire trades in pretty orthodox caricature and, in Brother Dallas, lacks a very compelling or sympathetic central figure; but it unfolds with a very cinematic imagination that, while formulaic, is itself one hell of a movie pitch. (Avila)

The Little Foxes Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Wed/20-Sat/23, 8pm. Tides Theatre Company performs a modern take on the Lillian Hellman classic.

The Motherfucker with the Hat San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through March 16. A fine cast makes the most of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s deceptively coarse, often amusing little play, The Motherfucker with the Hat, which receives its local premiere in a sure and rowdy production from SF Playhouse. Director and designer Bill English’s striking two-tier set almost belies the intimate nature of the quirky story, which concerns a hapless parolee and recovering alcoholic named Jackie (a winningly frazzled, bumptious Gabriel Marin) who retreats to his AA sponsor’s apartment to pine and plot revenge after he discovers a stranger’s hat in the bedroom of his longtime Puerto Rican girlfriend, Veronica (played vividly by an at once edgy and vulnerable Isabelle Ortega). But Ralph, his suave and persuasive sponsor (played with unctuous charm gilded by just a hint of ineptitude by an excellent Carl Lumbly), may not be the guy he wants in his corner. Not that Jackie can see that — he’s got a man-crush on Ralph that dwarfs his already ambivalent affection for much put-upon but stalwart cousin Julio (a sharply funny Rudy Guerrero) and blinds him to the warning signals from Ralph’s own disgruntled wife (a coolly disgusted Margo Hall). Throughout, these working-class New York borough dwellers display their wit and shield their soft underbellies with a rapid-fire barrage of creative swearing. English and cast display a real comfort with this kind of material (this is SF Playhouse’s fourth Girguis play), which drapes its soft heart in the intimations of violence more than the real thing. If the heat and imaginative cursing also seem to cover up for a play with little dramatic purpose beyond a gentle and somewhat pat exploration of loyalty, maturity, and trust, there’s pleasure to be had in the unfolding. (Avila)

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri/22, 8pm; Sat/23, 5pm. What, the unapologetically middle-class Brian Copeland asks, is the real meaning behind the phrase "a genuine black man"? By way of an answer, the stand-up comic and KGO radio host offers up a simultaneously funny and disarmingly frank story about growing up African American in the racist suburb that was San Leandro in the early 1970s. Letting his narrative bounce back and forth between his boyhood memories and a period of depression that overtook him as a parent in 1999 — and interlacing the autobiography with verbatim utterances from both sides of the fight his family joined to desegregate the city — Copeland brings admirable chops as a comedian to bear on some difficult and disturbing, if ultimately hopeful, material. Note: review from an earlier run of the same show. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. Lady Bear, Trixie Carr, Heklina, and D’Arcy Drollinger star in this drag tribute to the long-running HBO show.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Extended through March 17. The Amazing Bubble Man (a.k.a. Louis Pearl) continues his family-friendly bubble extravaganza.

You Know When the Men Are Gone Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $30-55. Wed/20-Thu/21, 7pm; Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 3pm. Word for Word mounts two related short stories from the titular collection by Siobhan Fallon about the home-front impact of warfare on the families of an American army base. In The Last Stand, an injured soldier (Chad Deverman) returns home to his young wife (Roselyn Hallett) to find she has decided to leave him. In Gold Star, a wife (Arwen Anderson) learns of her soldier husband’s (Ryan Tasker) death — the officer who died saving the life of the young soldier in the first story. Reeling from grief, she innocently hangs on the words of the young soldier (Deverman) as he comes to visit her. Beautifully designed — with shrewd use of Z Space’s large, potentially engulfing stage by Jacqueline Scott (set), Drew Yerys (lighting, sound), Delia McDougall (costume, props), and Andrea Weber (choreography) — directors Joel Mullennix (Last Stand) and Amy Kossow (Gold Star) show an imaginative command of the material that has made the company’s trademark verbatim staging of literature a viable theatrical undertaking in its own right, with much to admire and ponder in the juxtaposition of words, blocking, characterization, and imagery. Moreover, the ensemble (rounded out by Marilet Martinez and Armando McClain) is very strong, with standout turns from the mutually sympathetic but achingly at-odds characters played by Deverman and Hallett in the first half, and by Anderson’s shattered, erratic, yet highly attuned new widow in the second. As for the stories themselves, certain details of base life (such as the prime parking spaces eerily and crassly allotted widows of soldiers killed in combat) reveal the author’s firsthand knowledge as the wife of an active-duty soldier, adding a sense of authenticity to these intimate, heartfelt, and movingly told stories. Their essentially everyday tragedies, however, remain tightly focused on the subtleties of grief rather than any larger contextualizing of the immediate political and moral dimensions of the American imperial machine in which all characters ultimately serve. That leaves largely intact and unexamined the usual allusions to sacrifice, service, nationhood, duty, and traditional modes of male and female heroism in war, which is perhaps the most distressing thing about these otherwise quietly troubled stories. (Avila)

BAY AREA

The Fourth Messenger Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.thefourthmessenger.com. $23-40. Wed-Thu, 7pm (no show Wed/20); Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 10. It’s been some time since a work by local playwright Tanya Shaffer last graced our stages, not since 2005 to be precise, and in keeping with her penchant for multicultural themes, her latest piece, The Fourth Messenger, is a reimagining of the Siddhartha story, written as a musical in collaboration with composer Vienna Teng. Raina (Anna Ishida), a "hungry" journalism intern with a secret agenda, pitches her first scoop — the debunking of a beatific guru named Mama Sid (Annemaria Rajala) — and embeds herself in a meditation retreat where she can get close to the famously private teacher and uncover her past. Neither as humorous or as merciless as Jesus Christ Superstar or as exuberant as Godspell (though the excellent song "Monkey Mind" crackles with wit and trenchant observation, and the tender "Human Experience" genuinely uplifts), Messenger does offer a fairly solid primer to the path of spiritual enlightenment including its all-too-human fallout and sacrifices. The white-on-wood set design by Joe Ragey frames the action in a deceptively delicate layer of gauze and mystery, and the capable ensemble inhabit their multiple roles with ease — from jaded newsies to loyal disciples. Which makes it doubly unfortunate that the jazzy, piano-driven score seems pitched just outside of most of the actor’s ranges, even those of the notably skilled Ishida and Rajala, an admitted distraction for the monkey-minded, which is to say most of us. (Gluckstern)

Our Practical Heaven Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Anthony Clarvoe’s new play receives its world premiere as a 2011 prizewinner in Aurora’s Global Age Project (GAP), which cultivates new work addressing life in the 21st century. In the case of this labored and dull effort, the young century and its anxious outlook come refracted through three generations of women who gather for holidays at a seaside home whose own future is threatened by, first, financial and, ultimately, climatic conditions. Neurotic, self-absorbed Sasha (Anne Darragh) and capable businesswoman Willa (Julia Brothers) are middle-aged best friends forever who grew up in the home of Sasha’s mother (Joy Carlin) and late father. Joining Sasha’s two daughters by separate husbands, Suze (Blythe Foster) and Leez (Adrienne Walters), is Willa’s daughter, Magz (Lauren Spencer), who suffers from a debilitating disease. Despite many personal and generational differences — and a rising conflict over the house — all six women share in a traditional bout of bird watching in this fragile nature "refuge" for bird and human alike. While bird watching supplies the play’s operative metaphors, however, it does little to actually bring these characters together in any compelling or convincing way. In fact, respective backstories are pretty sketchy in general, dialogue strained and broadcasting, and performances correspondingly patchy. The three stage veterans in director Allen McKelvey’s cast — Brothers, Carlin, and Darragh — go furthest toward making Clarvoe’s leaden exposition somewhat buoyant, but the momentary pleasure they provide can’t stem the overall tide. (Avila)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

"Analog: New Work by Katharine Hawthorne" Joe Goode Annex, 401 Alabama, SF; analogdance.eventbrite.com. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm. $15-25. A full evening of choreography inspired by the intersection of art and science.

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Sat/23, 8pm. $20. The company performs "Warp Speed: An Improvised Trek!"

"Comedy Night at the Presidio" Presidio Café and Golf Course, 300 Finley, SF; www.presidiocafe.com. Thu/21, 8pm. $10. With Will Durst, Andrew Holmgren, and host Justin Gomes.

"Dance and Diaspora" ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm. $25-30. Featuring the work of belly dance artist Jill Parker and Afro-Brazilian choreographer Tania Santiago.

"Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thu/21-Sun/24, 8pm. $20-25. DavEnd’s performance extravaganza promises "singing pink cakes, dancing mirrors, and couture genitalia."

"Killing Me Softly With Jazz Hands" Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; (415) 517-3581. Wed/20, 8pm. $10. Comedian Becky Pedigo performs.

"Megillah 3.0" Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. Sat/23, 7pm, $20. Killing My Lobster launches its online collection of original videos, music, and performance with a Purim carnival, featuring live sketch shows, KML comedy videos, and more.

"Our Voices, Our Stories Play Reading Festival" San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. Mon/25, 7:30pm. Free. Readings of in-development works Without and Opportunity for Defense and Obeah.

"San Francisco Magic Parlor" Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

"Smack Dab" Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; www.magnetsf.org. Wed/20, 8pm. Free. Open mic featuring Randy Alford.

"Solo Sundays: Family Blend, the Sweet and the Bitter" Stage Werx Theatre, 433 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun/24, 7pm. $12. With Susan Ito, Lisa Marie Rollins, and Zahra Noorbakhsh.

Tanya Bello’s Project. B. and Karen Reedy Dance ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.odcdance.org. Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 7pm. $22. Featuring the world premiere of Bello’s Games We Play(ed).

BAY AREA

"One-Off Wednesdays (or sometimes Two-Off)" Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Wed/20, 8pm. $15-50. This week: Wayne Harris in The Letter: Martin Luther King at the Crossroads.