Health

Mayor on local health care policy: “Everything is on the table”

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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A recent controversy has been brewing around San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance, the 2006 legislation authored by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano that created Healthy San Francisco, the city’s medical services safety net program for the uninsured.

As we explain in greater depth in an article for tomorrow’s issue of the Guardian, influential forces in the business community such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association have been publicly raising questions about the Health Care Security Ordinance in light of the federal implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

In a recent article in the San Francisco Business Times, Small Business California President Scott Hauge was quoted as saying, “We question whether Healthy San Francisco should continue in its current form with the ACA coming in.” And an article published today suggests that some are continuing to question whether the HCSO can legally coexist alongside the federal requirements under the ACA despite clarification given by Jon Givner of the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office last Thursday stating that the ACA expressly allows jurisdictions like San Francisco to adopt health-care policies such as the HCSO.

Meanwhile, the message from defenders of the city’s health care policy at a hearing called by Sup. David Campos last week was clear: Funding for employee health care generated by employer contribution provisions under the HCSO will be needed more than ever once the ACA is implemented, because many people who now rely on the low-cost Healthy San Francisco for medical care will suddenly find themselves ineligible for that program and automatically funneled into a new system where they are eligible to sign up for subsidized health care, but won’t necessarily be able to afford it.

The ACA will begin enrollment in October, and will take effect in January of 2014. At that point, roughly two-thirds of current enrollees in Healthy San Francisco will either transition to Medi-Cal (if they earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level) or qualify for subsidized health care coverage under Covered California, the health benefit exchange created under the ACA. Things are apt to be the most complicated for Healthy San Francisco enrollees who discover they cannot actually afford to take advantage of the options offered under Covered California. 

For this reason, Campos stressed that the HCSO should remain in place without being scaled back or tampered with, because medical reimbursement accounts provided by employer contributions under the ordinance could serve to fill those gaps and help low-wage earners obtain coverage regardless of income. As things stand, Campos and Healthy San Francisco advocates said, gaps created under the ACA will be filled by stronger HCSO provisions, so the programs stand to complement one another.

But the business community, seeking what GGRA executive director Rob Black described to the Guardian as “guidance” from the city on how to move forward given the pending implantation of federal health care reform, wishes instead to open up a new policy dialogue about the HCSO. The mayor has been receptive to their concerns, and recently reconstituted the Universal Healthcare Council, a body that was previously formed to hash out local health care policy.

A key question is who will be appointed serve on that board: Department of Public Health Director Barbara Garcia will chair it, but so far the only indication of who else will be named is that it will consist of “community, healthcare, labor and business stakeholders,” according to a quote attributed to Garcia in the Business Times. Will the makeup include members of the GGRA, the business organization that sued the city to overturn the employer contribution mandate under the HCSO? 

In response to questions about whether the mayor believed the employer spending requirement ought to be revisited in light of ACA implementation, and who would be appointed to the newly convened healthcare council, mayoral spokesperson Christine Falvey responded ot the Guardian with the following statement: “Everything is on the table as the City develops a plan to best implement [the Affordable Care Act]. This is a great opportunity to see how the city can continue to be a leader in making sure San Franciscans have access to quality healthcare. We are currently updating a membership list for the Universal Healthcare Council. More information on that as it becomes available.”

Under fire again

Michael Redmond
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Under fire again

rebecca@sfbg.com

At a recent hearing on San Francisco’s Health Care Security Ordinance — once-controversial legislation that is now in the business community’s crosshairs once again — a nursing student stood at the podium to address members of the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services & Safety Committee.

She told them about her mother, who battled illness but did not have access to healthcare for 14 years due to her immigration status, recalling a day when her mother explained why she wasn’t seeking medical attention: “If I go to the hospital, I’ll bury you in debt.”

For the uninsured and undocumented, going without medical care or going into insurmountable debt could be the only options if it weren’t for Healthy San Francisco, a medical services safety net that was created by the HSCO in 2006. The program is expected to continue to provide care for undocumented enrollees who won’t be eligible for federal assistance once the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, takes effect early next year.

The HCSO’s mandate that businesses provide some healthcare coverage for their employees was fiercely opposed by the business community, which challenged it all the way to the US Supreme Court. Now, those same powerful forces are gearing up for a fresh challenge that could jeopardize HCSO’s potential to fill coverage gaps that will be created under Obamacare.

Under federal health care reform, two-thirds of the enrollees in Healthy San Francisco will become ineligible to continue receiving coverage because they will automatically gain eligibility for some form of federal assistance. Those earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level will be guaranteed coverage under Medi-Cal. But for low-income earners whose wages hover around $14 an hour, things are far less certain because they will be eligible to enroll in the federally created health benefit exchange, Covered California, although they won’t necessarily be able to afford it. For someone earning around $30,000 per year before taxes, the estimated monthly cost for a health insurance plan under Covered California hovers at more than $200 per month, in many cases making it too much of a stretch.

As things stand, uninsured San Francisco employees who earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, but not enough to afford enrollment in Covered California — despite being eligible — can still access funds set aside for them in medical reimbursement accounts under the HCSO. This option may provide enough of a financial boost for low-wage earners to take advantage of federally subsidized health insurance after all.

“For working people, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act actually makes the Health Care Security Ordinance more important,” explains Ian Lewis, research director at UNITE-HERE Local 2. “There are many consequences of the ACA … and the Health Care Security Ordinance is a buffer against them.”

As it stands, the local law “makes Covered California actually work in a high-cost city like ours,” Lewis added.

Under HCSO, San Francisco employers are required to contribute toward employees’ health care on a per-hour basis for each employee working more than eight hours per week, regardless of immigration status or city of residence, amounting to an estimated $255 per participant per month.

This mandate, known as the Employer Spending Requirement, has been the target of multiple lawsuits brought against the city by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association since the landmark health care ordinance, authored by then-Sup. Tom Ammiano, was first enacted in 2006.

That same requirement also makes the local ordinance stronger than the federal law when it comes to worker protections, because the federal mandate only requires employers to offer coverage for workers who put in 30 hours a week or more. That has prompted businesses nationwide to reschedule their workers down to 29 hours per week in a gesture of opposition to health care reform, but no such incentive exists in San Francisco because of the hourly contribution requirement.

Now that federal health care reform is poised for implementation, with enrollment set to begin in October and a transition to the new system slated for early next year, GGRA and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce are urging the city to open up a new policy dialogue about employer requirements under the local health care law — and Mayor Ed Lee has been receptive.

“We question whether Healthy San Francisco should continue in its current form with the ACA coming in,” Small Business California President Scott Hauge told the San Francisco Business Times (“Healthy San Francisco, related program to shrink dramatically, but not price tag,” July 16). Hauge has met with Jim Lazarus, the Chamber’s senior vice president for public policy, and GGRA Director Rob Black on the issue, the article noted.

Reached by phone, Black emphasized to the Guardian that GGRA employers are merely seeking guidance on how businesses should comply with the local and federal mandates. “It’s important that we really focus on getting together, and getting together quickly,” Black said, to ensure “San Franciscans have access to the full benefits and subsidies of the Affordable Care Act.”

Longtime advocates of Healthy San Francisco and progressive policymakers are watching closely. “They’ve been trying to get out of their responsibility to provide worker’s health care since the law was passed,” Hillary Ronen, a legislative aide for Sup. David Campos, said of business interests who are airing complaints about employer requirements.

Once the federal law takes effect, San Francisco employers will have the option of either providing coverage, or contributing to a city program that establishes medical reimbursement accounts for employees administered by city government, Ronen explained. A third option, “standalone health reimbursement accounts,” under which employers manage reimbursement funds for employees, will be rendered illegal under Obamacare. That system generated controversy in recent years because employers were placing undue restrictions on the use of those funds, and in some cases even pocketing the money after neglecting to inform their workers that it was available (see “Check, please,” 4/23/13).

On July 25, Lee announced that the city’s Universal Health Care Council, a body previously tasked with guiding local health care policy, would be reconvened to “examine San Francisco’s implementation of the Federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) and engage stakeholders in identifying necessary local policies” to support the transition.

In response to signals that the business community is gearing up for a fresh challenge to the city’s health care law using the ACA as ammunition, Campos convened a hearing July 25 to discuss the importance of the HCSO in relation to the federal law.

For several hours, advocates of Healthy San Francisco — many of them members of the immigrant community who would have no other options if it weren’t for the program — delivered passionate defenses of the current program. Campos emphasized that federal health care reform stood to be a great success in combination with the local health care ordinance, which would serve to fill in any gaps in coverage.

Deputy Director of the Department of Public Health Colleen Chawla explained during the hearing that of the 60,000 San Franciscans currently enrolled either in Healthy San Francisco or SF Path, a second medical assistance program, roughly 40,500 will automatically become eligible to enroll either in Medi-Cal or Covered California under federal health care reform come January. The remaining 19,500 won’t be eligible, however, mostly due to immigration status. Healthy San Francisco is expected to continue providing a safety net for those who would otherwise fall through the cracks. But when it comes to the two-thirds who are eligible for federal assistance, but may not be able to actually afford it, things would be thrown into uncertainty if the Employer Spending Requirement were altered or eliminated. “Folks in the business community would be happy to say, the Affordable Care Act is enough, and businesses shouldn’t be complicated with an additional burden,” notes Le Ly, program director at the Chinese Progressive Association. But the HCSO “is an important pillar of the total continuum of care,” he said. “We see it as continuing to complement and strengthen health care coverage.”

The death aquatic

Michael Redmond
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The death aquatic

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM The 911 call placed from SeaWorld Orlando on February 24, 2010 imparted a uniquely horrific emergency: “A whale has eaten one of the trainers.” That revelation opens Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfish, a powerful doc that puts forth a compelling argument against keeping orcas in captivity, much less making them do choreographed tricks in front of tourists at Shamu Stadium.

Whale experts, former SeaWorld employees, and civilian eyewitnesses step forward to illuminate an industry that seemingly places a higher value on profits than on safety — skewed priorities that made headlines after veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by Tilikum, a massive bull who’d been involved in two prior deaths. (Though SeaWorld refused to speak with Cowperthwaite on camera, they recently released a statement calling Blackfish “shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate;” read the filmmaker’s response to SeaWorld’s criticisms at film blog Indiewire.) Blackfish, which premiered locally at the San Francisco International Film Festival, opens theatrically this week. I spoke with Cowperthwaite ahead of its release.

SF Bay Guardian Blackfish uses home-movie footage to illustrate training accidents, whale misbehavior, and so forth. I’m guessing a company as image-conscious as SeaWorld would strive to keep that kind of material out of the public eye. How did you get ahold of it?

Gabriela Cowperthwaite It came from every source imaginable: personal archives, historical archives, people who happened to be filming shows when they were visitors at the park. We had to vet every piece of footage, figure out the original owner, and go from there. It was the most time-consuming process imaginable — but we really needed to be inside the park to tell the story, so we had no choice but to really do the detective work to find out where every little bit came from.

SFBG Did you do any of your own clandestine filming at SeaWorld?

GC We kind of had to. I had to “meet” Tilikum, you know? Whatever we could do to get footage that could truthfully represent the story, we did.

SFBG The film interviews several former SeaWorld trainers who seem eager to speak out against the park. How did you find them?

GC When they heard how SeaWorld responded to Dawn Brancheau’s death in the news, they knew something was amiss and they began speaking out. In terms of them being comfortable [with being in] the film, they had spoken to author Tim Zimmerman [for the] Outside magazine article “Killer in the Pool,” and had felt a level of comfort with him. His article was one of the best articles I read about the Brancheau case. So from that, I was able to contact them. Their only caveat was that the film [would have to] be truthful, and I told them I planned to do a fact-based narrative that wasn’t sensationalized or gratuitous. Because we saw eye to eye on that approach, they agreed to be interviewed.

SFBG Blackfish highlights the disconnect between SeaWorld’s version of Brancheau’s death and what the trainers suspect actually happened. Their analysis of the video shot in the moments leading up to the attack is very effective.

GC It’s exactly what you want to know because you can’t understand what’s happening. The lay viewer sees a whale circling a pool; there’s nothing other than, “Isn’t this a cute trick?” Audience members at these shows are trained just as much as the whales are, to respond and laugh and clap on cue. And yet, to have a trainer say, “Oh no, this session is going badly” — that was so eye opening for me, and I could only learn that from these former trainers.

SFBG What do you think would be the best-case scenario for whales in captivity, going forward?

GC If SeaWorld were to stop its breeding program, that would be hugely important. And one of the best alternatives [for whales in the park] is instituting a sea pen, which is essentially cordoning off part of an ocean cove with a big net. You can’t just dump [the whales] into the ocean because they don’t know how to eat live fish, and a lot of them are hopped up on antibiotics. But you could soft-release them and keep them in a place where you could monitor their health, and yet allow them to be in an ocean environment. That would be an amazing thing that SeaWorld could do.

SFBG You mentioned that you had gone to see Tilikum in person. What was that like?

GC I was terrified of Tilikum when I first started making the documentary — I think because I’d read [Brancheau’s] autopsy report early on, and it was the stuff of nightmares. But when I started unpacking his life to try and understand [him], I started feeling this empathy. It culminated with me seeing him and truly feeling sorry for this tremendous, impossible animal — relegated to doing this silly lap around the pool and splashing everybody, and then going right back into his little pool.

SFBG And SeaWorld doesn’t acknowledge that it’s the whale that killed the trainer, of course.

GC Oh no. Absolutely not. They just don’t talk about it. And remember, they call everything Shamu. That’s the easiest way not to have to deal with the Tilikum factor.

BLACKFISH opens Fri/26 in Bay Area theaters.

New director triggers a brain drain at SFDPH

Michael Redmond
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The San Francisco Department of Public Health has seen an exodus of top officials over the 18 months since Barbara Garcia took the reins from longtime chief Mitch Katz, the most recent being Environmental Health Director Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, who was placed on administrative leave last month pending an investigation into unspecified concerns.

Bhatia has been a hero to many progressive San Franciscans and public health professionals for his innovative work supporting expanded worker protections, regulation of cannabis dispensaries and restaurants, environmental justice initiatives, and other work that has landed him in the pages of the Guardian many, many times.

“The poorest Americans are about two times as likely to die. People in low-wage jobs have less access to health care … food, shelter, clothing, and transit,” Bhatia testified during the 2002 Board of Supervisors hearing that led to the creation of a city minimum wage.

Neither Bhatia nor the department would comment on his leave, although sources tell us that he has not been informed of the charges against him (which an item in the Chronicle last month suggested was a possible conflict of interest issue relating to his regulation of restaurants) and that Garcia has clashed with many top officials in the department since taking over.

Among those who have left the department are Dr. Susan Fernyak, Director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control; Dr. Masae Kawamura, Director of TB Control; Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of HIV Prevention; Elizabeth Jacobi, Director of Human Resources; Tangerine Brigham, Director of Healthy San Francisco; Mark Trotz, Director of Housing and Urban Health; and Dr. Erica Pan, Director of Emergency Preparedness.

“SFDPH has a national and worldwide reputation for innovative solutions to traditional public health problems. As a citizen of this city, I’m concerned that the current leadership is fostering an environment that is driving out and stifling that innovation to the detriment of all of us. A number of staff people have told me they have been instructed not to stretch themselves to innovate, to do only what their job description says and no more,” said the source, who works for a nonprofit that partners with the department.

Asked to comment on the exodus and her role in it, Garcia issued the following statement in response to questions from the Guardian: “Three staff that reported to me directly were recruited and provided promotions in the Los Angeles Department of Health Services. I’m very proud of these staff who are now involved with Health Care Reform efforts for the Los Angeles area. Several other staff that reported to our Public Health Division left for positions that were closer to home and the majority of these departures were promotions. All staff left in good standing with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.”

Meanwhile, 93 “members of the public health, social and environmental justice, foundation and education communities” wrote a signed letter to Mayor Ed Lee on July 10 on behalf of Dr. Bhatia, highlighting his work and appealing for a just resolution to the situation.

“Many across the nation have been grappling with how to improve the social and environmental conditions that are the cause of poor health and health inequities. Under Dr. Bhatia’s leadership, the San Francisco Department of Public Health Environmental Health Section has found practical ways — using research, policy, regulation, and cross-sector collaboration — to produce measurable improvements to environmental and social conditions throughout San Francisco’s diverse communities,” they wrote.

While writing that they “have no knowledge or commentary on the details of the leave or investigations, they went on to note the initiative that Bhatia has shown in going beyond his prescribed duties to work with various San Francisco constituencies to support equitable solutions to this city’s problems: “He takes his responsibilities as a public servant seriously, working well beyond required hours, and he is committed to improving the life-chances of socially, economically, and politically marginalized communities.”

Striking Out

Michael Redmond
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Striking Out

news@sfbg.com

Today marks 1,575 days since concession workers at AT&T Park have had a raise, during which time the San Francisco Giants have been fabulously successful, both on and off the playing field.

The 750 workers represented by UNITE-HERE Local 2 are currently involved in frustrating and fruitless negotiations with their employer, Centerplate, a South Carolina-based food service company contracted by the Giants to sell beer, garlic fries, and other overpriced consumables at games.

The Giants and its front office seem fairly unconcerned about the plight of workers who proudly don the team’s logo and pad its revenues. Not a single concession worker that we interviewed for this article said that they work for Centerplate — each of them said that they work for the Giants.

Since the last contract expired in March 2010, the Giants have won two World Series championships, raised the average ticket price by 20 percent, and have seen the value of the team shoot up by $223 million. The only thing that hasn’t improved are the wages of the concession workers.

Cashiers currently make $16.40 per hour, in-seat runners make $13.40, and some entry-level workers make just $10.45, which is actually less the city’s minimum wage. That’s only legal because those workers were under contract for $10.45 per hour when the wage increased to $10.55 at the beginning of this year. And Centerplate won’t even let Giants workers have a tip jar to augment their substandard wages.

Local 2 reports that revenue from concessions is divided up in a 55-45 split between the team and Centerplate (the Giants PR office disputes this number, but it won’t divulge the actual split). So when a fan spends $17 for a hot dog and 16oz beer, Centerplate and its workers get $7.65 and the Giants get $9.35, all of it pure profit. And the Giants executives even set the concession prices, not Centerplate.

But the team says the plight of these workers isn’t its problem. “We continue to urge both parties to get back to the bargaining table and to have productive discussions so the matter can be resolved as quickly as possible. This dispute is between Centerplate and Local 2, not the Giants,” is the team’s public position on the issue.

The Giants communications office responded with this stance to every question the Guardian asked about the issues involved: What have you done to “urge” Centerplate to settle the contract? Couldn’t the Giants force a settlement if it really wanted to? Why haven’t concessions workers shared in the team’s success and rising revenues? How can you claim to support the community if you can’t even ensure the people who work in your stadium are paid minimum wage?

The Giants had nothing to say about a petition signed by 600 of the workers urging the team and Centerplate to agree to a deal, instituting a company-wide no-comment policy on the standoff with concession workers.

“It would be nice if they would come in and talk—not be a mediator, but to know what we’re asking for and say why they’re not providing it or why they feel they shouldn’t provide certain information,” Billie Feliciano, who has worked as a Giants cashier for more than 30 years, told us. “They could talk to the president of the union on that if they wanted to. You know, we’re not asking you to tell us how you spend your money. We just want to know how much control you have of this situation.”

Feliciano and her fellow workers just want the Giants to be team players.

 

 

WHO’S IN CONTROL?

Contrary to what the Giants may say, there is one pressing issue—job security for the workers—that is nearly impossible for the workers and Centerplate to resolve. Every worker interviewed for this story has explicitly said that job security is their most important goal.

Even Centerplate says only the Giants can offer job security to concession workers. If Centerplate goes out of business or loses its contract, the concession workers will likely lose their jobs, which is why they’re advocating for a succesorship clause that would guarantee their employment in that scenario.

When The Guardian inquired with the Giants office about the issue, its spokesperson once again responded, “This is an issue between the workers and Centerplate, not the Giants.”

But with the Giants controlling who runs its concession and how much they charge the fans, is Centerplate just an easy scapegoat for squeezing more profits from workers? Because on the subject of health benefits and wages, the two camps are separated by a wide chasm.

In order to qualify for healthcare, the workers need to work at least 10 games in a month (they’re eligible for health insurance only from June 1 through December 1) to have coverage a month later, which means that the health and well-being of the 750 workers hinges on Major League Baseball’s scheduler.

Workers almost got denied coverage for August because June only had nine games, but they ended up qualifying because they worked a private event at AT&T Park for the biotechnology firm Genentech.

Yet Centerplate wants to raise the number of qualifying games to 12, while Local 2 wants to keep it at 10 and grant healthcare coverage to workers who work every game in months with less than 10 games.

On wages, Centerplate has offered 25-cent increase in hourly pay, no retro raises for the years worked under the expired contract, and a $500 bonus. Though Local 2 has not put out an exact number on their wage demands, its spokesperson says Centerplate’s wage offers are beyond unacceptable; they’re insulting.

Centerplate’s main message in this quarrel is its insistence that the concessions workers are among the highest paid in the nation and that they accrue more benefits than most part-time workers. But the workers say that claim is misleading given the high cost of living in the Bay Area.

“If we were living in Dallas, Texas, I’d say yeah, we’re probably overpaid. But we’re not,” Anthony Wendelburger, who has been a cook for three years, told us.

The Bay Area is among the most expensive metropolitan areas in the nation. Last month, the business consultant Kiplinger published a list of the top 10 most expensive cities in the U.S. San Francisco was third behind Honolulu and New York, with nearby San Jose in fourth and Oakland eighth.

The average concessions worker makes around $11,000 in a year while some make upwards of $13,000 during the regular season. Based on differences in the cost of living, we calculate (using www.bankrate.com) that $11,000 translates to $7,760 if they served food and drinks for the Seattle Mariners, $7,880 for the Chicago Cubs or White Sox, and $6,530 for the Atlanta Braves.

 

 

THE OLD BALLGAME

At the Giants-Padres game on June 18, a Tuesday, several hundred protesters gathered at a rally to show support for the Giants concession workers. Most were affiliated with Local 2, but a few off-duty concession workers came to join the demonstration.

They implored the fans—most whom seemed to be just learning about the dispute—to abstain from purchasing any concession stand products. The rally started an hour before game time engulfed fans waiting in line with chants of “No justice, no garlic fries!” and “Ain’t no protest like an union protest because an union protest don’t stop!”

Inside the stadium, 44 protesters (all of whom had purchased tickets) staged a sit-in in front the garlic fries stand situated behind sections 122 and 123. Their numbers withered as the game progressed and by the fourth inning, the area in front of the stand was cleared and business resumed, with 10 protesters arrested for refusing to disperse.

That protest followed a more significant action on May 25, when all of the 750 workers staged an one day strike, authorized by a 500-16 vote by workers. For that game, Centerplate employed volunteer workers who only got paid in tips. Yes, the scabs got the tips that the regular workers are being denied.

Food and drink service during that game was significantly slower than normal, as even the Giants acknowledged. There were reports of fans standing up to 40 minutes in line for a beer, which is usually more than two innings, an amount of playing time that few true baseball fan would ever give up for a beer run.

Critics—including several passerby fans who were loudly expressing their disdain for the demonstrators at the Giants-Padres game—say the workers should be content with what they have, perhaps assuming the workers were getting more from that $10 beer than they really are.

When Pearlie Jones started working concessions at Giants games 22 years ago, hot dogs were $3. Today they sell for twice that amount at the stand that Jones now manages.

We met Jones at the Local 2 building in the Tenderloin. She lives in Daly City, survives on unemployment during the off-season, and has no other source for health insurance. With nervous laughter, Jones told us she “prays to God during [the off season] that I don’t get sick.”

Wendelburger, who has to commute almost two hours each way to the ball park, works as a bartender during the off-season, although he can only get three days a week. When asked about health insurance during the off-season, this husband and father of two says, “Unless I’m going to die, I’m not going to see a doctor.”

But Jones says that as important as improved wages and healthcare benefits are to her and other employees, they really fear losing their jobs: “Our job security is the main issue that we’re pushing for right now.”

One issue that seems telling of the way Centerplate and the Giants are treating concession workers is on the issue of tips. The workers are currently not allowed a tip jar or a tip line on credit card receipts, a standard feature of food service, particularly here in the Bay Area, where even butchers and bakers have tip jars.

Ramirez says she’s utterly baffled by Centerplate’s stubbornness on the issue. “A tip line is something that doesn’t cost management anything and requires a small change in the computer system and is something the customers are actually demanding. We have a great experience with our fans and customers and they want to share their gratitude and they can’t,” she told us.

Another seemingly minor yet deadlocked issue is the request for benches for in-seat food runners. These workers currently have nowhere to sit for breaks or in between food runs, yet Centerplate has refused to budge on that issue.

When asked about these minor demands, a Centerplate spokesperson said that they have not seen any list of demands from Local 2, a statement disputed by workers and Local 2.

Centerplate has cast workers as greedy, even filing a lawsuit against Local 2 claiming that the union and the workers are trying to exploit the Giants’ World Series championships, an action that the union and its workers heard about from reporters, adding to the aura of mistrust hanging over these negotiations.

 

 

LONG STANDOFF

Both sides have accused the other of not operating in good faith, something they both hope will change when negotiations resume on July 29.

Centerplate says it wants to give the workers a contract, but blames the deadlocked negotiations on Local 2 head Mike Casey, who also serves as the elected president of the San Francisco Labor Council.

“Unfortunately, Local 2 and its leader Mike Casey have not responded to our economic proposal. Our employees, and Local 2 members, remain without a contract, raise, bonus, and health security all because of Casey’s failures,” Centerplate spokesperson Gina Antonini told us.

But the concession workers seem to strongly support Casey, who was on vacation and unavailable for comment. “I have tremendous faith in our Local 2 union leadership. Mike Casey is brilliant,” Patricia Ramirez, a line cook of 14 years, told us. “I think Casey and [Local 2 organizer] Alphonso Pines are leading us in the right way and I think we’re going to win because of their guidance.”

Centerplate seemed unaware of Casey’s local reputation and community support. “The entire labor community is supporting Local 2 and our message is clear: If you have to go to the games, don’t buy the food” San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson told us.

Local 2’s tough, deliberate, long-term strategy is one that has paid big dividends numerous times in its history, even if it has resulted in long standoffs with management, as was been the case with hotel workers in San Francisco.

“We have seen plenty of times that they have deadlocked for a period of time, they hold out, they tend to fight as long as it takes, and they tend to win” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

For their part, concession workers involved in the negotiations blame Centerplate lawyer and lead negotiator George Aude and his abrasive style for the impasse and the tense relations. Several workers we talked to cited Aude’s disrespectful demeanor, with one worker calling him a “giant hothead”.

In one of the negotiations, Aude made several irate comments, which Local 2 took as a threat. They say Aude demanded of the Local 2, “If you don’t stop all these actions you’ve been doing, we’ll offer you less money.”

We reached Aude to comment on the contract talks, he said simply “unsatisfied,” and when we asked for further details, Aude hung up and refused to answer our calls.

 

 

SUPPORTING THE TEAM

Mayor Ed Lee says he’s urging the two sides to settle the standoff and that he has offered to help, although he’s leaving it to the mediators involved. So for those keeping score, City Hall has offered help but the Giants organization has not.

Yet Lee’s half-hearted offer to help Giants workers belies his zealous efforts to promote the Giants and its brand. In February, Lee and the Giants launched a citywide anti-litter program called “The Giant Sweep,” named in honor of the Giants’ sweep of the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 World Series.

“Last year the Giants showed us that winning the World Series took a team effort that went far beyond individual heroics. It required the effort of every player, coach, manager, and support staff — not to mention the fans — to build a championship team. The same approach is needed to attack San Francisco’s litter problem. The Giant Sweep will help San Francisco remain a place where people want to live, work and visit,” the Mayor’s Office said in announcing the program.

Mayor Lee and Gavin Newsom awarded the Giants a “Key to the City” for their World Series wins. Pitcher Matt Cain was awarded a “Key” last year for his perfect game against the Houston Astros. Even disgraced slugger Barry Bonds was given a “Key” after passing Hank Aaron on the all time home run list in August 2007.

“You know, we usually give keys to individual dignitaries who have accomplished great things, whether it was the president of Ireland, or Tony Bennett, or even a Matt Cain on his wonderful perfect game in San Francisco,” Lee said during last year’s celebration. “We normally celebrate those individual accomplishments, but today, we’re gonna break with that tradition and present this key to the entire team and coaching staff, everybody involved in the Giants, the investors, their front office. Congratulations to a team that doesn’t know how to quit, never gives up, and defied the odds at every opportunity.”

Then the city spent nearly a reported quarter-million-dollars to throw its team a massive victory parade and San Franciscans went wild in celebrating the Giants, once again, as the concession workers waited to feel like part of the team.

Could Lee or other City Hall figures help solve the standoff? Other mayors have successfully intervened in situations like this before. In 2004, then-Mayor Newsom sided with the 4,300 picketing hotel workers after the hotels refused his request to end a lockout.

Less than a year before that, Newsom ran for mayor as a “business friendly centrist” who raised millions of dollars from the hotel industry and other downtown business interests. But when he saw that hotel management wasn’t being reasonable, he used the power of his office to help broker an agreement.

It would seem Lee could do the same thing if he wanted, particularly given that the Giants are currently asking the city for land and support to help grow its business.

STADIUM SPRAWL

The Giants organization is currently working on a $1.6 billion, 27-acre development project at Pier 48, located on the opposite side of Mission Creek from AT&T Park. The gargantuan project will include 1,000 housing units, 125,000 square feet of retail, 1.7 million square feet of office space, 2,690 garage parking spaces, and more than eight acres of public space. The project is on public land and will be subject to numerous approval processes, by both the city and the Port of San Francisco. Pier 48 and Seawall Lot 337 are some of the last valuable, easily developable sections of waterfront in San Francisco, so one might say the team is asking a lot from the community. And of course, Mayor Lee offered unqualified, enthusiastic support for the project, telling the Chronicle, “Among my highest priorities is to make sure our homegrown companies can stay, grow, and hire right here in San Francisco, driving job growth, improving our neighborhoods, and in this case our world-class waterfront.” But Lee, Centerplate, and the Giants seem to think that just creating jobs is enough, regardless of pay, benefits, and job security. “The success of a Major League Baseball club is measured by more than game-winning rallies and pennant drives. Beyond the box scores, a ballclub has a unique opportunity to create partnerships to improve the quality of life in its community,” the Giants proclaim on its community page. But for Giants workers, such sentiments have done little to improve their quality of life.

Street Fight: Plan Bay Area falls short of a worthy goal

Sasha Cuttler
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20
Street Fight: Plan Bay Area falls short of a worthy goal

Last week’s adoption of Plan Bay Area by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission was a watershed moment in regional planning. The plan links regional planning to state policies mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and aims to limit future sprawl by accommodating 2.1 million people, 1 million jobs, and 660,000 housing units largely within the existing built-up areas of the nine-county region.

Newly designated priority development areas (PDAs) will enable modest-density, walkable development in city and suburb alike, while preserving both existing single-family neighborhoods and open space. In a time of urgent need to address global warming, the Bay Area has once again proved a leader by enabling compact housing around transit, and its supporting studies expect the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from driving to decline by 15 percent in 2040.

This will not save the world and it’s not without some challenging byproducts — such as preventing displacement of low-income residents from San Francisco and other urban centers — but it is a start. And in a nation hell-bent on denying the urgency of global warming, it is refreshing and inspiring that someone, somewhere, is trying to do something.   

Yet the transportation component – the lynchpin and impetus of Plan Bay Area, according to many local leaders –is mediocre, uninspiring, and inadequate.  Despite land use policies enabling compact development, 80 percent of all travel in the Bay Area will still be in cars in 2040, not much different from today, and far short of the real change that is needed in this time of urgency. With 2 million more people, this is a recipe for gridlock, inequity, and ecological disaster – not sound public policy. 

 It should be no surprise that a big part of the problem is funding. The MTC, charged with assessing future regional transit potential, identifies just $289 billion between now and 2040 for roads, bridges, and transit — far short of what’s needed.  At $10.3 billion a year that may seem like a lot, but upwards of 87 percent of this is already committed to maintenance of existing roads and transit– not transit capacity expansion.  New homes and jobs might be focused around BART and Caltrain stations, but because there’s no real capacity expansion, the current iteration of Plan Bay Area can’t even reach its own modest goal of 74 percent of trips by car in 2040. 

With 2 million more people, cumulative emissions from driving will actually increase by 18 percent because so few new residents will be able to squeeze onto our already crowded transit systems.  Today BART is breaking ridership records but it is crowded. Extensions to far flung suburbs might be worthwhile but they don’t expand capacity in the system’s core. What we need is a second BART line and/or Amtrak service between San Francisco and Oakland, but this is absent from the plan. Meanwhile, most mainline Muni buses and railcars are currently jam-packed, yet San Francisco is somehow expected to absorb 92,000 housing units in Plan Bay Area.

Supervisors David Campos and Scott Weiner, representing San Francisco in the Plan Bay Area process, are to be commended for drawing attention to the transit problem and for asking MTC staff to show how to meet future funding gaps. By broaching the subject, they show that San Francisco might be poised to lead on this critical issue. But Campos and Weiner, working within the “fiscally constrained envelope” as framed by MTC planners, were only seeking to cover deficits for existing service – not visionary expanded service.  In the end, there was no real vision for adequate transit capacity expansion.

This foretells a troubling transit future – and one that will likely be more and more private. While many San Franciscans decry the proliferation of Google buses and other private corporate shuttles hogging Muni stops, these buses do lay bare the transit conundrum in the Bay Area. Without well-funded, visionary capacity expansion of public transit, those with the means (and high wage jobs) will shift to private buses while everyone else is left to duke it out on crowded highways, buses, and trains.

This conundrum demands that progressives in the Bay Area ramp up their transit politics to lead locally and nationally. The debate about transit finance needs to be redirected – away from regressive local sales tax measures (which often include more roads) back towards more progressive measures, such as transit assessment districts – which could require developers who profit from Plan Bay Area’s growth incentives to adequately finance transit expansion.

The debate needs to move away from demonizing public transit employees to a discussion of the role and responsibility of corporate health care, banks, and the real estate industry in causing economic instability (which has harmed public transit finance more in the last decade than a bus driver expecting a living wage and healthcare). The debate needs to move away from creating new roadway capacity, such as exclusive toll lanes, and focus on how to convert existing highway lanes into transit-only lanes with fast, frequent, reliable regional bus service open to all.

Plan Bay Area is a living document, a work in progress. Within the next four-five years it will need to be revised and can be improved.  The current version of the plan, weak on transit funding, has been dominated by a loud, irrational mob of Tea Party cranks bent on sabotaging anything that hints of progressive ideas. They were successful in diluting Plan Bay Area. While a smattering of progressive transit activists showed up and attempted to shape the plan, next time the plan needs a broader progressive movement — including housing, social justice, and environmental activists — to demand a truly visionary transportation plan.

 

Jason Henderson is a geography professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco. We’ll be sharing his perspective regularly in the Bay Guardian.

Change in leadership at DPH triggers brain (and heart) drain

Sasha Cuttler
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26

The San Francisco Department of Public Health has seen an exodus of top officials over the 18 months since Barbara Garcia took the reins from longtime chief Mitch Katz, the most recent being Environmental Health Director Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, who was placed on administrative leave last month pending an investigation into unspecified concerns.

Bhatia has been a hero to many progressive San Franciscans and public health professionals for his innovative work supporting expanded worker protections, regulation of cannabis dispensaries and restaurants, environmental justice initiatives, and other work that has landed him in the pages of the Guardian many, many times.

“The poorest Americans are about two times as likely to die. People in low-wage jobs have less access to health care … food, shelter, clothing, and transit,” Bhatia testified during the 2002 Board of Supervisors hearing that led to the creation of a city minimum wage.

Neither Bhatia nor the department would comment on his leave, although sources tell us that he has not been informed of the charges against him (which an item in the Chronicle last month suggested was a possible conflict of interest issue relating to his regulation of restaurants) and that Garcia has clashed with many of top officials in the department since taking over.

Among those who have left the department, said one knowledgeable source, are Dr. Susan Fernyak, Director of Communicable Disease Prevention and Control; Dr. Masae Kawamura, Director of TB Control; Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of HIV Prevention; Elizabeth Jacobi, Director of Human Resources; Tangerine Brigham, Director of Healthy San Francisco; Mark Trotz, Director of Housing and Urban Health; and Dr. Erica Pan, Director of Emergency Preparedness.

“SFDPH has a national and worldwide reputation for innovative solutions to traditional public health problems. As a citizen of this city, I’m concerned that the current leadership is fostering an environment that is driving out and stifling that innovation to the detriment of all of us. A number of staff people have told me they have been instructed not to stretch themselves to innovate, to do only what their job description says and no more,” said the source, who works for nonprofit that deals with the department.

Asked to comment on the exodus and her role in it, Garcia issued the following statement in response to questions from the Guardian: “Three staff that reported to me directly were recruited and provided promotions in the Los Angeles Department of Health Services.   I’m very proud of these staff  who are now involved with Health Care Reform efforts for the Los Angeles area.  Several other staff that reported to our Public Health Division left for positions that were closer to home and the majority of these departures were promotions. All staff left  in good standing with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.”

Meanwhile, 93 “members of the public health, social and environmental justice, foundation and education communities” wrote a signed letter to Mayor Ed Lee on July 10 on behalf of Dr. Bhatia, highlighting his work and appealing for a just resolution to the situation.

“Many across the nation have been grappling with how to improve the social and environmental conditions that are the cause of poor health and health inequities. Under Dr. Bhatia’s leadership, the San Francisco Department of Public Health Environmental Health Section has found practical ways — using research, policy, regulation, and cross-sector collaboration — to produce measurable improvements to environmental and social conditions throughout San Francisco’s diverse communities,” they wrote.

While writing that they “have no knowledge or commentary on the details of the leave or investigations, they went on to note the initiative that Bhatia has shown in going beyond his prescribed duties to work with various San Francisco constituencies to support equitable solutions to this city’s problems: “He takes his responsibilities as a public servant seriously, working well beyond required hours, and he is committed to improving the life-chances of socially, economically, and politically marginalized communities.”

Brutal murder, wrenching trial: HBO’s must-see doc “The Cheshire Murders”

Sue Vaughan
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10

It was, people said, Connecticut’s version of the In Cold Blood murders. In July 2007, Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, 11-year-old Michaela and 17-year-old Hayley, were murdered by a pair of strangers — Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, who’d picked the family at random — while patriarch William Petit lay bound and beaten in the basement of their suburban home. He survived; the women perished either at the hands of their attackers or in the fire the men set to cover their tracks.

Clearly, the bare facts of the case — which took place in Cheshire, Conn., a bedroom community near New York City — are horrific enough, without considering any of its other elements. But The Cheshire Murders, created for HBO’s Summer Documentary Series by married filmmaking team Kate Davis and David Heilbroner (2010’s Stonewall Uprising), reveals that the deaths may have been preventable if only police had intervened; a frantic bank teller dialed 911 after observing a frightened Jennifer Petit withdrawing a large sum of money for the waiting Hayes. Or, perhaps the family would have been spared if Komisarjevsky and Hayes, men with long rap sheets, had been more closely monitored by their parole officers and drug counselors — or had received better mental-health care during their respective troubled childhoods.

But all the “what if” scenarios in the world can’t restore three lives — or fill the void felt by those they left behind. Using revealing interviews that explore the many facets of the case, deft editing, and a sensitive yet questioning tone, The Cheshire Murders is a both thought-provoking and disturbing viewing experience. I spoke with Davis and Heilbroner ahead of the film’s Mon/22 HBO debut.

SF Bay Guardian A story like The Cheshire Murders, with its many lurid details, could come across as exploitation, but your film manages to avoid that.

David Heilbroner It would have been very easy to go down the “murder-tainment” path. Obviously, we didn’t go there.

SFBG The earliest interviews in the film seem to occur right after the crimes. How did you first hear about the murders, and how did you go about getting access to your subjects?

DH We heard about the murders, I think, like everybody else — in the papers the next day. We’ve been working with Sheila Nevins, who is the President of HBO Documentary Films, for over a decade, and she called us up. I used to be a prosecutor and I’ve written true crime, and she said, “You guys should go to Cheshire and take a look at what’s going on. There might be a movie — I don’t know, but go look.”

So Kate and I went, and what really got us hooked was that nothing about this case screwed together all that logically right from the beginning. It just was a mystery. It didn’t make sense. It was the wrong town: Cheshire, this stuff just doesn’t happen there. It was the wrong family: usually when you have a crime like this, it turns out one of them was dealing drugs after all. Like Breaking Bad or something, the guy’s actually cooking meth in the basement. But everyone in this family was wonderful. They were all just good, upright citizens. The didn’t bring this upon themselves at all.

And the perpetrators weren’t lifelong arsonists, or sexual predators, or people with vicious assaults in their records. They were petty burglars. And then, Mrs. Petit turns out to have been at the bank and alerted the police in a timely fashion, when the perpetrators were separated and the family was still alive. And yet, 35 minutes later, everybody’s dead.

So, it just was full of weird mysteries that got us immediately hooked on what happened, and why.

SFBG It seemed like you had pretty generous access to everyone (except the police, who refused to comment at all). Several family members on both sides give very open interviews. How forthcoming were they really, and how did you get access to them?

KD It was not easy. The town had virtually shut its doors because it was inundated by a tidal wave of media trucks and reporters. It’s a place where people like to keep to themselves, and privacy is considered a really important commodity. So they were shell-shocked and didn’t want to talk, by and large.

But we stuck around, because we had the latitude to do that with HBO’s support. And beyond that, it really took months for people to understand that this would be a story that really would take place over time, and that we would allow people to speak for themselves, and we weren’t trying to squeeze them into our version of the story. We also assured the people in the film that us filming them, before the trial particularly, wouldn’t affect the trial, because nobody would see the material until after both trials were done. But did it take a long time? Yes.

DH It took months. People were shell-shocked by the horror of the crime, and wary of being taken advantage of. They didn’t want their sound bites taken out of context, and they wanted to trust us. So we spent a long time talking to people about what exactly we were trying to do. They’re hard questions to answer when you’d love someone to open up and be part of your film, but you have to earn their trust.

Now that the film is done, we were able to show it to a few of the central characters in the film — I was actually shaking, I was so nervous showing it to them, because I really wanted them to like it and think we hadn’t abused their kindness — and I’m delighted to say that they all really liked the film, and really believe in it. That’s more gratifying than I can say.

SFBG Did you try to interview either of the killers?

DH We did try. Steven Hayes, shortly after his trial, fell apart mentally. He started writing crazy letters to these sort of death row groupies who are out there, and his letters were intercepted. He’d started taking credit for 17 rape-murder-abductions, none of which were true. He was just losing it, and saying all this crazy stuff, and his lawyer said, “You know, I just can’t have you interview him in this state. He’s a mess.” He was falling apart anyway; he was depressed, he was on meds during the trial, he was deeply suicidal.

As for Joshua Komisarjevsky, the prison authorities have not been kind to any reporting. They literally wouldn’t allow us to film any exteriors of the prison in which he was incarcerated, unless we were off the perimeter of the property. Eventually we hit a brick wall with them. And even if Steven had said yes, we probably wouldn’t have gotten in, ultimately. Not unlike what happened with the Cheshire police, we offered any number of compromises and suggestions, and the prison authorities flatly rebuffed all filming requests.

As for the Cheshire police, if you’ve seen the film, you know there is a terrible scandal about the way they treated the family [of Jennifer Hawke-Petit]. I went and had two meetings with the Chief of Police in Cheshire, and I said, “Our film’s going to come out, and it’s going to say X, Y, and Z, and it’s not very flattering to you. I bet you have good answers to this. Please be in our film. We will honor what you have to say and let you give your point of view, and rebut these allegations if you want to.” And they said no. They didn’t want to say anything.

I’m sorry to say, both the Cheshire police and the correctional authorities have lot of unanswered questions. [After his arrest,] Steven Hayes was able to squirrel away days and days of medication, even though he was on suicide watch, so how did that happen? So many mysteries in this case. It just kept getting weirder as the trial wore on.

SFBG The film’s revelation about the timeline of the crime — that the police could have, maybe, intervened while Jennifer Hawke-Petit was at the bank — was something that the mainstream media hadn’t really covered.

DH What was also missed was that they came up with a cover story. Right after the crime, both the state and the local police had this story about how, the minute they arrived at the crime scene, the house was already on fire and the perpetrators were running out of the building. And that was directly contradicted by their own records. It shows that they had a full complement of officers, about 16 of them, surrounding the house for about half an hour.

That was really troubling — this is a crime that took place in small-town America, with a local police force that everyone knows, and you’d think if anyone was going to stand up for me, and protect me, and tell me the truth about what happened, it would be those guys.

SFBG I appreciated how you included the Hartford Courant reporter in the film. It seemed like he encountered some of the same frustrations that you guys did.

DH Yeah. Colin Poitras. He was a model reporter, I thought, because he was very cool-headed, extremely dogged, just wanted the facts. He had to bring a lawsuit to even pry loose heavily redacted [case] documents. He was very gracious to let us into this real-time process of reporting on an ongoing event.

SFBG The film ends up making a pretty strong statement against the death penalty, although for reasons not normally mentioned in death-penalty debates: it was known from the beginning that the trial would be long and costly, and would make the crime’s most traumatic details public knowledge. Plus, the men were willing to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences, but emotions were so high that the quest for death sentences kind of took over. Did you start out making The Cheshire Murders with that theme in mind, or did it emerge while you were filming?

KD David, you have a legal background, so you may have been aware of the two-part stage of death penalty trials. But it was new to me. I went into the film really being quite open-minded. I was historically anti-death penalty, but with this case, I thought — particularly as a filmmaker — that I would learn more, and make a better film, and think more deeply about things if I could set aside my political beliefs and just watch the story unfold.

So if anything, I went into this thinking that this might steer me toward understanding why somebody would want the death penalty, and that I might end up more pro-death penalty than I was. But in watching the re-victimization of the family members on both sides, and what they had to go through — with these protracted displays of the worst evidence you can imagine — even the jurors suffered from PTSD and many of them had to undergo therapy after the trial.

This was all avoidable, had these guys been locked up for life. In the end, in the end, that’s what will happen, because the chances of them actually being put to death is slim to none.

DH There are any number of documentaries that have looked at the death penalty, and I’ve seen a lot of them. Most of them are about cases where guilt is ultimately in question. Maybe they didn’t do it, this was a miscarriage of justice and god forbid we execute somebody who didn’t do it. That’s the worst indictment of the death penalty.

This is the first case that’s the poster child for the death penalty, if you’re going to have a death penalty. These guys definitely did it. They admitted they did it. And what they did is just awful. There’s no conceivable good spin you can put on tying girls to their beds, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them on fire. It’s as bad as it gets.

Then, since guilt isn’t the question, and since the horribleness of the crime isn’t the question, it becomes, “What is the death penalty going to achieve, emotionally, in terms of society, in terms of finances?” It was a chance to document that and it had never been done before. I think it gives you a chance to really look the death penalty squarely in the eye and decide whether you believe in it, not when someone’s innocent, but when someone’s guilty.

KD And guilty of, arguably, one of the worst domestic crimes in US history.

SFBG Somebody in the movie mentions that it’s like a modern-day In Cold Blood.

DH It’s a comparison that gets made often, and with good reason. There’s an uncanny similarity between the crimes. A family of four in a nice rural home. Two perpetrators who barely know each other break in, in the hopes of stealing money, and by morning nearly everybody’s dead. And they’re eventually sentenced to death. The similarities were resonant in my mind as we were making the film.

SFBG Did you try to get a more formal interview with William Petit, or is what’s in the movie all he was willing to share one-on-one?

DH That was what he was willing to share, and that was more than he was willing to share with anybody but Oprah. He did do one sit-down interview with Oprah, although he refused to discuss the crime. To this day, he refuses to discuss the crime publicly. He doesn’t do interviews. We were close with his family and he agreed to talk with us on camera on a couple of occasions, and he was inundated with requests. I think he spent as much time fending off the media as he did being at the trial. He couldn’t walk down the street without this school of fish of cameras and mics following him, just hoping he might say something.

So to get the few intimate moments we got with him — it was hard to find him when he wasn’t surrounded. We were grateful. And I think it gives you a glimpse into his loneliness and his struggle with pain, anger, and frustration, which is completely understandable, given that he is a man who literally lost everything in his life overnight.

SFBG What are the advantages of working with a company like HBO, and making a film for cable rather than theatrical release?

KD First of all, it really reaches millions of people. The audience is built-in. And for such a national story, I think it was important for us to know that it would be seen if we were going to invest that kind of time. Theatrical documentaries are a wonderful way to see films, but the numbers of people who see them are much smaller.

Also, HBO is one of the few places in the world that has the appetite and the financial backing to support long-term stories like this. The fact that the film went on for years, and the trial took a long time, didn’t stop them from wanting to continue to make the film.

DH Having a place like HBO, which will give you a national audience and potentially an international platform, is really amazing. If your goal as a filmmaker is to get your take on a subject into the public zeitgeist, it’s a great way to go. And they’re wonderful to work with, I have to say. At least with Kate and me, they do not have a heavy editorial hand; they’re just helpful and I have always been really grateful to work with them.

THE CHESHIRE MURDERS airs Mon/22 on HBO.

My stars!

Michael Redmond
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22
My stars!

culture@sfbg.com

PSYCHIC DREAM This month marks 10 happy years of predicting your weeks ahead through the magic and wisdom of astrology, with my weekly Psychic Dream horoscopes. These 10 years have been so much fun — thank you, my beloved stargazers (and naysayers!). In honor of this decade of Psychic Dream, we solicited questions from readers across the zodiac about the fine art of astrology and the intuitive work I do. Below are my answers. XO, Jessica.

Q What’s the Guardian’s sign? 

Jessica Lanyadoo An intense and taboo breaking Scorpio, of course!

Q In terms of compatibility, does astrological compatibility differ for same-sex couples? If I’m looking at my partner and my charts, where should I look for compatibility? 

JL In traditional astrology we often see traditional thinking about gender and sexuality. Unfortunately, most astrological texts are written not only for heterosexual couples, but also for people who conform to stereotypical gender norms and relationship styles. This often leaves homos, poly folks, and anyone of any sexual orientation who doesn’t fit into classic gender roles straining to find themselves reflected in astrological relationship readings.

Compatibility doesn’t differ for same sex couples, but relationship dynamics, values, and expectations can. People are just energy, and astrology gives voice to the ways that our energies run, and the most effective ways to use them, regardless of where we fall on the sexuality spectrum.

So this next part applies to all relationships. What I look for in relationship compatibility is a couple of things. After making sure that the people involved’s moons are well aspected so that they both feel safe and loved, I like to look for some healthy friction in a chart. We need difference in order to have sustained attraction and be interested in a person, so one shouldn’t be scared away by predictions of conflict. Some of the most successful relationship charts I have seen are riddled with strife! The key is to make sure that whatever problems you see challenge you to become a better, more whole person instead of ones that replay your old patterns. Don’t get too hung up on whether or not your Sun signs are supposed to be well matched; we are more than the sum of our Sun signs. Remember, easy is not the same as compatible.

Q How can I make “Virgo” sound sexier to people? 

JL One of the worst things that people do in astrology is pathologize others with it. Stereotyping sucks!

Virgo does sound sexy to people, but only people who are excited by smart, contemplative, and complex lovers. All 12 signs of the zodiac are sexy in their own way, but if you don’t werque what you’ve got then you’re not using your natural goods to their full potential. Be unapologetic about the sign you are, and trust that whether your spirit animal is Grumpy Cat, K.I.T.T. the talking car, or the Eiffel Tower, there is someone out there who’s astrologically perfect for you.

Q How can you spin the negative or challenging traits of your sign into something good? For example, manipulation for Scorpio, fickleness for Sagittarius, etc. 

JL Luckily, every sign has its bad and good traits, no spin necessary.

Most bad traits of your astrological sign are only positive qualities that are out of balance. For instance, we know that Sagittarius can be a know-it-all, but that’s just an over-exaggerated expression of Sag’s awesome enthusiasm and truth-seeking nature. Cancers can be clingy, but that’s just the fear-based side of their gift of being able to experience their needs and feelings genuinely. If we stop thinking about the signs as good or bad, and start seeking balance in our nature, whatever our natures are, then we tend to thrive. A simple concept, but not an easy task to fulfill.

Q In addition to astrology, tarot, and speaking to the dead, you say you work by intuition. What can you tell about someone when they walk in the room? 

JL I get asked this a lot. I try not to know anything about people when they walk in the room because it’s creepy when intuitive people psychically peep on others. I’m committed to respecting others’ privacy as much as I can. Also, when I’m not working, I don’t want to be overwhelmed by other peoples’ personal issues.

The most common misconceptions people have about psychics are that we can read your mind or are Hollywood style fortune-tellers. Your psyche and your life are not like a movie with a well-defined plot line and a beginning, middle, and end. Life is a complex choose-your-own-adventure story, a “Where’s Waldo” of happiness, success, and health. Psychics and astrologers can’t know all things at once about a person or their life because it’s all too complex and constantly shifting.

We all have agency in our lives, and with effort and time we can change just about anything, including the path we’re walking on right now.

Q Hi Jessica. Hope you are doing well. I have a question for your anniversary column. Can you see in someone’s chart when/how they are going to die — or even any possibilities or hints? 

JL Another commonly asked question! I always have the same thought when someone asks me this: why in the world would you want to know how or when you’re going to die? How can this information help you, and what if it’s wrong? We all die, and we generally don’t get to control the when and where of it, so as an astrologer and a counselor I never predict death.

What I do look for is how to maximize your quality of life while you’re here, how to make good choices that promote the highest quality of life possible, for the long haul. I believe that living well trumps having a solid When-Am-I-Gonna-Die theory any day. As a medical astrologer and medical intuitive, I am interested in investigating health issues and tendencies, but only inasmuch as it’s constructive.

Q Can you say without a doubt, after 10 years, that astrology “works” as a predictive science? 

JL I’ve been working as a professional astrologer for 18 years now and I can say authoritatively that, yes, astrology works!

Nothing is foolproof though; I believe that medical science works too, but I don’t know a single person who hasn’t been misdiagnosed or mistreated by it on occasion. No system or practitioner works effectively all of the time, or for all of the people, and no system should be used without discernment.

Many people throw away the wisdom of astrology and call it quackery without investigation. Many people follow it blindly. Neither approach is wise. Astrology is not a religion or a belief system. It is a valuable process of divination that when used by a trained and experienced professional can profoundly help people.

I no more encourage a person to make decisions about medicine by reading WebMD than I do by reading a random astrology website. Always consult a professional if you want accurate, high quality astrology information, folks!

 

 

Giraudo (and activists) close CPMC deal

Michael Redmond
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18

The takeaway message from a July 11 press conference held in the Mayor’s Office touting legislation authorizing California Pacific Medical Center’s construction of two new San Francisco hospitals was seemingly this: Everyone hearts Lou Giraudo.

A part owner of Boudin Bakery and former president of the San Francisco Police Commission, Giraudo was called in last year to help mediate a deal that seemed doomed when CPMC, city officials, and a coalition of labor and community organizations were unable to hash out an agreement that was acceptable to all sides.

Negotiations have been contentious over the past year due to early indications that CPMC would not guarantee that St. Luke’s, a health care facility relied upon by many low-income San Franciscans, would keep its doors open as a condition of moving forward with the new Cathedral Hill facility, a centerpiece of CPMC’s $2.5 billion project.

Enter Giraudo, who was, according to a not-so-subtle hint dropped by former Mayor Willie Brown in his San Francisco Chronicle column last year, “quietly brought in” by the mayor’s office to fix the half-baked mess that the CPMC deal had evidently devolved into.

Sup. David Campos sang Giraudo’s praises, saying, “I have yet to meet a finer public servant,” and calling Giraudo “a real hero of mine.”

Giraudo himself told the Guardian that his strategy was “to de-politicize the process and get people to think about the community.”

Board President David Chiu, who worked closely with Campos and Sup. Mark Farrell to negotiate with CPMC and other parties on behalf of the Board, went so far as to compare Giraudo to Batman. He even joked that he was going to shine a bat signal the next time a negotiator was needed, in hopes that Giraudo would save the day.

Yet while Giraudo may have provided the catalyst needed for a deal, it was community advocates who ensured that the public at large benefited from the CPMC plan more than they would have otherwise — since the mayor’s office seemed willing to go along with the health care giant’s original terms.

Long before Giraudo’s involvement, a coalition of labor and community organizations waged a campaign to rebuild CPMC “the right way,” holding strong on the issue of St. Lukes and refusing to agree to anything that would leave open the possibility that the hospital, a critically important facility for low-income patients, would be shuttered. “That coalition has been working for quite some time … to save St. Lukes,” Campos said of the diverse coalition of community and labor leaders, who formed under the name San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing, Jobs and Justice. “It kept working for many years.” Under the terms of the agreement that was ultimately agreed upon, St. Luke’s will have a number of specified services to ensure it remains a full-service hospital, and CPMC will commit to providing services to 30,000 charity care patients and 5,400 Medi-Cal managed care patients per year. CPMC will also contribute $36.5 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, and it will pay $4.1 million to replace the homes it displaces on Cathedral Hill. While many advocates for San Francisco’s most vulnerable populations heralded the deal, some were disheartened that it did not dedicate space for psychiatric care.

Burning Bacon

Michael Redmond
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Burning Bacon

news@sfbg.com

Bacon has its own buzz these days, infused with an almost cult-like enthusiasm that’s hard to explain. But the uptick in business that my employer, the Bacon Bacon Food Truck, has recently experienced can hardly be explained by the pork product’s faddish popularity.

Bacon Bacon is in demand more than ever, and it’s all because a small group of neighbors who raised a stink inadvertently set off a national media craze, thereby inspiring bacon-loving supporters to come out in droves and place their orders.

When Jim Angelus opened a neighborhood breakfast sandwich shop five blocks from where he lives with his wife and daughters in the Haight, he never imagined he’d set off a media feeding frenzy about bacon. But that’s what happened.

Jim is my boss. I am a news intern at the Bay Guardian and a recent hire at the Bacon Bacon Food Truck as a line cook. Our menu is crammed full of items like bacon-wrapped fried chicken, a bacon-filled parody of the It’s-It ice cream sandwich called the “That’s-That,” and in quintessential San Francisco fashion, a BLT with goat cheese called “THE L.G.B.T.”

We’re open at Brick and Mortar, on Mission and Duboce streets in San Francisco, for lunch service. We recently reclaimed our original Frederick Street location, pending installation of a costly ventilation system replacement to be OK’d by the Planning Commission as a result of a dustup stemming from neighborhood complaints.

Just a typical San Francisco small business, right?

But ever since a group of neighbors in proximity to our location in the Haight filed complaints with the San Francisco Planning Department about the smell of bacon, sparking a media firestorm, things have gotten a bit surreal.

A Wall Street Journal reporter recently interviewed us for what would become a front-page article. Bacon Bacon even made Saturday Night Live in May, with Amy Poehler informing the nation that a “San Francisco bacon restaurant” was closed for its bacon smell.

Bloggers blogged, tweeters tweeted, and Bacon Bacon was thrown into the spotlight when ABC’s Good Morning America aired a segment titled, “big bacon battle sizzling.”

That media spectacle started to smell like business. Random San Franciscans, many of whom had only heard of us through recent headlines, began to walk up to the truck, stop by the new location and espouse gestures of solidarity to a crew of cooks bewildered by their sudden celebrity status. Many of these supporters had never even eaten the food.

It all started with a series of short San Francisco Examiner articles by Andrea Koskey, with catchy headlines like “Bacon Bacon Aroma Set To End,” which went viral in May. “One of the things I’ve taken away from all of this,” says Angelus, “is how few people called me [as the story was going viral] and asked questions.”

Maybe because it was about bacon, the media attention was largely sensational. “The Haight-Ashbury district was all about peace and love until bacon entered the picture,” Vauhini Vara’s Wall St. Journal story began on July 11, the day Bacon Bacon’s Planning Commission hearing was scheduled. When I asked Vauhini why she was doing the piece, said she just wanted to do more “fun” articles.

“Plus,” she added, as if to explain everything, “it’s bacon!”

 

THE SIZZLE

Angelus started the Bacon Bacon food truck two years ago, moving away from the late nights and weekends of the restaurant business to do a lunch-only truck so he could have more time with his family.

But, as he said the day before the hearing as a recently hired personal assistant scrolled through journalists’ emails, “a lot of this has been a huge distraction in running a business.”

The Wong Family, which owns Ashbury Market, offered Jim a lease on the deli portion of their building to operate as a commissary for the Bacon Bacon Food Truck (which then had four employees, Angelus included), and they started making bacon. The Planning Department stipulated that Angelus needed a “limited use restaurant” permit to operate. That’s when the trouble started.

Shortly after Angelus opened his doors in January of 2012, a handful of neighbors complained about the smell of bacon and the influx of bacon lovers to the new restaurant in their residential neighborhood. Contrary to SNL-fueled legend, none of the neighbors “complained to the cops that [they] smelled bacon.” Instead, they filed a discretionary review application, a process in which anyone can urge the Planning Department to take action if it’s found that the case demonstrates an exceptional and extraordinary circumstance. The Health Department allowed the restaurant to operate in the interim, as long as issues with the Planning Department were ultimately resolved.

But when the issue still wasn’t resolved more than a year later, the Health Department imposed a 75-day deadline by which the planning permits must be secured. Once that deadline passed in May, Bacon Bacon was shut down. This prompted the media frenzy, which continued through July 11 — when the Planning Commission unanimously ruled that it could reopen as long as an air filtration system was installed.

Four major-network television crews filmed the three-hour hearing, periodically running out of the hearing room to grab more videotape. Phylis Johnson-Silk lives around the corner from Bacon Bacon, on Downey St. “If they put in a nail salon,” she said during the commission meeting, “[these neighbors] would complain about that. Put in a bakery, then it’d be the smell of yeast!”

“I know [the neighbors] call FedEx when the truck is double parked for deliveries on their block,” said Mike Shell, who showed up to defend Bacon Bacon independently of the company in a pork-pink tie.

In an email to members of the Haight Ashbury Improvement Association, HAIA president Ted Lowenberg urged opponents to attend the Planning Commission hearing. “We have to get as many voices as possible to attend to say the Commission must take discretionary review,” he wrote. “The owner has committed a number of cardinal sins vis-a-vis the normal process of getting a business started, and to simply let this slide through creates havoc with the planning code and process. It would like legalizing Al Capone’s liquor sales because he’s been doing it for a while, whilst getting away with murder. Now is the time to scream, ‘STOP THIS!!!'”

Neighbor David Nevins described for the commission the physical “clouds” of bacon smell that wafted down the block, “almost toxic smelling.”

His wife, Inge, visibly teared up after her turn to speak. “This should not be a popularity contest,” she said. “This should be about proper placement of a restaurant … There are people on our sidewalks eating this stuff!”

In Bacon Bacon opponent David Nevins’ plea to the Planning Commission, he cited the Wall Street Journal’s interview with the head of Iowa State University’s Sensory Evaluation Unit as evidence that the bacon smell was a nuisance, while complaining the media overexposure had turned the proceedings into a “joke.”

“I have no problem with what the health department did,” Angelus said. “They waited a year and a half for us to sort all this out and it wasn’t working. The Planning Department was really banking on us resolving the issue with the neighbors.”

“This is a residential neighborhood, not a commercial neighborhood,” David Nevins said, “The commercial activity that’s existed is ‘limited commercial use,’ which means that it respects the integrity of the neighborhood that it’s in.”

If it weren’t for the Bacon Bacon buzzwords involved, it’s likely that none of us would have heard about any of this. The neighbors, who spent a lot of money obtaining top-level legal representation and footing the bill for all sorts of tests to check the credibility of Bacon Bacon’s operations, might have gained more traction if it weren’t for the public scrutiny.

But at the same time, it’s a prime example of the kind of story which gains national media attention simply because the topic is trendy.

Instead of reading about world affairs in the morning papers this week, many Americans will be reading about their breakfasts.

Labors of love

Sue Vaughan
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0

Los Angeles’s Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras makes common cause with Santa Rosa’s the Imaginists

(Note: what follows is an extended version of a story and interview that appears in this week’s Guardian.)

A white passenger van pulls to the curb in a largely residential Spanish-speaking neighborhood in Santa Rosa, discharging a group of Latino men and women at the door of a converted warehouse. The visitors vary by age, class, and education. All hail from Mexico or Central America, but more recently Los Angeles, where they’re among the cities thousands of jornaleros, or day laborers, making their way job by job, often without secure documentation, or much security of any kind.
Standing beside the warehouse on this quiet street, they could be mistaken for an ad hoc work crew. But the warehouse is a theater, and this sunny afternoon in June is the culmination of a precious week off. Not that these men and women aren’t here in Santa Rosa to work — just this time it’s on a play.

Brent Lindsay and Amy Pinto, founders and artistic directors of the Imaginists, greet the visitors warmly as they collect outside the theater and slowly saunter in, joining other members and friends of the Santa Rosa company inside its spacious single room, together with their small children. The two groups have known each other barely a week, but already seem more than colleagues — more like extended family.

It’s the final day of a weeklong artistic exchange between the Imaginists and Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras (Day Laborer Theater without Borders), a Los Angeles–based Spanish-language ensemble theater created by and for the immigrant day laborer population. The ten-member troupe, founded in 2008 under the umbrella of LA’s Cornerstone Theater and led by co-artistic directors Juan José Mangandi and Lorena Moran, has so far created 15 short plays that they perform mostly at day laborer centers across Los Angeles — although this last year saw TJSF tour both Northern California and El Salvador. The plays examine everything from the legal and human rights of immigrant workers to health issues to the transnational cultures migrant workers share and foster.

After some socializing over a light breakfast of coffee and pan dulce, the two companies gather in a circle for some warm up exercises led by both Lindsay and Moran. One particular challenging memory game provokes mild frustration and laughter. “This is why we do this exercise,” explains Moran to her actors, all amateurs and volunteers united by the unique opportunities their theater has offered them. “We need to connect to another person and remember details about them.”

Then they all get back to work on a playlet they’ve been developing from improvisations. It begins with two workers who alternately pay off and slip by a snoozing guard (played by Imaginists company member Eliot Fintushel) to dump toxic waste into a nearby stream. When this causes an environmental disaster, a government spokesperson (played by Pinto) assures people in the audience that their organic produce is safe. Meanwhile, a cleanup crew of migrant workers is slowly poisoned to death. A news team rushes to the scene of the eco-disaster, but seems to take no notice of the brown bodies sprawled over it. Left alone onstage, the workers rise as ghosts — beginning with one who sings, “They’re carrying me off to the cemetery. Don’t anyone cry for me. Just sing my favorite song…” — and one by one exit the stage.

Throughout, Lindsay directs from a chair audience-side, giving advice or suggestions at various points. All, however, are welcome to chime in with comments and do. An elderly woman named Adela Palacios, for instance, suggests that before departing the stage each ghost can simply state their name and what they did for a living, a suggestion readily embraced by all. Soon the form of the scene has a solid arc, and the action gains many subtleties, as well as a tone that makes a virtue of the mix of amateur and professional actors. Combining slapstick, winking asides, an eerie sense of tragedy, and a moving use of direct address, it’s a surprisingly affecting bit of work.

“We come to the theater as older people,” explains Moran. “But we feel we’ve found a company [in the Imaginists] like us. We share the same path.” A native of Guatemala who worked in business administration before fleeing domestic abuse and the country, Moran (translated by Gustavo Servin, a young member of the Imaginists) speaks eloquently about the company she joined five years ago amid a dangerous working life that was both foreign and alienating to her. She acknowledges frankly, “Theater saved my life.”

TJSF is currently developing its first full-length play, Caminos al Paraíso (Paths to Paradise), written by Mangandi and directed by Moran. This exchange in Santa Rosa, made possible by a grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters, has offered TJSF the opportunity to learn important technical aspects of crafting a full evening’s production from their more experienced colleagues. At the same time, it’s offered the Imaginists, which has grown into a bilingual company since rooting itself in Santa Rosa, a chance to advance their own mission through contact with a deeply community-driven Latino theater. But neither motive really captures the personal ties and mutual respect that have been forming here, the subtle and profound reciprocity of influence, and the solidarity emerging from it all.

“TJSF is a brave, important theater company that is telling stories that we don’t usually hear,” reflected Amy Pinto recently by email. “They tell them with humor, with heartache, in a group, in Spanish. Coming together for a week, we were able to strengthen our own resolve to tell these stories, not to be afraid of being deemed ‘political.’ For the Latino members of the Imaginists, the exchange was a catalyst to take ownership and be empowered by their histories and stories. This exchange reinforced how necessary it is to have comrades, to share experiences and methods, to have a network of support throughout the country for this work.”

The Imaginists plan to travel to Los Angeles for another face-to-face meeting with TJSF over next steps. Together they hope to develop something that can tour to labor centers across the country.

In the meantime, inspired by the exchange, the Imaginists are concocting a new play, based on a famous children’s story, which will address the plight of undocumented people. Working title: REAL.

“For Teatro Jornalero there is no division,” notes Pinto. “They are telling the stories of their lives. They are humanizing a ‘political’ situation. We have to let that sit in us, that uncomfortability — can we turn our politics off and on? No. Everything in art is a choice.”

She adds that the encounter held surprises for them too. “To have an encounter where all your expectations are turned upside down,” she marvels, “theater can do that. We are changed. There was so much laughter the entire week. And a fare share of tears.”

Voices from Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras

The following excerpts are from conversations that took place on Saturday, June 22, at the warehouse theater of the Imaginists in Santa Rosa. Members of the Imaginists and Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras had just completed their rehearsal, ahead of a public performance that evening, and were seated in a semi-circle to answer a few questions about their collaboration. Translation was provided by Julie Kaiser.

SF Bay Guardian Can I ask a general question of the members of Teatro Jornalero? Anyone who would like to answer please do. What brought you to the company, and why did you join? What does being in the company offer you?

Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras My name is Alberto Scareño. I found out about this when some of my friends told me about it. It was really interesting, so I called them up to see if there was a spot for me. They said, sure, come that day. And I went in. I’ve never been an actor. We started with exercises. It was really interesting and relaxing. Sometimes I have a lot of stress, or I’m just mad, and to come to this place that relaxes me — it relieves my stress, and time flies. Now what I hope for is to work with even more verve and learn more about the theater.

SFBG What kind of work do you do to make a living?

TJSF Every morning I go out and look for work at a corner in central Los Angeles. I’m a day laborer.

SFBG And you still find energy after a long day’s work for theater?

TJSF The deal is, I don’t get work everyday. So if I don’t work one day, then I have energy to go. When I work, I’m tired, but I get there, and I get my friends, and we do the exercises and I relax. And it’s fascinating.

SFBG Anyone else?

TJSF My name is Xico [pronounced “Chico”] Salvador Paredes. I was on a workers’ corner in California — I’d joined a battle to have a [day laborer] center made — and the first person that [I met] was Juan José. He had participated in theater as an actor, and he was starting to work on his play about illegals. Then he invited me and Lorena [Paredes is married to artistic director Lorena Moran], and other guys, to work in theater. At first I didn’t like it, because I’m a worker: I just get work, get work, get work — I’m not interested in anything else. I send money [home]. That was my only vision, to have a day of work.

But after I came in, I realized, it’s a weapon for communication and understanding, a means of connecting with other people. We started to create pieces out of our own experience, and to recreate our experience. It serves to take out of us what’s inside of us, and to let us know that we’re not alone. The best part of being in this theater is that we’re getting together with people who don’t know what a day laborer is. A day laborer stands on a corner. In the morning he’s cold. He doesn’t have anything to eat. He doesn’t have the security he’s going to actually get work. People walk by and say, “Oh what a lazy guy,” or they pass by as if you’re just a tree, because you’re just standing there all the time. Nobody understands what you’re doing standing there. But a day laborer has huge hope. And he doesn’t know if he’s going to get work. And that’s us.

With the theater, we’ve told many people about what a day laborer is, and shared with those who don’t know anything about their rights. Now we can say, “This is what it is.” It’s really difficult. I just got into a situation where I’ve gotten into the deportation process. I’m in the struggle, but I also have to go to court. I have to do lots of things. And I might get deported. I came here not just to work; I came here to tell my story. And my story’s big. No bigger than anybody else’s. But it’s very positive for people to hear: Here we are.

TJSF I’m Mario Rivera, and I’m very happy to be here sharing with you all. I’m also, like my friends here, a day laborer and I work in central Los Angeles. I came into the theater because I was invited by Lorena. What I like is learning from my compañeros. I had nerves when people looked at me, and I lost that. I lost that fear, and I really like being here. I’d like to learn more from everybody. And I like the play that we’re doing here [with the Imaginists]. This all suits me. I like all of this.

TJSF I’m Adela Palacios. And I’m not very good for talking. The reason why I’m in the theater is because I don’t have work. I studied nursing. Two times I graduated in nursing. I am a nurse. But I had an accident. Now I can’t find work. In this country there’s a lot of discrimination about age. I looked for work for two years. The only opportunity I’ve found, that opened doors for me without discrimination, was this theater. We are volunteers. We don’t have work. They help us. Sometimes they give us food. I am very grateful to this great person, Lorena. And I’m very grateful to Cornerstone Theater. We have some understanding there. We are not heard as we should be [in society], but they do a little, what they can. They give us a little bit of a normal life. My stress is better than it was. And they’ve done everything possible. They do what they can. They can’t do more. I’m really grateful. You have to accept what there is and not ask for much.

TJSF I’m Heidi Guevara. My problem is I have a fear of being in front of people. But now it’s gone. I didn’t think I’d ever do something like this, because I’m really embarrassed easily. Now I have the courage to be in front of people. Lorena gives us exercises. And they help you to use your voice and express yourself, to overcome your shame. It’s a little complicated, but I’m learning more little by little. And here we go! I’ve been with them one year — you have to keep learning and learning. You know this. You have to keep going and learning. Little by little, but I’m going. Thank you, Lorena.

TJSF My name is Raul Salinas. I’m from northern Mexico. Chihuahua. I have six kids. I’ve been ten years here. Now I’m in the Centro Jornalero for work. I don’t have full-time work. I’ve been with the theater three months. How did I get here? I don’t know. It was just chance. One day Lorena came to the work center. She came to do casting for a play that they’re doing called Ways to Paradise. I wasn’t going to do it. No. But there was another person who wanted to go and I helped him with directions to the place where they were doing the casting. And then I got involved. Now I’m involved with Ways to Paradise, about the problems facing migrant workers, explaining who we are, what we’re doing: Yeah, we’re undocumented, we’re from Central America, Mexico … I started thinking about the work, and I really like it. So I stayed. That’s it. There’s not much more to tell.

SFBG I’d like to ask Lorena: How did you become involved in the theater, and how has your relationship with it evolved over the years?

Lorena Moran I would like to tell you the story of Teatro Jornalero, how the project got created. In 2006, Michael John Garcés, the director of Cornerstone Theater, wrote a play called The Illegals. He went and did castings at all the day laborer centers. [Co–artistic director] Juan José [Mangandi] came out of that. He participated in the work, along with other workers from day laborer centers at the national level. And they were invited to a national congress of day laborers. One day they were bored, just hanging out. And Juan José said, “You know what? I have the script of The Illegals. Why don’t we just do a little piece of it and present it to the congress?” It was a marvelous idea.

We have lots of ideas that are marvelous. We need a reason to do it and we also need people to help us. Nothing is possible without that. This was a great idea of Juan José. And we got a lot of help from Michael Garcés and Cornerstone Theater. Roberta Uno of the Ford Foundation gave us our first grant, a big grant of several thousand dollars for two years. And right now, we’re working on a small grant of $25,000 for two years. It’s not much — it’s a big deal to maintain 21 people on $25,000. But it would not have been possible at all if we didn’t have these workers — gardeners, housekeepers, bouncers, day laborers, nurses — they all have stories and voices. And they can educate others, and educate themselves about the rules of this country, the laws, their status as undocumented people.

In 2008, I was invited to participate in a casting for the first company of Teatro Jornalero Sin Fronteras. We were 12 members, two directors. Ethan Sawyer, an American graduate of Northwestern, helped train Juan José, who didn’t know anything about the technical part of theater but had a big spirit for it. They helped us, and the other 12 members of the company.

And that’s how my story starts. I’d had just a year here. I’m from Guatemala. I suffered domestic violence; that’s something I don’t want to remember. They even have my three kids; they’re still there now. But I’m here. And I’m growing a better life. And my dream is that when I’m a citizen I can bring my kids here. But nevertheless, I’ve had five years in this country, and the theater saved my life. And if I’m well, I want my friends to be well, in spite of the traumas, the economic problems. I was this close to getting deported once. I was this close to getting deported once. I was working on a corner with my husband, Xico. I was working gardening, in construction, cleaning houses. I spent five months making six houses. Twelve men, one woman. I was the only woman building houses.

All that showed me the world of day laborers from the roots up. We’d get up at 5:00 in the morning and be standing next to Home Depot. And somebody would drive up and say, “I need somebody,” and we’d run. It was like trying to play the raffle. In my country I’m actually a business administrator. I have a university degree. It’s a totally different life. And there I am, standing on the day laborer corner. I’ve had to clean bathrooms, deal with sexual harassment, I’ve had to clean, and change floors out, and paint — it was a completely different thing for my life. And I realized this is the moment to find a sense of what it’s like to be a migrant. Separated from our families, from our countries; we’re not raking in money, we just want to live with dignity.

So we did a casting. We had some administrative help from Michael John Garcés. And I was named the managing director. It was a whole process. It didn’t happen immediately. But from the beginning I was a part of this group. There’s a moment when you’re present, and there’s a moment when you leave. I don’t know when I’ll leave. But I want people to love this group. We have a voice, and we have a story. We ourselves are part of this story, and we’re writing it.

For today, I’m grateful for my life, and I share with Brent and Amy and their group. I haven’t stop writing, because each day I want to get down every word that drops out of their mouths. For me, it’s part of my learning. That’s what this exchange is all about. We’re training in technical ways with a group that has a lot of similarity with us. They’re helping our community of day laborers and house cleaners. We’re talking. Not in the same idiom, but the same language. And I’m very grateful.

SFGB Can you say a little more about what it’s been like to work with the Imaginists?

LM This is a dream. It’s a dream. To think it all started those years again with Juan José and Sergio in Washington, DC. Juan José Mangandi, the other artistic director, he dreams all the time. He thinks of all these big ideas. For four years we’ve been looking for funds to do this. And we found a grant. And here we are. And we’re dreaming of a second one. We don’t know when or how, but we have a dream, we’re going to keep going, we want to build a network of theaters nationally in the same line as [Teatro Jornalero]. But even so, we have to talk more. This coming together now is a first pass.

We’re just dreaming — some groups in a bus, in a van, connecting with each other from different cities. We’re empowering our voice as immigrants with respect to the larger population of whites, African American, and other groups. This is the story that we have. We’re trying to remove the barriers to our opportunities. It’s huge that we came together.

SFBG What about for the Imaginists?

Amy Pinto For us, the kind of work we’re doing — in bringing Spanish and English together, the issues of the day laborers, and bringing people who are day laborers and professionals together to perform — sometimes the community doesn’t understand, and we’re not always supported. So you [Teatro Jornalero] coming here gives us strength. You teach us how to be strong and to come together to make this kind of work. I think for [Imaginists company members] Zahira [Diaz], and Sergio [Zavala], and Marcela [Mejia], and Gustavo [Servin], who is young, meeting all of you — they see the road then; and it can empower them to take more leadership.

Brent Lindsay It reminds us of why we do theater.

LM I have one question for Amy and Brent. How did it come about that two white people decided to come so close to our community, and do such magic things and help empower us? There’s migrants and Latinos — how did two white people decide to tell our stories, to live our stories?

BL There was a gentleman in the video that you showed. Close to the end, he said, I want to be proud of what I do in life. Like you, Lorena, theater saved me. And it became my religion because it saved me. My investment in theater now is the investment of human beings, what theater can give to others. Because what it did for us, that gift — now we should become its messenger. We have to invite every person into this art form. For the reasons that you’re finding: It heals us. It’s too easy to let fear divide us. We have to worker harder, to overcome fear and come together. Because so much of that fear is based on nothing. It’s nonsense. And the best way we learn that is to do what we’re doing now.

A conversation with co–artistic director Juan José Magandi [translation by Marcela Mejia]

SFBG Can you tell me about Caminos al Paraíso and your part in the production?

Juan José Mangandi As the dramaturg, I try to put the stories together in a cohesive way, drawing from the experience of the actors and my own — as a day laborer, as a community organizer, as an undocumented person. There was a lot of pressure of impose specific themes or stories, but in the end I put in what I felt was the most appropriate for the story as a whole. I was tempted to tell my own personal story, but I tried to tell the story of our community. it’s the first full-length play of Teatro Jornalero since I’ve been working with them, seven years now.

SFBG What was the starting point for this new project?

JJM I’ve worked for many years on behalf of day laborers, and have heard many stories, experiences, tragedies, dreams, songs. So Caminos al Paraíso is the story of the breakdown of connection, of what it feels like for people to lose their home, their town, their country. For example, Chronic Stress Disorder is something that affects many immigrants. Every time you cross a border, and then another, the syndrome grows worse. You don’t get rid of it. It manifests in the way you behave — in anxiety, fear, even the change in the diet has an effect, in addition to the intrinsic dangers that a journey like that implies.

So we speak about these things, so people know what happens when one cross the border, including the abuses on the Mexican side of the border. Everybody talks about the US and the racism and the discrimination of an imperialistic government, but what happens when our own people are the ones that are doing the discriminating? So the governments from Mexico and Central American countries say they want to protect the rights of our emigrants and yet they are often the first ones to commit abuses. So it’s a critique of the economic, political, and social conditions. It’s an industry, an industry of immigrants, not only here but there as well, where for the ones that benefit — the government, the traffickers, the narcos, everybody — it’s a business, it creates a lot of employment for people.

So there are a lot of tragic events that immigrants experience before they arrive in the US. And then what happens when we arrive in “paradise”? That will be the second half, and that’s a totally different story. We start to mix with other races, and we start to change. I mentioned already the diet, but also the culture, the values, the sense of belonging to a community, not necessarily a country. And chronic health problems can ensue. Many become bipolar or diabetic, suffer from high cholesterol, high blood pressure. It’s like the body is not prepared for all of this processed food. It’s a big shock physically, in addition to all the other aspects impacting the humanity of the immigrant.

We are escaping because we are old, victims of the corruption, the lack of opportunities. But we come here and there are no jobs really, and we don’t have a social identity — just the paper itself makes such a difference. It’s like being invisible. Besides doing dangerous work, we are also breaking with our cultures, with our identities, who we were and where we came from. Some people get really uptight about clinging to their past identities. It can become a big obstacle to making bridges to connection with each other, to understand each other.

SFBG Do you see the theater you’re making as a means of helping forge a new culture, bridging those divides?

JJM I think that the theater is a weapon of social struggle and transformation—not only for the people that are out in the audience but also for the actors themselves. The government teaches us about political borders, and then the poverty and the ignorance help us create another border, another barrier. We want to be different, we want to be better than the other, we want to separate form each other—a Salvadoran has to be better than a Mexican, a Mexican has to be better than a Guatemalan, and so on. For me, in my experience, the great problem is, and my big question is: Why can’t we integrate? This is what Teatro Jornalero is searching and striving for, to break these separations. We’ve had people from Cuba, Mexico, Salvador, Guatemala… Sometimes it gets heavy between the actors. There’s an inner racism. All of these themes that hurt so much, that we don’t want to talk about, are in Caminos al Paraíso. But then there is also a message for the community. That we should get ready to integrate. That we like this country. That we have adopted it as our own. Now we want them to adopt us as well, as members, and let us taste the good of this country so we can practice compassion for the ones that come after us.

Inmates on hunger strike win support from California legislators

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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The largest prison hunger strike in California history officially began on July 8, and though some California legislators have voiced support for state prison inmates, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) won’t cede an inch. Prisoners are in for a long battle.

Estimates indicate that over 29,000 inmates have joined ranks to refuse meals in 24 of the state’s 33 prisons and all four of the private, out-of-state facilities where California sends offenders. Additionally, thousands of inmates have declined to attend work and educational assignments since the strike commenced a week ago.

The CDCR released its own tally July 11, stating that there were only 12,421 participants. Asked about the discrepancy between numbers, CDCR Deputy Press Secretary Terry Thornton said, “we have inmates who skip a meal here and skip a meal there,” and clarifying that the estimate included only inmates who had met the CDCR’s official metric of nine consecutive missed meals up to that point. 

State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who authored a 2012 senate bill aimed at increasing media access in prisons which was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown, issued a statement last week “join[ing] the protesters in urging prison officials to make more progress in establishing fair and humane policies in the prisons paid for by California taxpayers. We should not be the focus of international human rights concerns.”

This hunger strike, and an earlier pair that took place in 2011, was orchestrated by the Short Corridor Collective, a group of four inmates confined to security housing units (SHUs) at Pelican Bay State Prison, a supermax facility 15 minutes south of the Oregon border.

A network of legal advisers and prisoners’ rights advocates facilitated communication between participating inmates, and the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition is serving as the main conduit for information traveling from prisons to the public. The Coalition has summarized the goals of the strike in this video and mobilized support across the state. This past Saturday, July 13, several hundred activists participated in a rally at Corcoran, a California State Prison in the Central Valley.

In the Guardian last week, Toshio Meronek reported on the motivations behind the strike. The Short Corridor Collective’s five core demands include ending group punishment and long-term solitary confinement, abolishing a “debriefing policy” that encourages prisoners to exchange information about other inmates in return for favorable treatment, providing more nutritious food, and allowing for weekly phone calls and annual photographs. Inmate groups outside of Pelican Bay have documented separate sets of grievances, also published on the Solidarity Coalition’s website.

The 2011 strikes ended when the CDCR promised to create a formal “step down” process, through which SHU inmates could be vetted and prepared for reintroduction into general prison populations.

That program got underway last fall and, by all accounts, progressed slowly with limited success. In a press release issued Thursday, the CDCR disclosed that “since last October, [it] has conducted 382 case-by-case reviews of [gang] validated inmates housed indefinitely in SHUs. As of June 28, 208 inmates housed in SHUs have either been transferred or are approved for transfer to a general population facility and 115 inmates were placed in various phases of the Step-Down Program.”

At this rate, it would take nearly 20 years to conduct reviews of the over 10,000 inmates presently held in solitary confinement in California. Completion of the step down process, meanwhile, could take an additional four years for inmates enrolled in the first phase.

In a statement circulated shortly after the CDCR’s on Thursday, State Senator Mark Leno wrote, “I have concerns that this review process is moving too slowly and I would like to see it accelerated.” 

Leno stated “grave concerns about the Department’s over-reliance on the use of solitary confinement and in particular on a policy in which suspicion of gang affiliation is sufficient grounds for keeping an inmate in solitary confinement indefinitely.”

In a KALW radio interview Thursday morning, Thornton asserted that the CDCR doesn’t “negotiate with people who are trying to hold the prison system hostage. We don’t condone these types of disturbances. We will keep the lines of communication open. And we will manage the prisons as safely as possible with as little interruption to normal programming as possible.”

Also on Thursday, Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard’s confirmation was pushed through after being in limbo since Governor Brown appointed him in December 2012. Almost immediately, Beard declared all step-down reviews suspended, in what may well be the first official retaliatory action by the state against the hunger strikers.

Beard inherits not only the hunger strike, but a prison system long plagued by severe overcrowding, high recidivism rates, gross mismanagement of inmate health services, and a Supreme Court order to release close to 46,000 low-risk offenders.

“The prisoners are complaining about indeterminate solitary sentences not based on findings of misbehavior, but on alleged gang associations,” explained Rachel Meeropol, a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed a class action lawsuit against the state and CDCR last May alleging inhumane treatment of Pelican Bay prisoners through the use of security housing units. “California is an outlier in the number of prisoners that it holds in indeterminate solitary confinement.” In the CDCR system, inmates can spend decades in SHUs, sometimes without ever understanding what landed them there in the first place.

The hunger strikers seek a binding, written agreement from the CDCR that commits to a maximum sentence of five years in solitary confinement. Given the UN Human Rights Council’s recent judgment that “any imposition of solitary confinement beyond 15 days constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” and “should be subject to an absolute prohibition,” the Short Corridor representatives think their demand is reasonable.

In his statement last week, Ammiano indicated that he “continue[s] to be concerned about the policies being used to segregate prisoners who are deemed – often on weak public grounds – to be gang leaders.”

Donna Willmott, a member of the media committee for the Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, said the vast majority of inmates in SHUs are there because they have received validation of gang affiliation from the CDCR. She described a “fundamentally flawed and corrupt” process, in which validating evidence is often scant.

“People have been sent to the SHU for indefinite terms for having Aztec art on their walls or a George Jackson book in their cells. And there’s no appeal process,” Willmott explained. “The way you get out of the SHU is parole, snitch, or die.”

A community-based coalition, a trio of supervisors and a very special mediator helped seal CPMC deal

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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The takeaway message from a July 11 press conference held in the Mayor’s office touting legislation authorizing California Pacific Medical Center’s construction of two new San Francisco hospitals was seemingly this: Everyone hearts Lou Giraudo.

A part owner of Boudin Bakery and former president of the San Francisco Police Commission, Giraudo was called in last year to help mediate a deal that seemed doomed when CPMC, city officials, and a coalition of labor and community organizations were unable to hash out an agreement that was acceptable to all sides.

Negotiations have been contentious over the past year due to early indications that CPMC would not guarantee that St. Luke’s, a health care facility relied upon by many low-income San Franciscans, would keep its doors open as a condition of moving forward with the new Cathedral Hill facility, a centerpiece of CPMC’s $2.5 billion project.

Enter Lou Giraudo, everybody’s favorite public servant who was, according to a not-so-subtle hint dropped by former Mayor Willie Brown in his San Francisco Chronicle column last year, “quietly brought in” by the mayor’s office to fix the half-baked mess that the CPMC deal had evidently devolved into.

“He’s often said he’s just a businessman. A baker, if you will,” Lee said during yesterday’s press conference. But Giraudo came to the table with the right “recipe” and the “main ingredients” for a successful deal, Lee added.

Sup. David Campos also sang Giraudo’s praises, saying, “I have yet to meet a finer public servant,” and calling Giraudo “a real hero of mine.” 

Giraudo himself told the Guardian that his strategy was “to de-politicize the process and get people to think about the community.”

Board President David Chiu, who worked closely with Sups. David Campos and Mark Farrell to negotiate with CPMC and other parties on behalf of the Board, went so far as to compare Giraudo to Batman. He even joked that he was going to shine a bat signal the next time a negotiator was needed, in hopes that Giraudo would save the day.

Presumably, when this happens, Giraudo will dust the flour off his apron after toiling away at some sourdough bread shaped like an alligator, duck into a Boudin Bakery bathroom to squeeze into a superhero costume, strap on his jet pack and take off for the gold-capped dome.

Giraudo may have provided the catalyst needed for a deal, but it was community advocates who ensured that the public at large benefitted from the CPMC plan more than they would have otherwise – since the mayor’s office seemed willing to go along with the health care giant’s original terms.

Long before Giraudo’s involvement, a coalition of labor and community organizations waged a campaign to rebuild CPMC “the right way,” holding strong on the issue of St. Lukes and refusing to agree to anything that would leave open the possibility that the hospital, a critically important facility for low-income patients, would be shuttered.

“That coalition has been working for quite some time … to save St. Lukes,” Campos said yesterday. The diverse coalition of community and labor leaders, who formed under the name San Franciscans for Healthcare, Housing, Jobs and Justice, commissioned studies on the need for health care services for low-income populations, studied housing and transportation impacts, and developed a broad base of support for a better deal than what was originally floated by the healthcare giant. “It kept working for many years,” Campos noted.

Under the terms of the agreement that was ultimately agreed upon, St. Luke’s will have a number of specified services to ensure it remains a full-service hospital, and CPMC will commit to providing services to 30,000 charity care patients and 5,400 Medi-Cal managed care patients per year. CPMC will also contribute $36.5 million to the city’s affordable housing fund, and it will pay $4.1 million to replace the homes it displaces on Cathedral Hill.

But wait, one last thing we’ve just learned about Giraudo: Did you know he also served as chairman at Pabst Brewing Company? The next time you get drunk off PBR while gorging yourself on sourdough baked into the shape of a teddy bear, or for that matter receive emergency medical care at St. Luke’s after an unsuccessful attempt at building a DIY jetpack, you’ll know who to thank.

Hey, baby

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Hey, baby

culture@sfbg.com

LIT A new children’s book with a social justice, all-inclusive approach to reproduction? To anyone who might question the need for such a thing, look no further than Toronto-based sexual health educator and writer Cory Silverberg‘s enormously successful crowdfunding campaign to get it published: $65,000 in one month. Not too bad to kickstart a picture book, eh?

Silverberg, along with illustrator Fiona Smyth, noticed that the existing resources for parents to explain to preschool-aged children where they came from are by default heterosexual and gender binary-based, thus excluding many families and children. These books also don’t provide much guidance on topics like adoption or alternative fertilization methods. Silverberg’s fundraising campaign gave LGBT parents an opportunity to prove demand for a factual, age-appropriate, children’s book inclusive to all families regardless of how many people were involved, what the orientation, gender identity, or other make up of the family is, or how it came to be that way.

Parents in the Bay Area offered a lot of the support. Dr. Sonja Mackenzie, faculty at the Health Equity Institute and Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality (CREGS) at San Francisco State University is a queer parent of two children, aged three and seven. Dr. Mackenzie started looking for resources about birth and reproduction when her daughter was two and she was pregnant with her second child. She and her partner sought out media providing age-appropriate but real information about reproduction that reflected their two-mom family structure. For years they found nothing.

Which is why when she saw the What Makes A Baby campaign, she pre-ordered copies for their daughter’s first grade class and their son’s preschool class. Dr. Mackenzie said her favorite parts of the book are the questions that ask children to reflect on “who helped bring together the sperm and the egg that made you?” — because of the possibilities for varied family structures that question allows for. That, she says, “is beyond what we have ever seen represented in children’s books.” She also notes the tear-jerker at the close of the book that asks, “Who was waiting for you to be born?” alongside a depiction of many and varied people surrounding a baby.

Bay Area backer Vicki Hudson, parent to two kids aged four and one, also started looking for books when her wife was pregnant with their second child. What Makes A Baby “enables many different types of families to feel represented. Our story was there.” She also appreciated the physiological accuracy of the preschool material. Hudson believes that using accurate reproductive terms empowers children.

Another family structure included in the story’s framework is that of a single parent household. Hilary Brooks of Berkeley is a single mother by choice, whose five-year-old daughter has a known sperm donor. Brooks was excited about the book because she was “ecstatic to see this entry for young children… it’s more accurate, includes everyone, and will not alienate many of the children it needs to reach.” Once she received her copy she was not disappointed, “I love that love is included in this book, and that it is reframed as love for every child from their family — instead of originating in hetero lovemaking, like it was in the sex-ed books I read growing up.” Which is a main premise of Silverberg’s work, to provide a sexual education resource that is straight friendly, but is also for the parents who don’t have anything else right now.

Are mainstream publishers beginning to recognize this demand? There’s still an overwhelming amount of stigma associated with any book related to alternative sexuality. Despite the actual facts of life, books like What Makes A Baby are still too risky for mainstream publishers, it seems. Or maybe it just takes a little pitch in a language they understand. After the outpouring of immediate and public financial support for Silverberg’s book, he was approached by multiple publishing houses, and has signed a three-book deal with Seven Stories Press, beginning with What Makes A Baby. Silverberg’s next volume might well be What Makes a Book Contract.

CORY SILVERBERG: WHAT MAKES A BABY AUTHOR RECEPTION AND “CROWDFUNDING FOR SEX” WORKSHOP

Fri/12, 7:30 reception, free. 8:30 workshop, $10-$50 sliding scale

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF.

(415) 902-2071

www.sexandculture.org

City College will appeal

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9

OPINION City College will appeal last week’s decision by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) to revoke City College’s accreditation.

The reason for the appeal is simple: Most of what ACCJC asked for has been accomplished, and the rest is well on its way towards completion within a year.

First, the San Francisco City College district is financially secure. This is not a district that is close to fiscal collapse. This year’s audit was “clean,” and the budget is balanced, thanks to multiple cost-saving reorganizations, large spending cuts, reforms in practices, and the passage of Propositions A and 30. City College also has a healthy reserve fund well above that of state requirements. City College is even squirreling away money for a special “Ninth year” fund in the event that voters don’t reapprove Prop A when it expires 8 years from now.

The City College budget also increases spending in areas that ACCJC wanted: there is nearly $3 million per year for new technology and building maintenance, both long deferred through the years of radical state funding cuts. City College is also paying money towards the unpaid liability in retiree health benefits. The City of San Francisco also has this kind of liability — to the tune of $4.4 billion — but has so far not come up with a plan to deal with it. City College, on the other hand, has a plan and the funds to enact it.

City College has also cut costs by millions of dollars. There have been layoffs and furloughs, and salary cuts. For instance, faculty members are earning 5 percent less than they did in 2007. Department chairs are earning less, and the Board of Trustees just cut administrators salaries. Streamlined operations have resulted in other savings.

Governance is another area where City College has made major changes. There have been five major management overhauls to streamline bureaucracy, increase efficiency and speed the carrying out of decisions. And many administrators have been replaced. Any one of these overhauls could ordinarily have taken a year each to implement. There were all done in a matter of months.

For instance, the job description of every dean’s position was completely rewritten; some posts disappeared, and new ones were created. Every dean had to reapply for a job, and many did not return. The same is true for other management positions.

City College also replaced a decades-old department chair structure with a system that costs less and has simpler lines of authority. And last fall, the Board of Trustees acted to completely restructure the Participatory Governance system. This is a state-mandated system of getting input from faculty and staff into management decisions. Over 40 committees were dissolved and replaced with a more streamlined system.

The faculty and staff also worked hard in fixing problems identified by ACCJC, particularly in the areas of planning. One of the most important of these is in the collection of Student Learning Outcome data -– a measure of how well students do. Faculty filed thousands of reports in order to fulfill this requirement, a truly enormous amount of work. The collected data will then be used to improve courses next year. This cycle of planning, data collection, and improvement are the basis of ongoing reform effort that takes a year at minimum to prove that it’s working. There is a lot more work to be done in this area. It will take another year to complete — if City College is given the time.

Not everyone at the college agrees with all of the changes that were made. People have the right to express their views, and indeed, we want the internal experts to speak up and give their best advice. And given the speed and monumental scope of the changes, it is very likely that these changes have flaws and that improvements can be made.

But regardless of what people think of the changes that have occurred, these are changes that ACCJC asked for. City College neither ignored nor fought ACCJC’s recommendations, as many people wish we had. City College’s response was to work to enact ACCJC’s will as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, the decision to revoke accreditation will harm City College’s otherwise good financial position by causing a large drop in student enrollment for fall — and the loss of millions of dollars in state funding. Ironically, this will make it more difficult to finish what ACCJC wants done.

The best course for students is to let City College retain accreditation while it finishes the job that ACCJC wants done.

John Rizzo is President of the City College Board of Trustees

 

So now what?

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EDITORIAL The scene at City Hall on Friday, June 28 could have been a video rewind of 2004’s Winter of Love: a surprise announcement granting same-sex marriage licenses; a breathless rush of couples to the civic altar, led by two brave, symbolic women (lesbian groundbreakers Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon in 2004 and anti-Prop 8 plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier in 2013), a city erupting with good will and cheer, dazed by the speed of luck and history. Earlier, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, teeth and hair and all, was making grand pronouncements, strutting about like he was mayor of the place again.

Back in 2004, the city was scarred and drained from the first great Internet bust, and still reeling from the losses of AIDS. San Francisco was a mess, but it was starting to recover. People who had been forced to move out by the city’s skyrocketing rents and evictions in the early 2000s were beginning to trickle back in, and many of those beached by the boom’s collapse were turning into the very freaks, artists, and innovators they had helped displace. When Newsom launched SF’s same-sex marriage rebellion, it was an act of great civic uplift, burnishing SF’s progressive image in the eyes of the world, while boosting the city’s self-confidence. (Not to mention its economy, which benefited greatly from the wedding explosion.)

The act also burnished Newsom’s own reputation. Previously reviled for his “Care Not Cash” policies that demonized the poor and homeless, a significant percentage of LGBTQ people among them, he was suddenly a posterboy for civil rights. Now of course, San Francisco is supposedly on the arc of an economic boom, skyrocketing evictions included, and not in the dregs of a bust. So it was with a regretful shudder that we noticed some more ominous similarities between 2004 and 2013.

A week before this year’s Pride, and right before the wave of marriage elation overtook the festivities, the city’s homeless census was released. Out of the total count of 6,436 homeless people, a figure emerged that stunned many: 29 percent of 1000 people specifically asked identified themselves as LGBTQ, and it’s assumed that the actual percentage of queer homeless people is in fact higher, due to factors like closeting and mental health. A large portion of LGBTQ homeless are youth, still drawn here by San Francisco’s promise of inclusion and shelter from abusive and rejective backgrounds.

While the city celebrates the achievement of grand ideals of equality, we are failing the very people for whom those ideals may be most valuable. Currently, Dolores Street Services, along with help from Sup. David Campos and the city’s “homeless czar” Bevan Dufty, is working towards the building of a 24-bed shelter specific aimed to service LGBTQ homeless people. But that’s just a drop in the bucket. We need much more.

Now that DOMA has been overturned and Prop. 8 kicked to the curb, there’s a lot of discussion about what the powerful, energized “gay lobby” should take on next. Righting the horrible Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act and achieving marriage equality in 37 more states are valiant, necessary goals. But turning toward the actual problems in our own backyard is another imperative.

As the Pride celebration in the Civic Center was winding down on the evening of Sunday, June 30, a group of young women emerged seemingly out of nowhere among the trash-strewn streets and beeping trucks being loaded with the party’s massive detritus. The women quietly dispersed among the leftover crowd, hauling sacks of bread on their shoulders. They made their way toward those lying on the street or huddled in doorways, distributing loaves in a matter-of-fact manner to people in need. It was a perfect reminder of the real spirit of Pride — an inclusivity that benefits all, empowered by actions on a one-to-one, human scale.

Parents, behind bars

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By Ross Mirkarimi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ross Mirkarimi is sheriff of San Francisco

Hungry for reform

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Hungry for reform

news@sfbg.com

Sitawa Jamaa is among the thousands of California inmates who, two years ago this summer, took part in the largest prison hunger strike in US history to protest harsh conditions and their invisibility to those outside prison walls.

Now, Jamaa and other prisoners are about to launch another hunger strike to highlight the system’s unfulfilled promises and the persistence of inhumane conditions.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) counted 6,000 prisoners throughout the state who refused food over several weeks in July 2011. During a follow-up strike that September, the number of prisoners missing meals swelled to 12,000, according to the federal receiver who was appointed by the courts to oversee reforms in the system. At least one inmate starved to death.

As one of four inmates who call themselves the Short Corridor Collective, Jamaa was a key organizer of the hunger strike. The group of inmates drafted a list of core demands calling for the strike when they weren’t met.

That was no easy task for Jamaa, who has spent most of the last 28 years alone in a windowless, 8-by-10 foot concrete cell in Pelican Bay State Prison, a supermax facility not far from the Oregon border, where some 1,200 men are held in similar conditions.

Inmates held in solitary confinement (in government lingo: “Segregated Housing Units”, or “SHU” for short) aren’t supposed to communicate with each other, verbally or through the mail. But they were able to organize with the help of their lawyers, who they are allowed to communicate with, and prison reform advocates outside.

Jamaa and other inmates are planning to launch a second hunger strike on July 8. The Short Corridor Collective has drafted a list of 45 demands, reflecting concerns ranging from inadequate health care to extreme solitary confinement—conditions that prison advocates characterize as cruel and unusual punishment.

The list is an extension of the five initial demands that Pelican Bay inmates presented in 2011 before initiating a hunger strike. Most of those demands were never met, or they were met only with lip service, leading prisoners back to where they started.

 

 

CONFINEMENT AS TORTURE

High on the list are concerns about conditions in the SHU, the amount of time prisoners can be made to spend in isolation, and the public’s inability to monitor the situation.

“I feel dead. It’s been 13 years since I have shaken someone’s hand and I fear I’ll forget the feel of human contact,” Pelican Bay prisoner Luis Esquivel told attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights in an interview.

Along with Jamaa and others, Esquivel is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the state of California that would effectively cap the time someone can spend in solitary confinement to 10 years.

“The hunger strike is an extreme act,” says Terry Kupers, a Piedmont-based psychology professor and clinical psychiatrist who has testified before the California State Assembly on long-term solitary confinement. “It’s very dangerous, and you can die. So when a group of prisoners go on hunger strike, it means they’ve exhausted all ways of expressing themselves and having their demands considered. And that’s very much the case here—some of these guys have been in SHU for 30 or 40 years.”

Kupers believes solitary confinement in California prisons violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, a view echoed by activists who’ve launched a statewide effort called the Stop the Torture Campaign.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Juan Méndez, an expert on torture, has called for a ban on solitary confinement where inmates are kept in isolation for 22 hours a day or more, saying the practice should only be used in very exceptional circumstances and for short time periods.

The CDCR has made some concessions and reforms since the 2011 hunger strikes, but critical issues have gone unaddressed. In Pelican Bay’s SHU, the men are now allowed beanie caps for when it gets cold. They can now have wall calendars to track time and bring a human touch to their surroundings.

Some prisoners have received exercise equipment, such as a handball or pull-up bar. Each year, they now have permission to have one photograph of themselves taken to send to family members, and prison administrators have signaled that they are looking into extending Pelican Bay’s visitation hours.

But more pressing issues have yet to be resolved, so the prisoners who drafted the 45 demands are resorting to starvation once again, despite official statements that it will do little to improve their conditions.

“Negotiation is something the department does not do,” says Terry Thornton, a spokesperson for CDCR. But the department has met periodically with a mediation team, consisting of lawyers and prison activists, who have communicated the inmates’ concerns and gone over their demands with prison authorities.

 

 

RESISTING REFORM

In 2002, the state of California was sued, and lost, in an 8th Amendment class-action lawsuit: Plata v. Davis. The federal judge overseeing the case called the medical treatment in California prisons “horrifying,” sinking “below gross negligence to outright cruelty,” ordering improved treatment and reductions in severe prison overcrowding.

A court-appointed doctor found that out of 193 deaths over the course of one year, 34 were “probably preventable,” but medical staff gave “well below even minimal standards of care.” Eleven years later, the state is still under federal receivership, until it can show that conditions have actually improved.

Court-appointed consultant Dr. Raymond Patterson wrote his 14th annual assessment report last April, blaming high suicide rates behind bars on a lack of “adequate assessment, treatment or intervention.” After it was released, he quit the post in frustration, writing: “It has become apparent that continued repetition of these recommendations would be a further waste of time and effort.”

So inmates are taking in upon themselves to accomplish what the courts and consultants have failed to do: reform conditions in the prisons.

As happened in 2011, in spite of what is planned to be a peaceful protest, prisons housing strikers will be, according to Thornton, on “modified program” (or “lockdown,” as prisoners call it). Generally, that means inmates aren’t allowed to leave their cells, even to shower.

New regulations created after the 2011 strikes call for no visits for striking prisoners, and for their canteen food to be confiscated. In addition, “inmate(s) identified as strike leaders, instrumental in organizing, planning, and perpetuating a hunger strike, shall be isolated from non-participating inmates.”

Since March of this year, the Guantanamo Bay prisoner hunger strike has made news around the world for highlighting alleged violations of international law. There, when a striker goes below 85 percent Ideal Body Weight, regulations dictate that he or she be shackled to a chair, fitted with a mask, and have tubes inserted through their nostrils into their stomachs for up to two hours at a time.

That didn’t happen in California back during the 2011 strikes, but the Division of Correctional Health Care Services devotes five pages of its policy handbook to outlining specific instructions for dealing with hunger strikers, including transfers to prison medical facilities where they could potentially be force-fed, another practice the UN regards as torture.

Prisoners and activists believe the policy was instituted as preemptive attack on the upcoming hunger strike. “We are concerned that, under the pretext of ‘welfare’ checks, prisoners are being harassed, targeted, and deprived of sleep as the date of planned hunger strikes and work stoppages approaches,” said Isaac Ontiveros of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity group. “Whatever the case, new CDCR Secretary Jeffery Beard has an opportunity to avoid the strike and begin to undo the indescribable harm that the California prison system has caused.”

 

 

DANGEROUS ASSOCIATIONS

Problems associated with solitary confinement are closely connected to CDCR’s most commonly used tool for sending prisoners like Jamaa into the SHU: the controversial “gang validation” process.

Once an inmate is listed in prison records as a gang member, he or she loses multiple rights on the assumption that they’re a threat to the order of the prison. With no disciplinary write-ups since 1995, Jamaa would have been eligible for parole in 2004, except for the gang validation that led to his indefinite SHU sentence.

Getting pegged as a member of a gang can happen easily. Guards can write prisoners up for anything from the possession of artwork deemed to be gang-related, to information obtained from confidential informants whose claims prisoners often aren’t allowed to refute and whose identities remain unknown to the targeted prisoners.

Last year, in the wake of hunger strikes, CDCR announced a “complex retooling” of the gang validation practices. The so-called Step Down process, created in conjunction with the Department of Homeland Security, is meant to transition inmates out of gangs over the course of four years, with privileges gained over that time.

It might be the most significant of the reforms that followed the last hunger strike, but prisoners and their advocates criticize it as too lengthy of a process, subject to the arbitrary whims of the correctional officers overseeing a given prisoner. In fact, they say it may widen the definition of who counts as a gang member.

Manuel Sanchez, who is participating in the Step Down program at Corcoran State Prison, wrote in a letter that he is “seriously considering returning to SHU, where I’d be less harassed and I’d get more yard access more consistently.”

Compounding the problems in the prisons is a lack of transparency and public accountability.

“It’s like mentioning July 8 is anathema,” says San Francisco Bay View Editor Mary Ratcliff, whose African American-focused newspaper has been a CDCR censorship target.

From January to April of this year, Ratcliff said papers were being returned from Pelican Bay undelivered because they included articles about the hunger strikes, representing “material inciting participation in a mass disturbance,” and “a serious threat to the safety and security” of the prison, according to CDCR Administrator R.K. Swift.

“I think it’s remarkable that hunger strikes are considered a ‘disturbance,'” says Ratcliff. “A disturbance is supposed to mean a fight—something that threatens people. A hunger strike is a threat to no one except the people who are participating in it.”

Just as inmates can’t get news from the outside, they are also walled off from journalists who might cover them and the conditions they live in.

Since 1996, the CDCR has limited reporters to only interviewing prisoners they’ve selected. Last September, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed legislation that would have opened up media access to the prisons. “Giving criminals celebrity status through repeated appearances on television will glorify their crimes and hurt victims and their families,” he wrote, citing the media spectacle around Charles Manson.

But activists say the nearly $2 million Brown received from the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) during his successful bid for governor in 2010 had more to do with it than infamous serial killers.

Assembly member Tom Ammiano, who authored the most recent bill, stressed that “Press access isn’t just to sell newspapers. It’s a way for the public to know that the prisons it pays for are well-run. I invite the governor to visit the SHU to see for himself why media access is so important.”

 

 

DRASTIC MEASURES

Last time around, Jamaa lost 19 pounds. Deprived of sunlight, the Oakland-born man has developed melanin and vitamin D deficiencies that have lightened his normally dark brown skin. He suffers stomach problems and swollen thyroid glands that he didn’t have before prison. Starvation is a possibly lethal proposition. “Make no mistake, none of us wants to die. But we are prepared to, if that’s what it takes to force a real reform,” he and other strike leaders wrote in a statement last December. Jamaa’s sister, Marie Levin, who has organized monthly vigils for the strikers at Oakland’s monthly First Fridays/Art Murmur event, is worried about how her brother’s body will cope this time around. “It’s something that we as family members don’t want them to have to experience again,” she notes with anxiety. Yet both the prisoners and their advocates on the outside say they can’t simply let dehumanizing conditions in California’s prison system continue indefinitely. “I think things have changed, but not substantially in terms of actual conditions,” Kupers argues. “What is changed is the CDCR had to recognize the strikers, and conceded some of the things. And subsequently, the various prisoner groups have come together and made a commitment not to have violence between groups inside the prisons. This is huge advancement.” But unless all 45 demands are met, they say the strike will commence July 8. For now, Jamaa and others are readying their bodies for hunger, for a cause they believe goes far beyond prison walls. “Know this,” he wrote from SHU, words that needed to be smuggled out through unconventional means to get around an official wall of silence. “I am a … Prisoner of War, and I serve the interest of all people.”

Rep Clock

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Schedules are for Wed/2-Tue/9 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. Directing Dissent (Hamacher, 2013), Sat, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-13. •Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), Wed, 2:15, 7, and Rocky (Avildsen, 1976), Wed, 4:35, 9:25. •Josie and the Pussycats (Elfont and Kaplan, 2001), Fri, 7:30; Velvet Goldmine (Haynes, 1998), Fri, 9:30; Wild in the Streets (Shear, 1968), Fri, 11:59. “Scary Cow Independent Film Festival,” Sat, 3. This event, $10-25; visit www.scarycow.com for more details. “50th Anniversary Restoration:” Cleopatra (Mankiewicz, 1963), Sun, 2, 7.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. Fill the Void (Burshtein, 2012), call for dates and times. Frances Ha (Baumbach, 2012), call for dates and times. Rebels With a Cause (Kelly, 2012), call for dates and times. 20 Feet From Stardom (Neville, 2013), call for dates and times. Augustine (Winocour, 2012), July 5-11, call for times.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” Mr. Hush (Madison, 2011), Fri, midnight. Hosted by Miss Misery.

“FILM NIGHT IN THE PARK” This week: Creek Park, 400 Sir Francis Drake, San Anselmo; www.filmnight.org. Free (donations appreciated). Super 8 (Abrams, 2011), Fri, 8; Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983), Sat, 8.

NEW PARKWAY 474 24th St, Oakl; www.thenewparkway.com. Free. “First Friday Shorts,” featuring short films made by local youth, Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “A Call to Action: The Films of Raoul Walsh:” Sailor’s Luck (1933), Fri, 7; Me and My Gal (1932), Fri, 8:40. “A Theater Near You:” Port of Shadows (Carné, 1938), Sat, 6:30; Kuroneko (Shindo, 1968), Sat, 8:30. “Castles in the Sky: Masterful Anime from Studio Ghibli:” Pom Poko (Takahata, 1994), Sun, 4:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. Hey Bartender! (Tirola, 2013), Wed-Thu, 7, 9:15. Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (Hatley, 2013), Wed, 7:15, 9:15. A Band Called Death (Covino and Howlett, 2013), July 5-11, 7, 9. Maniac (Khalfoun, 2012), July 5-11, 7:15, 9:15.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; teatrofrida.eventbrite.com/#. $12-35. “Fiestas Fridas:” •Frida: Naturaleza Viva (1984), and The Life and Death of Frida Kahlo as told to David and Karen Crommie (1966), Sat, 5. Followed by “Somos Frida,” a performance showcase. *

 

Our Weekly Picks

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WEDNESDAY 3

PANTyRAiD

Seven years after meeting in Costa Rica, Martin Folb and Josh Mayer are still doing their thing as seductive bass collaboration PANTyRAiD, even while each has achieved solo success as the Glitch Mob’s Ooah and MartyParty respectively. New album PillowTalk has the right touch of move and groove while keeping an arm’s length from booming, bro-centric dubstep or ear-shattering electro. PANTyRAids like to jump from genre to genre, dropping some trap here and some glitch there, keeping listeners on their toes. Standout track “Just For You” showcases the duo’s slick handling of hip-hop drums, brooding basslines, and melodic synths. Call it mood music for the bass-minded. (Kevin Lee)

10pm, $20-25

1015 Folsom

(415) 431-1200

www.1015.com

Fruition

Upright bass, acoustic guitars, and mandolin (quickly strummed and finger-picked) fill out Fruition’s sound, but don’t clutter its performance. And this show will feature Bridget Law of Elephant Revival, an addition that only upgrades the night. Bluegrass itself requires a lot of emotion and passion to sound right, but Fruition harbors a certain old-back-road, last drop of sunlight through the trees kind of passion. “Make me an angel that flies from Montgomery,” sings the group in gorgeous country harmonies, in its cover of John Prine’s “Angel from Montgomery.” (Hillary Smith)

7pm, free

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 371-1631

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

 

THURSDAY 4

Oil and Water

It just wouldn’t be summer in the Bay Area without the San Francisco Mime Troupe — so thank goodness the veteran company was able to raise enough funds (in part through crowdsourcing, a testament to its loyal supporters) for its 54th season. Though the 2013 musical will still be performed mostly for free, and comes complete with a political theme (corporations vs. environmental activists), the format is different this year. The show is broken into two musical one-acts: Crude Intentions and Deal With the Devil, both written by Pat Moran And Adolfo Mejia. Per tradition, the show opens July 4 in Dolores Park before spreading its jolly satire ’round NorCal parks through Labor Day; check website for additional shows this week in Golden Gate Park and beyond. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sept. 2

Thu/4, 2pm, free

Dolores Park

18th St. and Dolores, SF

www.sfmt.org

 

Giraffage

San Francisco-based futuristic dream R&B producer Charlie Yin has made some big leaps in 2013, with a performance at SXSW along with upcoming gigs at Southern California’s Lightning in a Bottle festival and SF’s Treasure Island Music Festival. His new album Needs on Los Angeles label Alpha Pup Records is a thesis in music manipulation, a comprehensive counterargument to straightforward 4/4. Vocal samples are up-shifted in tempo to lend a playful mood. Tracks are sometimes dipped in sonic mud halfway through, decelerating to a crawl before jumping back to normal time. But Needs never feels jerky, which owes to Yin’s tight transitions and harmonious melodies throughout. The sensual, infectious, shifty third track “Money” sounds like it will be played in lounges in 2050. (Lee)

With Mister Lies, Bobby Browser

9:30pm, $13–$15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

FRIDAY 5

“Fiestas Fridas”

There’s a reason this three-day event is subtitled “celebrating the 103rd and 106th birthday of Frida Kahlo:” the iconic Mexican painter was actually born in 1907, but she liked to say she was born in 1910 — the year the Mexican revolution began. The fest kicks off with a gala dinner featuring Kahlo’s own recipes (cooked by Puerto Alegre, Gracias Madre, Mijita, and other restaurants), with proceeds going to Cine + Mas; Saturday brings film screenings and Kahlo-inspired performances. The fest wraps up Sunday with an afternoon and evening of live art, dance, DJs, and more family-friendly fun, like a costume contest with a variety of categories: Best Frida and Diego, Best “Little Frida,” and Best “FriDRAG.” (Eddy)

Opening dinner tonight, 6-11pm, $50

Mission Cultural Center

2868 Mission, SF

Film screening and performance, Sat/6, 5-11pm, $35

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St, SF

Community event, Sun/7, 2-9pm, $10 suggested donation

Women’s Building

3543 18th St, SF

www.fiestasfridassf.com

 

 

Johnny Mathis with San Francisco Symphony

Legendary crooner Johnny Mathis’ family moved to San Francisco when he was very young, and it was here in the city that he developed his love for music; while studying at San Francisco State University, he began performing at the Black Hawk nightclub and eventually garnered the attention of some high-profile promoters. In early 1956, Mathis recorded his first album, and he continues to this day. Singing hit songs such as “Chances Are,” “Wonderful! Wonderful!,” “A Certain Smile,” and many more, Mathis has been going strong for nearly 70 years now — don’t miss you chance to see a true icon this weekend, performing with the San Francisco Symphony (Sean McCourt)

Also Sat/6, 8pm, $20–$125

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

Accidental Bear Queer Summer Tour

What, you thought just because DOMA got overturned and same-sex couples might be getting married again this summer that our work was over? And also that we’re too hungover from Pride to start partying again? Queer mental health issues and suicide risk are still a huge concern in the community, and hyperenergetic SF gay blogger Mike Enders, a.k.a Accidental Bear, is trying to break the stigma and bring awareness — by throwing a big, fun, charitable concert and party, of course. Colorful gay novelty rappers Rica Shay and Big Dipper (let the double entendre zingers fly!), dazzlingly alien outfit Conquistador, local electro heartthrobs Darling Gunsel, and soulful tunesmith Logan Lynn fill the bill, with proceeds going to the Stonewall Project, the Ali Forney Center, and more. (Marke B.)

8pm, $15

Beatbox

314 11th St., SF.

www.accidentalbear.com

 

 

SATURDAY 6

Beast Crawl

Now in its second year, Beast Crawl is a free literary festival featuring more than 140 writers in one night. It’s probably pretty hard to go wrong with that many options. Spread out over 26 local galleries, restaurants, bars, and cafes, the annual event offers a place and performance for everyone. Beast Crawl has four legs — the first one beginning at 5pm, and the last one (the after-party) starts at 9pm. Visit the Uptown, have a drink at Telegraph Beer Garden, open your eyes at Awaken Café, all while taking in some of the best Bay Area authors, poets, and even stand-ups. You know how you always hear people say “I went to this rad little poetry reading the other night,” and then wonder where the hell they always are? Well, here’s your chance to finally check out one, or 20. (Smith)

5pm, free

Uptown, Oakland

(415) 706-9128

beastcrawl.weebly.com

 

Audiobus Mission Creek

Properly executed, music should take you on a mental voyage, a mini musical vacation, if you will. It’s not to remove all thought, but to direct your attention elsewhere momentarily, in the direction the sound dictates. The AudioBus, a mobile venue, will delete the figurative from that jaunt, and take you on a literal trip down a specific San Francisco route. For AudioBus Mission Creek — a Soundwave SonicLAB event — sound artists Jeffy Ray and Jorge Bachmann will sonically guide passengers through the old and new Mission District, narrated by Adobe Books’ Andrew Mckinley. Together, they’ll explore “profound themes of the past, from nostalgia to displacement, and the future ideas of technology and possibility.” The sound-tour will leave the temporary station twice tonight, once for a sunset tour and then again on a starry night ride. A reminder: the bus waits for no one, so don’t miss your stop. (Emily Savage)

8 and 9pm, $16

Bus station: Adobe Books

3130 24th St., SF

www.projectsoundwave.com

 

Fillmore Jazz Festival

Live jazz music, crafts, and gourmet food, all in one place (and most of it is free to check out). The Fillmore Jazz Festival is the largest of its kind on the West Coast, reportedly luring in a mind-blowing 100,000 visitors over the two-day event. Considering the history and popularity of the neighborhood — and the sheer amount of bands and musicians playing the fest — that number starts to make sense. Sultry local vocalist Kim Nalley will bring her jazzy blues blend to the stage, as will instrumentalist-composer Peter Apfelbaum, Mara Hruby, John Santos Sextet, Beth Custer Ensemble, Crystal Money Hall, Bayonics, and Afrolicious, among many others. Stroll through the 12 blocks, and you’re bound to find some acts that give you a reason to pause. (Smith)

Also Sun/7, 10am-6pm, free

Fillmore Street between Jackson and Eddy, SF (800) 310-6563

www.fillmorejazzfestival.com

 

Woolfy

I miss Kevin Meenan’s show listings at epicsauce.com. At one time it was a go-to for highlights of small shows going on in the city, filler free, and super reliable for finding a new act to see live. Meenan has since dropped the showlist (perhaps made redundant with the availability of social apps), but is still active with his regular event Push The Feeling. This edition features a DJ set by English born, LA musician, Simon “Woolfy” James, whose eclectic and spacey post-punk dance sensibility first got my attention with the caressingly Balearic “Looking Glass” and the recent James Murphy-esque snappy cut on Permanent Release, “Junior’s Throwin’ Craze.” (Ryan Prendiville)

With Bruse (Live), YR SKULL, and epicsauce DJs

9pm-2am, $6, free before 10 w/ RSVP

Underground SF

424 Haight, SF

www.undergroundsf.com

 

SUNDAY 7

Cleopatra

The backstory that looms over 1963’s Cleopatra is very nearly as glorious as the film itself, which ain’t no small feat; Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s epic take on the legendary Queen of Egypt ran famously over-budget, but damn if all those dollars aren’t one hundred percent visible, with lavish sets, costumes, and blingy whatnots filling every frame. But really, who cares about overapplied eye make-up and historical inaccuracies when you have the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton romance playing out before your very eyes? There’s no better way to relive the drama — oh, the drama — than in this 50th anniversary restored DCP screening, a one-day-only affair at the Castro. (Eddy)

2 and 7pm, $8.50–$11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

 

TUESDAY 9

Chef Hubert Keller

Hubert Keller is a culinary celebrity as a multiple James Beard Award winner and the owner and executive chef of trendy restaurants across the country, including the highly-praised San Francisco-based Fleur de Lys. But the classically trained French chef is not all expensive, showy cuisine — during the first season of Top Chef Masters, he earned the respect of broke college kids and amateur foodies everywhere when he resourcefully used a dorm room shower to cool a pot of pasta. Last year, he collaborated with co-author Penolope Wisner to publish Hubert Keller’s Souvenirs: Stories and Recipes from My Life, a memoir-cookbook featuring instructions on 120 dishes. (Lee)

In conversation with Narsai David

6pm, $25 (students, $7)

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, SF

(415) 597-6700 www.commonwealthclub.org

New Zealand’s Cup

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New Zealand’s Cup

news@sfbg.com

A few weeks ago I was walking down the dock in the marina where I live, in Wellington, New Zealand, when I passed a woman and a young boy. I’d never seen them before, which is uncommon here in this municipal marina — about 100 boats — in a small suburb of the country’s capital.

The boy was walking from berth to berth pointing out certain rig and hull features and expounding on them as only a future aficionado can. “Lots of different boats, huh?” I asked as I passed.

“Different than America,” he confirmed in an accent the same as mine.

The kid is sharp, I thought, or maybe it’s just obvious, even to an eight-year-old from Chicago. The New Zealand sailing scene is vastly different than its American counterpart, which is not to say there’s no comparing — they’re not exactly navigating carved logs with gunnysack sails down here.

But the boats in my marina are, in fact, mostly homebuilt from steel, cement, aluminum, and wood. They appear a motley crew compared to the cookie-cutter production fiberglass Beneteaus, Catalinas, and Hunters, with their identical pacific blue sail covers lined up in San Francisco’s South Beach Marina.

In New Zealand, a boat is rarely a status symbol — it’s part of the middle-class way of life, the home base for holidays and weekend fishing trips and lots and lots of competitive racing. If I’ve noticed one thing since I arrived in this country (aboard a sailboat, after leaving San Francisco and my job as a Bay Guardian staff writer), it’s that every little harbor town has a yacht club and an awful lot of Kiwis own boats — and they sail the shit out of them.

Which is part of the reason why the New Zealand government is willing to invest NZ$36 million (US$27 million) to compete in the 34th America’s Cup against some of the richest men in the world in a race that has become so elite there’s barely any competition.

Small as the field is, Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) is quickly shaping up to be the team to beat if you’re on a high-speed, air-catching AC72 catamaran. If they succeed, it will show that developing an America’s Cup team doesn’t have to come from having deep pockets in your Nantucket Red pants — it comes from having the sport ingrained in your culture, filtered through affordable local boat clubs, city-run facilities, volunteer programs, publicly accessible shorefronts, and an innovative marine industry.

In fact, without New Zealand’s maritime way of life, Larry Ellison wouldn’t have much of a team: of the 27 sailors and management crew aboard Oracle, a third are Kiwis. Another third are Australians. If you count Ellison, there are only three Americans aboard. Just one of them — tactician and grinder John Kostecki — grew up sailing on San Francisco Bay.

Ellison’s boat is mostly a Kiwi production, too — the fixed-wing sails and structural components for Oracle’s two AC72s were made in New Zealand, as were the boats, sails, and rigs for ETNZ and Luna Rossa. The only other syndicate competing, Sweden’s Artemis, in the wind since the death of crewmember Andrew Simpson, is the outlier, but they still have eight New Zealanders on board.

America’s Cup is looking more and more like it owes a lot to New Zealand. Is the Cup doing as much for San Francisco as it is for this little island nation, with a population just a tenth of California’s?

“If it wasn’t called Team New Zealand, we wouldn’t get a lot out of it,” says Sven Pannell, a competitive dinghy racer and employee of the economic development agency Grow Wellington. “The numbers of boat builders, carbon fabricators, sail makers, yacht designers coming out of New Zealand are the reason we’re still at the top of the global game. If we can bring the Cup home that means a lot for our country.”

It may also save America’s Cup from becoming even more out of touch with reality.

 

IT’S THE CULTURE, STUPID

It’s June 8, summer in San Francisco but winter in Wellington. The first race of the 2013 Winter Series at Evans Bay Boat Club hits hypothermic seas beneath steely overcast skies and 20-30 knots of wind — “perfect conditions,” one sailor enthuses. Tame, actually, for Wellington. A week ago, wind blew out the fifth story windows of a building downtown.

Sven Pannell has just finished racing a 12-foot skiff, a super lightweight, often homebuilt boat that probably originated in Australia and is almost exclusively raced in the Southern Hemisphere, though an 18-foot version will be showcased in San Francisco this September alongside the America’s Cup finals. Weighing about 100 pounds, with no class restrictions on sail area, they rooster-tail around Wellington harbor, bow high, barely in the water. They seem to require a similar caliber of nerve as the AC72s.

Which Pannell, who won today, evidently has. He grew up sailing as a kid, as did his crew, Craig Anderson. Neither of them can think of anyone who didn’t get into sailing as a child.

“A lot of people around the world think yachting is a well-heeled sport, but not in New Zealand,” he says. “There’s a reason that half those [America’s Cup] boats are full of Kiwis and Aussies. Go out and see the number of eight-year-olds in Optis in all kinds of weather here. A high number of people sailing at that age creates a deep pool of sailors in demand.”

“America’s Cup is about stretching the limits, but it starts here, when you’re eight years old,” he adds.

Eager to get out of the icy Antarctic wind, I enter the boat club where about 35 people are gathered at the bar, buzzing from adrenalin, barefoot and wet from spray or capsizes, gripping ginger beers and green bottles of Steinlager, the Budweiser of New Zealand. It’s a humble looking crowd — no flash gear or cashmere.

I’m introduced to Mike Rhodes, 26, wearing a blue sweatshirt and camo pants. He’d love to race an America’s Cup boat, but he also satisfies himself with a 12-foot skiff, which he stripped and rebuilt, fashioning the stainless steel fittings himself — he’s a sheet metal worker.

“New Zealand sailing is all about learning and moving forward,” he says. “The boats we’re sailing are always changing. We have set rules for weight, width, and length. After that it’s wide open. You can put up as much rig as you can handle. We went out in 50 knots last weekend. It was insane. We probably had boat speeds of 30 knots.”

The speed and innovations are what appeal to Rhodes and also connect to the America’s Cup, which has been an historic proving ground for leaps forward in boat design. “Who thought New Zealand could make the boat fly first?” he says of ETNZ’s proficiency at foiling the AC72 — going so fast the hull actually lifts off the water.

We’re soon joined by Laura Hutton, a 30-year-old from Cape Cod. She’s raced dinghies, coached and taught sailing for years. Now a speech therapist, she moved to New Zealand three months ago and immediately hooked into the local yachting scene. It’s palpably different than what she’s used to in the States. Here, she says, “It’s a lot more laid back. It’s more inclusive than exclusive. I used to go to events at New York Yacht Club in Newport and I felt so uncomfortable there. It’s the most elite, snobby place.”

“You can’t get coaching in the US unless you’re part of a yacht club or go to a school with a racing team,” she adds, and there’s often a huge cost to enter the sport. “Here, I can join the local yacht club for $35 a month,” she deadpans.

I spend more money riding the bus, I tell her, but I wouldn’t in San Francisco, where it’s cheap to catch a bus but where most people rarely board boats.

The American yacht club tradition has a certain “if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it” attitude. Ellison is one of 300 members of Golden Gate Yacht Club, official host for the Cup. Its neighbor, St. Francis Yacht Club, 2,300 strong, also has a role in the festivities. Both are exclusive, members-only clubs and neither would tell me what their members pay for the club’s privileges.

However, they’re officially nonprofit organizations and filings with the IRS show St. Francis made nearly $13 million in 2011. Golden Gate Yacht Club took home $660,000 the same year. Ironically, both clubs are on public lands, leased from San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department for $231,125 and $64,000 annually respectively.

Both clubs run learn-to-sail programs for kids — $350 for St. Francis and $200 for GGYC — which seem affordable, but what’s the next step? Joining the club, but apparently it’s too rude to query the price.

By contrast, Wellington’s Evans Bay Boat Club charges NZ$281 (US$210) to join and Royal Port Nicholson Yacht Club, which is a sister club to St. Francis, costs NZ$160 (US $120). The Bay Area is lucky — Berkeley and Treasure Island both have affordable clubs, however one could argue that if St. Francis and GGYC are on public lands, they should be paying more in dues to the city.

If there’s a posh club in Auckland, it’s ETNZ’s home — the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. “But it’s a Kiwi version of posh, nothing like some of the yacht clubs I have been to in places like England, where women aren’t allowed to order drinks at the bar,” says Ben Gladwell, a journalist for Boating New Zealand who will be racing an 18 foot skiff in San Francisco in a regatta concurrent with the Cup finals. “At the Squaddy, there are obviously rules, like no cell phones, and dress codes and such like, but the fees are still only a few hundred dollars per year and it is much more inclusive than other yacht clubs around the world.”

Gladwell explored the health of New Zealand’s sailing culture in a story called “State of the Racing Nation” for Boating New Zealand. He found that although there is a drop-off in interest during university years, many yacht clubs have created partnerships to keep kids in the sport, there are mobile learn-to-sail units roaming the country, and lots of accessible city-run programs for kids. Couple that with low lifetime fees to stay in the sport and you see healthy clubs like Evans Bay, where people of all ages are out racing every weekend, all year round.

“Having so many people involved in sailing is a major reason we are successful,” he says. “Children are introduced to it at such a young age…by the time they come to competing at youth international regattas, they are hugely experienced and winning becomes a habit.”

 

“AMERICA’S CUP IS NOW NEW ZEALAND’S CUP”

In 1995, when Black Magic smoked Dennis Connor’s Stars and Stripes in a five-race shut-out, commentator Peter Montgomery famously quipped “America’s Cup is now New Zealand’s cup,” a line that’s gone down in Kiwi history like the “I have a dream” speech.

For the first time, the Auld Mug would be defended in New Zealand. Back then, Auckland’s Viaduct Harbor probably looked a lot like parts of San Francisco’s waterfront does today — dilapidated piers and old industrial buildings crumbling on their pilings. It would cost of NZ$58 million (US$29 million at the time) to dredge the harbor and spruce up the waterfront for the Cup.

The city made its money back. Hosting for two years, in 2000 and 2003, brought NZ$1 billion (US$500 million, at the time) in economic benefits to the country, about 85 percent of that going to Auckland’s local businesses, mostly from visiting megayachts and the services required for the nine syndicates that competed — twice as many as are in San Francisco today.

And Auckland made a lot less than the US$900 million predicted for San Francisco, already trimmed from the US$1.4 billion initially estimated. What the city actually gains from the $22.5 million investment they’ve been forced to make remains to be seen. Meanwhile, Auckland continues to benefit from the race.

It’s been estimated that the four Cup contenders have collectively spent half a billion on their campaigns and a decent chunk of that has been in Auckland, particularly during the AC72 design, build, and testing phases. Already, taxes paid by ETNZ employees amount to NZ$22.4 million (US$16.5 million). That doesn’t include the employee payroll taxes of all the businesses doing Cup-related activity, like the boat builders, riggers, and sailmakers.

ETNZ CEO Grant Dalton has netted sponsorships from more than 100 companies and argues that the Cup efforts have kept many marine businesses afloat that would have otherwise shuttered. Kiwis have not been immune to the world financial situation: the high New Zealand dollar hurting exports and the NZ$30 billion (US$22.5 billion) price tag for the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake have stressed the country’s coffers.

Because of that, funding ETNZ has been as contentious here as hosting Ellison’s party has been to San Franciscans. The agreement was signed in 2007 by a Labour Party-led government and when National Party’s John Key won the Prime Minister’s seat in 2008, he looked into breaking the contract, a move supported by other parties. “Funding the America’s Cup is surely a ‘nice to have’, rather than essential spending, in the current economic climate,” said Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei at the time.

The government was advised they’d still be legally on the hook for the money if they broke the contract, so ETNZ proceeded, but proof of economic return was a contingency and Dalton has taken pains to keep the public good in the conversation, a sharp contrast to Ellison’s attitude toward San Francisco. Dalton has said if New Zealand wins, the world should expect a sharp scaling back of costs. “We stand for nationality rule and we stand for real budget numbers that real people can raise,” he has said.

There’s definitely a sense that this could be New Zealand’s last chance to bring the Auld Mug home. If they don’t, the America’s Cup also loses. Who else will save it from American-style exclusiveness?

City budget boosts homelessness spending, but not enough to meet demand

Sasha Cuttler
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The city budget that is now awaiting approval by the Board of Supervisors includes new funding for individuals and families facing homelessness, but community advocates say it doesn’t devote enough of the city’s rebounding revenues to addressing this growing problem.

Last Thursday, the Board of Supervisor’s Budget and Finance Committee approved $2.4 million in “add-backs” to homeless services, on top of the $2.3 million that Mayor Ed Lee pledged to supplement the city’s initiatives to curb the burgeoning number of San Francisco’s individuals and families becoming homeless.

The committee’s proposed budget will go before the full Board of Supervisors’ for a vote this month, devoting at least $2 million for this fiscal year and $1 million the next in to continue the successful Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing (HPRP) program that provides eviction defense and rent and utility vouchers to residents at-risk of homelessness.

Other homelessness initiatives in the proposed budget include extending the Lower Haight First Friendship shelter for homeless families to a year-round schedule, permanent housing units at 5th and Harrison streets for transitional age youth, 33 Local Operating Subsidy Program (or LOSP) subsidies for low-income homeless individuals and families, and funding to construct 24 shelter beds for the City’s first LGBTQ-focused homeless shelter at Dolores Street Community Center.

But for many residents and families, these initiatives may not be enough to stay in their homes, or re-house themselves after becoming homeless. And as the rent prices continue to drastically rise in San Francisco as the city’s economy heats up, the search for affordable housing or shelter beds has become more and more desperate.

January’s point-in-time homeless count identified 6,436 homeless persons on the streets and in the shelters in the city, a majority of which became homeless as San Franciscans. The current number on the city’s wait list is 220 families with an expected wait of seven to eight months, according to the Human Services Agency, which runs the city’s homeless shelter system. This is slightly down from 268 families earlier this year, then the largest in city history.

As the Guardian reported recently, the number of eviction notices in San Francisco hit a 12-year high this year, indicating an increase in displacement that may compound the number of families on the emergency shelter waiting list.

Bevan Dufty, the mayor’s point person on homelessness, told the Guardian that “the city definitely is not seeking to expand the shelter system,” despite the near-record waiting list.

 “Yes, we have lost shelter beds in recent years, and the 24 we are adding at Dolores Street Community Services is a minimal number,” Dufty added. “But you have to have a toolbox to respond in different ways.” And Dufty claims that re-housing families through programs like HPRP services in the budget has been shown to be the best way to prevent homelessness.

In response, Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness told the Guardian that, although the $1 million of HPRP services did prevent 1,300 San Francisco households from becoming homeless last year, it only covered 15 percent of the city’s overall need based on the number of people seeking services through San Francisco’s Eviction Defense Collaborative.

When asked to respond to the Coalition’s estimate, Dufty replied that he could not comment on its accuracy, but he conceded that the HPRP funding is “certainly not going to satisfy all the need.”

Dufty stressed that the city has been able to reduce the number of homeless veterans and has responded to a noticeable outcry in the need for more transitional housing, especially from LGBTQ community activists. Although the version of the budget making it to the Board of Supervisor’s vote this month would not expand the homeless shelter system beyond the Dolores Street Community Services project, it would improve the city’s oft-criticized shelter reservation system for single adults.

Along with Dufty and the Mayor Lee’s support, Friedenbach advocated in the homeless community to change the current line-based system to a lotterized system run through the city’s 311 system.

“The current shelter waitlist system is really archaic,” Friedenbach told the Guardian. “People spend 17 hours a day trying to get a bed at night.” Mayor Lee proposed this change in his budget, especially so the indigent and elderly no longer have to stand for hours waiting in line for a bed.

Though Friedenbach acknowledges the positive in the budget initiatives, she pointed out that there is still only one shelter spot for every six homeless persons in San Francisco, and that she “doesn’t know what standard you can go by to say that is too much.”

The new revenue from November’s business tax reform measure, won through a ballot initiative pushed by on-the-ground community groups like the Coalition on Homelessness, should “go back to low-end communities who are hurt from years of reduced services in mental and public health,” Friedenbach said.

Last month, the Coalition on Homelessness and other advocates pushed the Budget and Finance Committee to double Mayor Lee’s proposed $1 million for HPRP for 2013-2014 and an additional 75 LOSP rental subsidies on top of the 25 the Mayor had already pledged. At its last meeting before the new fiscal year, the Budget and Finance Committee pledged an addition $1 million for HPRP, but only added eight new LOSP subsidies.

Friedenbach attributed the lower number to the city’s logistical problems of trying to find additional service providers for subsidies. The “add-backs” marked “a lot of progress for poor folks,” Friedenbach said, although the city will still have “a situation where a lot of money is coming in, but not trickling down.”

“San Francisco is at a critical juncture,” Friedenbach prefaced her public comment at a Budget and Finance hearing last month. “The influx of wealth is pushing the heart of the city—the working class and poor—out.”

The budget approved by the Budget and Finance Committee last Thursday will likely go to the full Board of Supervisors starting next week, July 9.

Possibly the coolest queer mental health concert tour ever

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Possibly the coolest queer mental health concert tour ever

Accidental Bear Queer Music Summer Tour Benefit for LGBTQ Mental Health Services and Suicide Prevention. Now, that’s a mouthful.

“It’s the longest, most ridiculous title ever,” Accidental Bear blog owner and founder Mike Enders said in a Guardian interview.

It’s basically a really queer, really cool music concert series travelling to five cities with performances by Logan Lynn, Big Dipper, Conquistador, Darling Gunsel, and Rica Shay, who all put a different spin on the concept of “queer music.”

But it’s also a two-fer. It’s giving exposure to the bands playing while raising money to donate to LGBT foundations in support of mental health including the San Francisco-based Stonewall Project, the LAGay and Lesbian Center, Ali Forney Center, Pride Foundation, and Q Center.

“All of these people [performing] are up-and-coming and some people have been around longer than others,” Enders said. “I wanted to have people who are going to draw a crowd and each one of these bands has their own group or pull.”

There are some big characters and personalities performing, and it’s going to be a high energy show. It’s also something you don’t want to bring your grandma to.

“Parts of the show are going to be X-rated,” Enders said. “Not like, nude, but Big Dipper, he has a lot of songs about his private parts. His version of the twerking that’s going on, is a song he has out called ‘Dick Bounce.’”

The Accidental Bear Tour is going to be a fun, queer time that also aims to eliminate the stigma that surrounds mental health and bring awareness to the alarming rates of suicide in the LGBTQ community.
Enders has a personal connection to the cause as well.

“In 2007, I started having these out-of-the-blue horrible panic attacks. And, being someone who didn’t have a lot of money, that was uninsured, I couldn’t find a resource, couldn’t find anybody to help,” Enders said.

He went to LGBT-specific services that couldn’t help due to him being uninsured, or being put on the end of a waiting list.

“I ended up in the emergency room,” Enders said. “If you’re unaware of what’s actually happening with a panic attack, a lot of times people think they’re having a heart attack. It was just kind of an eye opener. Luckily, I had good support around me, but I just realized there’s a real lack in services.

“The fact is, everyone in their life has dealt with a mental health issue. It’s kind of embarrassing admitting it now. It’s weird with the stigma to it.”

Tickets start at $15, and are on sale now. The tour kicks off here in San Francisco on July 5 at Beatbox, and will travel to LA, Portland, Seattle, and finish in New York City on the 19th.

“This is something that the queer world is missing right now,” Enders said. “Everything right now’s like DJs and dance music.”

The Accidental Bear Tour features dance, rap, hip hop, and electro music – a little something for everyone.

It’s going to be a great, big, gay time, with awesome performances while simultaneously fighting for a good cause.

AB SUMMER TOUR

8pm, $15
Beatbox
314 11th St., SF.
www.accidentalbear.com

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