Health

Health class, without the STD slideshow

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Health class, without the STD slideshow

caitlin@sfbg.com

RENEW For a brief moment, we here at the Guardian are taking a break from listing the best places to host more damage to your liver to give some soapbox time to a health care professional. Meet Dr. Julie Chen, who has a private practice in San Jose that specializes in integrative medicine, an approach combining conventional Western health knowledge with holistic care options. That’s right, just like Tron‘s Kevin Flynn, Chen is able to operate in multiple dimensions when it comes to your physical well-being. We asked her some big-kid questions about health and her innovative brand of medicine that you should probably know the answers to.

SFBG What’s the most commonly held misconception about integrative medicine?

Julie Chen The fine line between “alternative” and “conventional” medicine is frequently erased and redrawn. For example, fish oil used to be “alternative.” So was vitamin D supplementation. But now we have Lovaza and vitamin D prescription versions that insurance companies will pay for.

Integrative medicine is frequently seen as “alternative medicine,” but — especially if the physician is fellowship-trained and board-certified — it is heavily evidence-based, just like “conventional” medicine. We utilize clinical research as a basis for treatment plans that integrate aspects of conventional and complementary medicine like supplements and herbs, energy medicine, manual therapy, acupuncture, and hypnotherapy. It’s not about one or the other, it’s about utilizing all appropriate modalities available out there to achieve optimal health outcome.

SFBG You’re an expert on stress-reducing mind-body exercises, so let’s get practical here. Recommend one for people sitting on Muni or at a computer.

JC Breath work is relatively unobtrusive and inconspicuous, as is meditation or self-hypnosis. You may even try abridged versions of progressive muscle relaxation: tightening shoulder and upper back muscles, then relaxing; tightening hands and arms, then relaxing; tightening gluteal muscles, then relaxing; tightening leg and feet muscles, then relaxing.

For people who say they can’t sit still long enough to do meditation or self-hypnosis, this exercise may be an option — it offers something active to focus on.

SFBG Eating healthy is hard. What are some ways people eat wrong?

JC Patients frequently think they have to make all the right changes all at once with their diet, and then feel defeated when they can’t sustain them. I’m a big fan of setting smaller, more attainable goals, and using positive reinforcement that helps you to move onto the next.

I’m also a big fan of mixing foods if you’re not ready for a complete change. For people who don’t like brown rice, mix brown and white or use less white rice and mix it with vegetables. That way you can increase complexity of the food you are eat and decrease simple carbohydrate intake with food that is still palatable. Many patients also think that as long as they eat vegetables at one main meal, that’s enough for the day. But our bodies function better if we can provide those phytonutrients and flavonoids all day long. That means that we should incorporate healthy foods like whole grains and vegetables into every meal.

SFBG We live in an age of health info oversaturation. With all the conflicting theories out there, how can we tell if we’re living healthily or not?

JC This is a great question. First, it’s important to educate ourselves about what’s considered “healthy.” At the end of the day, we physicians do not go home with you. Your readers should know that they are the most important member in their health care team, and that they should utilize their doctors as informational tools. Second, our bodies usually will tell us if we are living as healthy as we can. If you feel chronically fatigued, or have insomnia, or a “foggy” mind, there are probably steps you can take to improve your overall health by evaluating and maximizing aspects of your lifestyle, nutritional intake, or health status.

SFBG What should someone do if the advice they are getting from their HMO differs from or conflicts with what is prescribed by their holistic health care provider?

JC In this situation, it would be beneficial for the physician to speak with the holistic health care provider. The extent of training among holistic care providers can be vastly different — it can range from those who have taken weekend courses or are self-taught versus those who are board-certified or fellowship-trained. By increasing communication between physicians and holistic practitioners, it provides an additional level of protection for the patient in case the holistic provider is suggesting something medically dangerous. On the other hand, if the treatment plan from the holistic provider is medically appropriate, then it provides an opportunity for the physician to learn more about holistic care and how it can augment conventional care.

SFBG Are there real health benefits to going vegetarian?

JC There are tremendous benefits to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Plant-based diets tend to be much more anti-inflammatory and thus are more beneficial. The trick is to make sure that the diet is high in plant-based proteins, minerals, vitamins, and phytonutrients, and not processed or fried fatty foods. If the vegetarian or vegan diet is composed of things like steamed vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, it has tremendous health benefits like improving cholesterol levels, insulin sensitivity, and decreasing inflammation.

SFBG Are there positive health benefits of living in a big city?

JC San Francisco is one of the healthiest cities in America — access to healthy, organic, and diverse foods allows us to eat well throughout the year. Another tremendous benefit of living in San Francisco is the easy access to hiking, biking, and other forms of outdoor exercise. Even for those who aren’t interested in outdoor activities, the simple act of getting around the city allows us to get in regular exercise thanks to the hilly streets.

Hoop dreams

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Hoop dreams

culture@sfbg.com

RENEW Christabel Zamor moves like a snake — eyes fixed, lithe body writhing, hips rippling back and forth — which isn’t really surprising, considering the number of times she’s shed her skin.

Zamor is a hoopdancer — one of those sylph-like sirens who show up at parties and raves and on the playa in order to make the men drool and the women vow to do sit-ups. She credits hooping as the secret to her sensuous shape — but if you’re thinking of getting out your snake charmer’s flute, let’s get one thing straight: in this case, it’s the sexy serpent who’s charming you.

Zamor is magnetic and incredibly talented, but what sets her apart from other Bay Area hoopers is her avid following, cultivated by Hooping! The Book!, an array of instructional DVDs and 72-hour teacher training program that has certified 570 instructors in 16 countries. Zamor is HoopGirl® — a persona that not only has allowed her to whittle her waist and tone her tummy but to explode into a fitness franchise.

An erstwhile doctoral student and one-time “heavy-set, shy academic,” Zamor says she transformed her life — and her body — through hooping’s calorie-burning workouts and confidence-building powers. She now travels the world as a fitness trainer and empowerment coach, teaching people that they can do the same thing.

“I wasn’t really looking for hooping,” she says. At 27, Zamor was a UC Santa Barbara PhD student struggling to find academic support for her interest in ethnomusicology and drumming. Frustrated, she dropped out from her program after receiving a master’s degree, traveled to Senegal to study djembe, returned to the States, enrolled in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s master’s program in mythology and depth psychology, and began working as a personal assistant. Amid the confusion, she says she didn’t have the power to envision a life outside her studies. “I wanted to be a healer but didn’t know it,” she says.

But a simple circle changed all that. At a Gathering of the Tribes conference in Los Angeles, Zamor fortuitously picked up her first hoop — and HoopGirl was set in motion.

Zamor claims she never had a hula hoop as a child, but from the first instant she picked up the plastic ring and it clattered uncooperatively to the ground, she was hooked. Despite the initial “experience of not succeeding,” she was captivated by the hoopers around her — “beautiful nymphs undulating gorgeously” — and she was determined to become one.

“I got a hoop and started practicing in the park, in rhythm with high-energy trance or electronic music,” she says, and crowds “just started gathering.” When a newspaper reporter wrote a story on her weekly spin sessions, “100 people showed up wanting to hoop.”

Hooping has provided Zamor with a means of transformation, for her physical body as well as her spiritual self. She describes hooping as the portal that awakened her to underground subcultures like the circus-arts scene and artistic communities like Burning Man.

Zamor found that she could hoop for six hours at a time and that it catalyzed a level of physical and spiritual presence she describes as a “quickening” of the body. She interprets the orbital motion of the hoop as “intrinsically about coming back to your center,” a practice that stills mental chatter.

Hooping also began to fill in for the cultural activity that Zamor had so desperately wanted to study at UCSB. She had sought to understand how tribal rituals played a role in society, but she realized that dissecting a cultural form appropriated from the third world brought up questions of co-optation that she didn’t want to wrestle with. Hooping provided the same rhythmic, percussive, ritualistic aspects and counted as an indigenous rite in California in the early aughts, when its popularity was exploding. Burning Man was where Zamor tapped into hooping as a “sacred, transcendent experience,” one that she ultimately felt empowered to interpret for a national audience.

Now 10 years later, Zamor has performed at events for Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, and Cirque du Soleil. She has been hired to represent fitness brands and health club chains. She is licensing HoopGirl® Workout teachers across Canada, England, Australia, and the United States, where her hoop regimen has been certified by the Aerobics and Fitness Association of America.

At 38, she is a fitness guru and the leader of a profitable exercise business. In her books and DVDs, she maintains a bubbly exuberance in describing her physical transformation. “My unwanted extra fat just disappeared and was replaced by gorgeous muscle,” she crows, describing her journey. But she leaves out transcendence at Burning Man in favor of the elation of calories burned.

Zamor admits that she has had to be a chameleon to market herself and her hooping. Unlike other elite hoopers who began to develop the art form around the same time or even earlier, Zamor hasn’t been content to limit herself to a part of the San Francisco subculture. She hopes to bring legitimacy to hooping, which sometimes means talking abs and aerobics. “To spread hooping, I have to be able to spread the lingo. I gain respect by speaking a language that people respect.”

But when she is training HoopGirl dancers, she says she still refers to hooping as a spiritual practice. Her mantra — hooping is sexy! — is as much about a sense of self-worth as a satisfying session in the sack. The once “introverted loner” has been able to use hooping to help shed her old self, literally — and she’s eager to show us that results are replicable at home.

“The hoop adheres better to bare skin,” she explains, “so I started wearing less clothing. Showing my arms, showing my legs — it’s like the hoop was asking me to take those things off. I started to feel like I didn’t have to hide who I was.”

Flipping through pages of toned hotties in her book, or watching the bootie-shorted babes in her DVDs, it might be difficult to believe that the sexiness of hooping isn’t about, well, sex. But Zamor says there is something deeply and inherently feminine about the hoop — and it’s not just that the ladies look better shakin’ it.

After two surgeries for endometriosis, Zamor is convinced that the “soothing gyrations” of the hoop against her pelvis have helped heal her. “Hooping provided the insight I needed to slow down and focus on my body,” she says, explaining that it’s also a way to strengthen her core and reproductive organs, bringing fresh blood to the pelvic region and awakening her libido. Now, six years since her last surgery, she emphasizes that her doctor was amazed at how quickly she healed by hooping through the ordeal.

Next up, Zamor will be working on bringing that whole-body healing to women who may not be willing to step inside the hoop. She has expanded her business to include empowerment classes that honor the “divine, delicious feminine” and that will help women become a more supple, radiant, and luminous version of themselves, she says.

These classes in “hooping outside the hoop” are geared toward helping others uncover the empowerment and sense of self-worth that Zamor has found through HoopGirl. Of course, unless Zamor is planning on turning out hundreds of successful fitness revolutionaries with profitable book deals of their own, it’s hard to say whether her personal transformation will be replicable. But with one irresistible smile from Zamor, it’s easy to see that the hoop has worked for her — and difficult to resist the urge to run out and buy one for oneself.

Renew yourself

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2
Renew yourself

culture@sfbg.com

So 2011 is a couple months in, and already your new year’s resolution list reads like so many dreams deferred? Chuck it in the flames — not all rebirths neatly coincide with the Gregorian calendar. This spring, rejuvenate your inner and outer workings with some of these excellent opportunities to renew everything from your chi, to your core strength, to the sweetness of your swagger.

 

HEAR THE CRY OF THE MIDNIGHT DOWN-DOG

Tripped the light cataclysmic a time too many? The toxic Fernet fumes ooze from your pores, and you’ve left not only your debit, but your credit, library, and frequent bagel-buyer card in various watering holes about time? Time to purge. Take a night off from tippling and toddle to Laughing Lotus, where Friday night’s midnight yoga class (each week from 10 p.m.-midnight) soothes abused chakras — and livers, need be. Each week even features a different live musician: Fri/25’s class will be home to the didgeridoo and sound-healing savasana of Amber Field.

Laughing Lotus, 3271 16th St., SF. (415) 355-1600, www.laughinglotus.com

 

PARTICIPATE IN A GROUP POKING

What’s community acupuncture, you ask? Small groups of patients are treated in recliners in a quiet, calm room. During the hour-long sessions, those waiting for their pokes receive staggered personalized care (needles are inserted into one’s limbs, face, and head: no disrobing necessary) from a licensed acupuncturist. Learned how to share in kindergarten? Perfect, because the cooperative method means that a single session will only run you $25–$45, including the initial visit’s paperwork fee. Circle Community Acupuncture, 1351 Harrison, SF. (415) 864-1070, www.circleca.com

 

ALKALINIZE!

Fasting, ugh. It has its place, but not eating anything is a bitter pill in the land of street tacos and gourmet coffee grounds. If you’re asking our opinion, a day of cleanse is best accessorized with Lydia’s raw green soup, a tangy elixir of kale, cucumber, dulse seaweed, avocado, ginger, and other green delicious majicks. Lydia’s sells neatly packaged soup servings, resplendent kale chips, and other yummy raw treats are favorites at the city’s crunchiest festivals, and you can pick them up at health food stores too.

Available at various SF grocery stores, www.lydiaslovinfoods.com

 

SWEAT IT OUT

Hidden behind hippie-wear emporium P-Kok is a small green garden and a sauna where tired city souls retreat for the store’s patchouli-heavy full moon ceremonies, complete with vibrational sauna singing. Starting in March, the hidden space will go holistic and become Tall Tree Tambo Wholeness Center. Monthly memberships (to encourage the use of the space as a healthy community hub) will be available for $100–$125 including coed and single-sex sauna access, healing events facilitated by other members, and the center’s four on-site healing arts practitioners, small-group classes in spiritual alignment, yoga, and the ever-popular full moon rites.

776 Haight, SF. (415) 430-8285, www.talltreetambo.org

 

TAKE INSPIRATION FROM A FEMALE FIGHTER

Forget Rocky. For true Bay Area boxing spirit, you couldn’t do better than checking out the super bantamweight championship boxing match of Ana “the Hurricane” Julaton vs. Franchesca “the Chosen One” Alcanter on Fri/25. Julaton, a Daly City and Bayview raised Filipina American, is looking to regain her standing in the pro world after a disappointing loss last year. Regardless of who walks with the belt, the ring’s high-powered punching — and rock hard musculature — is worth checking out if you’re in need of some gym motivation.

Fri/25 6 p.m., $35–$360. Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour, Richmond. www.brownpapertickets.com

 

SWEAT TO BOLLYWOOD BREAKS

Of course, you could saddle up your most comfortable heels and get your werqout in the club. Should you try this tactic, you could hardly do better than the rum-tum-tum stylings of Non-Stop Bhangra, a night that’s been teaching San Franciscans how to circle wrists and move hips in pure Punjabi mode since 2004. Nights begin with a hour-long class on Bollywood-style dance, continues with ample time to practice to beats by resident DJs and guest scratchers, and now attract a diverse following of races, ages, and ahem, physical aptitudes. Calorie burn and culture learn at the same time, perfect.

Next show: March 19 9 p.m., $10–$20. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011, www.nonstopbhangra.com

 

READ ABOUT OTHER, HEALTHIER PEOPLE

Maria Arellano was gunning for a healthier lifestyle, so she decided to blog about it. “Accountability,” the chipper office manager e-mailed us when we asked her about Oh Healthy Day‘s providence. “Posting your workouts and healthy eating habits with others is a great way to stay motivated.” Her short, addicting posts and sunny photos of her ongoing journey to fitness are also great ways to hold us accountable — how are you going to down that family-sized bag of corn chips after reading Arellano’s upbeat prose about her delicious protein and veggie dinners or inspiring Crossfit workout? Answer: you’re not.

www.ohhealthyday.com

 

REACH FOR THE SKY

While the spectacularly cool House of Air has added a valuable component to San Francisco’s kid’s-activity-starved landscape (little ones can’t help but explode with glee at the very sight of the humongous “Bounce House”), there’s trampin’ for adults as well. Specifically, the Air Conditioning workout is a 50-minute fly-through that promises to “leave your cheeks just as sore as your quads from smiling so much.” At $16 for a 50-minute session, it’s not a huge leap to “yes.”

926 Mason, SF. (415) 345-9675, www.houseofairsf.com

 

BUFF YOUR BRAINPOWER

Feel the burn all you want in your thighs, but no fitness program would be complete without a stretching your mind. At vibrantBrains, you’ll exercise that flabby cerebellum in what amounts to a workout for your brain. Improve your memory, tackle abstractions, and fast-track your alertness, literacy, and comprehension skills with programs like “Neurobics,” “Mind Evolve,” “NeoCORTA,” and “Posit Science Cortex with InSight.” Each program concentrates on a different area of mental agility using a combination of cutting edge techniques and personal attention. Even reading about the various vibrantBrains offerings makes us feel smarter.

3235 Sacramento, SF. (415) 775-1138, www.vibrantbrains.com

 

IMMERSE YOURSELF IN EGGHEAD

Holy smarty-pants, Batman, there’s a ton of intellectually stimulating stuff going down at the Mechanics’ Institute. Any given day you might enjoy a screwball comedy from the 1940s, a talk by a famous fantasist-cartographer, a book club discussion centering on the Harlem Renaissance, a class in beginner Excel, or intensive chess instruction at any level. It’s also a library! The 1854 Mechanics’ Institute building is a mind-blow in itself — but with a wide-ranging and welcoming program of creatively exhilarating (and very inexpensive) events, you may not even notice your intriguing surroundings.

57 Post. # 415, SF. (415) 393-0110, www.milibrary.org

 

STROKE SOME FUR

Next time you’re about to calculate your checkbook in your head or cry because your (ex-)drummer stole your boyfriend, head over to the Little Farm petting zoo in Berkeley’s Tilden Regional Park. This fully-loaded snuggle gang of cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, and pigs will have you back to your cute self — because petting zoos are restorative for small, whiny children, but they also work for midsized, whiny adults.

Little Farm petting zoo, Tilden Regional Park, Central Park Drive, Berk. (510) 525-2233, www.ebparks.org

 

MEDITATE STUPA-SIDE

If you want to change your outlook, pay a visit to the Peace Pagoda in Japan Center, an underrated San Francisco landmark. Designed by artist and architect Yoshiro Taniguchi, the pagoda and its subtly Op Art-tinged interpretation of a Buddhist stupa made their debut in the year of the Summer of Love. Walk around and even step inside Taniguchi’s 100-foot-high, five-tiered, many-passaged structure to meditate from an infinite variety of angles. Or better yet, play a quick game of hide and seek with someone you love. 24-7.

1704 Post, SF. (415) 775-1817, www.sfjapantown.org

 

LET YOUR SPIRIT WANDER

Sometimes the best way to refresh yourself is to get a little lost. When things begin to spiral out of control, let the ancient spiritual meditative paths of the three Bay Area labyrinths lead you to a calmer place. Take a natural journey to the mysterious Eagle Point Labyrinth (Lands End, Sutro Heights Park, SF.). Experience transcendence — and a spectacular quiet zone — with the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral (1100 California, SF. www.gracecathedral.org). Or amble with playful tots along the colorful circle of the Scott Street Labyrinth near Duboce Park (Scott between Duboce and Waller, SF).

 

MULTITASK YOUR RETRO BEAUTY FIX

If you want to feel new, sometimes there’s only one thing to do: get a fresh hairdo at Down at Lulu’s. The bass is thumpin’, the clothes are cheap and sexy, and the pop culture treasures and creative energy are abundant at this self-described “hair salon-vintage clothing-record store-junk shop” co-owned by Tina Lucchesi and Seth Bogart, where you can get hot highlights, cuckoo color jobs, and perms with panache.

6603 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 601-0964, www.downatlulus.com.

 

PUT CUTE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

You’ll break your lease in the land of not-so-fresh after an introduction to wonders of kawaii nail art. Let Trang Bui, the manager of Crystal Nail, facilitate your escape from the days of dull French manicures with her signature collage talons of glitter, jewels, and — so popular you should book and specify you want them well in advance — Hello Kitty 3-D art. Don’t be shocked at the price tag — a full acrylic set with designs and tip will run around $65. Worth it for such blingy digits, no? Next challenge: learning to type with horizontal fingers.

2347 Clement, SF. (415) 752-4425

 

STICK A FEATHER IN YOUR COIF

Still rocking the all-natural look? Shame that — freshen up your do with some feather hair extensions, slim bursts of hue that’ll set you apart from the other land-locked long hairs, but don’t involve the same commitment as a jar of Manic Panic (though they can last for months). You can get a natural or neon-colored bundle of up to four feathers for $30 or single plumes for $10 each at the Mission’s Pretty Parlor. Move fast — once these hit Dolores Park, the trend’s gonna blow up.

Pretty Parlor. 3150 18th St., SF. (415) 556-2883, www.prettyparlorsf.com

Police Commission braces for another Taser debate

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Police Commission braces for another Taser debate

The San Francisco Police Department, police commissioners, and community advocates are gearing up for another debate about whether or not SFPD officers should carry and use Tasers. The hearing will be held at tomorrow’s Feb. 23 police commission meeting.

Interim Police Chief Jeff Godown — carrying forward a plan that originated with his predecessor, former police chief George Gascon — called for a hearing on the Taser proposal, according to a Police Commission spokesperson. If it wins approval, the SFPD will begin conducting research to develop training and policy guidelines for the SFPD to implement Tasers. The issue has ignited fierce debate in the past, and resistance is likely to be revived on this go-round.

Last year, the commission rejected Gascon’s proposal to add Tasers to police officers’ use-of-force options. Now, Commissioner Angela Chan, who was appointed last year by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors after the proposal had been defeated, is emerging as a voice of dissent.

Chan submitted a handful of reports published by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International, and other sources critical of Tasers for commissioners to review prior to the meeting. She’s also preparing a 45-minute presentation highlighting concerns about the weapons.

The SFPD will give its own 45-minute presentation to try and convince commissioners that it should be allowed to move forward with the plan this time. “It’s another tool for officers to use when encountering violent persons,” noted Sgt. Mike Andraychak, a police spokesperson.

Andraychak said it was too soon to provide any details about whether the Taser proposal would take the form of a pilot program, or be implemented all at once. He did not have specific information about how training would be developed, how the department planned to solicit input from various communities, or how long the department expected to be working on a draft policy if the police commission granted approval. Chak did note that if the SFPD moves forward, it may host town hall meetings about Tasers.

The Feb. 23 police commission meeting is likely to bring vociferous community opposition. The Coalition on Homelessness (COH) and a number of other community-based organizations are encouraging people to attend the meeting and speak during public comment.

In a letter submitted to the police commission, Asian and Southeast Asian Societies, Causa Justa (Just Cause), The Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, COH, and other community advocates point out that Tasers have been declared a form of torture by a UN torture panel, and cite a University of Calfornia San Francisco study finding that police shootings more than doubled in the first full year of Taser implementation.

The community organizations also pointed out that Tasers are manufactured in Scottsdale, Ariz. — and San Francisco is still boycotting Arizona for enacting SB 1070, a bill that has drawn widespread criticism for encouraging racial profiling. Meanwhile, in a lean budget year, the cost of implementing Tasers is estimated at around $2 million, according to the letter.

Despite being turned down last time, the department has revived its Taser proposal in the wake of two officer-involved shootings early this year, including one that struck a mentally ill, wheelchair-bound man who was brandishing a knife. That case came under scrutiny after it was caught on a phone camera and posted to YouTube.

Following that incident, Gascon suggested that the outcome may have been different if officers had the option of deploying Tasers.

Yet Allen Hopper, police practices director at the ACLU, questions the idea that deploying a Taser would have been the correct response in that circumstance — especially in light of a recent Police Commission vote to strengthen SFPD practices when encountering people with mental illness. The Commission recently directed the SFPD to establish a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), based on a policing model that emphasizes deescalation. Yet Hopper says deploying a Taser would achieve just the opposite.

“We think it’s putting the cart before the horse to give the police Tasers before they put that plan into effect,” Hopper said. People with mental-health problems, he added, are more likely to be on strong medication, or prone to excited emotional states and rapid heart rates — all of which could place them at a higher risk for serious injury or even death if struck with a Taser.

Counted among a class of weapons called conducted energy devices, Tasers deliver a painful electric jolt when deployed, temporarily immobilizing a subject by disrupting the central nervous system and causing involuntary muscle contractions. While they tend to be hailed by law enforcement as non-lethal alternatives to firearms, human-rights organizations have criticized Tasers because accidental deaths have been linked to their use. According to a report by Amnesty International, more than 330 people were reported to have died in the last decade after being struck by police Tasers. While not all of those deaths were directly attributed to the Tasers in coroners’ reports, many of the people who died were found to be in “excited states of delirium” or under the influence of illegal drugs or prescription medications when they were Tasered.

Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

Mary Magee
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Is Adachi’s pension reform a Tea Party initiative?

With all eyes on Wisconsin, local labor leaders are suggesting that Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s proposed retirement/health plan reforms are really Tea Party initiatives, even as Adachi threatens to place another Measure B-like initiative on the fall ballot if city leaders can’t agree on a fix for the city’s fiscal problems

Last fall, Adachi started a war with the local labor movement when he placed Measure B on the November ballot. Measure B proposed increasing employee contributions for retirement benefits, decreasing employer contributions for heath benefits for employees, retirees and their dependents, and changing rules for arbitration proceedings about city collective bargaining agreements,

Measure B ultimately failed, but not after both sides spent a ton of cash. And now labor is refusing to have Adachi sit in on their pension reform talks with Mayor Ed Lee, former SEIU President Andy Stern is describing the fight in Wisconsin as a ’15 state GOP Power grab,” and SEIU Local 1021 leader Gabriel Haaland is pointing to Wisconsin as a reason for excluding Adachi from pension reform talks

“Adachi’s obviously scapegoating a group that’s part of a national agenda,” Haaland said, noting that in the states where Republicans gained statehouse control in 2010, there’s talk about eliminating collective bargaining, and ending defined benefit plans and paycheck protection.

“The problem is that pension reform has been blowing on the anti-public sector worker winds that are blowing in Wisconsin and other states, whether progressives want to acknowledge it or not,” Haaland continued. “There is a reason that Adachi got so much money last year, and the corporate interests behind him are part of this effort to bash public sector workers.”

Prop. B’s campaign finance records show the campaign raised $1.125 million in 2010, and that the lion’s share came from wealthy individuals.

Billionaire venture capitalist, former Google board member and Obama supporter Michael Moritz gave $245,000. Author Harrier Heyman, Moritz’ wife, donated $172,500. financial analyst Richard Beleson donated $110,000. George Hume of Basic American Foods donated $50,000. Gov. Schwarzenegger’s former economic policy advisor David Crane gave $37,500. Philanthropist Warren Hellman donated $50,000. Republican investor Howard Leach, who co-hosted a Prop. B fundraiser with former Mayor Willie L. Brown, gave $25,000. Investor Joseph Tobin gave $15,750. Maverick Capital partner David Singer gave $15,000. JGE Capital Partners donated  $15,000; Bechtel owner  Stephen Bechtel Jr gave $10,000: Matthew Cohler, a general partner of Benchmark Capital, donated $10,000; the California Chamber of Commerce donated $5,000 and philanthropist Dede Wilsey gave $1,000.

But records also show that Measure B opponents, which included San Francisco Firefighters, SF Police Officers Association, SF First Responders, the California Nurses Association, United Educators, San Francisco Gardeners, San Francisco Teachers, Library Workers, laguna Honda Workers, donated over $1 million in their successful bid to squash Adachi’s reform. And that just about every elected Democrat, including Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, then mayor Gavin Newsom, Sheriff Mike Hennessey, and Board President David Chiu, came out against Adachi’s original plan.
 
Haaland acknowledged that the argument could be made that the progressives’ version of the hotel tax didn’t pass and less attention was paid to the district elections last fall, because labor focused primarily on defeating Adachi’s Measure B.

“But at the end of the day, we did get the real estate transfer tax and we defeated Measure B,” Haaland observed. “So, we need to keep fighting anti-worker pressure. It’s challenging times, but I feel like the connections need to be made.”

Adachi was swift to refute Haaland’s claim that his Measure B pension reform is and was a Tea Party initiative.
“What’s not been reported is the fact that there are all these people supporting pension reform who are progressive Democrats,” Adachi said, pointing to Moritz, Crane and former Board President and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez, who all supported Measure B last fall.

“You are talking about saving basic services and that’s a progressive cause,” Adachi continued. “You might argue that pension reform isn’t a progressive solution. But then you are saying that the needs of one group of workers are subservient to the needs of other workers. And even if you raised every tax in the city, you’d not be able to keep up with pension and healthcare costs.”

“Even if we could raise parking tickets to $200 a pop, and tax folks who make more than $100,000 a year, that still wouldn’t solve the problem, because the problem is so huge,” Adachi added. “When you look at this crisis, you can’t simply redbait and say, you are a Republican, or Sarah Palin. Matt Gonzales has always spoken for progressive values, but because he supports pension reform, he’s suddenly a member of the Tea Party? At a certain point, it begins to become absurd.”

Haaland countered that he’s  “challenged by the notion that thousands show up in Wisconsin to fight some of the same people behind Measure B, but our discourse has lowered to whether or not Jeff Adachi is a good guy.”

And Adachi expressed doubt that Mayor Ed Lee can come up with a suitable pension reform plan.

“I’ve heard Lee say there has to be a solution involving pension reform and underfunded healthcare benefits that would save $300 million to $400 million in annual savings, and that corresponds with the solution he needs to come up with to close the budget deficit,” Adachi said.

Adachi said that he has met with Lee on his own to discuss pension reform, but the new mayor did not list specifics.
“He didn’t tell me what his plan was,” Adachi said, “The Prop. B supporters have a plan, but Lee did not ask what that was. But he said he sincerely wants to solve that problem, and that his preference would be one ballot initiative that everyone would agree on. And I fully support a solution that is going to truly solve the problem. I’ve always believed it’s important for the public to understand the gravity of the situation. For too long, it’s been the elephant in the room and there hasn’t been enough public information.”

Adachi said he had a beef with the idea of “groups of labor unions holding meetings at City Hall and deciding who can participate.”

“It’s also troubling that there is no information publicly available about what the ideas on the table are, no explanation of how they got there, and no documenting of the extent of the problem,” Adachi continued. “And that’s what got us here in the first place: a lack of transparency, and voters being asked to weigh in without the full information.”

Adachi said he has an upcoming meeting with Lee, the Department of Human Resources and Sup. Sean Elsbernd about pension reform that is separate from the working group that includes labor and philanthropist Warren Hellmann.

And Elsbernd told the Guardian he believes the pension reform process would go smoother if Adachi were at the table.
“I have no problem with Jeff at the table, it makes sense to have him there to avoid two ballot measures,” Elsbernd said.

Elsbernd added that it was too early to cite numbers when it comes to talk of capping pensions.
“It’s a mistake to pick a number right now because you don’t know what it’s worth,” he said, noting that the pension reform working group has sent a bunch of different scenarios to retirement actuaries to crunch the numbers to see how much they would save the city.

“I can see a case being made for asking the highest paid city workers to contribute higher amounts for healthcare benefits,” Elsbernd said. “But I’m not sure that’s equitable on retirement benefits, though I could see a situation where safety pays more, regardless, because they have better pensions.”

Dick Meister: Shades of the Thirties

Maria Poblet
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4

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.

By now, there’s can be no doubting it: What’s happening in Wisconsin is one
of the most important labor developments in decades. It’s of major
importance to unions and their members, of major importance to working
people generally ­ of major importance to us all.

In  many ways, it’s the 1930s again. Just as then, workers and their
political allies and other  supporters are demonstrating, picketing,
marching, striking and otherwise forcefully demanding the basic civil right
of collective bargaining ­ the unfettered right for workers’ representatives
to negotiate with employers on setting their wages, hours and working
conditions.

Eventually, workers and their millions of supporters won the 1930s struggle.
Congress, acting closely with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, granted the
legal right of collective bargaining to most workers. Farm workers,
domestics and a few other groups were excluded from the law, but all others
finally had that vital right.

The 1930s struggle arose primarily because of the economic pressures of the
Great Depression that led to massive protests, just as today’s struggle can
be traced to the pressures of the Great Recession that also have led to
massive protests.

There are key differences between then and now, however. In the thirties,
the struggle was to win union rights for workers in the face of strong
opposition from large financial interests, powerful conservative politicians
and other anti-labor forces. Today, the struggle is to keep union rights
from being taken away from workers by today’s anti-union forces. Their main
targets are public employees and the pensions and other benefits they won in
past bargaining with their government employers.

The governments’ aim, of course, is to use the savings from that to make up
for budget shortfalls resulting from the recession and, in many cases, from
poor government management.

But there’s another important reason: Public employees have become the
vanguard of the labor movement. Their numbers and the percentage of them
belonging to unions have been growing steadily, while the number and
percentage of unionized workers in private employment have been shrinking.
That’s caused anti-union forces to shift their major efforts into attempting
to curb the escalating spread of unionization among public employees.

Which explains what’s happening in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott
Walker has moved to all but eliminate the bargaining rights of most state
employees.
Walker is pushing bills through the GOP-controlled Legislature that would
bar state employees from bargaining on anything except their pay, and limit
any pay increases to the level of Consumer Price Index increases.

Employees would have no say in determining  their benefits or working
conditions, although most would have to increase their contributions to
pension and health care funds by up to 50 percent. What’s more, their
contracts would have to be re-negotiated yearly, and union dues could no
longer be deducted from employee paychecks.  It’s hard to imagine a union
surviving under such restraints.

The pay and benefits of Wisconsin state workers may be too high, or too low,
depending on who’s measuring. But that could be addressed through
negotiations between Gov. Walker and union representatives. But like some
petty dictator, Walker insists, “I don’t have anything to negotiate.”

Peaceful negotiations are how it’s done in civil societies, but that’s not
the style of union-busting Walker and his cohorts.  And if anyone doesn’t
like Walker’s approach, look out! He’s alerted the National Guard to be
armed and ready should Wisconsin state workers strike, disrupt state
services or otherwise rise in protest.

Shades, again, of the 1930s. In fact, the last time the Guard was called out
to quell a labor dispute in Wisconsin was during a United Auto Workers
strike in 1934.

Workers eventually won that and many other struggles of the thirties, thanks
to their courage and fierce determination and the broad public support they
inspired. And that’s precisely what it will take to overcome today’s
anti-worker onslaught by Walker and others like him.

The good news ­ and it’s very good news ­ is that such help is here and
growing fast. Crowds of as many as 70,000 labor supporters have been
gathering daily outside the Wisconsin State Capital in Madison to demand
that Walker and his fellow reactionaries return to the 21st century.

But give Walker this: Like the anti-labor politicians of the 1930s, he has
aroused public outrage that has brought important new strength and
solidarity to the cause of working people and their unions nationwide.

Certainly they’ll need all the strength they can muster, with major efforts
similar to Walker’s in Wisconsin underway in at least 17 other states.  In
more than a dozen. , Republican anger over labor’s strong support for
Democrats in last year’s elections have led directly to measures curbing
union political activities.

President Obama is correct. There is indeed a nationwide “assault on
unions.” But as the assaults increase, so will the public outrage that’s
winning unions the broad support they so badly need ­ and so richly deserve.

Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based columnist who has covered labor and
politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.
Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com

Herrera’s crackpipe crackdown

Zelda Bronstein
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45
Herrera’s crackpipe crackdown

I lived at Hayes and Fillmore in the 1980s, at the height of the crack epidemic, and a spectacularly unsuccessful dealer hung out on my corner. He was so bad at selling the stuff (or else was smoking so much of it) that he was constantly broke and used to knock on my door late at night ask to borrow a buck to buy a can of beer.


At one point he owed me about $10, and offered to pay me back with “some hubba.” He proceded to open his fist and show me a couple of grimy rocks rolling around in his filthy, sweaty palm.


It looked so appealing. I politely declined.


That was my one and only chance to smoke crack, and I passed it up. So when I heard that city attorney Dennis Herrera was going to sue a bunch of local stores for selling crack pipes, I must admit I was curious: What’s the definition of a “crack pipe?” How can you tell what a piece of smoking apparatus is going to be used for?


I asked Jack Song, a spokesperson for Herrera, and he told me it was pretty clear. “They’re glass, and they have certain characteristics,” he said.


Again: I’ve never actually smoked crack, so I have no personal experience with crack pipes. But I used to have a really nice glass pot pipe, which unfortunately was seized by the police in upstate New York many years ago. I went on Google images, the source for all truth, and checked out “crack pipes,” and some of them looked a little like the one I used to use for what we now consider a legal medical treatment.


According to the press reports, an undercover cop went into these stores and asked to buy a crack pipe. The store owners allegedly offered up a specific device, which would not have been terrible smart; when we used to buy bongs in Connecticut, where selling any sort of drug paraphernalia was illegal, the salespeople would talk loudly about how to load “the tobacco.”


In this case, Herrera’s even going a bit beyond crack pipes:


At all times relevant to this Complaint, up to and including the present, in addition to
the permitted tobacco products, Defendants have also displayed and sold smoking paraphernalia, including a large array of pipes and devices commonly referred to as “bongs.”


But Song told me marijuana devices wouldn’t be targeted.


At any rate, the legal case is now going to rest, I guess, on what defines a “crack pipe.” (Apparently there are “meth pipes,” too, which are a little different from crack pipes. I feel so old and uninformed.)


And while I understand the neighbors griping about the stores attracting a nasty element (my old pal on Hayes and Fillmore was harmless enough, but your typical crackhead isn’t great company), I wonder about the ultimate impact of this particular, uh, crackdown.


Herrera’s lawsuit notes:


By providing their customers with a way to ingest illegal and dangerous narcotics, Defendants are creating and contributing to conditions which are injurious to the health, safety and welfare of their customers, neighbors, and the community at large. Defendants’ conduct causes or contributes to offensive and annoying conditions, including, but not limited to: illegal and dangerous trafficking of controlled substances, illegal and dangerous use and abuse of controlled substances, public intoxication, and the crime and nuisance related thereto.



I get that the city attorney considers these stores a community nusiance, and he may well be right. But I don’t think this is going to do much about crack and meth use.


I mean, can’t you smoke crack out of a pot pipe? Can’t you pretty much smoke it out of anything? When I was in high school people stuck their pencils into apples and made holes to smoke pot out of; in college, I learned that, in a pinch, Tampax wrappers made perfectly adequate rolling papers.


Druggies (of the sort who use crack pipes, anyway) may be violent and otherwise fucked up, but they’re notoriously creative. They may stop hanging around these particular stores in these particular neighborhoods, but they’ll find someplace else.


It seems likely that the only ones who are going to suffer for this are the store owners; the crackheads will be just fine. In a manner of speaking.


 

Planned Parenthood calls for support against GOP attack

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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6

As the struggle to keep the doors open at the legendary women’s clinic, Lyon-Martin Health Services, continues here in San Francisco, yet another blow to women’s health care at the national level has advocates sounding the alarm. Planned Parenthood has issued a call for help defeating a federal bill it’s calling “the most dangerous legislative assault on women’s health and Planned Parenthood in our 95-year history.”

Congress is gearing up to vote on the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would eliminate federal funding for all health-care services provided by any clinic that offers abortion services. The legislation places Planned Parenthood, a leading national provider of reproductive health care serving primarily low-income and uninsured women, squarely in the crosshairs.

The bill was proposed by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IL), who apparently has serious beef with Planned Parenthood.

While Pence has sought to convince lawmakers that the bill would eliminate federal funding only for abortions, its reach is actually much broader than that, and it would deliver a devastating blow to basic reproductive health services for millions of women.

“This bill would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood health centers — including funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and more,” notes a statement on Planned Parenthood’s website. “The consequences of this bill are clear — and they would be devastating. More women would have unintended pregnancies. Cancer would develop, undiagnosed, in countless women. There is no doubt: cutting off millions of women from care they have no other way to afford places them at risk of sickness and death.”

Even Cosmo has weighed in, noting that this federal funding is helping millions of women stay healthy or detect early stages of disease: “Last year, that money (which would dry up completely if the bill is passed) went towards 2.2 million Pap tests, 2.3 million breast exams, and over six million tests for STDs.”

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has joined in the calls for defense of Planned Parenthood, issuing an email blast as part of his mayoral campaign asking voters to sign a petition against the Pence legislation. “New efforts by the far right to eliminate funding from all Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide pose a dangerous and immediate threat to women’s health,” Herrera wrote in the campaign message.

A number of other online petitions are circulating on this issue as well. Go here or here to learn more.

Adachi and Ballard’s pension reform gloves come off

Mary Magee
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64
Adachi and Ballard’s pension reform gloves come off

Yesterday, I talked to Public Defender Jeff Adachi about the latest efforts to address pension reform in San Francisco. Readers may remember that Adachi roused the ire of the labor unions last year, with the ultimately unsuccessful Proposition B. At the time, most folks felt Adachi’s measure didn’t have a snowball’s chance because it asked public employees to bear the brunt of the city’s ballooning retirement and health plan costs. Yet, they all praised Adachi as a great city leader who has been on the right side of many other battles in this city’s rich political history.
But the pension reform issue hasn’t gone away, and now that Adachi is threatening to introduce another measure this fall, the gloves have apparently come off, as witnessed by a Bay Citizen article that reported that union leaders don’t want Adachi to be part of a pension-reform working group at City Hall
In that Bay Citizen article, Nathan Ballard, who served as communications director for former Mayor Gavin Newsom from 2007 to 2009, said, “Inviting Jeff Adachi to our talks would be like inviting Sarah Palin to speak at the Democratic convention.”
The Bay Citizen characterized Ballard as “a Democratic strategist who has been involved in the working group since its inception.” And it noted that Mayor Lee had reached out to Adachi—an effort that it framed as a “complicating move.”
But it didn’t get Adachi’s thoughts on Ballard’s comments. So, I asked Adachi how he felt about being compared to Sarah “Moose in the headlights” Palin.
“It’s ironic that a spokesperson from Burson-Marsteller, which is headed by Republican operatives such as President Bush’s former press secretary (Dana Perino) and represents some of the most reactionary corporate interests, such as USA Blackwater, is accusing me of being a Republican for trying to solving our city’s pension crisis,” Adachi replied, referring to the fact that Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations firm, appointed Ballard as a managing director in March 2010.
“This is a company that is known for representing the worst corporate criminals in modern history,” Adachi continued. “They organized a campaign against civil rights in Argentina, supported a government massacre in Indonesia and tried to justify the killing of over 2,000 people in India’s Bhopal disaster. You have a hired mouthpiece, Nathan Ballard, who’s been paid $50,000 out of union member dues deciding who can attend meetings at City Hall. “
Asked for his thoughts on Adachi’s response, Ballard replied, “Burson-Marsteller employs talented operatives from both sides of the aisle. Although I won’t speak to the specifics of Jeff Adachi’s allegations, Burson is well known as the world’s go-to firm for crisis communications, and that tends to involve handling high-stakes disputes for controversial clients. As a criminal defense lawyer, Jeff Adachi should resist the temptation to assign blame to an advocate for accusations made against a client.”

So, buckle your seats, ladies and gentlemen. The pension reform battle is ON. And if the exchange posted above is any indication, it’s only going to get uglier

Playing chicken

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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27
Playing chicken

news@sfbg.com

The Heart of the City farmers market in U.N. Plaza may not exude the bourgeois foodie reputation of the Ferry Plaza farmers market. It doesn’t sell micro-roasted coffee or artisan cheeses, and its fountain may sometimes double as a public shower, but it does offer one product that no other San Francisco farmers market does: fresh, live poultry.

Raymond Young has sold live chickens here for two decades, showing up at dawn to set up shop and peddle his poultry to an eager throng of customers, mostly Chinese, who happily take home upwards of 600 birds per day.

But a group of animal rights activists is saying that the poultry stand is inhumane, violates health codes, and that Young’s employees have infringed on their civil rights as protestors. Since April 2010, members of LGBT Compassion have been showing up in the wee hours of the morning next to Young’s stand with banners, brochures, and signs promulgating the alleged cruelty of his business and seeking to block the sale of live birds. In January, protesters upped the ante when they slapped Young and the HOC market with a lawsuit alleging continuous abuse and negligence by those who supervise the market.

“For me, it was as simple as seeing the animal cruelty,” said Andrew Zollman, 43, the founder and organizer of LGBT Compassion. “The cages are dilapidated and cramped, there are feces everywhere, and the chickens are shoved in plastic bags, two at a time, while they scream in fear or pain. It was like walking down the street and seeing a dog beaten — and it’s really frustrating to see it happen here in San Francisco.”

Zollman and fellow protester Alex Felsinger, 25, filed the lawsuit with San Francisco attorney Matt Gonzalez after months of attempts to get city officials to intervene.

The allegations have Young and market management squawking, saying that the activists are opposing a practice that is both legal and routine. They claim the protesters are overly sensitive to the treatment of the chickens simply because they can see it, and decry their tactics as an attack on a small business and cultural traditions since almost all of his customers are Asian.

“These people just don’t seem to like other people’s culture of selling live chicken,” Young said. “”I think that what I do is right. I abide by all the health codes and animal care codes. I try to do everything I can to satisfy everyone. These protesters think they can override the law because they don’t like what they see.”

 

THE PATH TO COURT

Zollman and Felsinger have been encouraging the city to investigate Young’s stall, regularly sending videos and photos taken at Young’s stall to the Department of Public Health and Animal Care and Control. But their quest to protect the chickens has been complicated by the lack of city oversight and an inability to enforce animal cruelty laws due to provisions exempting poultry.

The clash between the vociferous vegans and the poultry purveyors reached its pinnacle in late December 2010, when Felsinger claimed he was punched in the side of the head, wrapped up in a tarp, and had the memory card from his camera stolen by one of Young’s employees. As painful as the altercation was, Felsinger’s scuffle has helped him garner support.

Felsinger doesn’t have footage of the December attack, but he and Zollman have documented several instances of alleged verbal and physical abuse by Young’s employees, including anti gay statements from Young’s daughter, which was the subject of a complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

“There is a long list of things being done to us over the past year,” Felsinger said. “I never expected them to take such a violent act against me. It’s not how I wanted to go about it. But it might have the end result we’re looking for.”

Christine Adams, manager of the HOC market since it first opened in 1981, has consistently defended Young and called the lawsuit “completely outrageous.”

“This is a market, and if they (Young’s crew) were illegal, they would have been booted,” she said. “I have done nothing wrong; Raymond has done nothing wrong. I’m not worried at all about the lawsuit.”

Adams said that while she had not been personally affected by the protesting in the past, she did not approve of Zollman and Felsinger’s actions and attributed a decline in live poultry sales to their presence.

“Their sales have gone down considerably,” Adams said. “They used to sell more than 1,000 birds a day and now it’s more like 600 or 700. I think it’s definitely because of the protesters. People don’t like to be followed through a market and have a camera shoved in their face just because they bought a live chicken.”

 

GATHERING EVIDENCE

Almost every market day, Zollman and Felsinger would show up to protest and take video and still photography of Young’s stall. They have posted numerous videos and photos to their group’s website (lgbtcompassion.org) — the same ones they say they send to DPH and ACC — documenting the conditions at Young’s stall.

The DPH makes routine inspections twice per year to the market. In November, Zollman, Young, and Adams held a meeting with principal environmental health inspector Lisa O’Malley to address issues of sanitation, handling, and guidelines for bringing live animals near food. The department says the vendor is operating within guidelines.

“There were some problems in the past, but they’ve been fixed,” O’Malley told us, naming a few instances of inadequate removal of chicken feces from the area and improper hand-washing as past problems. She said the challenge was maintaining the guidelines, the most difficult of which is making sure people do not walk through the market after purchasing their birds. Health codes prohibit animals from being within 20 feet of food. The primary concern is contamination from fecal matter, which could cause illnesses such as Salmonella poisoning.

O’Malley walks by the market regularly because of its proximity to her office and says all operations seem compliant. At the same time, official enforcement and inspection is limited to the Public Health Department’s semi-annual visits. This means the only people watching over the operations of the stall and customers are the security guards, who don’t start working until two and half hours after the market opens, long after prime time for buying live chickens.

 

CULTURE CLASH

Young stands by his actions and said he is not guilty of any wrongdoing. The activists criticize him for practices such as cutting off the tips of the chickens’ beaks, but Young said he only does this to prevent fighting injuries sustained when they are caged for transport and sale, a common practice for any chicken farmer.

In their pamphlets and the lawsuit, the activists claim that the poultry is a “collection of ‘spent’ live chickens (those who are no longer productive egg layers) from large Central Valley farms,” according to the suit. But Young contests that characterization and the activists can’t produce credible evidence of the birds’ age or origins.

“They don’t know how old my birds are. They don’t know how I care for them,” Young said, refusing to tell us how old the chickens are. “They just assume. What’s the difference between Safeway chicken and my chicken? They were all alive at one time, but you see mine.”

Young has three farms listed on his permit — in Modesto, Sacramento, and Manteca — that he runs with the help of his children and a few employees. Adams has visited his Modesto facility and reported that the chickens are free-range, seem to be in good health, and are treated no differently than they would be at any other farm. She also supported the accusation that the protests undermine cultural norms.

“How can it not be cultural? All their customers are Asian!” she said. “And why is it only the chicken man they harass? There is a guy who sells quail and pheasants and they aren’t bothering him.”

Zollman, Felsinger, and Gonzalez call that cultural criticism a diversionary tactic. “I don’t even want to dignify culture and race as an issue in this,” Zollman said. “I understand that people want to buy live chickens. Animal cruelty issues aside, this isn’t a live animal market like they have in most of Asia.”

Young and Adams stressed that Zollman could not possibly know about operations on the farm, and that his suggestion that the operation is extremely profitable is absurd. “Do you know how hard it is to work on a farm?” asked Young, a single father of three. “You don’t make any money except to put food on the table or send your kids to school. And now I have to pay for a lawyer.”

 

ARE CHICKENS ANIMALS?

Although the activists oppose factory farms and live animals for sale for human consumption in general, they have focused their attention on the HOC market because it is permitted by the city.

Gonzalez said the lawsuit aims to address three different issues. The first is violating his client’s free speech rights by Young and HOC market. The second seeks to compel the city to better identify and enforce alleged health code violations. The third and trickiest aspect deals with animal cruelty laws, which the activists hope will force more humane treatment of the birds.

Penal Code 597 outlines animal cruelty provisions, defining the word “animal” as “frogs, turtles, and birds sold for human consumption, with the exception of poultry.” That law was adopted in the early 1900s. Elsewhere the code defines animals as “every dumb creature.” But in 2000, the Fourth District California Court of Appeals analyzed the section and deemed that the definition should include birds.

But Gonzalez and ACC say city officials have allowed the poultry exemption to stick. “[The law] refers to live animals and makes a specific exemption for poultry,” Rebecca Katz, director of the Department of Animal Care and Control, told us. “I would venture to guess that poultry lobby was very strong at that time.”

The ACC, prompted by the protests, inspected Young’s facilities and cited him for 700 different violations, according to the lawsuit. Katz mentioned a few instances in which they observed chickens suffering to the point where they had to be euthanized. But most of the citations were for inadequate water supply or holding birds improperly.

“A lot of people eat animals for food, and that’s what it is,” Katz said. “I’m not a vegetarian, but the way they are being kept is not the way we would recommend they be cared for. Do we think there is some cruelty? Probably. But there is nothing we can do at this time until the law changes.”

Like his predecessors, newly appointed District Attorney George Gascón seems to believe that chickens are not protected by state law, regardless of perceived cruel treatment.

“To date, our position has been that there is a clear exception under the law for live poultry being sold for human consumption,” said Gascón spokesperson Erica Derryck. “As much as it appears that the treatment of these animals is inhumane, there is nothing we can do to prosecute these allegations under the current laws in California.”

Gonzalez disagrees, and his office referenced similar cases in the state in which poultry was protected from cruelty. “Frankly, it’s kind of embarrassing that they are taking the position they are taking,” Gonzalez told us. “They are trying to avoid a topic that would compel them to do what they need to do. Many in the Asian community and Mexican community see this as an attack on their cultural traditions, and that’s not the issue. We see it as a straight matter of misinterpretation.”

 

DAILY OPERATIONS

On a recent visit to the market, the stall appeared clean and the chickens were out of view. The stall features prominent signage in English and in Chinese languages of the ban on bringing live animals into the market, with additional signs throughout the plaza, but customers routinely step directly into the market after buying their chickens.

“This is not easy,” security guard Diana Ybarra said while trying to point a man carrying a bag with two chickens in the right direction. “Nobody wants to listen — most of them don’t speak English. Everyone wants to take a shortcut right back through the market.”

Ybarra and her coworker, Washington (who chose to be identified only by his last name), said that their entire day is consumed trying to get customers to abide by this rule. Prior to the November meeting, no signage was posted and customers just “walked all over the place as if it didn’t matter at all,” Ybarra said.

“Chinese New Year was bad,” Washington added.

The guards see enforcing the rule as an unnecessary waste of time that takes their focus off tasks such as preventing theft. Both said shoving birds in sacks was “messed up,” but they were also quick to criticize the protestors.

“Why are they bothering this man? This is a family business and people have to make money,” Washington said. “Those protestors came in and fucked everything up, if you ask me.”

Young said he resents getting caught up in this controversy. “We are so loyal to this city and to this market,” he said. “We have put up with drug dealers and crime just so we can serve the people. Maybe these protesters think differently.”

For now the activists are more focused on the lawsuit than remaining vigilant in their protests, hoping it will accomplish their goal.

“I wasn’t always so adamant about getting rid of them, it was having people notice something that is animal cruelty,” Felsinger said. “It had been good in some ways to have people exposed to this cruelty in San Francisco because it gave us a platform to speak on animal rights. These are egregious offenses and it’s hard to ignore when it is right in your back yard.”

Dick Meister: Scapegoating Public Empoyees

Maria Poblet
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7

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.

Let’s pause for a moment to recognize some of our most important, yet most maligned workers. They are teachers and librarians. Police officers and firefighters. Bus drivers, doctors and nurses. Judges, lawyers, gardeners. They’re laborers and other maintenance and construction workers, and many others who provide us vital services.

They are public employees. There are millions of them, who every day do the essential work that keeps our country going.

It is they who keep our streets and highways, our parks and playgrounds safe and clean, who collect our trash. It is they who help educate our children, who provide emergency health care, who convey us to our jobs and back home after our day’s work, who sometimes risk their very lives to protect us from harm.

Yet despite all that – and more – public employees have come under heavy bipartisan attack by politicians who find them easy targets to blame for the budget shortfalls that have beset government at all levels.  Labor costs, after all, make up the bulk of government spending everywhere.

There’s no way around that basic fact. So if we want all those vital services public employees provide – and we do – that’s the price we must pay, and should be happy to pay. Certainly no group of workers has done more for us, none who are more important to our welfare, none more deserving of their wages.

Yet we seriously shortchange many of those workers. And some people, including political leaders who obviously know better, ludicrously cite public employees as a major cause of the economic recession that just won’t go away.

The blame, of course, clearly rests elsewhere. The culprits, as the Portside Labor website noted, include “the super-rich who will continue to enjoy immensely lucrative tax breaks enacted during the Bush administration,” and the Defense Department officials who want “a budget blowing $78 billion over the next year to fund the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and maintain a military machine that spends more than all its rivals combined.”

No, it’s not obscenely wealthy tax-dodging greedheads or the war-happy folks at the so-called Defense Department who’ve caused  record budget deficits. Oh, no. It’s that “greedy public employee who pulls in an outrageous $19,000-a-year pension.” You know, one of those public employees Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana actually characterized as members of  “a new privileged class.”

Public employee unions are striking back at such foolishness. For instance, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is waging a nationwide “Stop the Lies” campaign. Union President Gerald McEntee has been arguing that “hundreds of thousands of public employees, just like private sector employees, have been laid off, and taken pay and benefit cuts – even as Wall Street executives lined their pockets with taxpayer money and took home huge bonuses.”

The union’s retirees, meanwhile, are getting rich on pensions of, indeed, $19,000 a year.

There’s this, too: Government workers generally get less in pay and benefits than workers holding similar jobs in the private sector. As Portside Labor and others have pointed out, public sector workers don’t seem to resent the fact that their pay lags behind pay in private employment, “because most choose public service for other reasons than pay.” That’s obvious, and another reason to quit scapegoating the under-compensated workers who are among our most valuable.

The latest and perhaps best defense of the scapegoated public employees has come from President Harold Schaltberger of International Alliance of Firefighters .

Schaltberger notes the attacks on public employees are “like a tsunami rolling across the country.” He says the attacks have never been greater, more serious or as vicious.”  As he says, “Wall Street’s recklessness, not public employee pensions, caused our nation’s financial collapse. Scapegoating workers won’t solve anything.”

In a full-page newspaper ad, Schaltberger noted that “Firefighters and paramedics are dedicated to the lives of our neighbors. Whether it’s a natural disaster, terrorist attack or another tragedy, we answer the call. We understand that many Americans are hurting because of the recession, but we will not apologize for putting our lives on the line, the dangerous work we do, or the pensions we’ve earned.”

Part of the reason for the strong attacks on public employee unions is that they have become the vanguard of the labor movement. They’ve been growing as unions in private employment have declined. Union membership overall dropped by about 600,000 last year, lowering the percentage of union members in private and public employment combined from just above12 percent to slightly below that figure.  The percentage of public employees belonging to unions also shrunk slightly, but still stood at about 36 percent.

So, more than one-third of the country’s public employees now belong to unions, but only about 7 percent of workers in private employment are unionized.  Which explains why the country’s anti-union forces are concentrating so heavily on public employees, and seeking to enlist broad public support for their anti-unionism by blaming public employees for our serious economic troubles.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Hyatt targeted as labor impasse drags on

Sasha Cuttler
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0

Hundreds of Hyatt hotel workers and supporters represented by the UniteHere Local 2 union continued their 18-month long struggle against the Hyatt Corporation yesterday (Thu/10) by protesting outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the Embarcadero.

The Hyatt Regency was one of six hotels where demonstrations took place in a National Day of Action against Hyatt management. Local 2 said many issues still need to be negotiated, such as decreasing the current health care costs of $200 a month for a family plan, raising pensions from $900 to $1200 a month, and taking steps to reduce injuries to Hyatt employees.

“We want to draw attention to the injury rate that Hyatt has been witness to,” Local 2 spokeswoman Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer said.

The protest, which started at 4:30 p.m., surrounded the front entrance of the Hyatt Regency on Drumm and Market Streets, with protestors sitting in front of its turnstile doors. About two dozen protestors were arrested, cited and released on charges of misdemeanor trespassing.

The Hyatt Corporation’s statement on yesterday’s actions tried to turn the blame on the union, stating they haven’t been willing to come to the bargaining table. “Once again, the leadership of UniteHere Local 2 is putting its own agenda ahead of the needs of its members,” the statement said.

Cynthia Reed, a telephone operator with the Hyatt for 22 years, who was a part of the protest, was angered that she has been without a fair contract since August 2009.

“I feel as though we are being oppressed,” she told the Guardian. “We, the workers, are living off $38,000 a year with $12,000 in taxes. We can’t live like this in San Francisco. We just want a living wage.”

Reed noted that some of her co-workers include parents of multiple children and cancer patients, while others are over retirement age. “If the union doesn’t stand up for us, who will?” Reed asked. “Why patronize these facilities when all the money is going to a few at the top?” she wondered before going back to a line of picketers chanting, “Union bustin’ is disgustin’!”

Peter Hillan, a spokesman that represents the Hyatt, was at the scene to give the corporation’s point of view. “It’s street theater,” he said of the event. “It’s taking revenue away from the business that could be going to the employees.”

Hillan said that over the past 18 months, the protests and the union’s call to boycott the hotels have taken about $10 million of convention business away from San Francisco’s Hyatts.

A meeting to discuss contract negotiations with the Hyatt Corporation and Local 2 is set for Feb. 24.

Twitter tax break could help a well-connected landlord

Sasha Cuttler
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34

Opposition to the proposal to give millions of dollars in city payroll tax breaks to Twitter and other companies that open for business in the mid-Market area has focused on the bad precedent of caving into demands for corporate welfare and the lead role that two people who call themselves progressives – Sup. Jane Kim and Board President David Chiu – are taking in pushing the deal.

But behind-the-scenes, there’s another aspect of the deal that is troubling to advocates for transparent government that acts in the broad public interest, rather than that of powerful individuals. And once again, the specter at the center of this insider deal-making is none other that former mayor Willie Brown, whose close allies seem to once again have the run of City Hall.

The mid-Market property that Twitter wants to move into is San Francisco Mart, a million-square-foot building at Market and 9th streets, which sources say has been having a hard time finding tenants to fulfill its ambitious plan to “transition and reinvent” the old furniture outlet as a modern home for high-tech businesses. Most recently, they were unable to seal the deal with Twitter – until the tax break proposal popped up.

The building is owned by millionaire developer Alwin Dworman, founder of the ADCO Group and someone who has had a 30-plus-year friendship with Brown, who sang Dworman’s praises in this 2007 article from the San Francisco Business Times discussing this property and others. The property is also operated by Linda Corso, longtime partner of Warren Hinckle, a local media figure with close ties to Brown (as well as Gavin Newsom, who last year named Hinckle as his alternative representative to the DCCC). Reached by phone yesterday, Corso said she wasn’t directly involved in the negotiations with Twitter and would have someone call us, but nobody did.

Brown’s name has been popping up quite a bit in recent months as he and his allies re-exert their deal-making influence on the city, starting four months ago with his stealth support for Kim’s campaign and continuing with his role in elevating his protege Ed Lee to the interim mayor post (the way the pair ran City Hall when Brown was mayor is also the subject of an investigative report in this week’s Guardian) and placing ally Richard Johns onto the Historic Preservation Commission over progressive objections that he was unqualified.

Reached on his cell phone, Brown refused to comment, telling us, “I don’t want to talk to the the Bay Guardian ever in my life. Goodbye.” There is no indication that Brown or other representatives for Dworman lobbied the supervisors over the deal, and both Kim and Chiu say they weren’t contacted. “I’ve never spoken to the man and I don’t know much about his business,” Chiu said of Dworman, although he said that he was told by people in the Mayor Office, which brokered the deal, that Twitter was looking at moving into Dworman’s building.

Kim has maintained that she has very little contact with Brown and doesn’t know why he supported her candidacy. And she said the benefits for Dworman and other big mid-Market landlords who will profit from her legislation wasn’t a factor in her decision to sponsor it. In a prepared statement to the Guardian, she wrote, “I am not aware of any lobbyists for the Mid-Market legislation and therefore certainly have not met with any.  I have communicated directly with Twitter, who are [sic] excited to be a part of revitalizing the Mid-Market corridor and about partnering with community-based organizations and schools who serve the neighboring communities of SOMA and the Tenderloin.  Our office has convened neighborhood stakeholders who will be directly impacted by this legislation and they are currently committed to being a part of this dialogue over the next month.”

Kim told us last week that she philosophically opposes business tax breaks, but that she wanted to help stimulate the mid-Market area and keep Twitter from following through on its threat to leave town. Despite calling himself a progressive, Chiu has supported using targeted tax breaks as a economic development tool, including the biotech tax credit. And yesterday, he told us, “I would love to bring more companies in the mid-Market area…If we don’t do this policy, we will see future years of zero economic activity in that area.”

But progressives say these tax breaks are nothing but corporate welfare that will exacerbate the city’s budget deficit. During a benefit event for Lyon Martin Health Services last night at the Buck Tavern, which is owned by Kim predecessor Chris Daly, signs plastered throughout the bar urged the public to oppose the Twitter tax break in order to preserve public health and other vital city services.

Hot sexy events: February 9-15

Andrew Lam
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1
Hot sexy events: February 9-15

So Rihanna made an S&M video. No really, it’s called “S&M.” And yes, it does feature her walking Perez Hilton – not the sexiest choice – on a leash, while wearing a latex dress and a killer day-at-the-races hat-thing, plus her singing while hanging from the ceiling, men in restraints and gags, and creative use of duct tape. Yep, yet another celebrity discovers BDSM. While the video itself is not thrilling and not all that arousing (for my money, Rihanna’s made hotter), the girl’s got a way with outfits – she has a penchant for performing in latex, and sports a pretty incredible hood and stockings latex ‘fit in the new video, which already has 9.3 million views on YouTube, fyi. Perhaps she could be convinced to share the wealth at one of SF’s two kinky costume swaps this Sun/13 — at Kinky Salon and the SF Citadel respectively. Even if RiRi’s not in attendance, the event should be a good opportunity to re-up on some gear to wear to the next wild-and-wacky costumed sex party. Or nearly any of this weeks’ sex events, for that matter…

 

 

Bawdy Storytelling: “Slut or Whore?”

Four years of Bawdy Storytelling already? And it doesn’t look a day over “once upon a time”! At any rate, four years of exhibitionist show-and-tell deserves a little contemplation, so this month’s theme makes perfect sense. Sexologist Carol Queen and fowl-about-town Chicken John will be sharing scenes from their crazy line-toeing lives – maybe we can all sit back and think on what it means to get paid for it, whatever our career may be.

Weds/9 8 p.m., $10

The Blue Macaw

2656 Mission, SF

www.bawdystorytelling.com


Lyon-Martin Beer Bust

You’ve heard by now, no doubt, about how trans and woman-friendly Lyon-Martin Health Services is being threatened by these toughie economic times. Things are looking good for the clinic though, if one is to judge by the magnum-sized avalanche of fundraising events that have come down the chute from organizations and businesses all over the city. You can find a list of them here, by the way. And here’s a fabulous option: the Eagle will be busting beers out all afternoon in honor of safe, respectful, and effective reproductive health care – go drain a bottle, donate some cash to the cause, and buy some raffle tickets while you’re at it – your community will thank you.

Sat/12 3-6 p.m., free

The Eagle Tavern

398 12th St., SF

(415) 626-0880

www.lyon-martin.org


Valentino’s Casablanca

Here’s looking at you kid – you and your valentine(s, not trying to be limiting here) are welcome to get fuzzy at Stefanos invocation of Bogart’s bar. Sip on noir-style cocktails and look sultry while you check out violinists and sky-suspended roped beauties. Plus, there’s that big old dungeon to frolic in. Trust, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship(s, again, not tryin’ to hold you back here).

Sat/12 8-10 p.m., $30 singles, $60 couples, $90 trios

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.brownpapertickets.com


Kinky Salon Costume Swap

It can get rough attending themed swingers’ parties week in and week out – there’s only so many times you can wear those pink cat ears before their frisky fun seems a little worn out. Luckily, Kinky Salon’s got your back – show up at this naked person party (when you’re changing outfits people, game faces please) with an armload of the fetish funwear you’ve grown luke-warm on, and pick up another armload of your kinky peers’ cast-offs. Remember to clean everything before you bring it down.

Sun/13 4-6 p.m., $10 with costumes to swap, $20 without

Mission Control 

www.missioncontrolsf.org


Swap it Out!

Just like the one above, only the Citadel’s swap is a true naked lady party – only women and the female-identifying are allowed at this trade. Bring your threads (street clothes welcome at this swap) – the ones that no one picks up will be shipped off to charity at the end of the three hours. 

Sun/13 2-5 p.m., free

SF Citadel

1277 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2746

www.sfcitadel.org


Pop-Up Dildo Shop and Icecream Social

Now this will be all kinds of fun: an event at Fifty 24’s pop-up store with a little something for everyone. To whit, raunchy comedy by Will Franken, free organic icecream from Three Twins, a class on how to choose the perfect sex toy with Carol Queen, giveaways from Good Vibes, even free PBR! My goodness, and hot ’60s pop act Female Trouble to soundtrack the whole thing? Can you wait til Sunday, even? 

Sun/13 3-5 p.m., free

Fifty 24 SF Gallery

252 Fillmore, SF

Facebook: Good Vibrations’ Pop-Up Dildo Shop and Ice Cream Social


Club Neon Underwear Party

Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, folks. This is an underwear party – which does not mean that you’re guaranteed nookie (when are you, really), but the talent will be much easier to scope than in your typical nightclub scene. That stud over there seem awfully full in the boxer brief? Sweaty sweetie by the bathrooms shaking that demi-bra with the skills to pay the bills? Play your cards right and you may have found your valentine. 

Mon/14 9 p.m.-2 a.m., $5, free before 11 p.m. with no pants

The Knockout 

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

Facebook: Club Neon Underwear Party

 

Come drink and put Lyon Martin over the top

Sasha Cuttler
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0
Come drink and put Lyon Martin over the top

Labor and transgender activist Gabriel Haaland reports that supporters of Lyon Martin Health Services have almost reached their $250,000 to save the clinic. Almost. Come help put them over the top on Wed/9 when I and other “celebrity bartenders” will be pouring stiff ones in a benefit event at the Buck Tavern (aka Daly’s Dive), 1655 Market, starting at 6 pm. Donation of $5-$20 requested. See you there.

Live Shots: Stag Dining “Speakeasy” Clandestine Dinner, 01/29/2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

These days, it’s hip to be in the know of well-kept secrets. OK, maybe that’s confusing, but what I’m trying to say is there’s an ever-growing list of underground events going on in San Francisco, but if you don’t know about them, well, than you better start getting on it. Now. I’ll give you a hint. Secret restaurants are popping up everywhere and it’s the kind of eating experience you don’t want to miss out on.

Case in point: this past weekend, Stag Dining Group hosted a clandestine dinner at a mysterious locale, which included a myriad interesting dishes, from Japanese lobster custard to skewered duck hearts in mole sauce.

The chefs, Ted Fleury and Jordan Grosser, were bustling in the kitchen to get six courses out to almost eighty people at the same time, while Cocktail Lab was busy concocting a new libation for every course, filled with everything from chili peppers to flaming cinnamon sticks. And boy, my drinking habits are not up to snuff these days … I could not keep up!

The food was tasty and carefully crafted, and I especially loved dessert, a thick creamy chocolate mousse, topped with a see-through thin olive-oily piece of cinnamon toast. My only crit note was the lack of carbs in the meal. I definitely felt the need for one dish that might be considered “hearty.”

Stag Dining is comprised of a bunch of affable dude-bros who have been friends for years and decided to collaborate to create a supper club. Beyond the delectable delights, I also loved that they did a spiel about their values, right down to their handmade recycled menus and to the fact that eating sustainably is really becoming a must. Sometimes people overlook the “spiel” — but I’m one of those people who is constantly giving them and feel that it’s so important to educate whenever possible. (My broken record spiels include: “Check your bathroom products … they might contain parabens!” “Non-organic strawberries taste like crap … and can kill you!” “Did you know that health care in other countries is way better than in America? Write a letter!” It’s something people still do!)

So folks, now you’re a little in the know for something well worth being in the know about, start exploring some of these hidden edible treasures, which are sure to tantalize and tickle your taste buds.

Saving Lyon-Martin

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Saving Lyon-Martin

rebeccab@sfbg.com

When word got out that the Lyon-Martin Health Services clinic faced imminent closure, Luette Chavez’s cell phone started ringing off the hook. Her friends were going into panic mode.

“It’s shocking to think that something that’s so important to so many people could just be lost so easily,” Chavez told us. The clinic serves nearly 2,500 patients, regardless of their ability to pay for health care. It offers specialized services for queer women and transgender people, providing everything from primary care to mental health services to hormone treatment. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, medical school student, and part-time sex worker, Chavez volunteers at the clinic and relies on it for health care. Her dream is to someday start a free clinic in New Orleans that is cast in the mold of Lyon-Martin. But for now, all of her energy is consumed with the widespread effort to raise enough money to keep the clinic afloat. To survive, Lyon-Martin must pay off a $250,000 debt immediately.

 

CASH FLOW PROBLEM

As one volunteer among many, Chavez has adopted the mindset that failure is not an option. “I have absolutely every confidence that we will be able to save it ourselves because we’re running ourselves into the ground doing it,” she said.

Lyon-Martin’s board of directors initially voted to shut down the clinic at the close of business Jan. 27, citing insurmountable financial problems. That decision was rescinded, however, following an emergency meeting held at the LGBT Center shortly after news of its pending closure went viral. By Jan. 28, an emergency fund drive had netted close to $100,000 in pledges and cash donations. A fundraiser held Jan. 30 at El Rio drew nearly 700 supporters and roped in another $28,000.

Despite the outpouring of support, the long-term future of the 30-year-old clinic remains uncertain. Lyon-Martin can restructure and avoid shutdown if it manages to clear the $250,000 urgently owed, but it must find $500,000 to continue operating in the same capacity as it has. It has stopped accepting new patients, but will likely be able to serve current patients until at least the end of February.

“Without Lyon-Martin, a community that is historically marginalized won’t have anywhere to turn,” stated an open letter to supporters from Board Chair Lauren Winter, who was unavailable for comment.

A combination of state funding cuts, increased demand, and poor financial management created a perfect storm for Lyon-Martin. A key source of the trouble was that the clinic had not been keeping up with its billing, and after a certain amount of time, it could no longer claim reimbursements from Medi-Cal. Yet external factors such as state and local budget cuts contributed to the problem, too, and Lyon-Martin is not alone in that respect.

All across San Francisco, community clinics that serve low-income and uninsured people are struggling to do more with less. Jim Illig, president of the San Francisco Health Commission, told us that he knows of several other clinics in dire financial straits.

“There are a lot of clinics on the edge because they have dedicated their mission to serving the uninsured,” he said. “Any nonprofit clinic that you see — they’re struggling.” The Haight Ashbury Free Clinics, another nonprofit healthcare organization serving the uninsured, recently announced a merger with Walden House, a substance-abuse treatment center. The merger allowed the venerable health-care nonprofit to continue offering services after its budget was slashed by 50 percent due to reduced support from the city’s General Fund. Even as the cuts took effect, demand for the free clinic’s services rose 10 percent from 2009 to 2010.

“Every time I look into the waiting room, it’s full,” said Jeff Schindler, chief development officer.

If Lyon-Martin closes, its patients will have to be transferred to other clinics, but there’s high demand everywhere. Such an outcome might evoke a sense of dèjá vu for some. Last fall, when an LGBT-focused clinic called New Leaf shut down due to crippling financial problems, many of its clients were transferred to Lyon-Martin.

 

COMMUNITY SURPRISED, UPSET

The front office manager at Lyon-Martin, who wished to be identified only as Braz, said she’d had no warning that closure was imminent. “Just closing down like that seemed impossible. We couldn’t ethically do that,” she said. “Our patients are freaking out right now.”

Once people became aware that the clinic was on the brink of closure, some aired the criticism that the board should have been more forthright about financial troubles. The Bay Area Reporter, a San Francisco publication covering LGBT issues, published an editorial calling for the resignation of the six-member board, and several sources told the Guardian they expected the board members to step down.

Meanwhile, health officials and elected representatives have stepped into the mix, but no promises of governmental financial assistance had been secured by the time the Guardian went to press.

Department of Public Health Director Barbara Garcia was unavailable for comment, but released a prepared statement: “The Department of Public Health has been in close discussions with Lyon-Martin and the pressing need to make immediate changes to the way they conduct their financial affairs. We value the important health care services they deliver and will continue to work with them to find the best long-term outcome for the clinic and the patients.”

Sup. Scott Wiener told the Guardian that he’d been in discussions about Lyon-Martin with Garcia and Sup. David Campos. Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Jane Kim also attended the emergency meeting, and California Sen. Mark Leno was said to be attempting to secure some state funding for the clinic. As the push to save the clinic continues, a parallel effort is moving forward to craft a contingency plan for how Lyon-Martin’s nearly 2,500 patients can access care in the event that it doesn’t survive.

 

COMPETENT CARE

Lyon-Martin patients and others familiar with its services stressed that the women’s clinic is a critical resource for lesbians and the transgender population, because medical staff are trained in that specialized area of care.

“The service there is incredible,” noted Cheryl Simas, who has been a patient there for three years. “They explain everything to you, you’re listened to, and you’re treated with care and respect.” Simas said it was a dramatic difference from an experience she’d had in the mid-1990s, when her healthcare provider was barely comfortable pronouncing the word “lesbian.”

Lyon-Martin medical staffers receive training on transgender patient care, and it even offers training in that realm for medical professionals from cities throughout the United States. “They are internationally renowned as a model for what it means to offer transgender care,” noted labor organizer Gabriel Haaland, who said he was once denied health care due to his transgender identity. “The healthcare system is a fairly traumatic experience for most transgender people,” he added.

If Lyon-Martin closed, “it’d be pretty tragic,” noted Carlina Hansen, executive director of the Women’s Community Clinic, which works closely with Lyon-Martin. When it comes to health care, “We live in an unusual city, in that there is a lot of need among low-income people, due in part to a high cost of living. “Every clinic in San Francisco provides an integral part of that network,” and each clinic fills a specific need, Hansen noted. “The diversity of the clinics matches the diversity of our community.”

The price of mental health cuts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The price of mental health cuts

By Hetty Beth Eisenberg

OPINION The massacre in Tucson is a tragic wake-up call for the public mental health system of our own county. Among the many pressing angles to the story, it is vital to consider the severe cuts to mental health services in Pima County last year.

Although only a small fraction of the mentally ill commit acts of violence, we must contemplate the larger issue of what happens when a community fails to prioritize mental health. Acute mental health services are such an essential tool for caring for the severely mentally ill that one is staggered by the low priority they’ve been given by our forward-thinking community in San Francisco.

Throughout the nation, the mentally ill are among our most disenfranchised constituents. In San Francisco, a considerable fraction of our severely mentally ill populations are indigent, homeless, and without health insurance. Acute care services for the mentally ill therefore lose money. In these hard financial times, city officials, like those in Pima County, are making painful decisions. Over the past three years, mental health services in San Francisco have been cut to austerity levels.

To see the short-sightedness of these cuts, one must consider not only the most drastic scenarios. For every Jared Loughner, there are thousands of individuals whose profound burdens could be alleviated with the help of these services. Inpatient psychiatry at San Francisco General Hospital provides the highest level of mental health care in our county. Unlike private hospitals, SFGH takes all patients, regardless of their insurance, and regardless of the risk of violence. The inpatient service at SFGH provides the only safety net for those patients who are the most extreme danger to themselves and others.

From 2008 to 2010, the number of acute psychiatry beds at SFGH was cut from 84 to 42. The consequences of the cuts were palpable. They led to the disintegration of the Cultural Focus Program, a nationally-recognized model of ethical inpatient psychiatric care. The most ill patients were crowded onto two remaining acute units. The staff was then put in the position of having to move patients to understaffed units, so-called subacute, before they were clinically ready.

In January, one of two remaining acute psychiatry units at SFGH was cut. This leaves 21 acute beds available to the entire city. It’s now impossible to separate the most violent patients. The unit has become hyperacute, with an increasingly agitated population amplifying itself. Staff feel unsafe and cannot provide adequate care for their patients. As they grapple with understaffing, many cite what happened at Napa State Hospital recently when a psychiatric worker was murdered — an incident attributed to understaffing.

Meanwhile, there is considerable pressure to discharge these patients quickly. A vast number end up on the streets, in jails, overwhelming outpatient programs, or bouncing back to the emergency room — racking up even higher costs.

Due to budgetary pressures, the Department of Public Health insists that our unstable patients should be funneled into outpatient services. While outpatient programs provide vital means for supporting the chronically mentally ill when they are stable, they are also being cut — and are insufficient to protect acute patients.

These budget cuts make it plain that we are dealing with a clumsy model of mental health — one that lacks essential mechanisms. Such a model reflects a poor understanding of mental illness.

Arizona provides a clarion call to California: we must hear the implicit warning. These cuts to acute mental health services in San Francisco, a city with a large mentally ill population, must be reversed. Each day that they persist heightens the very real tragedy for our patients, our healthcare workers, and our entire community. *

Hetty Beth Eisenberg, MD, MPH, is a resident physician in psychiatry at San Francisco General Hospital.

Brown goes nonpartisan while Obama stays the course

Sasha Cuttler
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6

Gov. Jerry Brown gave a brilliant State of the State speech this evening, validating those who hoped that he would have the wisdom, courage, and candor to properly frame this difficult political moment. And it was great because he abandoned tired calls for bipartisanship and opted to go straight to the people, even citing Egypt and Tunisia as cautionary examples of the peril and potential of real democracy.
Contrast that with President Barack Obama, whose White House today indicated it would plow forward with a health care reform package – crafted entirely by politicians and corporate lobbyists – that nobody really likes even after another federal judge ruled its central tenet unconstitutional and House Republicans have threatened jihad over.

Liberals never did buy into this reform after Obama abandoned single payer and even the public option compromise, and its seems conservatives and teabaggers have been whipped up into a froth over its real and imagined provisions. So Obama has some pretty thin backing to fight through the fairly reasonable ruling that the federal government can’t make it a crime not to want to be health insurance company customers.

Both Brown and Obama correctly gauge that “something is profoundly wrong,” as Brown put it. “They see that their leaders are divided when they should be decisive and acting with clear purpose.”

Obama’s solution is bipartisanship, even though Republicans seem incapable of dealing with him or the public in good faith these days. So he makes attempts at bland compromises that please nobody – from escalating war in Afghanistan with a fake exit strategy to extending jobless benefits and billionaire tax cuts – feeding the public perception that both major parties are hopelessly corrupt and ineffective.
Brown is taking a different tact: nonpartisanship. He’s crafted a bold effort at compromise that neither political party likes, but one that will probably prove reasonable to most people if sold properly (unless we are indeed incapable of self-governance at this point, a possibility the I allow and which would require solutions like breaking California up into multiple states or accepting anarchy). And hopefully creative progressive legislators will even give multiple options to the people, including increasing taxes on the richest individuals and corporations to lessen the cuts even more, as long as we’re placing our faith in the people. Hell, I don’t even mind putting a conservative package of deep cuts to government on the ballot as well, just so we can show them how unpopular the right-wing stance really is in California.
Brown doesn’t preclude the future possibilities of bipartisanship, but he also correctly says that the political gridlock is just too strong in Sacramento right now. After punting the budget to the people, maybe they can start doing old-fashioned governance again.

“But let’s not forget that Job Number 1 – make no mistake about it – is fixing our state budget and getting our spending in line with our revenue. Once we do that, the rest will be easy—at least easier because we will have learned to work together and earned back the respect and trust of the people we serve,” he closed. “I look forward to working with all of you.”

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