Government

The dawn of Earth Day

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The dawn of Earth Day

tredmond@sfbg.com

GREEN ISSUE The heavens welcomed Earth Day to America. All over the country, April 22, 1970 dawned clear and sunny; mild weather made it even easier to bring people into the streets. The Capitol Mall was packed, and so many members of Congress were making speeches and appearing at events that both houses adjourned for the day.

Mayors, governors, aldermen, village trustees, elementary school kids, Boy Scout troops, labor unions, college radicals, and even business groups participated. In fact, the only organization in the nation that actively opposed Earth Day was the Daughters of the American Revolution, which warned ominously that "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them."

By nightfall, more than 20 million people had participated in the First National Environmental Teach-In, as the event was formally known. It established the environmental movement in the United States and helped spur the passage of numerous laws and the creation of hundreds of activist groups.

It was, by almost all accounts, a phenomenal success, an event that dwarfed the largest single-day civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the era — and the person who ran it, 25-year-old Denis Hayes, wasn’t happy.

His concern with the nascent movement back then says a lot about where environmentalism is 40 years later.

Gaylord Nelson, a mild-mannered U.S. senator from Wisconsin, came up with the idea of Earth Day on a flight from Santa Barbara to Oakland. Nelson was the kind of guy who doesn’t get elected to the Senate these days — a polite, friendly small-town guy who was anything but a firebrand.

A balding, 52-year-old World War II veteran who survived Okinawa, Nelson was a Democrat and generally a liberal vote, but he got along fine with the die-hard conservatives. He kept a fairly low profile, and did a lot of his work behind the scenes.

But long before it was popular, Nelson was an ardent environmentalist — and he was always looking for ways to bring the future of the planet into the popular consciousness.

In August 1969, Nelson was on a West Coast speaking tour — and one of his mandatory stops was the small coastal city that seven months earlier had become ground zero for the environmental movement. Indeed, a lot of historians say that Earth Day 1970 was the coming out party for modern environmentalism — but the spark that made it possible, the event that turned observers into activists, took place Jan. 28, 1969 in Santa Barbara.

About 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, a photographer from the Santa Barbara News Press got the word that something had gone wrong on one of the Union Oil drilling platforms in the channel just offshore. The platforms were fairly new — the federal government had sold drilling rights in the area in February 1968 for $603 million, and Union was in the process of drilling its fourth offshore well. The company had convinced the U.S. Geological Survey to relax the safety rules for underwater rigs, saying there was no threat of a spill.

But shortly after the drill bit struck oil 3,478 feet beneath the surface, the rig hit a snag — and when the workers got the equipment free, oil began exploding out. Within two weeks, more than 3 million gallons of California crude was on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, and a lot of it had washed ashore, fouling the pristine beaches of Santa Barbara and fueling an angry popular backlash nationwide.

Nelson received an overwhelming reception at his Santa Barbara talk — and horrified as he was by the spill, he was glad that an environmental concern was suddenly big news. But, as he told me in an interview years ago, he still wasn’t sure what the next steps ought to be — until, bored on an hour-long flight to his next speech in Berkeley, he picked up a copy of Ramparts magazine.

The radical left publication, once described as having "a bomb in every issue," wasn’t Nelson’s typical reading material. But this particular issue was devoted to a new trend on college campuses — day-long "teach-ins" on the Vietnam War.

Huh, Nelson thought. A teach-in. That’s an intriguing idea.

Hayes was a student in the prestigious joint program in law and public policy at Harvard. He’d been something of a campus activist, protesting against the war, but hadn’t paid much attention to environmental issues. He needed a public-interest job of some sort for a class project, though, so when he read a newspaper article about the senator who was planning a national environmental teach-in, he called and offered to organize the effort in Boston. Nelson invited him to Washington, was impressed by his Harvard education and enthusiasm, and hired him to run the whole show.

The senator was very clear from the start: the National Environmental Teach-In would not be a radical Vietnam-style protest. The event would be nonpartisan, polite, and entirely legal. Hayes and his staffers chafed a bit at the rules (and the two Senate staffers Nelson placed in the Earth Day office to keep an eye on things), and they ultimately set up a separate nonprofit called the Environmental Action Foundation to take more aggressive stands on issues.

Meanwhile, Hayes did the job he was hired to do — and did it well. Everywhere he turned, from small towns to big corporations, people wanted to plug in, to be a part of the first Earth Day. Many wanted to do nice, noncontroversial projects: In Knoxville, Tenn., students decided to scour rivers and streams for trash to see if they could each clean up the five pounds of garbage the average American threw away each day. In dozens of communities, people organized tree-plantings. In New York, Mayor John Lindsay led a parade down Fifth Avenue.

A few of the actions were more dramatic. A few protesters smashed a car to bits, and in Boston, 200 people carried coffins into Logan International Airport in a symbolic "die-in" against airport expansion. In Omaha, Neb., so many college students walked around in gas masks that the stores ran out. But it was, Hayes realized, an awful lot of talk and not a lot of action. The participants were also overwhelmingly white and middle-class.

Hayes wasn’t the only one feeling that way. In New York, author Kurt Vonnegut, speaking from a platform decorated with a giant paper sunflower, added a note of cynicism.

"Here we are again, the peaceful demonstrators," he said, "mostly young and mostly white. Good luck to us, for I don’t know what sporting event the president [Richard Nixon] may be watching at the moment. He should help us make a fit place for human beings to live. Will he do it? No. So the war will go on. Meanwhile, we go up and down Fifth Avenue, picking up trash."

Hayes finally broke with the politics of his mentor early on Earth Day morning when it was too late to fire him. The next day, the National Environmental Teach-In office would close and the organization would shut down. From that moment on, he could say what he liked and not worry who he offended.

"I suspect," he told a crowd gathered at the Capitol Mall, "that the politicians and businessmen who are jumping on the environmental bandwagon don’t have the slightest idea what they are getting into. They are talking about filters on smokestacks while we are challenging corporate irresponsibility. They are bursting with pride about plans for totally inadequate municipal sewage plants. We are challenging the ethics of a society that, with only 6 percent of the world’s population, accounts for more than half the world’s annual consumption of raw materials.

"We are building a movement," he continued, "a movement with a broad base, a movement that transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a movement that values people more than technology and political ideologies, people more than profit.

"It will be a difficult fight. Earth Day is the beginning."

I first met Hayes in 1990, near the office in Palo Alto where he was planning the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. He’d continued his environmental work inside and outside government, at one point running the National Energy Laboratory under President Jimmy Carter. Earth Day 20 was shaping up as a gigantic event, one that would ultimately involve 200 million people around the globe. Earth Day was becoming the largest secular holiday on the planet.

Hayes was excited about the event, which he was running this time without the moderating influence of a U.S. senator. And he was aiming for a much more activist message — in fact, at that point, he was pretty clear that the U.S. environmental movement was running out of time.

"Twenty years ago, Earth Day was a protest movement," he told a crowd of more than 300,000 in Washington, D.C. "We no longer have time to protest. The most important problems facing our generation will be won or lost in the next 10 years. We cannot protest our losses. We have to win."

And now another 20 years have passed — and by many accounts, we are not winning. Climate change continues, and even accelerates; an attempt at a global accord just failed; and Congress can’t even pass a mild, watered-down bill to limit carbon emissions.

And Hayes, now president of the Bullitt Foundation, a sustainability organization in Seattle, thinks the movement has a serious problem. "Earth Day has succeeded in being the ultimate big tent," he told me by phone recently. "To some rather great extent, is had some measure of success."

But he noted that "in American politics these days, it’s not the breadth of support, it’s the intensity that matters. Environmentalists tend to be broadly progressive people who care about war and the economy and health care. They aren’t single-issue voters. And somehow, the political intensity is missing."

Hayes isn’t advocating that environmentalists forget about everything else and ignore all the other issues — or that the movement lose its broad-based appeal — but he said it’s time to bring political leaders and policies under much, much sharper scrutiny and to "stop accepting a voting record of 80 percent."

It’s hard today to be bipartisan, and compromise is unacceptable, Hayes told me. "I was probably right [in 1990]," he said. "If what you’re aspiring to do is stop the greenhouse gases before they do significant damage to the environment, it’s too late." At this point, he said, it’s all about keeping the damage from turning into a widespread ecological disaster.

"I would like to see Earth Day 50 be a celebration," he said. "I would like to see by then a real price on carbon, nuclear power not proliferating, and a profound, stable investment in cost-effective, distributed renewable energy." But for that to happen, "we need to have a very intense core of environmental voters who realize that these threats to life on the planet are more important than a lot of other things."

Tim Redmond is the author, with Marc Mowrey, of Not In Our Back Yard: The People and Events that Shaped America’s Modern Environmental Movement (William Morrow, 1993) which can still be found in the remainder bins of a few used book stores.

The Chamber of Commerce scorecard: You gotta be kidding

Zelda Bronstein
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The Chamber of Commerce scorecard: You gotta be kidding

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce has released a voting scorecard on the supervisors — and it’s a bad joke. The Chamber says the scorecard shows who are top opponents of business in the city, the ones who don’t support “job creation and government efficiency” — two poll-tested buzzwords the Chamber will try to use in supervisorial campaigns this fall.


But there are only ten votes on the scorecard — and they don’t even remotely represents the most important jobs, business or economic issues the board has addressed in the past year.


Seriously: Does anyone think that naming rights for Candlestick Park has had a huge impact on the ability of businesses to create jobs in the city? How about a resolution supporting a proposed Contemporary Art Museum?


And since small, locally owned independent businesses are the single largest private-sector job generators, how does the Recurrent Energy deal — a giveaway to a big power company — help create jobs?


Of course, that’s not what this is about. The scorecard issues were carefully chosen to make the progressives look bad. And, as always, the Chamber has completely ignored the fact that the largest employers in San Francisco are public-sector agencies, and that cutting government programs and blocking new sources of revenue are the real “job killers.”


We’re putting together our own scorecard, measuring a wider range of votes on key issues in the past year. What were the most important? What really mattered to San Franciscans? The comment lines are open.

Officials accused of destroying public documents on Palin visit

Sasha Cuttler
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The lesson of political scandals from Watergate through Monicagate is that the cover-up is often worse than the original crime, and that could once again prove true with the simmering conflict over large speaking fees that CSU-Stanislaus has agreed to pay Sarah Palin, particularly given new revelations that university officials might have destroyed public documents that had been requested by Sen. Leland Yee.

At a press conference convened by Yee this morning, two university students told the story of being informed by fellow students that administrators were shredding and disposing of documents in an administration building on Friday, which was particularly strange because the campus was shut down for a state-mandated furlough day.

So a group of five students started digging into a dumpster adjacent to the building that was being used that day and gathered all the documents in there, some shredded, some intact. And among those documents, they say, were pages four through nine of a contract with the Washington Speakers Bureau, which represents Palin. And although they don’t mention her by name, they reference “air travel for two between Anchorage, Alaska and event city.” (Read the document here) Palin — the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate who has become a darling of the Tea Baggers and other right-wing populists — is scheduled to speak at a $500 per plate fundraising on June 25.

That was precisely the kind of document that Yee and attorney Terry Francke of Californians Aware had recently requested of the university through a California Public Records Act request, although their response from the university last week was that it had no documents responsive to their request.

So Yee asked the Attorney General’s Office to look into the matter, which could be what triggered the document destruction session, with officials fearing they might get caught in a lie. The CPRA allows for civil penalties for refusing to disclose public documents, while the Penal Code indicates willful destruction of public records may be considered a criminal act.

“This is an issue of accountability and transparency that is fundamental to our democracy,” Yee told reporters, calling the actions “unconscionable” and “reprehensible.”

Yee has been a strong critic of secrecy in the CSU and UC systems, and has unsuccessfully tried to pass laws requiring college foundations to be bound by open government and public records laws. That’s an issue in this case considering it’s the CSU-Stanislaus foundation that is hosting Palin’s visit, although Yee has pointed out that the university president and other top officials control the foundation, which uses campus facilities and resources.

“What we’re finding is with more and more of these foundations, there’s unethical and illegal stuff going on and nobody knows what’s going on,” Yee said, citing as an example the indictment of former City College of San Francisco chancellor Phillip Day for illegally laundering public funds for private use through the foundation.

But if the students’ story holds up, it now appears that the university itself was in possession of the documents that Yee requested, the first evidence that it wasn’t just the foundation that was involved with the Palin visit. 

Francke told reporters that he plans to file a lawsuit over the matter this week, depending on what the AG’s Office does. “Our purpose is to get a court decision that regards these documents as university documents and not just foundation documents,” he said.

Calls to the CSU-Stanislaus and the AG’s Office have not yet been returned, so check back for more details later.  

Make PG&E get two-thirds for its initiative

Zelda Bronstein
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Make PG&E get two-thirds for its initiative

Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Morain just joined the chorus of voices against Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Prop 16 with a piece that reminds us how PG&E just nine years ago last week went into bankruptcy. It’s particularly interesting to read the comments; the Bee publishes in a town that’s had public power for decades. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District offers lower rates and better service than PG&E — and while the public in general, and people who comment on newspaper blogs in particular, tend to be cynical about government these days, the folks in Sacramento seem quite pleased with their public utility.


Here’s one comment:


I used to live in a PG&E supplied house and my electric bills were unbelievably high… Now I live in SMUD house and my electric bills are sooo low. So I would definitely encourage people to vote NO. PG&E wants to monopolize the market knowing that a 2/3 vote is impossible. This is a case where a nonprofit efficient quasi govt. entity would be for our best interests. A for profit corporation like PG&E would suck us dry…

And another:

Why is this initiative known as the “Taxpayers Right to Vote” measure when it obviously should be names the “PG&E Profit and Monopoly Protection Act”? It’s the same disingenuous campaign that prevented Yolo County residents from enjoying the benefits of SMUD electricity. PG&E, along with their two-faced spokesman, the supposedly “honorable” Stan Atkinson, sold Yolo Co. down the river with a barrage of distorted facts, misinformation and scare tactics. When are voters going to stop approving these special interest propositions that are ruining this state? Quit relying on 30 second sound bites to make your decisions and see who’s really behind these initiatives and what their motives are. In fact, vote NO on all propositions unless they really have some merit. Prop 16 does not.

But here’s my favorite:


Here is an idea for a new initiative. I propose an initiative that would apply to all subsequent initiatives. For any initiative that seeks a 2/3 voter approval, or 2/3 legislature approval, that initiative itself would have to be passed by a 2/3 majority rather than by a simple majority. What is good for the goose ought to be good for the gander.

That makes a whole lot of sense. If PG&E thinks a two-thirds vote is fair, and the company wants to spend more than $30 million forcing that standard on all of us, then PG&E should have to get two-thirds of the vote for its own self-serving initiatives.

SF smokers kicked to curb, by the cars

Sasha Cuttler
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SF smokers kicked to curb, by the cars

By Adam Lesser

San Francisco smokers will be hit with the latest in a long lines of restrictions starting April 25, when they’ll be kicked to the curb, out by the cars whose tailpipes are at least as dangerous as secondhand smoke.

But drivers haven’t been as easy to demonize as smokers. Light up within 15 feet of a building entrance and you’ll be breaking the law. Other spots where smokers will be barred include outdoor areas at cafes and restaurants, farmer’s markets, and charity bingo games (grandma can take her wheelchair to the curb if she needs a puff).

But pot smokers need not fear. The new law maintains a provision allowing you to light up in licensed dispensaries. Smoking patios at bars are still okay, though smokers probably shouldn’t get too comfortable.

            The San Francisco Department of Public Health frames the smoking debate in terms of the impacts of secondhand smoke. And there’s some good data there. People tend to think lungs and cancer when they think smoking, but the real problem with second hand smoke is heart attacks.  A 2005 estimate from the California EPA put the number of heart attack deaths from second hand smoke at 3,600 annually. Second hand smoke contains a host of toxins from benzene to arsenic.

But it’s hard to know the incremental benefits of moving smokers to the curb. Almost all of the positive data on public health improvements from smoking bans has come from measures the city has already taken. But Mele Lau-Smith of DPH gave me a preview of the potential next battleground: third hand smoke.

“The new science that’s coming out on third hand smoke is interesting. Third hand smoke is everything that clings to furniture and hair and takes longer to dissipate. They’re smaller particles that get deeper into the lungs,” she says. The term was coined last year in the journal Pediatrics and a 2010 paper showed that nicotine reacts with nitrous acid to form carcinogenic molecules that hang around long after a smoker has left the room.

            So the news gets worse for smokers, and the anti-smoking crusade to completely eliminate smoking gains an inch. The smoking prevalence rate in California is among the lowest in the country at 14.3 percent. Most states are in the 18-20 percent range.

            And while it’s all well and good, one wonders if there are other problems in the air besides second hand smoke. Choosing to live in an urban area like San Francisco lowers one’s life expectancy by two years, and one of the major reasons for that is auto exhaust and illnesses related to poorer air quality.

            Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, believes the government should keep regulating until smoking is eliminated. But when comparing deaths from automobile emissions versus second hand smoke, he added, “If you look at the mass of the automobile exhaust, then you’re looking at a much bigger figure than second hand smoke. Vehicle exhaust is still way under regulated for addressing health concerns.” Over 2 million people die globally from air pollution each year. About 500,000 die from second hand smoke.

            In the end, Jacobson says it comes down to combustion. When you start burning, you release toxins that eventually hurt or kill people. It doesn’t matter if it’s diesel fuel, gasoline, or tobacco. Combustible products harm public health, and in the case of oil, the environment.

Smokers have proven ideal targets for taxes. San Francisco smokers pay $2.08 in taxes on every pack of cigarettes. When you’re in the minority and the government needs cash, it’s a political no brainer. A 20 cent cigarette tax was tacked on by the Board of Supervisors last October, done under the argument that the money was needed to clean up cigarette butts. Recent proposals to add a local 10 cent tax on gasoline in order to help various cash strapped public transit agencies haven’t found much traction.

So smokers, enjoy the summer. It’ll be the last summer you can light up after an outdoor sunset meal. The smoking ban at restaurants won’t be implemented for another six months.

But come November you’ll be enjoying that smoke out by the curb, where you’ll also be treated to some car exhaust. But, hey, at this point you’re probably all in anyways.

No time for a trade war

David Talbot
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No time for a trade war

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news series. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics and has a recently published book, Freefall .

NEW YORK – The battle with the United States over China’s exchange rate continues. When the Great Recession began, many worried that protectionism would rear its ugly head. True, G-20 leaders promised that they had learned the lessons of the Great Depression. But 17 of the G-20’s members introduced protectionist measures just months after the first summit in November 2008. The “Buy America” provision in the United States’ stimulus bill got the most attention. Still, protectionism was contained, partly due to the World Trade Organization.

Continuing economic weakness in the advanced economies risks a new round of protectionism. In America, for example, more than one in six workers who would like a full-time job can’t find one.

These were among the risks associated with America’s insufficient stimulus, which was designed to placate members of Congress as much as it was to revive the economy. With soaring deficits, a second stimulus appears unlikely, and, with monetary policy at its limits and inflation hawks being barely kept at bay, there is little hope of help from that department, either. So protectionism is taking pride of place.

The US Treasury has been charged by Congress to assess whether China is a “currency manipulator.” Although President Obama has now delayed for some months when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner must issue his report, the very concept of “currency manipulation” itself is flawed: all governments take actions that directly or indirectly affect the exchange rate. Reckless budget deficits can lead to a weak currency; so can low interest rates. Until the recent crisis in Greece, the US benefited from a weak dollar/euro exchange rate. Should Europeans have accused the US of “manipulating” the exchange rate to expand exports at its expense?

Although US politicians focus on the bilateral trade deficit with China – which is persistently large – what matters is the multilateral balance. When demands for China to adjust its exchange rate began during George W. Bush’s administration, its multilateral trade surplus was small. More recently, however, China has been running a large multilateral surplus as well.

Saudi Arabia also has a bilateral and multilateral surplus: Americans want its oil, and Saudis want fewer US products. Even in absolute value, Saudi Arabia’s multilateral merchandise surplus of $212 billion in 2008 dwarfs China’s $175 billion surplus; as a percentage of GDP, Saudi Arabia’s current-account surplus, at 11.5% of GDP, is more than twice that of China. Saudi Arabia’s surplus would be far higher were it not for US armaments exports.

In a global economy with deficient aggregate demand, current-account surpluses are a problem. But China’s current-account surplus is actually less than the combined figure for Japan and Germany; as a percentage of GDP, it is 5%, compared to Germany’s 5.2%.

Many factors other than exchange rates affect a country’s trade balance.  A key determinant is national savings. America’s multilateral trade deficit will not be significantly narrowed until America saves significantly more; while the Great Recession induced higher household savings (which were near zero), this has been more than offset by the increased government deficits.

Adjustment in the exchange rate is likely simply to shift to where America buys its textiles and apparel – from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, rather than China. Meanwhile, an increase in the exchange rate is likely to contribute to inequality in China, as its poor farmers face increasing competition from America’s highly subsidized farms. This is the real trade distortion in the global economy – one in which millions of poor people in developing countries are hurt as America helps some of the world’s richest farmers.

During the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, the renminbi’s stability played an important role in stabilizing the region. So, too, the renminbi’s stability has helped the region maintain strong growth, from which the world as a whole benefits.

Some argue that China needs to adjust its exchange rate to prevent inflation or bubbles. Inflation remains contained, but, more to the point, China’s government has an arsenal of other weapons (from taxes on capital inflows and capital-gains taxes to a variety of monetary instruments) at its disposal.

But exchange rates do affect the pattern of growth, and it is in China’s own interest to restructure and move away from high dependence on export-led growth. China recognizes that its currency needs to appreciate over the long run, and politicizing the speed at which it does so has been counterproductive. (Since it began revaluing its exchange rate in July 2005, the adjustment has been half or more of what most experts think is required.) Moreover, starting a bilateral confrontation is unwise.

Since China’s multilateral surplus is the economic issue and many countries are concerned about it, the US should seek a multilateral, rules-based solution. Imposing unilateral duties after unilaterally labeling China a “currency manipulator” would undermine the multilateral system, with little payoff. China might respond by imposing duties on those American products effectively directly or indirectly subsidized by America’s massive bailouts of its banks and car companies.

No one wins from a trade war. So America should be wary of igniting one in the midst of an uncertain global recovery – as popular as it might be with politicians whose constituents are justly concerned about high unemployment, and as easy as it is to look for blame elsewhere. Unfortunately, this global crisis was made in America, and America must look inward, not only to revive its economy, but also to prevent a recurrence.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a professor of economics at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. His most recent book, Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy, is now available in French, German, and Japanese, and will be shortly available in Spanish, Italian, and Chinese.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org

Force is the weapon of the weak: decrying the right’s violent rhetoric

Sasha Cuttler
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Force is the weapon of the weak: decrying the right’s violent rhetoric

American political discourse is being poisoned by some truly scary rhetoric from the right-wing, which is increasingly resorting to threats and condoning of violence, a trend that has played out in recent weeks right here on the Guardian’s Politics blog. Now is the time to recognize and stop it, just as a new coalition is calling for. 

San Francisco resident Greg Lee Giusti was arraigned in federal court this morning for making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one day after the arrest of Charles Alan Wilson for threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.). In both cases, the subject was the recent health care reform bill, the anger of the suspects stoked by misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric from top conservative politicians and media figures, as well as the Tea Party movement.

But these cases – along with the recent domestic terrorism plot by Christian fundamentalists and other incidents of overt and implied threats of violence – aren’t isolated examples; they are closer to the norm of rhetoric emanating from the right-wing these days, a trend not seen in this country since the months that led up to the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by right-wing radical Timothy McVeigh, the biggest act of domestic terrorism before 9/11.

Consider Giusti, who also wrote a scary letter to me and the Guardian in the midst of his threats against Pelosi, taking issue with our recent cover story that was critical of police crackdowns on SF nightlife. In additional to praising police violence and encouraging cops to “crack a few skulls open,” just like his NYPD cop uncle, who “knows how to inflect [sic] excruciating Paine [sic] on someone without leaving any signs of what happened.”

But Giusti was far from alone in promoting violence over the issues we’ve raised. SFPD Southern Station Capt. Daniel McDonough praised the sometimes-violent tactics of the two undercover cops who bust parties and nightclubs, strongly implying those tactics were justified to counter the unspecified threats of violence that nightclubs represent. “Because of their diligence and professionalism the amount of violence and disorder has been reduced,” McDonough wrote, echoing a troubling strain of right-wing political thought that condones violence to prevent even speculative threats of violence, a perspective that led us to invade Iraq.

And when I wrote about McDonough’s response yesterday, a commenter wrote that aggressive police tactics are justified because, “The unprecedented ascendancy of nightclubs and violation of the Constitutional rights of residents to peaceful use of their property calls for drastic measures.”

In a similar vein, our blog post this week on a newly released video of American soldiers in a helicopter opening fire on a crowd in Baghdad that included journalists and children while making disturbing comments that seemed to relish the opportunity to kill people also provoked some equally disturbing comments.

“So a couple of journalists embedded with terrorists killing Americans got wiped out…congrats to the shooters! A couple of terrorists in training got shot up in a terrorist rescue attempt…congrats to the shooters! Everyone on scene who died got what was coming to them,” one wrote, while another warned, “Raise a weapon against America or Americans and prepare to experience the worst day in the rest of your life. Hoowa!”

Even though the helicopter was miles away and the video showed no credible threats toward it or anyone else, supporters of the war seemed to think that quickly resorting to violence is acceptable. “This is the price we pay for are [sic] freedom. put yourself in that chopper and then put yourself on the ground they all no [sic] what can and will happen. It will happen at home again 911 just give it time. We will do are [sic] best to defend are [sic] country. GOD BLESS USA.”

And I will do my best to defend this country from right-wing extremists. That effort starts with challenging Sarah Palin’s winking exhortation for her followers to “lock and load,” and with letting commentators like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, on a nightly basis, cast liberals as enemies of the state to their well-armed listeners.

This is simply not OK, a point that’s being made by the prosecutors of Giusti and Wilson, as well as the new Stop Domestic Terrorism campaign by a coalition of organization concerns about the increasing violent rhetoric of the rights. 

“Law abiding Americans do not advocate violence against fellow Americans,” campaign spokesperson Brad Friedman said in a public statement. “As Americans, we all need to engage in a vigorous debate of the issues based on facts and reason rather than fear and prejudice.”

But even in San Francisco, it’s common for conservatives and so-called “moderates” to condone violence against the homeless, drug users, petty criminals, ravers, Critical Mass bicyclists, “illegal immigrants,” or others that they dismiss as “getting what’s coming to them” for daring to violate laws or social mores. I’ve personally had violence wished on me more times than I can count, in letters, phone messages, and to my face. 

As a full-time newspaper journalist for almost 20 years, I’ve dealt with right-wing crazies for a long time, but there are times when you can sense their indignation getting ratcheted up to dangerous levels. In 1994, I wrote stories for the Auburn Journal and Sacramento News & Review about right-wing “patriots” and “constitutionalists” that were part of the militia movement in Placer County.

They warned me that then-President Bill Clinton was an agent of the “New World Order” who was plotting a socialist takeover of the “real Americans,” and that violent resistance was necessary. They spun elaborate fantasies about the impending civil war, which they said the federal government had already started with their raids in Ruby Ridge and Waco. 

“You won’t be able to write an article like this anymore because the government will come and kick in your door and murder you and your children,” one militia member told me after my first article came out.

On April 19 of the next year, while I was working for the Santa Maria Times, I remember vividly when the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168 people. For the first 24 hours, most media outlets speculated that it was an attack by terrorists from the Middle East, but as soon as I heard it was the anniversary of the Waco incident, I knew exactly who was really responsible: the dangerous right wing extremism that pushed militia member Timothy McVeigh to attack his own country.

And now, it’s happening again. Overheated rhetoric on the right is casting Pelosi and fellow Democrats not just as political opponents, but as dangerous enemies of the “real Americans” that Palin claims to champion. They have, like Wilson said of Murray, “ a target on her back.”

When Sen. Leland Yee tried to find out how much Palin was being paid to speak at California State University-Stanislaus, he was aggressively attacked by her acolytes for trying to “take away her constitutional right to free speech,” according to an anonymous message left on his answering message yesterday, which his office shared with the Guardian. “Maybe we ought to have a homosexual with a long enough dick so he can stick it up his ass and fuck himself while he’s on stage giving a speech.”

Such crass, semi-literate, weirdly homophobic comments might be funny if they weren’t part of a larger, more dangerous trend in this country. Once again, a Democratic president is being actively accused of treasonous hostility to “real Americans” by major conservative figures with huge audiences, and once again, the lunatic fringe is being worked up into a frenzy.

The recently uncovered plot by Michigan militia members to murder police officers in the hopes of starting a holy war with the enemies of Christianity is just one indication for what this kind of rhetoric is leading to in isolated pockets around the country. Now is the time to put a stop to condoning violence in any of its forms, whether it’s cops cracking the skulls of clubbers or street denizens, soldiers firing on crowds of people, or citizens threatening our elected representatives.

“Force is the weapon of the weak,” said the radical pacifist-anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a quote that was often repeated by folk singer and progressive writer Utah Phillips, who I had the honor of covering at the same time I was covering the militia movement. It’s true, and at this difficult moment in our country’s history, let’s all try to stay strong.  

Saturday voting — and how to fund it

Zelda Bronstein
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9
Saturday voting — and how to fund it

Alex Tourk, a local political consultant who was once Gavin Newsom’s campaign manager, came by today to pitch us on his latest project: Saturday voting. He’s generated a fair amount of press on the concept, and it sounds like one of those thing nobody could oppose; why not open the polls an extra day? In fact, why not open the polls from Friday until Monday? Why Tuesday, anyway?


Well, Tuesday voting is a creature of the mid-1800s, when it took a couple of days to get from the farm to the town center, and nobody wanted to start out on a Sunday. Now it’s in the California constitution. But there’s no law that says you can’t vote Saturday AND Tuesday.


What Tourk is proposing is fairly simple: Voting places would be open Saturday, but there would be no voting machines. You’d just go there and fill out an absentee ballot. Which you could also do at home, of course, and a citywide vote-by-mail effort might increase turnout even more. (Or maybe it wouldn’t, given the low rate at which census forms are getting returned.)


Tourk says he wants to build excitement about elections and community interest; that’s why he wants the polls open an extra day — and a day when more people are off work and thus, in theory, would have more time to vote. He’s circulating an initiative that would set up a one-time pilot project, for the 2011 mayor’s race. If it works, maybe the supervisors and the mayor will want to continue it.


Here’s my big concern: Tourk doesn’t want to ask for public money from a city that’s deep in the red, so he’s proposing to raise the $1 million or so it would cost for Saturday voting from private interests.


Of course, the names of the donors would all be public, but still: Managing elections is about the most central democratic function of a government — and I really don’t want to see private interests involved. It seems to me that if this is worth doing, it’s worth paying for with public funds.


Where would that money come from? Here’s an idea: Prop. 15, the California Fair Elections Act, would set up a pilot program for public funding for statewide elections. The money would come from fees on lobbyists. Why can’t we do the same thing in San Francisco? Fund Saturday elections with a lobbyist fee — and a tax on political consultants.


Seriously: Consultants make money by manipulating democracy. They represent, on a deep philosophical level, the privatization of American politics. I’m not saying all consultants are bad or that they should be outlawed or anything like that — but a modest levy on political consultant fees would more than fund a Saturday election pilot program.


Tourk smiled when I suggested this, and would only say it was “an interesting idea.” Now, which supervisor is going to pick up on a tax that will only offend the small number of people who help get all our local officials elected?

Revenue for all

David Talbot
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2
Revenue for all

OPINION Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut: this is the sound of your government — parks, schools, playgrounds, hospitals, clinics, public transportation, programs for youth and seniors, arts, social services, the whole fabric that makes San Francisco what it is — fading away as state and local politicians refuse to raise revenue to revitalize our economy.

Mayor Gavin Newsom and big business groups have promoted a defeatist politics of low expectations, cutting spending, laying off city workers by the thousands, and offering tax breaks to businesses and developers rather than tapping San Francisco’s deep pockets of wealth to generate economic opportunities citywide.

It’s time for a new path: a fiscal politics of optimism, opportunity, and addition rather than subtraction. It’s time for an unapologetic progressive taxation movement for this November’s ballot and beyond, to make the city’s great wealth — individual and corporate, often badly undertaxed — work for all San Franciscans.

As California crumbles, local revenue movements could fuel a statewide campaign of towns, cities, and counties to overturn Proposition 13. San Francisco can take the lead with progressive taxation to create jobs, promote small neighborhood businesses, expand affordable housing and public transit, save public health, and more.

A citywide campaign for progressive taxes is building, including leaders from community-based nonprofits, grassroots organizing and neighborhood groups, labor unions, and some corners of City Hall. There are many promising ideas; with the right political will and organizing, the city could, for instance, tax large-scale real estate and levy profits from large firms. Progressive taxes could, at minimum, bring in close to $100 million and help save critical city services.

To win this campaign, a strong coalition must educate and mobilize the public about the vital importance — and citywide benefit — of raising revenue through targeted taxes on large firms and wealthy individuals. The city’s political leaders will need prodding, pressure, and support to get this done.

Progressive taxation will benefit all of San Francisco, not just some — working-class people of color and immigrants who endure the cuts’ harshest effects, everyone from youths to seniors, and vitally needed city employees like social workers, nurses, librarians, park workers, and firefighters.

The politics of austerity poses false choices between public safety and public health — as if health isn’t a safety issue. San Franciscans of all stripes must reject the pitting of services and "constituencies" against each other, reject the wedge politics that pit labor against nonprofits (both of which work to uplift working-class and poor residents), and unify around progressive revenue.

Nobody likes taxes, least of all the middle class, working class, and poor (the vast majority of us) who shoulder the bulk of the burden. But wealthy individuals and corporations can and must pay their fair share. According to a 2007 World Wealth Report produced by Merrill Lynch, 123,621 households in the Bay Area — many of them in San Francisco — "had $1 million or more in financial assets in 2007, up 10.8 percent from the year before," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

At a Feb. 14, 2007 Town Hall on Poverty in Bayview-Hunters Point, Newsom asserted, "we haven’t addressed the wealth divide; we haven’t addressed the health divide; we haven’t addressed the economic divide … why in a city like San Francisco has income inequality grown like it has?"

Yet Newsom and others continue to avoid progressive taxation — despite polls suggesting such measures can win. Tell Mayor Newsom, and your district supervisor, to make San Francisco’s wealth work for everyone. Now. *

Christopher Cook, an award-winning journalist and former Bay Guardian city editor, is communications director for the Revenue for All campaign of Budget Justice, a coalition of members from dozens of community organizations, labor unions and their allies working to raise revenue and protect the most vulnerable San Franciscans from budget cuts.

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7

The Human Cost of Food


Join the Green Café Network, Mission Pie, and local farmers for a discussion about the different models of farm labor structure and how individual consumers, cafes, and restaurants can integrate this knowledge into their sourcing decisions and methods. It’s an idea whose time has come: fooders and foodies working together to balance social and economic justice goals with economic demands.

6:30 p.m., $5–$10 suggested donation

Kitchen at Mission Pie

2901 Mission, SF

(415) 282-1500

greencafenetwork.org

FRIDAY, APRIL 9

Berkeley Critical Mass


Join this "spring renewal ride" to celebrate Berkeley Critical Mass’ 17th year of protests on wheels. Bring noise-makers, bike decorations, food to share, and bike lights.

6 p.m., free

Berkeley BART

Center at Shattuck, Berk.

www.berkeleycriticalmass.org

SATURDAY, APRIL 10

Forum for Choice 2010


Hear candidates for governor, attorney general, and insurance commissioner take part in an in-depth discussion on a woman’s right to choose and the government’s role in making reproductive health decisions that affect all of us. Confirmed participants are Jerry Brown, Hector De La Torre, Rocky Delgadillo, Kamala Harris, Dave Jones, Chris Kelly, Ted Lieu, Pedro Nava, and Alberto Torrico.

8:30 a.m.; $50, $15 for students

Nob Hill Masonic Center

1111 California, SF

forumforchoice.com

Hilltop Park Beautification Day


Join AmeriCorps members of Habitat for Humanity as they maintain and beautify Hilltop Park, an under-utilized public outdoor space in the Bayview neighborhood that has fallen into disrepair due to budget cuts at SF’s Recreation and Park Department.

9 a.m., free

Across from 52 Whitney Young Circle construction site, SF

www.habitatgsf.org

San Francisco Green Festival


Volunteer or attend the Spring 2010 San Francisco Green Festival, a sustainability event featuring talks by authors, educators, and leaders; exhibits from ecofriendly businesses; workshops, films, activities, vegetarian food, and more.

Sat. 10 a.m.–7 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.– 6 p.m.

$15 weekend, $10 one-day; $5 seniors, bike, and public transit riders;

free for volunteers, students, and youth.

SF Concourse Exhibition Center

635 Eighth St., SF

www.greenfestivals.org

SUNDAY, APRIL 11

Cuba and U.S.


Attend this afternoon of presentations and discussions about Cuba, the U.S. blockade, how to visit, how to get involved advocating for Cuba, and how you can get involved with freeing the Cuban Five.

3 p.m., $5

La Pena Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 849-2568 or email cucaravan@igc.org

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Chilling footage of journalists getting shot in Iraq

Zelda Bronstein
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77

By Nima Maghame and Rebecca Bowe

On July 12th, 2007 two apache helicopters attacked the small suburb of Al-Amin, Iraq. More than two dozen people were killed, including two Reuters journalists, driver assistant Saeed Chmagh and war photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen.

And the entire incident was recorded on video — from the helicopters.

Reuters demanded an investigation in the summer of 2007, and asked for copies of the video the choppers took. The government refused. But after three years, a copy of the video has finally been released — through Wikileaks. The chilling footage shows the helicopters firing on seemingly unsuspecting Iraqi civilians — and includes the helicopter crews’s comment, which are even more chilling.

It’s as if the gunners were playing a video game, as if they didn’t consider the people on the ground to be living human beings. “Oh, look at those dead bastards,” one crewman says. At another point, the gunners — who aren’t allowed to fire at unarmed targets — practically beg a wounded man to pick up a weapon so they can finish him off. And when the man gets into a van that arrives to help him, they ask for permission to open fire: “Come on, let us shoot!”

The U.S. Military released a memo explaining that the actions taken by the soldiers were in accordance with its own Rules of Engagement.

 

The 17-minute video was posted online at Wikileaks.org, an investigative Web site that publicizes sensitive documents and
information leaked by anonymous sources in order to expose corruption and wrongdoing. Wikileaks obtained the footage “from a number of military whistleblowers,” according to a description accompanying the footage on the Web site CollateralMurder.com. Wikileaks editors had to decode the encrypted version of the leaked video in order to view its contents and air it.

In the video, when shooters inside the helicopter start to zero in on the pedestrians below, they can be heard identifying the objects they are carrying as an AK-47 and an RPG. But according to an Associated Press article quoting an unnamed U.S. military official, “a military investigation later concluded that what was thought to be an RPG was really a long-range photography lens; likewise, the camera looked like an AK-47.”

Reuters stopped short — way, way short — of making a big issue of the killings. “The deaths of Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh three years ago were tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones,” said David Schlesinger, editor-in-chief of Reuters news We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognise the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular.”

David Finkle wrote about the incident in his 2009 book The Good Soldiers. Finkle, who was following military personnel in charge of training Iraqi national forces, had only been a few streets away when the attack took place. The author had also been friends with Noor-Eldeen and Chmang.

Finkle wrote that both Reuters staff were working independently — that is, they weren’t officially embedded with the U.S. forces — and he claims that’s is why the military didn’t know of their existence. “There had been reports of sniper rifle, rooftop chases, and rocket-propelled grenades being fired at Bravo Company, and as the fighting continued, it attracted the attention of Namir Noor-Eldeen, a 22-year-old photographer for Reuters news agency who lived in Baghdad, and Saeed Chmangh, 40, his driver and assistant,” wrote Finkle, who was close to where the Apaches attacked but not an eyewitness.

“There was a one-second pause and then came the fourth burst. In the cloud, NE could be seen trying to stand, and then he simply seemed to explode,” wrote Finkle. Chmang tried to stand up and run away before falling down again. The video’s audio picked up two of the drivers urging Chmang to arm himself so they can kill him.

“Come on, buddy” says one driver. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” says the other driver.

A Kia passenger van stopped by Chmang and attempted to rescue him. The helicopters radioed for permission to fire on the van and received confirmation just as Chmang was being helped into the van. The soldiers blasted the van just as it started to roll away.

Two children were wounded in the attack as well, and were evacuated by US. Military personnel.

Alice Waters protested for supporting using human waste as compost

Sasha Cuttler
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8
Alice Waters protested for supporting using human waste as compost

By Brady Welch

In a story that continues to amuse and fascinate, it appears that the human biosolids compost shit show we wrote about last week has left town… and ended up in, of all places, Alice Waters’ own backyard garden. That’s right: the seasonal, local, and cage-free proprietor of Berkeley’s fabled Chez Panisse has emerged as a staunch and unlikely defender of fertilizing your garden with sewage sludge compost, which San Francisco officials have recently discontinued giving away because of environmental concerns.

It all started when the Organic Consumers Association found out that Francesca Vietor, executive director of Chez Panisse’s non-profit arm promoting safe and healthy food for kids, was the same Francesca Vietor who is vice president of the SFPUC Board of Commissioners, which had until very recently been pawning off toxic compost made from human waste contaminated with industrial chemicals and heavy metals.

The news was like finding Mom (Chez Panisse) in bed with a Hells Angel (the SFPUC).

But we understand organizational slip-ups happen, and we trusted Waters to do the right thing, issue an apology, and figure out what to do with Vietor. But it turns out that the Bay Area’s advocate for a slow food economy that is “good, clean, and fair,” has decided instead to stand in defense of a system that is, frankly speaking, fast, cheap, and out of control.

On March 23, OCA National Director Ronnie Cummins wrote a letter to Waters asking how this could be. The letter reads, in part:

“Considering that the sludge was given to several local schools for use on their educational gardens, your work with the Edible Schoolyard should especially elicit your concern. This is certainly in direct opposition to the standards that Chez Panisse Foundation and the Edible Schoolyard encourage and uphold. It seems to us a clear conflict of interest that Francesca Vietor should serve as both the Executive Director of the Chez Panisse Foundation and the Vice President of the PUC.”

Waters wrote back March 30:

“I have been involved with the organic garden movement for 40 years. I believe in the transparency of public institutions and count on the government to offer the highest standards outlined by the Organic Consumers Association and other reliable advocates. I look forward to reviewing the science and working with the SFPUC to ensure the safety of composting methods.”

Well, the science is already in, and as we reported, it isn’t pretty; and more, our public institutions aren’t that transparent either, especially when it comes to sewage sludge compost. So on April 1, the OCA plans to hold a protest at noon to commemorate Chez Panisse Café’s 30th anniversary and perhaps remind the East Bay bastion of sustainability why diners have patronized them for so long.

Building better buses

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Building better buses

By Adam Lesser

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY To hear Jaimie Levin talk is to understand that his cause is larger than just promoting alternative fuels for public transportation. “We either pay the tax ourselves or we pay the tax of sending money to the Middle East,” he said as we walked through the noisy AC Transit bus yard in East Oakland. “There’s a human cost of lives lost in a foreign war.”

AC Transit uses 6.5 million gallons of diesel per year. As the agency’s director of alternative fuels policy, it’s Levin’s job to lower that number. He has experimented with biodiesel and gas-electric hybrid buses. But the passion that consumes him these days is hydrogen. He has spent the last 10 years testing and deploying three hydrogen fuel cell buses for AC Transit, and he’s ready for more.

The first of 12 new hydrogen fuel cell buses begin arriving from Belgium at the end of April, doubling the number of fuel cell buses operating in the United States. They will run on multiple lines, including the 57, 18, and the NL transbay route, which runs between San Francisco and Oakland.

Levin promotes a mix of energy sources, but he argues that hydrogen is the best way to go, even if there’s a big near-term problem: the price of a hydrogen fuel cell bus. The new buses cost $2.5 million each compared to a standard diesel bus, which runs $400,000. Levin describes the buses as research vehicles and works with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to monitor their performance.

“It’s not cheap. We understand that. These are still hand-made. We’re talking about making less than 20 vehicles,” he says. Levin is hopeful that if orders for hydrogen fuel cell buses could reach even 200, the cost of the fuel cells would come down by 45 percent. Levin has secured 16 different grants from federal, state, and regional agencies, ranging from the Federal Transportation Administration to the California Air Resources Board, to cover the $57 million program. The use of outside funds has been critical at a time when AC Transit is cutting service to deal with its budget shortfall.

The cost of the hydrogen fuel itself has caused some to ask if it’s a viable alternative to gasoline. A kilogram of hydrogen, which is equivalent to a gallon of gas in terms of energy content, typically costs $7-$8. But hydrogen fuel cells are twice as energy efficient as internal combustion engines.

AC Transit currently gets its hydrogen fuel from its own production facility that it built with Chevron, which is regularly criticized by environmental and human rights groups for everything from pollution to obscene profits to support for despotic regimes. “Chevron Hydrogen” billboards plaster the bus yard, and the logos are yellow and baby blue, a noticeable difference compared to the traditional blue and red Chevron insignia. There’s an ecofriendly, sunny quality to the branding.

But come September, Chevron will exit its collaboration with AC Transit, which will begin purchasing its hydrogen from a Linde plant in Southern California. Part of the reason is that the Chevron-designed system does not have the capacity to produce hydrogen for 12 buses. Industry watchers note that oil companies have scaled back initial forays into hydrogen, perhaps not wanting to facilitate the transition from fossil fuels.

“The big issue is the infrastructure side. What’s cooling it off right now is how far the oil companies have backed off,” said Tim Lipman, codirector of the UC Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center. “If you’re an oil company, you’ve got to figure you’re going to lose money for a while — and you’re making tons of money in your existing business. It’s not broken right now. They don’t see an advantage of being the first to market. We’re not running out of oil.”

Maybe not yet, but between the global warming impacts of oil and the increased cost of extracting oil after the most readily available supplies peak, there is a pressing need to develop alternatives to fossil fuels.

“The oil companies were getting all sorts of pressure to get off oil and carbon so they go out looking for an alternative that looks good and takes the longest to implement. Hydrogen is perfect,” said David Redstone, editor of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Investor, who has covered hydrogen for more than 10 years.

After studying hydrogen for so many years, Redstone has become skeptical about its real potential. “I was a believer when I started,” he told us. “I learned a lot. I knew a lot less when I started. I knew a lot less about the engineering and cost issues involved.”

For example, fuel cells require platinum, which acts as a catalyst to help burn hydrogen fuel. There is ongoing research to reduce the amount of platinum needed in a fuel cell, and exploratory work with less expensive catalysts like nickel. But for now and in the foreseeable future, hydrogen is still a very expensive technology. “They’ve been demonstrating these fuel cell buses for 20 years. It’s like the mentality at the companies involved is that it’s perfectly normal to be a demonstration technology forever,” added Redstone.

He believes that the realistic solutions to the overuse of fossil fuels lie in a mix of behavioral changes and economic incentives, not technological silver bullets. Stop suburban sprawl, get people to live closer to work, and start taxing carbon. Or in Redstone’s simpler terms, you’ve got to put an end to “assholes commuting 75 miles to work in a Hummer.”

The International Panel on Climate Change estimates that surface temperatures will rise 2 degrees to 11.5 degrees Farenheit in the 21st century. Greenhouse gas emissions are a major contributor to global warming.

The promise of hydrogen fuel is that its only emission is water. The major criticism of the move toward battery electric plug-in vehicles has been that the power to charge batteries comes from a power grid that is frequently a heavy greenhouse gas emitter. Half of the electricity generation in the U.S. comes from coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels.

But the hitch with hydrogen fuel is how to make it. You can’t drill for hydrogen, you have to create it in a process that requires energy. The predominant source for hydrogen fuel is natural gas, which emits less carbon than gasoline but is still a fossil fuel.

The holy grail of alternative energy is an efficient method for making hydrogen fuel from water instead of natural gas. The problem has been the significant amount of energy required to electrolyze water, to split apart H2O to make hydrogen fuel.

Levin believes he has the beginning of an answer. Before the end of 2010, AC Transit will complete its installation of a solar-powered proton electrolyzer in Emeryville. Solar panels will be built atop the roof of the hydrogen fueling station and the solar energy trapped will power the electrolyzer, in turn producing hydrogen fuel from water, hopefully about 60 kilograms per day, enough to power two buses. Levin received $6.4 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the project. The remaining 10 hydrogen fuel cell buses will rely on hydrogen fuel made from natural gas.

As important as the production of hydrogen fuel are the pump stations to deliver it. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s promised “hydrogen highway” hasn’t happened. The initial plans called for 50 to 100 stations by the end of 2010, and a station every 50 miles, but there are now just 21 stations clustered in urban areas. And with oil companies withdrawing their support and government agencies hurting for resources, the hydrogen highway remains as far off as ever.

“I see the power of corporations growing and the power of politicians actually waning,” Lipman said. “Who is really going to benefit the most? It’s society and consumers, but they’re not going to lobby for it.”

When it comes to lobbying, few can outgun the power of the Western States Petroleum Association. WSPA is consistently among the top few lobbyists in California, spending $10.5 million to influence the Legislature in 2007-08. Even with the push for alternative energy options, it’s oil that really governs the debate. Relatively inexpensive and easily storable, oil is still king even as gasoline prices hover at $80 a barrel.

“We will never run out of oil, but the question is, can we afford it?” said WSPA spokesperson Tupper Hull. Rising oil prices have helped proponents of alternative energy because the cost spread between gasoline and other energy options has narrowed. But they worry that momentum will be lost if the recession lingers and oil drops in price.

Proponents of the “peak oil” theory say we are approaching a point at which global oil production will start declining, necessitating a rapid and potentially painful transition to new fuels. But identifying the peak is difficult, complicated by events such as the 2007 discovery of more than 5 billion barrels of oil off the coast of Brazil. The oil field was found under 7,060 feet of water, 10,000 feet of sand, and another 6,600 feet of salt. What the oil industry is ultimately worried about is whether we will hit a point where extracting oil gets so expensive that the cost of oil starts to cripple the global economy. Drilling four miles under the sea isn’t cheap.

In an e-mail exchange about Chevron’s AC transit hydrogen fueling station, Chevron spokesperson Brent Tippen wrote, “Hydrogen has potential as a transportation fuel in the long term, but significant technical and economic obstacles prevent it from being a widespread commercial fuel option right now.”

Levin is cautiously optimistic that it could be the gas companies like Linde and Praxair, and not the oil companies, that carry the hydrogen torch forward.

After a brief ride in a hydrogen fuel cell bus, Levin noted how quiet they are. At one point, he bought Tibetan bells and had them welded to the bus so it would be audible as it moved, but there wasn’t enough vibration to make them ring.

Therein lies Levin’s dream: a quiet, nonemitting vehicle for public transportation. And maybe even someday an entire society running on a clean, renewable, domestic fuel source. But for now he’ll start with what he’s got: a $2.5 million bus that emits water from the tailpipe and doesn’t make any noise.

The state budget isn’t growing

Zelda Bronstein
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11
The state budget isn’t growing

I heard a great show on NPR the other day about the new rules on compensation for executives whose banks got federal bailout money. The feds have cracked down (a bit), and some of those massive salaries have been cut and top bankers are now accepting much less pay, and stock that can’t be sold for three years.


And guess what: More than 80 percent of these people are still hard at work at their desks, including almost all of the most senior folks. Very few have left. It puts the lie to this notion that extreme salaries are needed to attract and retail the top talent; even after those salaries have been cut by more than half, the “talent” doesn’t flee.


There’s a new study by the California Budget Project (PDF) that says makes the same kinds of points. Jean Ross, the director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan group, says that urban legends die hard, so she’s chosen the top ten myths about the state budget and demonstrated how utterly inaccurate they are.


For example, the anti-tax folks love to crow about the massive growth in state spending and how the budget is “out of control.” Truth:


Current year spending is $16.9 billion below 2007-2008 levels and proposed 2010-2011 spending is $20.1 billion below  2007-2008 levels.


2009-2010 spending is $21.5 billion below the baseline levels projected by the Legislative Analysts Office in 2004.


As a share of the state’s economy, state spending is at its lowest levels since the early 1970s.


And it’s not just the recession:


State spending as a share of personal income has declined significantly in recent years.


And guess what: taxes aren’t driving businesses out of the state — or hampering personal wealth creation.


The number of millionaire taxpayers has increased more rapidly than the number of taxpayers as a whole since the passage of Prop. 63, which imposed an additional tax on high-income individuals.


And guess what, you bureaucracy bashers:


California ranks 41s [among the 50 states] with respect to the number of state and local government employees per 10,000 population.


So no, California doesn’t have a spending problem. The state has a revenue problem.

Radio: It’s about local, dammit

David Talbot
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8
Radio: It’s about local, dammit

By Johnny Angel Wendell


arts@sfbg.com

As the 2010 midterm elections approach, so rises the heat level in one of the American news media’s most vitriolic battlegrounds: AM (and increasingly FM) news/talk radio. Dominated almost entirely by the American right in all its permutations, the genre is part of what Hillary Clinton once deemed a "vast right-wing conspiracy." And while she may have overstated the case somewhat, talk radio is the angry white male’s jungle drum. As the broadcast point for the economic and social theorizing emanating from billionaire-funded think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, as well as repeating anti-government (when the government is not being run by Republicans) doggerel whose roots run all the way back to Father Coughlin’s screeds in the 1930s, it’s as effective a tool for mounting outrage (which is never aimed at corporate America, a telling sign, populism-wise).

Because of this obvious one-sidedness masquerading as news, many media critics on the left have demanded the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine — a law enacted in 1949 that required the holders of broadcast licenses to present issues of public importance in a way that a government commission deemed fair and equal, so both sides of an issue got equal time. The doctrine remained the standard by which talk radio operated until it was repealed in the late 1980s. Shortly after that, Rush Limbaugh began his ascent to the summit of talk radio, becoming its most popular voice. If the Fairness Doctrine was still in place, however, that might never have happened.

President Obama has said that he has no interest in restoring the doctrine, claiming it’s a distraction. Despite the fact that reinstating it would personally benefit yours truly as a left-leaning talk show host, I’m also opposed to it — it does not solve what truly ails talk radio today.

What’s really wrong with talk isn’t the imbalance between right and left — it’s local vs. national, live vs. syndicated. Tune in to nearly 80 percent of talk outside of morning and afternoon drive time, and it’s one national show after another: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Dr. Laura. Their politics are irrelevant — they’re broadcasting on local frequencies and not discussing local events.

Talk radio does not need partisan balance. At this point, half the country gets its news from the Internet, where thousands of Web sites provide every conceivable point of view. What talk does need — and badly — is a requirement that stations devote at least half their time to local issues. Most of the day or part of the evening should be devoted to what actually affects the audience — schools, traffic, cops, corruption, our kids, our money, what we see and hear right in front of us.

Radio chains might scream bloody murder at this because syndication is cheaper. But the two most popular AM stations in the state — KFI AM640 in Los Angeles and KGO 810 in San Francisco — are locally-based stations. KGO has no syndicated programming at all Monday through Friday, and consistently has been the top-rated station in the city.

A Fairness Doctrine would be seen (rightfully so) as a way to shut up the right. But a 50/50 Doctrine would not — and given that the polarity of opinion on local issues is less (because it’s real and present), the blatant disregard for fact would evaporate quickly. This is worth lobbying for — if anything meant "bringing it all back home," local talk would be the optimal place to begin. *

Johnny Angel Wendell is a talk show host at KTLK AM 1150 in Los Angeles and has been on Green 960 and KIFR 106.8 in SF.

Yee’s two-fer: Bashing Palin while promoting sunshine

Sasha Cuttler
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5
Yee’s two-fer: Bashing Palin while promoting sunshine

Sen. Leland Yee scored a two-fer yesterday when he blasted a California State University organization for hiding how much it’s playing Sarah Palin for a speaking gig, raising an important sunshine issue and knocking Palin’s populism-for-pay schtick in the process. And at the heart of the issue is how public education institutions increasingly use foundations to avoid accountability.

That issue was recently raised in San Francisco, when City College Foundation sought to keep its financial dealings secret. The Guardian sounded the alarm last month, and City College Trustee John Rizzo, who led the fight for more sunshine, negotiated a more open arrangement that the Board of Trustees unanimously approved last week.

“We got most of what we wanted,” Rizzo told us. “Most of the things are open and they have to give us a quarterly report on donations.”

Yee – who the Society of Professional Journalist-NorCal recently honored with a James Madison Award for his struggles to promote greater government transparency and protections for journalists – has long been fighting for more sunshine in the CSU and UC systems, which is particularly important as they make deep cuts to higher education spending. For example, Yee’s Senate Bill 330 would explicitly require those systems to adhere to the California Public Records Act.    

“These are public institutions that should embrace transparency and accountability,” Yee said yesterday in a press release announcing his request that CSU-Stanislaus’s foundation disclose how much it is paying Palin for a $500 per head speech on June 25. The press release triggered a front-page story in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, with CSU and foundation officials rebuffing Yee’s request.

So now, Yee gets to bash Palin and make an important stand for sunshine, both of which will likely help his nascent campaign to be elected mayor of San Francisco next year.

As Yee wrote in a letter to campus President Hamid Shirvani, who also serves as the chair of the foundation: “The sensational nature of former Governor Palin’s political commentary, coupled with an ongoing book tour, has allowed her to charge top dollar for speaking engagements. As was reported in the media, her speaking appearances typically command $100,000 per event. To that end, I request the foundation to respond to the following issues: 1. Is the former governor being compensated by the CSUS Foundation in any form for her participation in the event on June 25th?  If so, please describe the amount and nature of the compensation being awarded to the former governor.  2. Please disclose any contracts between the former governor and the CSUS Foundation involving the June 25 speaking engagement.”

Later in the press release, he added: “The CSU should immediately disclose how much money is being diverted from students to pay Sarah Palin’s exorbitant speaking fees. At a time when students are struggling to afford an education at CSU, I would hope that spending potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars on a guest speaker for a black-tie gala would be low on the priority list.  Money that is spent on bringing an out-of-touch former politician to campus could be spent on scholarships and other financial assistance during these challenging budget times.”

Win or lose, this is the right fight for Yee, both morally and politically. Go git ‘er!

Deadline looms for San Francisco’s green power program

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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8

Negotiations between city government and Power Choice LLC, a contractor selected to implement San Francisco’s Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) program, began Feb. 9. Almost seven weeks later, there’s still no end in sight — but if a deal isn’t secured soon, San Francisco could risk losing an opportunity to implement a cutting-edge green power program that would significantly reduce the city’s reliance on fossil fuels and give customers an alternative electricity provider.

About a half-decade of studies, debate, public meetings, and input from all sides have brought San Francisco’s CCA to the threshold of finally becoming a reality. The program would offer an energy mix comprised of 51 percent renewable power by 2017 for those who opted in.  

Assuming the program can operate successfully without an adverse impact to customers’ wallets, San Francisco could become a shining example of how to transition to a more sustainable energy model. It could represent giant step — rather than an inch-by-inch crawl — toward carbon-free power generation serving the needs of a major U.S. city.

As the negations drag on and a serious deadline looms closer and closer, some observers are growing anxious. No one can tell for sure what’s happening behind closed doors, but one thing is certain: PG&E is spending millions to try and torpedo CCA through a sophisticated public relations campaign, and it would have a much easier time derailing the project if it met with delays. PG&E would lose some of its customer base if the CCA program were a success.

PG&E has, intentionally or not, imposed a critical deadline on San Francisco’s CCA program implementation by introducing Proposition 16 — a ballot initiative that could slam shut this window of opportunity. Prop 16 would require a two-thirds majority vote before any CCA statewide could get off the ground, making it almost impossible to move forward.

If San Francisco’s CCA program hasn’t gotten underway by June, when Californians will vote on Prop 16, years of effort could be rendered futile if the initiative passes.

As SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington told the Guardian, “We will get a contract as soon as we can possibly get a contract — but I can’t tell you the date.”

Several things would have to happen before the June deadline in order to guarantee that the city’s CCA would not be affected by the outcome of Prop 16. The program contract would have to be approved by the SFPUC, signed off on by the Board of Supervisors, and a 60-day opt-out period would need to be initiated before the start of service.

With so much to do in such little time, some observers are worried that the whole thing could fall apart. “Something seems to be awry,” noted John Rizzo of the Sierra Club, noting, “The PUC has historically fought and delayed CCA.”

The program is the product the joint efforts of two city bodies, the SFPUC and the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo), which is chaired by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi. Historically, LAFCo and the SFPUC have not worked well together, with Mirkarimi trying to prod the power-and-water agency forward, and publicly bemoaning its recalcitrance.

Mayor Gavin Newsom — who has forged partnerships with PG&E in the past, received several campaign contributions from high-ranking PG&E employees, and traveled to Mexico on the utility’s dime — appoints commissioners to the SFPUC. The mayor’s apparent alliance with PG&E combined with his sway over the SFPUC has led program advocates to voice suspicion over the years that its progress was being hampered by something more than ordinary bureaucracy.

Harrington, who heads up the SFPUC, said everyone sitting at the negotiating table is well aware of the Prop 16 deadline.

“The hope is to do it, obviously, as fast as possible,” he said. “I think that we are doing well in terms of rate discussion [and] renewable discussion, they’re very much with us in terms of getting renewables as fast as possible, and meeting the goals that the Board [of Supervisors] and everybody else has set for years now.”

“But the real discussion at this point is risk,” he said. “And trying to figure out how that risk is done in a way that protects our customers and the city is a big deal.” A key program goal since the beginning has been to meet or beat PG&E rates, which will climb by some 30 percent in the next few years if its current rate-hike proposals are approved by state regulatory bodies.

“The other part is just how do you implement this?” Harrington continued. “You’re going to have to contract with people who will in turn contract with generators. What if one of them went under, what if there are price hikes? How do we step in for them?”

At the same time, Harrington acknowledged that in the long-term, this program has the capacity to shift the city’s electric and economic outlook by offering more stability, and minimizing risk.

“In general, the kinds of renewable power that we’re talking about are much, much more stable than natural gas, oil, those kinds of things,” he said. “And so while at the very first day of this we’re not going to own anything … as you start to have ownership interest in power supplies that are sustainable, renewable power, that price fluctuation should be a whole lot less, and our customers should be exposed to a whole lot less price fluctuation and risk than people who still have big things that are in natural gas and those areas.”

Harrington said he believed the CCA program would be attractive to San Franciscans because of its environmental edge. “I think people here want to take care of the world, they want to do things that are right. They probably don’t want to spend a lot of money to do it — and I don’t think they have to,” he said. “That’s the part that makes me crazy: If we can provide greener power for equal to or less than PG&E … why wouldn’t we try to do that for the city?”

Lawsuit could expose SFPD-ABC collaboration

Sasha Cuttler
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43
Lawsuit could expose SFPD-ABC collaboration

Imminent legal actions against San Francisco, its Police Department, and the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control could reveal whether a pair of undercover agents went rogue in harassing nightclubs and aggressively busting parties or whether they were acting at the direction of top officials.

Attorney Mark Webb – whose work on a racketeering lawsuit against the policing agencies was the subject of cover stories in the Guardian and the SF Weekly – told us that on Monday, he plans to file that racketeering claim against the city (which will then become a lawsuit if the city rejects it, as it routinely does) and a related lawsuit in Superior Court involving the rough, unnecessary arrest of bartender Javier Magallon and harassment of Mike Quan, owner of The Room, Playbar, and Mist. Narrated surveillance video associated with the case was posted on YouTube yesterday.

Central figures in the lawsuit are SFPD Officer Larry Bertrand and ABC agent Michelle Ott, plain-clothes partners in an aggressive crackdown on nightlife over the last year. Webb said he plans to immediately seek police records and communications and to depose Bertrand and Ott to try to determine who ordered the crackdown, why, and when higher-ups became aware of their aggressive tactics.

“I would like to know if Bertrand is being sent places or if he’s just a lone wolf, and the CADs will show that,” Webb said, referring to computer-assisted dispatch reports that track activities and communications involving individual officers. Those and other records that Webb can access through the court-ordered discovery process could finally shed light on what’s behind the crackdown.

Webb had sought to have Mayor Gavin Newsom mediate this dispute before the cases were filed, saying the racketeering lawsuit will be expensive and divisive, and all the nightlife community really wants is an end to the harassment and assurance that it wouldn’t restart once the media attention passes. And Webb did have conversations with top Newsom aide Mike Farrah and with Nicolas King, Newsom’s liaison to the SFPD, but neither indicated that Newsom was willing to get personally involved. Newsom spokesperson Tony Winnicker also told us Newsom preferred to let Police Chief George Gascon handle the matter.

So Webb said he now plans to move forward with litigation. “If they’re not answering the call at City Hall, let’s get into the arena,” Webb told us.

Webb is an experienced litigator who has won multi-million judgments and who started his career in New York City helping prosecute Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act cases against the mob, and now he plans to use RICO laws against what he says is a city-state enterprise to interfere with lawful nightlife activities in San Francisco.

“Webb gets it. It’s a weird mentality, the really good trial attorneys, and Webb is that,” said attorney Mark Rennie, who has spent decades working with the city’s entertainment industry and has helped advise Webb on the case.

Among the parties involved in the RICO claim are those involved in Webb’s other lawsuit against the city, as well as Club Caliente, its owner Maurice Salinas, Azul, its owner John Bauer, New York nightclub owners Phillipe Rieser and David Brinkley, Vessel, and Siobhan Hefferman, who was arrested by Bertrand and Ott at a private party. Others may be added soon.

Great American Music Hall, Slims, and DNA Lounge also claim to have been harassed by the ABC and have been involved in several meetings that led up to Webb’s lawsuit, but they’re not taking part in the lawsuit yet, partially because they fear retribution from the ABC.

“I probably would have jumped in, but I don’t want to walk into a hearing suing the ABC,” Slims and GAMH general manager Dawn Holliday told us, referring to Slims’ April 1 appeals hearing stemming from noise complaint citations triggered by one particularly cranky neighbor.

DNA Lounge, which has regularly documented the harassment campaign on its blog, decided to wait with the other two clubs before joining the suit. “We thought it was important to stand as a community and there were too many venues that were worried about retribution from the police or ABC if they joined the suit,” DNA general manager Barry Synoground told us. 

But Synoground said he’s anxious to see what Webb’s suit unearths, noting that Bertrand and Ott haven’t been visible in recent weeks as complaints against them went public, and saying he thinks Commander James Dudley and other top SFPD brass are really driving this crackdown: “We may have taken one of his tools off the street, but he’ll find another.”

Synoground said most SFPD officers are very professional and they have no problem working with them, but Bertrand and Ott have unnecessarily and aggressively interfered with their business. Holliday goes even further in praising the SFPD, saying she has a good relationship with Bertrand and everyone in Southern Station, blaming her clubs’ troubles on the ABC and the unwillingness of top city officials to stand up for them.

So the internal SFPD communications, and those between the city and the ABC, could prove revealing. “On April 17, I can send out subpoenas to the cops and I can take Bertrand’s deposition 30 days from Monday,” Webb said, citing statutory response periods.  

Webb expressed confidence in his case and said the police shakedowns and harassment fit well with the RICO statute, which has been used against a wide variety of enterprises over the years, including government agencies.

In fact, an American Bar Association book, “Civil RICO: A definitive guide,” by Gregory P. Joseph, seems to support Webb’s confidence. “Any person injured in his business or property by reason of a violation of Section 1962 of this chapter may sue therefore in any appropriate United States district court and shall recover threefold the damages he sustains and the costs of the suit, including reasonable attorney fees.’ This simple sentence has generated an avalanche of litigation,” the book begins.

It makes clear the intent of Congress that RICO laws “shall be liberally construed to effectuate the remedial purposes” of targeted individual seeking protection from harassment. A 1981 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (U.S. vs. Turkette) made clear even legitimate enterprises such as government agencies could be sued, and a 1994 ruling (NOW vs. Scheidler) settled a long dispute over whether the racketeering needed to be economically motivated, finding that it doesn’t.

Racketeering was defined by Congress as simply committing any of a long list of “predicate acts,” which include violence or the threat of violence, kidnapping (including false arrest), extortion, physical interference with business, malicious prosecution, and abuse of authority, all of which Webb says apply in his case. He is also reviewing the Guardian’s Death of Fun coverage from the last four years to find more examples of predicate acts involving the SFPD.

The hardest part of proving his case could be to show that it interfered with interstate commerce, although Webb said that’s met by efforts by Bertrand and Ott to prevent Rieser and Brinkley from transferring a liquor license from New York. But “Civil RICO” also said caselaw has established that “RICO requires no more than a slight effect upon interstate commerce,” citing the 1989 case U.S. vs. Doherty.

Like many who have had run-ins with Bertrand and Ott, Webb said he’s anxious to see what he finds in discovery: “What’s fascinating about this is you can uncover the whole system.”

The cheeseman can

Andrew Lam
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0

The subtitle of Rainbow Grocery cheesemonger Gordon “Zola” Edgar’s new memoir (supertitled Cheesemonger, appropriately enough) would be enough for me to count the book a success; “Life on the wedge.” Ha! See, right there, he had me ready to head out to his Omnivore Books reading (Sat/3) fangirl style, washed rind Taleggio in hand, hounding for an autograph. Luckily, the rest of his book is pretty good too. 

Where Cheesemonger triumphs is its accessibility. Edgar covers a lot of ground within its pages — Bay area agricultural/urban history, the ins and outs and importance of worker collectives, food justice, and of course, the art and science that is cheese. But it is all tied together with that rare liberal ethos that is both positive, and commonsensical. 

A word about those first three topics. Edgar’s tome ties how we eat to how we live to how our world works, coherently and colorfully enough that it stays interesting even to the casual reader. Cheesemakers, unlike produce farmers or vintners, have yet to really have their day in the sustainable food mania’s sun. Here in Cheesemonger, we get a clear picture of how factory produced cheese differs from that which is made from the milk of grass-fed cows and handcrafted by sustainable methodologies- and an explanation of why many dairy farmers have been forced to turn to mass production methods. Edgar utilizes his middle-man status at Rainbow’s worker collective in the book to neatly connect the latter with the stomachs and wallets of SF’s working Joes. Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dillemma functions similarly — but Pollan’s got nothing on Edgar’s encyclopedic knowledge of the most delicious of all foods. 

Ah, cheese. On my journalist’s salary, most of the cheese I’m eating these days ranges between the gold standard “block” cheddar and whatever brie I can swipe off of art reception buffet tables, so this book’s vivid descriptions of handcrafted Telemes and Sainte-Maure de Touraines were awe inspiring. I now have a grocery list the length of one of my legs, full of fancy cheeses to try (thanks for that, Gordon).

I kid, because Edgar does a great job of acknowledging how fine cheese’s price tag can keep out of the mouths of most Americans. “When American foodies mock other Americans for not appreciating fine cheese, they should remember that the US equivalent to French Bried is a forty-pound block of commodity Cheddar,” he writes.

So milk thistle coagulated Serra de Estrela doesn’t often make it’s oozy, pungent way into your grocery basket- Cheesemonger still makes for great food porn. Edgar breaks down how cheeses are made, gives helpful information on basic categories, explains what makes a rind and why the hell cheese is aged in caves, and perhaps most importantly, what to look out for when you do decide to splurge on a wedge (tip: stay away from rBGH hormone). I learned things about how the dairy industry works that every milk-and-cheese consumer should know — particularly about our government’s regulations and how ridiculous allocations of subsidies affect the food that’s available on our shelves. As a self-identified “cheese punk,” Edgar convinces you that to try the raw milk, the stinky, the smaller portions of local, expensive stuff- when you can afford it, of course, is to fight the man’s influence over the standardization and control of our larders.

Now that is tasty radicalism. And now, pass the Roquefort.

Gordon Edgar

Sat/3 3 p.m., free

Omnivore Books

3885A Cesar Chavez, SF

(415) 282-4712

www.omnivorebooks.com

 

Sit, lie, stand and fight

Sasha Cuttler
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14
Sit, lie, stand and fight

A version of the following op-ed by Ben Rosenfeld ran in this week’s Guardian, edited for space reasons, and it’s generating quite a lively discussion here. He has asked us to post this extended dance mix of his piece, which offers more political context and gets into some of the issues raised in this weeks’ cover story, which is also generating heated debate. So here it is:

            This is a call out to creative, fun-loving San Franciscans: The mayor, the police chief, and their downtown cronies have declared war on our grassroots arts culture, and they are coming for your actual and conceptual space next. All that stands between the town you love and their vision of San Francisco as one big mercantile zone is a single vote progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors. But come November, they see the chance to take that away. The future they promise is already manifest in their many recent attacks on public and private gatherings, and their efforts to wrest the commons from the commoners.

            On Halloween 2009, the San Francisco Police, under their new chief, Los Angeles transplant George Gascón, shut down the Take Back Halloween Flashdance in front of the Ferry Building before DJ Amandeep “Deep” Jawa even arrived. Then they shut down several smaller street parties. (SFBG, 11/2/09) Their official reason—that organizers lacked permits—is what Bill Clinton famously termed an explanation, but not an excuse. The SFPD has a long history not only of tolerating unpermitted gatherings, but of re-routing traffic around and even escorting them. They are fully empowered to grant the equivalent of on-the-fly permits, a concept recognized in federal parks regulations. Applying for an actual permit is cumbersome, costly, anti-spontaneous, and reinforces the government’s view of itself as censor.

            Since Halloween, Chief Gascón’s force has been striking a mighty blow against crime by writing scores of open container citations to revelers in Dolores Park; fining or forcing the closure of SOMA clubs and bars for failing to conform to every fickle letter of the law; and sending undercover officers into warehouse and studio parties to bust them from within, sometimes violently, and without warrants. Their alpha party-crasher is a twitchy undercover cop named Larry Bertrand. He reportedly makes a habit of gratuitously attacking partygoers and vandalizing property, especially DJ equipment. One DJ wrote on a confidential email list: “I have been telling every DJ I know to run with their gear when your party gets busted [by Bertrand].” Not only has the chief failed to rein in Bertrand, but he wants to put a Taser in his hand, and in the hands of a rotten core of approximately 100 other officers whom the Chron found in 2006 are responsible for most citizen complaints, but whom the Department and this chief have systematically failed to discipline.

            Perhaps the most un-San Franciscan of all of Gascón’s initiatives is his demand for an anti-sit/lie ordinance, which would literally criminalize the very act of sitting or lying on certain public sidewalks at certain times. Never mind the fact that most violent crime is committed by people standing up and in striking range. Gascón appears to share the mayor’s philosophy that homelessness is just an aesthetic problem the rest of us should hose off our sidewalks. Not only is the idea just plain mean, it is anathema to San Francisco’s culture of compassion and broadmindedness, and its affirmative celebration of vibrant street culture. The danger is not that the police will arrest everyone who dares to take a load off or sit and sip a Snapple against the side of a building, but that they will enforce the law selectively according to their own purity tests, while robbing the rest of us of a diverse street scene that makes us all richer.

            To be sure, essential San Francisco has reasserted itself in the teeth of earlier culture wars, if in ever wealthier iterations. When Willie Brown stood in front of Critical Mass in 1997 and declared it illegal, riders blew by him like he was a grand prix flagman, and ridership surged from one or two thousand to five to seven thousand. What’s different this time are the demographics. San Francisco is richer than ever before, even at the height of the dot.com boom. Rents are through the roof. Everywhere, industrial warehouses and studios are drying up and concept industrial restaurants and bars are sprouting up. A new wave of young, hip residents has arrived seeking Dionysus, but they want no part of the political machinations under his robe. They are liberal, but they are not active. At least not yet. The mayor, the chief, and the norm core they serve are counting on our collective non-engagement. If we don’t band together—hipsters, activists, artists, and fun-loving folk all—we will watch the San Francisco we cherish slip away.

            On March 27, reclaim public space. Sit and lie on the public sidewalk. March and sing in the public street. Picnic on the pavement. Pop open a beer in Dolores Park. Do it without a permit. The Constitution is your permit. San Francisco’s heritage of artistic experimentation is your permit. Hell, the people telling you to get a permit flocked here because people like you marched around them in the first place and made this City a model of art and innovation for the world. Do it for them too. This is a defining moment. They are playing for keeps and so must we. Let’s bask in San Francisco’s ongoing heyday, not in quaint stories of the good times that used to be.

Hank Plante’s exit interview

Sasha Cuttler
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2

Hank Plante ends a three-decade run as a political journalist with tonight’s (March 24) broadcast of the CBS 5 Eyewitness News, where he has worked since 1986 after starting his career with newspapers in Washington DC. So we took the occasion to talk politics with him, learning that his loyalties lie downtown.

Plante agreed that politics has become ugly these days. “It’s just so much more acrimonious, that’s one thing that’s changed. The other is just the money that’s involved,” Plante told us, marveling at Meg Whitman’s plans to spend $40 million of her own money to run for governor and the $1 million per day that corporations spent lobbying against the health reform bill signed by President Obama.

But the changes haven’t gotten Plante down, as they have many political junkies, who decry the crippling of government’s ability to combat corporate power and address real social and economic problems. “I’ve never become a cynic, and I think that’s one thing that sets me apart from many political journalists,” he said, adding, “I still think politicians can make a difference.”

Yet like many political journalists, when I ask who his favorite politicians have been, he rates them based on whether they’ve made good stories, not whether they good for the people. For journalists, bad is often good, whether it be natural disasters or disgraceful politicians.

“Arnold is a great story. Willie Brown was a great story. Gray Davis was a dull story until he got recalled, then he was a good story,” Plante said.

What about Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has often given Plante exclusive access (including Newsom’s first extended interview after his 2007 sex scandal), but who has also angrily walked out in the middle of an interview with Plante. 

“Personally, I like the mayor. But I have to ask him tough questions, so he can be mercurial. Right now, he’s running for office again, so he’s charming,” Plante said.

In fact, for a journalist, Plante makes clear his preference for Newsom over the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors, joking, “If I had a month to live, I’d spend it with the Board of Supervisors because it would seem like five years.”

Plante also said that he opposes district elections — which he said have prevented the emergence of big-stature political figures like Dianne Feinstein and Quintin Kopp — and Plante said he doesn’t see the value of district elections in counteracting the political power of downtown corporations. “I’m a capitalist and I have no problem with people making money,” he said.

Yet Plante acknowledges the divide between downtown and progressives is San Francisco’s dominant political dynamic, noting, “You see how afraid downtown is of the Board of Supervisors appointing the new mayor.”

While Plante said he believes in the importance of politics, he does decry how political science and public relations have been manipulated in recent years.

“They’re taken a page out of the Karl Rove playbook to talk over the journalists right at the public,” Plante said, noting how many politicians no longer feel the need to be accessible to journalists or honestly and directly answer their questions. “They really want to control the message, so the accessibility is diminished.”

Nonetheless, Plante said he regularly emphasizes the importance of political engagement: “In a place like the Bay Area, where people are inundated with lots of information sources, you have to keep saying it over and over again.” 

Plante, 63, is retiring and moving to his home in Palm Springs with his partner, Roger. Among the many awards and accolades he earned during his career are several Emmys and a prestigious Peabody Award. His station sent out a press release praising Plante, including this comment by anchor Dana King: “There is an entire population of politicians breathing a sigh of relief at the news of Hank’s retirement. Hank was the consummate professional, never combative but he did his homework and asked tough, pointed questions. Politicians, love him or hate him, respected and answered them, every single time. Our newsroom will suffer a huge intellectual void when he leaves.”

John Ross: The damaged spine of America

Zelda Bronstein
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2
John Ross: The damaged spine of America

 

I am on a low-rent book tour with my new cult classic El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption In Mexico City.  For the next three months, I will stumble across this land from sea to stinking sea probing the underbelly of Obama’s America.  The findings will be posted on these pages.


LAS CRUCES N.M. — The snow was already dusting the Organ Mountains fringing this high desert town, promising a hard winter further up the spine of Obama’s America. I ride the Mexican bus (officially doing business as the El Paso-L.A, Limousine Express) when I ply the back roads of the southwest. Greyhound, with its stern rules and regulations and surly drivers who threaten their cargos with summary expulsion for minor infractions, doesn’t much inspire me these days.  

 


With notable exceptions, Greyhound passengers are a harried and haunted bunch, riding the Big Dog from trouble to trouble, often with all their possessions stuffed into plastic garbage bags. In the cruelest of gestures, the Greyhound management has recently banned garbage bags as an instrument of luggage.  Zombie passengers on the Big Dog stare out at the distant horizon submerged in their worries or stab music into their ears to sever all human communication. No one talks to their fellow travelers anymore.

By way of contrast, the Mexican bus bubbles with chatter.  “Platicame!” (“Talk to me!”) my seatmates insist. The chitchat often gravitates towards work — where they have recently toiled, the job towards which they are headed. Wistful nostalgia for their families and pueblos down in Mexico are common ground. Rancheros belch from the speakers and the taste of tamales flavors the ride. It feels like going home.

Bus rides are an opportunity to reinvent oneself. I am usually the only gabacho on these long hauls through the rugged mountains and barren deserts of the southwest, but I speak colloquial, unaccented Mexican and who I really am excites curiosities. These days, my kuffiyah wrapped around my scrawny neck, I pass myself as an Arab from Mexico City hawking books from tank town to tank town, a plausible story — back home, Arabs are often stereotyped as itinerant peddlers.

North of Las Cruces, the Mexican bus is pulled into a Migra shed and the conversation modulates real quick. A blonde woman agent jumps on board and demands to see everyone’s documents. She studies the passports and green cards under the glare of her flashlight and then shines it into the eyes of the passengers to see who will blink first. One young man — he looks like a university student – is pulled off the bus and is never seen again. When the Mexican bus slides out of the shed, the chatter resumes — but with one less voice in the mix.

Clayton, a young Wobbly who used to run a bookshop down by the rail yards in Albuquerque that was mostly frequented by hobos looking for a little warmth in a cold winter world, is now teaching at a troubled middle school. Patrol cars are often parked out front and half the kids – 99.99% of who are “Hispanics” (read Mexicans) – have juvenile police records. Clayton asks me in to talk to the students, who have never seen a real author in the flesh.  

We hunker down in the library and I step into my Grandpa persona and tell tales of the Mexican revolution while Clayton projects portraits of the Great Zapata and Pancho Villa on the audio-visual screen. I recount how the two men met in a rural schoolhouse in Xochimilco, now a borough of Mexico City, in December 1914. For an hour the two sat in frozen silence until Zapata, unable to contain his bitterness, declares that Carranza, their rival, is “un hijo de puta!” The kids fall off their little library chairs in gales of Mexican mirth. Clayton frets for his job but the librarian apparently doesn’t understand Spanish.  

I show the kids my books. Helen, a boisterous tweener, grabs “Iraqigirl” from Clayton’s hand and announces she is taking it home. The next day, she returns it with a review: “this is the best book I have ever read.” Two boys sit at the round reading table with copies of “El Monstruo — Dread & Redemption In Mexico City” and “Murdered by Capitalism — 150 Years of Life & Death on the American Left” spread before them. They pour over the subversive pages all through the lunch hour. When we prompt them that we have to leave, they hide the books under their hoodies.

 “I don’t have it — check me out!” Salvador (not his real name) challenges. The librarian rushes over and promises the boys that she has just ordered the books on line for them. They will be here Monday morning.  “But this is only Thursday,” protests Manuel (not his real name.)  

Garfield middle school is the best stop so far on this monstrous book tour.

Attendance at public events in Albuquerque is sparse. A vegan spread at the Catholic Worker House drums up a dozen hungry souls, a presentation of “Iraqigirl” at the Peace & Justice Center eight, including an Iraqi woman who leaves early. I show “Corazon del Tiempo” (“Heart of Time”), the new Zapatista movie (it was previewed at Sundance) in a small room at the university – Weather veterano Mark Rudd and the remarkable investigator Nelson Valdez and a handful of starry-eyed students (“Corazon” is a love story) show up.  

 

I sorely miss my old pal Tilda Sosaya who fought doggedly for prisoners’ rights in the nearly wholly privatized New Mexico prison system for decades after her son was imprisoned for ten years for some dumb teenage caper. Last March, I wrote Tilda that I had been diagnosed with liver cancer and she wrote back that she had it too. The cancer took her quickly and now she is gone and her son is back in prison. We fight for justice but life in this lane is not very just.

I catch the day train up to Santa Fe to visit with the writer Chellis Glendinning. Chellis has lived for the past 18 years on a tiny plot in Chimayo, the land of miraculous dirt and a key distribution point for black tar heroin from Sinaloa and Nayarit — see her “Chiva – How One New Mexican Town Took On The Global Heroin Trade.” Now she is pulling up stakes and throwing in with Evo Morales. Her jeep flies a Bolivian flag and she is rushing to be in Cochabamba for the tenth anniversary of the landmark struggle against the privatization of that city’s water supply by the Bechtel Corporation. Adios companera — la lucha sigue y sigue y sigue!

I am back on the Mexican bus heading towards Denver. The riders get off at whistlestops like Las Vegas and Durango and Colorado Springs where they will do the dirty work of this country — walloping pots, washing cars, cleaning motel rooms, milking cows, shoveling their manure, keeping Obama’s America spic and span for the next paying customer at minimum wages if indeed they are not cheated out of them by unscrupulous contractors.  

When the guy across the aisle gets curious, I revive my new identity as an Arab peddler. “Donde esta tu mujer?” he asks (“Where is your wife?”) and I lie that she is in Iraq taking care of her people. “The Yanquis invaded her country and bombed her neighborhood…”  “Pobre gente,” he sympathizes.  Santiago (is that his real name?) is from Hidalgo de Parral, Chihuahua and says he is on his way to work the Colorado ski resorts where so many Mexicans slave for Senor Charlie these days. He knows all about exile.  

I am invited to deliver a pair of lectures at Denver University, Condoleezza Rice’s alma mater (her father was provost.)  Doug Vaughn, also a DU grad who went left at an early age, notices that I will be speaking at the same time as Cindy Courville, Condi’s roommate who followed her to the National Security Council and then became U.S. emissary to the African Union.

My talks are programmed for the Josef Korbel Center for International Studies. Josef Korbel was Madeline Albright’s father, to give you some assessment of my chances of winning converts here. Indeed, the students are polite and well-groomed, models of future CIA assets — in tracking down the announcement of Courville’s talk on a Korbel Center bulletin board, Doug encounters a CIA recruitment leaflet. The grad students have been forewarned they will be visited by a representative of the lunatic fringe and busy themselves with their e-mail under the pretext of taking notes.  

Academic acrimony flourishes in the Denver- Boulder axis.  Everywhere else in this land where my father croaked, the trials and tribulations of Ward Churchill and his ill-timed assault on the “little Eichmans” deconstructed in the Twin Towers conflagration went out with the fish wrap the next morning — but here in mile-high city, mention of Ward and Colorado AIM can still start a prairie fire. Although such Churchill accusers as the governor and the Colorado U president have long since resigned due, in fact, to other scandals after successfully silencing Ward, his detractors’ thirst for blood remains unsatiated.

Infused with the venom of the dearly departed Bellencourts (who Churchill once dissed as “Nebraska wigmakers”), Ernesto B. Vigil, author of an action-packed bio of Corky Gonzalez, the Denver-based Xicano founder of the Nation of Aztlan, is still brandishing the long knives. Ward Churchill is a fake Indian, Ernesto obsesses, a white guy whose claim to indigenousness is backed up by white people because white people only listen to white people.  White people think they know everything, he scoffs in a heated e-mail in which he disparages my whiteness a dozen times in as many lines.

Actually, I don’t give a rat’s ass if Ward Churchill is one/sixteenth Cherokee or not (the tribal government recently expelled all its black members) — Churchill remains the most lucid writer on American genocide in this benighted country.

Boulder is said to be the most over-regulated city in North America although white liberal enclaves like Madison Wisconsin and Arcata California could give Boulder a run for its money.  I accompany Joe Richey, a local alternative radio sleuth, to the Boulder dog pound to bail out his black lab “Yanqui” (as in “Yanqui! Go home!) “Yanqui” has been adjudged guilty of illicit dog-like behavior i.e. nuzzling a neighborhood garbage can.  

After Joe pays off the authorities and the mutt is released to his custody and properly admonished, we drive past a local dog park.  In a paroxysm of charitable intent, the Boulder City Council permits the homeless to encamp at night amidst the dog turds but they must be gone by daybreak when the pooches of the city’s housed residents take possession or risk a $100 fine. How the homeless, forced to bed down in dog shit nightly, can afford this astronomical sum is unclear. Such is what passes for compassion on the underbelly of Obama’s Amerikkka.

 

On my final day in Denver, Hank Lamport, a local schoolteacher who favorably reviewed “El Monstruo” for the Post, today the only daily in this formerly two-newspaper town, drives me out to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Rehabilitation Area. Until a few years ago, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal manufactured and stored deadly nerve gas, chiefly Serin — an occasional lost canister still spooks the wildlife.  The displays at the Visitors’ Center feature photos of workers filling “Honest John” missiles with the stuff. Napalm was also cooked up here. I study the glazed eyes of taxidermied foxes and coyotes and bald eagles and hastily bid adieu.

On the way out of town, we stop to worship the victuals in an Aurora, Colorado taco shop. Hank laments that when he first became a devotee of “Tacos y Salsas,” the clientele, uniformly Mexicanos, would greet him with a “buen provecho” (“good appetite” — a universal courtesy in the Spanish-speaking world) but now the customers have become so gringo-ized that the salutation is a lost art. Nonetheless, when we polish off our orders and head for the door, two working stiffs at the next table wish us each “buen provecho.”
  
It warms the cockles of my contused heart to know that such cultural resistance still percolates out here on the damaged spine of Obamalandia.

Next stop: the frozen, melancholy flatlands of the Great Midwest.  

John Ross and “El Monstruo – Dread & Redemption in Mexico City” (“gritty and pulsating” – NY Post) will be visiting Traverse City and Grand Rapids Michigan in the final week of March. You can catch them at the Headland Café in Chicago’s Rogers Park March 31st, Toronto’s Hoggtown April 1st-4th, and St. Louis Mo. April 7th.  

 

 

 

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