Environment

Parents, behind bars

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By Ross Mirkarimi

OPINION Nearly 50 percent of the 2.7 million people incarcerated in US prisons and jails are mothers and fathers. In San Francisco, about 40 percent of the prisoners are parents. For their children, the punishment does not fit the crime.

Federal and state recidivism registers at 78 percent; locally the rate is 65 percent and dropping. If we’re serious about breaking the cycle of incarceration, we must get serious about restoring the family ties of the incarcerated.

Studies support what common sense suggests — strengthening the parent-child bond reduces recidivism. It also reduces the prospect that children of the incarcerated are more likely to violate the law. While maintaining appropriate safety and legal protocols, the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department is reexamining policies that invariably damage or strain relationships between an inmate parent and child, starting with birth. In honor of Mother’s Day, on May 9, the Community Works Jail Arts Program, with our department, converted the lobby of the SF women’s jail into a temporary gallery of art created by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated mothers.

That provided a warm environment to announce a policy first in California: The Birth Justice Project, designed to affirm the reproductive rights of all incarcerated women and provide prenatal and postpartum care during the transformative experience of pregnancy, birth and parenthood. With the stewardship of Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an OB/GYN from UCSF, along with the Department of Public Health, Zellerbach Foundation, and our volunteer doulas (professional birth assistants), we’re radically distancing ourselves from the barbaric attitude of 33 states that still shackle women during labor. Rather, we seek to nurture the inimitable bond between mother and child.

While most jails and prisons shun a lactation policy, we’ve unveiled our pro-lactation program. Breast pumps, refrigeration, and delivery are provided around the clock, facilitated by our jail health professionals. While the arcane national practice is to separate baby and mother after the third day of birth, we’re working to maintain the connection. If we can’t do it through diversion (alternatives to incarceration), then we’ll continue to assess our facility in allowing mother and baby to stay together. I look forward to promoting breast feeding in San Francisco’s jails.

For children of incarcerated parents, the absence of a mother is the loss of a primary caregiver. Ninety percent of incarcerated fathers in the US report that while away, their children live with the child’s mother. In contrast, only 28 percent of incarcerated mothers report that their children live with their father. Routinely, her children are cared for by a grandparent or relative — and about 11 percent are placed in foster care. Many children are bounced from caregiver to caregiver during their parent’s incarceration.

These disruptions to a child’s life negatively affect their social and mental development. Acknowledging the sense of disconnection experienced by children whose parents are incarcerated also means we must grapple with the emotional poverty that increases the likelihood of criminal behavior. In San Francisco, we’re taking steps to bridge this disconnection by reforming visitation policies to facilitating regular contact between children and incarcerated parents.

The people in our jails will eventually be released and will return to communities that historically have been underserved. We’re trying to intensify resources toward exit planning for newly incarcerated parents and guardians. Depending on individuals cases, that could include a regiment of parenting classes, substance abuse and mental health treatment, domestic violence counseling, reunification counseling for parent and child, reading and writing comprehension, high school completion, life skills such as financial literacy, and vocational training.

Many people don’t know what the Sheriff’s Department does or the difference between us and the SFPD; we’ve launched a monthly e-newsletter to keep the public informed. To sign up or contact us at: Ross.Mirkarimi@SFgov.org

Ross Mirkarimi is sheriff of San Francisco

Stage Listings

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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.

THEATER

OPENING

Chance: A Musical Play About Love, Risk, and Getting it Right Alcove Theater, 415 Mason, Fifth Flr, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $40-60. Previews Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm. Opens Sun/7, 5pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun, 5pm. Through July 28. New Musical Theater of San Francisco presents Richard Isen’s world premiere work inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde.

Oil and Water This week: Dolores Park, 18th St and Dolores, SF; www.sfmt.org. Free. Thu/4, 2pm. Also Peacock Meadow, Golden Gate Park, SF; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat/6, 2pm. Also Washington Square Park, Columbus at Union, SF; www.sfmt.org. Free. Sun/7, 2pm. Also Mitchell Park, South Field, 600 E. Meadow, Palo Alto; www.sfmt.org. Tue/9, 7pm. Free. At various NorCal venues through Sept. 2. The San Francisco Mime Troupe presents its 54th annual summer season; this year’s performance is comprised of two one-act musicals about corporations and the environment: Crude Intentions and Deal With the Devil.

ONGOING

Abigail’s Party San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-100. Wed/3-Thu/4, 7pm; Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm (also Sat/6, 3pm). Although it’s tempting to compare Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party to Edward Albee’s rancorous Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Abigail‘s escalating nastiness skews emphatically British, giving it as much in common with televised exports such as Fawlty Towers and the Ricky Gervais version of The Office. As with these, the humor in Abigail’s Party is of the bleakest and cruelest kind, and there are moments when the five Americans onstage don’t quite convey the wit that lurks beneath the ire, but when they do the results are hysterical and uncomfortable in equal measure. Though the party we witness is not Abigail’s (she’s having a teenage house party next door, the music of which keeps throbbing through the walls of Bill English’s attractively-appointed set) the adults-only cocktail party is just as awkward as any high school mixer. Hosted by the fiercely self-absorbed Beverly (Susi Damilano) and her obnoxiously classist husband Laurence (Remi Sandri), the guest list includes the mousy Angela (Allison Jean White), her monosyllabic husband Tony (Patrick Kelley Jones), and Abigail’s ill-at-ease mum, Susan (Julia Brothers), who’s agreed to keep out of the house during her daughter’s wild soiree. The acting — as well as Brendan Aanes’ sound design, Jacqueline Scott’s props, and Tatjana Genser’s costuming — is pitch perfect, but unless you haven’t already been to enough bad parties, you might find it difficult to sit through this one. If you do, don’t be surprised if you find yourself secretly envying Laurence by the end of the play — at least he finds a way out. (Gluckstern)

Betrayal Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, Sixth Flr, SF; www.offbroadwaywest.org. $40. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through July 20. Off Broadway West Theatre Company performs Harold Pinter’s out-of-sequence drama about an unfaithful married couple.

Can You Dig It? Back Down East 14th — the 60s and Beyond Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 25. Solo performer Don Reed returns with a prequel to his autobiographical coming-of-age hits, East 14th and The Kipling Hotel.

Dark Play, or Stories for Boys Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.theexit.org. $5-20. Fri-Sat, 9pm. Through July 13. Do It Live! Productions offers a steadily engrossing production of this slippery play from Chicago playwright Carlos Murillo, wherein a less-then-trusty teenage narrator, Nick (a clever, tightly wound, darkly charming Will Hand), addicted to “making shit up,” recounts his fateful internet-baiting of a fellow teen upon whom he had become fixated. As the unwitting object of Nick’s desire, sweet guy Adam (Adam Magil) gets pulled into an online love affair with Rachel (Amy Nowak), his first love, and — as fate and Nick would have it — Nick’s sister. But Rachel exists only online. And her equally fantastical evil stepdad (Nathan Tucker) soon intercedes, throwing Nick and Adam closer together. All of this disembodied desire floating around the ether leads to a physical climax even Freud might find a bit much, but the way there proves increasingly tense and interesting — if also a little frustrating itself at times in some strained plot points and, especially, its overwrought psychopathologizing of homoerotic desire. (Erik LaDue’s awkward set design also takes a little getting over.) But despite various flaws, the story intrigues, thanks to the solid performances from director Logan Ellis’s sure cast. Tucker and Kelly Rauch are dependable throughout in a varied range of sharp and often hilarious supporting roles. Nowak’s take on the vital (albeit imaginary) teen heroine is refreshingly straightforward. And Hand, while slightly slower to catch fire, ends up a persuasively complex figure at the center of it all. (Avila)

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.com. $26-38. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 7. Shelton Theater peforms Yasmina Reza’s award-winning play about class and parenting.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $27-43. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. John Cameron Mitchell’s cult musical comes to life with director Nick A. Olivero’s ever-rotating cast.

In A Daughter’s Eyes Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th St, SF; www.brava.org. $15. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through July 14. Brava! For Women in the Arts and Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience presents the West Coast premiere of A. Zell Williams’ tale of two women: the daughter of a man on death row, and the daughter of the man he’s been convicted of killing.

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. It seems a no-brainer. Not just the HBO series itself — that’s definitely missing some gray matter — but putting it onstage as a drag show. Mais naturellement! Why was Sex and the City not conceived of as a drag show in the first place? Making the sordid not exactly palatable but somehow, I don’t know, friendlier (and the canned a little cannier), Velvet Rage Productions mounts two verbatim episodes from the widely adored cable show, with Trannyshack’s Heklina in a smashing portrayal of SJP’s Carrie; D’Arcy Drollinger stealing much of the show as ever-randy Samantha (already more or less a gay man trapped in a woman’s body); Lady Bear as an endearingly out-to-lunch Miranda; and ever assured, quick-witted Trixxie Carr as pent-up Charlotte. There’s also a solid and enjoyable supporting cast courtesy of Cookie Dough, Jordan Wheeler, and Leigh Crow (as Mr. Big). That’s some heavyweight talent trodding the straining boards of bar Rebel’s tiny stage. The show’s still two-dimensional, even in 3D, but noticeably bigger than your 50″ plasma flat panel. Update: new episodes began May 15. (Avila)

So You Can Hear Me Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through July 20. A 23-year-old with no experience, just high spirits and big ideals, gets a job in the South Bronx teaching special ed classes and quickly finds herself in over her head. Safiya Martinez, herself a bright young woman from the projects, delivers this inspired accounting of her time not long ago in perhaps the most neglected sector of the public school system — a 60-minute solo play that makes up for its relatively slim plot with a set of deft, powerful, lovingly crafted characterizations. These complex portraits, alternately hysterical and startling, offer their own moving ruminations on a violent but also vibrant stratum of American society, deeply fractured by pervasive poverty and injustice and yet full of restive young personalities too easily dismissed, ignored, or crudely caricatured elsewhere. An effervescent, big-hearted, and very talented performer, Martinez’s own bounding personality and contagious passion for her former students (as complicated as that relationship was), makes this deeply felt tribute all the more memorable. (Avila)

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8:30pm. Extended through August 24. Self-awareness, self-actualization, self-aggrandizement — for these things we turn to the professionals: the self-empowerment coaches, the self-help authors and motivational speakers. What’s the good of having a “self” unless someone shows you how to use it? Writer-performer Kurt Bodden’s Steve Seabrook wants to sell you on a better you, but his “Better Than You” weekend seminar (and tie-in book series, assorted CDs, and other paraphernalia) belies a certain divided loyalty in its own self-flattering title. The bitter fruit of the personal growth industry may sound overly ripe for the picking, but Bodden’s deftly executed “seminar” and its behind-the-scenes reveals, directed by Mark Kenward, explore the terrain with panache, cool wit, and shrewd characterization. As both writer and performer, Bodden keeps his Steve Seabrook just this side of overly sensational or maudlin, a believable figure, finally, whose all-too-ordinary life ends up something of a modest model of its own. (Avila)

Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma: The Next Cockettes Musical Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through July 27. Thrillpeddlers and director Russell Blackwood continue their Theatre of the Ridiculous series with this 1971 musical from San Francisco’s famed glitter-bearded acid queens, the Cockettes, revamped with a slew of new musical material by original member Scrumbly Koldewyn, and a freshly re-minted book co-written by Koldewyn and “Sweet Pam” Tent — both of whom join the large rotating cast of Thrillpeddler favorites alongside a third original Cockette, Rumi Missabu (playing diner waitress Brenda Breakfast like a deliciously unhinged scramble of Lucille Ball and Bette Davis). This is Thrillpeddlers’ third Cockettes revival, a winning streak that started with Pearls Over Shanghai. While not quite as frisky or imaginative as the production of Pearls, it easily charms with its fine songs, nifty routines, exquisite costumes, steady flashes of wit, less consistent flashes of flesh, and de rigueur irreverence. The plot may not be very easy to follow, but then, except perhaps for the bubbly accounting of the notorious New York flop of the same show 42 years ago by Tent (as poisoned-pen gossip columnist Vedda Viper), it hardly matters. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Through July 21. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns after a month-long hiatus with his popular, kid-friendly bubble show.

BAY AREA

Dear Elizabeth Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $24-77. Wed/3 and Sun/7, 2 and 7pm; Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm (also Sat/6, 2pm). Berkeley Rep performs Sarah Ruhl’s play written in the form of letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

George Gershwin Alone Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-77. Wed/3 and Sun/7, 2 and 7pm; Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm (also Sat/6, 2pm). Hershey Felder stars in his celebration of the music and life of composer George Gershwin.

Sea of Reeds Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Previews Wed/3-Thu/4, 8pm. Opens Fri/5, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Aug 18. Josh Kornbluth’s brand new comedy — it involves atheism, oboes, and the Book of Exodus — opens at Shotgun Players “before it goes on Torah.”

Superior Donuts Pear Avenue Theatre, 1220 Pear, Mtn View; www.thepear.org. $10-30. Wed/3 and Thu-Sat, 8pm (no show Thu/4); Sun, 2pm. Through July 14. Pear Avenue Theatre performs Tracy Letts’ comedy about the redemptive power of friendship.

This Is How It Goes Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through July 28. An awkward love triangle between former high school classmates gets the caustic Neil LaBute treatment in Aurora Theatre Company’s production of This is How it Goes. Not content to merely skewer the familiar battles between the sexes, LaBute further prods his captive audience with the big stick of race relations, and the often unacknowledged prejudices that lurk in the hearts of men. And women. There are no innocents in this play, though each character certainly has moments where they play upon audience sympathies, only to betray them a few inflammatory lines later. As the marriage between the successful yet self-conscious African American alpha male Cody (Aldo Billingslea) and his neurotically placating Caucasian wife Belinda (Carrie Paff) erodes, the mostly affable (and former fat kid) “Man” (Gabriel Marin) insinuates himself in the middle of their troubled relationship, obviously still carrying the torch for Belinda he did 15 years ago — as well as the same wary animosity an unpopular kid carries for the star of the track team, in this case, Cody. All three actors do a very good job of shape-shifting between their middle-class Jekyll and Hyde selves, assisted in part by Marin’s amiable asides, which don’t so much lull the audience as tease them with the idea that things are about to get better, when they can only get worse. (Gluckstern)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. July 13, 21, and 27, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Comedy Returns to El Rio” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/8, 8pm. $7-20. With Eve Meyer, Johan Miranda, Kate Willett, Sammy Obeid, and Lisa Geduldig.

“Mission Position Live” Cinecave, 1034 Valencia, SF; www.missionpositionlive.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Stand-up comedy with rotating performers.

“Performance Making Showcase” Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. Sat/6, 7:30pm. Free. Work created by participants in the University of Chichester (UK)’s Performance Making Institute.

“Queer Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance” Performances: African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; www.queerrebels.com. Fri/5-Sat/6, 8pm. $15-20. Films: New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakl; www.queerrebels.com. Sun/7, noon. $7-10. The National Queer Arts Festival presents this showcase of queer black performers, plus films by and about the same.

“Randy Roberts: Live!” Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. July 9, 16, and 23, 9pm. $30. The famed female impersonator takes on Cher, Better Midler, and other stars.

Red Hots Burlesque El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.redhotsburlesque.com. Wed, 7:30-9pm. Ongoing. $5-10. Come for the burlesque show, stay for OMG! Karaoke starting at 8pm (no cover for karaoke).

“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.

“Union Square Live” Union Square, between Post, Geary, Powell, and Stockton, SF; www.unionsquarelive.org. Through Oct 9. Free. Music, dance, circus arts, film, and more; dates and times vary, so check website for the latest.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission between 3rd and 4th Sts, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Through Oct 15. Free. This week: “Accordion Daze,” Sat, noon-3. *

 

Small Business Commissioners support Pet Food Express over local stores

Sasha Cuttler
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San Francisco’s Small Business Commission has recently come under fire for its promotion of corporate interests and, most recently, advocating for an allegedly predatory pet store chain known as Pet Food Express.

In 2009, the Small Business Commission voted in favor of denying Pet Food Express’ application for a location on Lombard Street in the Marina District. Subsequently, the Planning Commission also denied the request, seemingly blocking Pet Food Express’ efforts to set up shop in the Marina. 

San Francisco’s formula retail legislation requires chain stores like Pet Food Express to apply for a conditional use permit in order to receive approval for opening new locations.

But now, Pet Food Express is back after recently filing another identical application with the SBC for the exact same spot on Lombard Street, and this time some members of the SBC are oddly supporting the chain.

As Pam Habel, owner of local Marina pet store Catnip & Bones, pointed out at the commission meeting on June 10, Pet Food Express already has a location on California Street just one mile away. At the same meeting, Susan Landry, owner of another Marina pet store, Animal Connection, added that nothing has changed in the past four years that would point toward the Marina community needing or wanting this Pet Food Express, since four pet-related stores exist within a mile of the proposed Lombard Street location.

“We were really surprised and disappointed that the commission no longer seemed to be an advocate of small business and even made comments indicating sympathy for the big chain pet store,” Habel and Landry, told the Bay Guardian jointly via email. “Commissioner Adams even said it seemed unfair to him to penalize a business that had started out small and now are being victimized for their success since they are one of the largest pet store chains in the U.S.”

So what has changed since 2009 that is now making the SBC consider supporting the proposed Pet Food Express? For one, Mayor Ed Lee’s corporate-friendly appointees to the SBC, including developer Luke O’Brien and President Stephen Adams, a manager for Sterling Bank & Trust.

Additionally, San Francisco Animal Care and Control Director Rebecca Katz lobbied for approval of the Pet Food Express while holding a blind Chihuahua adorned with a sweater at the June 10 meeting. Katz cited Pet Food Express’ many financial contributions to her agency as reasoning behind supporting the chain’s new location and expansion. According to Animal Care and Control spokeswoman Deb Campbell, Pet Food Express donates an estimated $50,000 to $70,000 in supplies annually to the city department.

“The more business Pet Food Express does, the more they grow and the more they give back to the community,” Katz told the Bay Guardian. “We take in about 10,000 animals a year on a budget of about $40 million.”

Kathleen Dooley, one of the SBC’s few existing members still in favor of promoting local business over big business, met Katz’s lobbying with criticism.

“She went up and lobbied for Pet Food Express and implied if it wasn’t for them no pets would be adopted and the animal world would be in chaos,” Dooley told the Bay Guardian. “They already have a number of stores in San Francisco, but they act as if this one on Lombard would change the tide.”

But Katz says that her public promotion of Pet Food Express is not lobbying. “I spoke to the Ethics Commission and they told me it is okay for me to talk about what Pet Food Express does for us,” said Katz.

Few of the arguments in favor of the Pet Food Express’s intrusion into the Marina actually acknowledge the store’s potential detrimental impact on the existing local businesses. Katz even publically said she thought it was ironic to protest another corporation coming into the Marina, where so many chain businesses already exist.

“The size of the Lombard location would allow for an adoption center which would have a huge impact,” said Katz. “Whereas residents have to drive to the California Street location, now they could walk.”

Unfortunately for local Marina businesses, the SBC, whose professed goal is to “work to support and enhance an environment where small businesses can succeed and flourish,” may be doing just the opposite by supporting a chain business that will undoubtedly endanger the many locally owned pet stores.

“As small businesses in San Francisco, we rely on the SBC as our voice at City Hall, not as a sympathetic voice for chain stores,” said Habel and Landry. “Because of their response last month, we no longer feel that we can look to the SBC to support small business in San Francisco.”

In her presentation before the commission, Landry drew an analogy to the previous opening of a Blockbuster on Lombard Street. Following the corporation’s entrance into the community, all four independent video stores in Cow Hollow closed within a year.

At the same meeting, Commissioner Mark Dwight acknowledged the predatory nature of Pet Food Express, who has sat on the same property for four years in order to continuously rally support in favor of the proposed location.

The pet supply stores in the Marina could face the same fate as the local video rental shops if Pet Food Express succeeds in opening on Lombard Street.

“When chain stores go in, commercial rents go up and the small mom and pop businesses are priced out of the neighborhood and replaced by even more chain stores as they are the only ones who, with their corporate structures, can easily afford high rents,” said Landry and Habel. “This is about more than one Pet Food Express application on Lombard, this is part of our battle to retain the heart and soul of our neighborhood commercial corridors.”

BART workers authorize strike

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Note: This post has been updated from an earlier version.

Bay Area Rapid Transit workers, whose contract expires June 30, have authorized a strike if negotiations with the transit agency do not result in renewed contract terms that are acceptable to both sides.

“They just announced it. Both unions overwhelmingly supported a strike vote,” Leah Berlanga, chief negotiating officer for Service Employees International Union 1021, told the Guardian in a phone call this morning. Votes were cast yesterday, and the results have just come in.

SEIU represents about 1,400 BART inspectors and maintenance workers. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, which has also voted to authorize a strike, represents BART drivers.

For now, Berlanga said, SEIU and ATU remain at the negotiating table, and “we’re just focusing on reaching an agreement.” The contract is valid throughout June 30, so the earliest the transit workers could go out on strike would be Monday morning.

Contentious issues in the contract negotiations include workers’ request for raises, which haven’t been granted in years despite an uptick in ridership, and the agency’s insistence that employees pick up a share of their pension contributions.

Union representatives have emphasized that their primary concern is worker safety. Last week, SEIU filed an unfair practices labor lawsuit alleging that BART was not negotiating in good faith, pointing to worker safety as a central concern. “We’ve been talking about health and safety for the last four years. By law, health and safety is a mandatory subject of bargaining. Management has rejected every proposal we’ve put forward that addresses safety, and they are not bargaining in good faith,” Berlanga said. On June 25, unionized workers and supporters held a press conference outside the 24th Street BART station, nearby where an employee was struck and killed by a train in 2001. SEIU representatives have said this death was preventable, blaming it on poor lighting inside BART tunnels.

Antonette Bryant, president of ATU 1555, also emphasized safety issues. “We’ve had over 1,000 passengers assaulted and 99 workers assaulted,” she told the Guardian. “That’s something that we take very seriously. We want our work environment and riding environment on the BART to be safe.”

The agency is also trying to make changes to workers’ compensation programs, Bryant added, an issue that goes hand in hand with safety concerns. “They just give [compensation] to people that are hurt, they don’t make efforts to rehabilitate and bring these people back to work,” Bryant said. “We are trying to start a new program for this and they just don’t want to deal with it.”

Reached by phone, BART spokesperson Rick Rice told the Guardian, “We’re still confident there’s a deal to be had at the negotiating table. As far as I know, they are back at the table” after taking a break from negotiations yesterday, he said.

As of the morning of June 26, “We’ve gotten no notice from them” about when a strike could start, but “they’ve said publicly they’ll give 72 hours warning, and we would hope they would, for the sake of the riders.”

With regard to safety concerns, Rice said BART management meets weekly with union leaders on these issues and that the agency is planning to spend $4.5 million to replace lighting in train tunnels and had budgeted for “hundreds of new security cameras.” He said BART is asking employees to make higher contributions to their health care, and pay into their pension plans. He added that workers are requesting the equivalent of a 23.2 percent wage increase over the duration of the new contract. Rice did not have information about how this requested wage increase compares with the expected rise in the cost of living in the Bay Area, but said this was almost certainly a part of the conversation at the negotiating table.

Asked about the unfair labor practices suit, Rice declined to comment specifically on the allegations raised but stated, “We’re definitely at the table negotiating in good faith.”

‘A’ for effort?

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‘A’ for effort?

culture@sfbg.com

COCKTAILS Novela, the new literary-themed lounge in SoMa, is undoubtedly beautiful: plenty of window light pours in during the evening, highlighting tall black shelves packed full of color-coordinated books. The space, a collaboration between acclaimed bar stars Alex Smith and Kate Bolton, is littered with huge, cozy reading chairs as well as low comfy couches.

But my friend and I just somehow felt out of place.

Perhaps this was a case of misplaced expectations: this wasn’t the bar atmosphere I envisioned at all. With dance music (“Is this MGMT?” my friend asked as we sat down) blaring at around 7pm on a Tuesday, and an all-female service staff dressed in tight black clothing with gold jewelry accents and very high heels, it’s fair to say this place lacked the unshowy intimacy I associate with reading.

Despite our unease in the party environment, we decided to stay and give the libations a try. Novela has several “Cocktails with Character” on its menu, named for famous literary figures (duh). But it prides itself in its punches — six on tap, all made with fresh seasonal ingredients. Since the cognac punch was unavailable, I settled for a glass of the “Tequilla” (as spelled on the menu) punch while my friend, Michelle, tasted the gin one. Both weren’t anything to write home about. Tequilla was just not my cup of tea — the tequila, mezcal, hibiscus, grapefruit, and lime failed to gel — while I don’t remember much about the gin punch. Maybe it had too much rhubarb. Michelle and I pondered the thought of a book-themed bar having a typo on the menu, however deliberate, and realized that it perfectly encapsulated our thoughts of the place so far.

Once the after-work crowd poured out, we settled into some reading chairs near the back of the bar and ordered more drinks. This is when we found ourselves in the middle of a light show — the lights behind the book-filled walls started flashing, as did those along glass and metal liquor shelves. Disco time!

And with that, I suddenly felt like Novela was the one out of place. I can appreciate wanting to expand the notion of the “library bar,” of which our city has many examples, from the library at Bourbon and Branch to Two Sisters in Hayes Valley. But with Novela, I just plain could not see the purpose. San Francisco is a city rich with culture and character, and none of that is reflected here. It felt artificial: all flash and no substance, right down to the cocktail menu (every high school sophomore knows a drink named after Jay Gatsby should be based on gin, not bourbon) and the forced sorority-esque look of the staff.

Back to the drinks: Michelle ordered the Atticus Finch with bourbon, earl grey honey, and bitters — she originally ordered the pisco-based Sherlock Holmes but the birch beer was too overwhelming — while I ordered that Jay Gatsby, with bourbon, scotch, amaretto, calisaya, and nocino. They were both nice but, again, didn’t quite make the grade. In the end, Michelle and I walked out into the night with more questions than answers — a mark of great literature, perhaps, but not of great bars.

NOVELA 662 Mission, SF. (415) 896-6500, www.novelasf.com

 

Psychic Dream Astrology

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June 19-25, 2013

ARIES

March 21-April 19

The only way to become what you intend to be is by changing. You must let go of attitudes, habits, and relationships that no longer support you in being healthy and happy. Prioritize being authentic this week, and what needs to change will clarify itself, Aries. Even as you let things go, you are becoming more whole.

TAURUS

April 20-May 20

Reflection and contemplation is well starred for you, Taurus. You are putting yourself out there in a way that is much needed and fresh, but as with all new things, you need to stay aligned with yourself in order to make sure it’s right for you. Stay true to yourself even if that gets tricky this week.

GEMINI

May 21-June 21

Feeling trapped is a terrible state to be in. This is not the time to reactively stir up opposition and make big waves, even if you find yourself stuck and unsure how to change your situation, Twin Star. Assert your autonomy in concert with your environment for best results this week.

CANCER

June 22-July 22

Say yes, Moonchild! Walk through your world with an affirming and abundant attitude. Often when we are saying no to an opportunity or a person it is because we can’t say yes to them and ourselves at the same time. Even if you have to set limits and deal with hard stuff, look for the positive in it this week.

LEO

July 23-Aug. 22

The wisest course to stay this week is uber practical. It’s time to consolidate your debt, write those emails you’ve been putting off and finally donate the clothes in the back of your closet that you never wear; in others words, do all the crap you’ve been putting off but will help clarify your life once they’re completed.

VIRGO

Aug. 23-Sept. 22

There are no awards given out for being right, as sad as that may be for you, Virgo. It’s time for you to get present with the conditions you’re submerged in instead of focus on what they are supposed to be (according to you). Make acceptance of reality your number one priority this week.

LIBRA

Sept. 23-Oct. 22

Uncertainty is OK, Libra. What’s not so grand is talking like you have a clear plan when you are secretly freaking out. Own where you’re at, no matter where that may be. You are on the verge of being able to express your boundaries with confidence, so don’t hurry just to get an answer out there this week.

SCORPIO

Oct. 23-Nov. 21

Align your needs and your goals this week, Scorpio. It’s ideal if you can have a healthy work/play balance in your life, but it’s not always possible. Instead of going all in or all out on things, try a little moderation. You can afford to take enough time to consider your next moves.

SAGITTARIUS

Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Coping with frustration is hard for you fire signs, but you must strive to understand the deeper motives beneath your fears, and not react blindly to them. Resist the urge to jump in and make things more complicated than they need to be. Focus on what you value and how you can center your dealings to reflect that, Sag.

CAPRICORN

Dec. 22-Jan. 19

If you’ve been burning he candle at both ends of the wick, then, yes Capricorn, that is the scent of burning flesh you smell. Instead of trying to control or fix things, take a step back for a minute. You need time to gather yourself up before you do anything more. This week the best action is repose.

AQUARIUS

Jan. 20-Feb. 18

This week is a good one to take well-considered risks. You have the energy and power to be successful, the only warning you must heed is to make sure you are striving to attain the things that will improve your life and generate joy, not just pride. Be self-aware enough to think beyond the short term and purse lasting happiness.

PISCES

Feb. 19-March 20

You can’t change your feelings, you can only change your attitude. This week may find you overwhelmed by emotion, but that’s nothing new; what needs to be new is your willingness to be changed by your needs. Don’t worry so much about what others will say, just take care of your insides, Pisces.

Jessica Lanyadoo has been a Psychic Dreamer for 18 years. Check out her website at www.lovelanyadoo.com to contact her for an astrology or intuitive reading.

 

Save the white lion: Author on a quest to re-wild rare kitties

Andrew Lam
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Save the white lion: Author on a quest to re-wild rare kitties

WE DO NOT EAT THE KITTIES. I mean, some people do/would be excited to do so, given the meat-lust stirred up by the recent appearance of lion meat skewers on the menu at a Burlingame restaurant. But not us, not meow, not ever. 

Let’s instead focus on the arrival in the Bay Area of a woman famed for her work rescuing the technically-extinct white lion. Linda Tucker, take the bad taste out of our bewhiskered mouths, will you?

Tucker’s in town to read to us from her new journal Saving the White Lions: One Woman’s Battle for Africa’s Most Sacred Animal, which is a rundown of her efforts to preseve the white cats for future generations. The quest led her to start the Global White Lion Protection Trust, and she’ll be appearing today Mon/10 at Modern Times Bookstore Collective, and on Wed/12 at Book Passage in the Ferry Building to talk about her organization’s crusade.

The white lion is a relatively recent discovery in the Western world — Europeans didn’t first spot them until the early 1940s in the Greater Timbavati and southern Kruger Park region of South Africa. The white people promptly started hunting the white kitties, breeding babies for eventual slaughter as trophies, and installing them in zoos far afield from the Savannahs where they like to stay. The last white lion in the wild was seen in 1994. 

Tucker’s organization is attempting to establish the white lion genotype as a subspecies of Pantera leo, which would allow the cats to be officially classified as endangered and help stop hunting in their geographic area and the sale of their body parts, as well as those captive breeding practices which stress their gene pool. The group also works on re-introducing the cats into the wild — which Tucker says it’s successfully accomplished for three prides. 

The Global White Lion Protection Trust also recently saved the life of Nyanga, a white lioness whose cage was left open at the Johannesburg Zoo the day she killed a worker there. She’s since been relocated to a wildlife sanctuary, where the stresses of zoo life won’t kill anyone else. (RIP Tatiana, we miss you girl.)

Of course, Tucker is not the only hero here. Consider her website’s description of Marah, the lioness who started it all: 

her name means ‘mother of Rah, the sungod”, she formidably shattered all misperceptions about white lions not being able to hunt and survive in the wild — she successfully raised her cubs (Zihra, Letaba and Regeus) to adulthood under free-roaming conditions and taught them to hunt self-sufficiently. Her hunting success rate was comparable to the wild-born tawny lionesses that were observed in the same environment, under the exact same conditions.

Linda Tucker

Mon/10, 7-9pm, free

Modern Times Bookstore Collective

2919 24th St., SF

www.moderntimesbookstore.com

Wed/12, 6-7:30pm, free

Book Passage

Ferry Building, Embarcadero and Market, SF

www.bookpassage.com

Light bulbs, birth defects and sin

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Try though I may, I cannot understand the American right in 2013.

Thumbing through the news this morning, I came across two stories that are absolutely mind-boggling. The first is a sad commentary on the kind of mindset that is damaging and pervasive to and among the people that have it. The second is simply incredible.

The first was a study done on the benefits of CFL bulbs–those are the ones that last longer and are cheaper than incandescent ones. When not labeled as per “good for the environment”, conservatives and liberals alike preferred these, but when labeled “green” or environmentally friendly, right wingers were far less likely to want them.

Roll that over in your mind. A cheaper alternative that lasts longer is less desirable because as an added feature, it’s better for the only planet we now inhabit. What next? Right wingers declining cancer meds that are biodegradable? What this says to me is that they’re so vested in their ridiculous ideology, they’re willing to pay more and suffer more to prove a point that even they can’t articulate.

The second is even more astounding. E.W. Jackson is running for Lt. Governor in Virginia (Republican) and even though he has unleashed some whoppers before (yoga is satanic, Planned Parenthood is worse for African Americans than the KKK), apparently in 2008, this minister wrote that birth defects are caused by sin.

Organic and genetic causes, nah. You were nice to a gay guy once. You rubbed one out to nudies. You and your partner rooted around unmarried and on contraceptives–that’s why your baby has Down’s. As even line-toeing hardcore rightists have children with birth defects, this is not a winning electoral strategy.

Virginia is a large state. It is in the US in 2013. That anyone anywhere would espouse these ludicrous ideas and be anywhere near the levers of any power is mind boggling. And yet, the GOP’s candidate for governor hasn’t disavowed Jackson–and why?

Because when you’re marketed to shut in cable and radio junkies, you end up with them. The GOP’s base is now the dregs, the pits, the most pathetic of pathetic–what used to be fringe and laughed off is now what shows up at conventions and nominates idiots.

Until such time as their moneyed elite swallow their pride and heave these half-wits out, this will continue. This is the bed they’ve made, lie in it. 

Key CleanPowerSF facts matter more than myriad details

Sasha Cuttler
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10

It’s great to see our colleagues down the hall at the Examiner and SF Weekly covering the evolving details of CleanPowerSF, San Francisco’s plan for offering renewable energy options to city residents. And we’re all sure to see another barrage of confusing and arcane details being blasted in all directions by Pacific Gas & Electric and its union as they try to derail the program and maintain their monopoly.

These details do matter, but not nearly as much as a couple of important central facts that are too often overlooked or are given short shrift. One, this is the city’s only plan for meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals, the one proposal out there to actually build renewable energy capacity. There is no other plan, as a recent city study (that’s been buried, but which we unearthed and publicized) shows. We can build all the green buildings we want and fill the roadways with electric vehicles, but if we’re still using PG&E’s fossil fuels to power them, that doesn’t take us very far.  

Two, meeting our greenhouse gas reduction goals requires people to just sign up for CleanPowerSF, even if the plan isn’t perfect, because that customer base is what allows the city to issue revenue bonds to build these projects going forward. The more people there are in the program, the more clean power projects we can build for them, the less greenhouse gases we emit, period.

As the Examiner reported in its cover story today, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has found a way to drastically lower the cost of CleanPowerSF so that its monthly bills will now be on average about $6.50 more than PG&E’s. That relies on using some renewable energy credits, such as those created in the state’s cap-and-trade program, instead of purely the juice directly from renewable energy projects.

That change is now being criticized by some of the same people who criticized the plan for being too expensive, but it’s either one or the other, folks, because renewable energy simply costs more to purchase than the energy that PG&E buys from coal plants or generates at its taxpayer-subsidzed nuclear power plant.

But again, the point that the article gets to in its bottom half is what’s important here: you gotta get people to sign up for the program, then the city will be able to bond against that customer base and build its very own renewable energy projects, which the public will control throughout their lifetimes.

The alternative is abandoning our climate protection goals, or trusting that PG&E is going to benevolently act against its financial interests after scuttling CleanPowerSF and invest a bunch of money in renewable energy projects without jacking up our bills even higher than what the city is proposing — all evidence, history, and common sense to the contrary.

And that means believing that a company that spent a whopping $50 million unsuccessfully campaigning for an audacious ruse, when it should have been using that money on promised system repairs that would have prevented the deaths of eight people — a tragedy that regulators have blamed entirely on PG&E negligence — is going to selflessly act in the public interest.

So, yes, let’s all cover the details of CleanPowerSF, which has an important hearing next month, and make sure this program is as good as it can be. But let’s also not be distracted from the crucial central point: this is about empowering San Francisco to take care of its people and the planet.

Activists to governor: Please un-frack California

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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4

A statewide coalition of more than 100 environmental organizations has formed to pressure California Gov. Jerry Brown to ban fracking – an environmentally harmful oil extraction method technically known as hydraulic fracturing.

On May 30, environmental activists from the Center for Biological Diversity, Credo Action, Food and Water Watch, Environment California and other nonprofits rallied outside the state building on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco to launch the campaign and hand-deliver stacks of petitions calling on Brown to put an end to the practice. The action coincided with a similar show of opposition to fracking at the state building in Los Angeles.

Fracking has already taken off in Pennsylvania and North Dakota, and has the potential to transform vast swaths of landscape in California, where a geologic formation known as the Monterey Shale is estimated to contain some 15 billion barrels of oil.

With chants of “Jerry Brown, take a stand, don’t let frackers ruin our land,” the activists waved signs proclaiming, “Don’t frack California.”

“In California, water is more precious than oil,” said Becky Bond, political director at Credo Action. “It’s not just a question of will this produce some jobs.”

Bond added that the activists were targeting Brown because “we know that special interests have so much more influence in the Legislature than they do in the governor’s mansion.” And besides, she added, “even if good legislation passes, it ends up on the governor’s desk.”

Earlier in the week in Sacramento, legislation that would have imposed an indefinite moratorium on fracking was scaled back, much to the dismay of environmentalists. AB 1323 was introduced by Assemblymember Holly Mitchell, and would have imposed a statewide moratorium on fracking until an independent evaluation of the health and environmental impacts of the practice could be completed.

However, changes to the language of the proposed bill did away with the independent evaluation process and called for a moratorium only until the California Department of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources finished hammering out a set of regulations around the practice. A similar piece of legislation to impose a fracking moratorium, AB 1301, was kept on suspense file and won’t move forward this year.

“It renders the moratorium essentially meaningless,” Food and Water Watch political director Adam Scow told the Bay Guardian shortly after the changes were made. “We have a bill that is inadequate for protecting Californians from fracking.”

And that’s partly why Brown is the new target for anti-fracking activists. Elijah Zarlin, a campaign manager at Credo, jumped on the megaphone during the rally. “We’ve seen what fracking has done in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Governor Brown has the power to not let that happen in California.”

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 29

Protest: Call on Walmart and Gap to protect worker safety tinyurl.com/nfvnslj. Four Seasons, 757 Market, SF. Continue to Gap flagship store, 980 Market, SF. 5pm, free. Activists with Our Walmart and San Francisco Jobs With Justice recently discovered that Walmart made clothing at Rana Plaza, the Bangladesh factory building that collapsed recently, killing more than a 1,100 workers. Activists plan to rally outside the Four Seasons penthouse of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who also sits on the board of Walmart. Activists will show up to ask Mayer, then Gap, to sign onto a building safety agreement that would prevent future tragedies of this scale. Actions followed by a 6pm gathering at Bayanihan Community Center, 1010 Mission, SF. Dialogue on LGBT-inclusive comprehensive immigration reform SF Public Library, 100 Larkin, SF. www.sf-hrc.org. 5:30-7:30pm, free. The SF Human Rights Commission will host this community conversation on LGBT-inclusive comprehensive Immigration Reform, cosponsored by the Human Rights Commission LGBT Advisory Committee, Our Family Coalition, and Out4Immigration.

THURSDAY 30

San Francisco Green Film Festival Various SF and East Bay locations, Thu/30 thru Wed/5. www.sfgreenfilmfest.org. General admission $12/$11; Festival passes $100–$200. View 50 new films from around the globe, with over 70 visiting filmmakers and guest speakers, on topics ranging from clean energy, to water, to trash, to art in the environment. Events take place at the New People Cinema in Japantown, the SF Public Library, SPUR Urban Center and the David Brower Center in Berkeley.

SATURDAY 1

Moana Nui 2013 two-day teach-in Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School Auditorium, 1781 Rose, Berk. tinyurl.com/nlw34wd. 10am on Sat/1 to 6pm on Sun/2, $10–$20. The International Forum on Globalization and Pua Mohala I Ka Po present this two-day, international gathering featuring 45 speakers from 20 nations. All will present on critical issues facing the Asia-Pacific region, ranging from environment, to militarism, to global trade and resource depletion. Participants include Jerry Mander (dubbed as the "Ralph Nader of the anti-globalization movement" by the New York Times); indigenous actress Q’orianka Kilcher; Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute, and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, one of the original drafters of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, among others.

SUNDAY 2


Conference on public banking Dominican University, San Rafael. www.publicbanking.org. 1pm on Sun/2 to 6:30pm on Tue/4, $35 to $295. Join the Public Banking Institute in conversation with pioneering policymakers, civic leaders, banking entrepreneurs, innovators and ordinary citizens interested in learning about one of the most critical undertakings of our time: creating a truly prosperous, democratic and sustainable new economy. Attend the conference or just catch the Sun/2, 7pm forum, titled Take Our Economy Back from Wall Street, with Rolling Stone staff writer Matt Taibbi, Web of Debt author Ellen Brown, and guests Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Icelandic Parliament, and Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?

San Francisco Green Film Festival

Maria Poblet
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San Francisco Green Film Festival

The San Francisco Green Film Festival returns for a week-long event May 30 through June 5, with 50 new films from around the globe on environmental topics including clean energy, food, water, housing and art in the environment.

It opens with Rebels with a Cause, the new award-winning documentary from local filmmakers Nancy Kelly and Kenji Yamamoto, celebrating the compelling and epic story of those who fought to save the Marin County coast.

Other Festival highlights include the SF Premiere of Mark Decena’s Watershed with special guest Jamie Redford in attendance and La Source, which follows the story of a Haitian Princeton janitor who returns home after the 2010 earthquake to bring clean water to his village. Filmmaker Patrick Shen will be in attendance for Q&A after the show.

In the USA premiere of Because I Live Longer than You, we meet 9-year-old Felix Finkbeiner, who inspired youth to plant one million trees in each country.

Also, in Big Boys are Bananas!, filmmaker and muckraker Fredrik Gertten takes on the Dole Food Company in 2009 and has since experienced the PR and legal battles that inevitably followed. A discussion on media censorship follows the screening.

Tickets are $12 per screening, $100 for a weekend pass, and $200 for a full pass to the festival. Or, buy a six-pack and get six regularly priced tickets for the price of 5!

For more information please visit sfgreenfilmfest.org.

 

“One powerful newsroom” pulls back from its San Francisco roots

Sasha Cuttler
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22
“One powerful newsroom” pulls back from its San Francisco roots

Locally focused journalism in San Francisco took another big hit today with the announcement that The Bay Citizen — which was founded by the late Warren Hellman in 2009 specifically to augment declining reporting on San Francisco and the Bay Area — is being folded into Center for Investigative Reporting [Updated below].

When the two entities merged last year, Bay Guardian and others raised concerns that local accountability journalism in San Francisco would suffer and that the strong donor base that Hellman developed to support Bay Citizen was being used to support CIR, whose board is chaired by former San Francisco Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein, who engineered the deal.

“It’s exciting for us to be able to address what has been a vacuum in San Francisco for a long time,” CIR Executive Director Robert Rosenthal, addressing the need to strengthen local coverage, told us last year.

But today, in an upbeat press release and blog post announcing The Bay Citizen’s demise entitled “One Powerful Newsroom,” Rosenthal seems to dismiss the importance of San Francisco City Hall coverage and other locally based reporting in justifying CIR’s flip to a more national focus.  

“We know that as long as we are telling the right stories – the stories that no one else is covering, the stories that reveal deeply hidden information, the stories that actually make a difference in people’s lives – it doesn’t matter if they are about San Francisco or Sacramento or Washington, D.C.,” wrote Rosenthal, who has not yet returned our call to discuss the issue [see below].

For anyone who cares about journalism and accountability in San Francisco, where wealthy interests have essentially partnered with the Mayor’s Office on an ambitious agenda that is changing the face and future of the city, it does matter where reporters focus their time and energies.

CIR Editorial Director Mark Katches also wrote today that in addition to less coverage of San Francisco, the merged organization will do fewer overall stories: “First and foremost, we have rededicated ourselves to high-impact investigative reporting – stories that matter. We’ve largely stopped covering routine stories and breaking news, which got in the way of this core mission. Last year, we generated about 1,000 stories. By choice, we expect to produce about 200 stories this year. But the stories we go after will be the ones we think can make a difference.

“The newsroom will also rethink the scope of its coverage: Last year, about 95 percent of the stories generated out of this newsroom were either focused on the Bay Area or the state of California. That left a small fraction of our work focused on national or international issues or produced in a way that would appeal to an audience outside California’s borders,” wrote Katches, who also hasn’t yet returned our call (we’ll update this post if and when we hear back from Rosenethal and Katches).

While it’s always good to have more quality journalism focused on national and international issues, San Francisco needs more accountability journalism, not less, particularly when the Chronicle newsroom has been decimated and the stories that its reporters are doing are now stuck behind an online paywall, further reducing readership.

That dearth of San Francisco-based reporting is why Hellman created The Bay Citizen, as he told me while he was conceiving the concept and shortly after it was created. “It will focus on local news events, including politics and the arts, the kind of thing that is just dying at the Chronicle,” Hellman told me.

And now, just as we feared, two of the Chronicle editors who oversaw that demise — Bronstein and Rosenthal — are killing off the once-successful local newsroom that was created to shine a critical light on what’s happening in San Francisco and around the Bay Area.

We certainly wish CIR well and we hope that this “one powerful newsroom” will continue to devote some reporting resources to San Francisco, as they did most recently in exposing radioactive contamination at Treasure Island. But this is still a sad day for the Fourth Estate in the rapidly evolving city of St. Francis.

Update: Rosenthal just got back to me and expressed the hope that San Francisco won’t suffer from this latest move: “We’re going to continue doing what we hope will be stories that make a difference in San Francisco and the Bay Area.”

But as a longtime newspaper editor who also values local reporters working beats to hold powerful people and entities accountable and to inform local citizens about issues that affect them, Rosenthal said that he understands the Guardian’s concerns.

“I love beat reporting, and yes, beat reporting will suffer,” Rosenthal said, decrying the newsroom cutbacks in communities across the country. “At the same time, we’re the only news organization, if you can call us that, in the country that has been adding staff in the last five years.”

Rosenthal emphasized that there were no layoffs during last year’s merger or as part of this current move, and in the always challenging modern media environment, he said the question he wrestles with is: “How do we keep the whole organization alive?”

Rosenthal also said CIR plans to expand its investigative reporting on the technology industry and its impact on San Francisco and other cities, which should benefit the need for accountability journalism here.

“We don’t want to abandon the Bay Area or the Bay Area media,” he said, citing recent coverage of Bay Area pedestrian deaths as an example the kind of stories that can make a difference locally.

As for Hellman’s vision of The Bay Citizen as a local news outlet, Rosenthal said, “It evolved.”

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

Sasha Cuttler
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57

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.

Why is the SF housing market “positive?”

Zelda Bronstein
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81
Why is the SF housing market “positive?”

It’s been a long, long time since anyone said that traffic is terrific. When there are too many cars on the road, it’s considered bad, not healthy — even if the boom in single-occupant auto travel is a sign of a recovering economy and lots of job creation.

So why do newspaper reports still talk about a “positive market trend” when home prices reach levels that no middle-class people can ever afford? Why does the Chronicle run a quote like this …

Steve Berkowitz, CEO of online listing company Move Inc., said the region “is seeing a real stabilization and a really positive market trend. There is a very solid market in all the Bay Area counties.”

… without any indication that soaring housing prices are bad for most people who want to live in the area, bad for businesses, particularly small businesses, that have trouble paying employees enough to afford to live near where they work, bad for the environment (when people have to move further and further from their jobs to find affordable housing) and generally bad for the region?

Yes, it’s good to see that people who were underwater on their homes are getting back into the black. But for the most part, what we’re seeing is the affordability of homes soar way beyond the reach of the vast majority of people who work in San Francisco. That’s not “terrific.” That’s terrifying.

More protests over Willits bypass project

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Controversy over the Willits Bypass continued Monday, as Willits protesters sought to block Caltrans contractors from continuing work on the highway construction project. Protester Robert Chevalier, 66, locked himself to a Caterpillar tractor used for hauling felled logs using a steel “lock box.” At another location, four other protesters unfurled a banner to block work trucks that were preparing for pile-driving tests. Chevalier was arrested along with protesters Sara Grusky and Ellen Faulkner, who is 75.

Meanwhile, a new tree-sitter took to the branches of a rare wetland ash earlier this month. The protester, who goes by the name Condor, stationed himself at the northern end of the bypass on May 2. Since then, Condor has been replaced by a tree sitter who goes by the name of Hawk. “Part of the message of the medium is that birds move around,” explained Naomi Wagner, a spokesperson for Redwood Nation Earth First.

Condor was the eighth tree-sitter to protest the bypass. The first five were forcibly removed by CHP with cherry pickers on April 2. Two others decamped more recently before being arrested.

In the meantime, construction on the six-mile, four-lane highway continues, albeit with a few setbacks. On April 9, an inspector for the North Coast Water Quality Control Board visited the site and found that Caltrans had violated its permits by disturbing ground within 50 feet of streams and failing to follow statewide practices designed to prevent streamside runoff.

Critics maintain that it’s typical of Caltrans to go ahead with construction, even if that means violating the conditions of their permits. Jamie Chevalier of Earth First said, “Caltrans will just do what they’re gonna do and pay a fine.”

According to Caltrans spokesperson Phil Frisbie, however, the inspection was “normal routine business.”

“[The infraction] was an oversight on Caltrans and the contractor’s parts because the vegetation is so dense you can’t actually see the creek.” said Frisbie. “It won’t happen again.”

Last week, the California Transportation Commission approved an additional $26 million for the creation and rehabilitation of approximately 2,000 acres of wetlands. Many of those mitigation projects are years down the road, said Frisbie, a fact that alarms Chevalier and other opponents of the bypass.

Frisbie also said they were aware of the new tree-sitter, and were monitoring the situation.

When the Guardian reached Condor by phone last week, the tree sitter said he’d experienced minimal contact with Caltrans employees so far. “Yesterday they limbed an oak tree about a 100 feet from me,” he said. “I guess that was their response to my presence.”

Chevalier, the protester who locked himself to the Caterpillar, is a retired commercial fisherman who worked for years in Alaska.  He said he felt compelled to take a stand: “One thing we learned from fishing is that taking care of our rivers and forests creates a booming economy that will last. These big make-work projects leave the locals and the taxpayers worse off than before. It’s just a waste,” he said. “This project is trashing the land, water, and local jobs that we really do need.”

Ultimate zero

Andrew Lam
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3
Ultimate zero

rebecca@sfbg.com

In January, Mayor Ed Lee appeared on the PBS NewsHour to talk up the city’s Zero Waste program, an initiative to eliminate all landfilled garbage by 2020 by diverting 100 percent of the city’s municipal waste to recycling or compost. “We’re not going to be satisfied,” with the 80 percent waste diversion already achieved, Lee told program host Spencer Michels. “We want 100 percent zero waste. This is where we’re going.”

But somewhere in Te Anau, New Zealand, an environmental scholar tuning into an online broadcast of the program was having none of it. “I sat there thinking, no, you’re not. It would be great if you were, but you’re not — for obvious reasons,” said Robert Krausz, who’s working toward a PhD in environmental management, describing his reaction during a Skype call with the Bay Guardian.

Krausz, a Lincoln University scholar originally from Canada, spent three years studying municipal zero-waste initiatives internationally, and completed an in-depth, 40-page analysis of San Francisco’s Zero Waste program as part of his doctoral thesis.

He may as well have taken aim at a sacred cow. The city’s Zero Waste program has near-universal support among local elected officials, and has garnered no shortage of glowing media attention. San Francisco’s track record of diverting 80 percent of waste from the landfill is well ahead of the curve nationally, scoring 15 percent higher than Portland, Ore., a green hub of the Pacific Northwest, and 20 percentage points or higher above Seattle, according figures provided by Recology, San Francisco’s municipal waste hauler.

Despite the city’s well-earned green reputation, Krausz arrived at the pessimistic conclusion that “San Francisco’s zero waste to landfill by 2020 initiative is headed for failure.” In seven years’ time, he predicts, the program deadline will be marked with a day of reckoning rather than a celebratory gala. “I think the city is setting itself up,” Krausz told the Guardian. “Somebody’s going to be holding the bag in 2020.”

 

 

ANOTHER AFFLUENT CITY

Sporting a goatee and glasses, Krausz comes across as the type you might find locking up his bike outside a natural foods store with canvas bags at the ready. When he visited San Francisco, he said he was ready to be wowed by the example of an ecologically enlightened city, yet ultimately left in disappointment. “It was just another affluent American city, in terms of consumption.”

The problem, he argues, is that people are still buying way too much disposable stuff — and a significant amount can’t be recycled. Plastic bags, food wrapping, pantyhose, plastic film, pet waste, construction materials with resin in them (like the popular Trex decking), and particularly disposable diapers have nowhere to go but into the landfill.

San Francisco produces a total of about six kilograms of trash per person per day before diversion is factored in — three times the U.S. national average. That’s a sobering figure that puts a slight dent in the city’s eco-conscious image. It’s not really fair to denizens of the city by the Bay, because it counts trash generated by 20 million annual visitors, daytime employees, developers, and businesses as well as residents. Nevertheless, the trash output ranks well above the per capita average for the Eurozone, which clocks in at a minimalistic 0.5 kg per person per day.

The city has earned its bragging rights for making strides toward diverting waste from the landfill — yet truckloads of waste still leave the famously green city every day. Since 2003, Krausz notes, San Francisco’s overall waste generation has actually increased, from 1,900 to 2,200 kilograms per person per year. At the same time, the per capita amount of waste going into a landfill has dropped, from about 1,000 to 500 kilograms per year. That’s still a lot of garbage.

Krausz argues that San Francisco has no comprehensive plan for achieving Zero Waste, while at the same time having little control over “top of the pipe” consumption, which generates a glut of trash. “While the city has achieved success at managing waste at the end-of-pipe, it has thus far failed to address the fundamental problem of consumption, which is driving waste generation,” his study notes.

Guillermo Rodriguez and Jack Macy of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment counter that there is a strategy, involving a host of different measures ranging from education, to policy initiatives, to incentive programs aimed at reducing waste. They think zero waste is possible. “We’re probably at 99 percent diversion here in this office,” said Macy, who serves as the city’s Commercial Zero Waste Coordinator. “At least 90 percent of the discard stream is recyclable and compostable,” he added. And as for the last 10 percent, “that pie will be shrinking as we find more markets” for recyclables.

Krausz also raised skepticism about Recology’s bid for a landfill contract that would extend until 2025, five years beyond the deadline for all waste elimination. To that, Recology’s Eric Potashner responded that state law requires 15 years of disposal capacity to guarantee a safety net, regardless of municipal aspirations.

Krausz is critical of San Francisco officials for promising zero waste, but he acknowledges that manufacturers of disposable goods, not city officials, are to blame. Ambitious legislative measures such as San Francisco’s mandatory composting program and a ban on plastic bags have been enacted and achieved tangible results, but for items like ubiquitous thin-film plastics, dirty diapers, synthetic materials, and the like, good solutions have yet to be found.

Krausz’ study also determined that no city on the planet that’s set out to do so has ever actually succeeded at achieving zero waste. “If you are a city that is a member of Western civilization as we know it, you’re not going to be zero waste to landfill, because you participate in the global economy,” Krausz states plainly.

 

 

SF’S TRASH PIT

On a recent Friday morning, Recology’s Potashner and Paul Giusti led a tour of the city’s recycling and waste processing facilities. It featured a stop at the transfer station, housed in a large warehouse off of Tunnel Road where all the refuse from the black trash bins is deposited before being carted off to the Altamont Landfill. A sweet, pungent aroma hung in the air. “We call this the pit,” Giusti explained as we approached a sunken area that could have contained multiple Olympic-sized swimming pools, extending a story or two below us into the earth. “This is the last frontier,” Potashner added. “The last 20 percent.”

It was filled with an astonishing quantity of trash, making a tractor that ambled awkwardly over top the mound to compact it down appear toy-like in comparison. The sea of discarded material contained every hue, and floating around in the debris were orange juice containers, cardboard boxes, and thousands upon thousands of (banned) plastic bags. Between 200 and 300 garbage trucks eject their contents into the pit each day, and a single truck can hold up to four tons of trash.

Giusti started working for Recology, formerly NorCal Waste Systems, in 1978, following in the footsteps of his father. Back then, the pit was more like a mountain: “When I would dump my truck, I could walk up this pile,” he said, gesturing toward a set of sprinklers suspended from the ceiling to indicate how high it once extended. State data confirms the story: In 2011, according to CalReycle, San Francisco sent 446,685 tons of waste to the landfill. That number has steadily declined over time; in 2007, it stood at 628,914 tons.

Asked for his reaction to Krausz’s thesis that the Zero Waste program won’t ever actually get to zero, Guisti turned the question around by asking, what’s the harm in trying? “Let’s say you said, zero waste is unattainable,” he said. “Then what’s the number? I think zero waste is an ambitious goal — but if we get to 90 or 95 percent, what a tremendous achievement.” Setting the highest of bars is important, he said, because striving for it provides the motivation to keep diverting waste from the landfill.

In order to actually reduce the city’s garbage from 446,685 tons to zero in the next seven years, Zero Waste program partners Recology and San Francisco’s Department of the Environment face a twofold challenge. First, they must prevent compostable and recyclable material from getting into the landfill pile. Second, they must find solutions for diverting the waste that currently has nowhere else to go but the landfill. With a combination of seeking new markets for recyclables, using technology that can sort out the recyclable and compostable matter, and implementing incentives and educational outreach programs, they’re still focused on the goal. “It’s hard to tell how close we’ll get to zero in 2020,” Macy said. So even if zero waste does not actually mean zero waste in the end, that goal “sends a message that we want to move toward being as sustainable as we can.”

Get high

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3
Get high

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM San Francisco has a lot of film festivals (understatement of the millennium), but none until now can claim to show "films from the roof of the world." The first annual Himalayan Film Festival kicks off this week with screenings in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. Opening night features the West Coast premiere of Leon Stuparich’s Road to Peace, a doc that follows the Dalai Lama on his 2008 tour of the UK.

The timing of the visit coincides with a period of unrest in Lhasa, so the trip takes on an unexpectedly political tone, with reporters pressing His Holiness to speak about "the Tibetan problem." Which he does (advocating for "meaningful autonomy" instead of complete independence from China, and emphasizing the need for "a realistic approach" to the conflict), though he nudges his message toward broader themes: universal responsibility, religious harmony, cultural preservation, the environment, and so forth.

In his wake, he leaves a trail of teary-eyed, thoroughly chuffed Brits, including Absolutely Fabulous‘ Joanna Lumley, and proves once again to be one of the world’s most laid-back leaders, with an easy chuckle that puts awed audiences at ease. No wonder he’s such a frequent, favorite subject for documentarians like Stuparich; to that end, if you’ve seen a previous film on the Dalai Lama, this genial travelogue is likely to feel somewhat familiar.

More unusual subject matter is explored in Himalayan Gold Rush, which manages to overcome its stiff, National Geographic-ish narration with a gripping narrative and quite a bit of spectacular scenery. Director Eric Valli travels to rural Nepal to investigate the lucrative yartsa gunbu, or "Himalayan Viagra" trade. Derived from a fungus-and-caterpillar situation that only occurs 5,000 meters above sea level, it’s "worth more than gold" to herbal-remedy shops that cater to rich Chinese clients.

Medicinal claims aside, much of its value is due to the fact that it’s incredibly rare, as well as back-breakingly difficult to harvest. Himalayan Gold Rush zeroes in on a few different foot soldiers, including a father with two young sons who worries about the mountains’ rapidly dwindling yartsa supply — even as he gambles away the family’s meager earnings in a dice game — and a man who rides from camp to camp, buying the crop to sell to his boss, an exporter, in Kathmandu. This, too, is perilous work, with armed guards necessary to protect large parcels of the precious stuff, which to the untrained eye resembles dried-up tequila worms.

An entirely different Nepalese story unfolds in The Sari Soldiers, a 2008 film that focuses on the country’s turbulent political unrest in 2005-2006. It begins with a reminder about the 2001 Nepalese royal massacre, in which the country’s crown prince shot and killed nine of his family members, then himself — or so goes the official version of the controversial tragedy (where’s the documentary on that, by the way?) It then explains how the slain king’s unpopular brother ascended to the throne, and a few years later, amid a Maoist insurgency, claimed "absolute power" for himself.

With this chaos forming a potent backdrop, The Sari Soldiers highlights six women whose different viewpoints make for a remarkably even-handed doc. Not only does filmmaker Julie Bridgham make great use of handheld footage taken amid tense, anti-monarchy student demonstrations, she interviews both a Maoist soldier and a Royal Nepalese Army soldier. Most powerfully, she traces the struggles of a human-rights lawyer who advocates for the country’s alarming number of people who’ve been "disappeared" by the government, including the 15-year-old daughter of another of Bridgham’s subjects.

Other intriguing entries in the small but promising Himalayan Film Festival line-up include another doc about the Nepalese civil war, Beneath Everest: Nepal Reform; a doc about Tibetan athletes’ attempts to earn representation at the Beijing Olympics, Leaving Fear Behind — whose director was jailed because of the film; and, among a handful of narrative works, Old Dog, about a family at odds over the treatment of their much-cherished dog (a Tibetan Mastiff, natch).

HIMALAYAN FILM FESTIVAL

Wed/15-Sun/19, $10

Various venues

www.himalayanfilmfest.com

Commission approves soccer project but pushes the city to restore habitat

Sasha Cuttler
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43
Commission approves soccer project but pushes the city to restore habitat

The California Coastal Commission today upheld San Francisco’s plan to replace the Beach Chalet grass soccer fields at the west end of Golden Gate Park with artificial turf and high stadium lights after an emotional five-hour hearing, but not before voicing concerns about the loss of natural terrain and urging the city to do wildlife habitat restoration work on adjacent land.

The soccer project has been repeatedly approved by city agencies despite strong opposition from some neighbors and environmentalists, who say it conflicts with a Local Coastal Plan that calls for it to be a “naturalistic” setting. Their appeal to the commission — which enforces the California Coastal Act of 1976 and regulates development in the coastal zone statewide — was supported by commission staff, giving hope to opponents.  

But the dearth of playing fields in the city and bad conditions on this often soggy, gopher-ridden site drove the local approvals of the project, and advocates for soccer and youth dominated public testimony at today’s hearing, which was held in San Rafael. Supportive speakers made arguments ranging from the exodus of families from the city to the need to combat youth obesity and diabetes to concerns that the woods surrounding the field is now “a fornication playground for gay men, it’s a shooting gallery for drug users, and it’s a toilet for the homeless,” all ills they say the turf and lights will help dispel.    

“I urge you to reject the appeal and allow San Francisco to manage our park system,” Sup. Scott Wiener testified to the commission, adding, “San Francisco has a crisis in that we are losing our families and losing our children.”

Former Sup. Aaron Peskin took the opposite position, calling the commission’s staff report “well-reasoned” and telling commissioners they have an obligation to protect coastal areas on behalf of all Californians: “It is the role of the commission not to succumb to political pressure.”

After public testimony and before a lunch break when he needed to leave, Commissioner Steve Blank made a motion to adopt staff recommendations and deny the city’s project, rejecting the various arguments made by supporters as irrelevant to whether this project complied with the Coastal Act and should be built so close to the ocean.

“Our review is based on the needs of 38 million Californians. One of the reasons our coastline looks the way is does is because of this commission,” Blank said, later adding, “This project looks like an industrial sports facility which is the antithesis of a naturalistic setting.”

He acknowledged arguments that the site has been soccer fields for more than 60 years and that many San Franciscans want them there. But he analogized it to the city’s one-time embrace of the Embarcadero Freeway before decades later realizing it wasn’t an appropriate waterfront use and tearing it down.

After a lunch break, the commissioner who seconded his motion, Esther Sanchez, continued Blank’s arguments against the project. “Our purview is different than the city and county of San Francisco,” she said. The commission’s role is ensuring compliance with the Coastal Act and LCP — which was developed by the city and approved by the commission decades ago — and its call to “emphasize naturalistic land use qualities of the western part of the park for visitor use,” saying the city should use other parks if it wants artificial turf fields.

But Commissioner Steven Kinsey called for the commission to defer to the city process and argued that turf and lights don’t necessarily violate the vague language in the LCP. “Grass alone does not make the site naturalistic,” Kinsey said, making a motion to approve the city’s project.

Commissioner Martha McClure then strongly sided sided with Kinsey and the city, and Commissioners Robert Garcia and Wendy Mitchell followed suit, saying how they personally liked turf more than grass. “It’s great for the environment, it’s water reducing, it stays green,” Mitchell said, noting that she’s replacing the lawn at her Southern California home with turf, calling the staff report “arrogant,” and saying, “I’m disappointed that we’re hearing this item.”

Garcia said the project will improve the public’s access to the coastal zone, which is something the Coastal Act also encourages.

“Artificial turf has become a savior for us, we can keep all our fields in play,” Commissioner Carole Groom, a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, later said, making her the fifth solid vote for the city’s project.

That left four swing votes on this 11-member commission who all said this was a difficult decision. They were inclined to let the project go through, but they were bothered by converting seven acres of real grass to artificial turf and wanted to mitigate that loss of wildlife habitat.

Chair Mary Shallenberger took issue with Mitchell’s comments. “I think they is absolutely properly before us,” she said. “This is how the process is supposed to work. Staff ended their presentation by saying this is a judgment call,” commending project opponents for filing the appeal.

“This was a very hard one for me,” Commissioner Dayna Bochco said, raising doubts that “seven acres of plastic would be a natural and healtful condition.”

Commissioner Jana Zimmer shared the concern and seized on a comment that SF Recreation and Parks Director Phil Ginsburg made earlier expressing a desire to restore as a naturalistic setting a long-neglected four-acre site next to Beach Chalet that used to be the city’s old wastewater treatment plant, noting that $6.5 million in the city’s last parks bond was set aside for habitat restoration in Golden Gate Park.

“I’d like to find a way to link the finding here to that requirement,” Zimmer said, asking Ginsburg whether he could make that commitment.

Ginsburg said that would be the top staff recommendation for the bond money, but that a public process and environmental review would be needed and he couldn’t make the commitment.

“I do believe mitigation is required here,” Bochco said. “We’re taking away seven acres of habitat and I want it replaced with something.”

A majority of commissioners, those for and against the project, strongly urged Ginsburg to follow-through on his pledge to pursue habitat restoration on the adjacent site. But with concerns expressed about tying the two projects together — which raised both legal and local control issues — the motion to do so failed on a 5-6 vote.

With Ginsburg’s pledge and the writing on the wall, the commission then voted unanimously to approve the project, clearing the way for the city to break ground as early as this summer.

Aiming for the top of the food chain

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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6

The issue of labeling for genetically engineered foods gained fresh momentum last week, when Sen. Barbara Boxer announced she’d be pushing for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to require this consumer notification on a national level.

It’s sure to be an uphill battle for the organic food movement, which suffered a loss on this issue at the California ballot last year, but a new book calling for a mass restructuring of the nation’s food system might help provide ammunition for proponents of GE food labeling.

Wenonah Hauter’s Foodoply: The Battle over the Future of Food and Farming in America traces decades of little-known history documenting small farmers’ resistance to agricultural consolidation, followed by national and international policy agreements that gave rise to the commercialized agribusiness model that dominates America’s food system today. Hauter, executive director of Food and Water Watch, grew up on a farm.

“It gave me life experience about how difficult farm work is, and how hard farmers have to work, and how under-valued they are in our society,” the author said of that experience in a recent interview with the Bay Guardian. “One of the reasons I wrote Foodopoly was to get at this issue … It’s easy to demonize farmers rather than the systemic causes of the traditional food system.”

Her book is nothing short of a call to arms to take back corporate control of a food system that short-changes small farmers and leaves consumers with limited, unhealthy options.

“If we want to change our food system, we have to reclaim our democracy,” she says. “So many people just think we’re going to create an alternative system, without really doing the political work to address fundamental issues, like the consolidation that allows some companies to have so much power over our political system.” It won’t be achieved with certified sustainable agriculture programs or farmers markets alone, she says – but rather through confronting agribusiness’ influence in the halls of government.

Her meticulously researched work names names, providing detailed lists of the industry’s most influential processers, grocers, and junk-food manufacturers along with the ubiquitous brands they produce. It also sheds light on the ills of factory farming and genetically engineered foods.

“The top 20 processing companies and the grocery industry have benefited from figuring out that fat, sugar and salt actually addicts people to junk food, and is making people sick and overweight,” Hauter told us. “Children see just under 5,000 junk food ads a year. We know that children begin to identify with brands at about the age of two. Lots of junk food is placed at eye level for young children, because they pull on their parents’ shirttails, whining for the junk food.”

While organics may pose a healthier alternative, meanwhile, Hauter’s chapter on the “paradox” of attractively packaged, premium-priced organic food is rather disheartening. “Fourteen of the 20 largest food processing companies actually control many of the organic brands, and organics today are viewed as a rich market, where people can be charged,” Hauter notes, going straight to the heart of the matter. “It’s a lot different from the vision I think many people had in the early 1970s, when the organics movement began.”

Foodopoly also devotes considerable attention to the political influence of the biotech sector. “I think that the biotech industry has a lot of political power,” she told the Guardian, and then revealed that assertion to be a profound understatement: “Over a 10-year period, they spent $572 million on lobbying and campaign contributions, they hired 13 former members of Congress during this period, they hired 300 former staff from the White House … and they have about 100 lobby shops in Washington. … With Prop 37, [of the] the approximately $45 million put towards ads, about $8 million was Monsanto’s.”

This kind of influence doesn’t just carry troubling implications for the democratic process, but makes it less likely that looming questions around the long-term health effects of genetically engineered foods will ever be sufficiently answered.

“With all the new technology coming on – nanotechnology, cloning, genetic engineering – we really need to take a look again at our regulatory system,” Hauter insists. “There’s a lot of new evidence coming out on the problems with these new technologies. There was a review of hundreds of scientific studies around glyphosate, which is a major ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. It shows that there are cellular effects within the human body, and that these could very well be working together with other variables to trigger health problems. We’re talking about everything from gastrointestinal problems, to diabetes, autism, obesity, Alzheimer’s, and a number of different problems.”

Despite these disturbing findings, there’s been a distinct lack of long-term study or precautionary restraints imposed by lawmakers, Hauter says.

“There are a lot of other reasons that we should be concerned about genetic engineering, from the cost and control of foods, to the overuse of this dangerous herbicide, glyphosate, and the fact that it’s creating super weeds,” she says. Further complicating matters, “New pesticides are being developed to address the problems that these co-branded herbicides have caused. That’s the problem with our society,” Hauter adds. “We never look at the unintended consequences.”

Girls-only hackerspace teaches critical thinking through crafts

Andrew Lam
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7
Girls-only hackerspace teaches critical thinking through crafts

Get out your glue sticks girls, it’s time to get crafty. Turns out, all that glitters really is gold for summer campers who will wind up at the girls-only craft camps that Curious Jane is hosting in Marin County this summer. Young women aged six to 12 will glean a wealth of knowledge from DIY-centered classes aimed towards not just inspiring creativity, but cultivating critical thinking skills through projects — costume design, storyboarding graphic novels, toy design, and more.

The Brooklyn-based company, which employs all female camp counselors, is bringing its contribution to girl power to the West Coast for the first time this summer. Curious Jane founder and mother of two Samantha Razook Murphy wanted to provide her daughters with a space to create collaboratively in an high-energy, girl-powered environment — so she made it herself. 

Curious Jane is celebrating its cross-coastal arrival with what it’s calling a hackerspace for girls on May 19, followed by a three-week summer camp session at the San Domenico School in San Anselmo starting July 29. That camp will include the workshops, and a place for girls to engage in hands-on, project based classes exploring basics in design, building, and science, fostering a sense of individual empowerment in a group setting.

The camp’s marketing director Melisa Coburn was eager to hype the arts ‘n’ crafts-a-rama. “My daughter attends the programs and I can tell you from the “mom’ perspective that girls LOVE the programs”, she tells the Guardian in email.

Keep your daughters off the couch this summer — this camp looks great, and the May 19 event would be a great chance to give it a test run. 

Make It/Take It hackerspace for girls

May 19, 12:30pm – 4pm, $20 or $15 if you bring a friend

Marin Art and Garden Center

30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Ross

www.curiousjanecamp.com

The zero-sum future

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The zero-sum future

tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s going to take longer, sometimes, to get from here to there. Acres of urban space are going to have to change form. Grocery shopping will be different. Streets may have to be torn up and redirected. The rules for the development of as many as 100,000 new housing units in San Francisco will have to be rewritten.

That’s the only way this city — and cities across the country — can meet the climate-change goals that just about everyone agrees are necessary.

Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University, lays out that case in a new book. He argues, persuasively, that the era of easy “automobility” — a time when people could just assume the ease and convenience of owning and using a private car as a primary means of transportation — has come to an end.

Henderson isn’t suggesting that all private vehicles go away; there are places where cars and trucks will remain the only way to move people and supplies around. But in the urban and suburban areas where most Americans live, the automobile as the default option simply has to end.

“In 10 years, there will be less automobility,” he told me in a recent interview. “It’s a simple limit to resources.”

And the sooner San Francisco starts preparing for that, the better off the city and its residents are going to be.

 

BIG NUMBERS

Henderson’s book, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco, focuses largely on the Bay Area. But as he points out, the lessons apply all over. The numbers are daunting: Cities, Henderson reports, “use 75 percent of the world’s energy and produce 78 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.” He adds: “Transportation is the fastest growing sector of energy use and [greenhouse gas] emissions, and this fact is in great measure owing to the expansion of automobility.”

And the United States is the biggest culprit. This nation has 4 percent of the world’s population — and 21 percent of the world’s cars.

To turn around the devastating impacts of climate change, “America will need not only to provide leadership, but also to decrease its appetite for excessive, on demand, high-speed automobility.”

And buying a lot of Priuses, or even electric cars, isn’t going to do the job. “Americans must undertake a considerable restructuring of how they organize cities, and that must include the rethinking of mobility and the allocation of street space.”

The Bay Area is about to enter into a long-term planning cycle that, according to groups like the Association of Bay Area Governments, will involve increased urban density. ABAG, according to its most recent projections, would like to see some 90,000 new housing units in San Francisco.

That’s got plenty of problems — particularly the likelihood of the displacement of existing residents. Henderson agrees that more density is going to be needed in the Bay Area — but he’s surprisingly bullish on the much-denigrated suburb.

“It’s actually quick and easy to retrofit suburbia,” he told me.

And like so much of what he discusses in his book, the primary solution is the old, venerable, human-powered contraption known as the bicycle.

“Existing communities like Walnut Creek are eminently bikeable,” Henderson told me. He suggests expanding development in three-mile circles around BART stations — after getting rid of all the parking. “We could easily get 20 to 30 percent of the trips by bike,” he noted.

In fact, he argues, it’s easier to put bicycle lanes and paths in the suburbs than in San Francisco. The streets tend to be wider, there’s more room in general — and it’s fairly simple to provide barriers from cars that make biking safe for everyone.

In fact, a lot of European cities are less dense than San Francisco — and have far fewer drivers. Even in California, the city of Davis is famous for its bike culture; “In Davis,” Henderson said, “There are all these children riding their bikes to school.”

 

ACRES OF PARKING

One of the most profound changes San Francisco is going to have to make involves coming to terms with the immense amount of scarce space that’s devoted to cars. Parking spaces may not seem that big — but when you combine the 300-square-foot typical space (larger than many bedrooms and offices) with the space needed for getting into and out of that space, it adds up.

“Parking for 130 cars amounts to about an acre, and the aggregate of all non-residential off-street parking is estimated to be equal in area to several New England states.”

Cars need more than a home parking space — they need someplace to park when they’re used. So in a city like San Francisco that has more than 350,000 cars, a vast amount of urban land must be devoted to parking. In fact, Henderson estimates that parking space in San Francisco amounts to about 79.4 million square feet — or about 79,400 two-bedroom apartments. Off-street parking alone takes up space that could house 67,000 two-bedroom units.

And it’s hella expensive. Building parking adds as much as 20 percent to the cost of a housing unit. He cites studies showing that 20 percent more San Franciscans could afford to buy a condo unit if it didn’t include parking.

But the city still mandates off-street parking for all new residential construction — and while activists have managed to get the amount reduced from a minimum of one parking space per unit to a maximum of around eight spaces per 10 units, that’s still a whole lot of parking.

And if San Francisco is expected to absorb 90,000 more housing units, under current rules that’s 72,000 more cars — which means a demand for 72,000 more parking spaces near offices, shopping districts, and parks. Crazy.

So how do you get Americans, even San Franciscans, to give up what Henderson calls the “sense of entitlement that we can speed across town in a private car?” Some of it requires the classic planning measures of discouraging or banning parking in new development (AT&T Park works quite well as a facility that is primarily accessed by foot and transit). Some of it means putting in the resources to improve public transit.

And a lot of it involves shifting transportation modes to walking and bicycles.

San Francisco has had significant success increasing the use of bikes in the past few years. But there are limits to what you can do by tinkering around the edges, with a few more bike lanes here and there.

There are, for example, the hills. And there’s grocery shopping for a family. Those things need bigger shifts in the use of urban space.

San Francisco’s street grid, for example, sends travelers straight up some nearly impossible inclines. Young, healthy people in great physical condition can ride bikes up those hills, but children and older people simply can’t.

Henderson suggests that the city could install lifts in some areas, but there’s another, more radical (but less energy-intensive) solution: Reroute the grid.

If city streets wound around the sides of hills, instead of heading straight up, walking and biking would be far easier. That would involve major changes, particularly since there’s housing in the way of any real route changes — but in the long term, that sort of concept should, at least, be on the table.

Bikes with cargo trailers make a lot of sense for shopping, Henderson told me — and once big supermarkets get rid of all that parking, the price of food will come down.

 

THE POLITICS OF NEO-LIBERALS

The biggest challenge, though — and the heart of Henderson’s book — is political. Transportation, he argues, is inherently ideological: “It matters how you get from here to there.” And he notes that progressives, who are willing to think about social responsibility, not just individual rights, see the choices very differently than the neo-liberals, who in this city are often called “moderates.” If the neo-libs have their way, he says, the changes will be too little, too late, and mostly ineffective.

Because Americans are facing a series of choices — and there are no solutions that preserve the old way of life without sacrificing the future of the planet. It’s entirely a zero-sum game: We can slow global climate change, or we can keep driving cars. (Oh, and electric cars — which still require large amounts of power, mostly from fossil-fuel plants — aren’t going to solve the problem any time soon.)

We can shift to bicycles and transit as our primary ways to get around, or we can leave our kids an ecological disaster of unprecedented scope. We can overhaul the entire way we think about urban planning — to make streets friendly to bikes and buses — or we can go down a deadly path of no return.

We can accept the fact that moving around cities may be a little slower, particularly while we adapt. Or we can join the climate-change deniers. “There are a lot of neo-liberals out there who say we can’t start controlling automobility until we have a gold-plated transit system,” Henderson told me. “But this is not a chicken and egg problem. First you have to create the urban space. Then you can build a better system.”

Guest opinion: LGBT supporters of Bradley Manning

Zelda Bronstein
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Guest opinion: LGBT supporters of Bradley Manning

Editor’s note: At least 24 LGBT community leaders and activists have signed on to the following statement in support of Bradley Manning as a Pride grand marshal.

Recently, it was announced that PFC Bradley Manning would be a grand marshal of the 2013 San Francisco Pride Celebration. We felt this decision was a bold and uplifting choice, bestowing a great honor on a young whistleblower being persecuted for following his conscience.

Much to our disappointment, two days later SF Pride board president Lisa Williams issued a separate announcement that the SF Pride board would not be honoring PFC Manning as a grand marshal after all.  It appears the SF pride board’s reversal was affected by criticism from a recently formed gay military rights group. 

We want the world to know that the SF Pride board’s decision is not reflective of the LGBTQ community as a whole, and that many of us proudly celebrate PFC Manning as a member of our community.  Unfortunately, the statements by Williams, and the group which originally advocated against PFC Manning as grand marshal, continue to perpetuate certain factual inaccuracies with regards to the military prosecution against him. 

The first inaccuracy would be that PFC Manning did not advocate for gay rights.  In fact, while serving in the military, PFC Manning experienced harassment and physical assault because of his perceived sexuality.  He responded by marching against Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the DC pride parade, where he spoke to reporters about his position, in addition to attending a fundraiser with Gavin Newsom and the Stonewall Democrats so he could discuss the issue of homophobia in the military.  He told a friend in February of 2009 that his experience living under DADT and experiencing the oppression that entailed helped increase his interest in politics more generally.

LGBTQ activists fought hard for years to win the right to live free from the fear that we could be targeted with violence deemed acceptable to society at large, simply for being who we are.  We members of the LGBTQ community would like to stand in solidarity with others around the world who still must live in fear of violence and oppression, simply for being born into a particular group.

Contrary to SF Pride Board president Lisa Williams’s claim, no evidence has been presented that PFC Manning’s actions endangered fellow soldiers or civilians. In fact, the military prosecution has successfully argued in court that it isn’t required to provide such evidence, and former State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley continues to insist that the “Aiding the enemy” charge is unwarranted. 

In a February 28, 2013, court statement, PFC Manning detailed the due diligence he performed prior to releasing materials to ensure this lack of harm, in addition to explaining,

“I believed the detailed analysis of the [Iraq and Afghanistan war log] data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the affected environment every day.”

The truth is that President Bush and VP Cheney’s aggressive wars in the Middle East endangered far more LGBTQ service members and civilians than any Army whistle-blower.  Unlike PFC Manning, however, they have never served prison time, and likely never will.

Millions of people around the world support Bradley for the personal risk he took in sharing realities of complicated U.S. foreign conflicts with the American people.  He is the only gay U.S. serviceperson to be nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.  In joining the Army, soldiers take an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution, and we believe that by his actions PFC Manning strengthened our democracy, and fulfilled that oath to a greater degree than most enlisted.

We are proud to embrace PFC Bradley Manning as one of our icons, and intend to march for him in pride contingents across the country this year, as we have in years past.  We think Bradley Manning sets a high standard for what a U.S. serviceperson, gay or straight, can be.

Lt. Dan Choi, 2009 SF Pride Celebrity Grand Marshal, anti-DADT activist
Joey Cain, 2008 SF Pride Community Grand Marshal, former Board Member and President of SF Pride
Gary Virginia, 2012 SF Pride Community Grand Marshal
John Caldera, Commander, Bob Basker Post 315ED, American Legion, SF Veterans For Peace
Peter Tatchell, Peter Tatchell Foundation
Glenn Greenwald, award-winning journalist
Leslie Feinberg, transgender author and activist
Minnie Bruce Pratt, award-winning poet, activist and educator
Dossie Easton, Therapist and Author
Susie Bright, public speaker, educator, writer
Andy Thayer, co-founder, Gay Liberation Network
Becca von Behren, Staff Attorney, Swords to Plowshares Veterans Service Organization
Stephen Eagle Funk, Artistic Director, Veteran Artists
Liz Henry, poet and activist
Lori Selke, author and activist
Rainey Reitman, Steering Committee, Bradley Manning Support Network
Sergei Kostin, Codepink Art Director
Kit Yan, Queer & Trans Asian American Poet
Lori Hurlebaus, Civilian-Soldier Alliance, SF Chapter; Co-founder, Courage to Resist
Evan Greer, radical queer riotfolk musician
Pat Humphries, Emma’s Revolution
Sandy Opatow, Emma’s Revolution
Pamela Means, award-winning OUT musician
Malachy Kilbride, Coordinating Committee, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
Oliver Shykles, Queer Friends of Bradley Manning
Gabriel Conaway, equality activist, Steering Committee of SAME
Adele Carpenter, Civilian-Soldier Alliance, SF Chapter

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