Health

Should Pelosi oppose the Health Care bill?

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By Tim Redmond

There are some good reasons, I suppose, to support the Obama insurance bill. It’s a start, anyway — and you could argue that once it gets up and running, the flaws will become obvious and we can fix them later (by adding a public option, say).

You could also argue that this is the only chance we’re getting, and once this behemoth is in place, it’ll be hard to open the debate up again for years.

And the list of problems with the bill is growing.

Which is why Howard Dean is leading the charge to defeat it (and pissing off the White House in the process.)

In my Editors Notes column this week, I noted that a new poll shows Democrats less likely to come to the polls and vote for their party’s candidates next fall if there’s no public option in the health care bill. That leaves an interesting question: Once the bill gets out of the Senate, the House will have to reconcile the differences (since the House bill was not at all like the Senate bill is currently). If Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t support the bill — that is, if she takes Dean’s line — the it could well die. So far, she’s not saying much:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to show her hand on the matter Wednesday, telling reporters that she won’t make a call on the Senate bill until she sees it. She suggested she’s open to compromise.

“We do know that, between the two bills, we have the makings of a … big difference for the American people,” she said. “And our members are very enthusiastic about our House bill, and we want to defend our position. At some point, though, the legislative process will say that they have to yield on things and we have to yield on things.”

I’m starting to go with the Howard Dean line — we’ve given up absolutely everything. There’s no public option. There’s no Medicare buy-in. There’s not really a ban on pre-existing conditions.

So what, exactly, are we getting here?

Podesta: The Progressive case on health bill

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John Podesta from the Center for American Action Fund recommends passage of the Senate health bill despite its many flaws

The Center for American Progress Action Fund is the sister advocacy organization of the Center for American Progress. The Action Fund transforms progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world. The Action Fund is also the home of the Progress Report.

By John Podesta

Since Joe Lieberman demanded stripping the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions from the merged Senate bill, some strong progressives like Howard Dean have argued that without a public option or a Medicare buy-in provision, the bill is a giveaway to private insurers and should be killed. Other progressive leaders like Senators Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin and Sherrod Brown believe that the bill represents the best chance for passing health care reform in the foreseeable future. “I’m going to vote for it,” Brown told reporters. “I can’t imagine I wouldn’t. I mean there’s too much at stake.”

Ants attack!

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By Tim Redmond

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While the health-care bill is melting down and the global warming conference is frozen, we have some unavoidable news of a different sort: The ants are attacking.

I have ants in my house. Half the people I know are under ant attack. Dave Crow, the tenant lawyer (and one-time Guardian staffer) who writes for SF Appeal, says ants aren’t covered by city health codes and landlords don’t really have to do anything about them. Which is something I didn’t know.

The commenters on Crow’s piece say, among other things, that all you have to do is seal up all the cracks in your house with caulk and the nasty little beasts won’t get it. That’s not much help to those of us who live in older houses that have so many cracks, crevices, holes and tiny entryways that there’s no way to find them all, much less seal them all up.

Of course, you could also carefully remove every tiny scrap of food from counters, floors and sinks and seal everything in airtight bags and bins, but frankly, some of us just aren’t that clean.

We used to use vaseline, which traps the ants but makes an awful mess. Now we pour cinnamon in their path, which confuses them and sometimes sends them away. I’ve also had luck with a mixture of molasses and yeast, dropped onto small pieces of paper; the ants love the sweet stuff, and take it home to the rest of the nest — and since ants can’t fart, the yeast makes them explode. At least it’s an organic form of chemical warfare.

Other suggestions?

The human right to water

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The human right to water

rebeccab@sfbg.com

At a recent San Francisco conference in a plush downtown hotel packed with big-business representatives, venture capitalists, and public relations practitioners, some insiders from high-profile multinational beverage corporations spoke about the moments they realized how crucial water is as a resource.

For Harry Ott, who formerly worked for the Coca-Cola Company, the epiphany struck in 1998 when he arrived at a Coke bottling plant in Darussalam, Tanzania for a routine inspection.

"When we walked into the plant … I noticed that there was no one there," Ott explained in a careful, Southern-accented voice. "And I said to the plant manager there, ‘Is it a holiday? Did I mess up in scheduling this?’ And he said, ‘No, we had a real severe outbreak of amoebic dysentery and all the employees have been affected by it.’ At that moment it really brought it home to me … every human should have access to clean water and sanitation to be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle."

But then Ott seemed to disavow this last statement, which implied support for what water rights activists have been pushing for: an inalienable right to clean drinking water, unmediated by corporations. As he told the crowd, "I don’t necessarily agree with the term ‘human right to water,’ because then the lawyers jump in here … and become rich off of this back-and-forth, knocking-heads process."

For corporations and advocacy groups alike, defining a human right to water is more than just a legal battle or academic exercise. As bottled-water companies weather mounting criticism for depleting aquifers to sustain profits and nongovernmental organizations point to the pitfalls of water privatization, control of the ultimate life-sustaining resource is becoming an increasingly important issue.

Widespread industrial contamination means less potable water to go around — particularly in developing countries, but in parts of California too — and intensifying drought due to climatic change means water scarcity is becoming a bigger problem. Water issues now represent a big financial risk for multinational companies and the top priority for communities that depend upon groundwater for their survival, so battle lines have been drawn for a struggle that is a matter of survival.

The second annual Corporate Water Footprinting conference, part of a corporate conference series called Action for Sustainable America, cost approximately $2,000 to attend. Unlike last year, when conference organizers denied press passes to both the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle, they opted to allow reporters in this time — perhaps as a show of goodwill after being publicly critiqued for a lack of transparency (see "Tap dreams," 12/10/08). The event was held at Le Meridien, a swank Financial District hotel, and was attended by businesspeople from a variety of high-profile companies.

Representatives from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestle portrayed their respective corporations as model stewards of the environment, the opposite of the bad raps they’ve been branded with by social justice advocates, who complain that these corporate entities are responsible for exacerbating water shortages in drought-prone areas. Rather than profit-driven behemoths sapping communities of a critical resource, the spokespeople described their companies as environmentally-minded leaders acutely aware of the widespread lack of access to clean water and actively trying to hatch solutions to alleviate it.

Dan Bena, director of sustainability, health, safety and environment for PepsiCo International, kicked off with a presentation about how an estimated 1.5 billion impoverished people living in developing countries worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. Showing images of African children swimming naked in a river, he stressed the frequently repeated statistic that once every 15 seconds, another child in the developing world perishes from waterborne illness.

To hear Bena tell it, PepsiCo is emerging as a corporate trailblazer in protecting people from such a fate. In addition to its conservation efforts, it has donated to an organization that provides microloans to families for small-scale water infrastructure projects, he said. And at the urging of one of its shareholders, it recently agreed to sign a commitment supporting "the human right to water."

But when asked whether PepsiCo, the parent company of Aquafina, has a strategy for reducing the widespread use of bottled water — a flashpoint for environmentalists because it taxes aquifers, requires extensive shipping, and uses tons of plastic to produce — Bena didn’t have a straight answer. "We are evaluating it, but I can’t tell you," he said. "The critics are certainly very strong, but we think that people, by and large, want the convenience that bottled water provides."

In San Francisco, some of the beverage companies’ harshest critics organized a counter-conference to the 2008 Corporate Water Footprinting conference. This year, one of the counter-conference participants was seated on the same panel with Bena and the former Coca-Cola representative.

Mark Schlosberg, California director of Food & Water Watch, made it clear that he views the human right to water through a very different lens than the other panelists. "The ‘human right to water’ is not a concept for corporations to implement," Schlosberg said, relaying what was perhaps an unpopular message to a tough crowd. "Just as free speech is not a concept for corporations to implement. The human right to water is a concept which says that nobody should be denied access to clean water for basic human needs. It’s not a question of whether or not a corporation wants to adhere to that. It’s the responsibility of governments to create laws, and of corporations to follow laws. I don’t think that the basic human right to water … is alienable, just like certain constitutional rights are also inalienable and can’t be contracted away."

Speaking by phone several days later from New Delhi, India, Amit Srivastava, executive director of the India Resource Center, explained his perspective on the human right to water: "For us, the right to water means the community has control over its water resources. It is our fundamental human right to live free of pollution of water." As for PepsiCo’s efforts, "It sounds all good, but what is the reality on the ground?"

Srivastava, the driver behind the counter-conference to last year’s Corporate Water Footprinting Conference, spends half the year in India working in rural agrarian villages, where he says the impacts of Coca-Cola’s operations are hugely detrimental to people’s interests. PepsiCo has caused its share problems in India too, Srivastava said.

"Seventy percent of Indians make a living with agriculture," he explained. "They rely on groundwater — the same groundwater Coca-Cola uses to meet its production needs." Tens of thousands of farmers have been affected by a dearth of water in communities where Coca-Cola plants are sited, he says, and many have also been adversely affected by water contamination linked to the manufacturing facilities. As water becomes scarce, crops dry out and women must walk farther away to haul fresh water back home.

On Nov. 30, Srivastava said the India Resource Center helped bring 1,000 people out to a rally against Coca-Cola. "We’ve launched an international campaign to hold Coca-Cola accountable," he said, explaining that the goal is to "apply market pressure for the abuses they continue to commit in India."

Of particular concern is the village of Kala Dera, located in an area that was identified as a water-stressed region more than a decade ago, Srivastava said. Nonetheless, the construction of a new Coke bottling plant forged ahead there in 2000. A severe drought plagued the region this year, and Kala Dera experienced the sharpest drop in groundwater levels ever recorded, according to Srivastava. "When the rains didn’t come, the crops failed, and there was a sharp increase in the use of groundwater," he said. "For all its talk, Coca-Cola continued to mine for water, even as the community did not have ready access."

According to Denise Knight, a Coca-Cola Company representative who spoke at the Corporate Water Footprinting Conference, the multinational giant uses a total of 313 billion liters of water annually to produce 129 billion liters of soft drinks, juice, water, and other beverages.

Knight said Coca-Cola is committed to "replenish" the places it operates by returning the equivalent of the water it uses to communities and water bodies. Trumpeting a splashy green catchphrase, "Water Neutrality," Knight acknowledged that the term itself might be somewhat misleading because, "as our business grows, no matter how efficient we are, we’ll still use more water." This program essentially consists of making it a goal to live up to its self-guided wastewater treatment standards (wastewater is treated in 80 percent of its 1,000 facilities, Knight noted), stepping up conservation efforts and funding small-scale projects like rainwater harvesting.

Knight couched it in terms of fiduciary responsibility: in the past decade, Coca-Cola’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings have listed water shortages and poor water quality as financial risks to company profits. A third area of risk for the company is public perception, an uphill battle in India.

Srivastava summed up his opinion of Coca-Cola’s "Water Neutrality" pitch as "hogwash." In reality, the company is extracting clean, drinkable water from poor communities that need it, leaving behind processed wastewater that people can’t drink and calling it "neutral."
"It really is lies dreamed up by their PR department," he said. "They’re trying to suggest that Coca-Cola has no impact whatsoever on water resources. This is outrageous."
Srivastava said the conference is essentially a scam. "We see the Corporate Water Footprinting conference as nothing more than a greenwashing effort by companies that are the biggest abusers of water. We see it as just you guys in suits and ties. The communities that are suffering as a result, their voices are never there."

Cleaner air for Oakland — but no one wants to pay for it

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Cleaner air for Oakland — but no one wants to pay for it

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY On Jan. 1, the Port of Oakland and surrounding areas will get cleaner air — and as many as 1,000 truck drivers may lose their jobs.

That’s when the port’s Clean Truck Management Plan (CTMP) takes effect, setting strict requirements for trucks operating in the port. The new rules are an effort to address the public health crisis in communities near the port, where diesel exhaust fumes have been contributing to rampant asthma and increased cancer rates.

While no one questions the need for cleaner air, there’s still a raging battle over who should pay to overhaul old, dirty trucks — and how to make it possible for small independent truckers not to lose their livelihoods.

The new regulations, set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), ban all trucks older than 1994 from entering the port. Trucks built between 1994 and 2003 are allowed if they’re retrofitted with a special filter, which by most estimates costs between $20,000 and $25,000.

Eventually CARB’s regulations will reduce diesel particulate matter emissions by 90 percent in areas most affected by the noxious pollution.

The problem — at least for some of the drivers — is that two-thirds of the trucks running cargo in and out of the Oakland port are run by independent owner-operators, who say they don’t make enough money on the cargo runs to pay for cleaner trucks or upgrades.

The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports of Oakland (CCSP) is campaigning with Teamsters Union members and some truckers and Congress members to take the burden off independent owner-operators. But some say the industry model itself is the problem — that all the drivers should be employees of larger trucking firms that can pay for the latest equipment.

"The lack of resources among [independent owner-operators] and the inefficiencies in the current system strongly favor a more employee-oriented drayage sector," states an economic impact report on the issue commissioned by the port and prepared by Beacon Economics.

Currently the drivers wait, engines idling, an average of 3.6 hours at or in the terminal. That’s in part because they don’t get hourly pay — which gives the shippers and trucking contractors little incentive to hurry things.

As independent trucker Abdul Khan puts it: "Everybody certainly wants to have clean air. I might not be happy with this law, but I’m the one in this business being affected by this pollution." Still, with a 2003 engine in his truck, he expects to be out of a job come Jan. 1.

Khan has been a driver at the Port of Oakland for five years. He and his wife and child had to leave their home of 15 years to move in with his brother after fuel prices rose by 300 percent last year.

Khan has been without health insurance for his entire trucking career. The Beacon report states that "most [independent owner-operators] do not have health insurance from any source." Yet they are among those who suffer most from breathing the polluted air all day at work.

In some ways, the problem is the result of the 1990s-era deregulation of the trucking industry. In November, 24 members of California’s Congressional delegation, including East Bay Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee, Pete Stark, and George Miller, signed an open letter to the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee encouraging members of the House to "consider making changes to [federal law] so that California ports can successfully implement and enforce needed truck management programs."

The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act was supposed to standardize the regulation of cargo carriers and encourage competition. But mistreatment of drivers and detrimental working conditions are, says CCSP director Doug Bloch, some of the consequences of deregulation, which essentially bars local or state governments from legisutf8g industry working conditions.

The Port of Oakland, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District set up a grant fund to help drivers retrofit their equipment to meet the new standards, and some did. But others who sold their older trucks and bought upgradeable models lost out when the money ran dry.

Robert Bernardo, spokesperson for the port, told us the grants were unusual: "Typically, whenever a regulation comes into effect, by CARB or DMV, it’s incumbent upon business owners to purchase any upgrades," he explained.

That’s not a simple story, though, since the finances of port shipping are immensely complex. In theory, the bigger players in the industry — the large trucking companies and the corporations doing most of the shipping — have the access to capital for creating an ecologically-sound fleet and more power to negotiate shipping prices.

When items are shipped from overseas, shipping lines set the prices. Since the commerce is international, there’s no regulation of anything, including prices. The shipping lines set the prices for the trucking companies, which in turn tell the independent truckers what they’ll pay per load. The independently-contracted drivers have no leverage at all.

Matt Schrap, an intermodel transport expert at the California Truckers Association, notes that international shipping rates "are negotiated somewhere in Shanghai and set by steamship lines. Then you go into contract for two to three years at locked-in rate." Since the steamship lines aren’t subject to antitrust laws, he warns of their ability to collude in price-setting.

So the debate has become as much about labor issues as the environment. Some activists argue that the entire economic model of independent drivers contracting with trucking firms is unworkable, and would prefer to see all the drivers become employees. Not all drivers want that; some are happy with being independent. And the trucking contractors love the current system, since they pay no benefits.

Valerie Lapin, spokesperson for the Coalition of Clean and Safe Ports in Oakland, says that that port drivers are misclassified as independent. She explains that typically they can only work for one company, which tells them where and when to go. With the current classification, trucking companies "skirt all responsibility for paying taxes and benefits. Drivers have to pay for everything — trucks, fuel, maintenance, registration, and parking. And [the trucking companies] pay them really low wages."

The fate of the new regulations may depend on what happens to a legal battle at the Port of Los Angeles. L.A. has sought to mandate that trucking companies hire drivers as employees, and the port would allow only newer, cleaner trucks to enter.

But the American Trucking Association sued the port under FAAAA, saying the law bars the city from requiring employee-drivers. The courts put the program on hold until further hearings, scheduled for May 2010.

Paying with our Health, a 2006 report by the Pacific Institute assessing the practicality of "ditching dirty diesel" to improve health in the communities suffering from freight transport pollution, concluded that "the industry is quite capable of standing on its own and paying for cleaner technologies, instead of standing on the backs of California’s poor and minority communities."

It’s not clear what the truckers who own banned trucks will do come Jan. 1. Some say they will look for work elsewhere.

And there’s still the issue of whether the port will have enough clean trucks to haul all the cargo. Bernardo insists that won’t be a problem. Others, including Wayne Steinberg, terminal manager at Horizon Lines, an all-employee based trucking company with a fleet in full compliance, says the company is "extremely concerned about not having enough drivers Jan. 1."

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

Tredmond@sfbg.com

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is scared. She hasn’t told me about it (we’re not that kind of friends), and she hasn’t said much in public, but I can sense it in her political decisions. She’s facing her toughest test yet as Speaker — managing the ambitious agenda of a new president whose popularity is declining while at the same time trying to avoid the type of loss in House seats that almost always befalls the president’s party at the first midterm elections.

In the past four years, with the Bush administration in shambles and Obama ascendant, the Democrats in Congress were soaring — Pelosi’s party picked up seats in 2006 and 2008, even in places where Democrats have never had much success. The Republican Party was on the ropes a year ago, staggering around like a punch-drunk boxer who can only swing wildly and blabber incoherently while the folks in the audience alternately laugh and shake their heads with pity.

But Pelosi’s discovering that it’s not so easy being in charge. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, the continued recession, the health care debate … it’s all wearing on the voters, and the Democrats no longer seem to have all the answers. So Pelosi is looking at a potential train wreck next fall, a drop in her majority that will have people questioning her leadership ability as Speaker.

I hope she’s taken the time to read a recent poll commissioned by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which shows that as many as a third of the Democratic voters in the country are less likely to go to the polls and support their party’s candidates in 2010 if Pelosi, Obama, and Co. can’t deliver a public option for health insurance.

"Obviously, passions over the public option are on full boil right now," blogger Greg Sargent wrote in his report on the poll in the Plum Line. "Passage of a health care bill of some kind, not to say the passage of time, could reduce the impact that dropping the public option could have on Dem turnout in the 2010 elections, particularly since they’re nearly a year away.

"But these numbers are a reminder of just how dispirited the Dem base is by the party’s inability to leverage their comfortable majority in support of an agenda built on core liberal priorities."

See, the danger for Pelosi and the Democrats isn’t that a few swing seats in traditionally Republican districts will shift away from the D column. It’s that millions of Democrats, particularly young, motivated, idealistic Democrats who worked their asses off to get Obama elected, and partied in the streets when he won, will give up next year and stay home.

That will have an impact on key Senate races, key House races, and races for governor in dozens of states (including California). The party’s activist base didn’t just help elect the president last fall; those organizers and campaigners gave Pelosi her powerful majority and bolstered the Democrats’ control of the Senate. And their efforts trickled down to the state and local level.

But we’re unhappy now. Afghanistan has us wondering what Obama’s idea of change really is — and a health care bill that caters to the private insurance industry is going to make it hard to get any of us motivated next year. We all know the difference between the Democrats and Republicans, and we’re not naive idiots who are going to vote the wrong way out of spite. But we might not fight so hard next time around — and for Pelosi, that would be a serious problem.

Losing hope even faster

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By Steven T. Jones
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For more than a year, I’ve been defending President Obama against his critics on the left. They’d complain that he’s enabling hyper-capitalism and the military-industrial complex, and I’ve always urged them to give him time. The problems are huge and the political climate is stormy, so we needed to keep our immediate expectations reasonable and be patient.

But I’m beginning to lose hope.

The escalation of war in the Afghanistan was his third strike. First, he bailed out Wall Street, preserving an inequitable and unsustainable economic system. Then he abandoned his past support for a single-payer health care system, propping up the costly and corrupt insurance-based system. And then he decided to perpetuate the dangerous delusion that our military can make the world safe and secure and turn Afghanistan into a functional, modern state.

And now, as icing on the cake, it looks like Obama is backpedaling on his Afghanistan exit strategy and working with Senate Democrats to give up on the public health care option, leaving a “reform” bill whose most notable characteristic is that we’ll all be required to buy overly expensive health insurance from a profit-driven corporation.

Hope – it was nice while it lasted.

Fun and games, City Hall style

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Text, photos and video by Sarah Phelan

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City Hall looked cold and pretty Tuesday, what with the snow outside.

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And the wedding couples posing for photographers at the top of the stairs.
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Against the backdrop of a glittering Tree of Hope.
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But inside the meeting, things were getting hot and ugly… in that glitteringly controlled way typical of city politics.
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The highlight came Sup. Chris Daly produced a handmade bar graph in an effort to help folks better understand the economic backdrop against which the budget debate plays out.
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Promising to bring more charts to future meetings, Daly displayed a chart that showed how the San Francisco Police Department has enjoyed a significantly larger growth in General Fund support than any other department, including the Health Department. And you can watch some of that fun by clicking on the following video clip:

During Daly’s show and tell, Sup. Sean Elsbernd started mumbling about stunts, and according to the Chron, he subsequently challenged Daly to tackle pension costs, especially related to the Service Employees International Union, promising in return to tackle the police budget. Daly reportedly said he’d take a look at pension reform—so expect even more bar charts in the New Year.

Pedaling forward

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Pedaling forward

steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY San Francisco’s top elected and appointed officials made the city a little greener — literally — Dec. 3. And they say the recent removal of restrictions on bicycle-related improvements will make San Francisco a lot greener over the long term.

A festive mood was in the air when officials and activists gathered at the intersection of Oak and Scott streets to paint the city’s first green bike box (marking a safe spot for cyclists to wait in front of cars at intersections) and celebrate the first bike lanes to be created in more than three years.

In the week since Superior Court Judge Peter Busch partially lifted an injunction that had banned all projects mentioned in the city’s Bicycle Plan — the court ruled that they needed to be studied with a full-blown environmental impact report, which the city completed earlier this year, although it has been challenged by another lawsuit set for trial in June 2010 — city crews worked at a blistering pace on bike improvements.

They created three new bike lanes (of the 10 Busch is allowing to move forward before the trial, holding up another 50 for now) and installed barriers between the bike and car lanes on Market Street near 10th Street. "So now we have the first separated bike lane in San Francisco," San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum told the Guardian, happy over a safety improvement that encourages children and seniors to ride.

The crews also have been installing about five new bike racks and 20 shared traffic lane markings (known as "sharrows") each day. Mayor Gavin Newsom praised the rapid implementation and told the crowd, "You’re going to see more than you’ve seen in years be done in the next few months. The goal is to get from 6 percent of commutes in San Francisco up to 10 percent of all commutes by bicycle — and I think that is imminently achievable in the next few years."

Also on hand were Sups. Ross Mirkarimi, Bevan Dufty, and Sophie Maxwell, Department of Public Works head Ed Reiskin, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) board chair Tom Nolan, and SFMTA director Nat Ford, who declared the goal of making "San Francisco the preeminent city for bicycling in North America."

Mirkarimi, the only elected official to ride a bicycle to the event, told the crowd: "This is a delightful day…. We are all unified in the mission statement of making San Francisco bike-friendly."

Dufty, who chairs the Transportation Authority and pushed for the rapid implementation plan, said, "There’s a really great community here. First, my hat’s off to the Bicycle Coalition and all of their thousands of members who really keep the city honest and keep us moving forward."

Nolan also praised bike activists who pushing his agency to prioritize bike projects and prepare for the end of the injunction: "It was a very effective campaign. You did such a great job at making your case."

While anti-bike activist Rob Anderson, who sued the city along with attorney Mary Miles, regularly derides the "bike nuts" as a vocal minority pushing an unrealistic transportation option, the event showed almost universal support for bicycling at City Hall.

"I can say this is the best relationship we’ve had for years with the advocacy community, with the Bicycle Coalition," Newsom said. "We’ve begun to strike a nice balance where this is not about cars versus bikes. This is about cars and bikes and pedestrians cohabitating in a different mindset."

Bicycling in San Francisco has increased by 53 percent in the last three years, so Shahum said the plan’s projects and the growing legion of bicyclists will help the city in myriad ways in coming years.

"We know we can do this," she said. "We know the climate change goals this city has laid out, the public health goals, the livability goals that the city has laid out, will not be met without shifting more trips to bicycling, walking, and transit. And that’s why this day is so important."

Or as Maxwell said, "This is a great opportunity for San Francisco to finally take its place among world cities that recognize that cars are not the only mode of transportation."

Losing hope

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Losing hope

news@sfbg.com

In the back room of Tommy’s Joynt, more than a dozen members of the antiwar group Code Pink gathered Dec. 1 to watch television coverage of President Barack Obama’s speech announcing that 30,000 more U.S. troops would be sent to fight in Afghanistan, his second major escalation of that war this year.

“This is not the hope you voted for!” read a flyer distributed at the event.

Yet even among Code Pink’s militant members, reactions ranged from feeling disappointed and betrayed to feeling validated in never believing Obama was the agent of change that he pretended to be.

Jennifer Teguia seemed an example of former, while Cecile Pineda embodied the latter. “Right down the line, it’s been the corporate line,” Pineda told us, citing as examples Obama’s support for Wall Street bailouts and insiders and his abandonment of single-payer health reform in favor of an insurance-based system. “For serious politicos, hope is a fantasy.”

Throughout the speech, Pineda let out audible groans at Obama lines such as “We did not ask for this fight” and “A place that had known decades of fear now has reason to hope.” When the president promised a quick exit date, Pineda labeled it “the old in and out.” And when Obama made one too many references to 9/11, she blurted out, “Ha! 9/11!” and “He sounds just like Bush!”

But Teguia just looked saddened by the speech, and maybe a little weary that after nearly eight years of fruitlessly fighting Bush’s wars, the movement will now need to reignite to resist Obama’s escalation, which will put more U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush ever deployed.

“People are feeling tired and overwhelmed. We’ve been doing this year after year, and it’s endless. People are feeling dispirited,” Teguia told me just before the speech began.

She and other Obama supporters were willing to be patient and hopeful that Obama would eventually make good on his progressive campaign rhetoric. “But people are starting to feel like this window is closing,” Teguia said. “Now it’s at the tipping point.”

Obama has always tried to walk a fine line between his progressive ideals and his more pragmatic, centrist governing style. But in a conservative and often jingoistic country, Obama’s “center” isn’t where the antiwar movement thinks it ought to be.

“Obama is trying to unite the establishment instead of uniting the people against the establishment,” Teguia said.

That grim perspective was voiced by everyone in the room.

“Not only is he not clearing up the mess in Iraq, he’s escautf8g in Afghanistan,” said Rae Abileah, a Code Pink staff member who coordinates local campaigns. “I think people are outraged and frustrated and they’ve had enough.”

Perhaps, but the antiwar movement just isn’t what it was in 2003, when it shut down San Francisco on the first full day of war in Iraq. And the fact that Obama is a Democrat who opposed the Iraq War presents a real challenge for those who don’t support his Afghanistan policy and fear that it will be a disaster.

Democratic dilemma

Obama’s announcement — more then anything Bush ever said or did — is dividing the Democratic Party establishment, and the epicenter of that division is in San Francisco.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, second in command of the Democratic Party, essentially the person most responsible for the success or failure of a Democratic president’s agenda in Congress. She also represents a city where antiwar sentiment is among the strongest in the nation — and many of her Bay Area Democratic colleagues have already spoken out strongly against the Afghanistan troop surge.

Lynn Woolsey, the Marin Democrat who chairs the Progressive Caucus, issued a statement immediately following Obama’s speech in which she minced no words: “I remain opposed to sending more combat troops because I just don’t see that there is a military solution to the situation in Afghanistan,” she said, adding that “This is no surprise to me at all. I knew [Obama] was a moderate politician. I’ve known it all along.”

Woolsey told the Contra Costa Times that she thinks a majority of Democrats will oppose funding the troop increase — and that it will pass the House only because Republicans will vote for it.

Barbara Lee, (D-Oakland), the only member of Congress to vote against sending troops to Afghanistan eight years ago, has already introduced a bill, HR 3699, that would cut off funding for any expanded military presence there.

George Miller, (D-Martinez), has been harsh in his criticism. “We need an honest national government in Afghanistan,” Miller said in a statement. “We don’t have one. We need substantial help from our allies in the region, like Russia, China, India, and Iran. We are not getting it. We need Pakistan to be a credible ally in our efforts. It is not. We need a substantial commitment of resources and troops from NATO and our allies. While NATO is expected to add a small number of new troops, other troops have announced they are leaving. We need a large Afghan police force and army that is trained and ready to defend their country. We don’t have it.”

So where’s Pelosi? Hard to tell. At this point, she’s refused to say whether she supports the president’s plan. We called her office and were referred to her only formal statement on the issue, which says: “Tonight, the president articulated a way out of this war with the mission of defeating Al Qaeda and preventing terrorists from using Afghanistan and Pakistan as safe havens to again launch attacks against the United States and our allies. The president has offered President Karzai a chance to prove that he is a reliable partner. The American people and the Congress will now have an opportunity to fully examine this strategy.”

That sounds a lot like the position of someone who is prepared to support Obama. And that might not play well in her hometown.

The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee has been vocal about criticizing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on July 22, 2009, the committee passed a resolution demanding an Afghanistan exit strategy. There’s a good chance someone on the committee will submit a resolution urging Pelosi to join Woolsey, Lee, and Miller in opposition to the Obama surge. “I’ve been thinking about it,” committee member Michael Goldstein, who authored the July resolution, told us.

That sort of thing tends to infuriate Pelosi, who doesn’t like getting pushed from the left. And since there are already the beginnings of an organized effort by centrist Democrats and downtown forces to run a slate that would challenge progressive control of the local Democratic Party, offending Pelosi (and encouraging her to put money into the downtown slate) would be risky.

Still, Goldstein said, “she’ll probably do that anyway.”

And it would leave the more moderate Democrats on the Central Committee — who typically support Pelosi — in a bind. Will they vote against a measure calling for a withdrawal from Afghanistan? Could that be an issue in the DCCC campaign in June 2010 — and potentially, in the supervisors’ races in the fall?

In at least one key supervisorial district — eight — the role of the DCCC and the record of its members will be relevant, since three of the leading candidates in that district — Rafael Mandleman, Scott Wiener, and Laura Spanjian — are all committee members.

Tom Gallagher, president of the Bernal Heights Democratic Club and author of past antiwar resolutions at the DCCC, acknowledged what an uphill battle antiwar Democrats face.

“The antiwar movement today is a bunch of beleaguered people, half of whom have very bad judgment,” he said. “I’m afraid a lot of people have just given up.”

On the streets

The day after Obama’s speech, Code Pink, the ANSWER Coalition, and four other antiwar groups sponsored a San Francisco rally opposing the Afghanistan decision — the first indication of whether Bay Area residents were motivated to march against Obama.

ANSWER’s regional director Richard Becker told us the day before, “I think we’re going to get a big turnout. The tension has really been building. We may see a revival.”

But on the streets, there wasn’t much sign of an antiwar revival, at least not yet. Only about 100 people were gathered at the intersection of Market and Powell streets when the rally begun, and that built up to maybe a few hundred by the time they marched.

“I’m wondering about the despair people are feeling,” Barry Hermanson, who has run for Congress and other offices as a member of the Green Party, told us at the event. He considered Obama’s decision “a betrayal,” adding that “it’s not going to stop me from working for peace. There is no other alternative.”

As Becker led the crowd in a half-hearted chant, “Occupation is a crime, Afghanistan to Palestine,” Frank Scafani carried a sign that read, “Democrats and Republicans. Same shit, different assholes.”

He called Obama a “smooth-talking flim-flam man” not worthy of progressive hopes, but acknowledged that it will be difficult to get people back into the streets, even though polls show most Americans oppose the Afghanistan escalation.

“I just think people are burned out after nine years of this. Nobody in Washington listens,” Scafani said. “Why walk around in circles on a Saturday or Sunday? It doesn’t do anything.”

Yet he and others were still out there.

“I think people are a little apathetic now. Their focus in on the economy,” said Frank Briones, an unemployed former property manager. He voted for Obama and still supports him in many areas, “but this war is a bad idea,” he said.

Yet he said people are demoralized after opposing the preventable war in Iraq and having their bleak predictions about its prospects proven true. “Our frustration was that government ignored us,” he said. “And they’ll probably do the same thing now.”

But antiwar activists say they just need to keep fighting and hope the movement comes alive again.

“We don’t really know what it is ahead of time that motivates large numbers of people to change their lives and become politically active,” Becker told us after the march, citing as examples the massive mobilizations against the Iraq War in 2003, in favor of immigrants rights in 2006, and against Prop. 8 in 2008. “So we’re not discouraged. We don’t have control over all the factors here, and neither do those in power.”

Antiwar groups will be holding an organizing meeting Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. at Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia, SF. Among the topics is planning a large rally for March 20, the anniversary of the Iraq War. All are welcome.

Don’t rush the Candlestick EIR

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Don’t rush the Candlestick EIR

EDITORIAL The Candlestick Point redevelopment project is by far the biggest land-use decision facing San Francisco today, and one of the most significant in the city’s modern history. The project, sponsored by Lennar Corp., would bring 10,500 housing units and 24,000 additional residents to the area. Those residents would need new schools, playgrounds, open space, and transportation systems. Industrial and commercial development would create some 3,500 permanent jobs, and those people would need ways to get to work. Plans calls for new roadways, including a bridge over the fragile Yosemite Slough. The 708-acre site includes areas with significant toxic waste issues.

It’s no surprise that the draft environmental impact report on the project weighs in at 4,400 pages. It took two years to review the land use, transportation, air quality, water quality, population, employment, noise, hazardous materials, and other potential issues.

And now the Planning Department and Redevelopment Agency wants all public comment to be completed in a 45-day period that includes the winter holidays. That’s crazy – and it’s a sign that the city just wants to rush this project through without adequate oversight, review, or discussion.

The EIR in a project this size is a major political battleground. It’s one of the few times that the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors will get to weigh in on the entire project and look at its local and citywide impacts. It’s quite possibly the only time prior to construction when the economic, social, and environmental issues around the project will get widespread public discussion.

And anyone who reads these reports on a regular basis can tell you that they’re thick, dense, tough to follow, and filled with minute details and arcana that add up to very big policy decisions. Among the most pressing issues:

• The housing mix. The city’s own General Plan notes that almost two-thirds of all new housing built in San Francisco needs to be available at below-market rates. Lennar won’t even meet half that target. So the project would create an even greater unmet demand for affordable housing — something the EIR, at least on first read, glosses over. The report refers to “a broad range of housing options of varying sizes, types, and levels of affordability [that would] be developed at Candlestick Point” and states that “such housing would be in close proximity to the jobs provided by the project, [so] it is likely that future employees at Candlestick Point would seek housing at the project site prior to searching for housing in the surrounding Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood. However, if future employees did seek housing elsewhere in the neighborhood, the effects would not be adverse.”

Actually, if comparatively well-paid employees at the project’s research and development facilities decided to move into the existing Hunters Point/Bayview neighborhood, it would almost certainly drive up housing prices, displacing existing residents.

• Transportation options. The project projects significant improvements in Muni service — but doesn’t say how the city will pay for them. There’s a sizable focus on cars — the EIR estimates the project will need more than 21,000 parking spaces. That’s a lot more cars on the streets of the city, a lot more traffic in the southeast — and a direct clash with the city’s transit-first policies.

• What jobs, and for whom? The 3,500 permanent jobs that would be created are badly needed in that neighborhood, which has the highest unemployment rate in the city. But a comprehensive labor pool study, and a discussion of how existing residents will be trained for projected jobs, appears to be missing from the EIR.

• Hazardous materials. The EIR broadly proclaims that “construction activities associated with the project would not result in a human health risk involving the disturbance of naturally occurring asbestos, demolition of buildings that could contain hazardous substances in building materials, or possible disturbance of contaminated soils or groundwater within one-quarter mile of an existing school.” That is — at the very least — a matter of some dispute.

There’s lots more – 4,400 pages more – and if the approval process is going to be anything other than an utter farce, the Planning and Redevelopment directors need to extend the public comment period for at least another 45 days. *

State of the art displacement

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State of the art displacement

OPINION What does the loss of 11 residences and a few jobs matter if it means a state-of-the-art hospital will be built?

That’s the question Examiner columnist Ken Garcia asked Oct. 20. The line cut like sharp knives into my eyes and heart as I read about Sutter Health/California Pacific Medical Center’s proposal to put a billion-dollar hospital subsequently displacing elder and disabled tenants and low-income workers at Geary and Van Ness streets, on the edge of one of the poorest neighborhoods in San Francisco.

As I read and reread the hypothetical question, I knew it could only have been written by someone who hadn’t witnessed countless low-income elders die or become seriously ill after they were evicted or displaced or hundreds of poor migrant workers and their families struggle and go hungry because they couldn’t find a steady job with a living wage.

How do you quantify the importance of even one decent job for a poor person struggling to survive? Or one business owned by a small business owner who treats his or her employees with respect and love? Or the loss of one long-term residence of a disabled and elder tenant?

How do you rationalize the pain of relocation and job eradication in lieu of the building of a huge structure supposedly there to “heal people?”

And then there is the question of the building of a “state of the art” hospital – read: rich people’s hospital – in a community where the majority of people are poor. And the issue of how the corporation funding the building made another, perhaps more devastating, decision to leach resources and support from St. Luke’s, a truly community-based hospital.

“I won’t be able to sit in Mama Dee’s chair anymore.” My six-year-old son looked down as he spoke. We were sitting in the Van Ness Bakery & Cafe at the corner of Van Ness and Geary, one of the many small businesses facing displacement.

When my son and I heard about the pending proposal to demolish and build, not only did we know that the spirit of my Mama Dee, cofounder of POOR Magazine who passed on her spirit journey in March 2006, was very angry with the demolition of her favorite spot. But more important, as someone who struggled with poverty, racism, and gentrification her entire life, I knew my mama was also mad, as I was, at the lie of California Pacific Medical Center, for proposing to build a hospital that isn’t really needed, in a community it isn’t really geared toward, and in the process dismantling the jobs, homes, and livelihoods of tenants, poor workers, and small business owners.

“This is a bad economy, and I really have no other job options. I don’t know what we workers will do” said Ruthie Seng and Oy, two of the workers at the family-owned and humanely-operated Van Ness Bakery.

As we consider granting the plans for this $1.7 billion dollar hospital proposal, perhaps we should reassess what hospitals are there to do and whom, they are doing it for.

Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia is a poverty scholar and daughter of Dee, coeditor of POOR Magazine and the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America.

Alerts

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Alerts

Alerts@sfbg.com

THURSDAY, DEC. 10

Berkeley Critical Mass
Help to promote different modes of transportation during this critical time of Global Warming and Oil wars at this community bicycle protest and celebration that takes over the streets of Berkeley.
6 p.m., free
Meet at Downtown Berkeley BART station
Shattuck between Allston and Addison, Berk.
Zacharyrunningwolf@yahoo.com

Terra Madre Day
Celebrate Slow Food’s 20th anniversary by taking part in a worldwide “eat local” effort that aims to link chefs, artisans, and regular people. Coordinate your own event, join in with other people in your community, or just eat local in solidarity.
All day, free
San Francisco Bay Area and countries around the globe
www.slowfoodssanfrancisco.com

FRIDAY, DEC. 11

Health Forum
Learn more about single-payer health care at this screening of two short videos on the national single-payer plan, HR 676, which is being supported by many progressive leaders, and California’s SB810, which passed the state Legislature twice, only to be vetoed by the governor.
2 p.m., free
Community Room
1501 Blake, Berk.
revdecker@msn.com

Velo Vigil
Rally to support cycling on the eve of the U.S.’s participation in the U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen this month. Cyclists will circle the Oakland Federal Building to create a swarm of LED lights, while pedestrians congregate in front of the building. Bring as many LED lights as possible.
6 p.m., free
Oakland Federal Building
1301 Clay, Oak.
www.350.org/node/13135

SATURDAY, DEC. 12

“Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Consumption Christmas”
Take part in this theater workshop and performance with the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Class begins by collecting impressions and images among holiday shoppers, then returns to the YBCA to create characters, costumes, speeches, and actions for a procession that takes the show back to the streets of downtown for holiday shoppers to enjoy.
12:30 p.m., $15
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
YAAW Lounge
701 Mission, SF
(415) 978-2787

Art as Propaganda
Discuss tactics for making effective banners for demonstrations and community spaces with artist Hannah Blair. Blair will teach sketching designs with gouache paint and coming up with powerful messages and images. More work sessions will be available to gear up for the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights day of action Jan. 23, 2010.
2 p.m., free
Radical Women
625 Larkin, Suite 202, SF
(415) 864-0778

Rainwater Harvesting
Learn more about rainwater harvesting options in an urban area and hands-on skills for working with rain barrels just in time for our winter rains. Harvesting can be as simple as placing a barrel under your drain spout or using tanks and pumps to route water inside for toilet flushing.
10 a.m., $15
Garden for the Environment
Seventh Ave., SF
(415) 731-5627

“That’s Why We Don’t Eat Animals”
Attend this vegan book-signing and ice cream social with children’s author and illustrator Ruby Roth. The event is designed to encourage children to think about the emotional lives of animals, factory farming, the environment, and endangered species in relation to the food we eat.
1 p.m., free
Café Gratitude
1730 Shattuck, Berk.
(510) 725-4418

TUESDAY, DEC. 15

Protest AIPAC
Challenge and confront the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which supports Israel’s hawkish policies toward Palestine, at their annual dinner.
5 p.m., free
Hilton Hotel
333 O’Farrell, SF
stopaipac.org/sfprotest200

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

Ready, set, Whirling Dervish

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By Caitlin Donohue

dervishes 1 1209.tif
Get lost in the whirl of the Mevlevi, better known as the Order of the Whirling Dervish

Recents events involving an unlit bicycle, an unsignaled left turn onto Geary and an unexpected phone call from the emergency room have impressed upon me the true cyclical nature of this crazy world we live in. Viewed from a properly meditative perspective (difficult when one is contemplating ambulance bills san health insurance), it can be a calming thought; that the ups and downs and round abouts we experience are merely a reflection of a turning universe.

The Order of the Whirling Dervish, or the Mevlevi, are a Sufi Islam sect that holds that to revolve is life’s original nature. Electrons, protons and neutrons revolve, the human being’s life cycle revolves from the earth to life and back again. The prophet Rumi developed their traditional “whirling” dance, the sema, 700 years ago to reflect this fact and to bring one closer to the “Perfect,” or the god force.

At one point banned from their religious practice in Turkey by a political regime for being excessively mystic, the Mevlevis are allowed to continue their sema in their home country for purposes of tourism- but not to vocalize their prayers to Allah. In 1986 the head of the Mevlevi sect sent his son to America to spread their beliefs. Since then, the Order has had several successful US sema tours- and apparently has accrued some American faithful as well. The US Mevlevi website posts an announcement of an “obligatory practice and tuning for all semazen (as the participants in the ritual dance are called) turning in SF and Sacramento” to proceed the public event at the Palace of Fine Arts on Friday.

In practice, the semazen are hypnotically tranquil in their dance. Traditional Sufi music accompanies the dancers, an atmospheric affair of sitars that provide fertile foundation for whatever meditation you bring to the performance. The men and women are dressed in white robes to signify “ego’s shroud” and tall camel hair fez-like hats portraying “ego’s tombstone.” They whirl about the floor on their right feet, weaving through one another in one long motion of prayer with one arm extending to Allah and one cradled in front of them, delivering a message to their fellow human beings on earth. Altogether, they look like maple tree seed pods, helicoptering down from their branches. Its calming, almost enough to make one appreciate that in life’s twists and turns lie an equilibrium of sorts.

In the meantime… anyone know a good bike lawyer?

Fri/11 8 p.m., $25- $45
The Palace of Fine Arts
3301 Lyon, SF
www.ciis.edu

“Hit job” on Marin Clean Energy

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By Rebecca Bowe

In a report officially released yesterday, the Marin County Civil Grand Jury tore apart Marin Clean Energy, a community-choice aggregation program that is intended to reduce the region’s greenhouse-gas emissions to address climate change.

The Civil Grand Jury report called the project “costly and extremely risky” and recommended that the whole effort be abandoned. It criticized the program as adding another layer of bureaucracy at a time when resources are limited, and described it as being plagued with uncertainty. The report was titled “Pull the Plug,” and it warned of risks ranging from market volatility to legal costs if Pacific Gas & Electric should take steps to attack the effort once it is launched.

“The county and all participating municipalities of Marin Energy Authority should step away from their adversarial political posturing and seriously work with foundations, federal, state and local agencies and PG&E to foster cooperation,” the Civil Grand Jury report recommended.

The report was released on the same day as the start of the historic United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhapen, and coincided with the Environmental Protection Agency’s ruling that greenhouse gases endanger human health. MEA Chair and Marin County Supervisor Charles McGlashan said the timing was poignant, and called the civil grand jury report “a purposeful hit job by a biased group of conservative people in the county” that is “riddled with errors and misinformation.”

According to McGlashan, energy customers who accept the transition to MCE would automatically begin using electricity that is 25 percent greenhouse-gas-free, as opposed to PG&E’s 15 percent GHG-free power, with no difference in price.

Readers respond to Slow Food class issues

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By Caitlin Donohue

Food Sustainability Issues 006 blog.jpg
Chef Jon Hall of sustainable food management company Bon Appetit was profiled in recent SFBG article on class issues in the sustainable food movement. Photo by Erik Anderson

I’ve been pleased and impressed with the thoughtful feedback we’ve received on my recent cover story on class issues in the sustainable food movement. Many who wrote in took issue with my charge that sustainable food activists often don’t do enough for the working class. They cited programs that “good food” groups have implemented to work on making sustainable food accessible to low income groups, many of which I was excited to learn about and applaud. But is it counterproductive to “go after” organizations that are already doing important work to bring health back into our food systems, as rchstev- whose intelligent response raises a lot of great points- implies?

rchstev writes:

I’m disappointed, however, that the author and Bay Guardian editors chose – in the opening passage, closing statement, and under-headline – to disparage the sustainable food movement (and Slow Food in particular) as a hook for delivering the message.

Problems in our food system are complex and multifaceted. In many instances, addressing one concern, such as increasing wages and benefits to farm workers, can create offsetting problems, such as affecting the viability of smaller operations who want to produce high quality, healthy food and provide workers fair compensation and safe conditions. Talk with most independent producers and even the most successful say it’s an extremely difficult balance. (One reason numerous organizations are actively working to effect governmental changes.)

People’s Grocery dishes it up for underserved West Oakland

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By Caitlin Donohue


East Oakland’s People’s Grocery puts working people at the forefront of the fight for healthy, sustainable food for their community. Warning: around 7:30 things get very touching.

My recent SFB cover story “Out of Reach: How the sustainable food movement neglects poor workers and eaters” has attracted attention from both those within the “good food” movement and without. Which is good- it was meant to kick up a discussion of where working people stand these days in the fight for a more sustainable food system.

In celebration of this healthy discourse, I wanted to profile another East Bay group who is on the front lines of getting sustainable, pesticide-free eatables to the working class who was brought to our attention by one of the readers of “Out of Reach.” West Oakland’s People’s Grocery was started in 2002 in response to the area’s lack of grocery stores (versus its 50 plus liquor dealers) and has since developed a multi-pronged attack on the dearth of healthy food in poor American neighborhoods.

Currently People’s Grocery runs an urban agriculture program, nutrition classes for community members of all ages and maintains a focus on enterprise and leadership development among West Oakland youth, employing young people at their Grub Box program, which functions as sort of a reverse CSA- using local farms to support the health of the community at the cost of about $12/month per family. In the past they’ve also run a mobile healthy food cart that serves the areas of the city whose distance from proper grocery stores is so far as to be prohibitive to get to.

So rock on, People’s Grocery. The kind of action- along with work on a variety of other levels- is what it’s going to take to convert our country to a sustainable, equitable food system for all. And Guardian readers- you guys are awesome, keep sending in your nominations for food heroes. They deserve all the press, digital or not, that they can get.

Holiday blues

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Holiday blues

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Ethea Farahkhan lost her city job Nov. 29, when a round of city layoffs impacting front-line workers took effect.
Farahkhan, a woman of color who was an administrative assistant at San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth and their Families, said she would have a job if it weren’t for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision not to spend money approved by the Board of Supervisors to save people from job losses during the holiday season.

The layoffs rippled through city government as DPH employees with seniority exercised “bumping rights” to replace employees like Farahkhan, who was hired three years ago.

“No one’s in a festive mood. We’re concentrating on making mortgages and buying food to put on our table,” Farahkhan told us when we caught up with her Thanksgiving eve. “I know San Francisco is not exempt from the economic crisis,” she added, “but I feel like our mayor is out of touch. He’s never been in this position.”

If DPH layoff had been covered by existing funds and incoming grant money, as directed by a veto-proof, 8-3 vote of the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 24, she said, “I would definitely have a job to go to.” Instead, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced after the board vote that he was refusing to spend the reallocated funding to halt the 478 DPH layoffs and reassignments.

Farahkhan’s union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, spent months trying to save these jobs, finally winning over the final supervisor needed to overcome a veto, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, shortly before the vote. Then, for the second time in as many months, the head of the executive branch announced that he would simply ignore the legislative branch.

The impasse doesn’t bode well for a city that’s about to wrestle with a record midyear budget deficit again.
In October, Newsom declared that he would ignore the board’s passage of legislation — by the same 8-3 vote that could override a mayoral veto — to prevent deportation of undocumented youth in custody until they are convicted. It was the first of two actions that seemed to answer the question of whether the mayor is willing to work with the supervisors on the toughest problems facing the city.

That was the question raised last summer when the board discussed a budget analyst’s report that Newsom had either cut or refused to spend about $15.6 million of the $37.5 million that supervisors approved in budget add-backs for the 2008-09 fiscal year. With the mayor cutting 42 percent of program funding that the board fought to restore, trust was already eroding.

During budget deliberation, some progressive supervisors unsuccessfully tried to place hundreds of millions of dollars on reserve, which would give the board some leverage to force Newsom to honor his pledge to work with supervisors on midyear budget cuts, but the board ultimately decided not to do so.

The mayor’s latest rejection came after a long, embittered battle with the union. SEIU members resorted to drastic measures — staging protests in traffic intersections, distributing flyers outside Newsom’s PlumpJack restaurants, barging into his office unannounced singing civil-rights era ballads — to pressure the mayor. But neither those media stunts, nor compromise solutions developed by Sups. John Avalos, Bevan Dufty, and Board President David Chiu, could persuade Newsom to go along with revisiting the DPH cuts.

“Mayor Newsom cannot spend funds the city does not have,” Newsom’s press secretary, Joe Arellano, told the Guardian when asked for an explanation. “The board action didn’t provide any new money — it takes dollars already being used to pay other employees’ salaries.”

The money allocated by the board was already destined for salaries and benefits of other DPH employees, but Sups. Avalos, Chris Daly, and Ross Mirkarimi argued that new federal dollars en route to the city via state and federal channels would bring the department budget back into balance. An estimated $34 million in federal funding is expected to flow into city coffers for health services by mid-2010, but Arellano indicated that the mayor intends to use that money to help balance next year’s deficit.

As the city considers midyear slashes to cope with next year’s monstrous $522 million shortfall, the spirit of cooperation that Newsom publicly emphasized at the outset of last year’s budget cycle now seems dead. Chiu told the Guardian that the only way the board was able to achieve a palatable budget back in July was through controversial partnership with the Mayor’s Office. But when supervisors approached Newsom with alternative solutions for restoring the DPH layoffs, “the mayor was not interested in exploring these different options,” Chiu explained.

Now, Chiu said he’s worried by the implications of the mayor’s defiant approach to the board. “We have two branches of government — legislative and executive. Eleven of us are required to set laws for the city, and the mayor is supposed to carry it out. I hope and believe that the mayor would respect the roles of our respective branches,” Chiu said, carefully choosing his words when asked for his perspective on this trend. “I don’t know how we are going to get through next year if we can’t … not just agree to disagree, but figure out where we agree.”

Chiu’s persistent search for common ground stands in contrast to Daly’s more adversarial approach. In July, just before the board signed off on the 2009-10 budget, Daly floated a proposal to place $300 million on reserve — which would require additional board action to spend, thereby giving supervisors some leverage — but it failed to pass.

Daly also proposed a placing a charter amendment on the ballot that would have required the mayor to fund certain board-approved programs that supervisors deemed especially important. But that failed too when only Sups. Mirkarimi, David Campos and Eric Mar supported it. In a recent conversation with the Guardian, Daly indicated that this possibility could be revived. “It doesn’t matter how many supervisors it takes” to pass legislation, Daly said. “[The mayor] wants to govern unilaterally, and that’s not okay.”

As for the mayor’s latest announcement that he wouldn’t spend the money to restore DPH salaries, Daly said it’s not over yet. “There will be meetings. There will be discussions,” he said. “We’re going to move on this.”

At the same time, midyear cuts are speeding through the pipeline. By Dec. 4, city department heads will have to figure out how to slash their current budgets by 4 percent. By Feb. 20, Newsom is asking for plans to cut an additional 20 percent, plus an extra 10 percent in contingency funding in order to address next year’s gaping deficit.

Those “adjustments,” as they’re called in bureaucratic jargon, promise to be painful. As the next city budget squabble comes into focus on the horizon, the question of revenue measures is still out there and isn’t helped by the current acrimony at City Hall.

Progressive supervisors are also moving to tackle spending areas they deem wasteful, such as a surge in high-dollar management salaries or some of the mayor’s pet projects. Newsom is angling for opening the condo conversion floodgates by letting people buy their way out of the lottery system — a one-time moneymaker that progressives find repugnant because it depletes rental-housing stock.

As the city grows more financially anemic, accusations of mismanagement abound. After the board’s vote on DPH cuts, Newsom was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle saying that progressive supervisors are in a “reality-free zone.”

But Farahkhan and other SEIU employees who are facing layoffs during the holidays believe Newsom is the one who is living on a different planet. “He’s at the top of the pay scale,” Farahkhan said, “and out of touch with everyday working people.”

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MUNI CUTS BACK SERVICE

Service reductions that will affect about half of all Muni routes start Dec. 5, the result of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s early summer deal to close a $129 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year. And that’s just the beginning of the bad news.
Less than halfway through this budget cycle, SFMTA is already looking at an additional $45 million deficit, partly because of the agency’s failure to follow through on plans to increase parking revenue, such as the stalled proposal to extend parking meter hours (see “We want free parking!” Oct. 28).
So additional layoffs and Muni service reductions or even another fare hike are possible, even though Muni fares have already doubled to $2 since Gavin Newsom became mayor. SFMTA officials say midyear budget reduction decisions will be made by the SFMTA Board of Directors over the next two months.
But for now, to find out how this week’s Muni service reductions will affect you, visit www.sfmta.com. (Steven T. Jones)

Out of reach

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Out of reach

news@sfbg.com

On a sunny afternoon in Civic Center Plaza, a remarkable bounty covered a buffet table: coconut quinoa, organic mushroom tabouli, homemade vegan desserts, and an assortment of other yummy treats. The food and event were meant to raise awareness about public school lunches, although it was hard to imagine these dishes, brought by well-heeled food advocates, sitting under the fluorescent lights of a San Francisco public school cafeteria.

The spread was for the Slow Food USA Labor Day “eat-in,” a public potluck meant to publicize the proposed reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, national legislation that regulates the food in public schools. The crowd was in a festive, light-hearted mood. There was a full program of speeches by sustainability experts and a plant-your-own-vegetable-seeds table set up in one corner of the plaza.

A bedraggled couple who appeared homeless made their way through the jovial crowd and started scooping up the food in a way that suggested it had been a long time since their last roasted local lamb shish kebob. Their presence shouldn’t have been a surprise; most events involving free trips down a food table are geared toward a different demographic in this park, which borders the Tenderloin.

In a flash, an event volunteer was on the case, nervous in an endearingly liberal manner. “Sir,” she began. “This food is for the Child Nutrition Act.” And then she paused, searching for what to say next. I imagined her thinking: “Sir, this food is to raise awareness about the availability of sustainable food to the lower classes, not to be eaten by them,” or, “Sir, this good, healthy, local food is not for you.”

But there was no good way to say what she meant to convey. She knew it, and delivered her final line hurriedly before walking away. “If you could just, well, just don’t take like 25 things, okay?” Indifferent to the volunteer’s unspoken reprimand, the couple continued to eat, ignoring the whispers and stares of the social crusaders around them, who all seemed to take issue with their participation in this carefully planned political action.

It was a telling scene from a movement that has yet to really confront its class issues. Though organic grocery stores and farmers markets have sprung up on San Francisco’s street corners, it remains to be seen whether our current mania for sustainable, local food will positively affect the lower classes, be they farm workers or poor families.

Even iconic food writer Michael Pollan acknowledges the challenge the sustainability movement faces in widening its relevance for the poor, citing the high cost of local and organic food as just one of the issues that Slow Foodies and their allies must tackle before they can count the “good food” movement a success.

LOCAL ORGANIC LABOR

For the average heirloom tomato eater, the words “organic farm” often conjure up an idyllic agrarian picture: happy communes of earnest farmers growing veggies straight from the goodness of their hearts. In reality, a lot of the people who plant, tend, and harvest produce are poorly paid Latino immigrants. And it might come as a surprise that those who work on small or organic farms often face the same exploitative working conditions as those in conventional agriculture.

To learn how organic farm workers should be treated, consider Swanton Berry Farm, whose fields stretch out along the coastal highway just north of Santa Cruz. Swanton was the first organic farm in California to sign a contract with the United Farm Workers, a move that highlights the owners’ conviction that farm workers be viewed as skilled professionals. Employees are offered ownership shares in the farm and are provided health insurance, retirement plans, comfortable housing, and unlimited time off to attend to pressing family matters.

“Organic is a lot cleaner. Working with pesticides, you have to worry about wearing gloves and covering your skin. Here, you can pick that strawberry right off the plant and eat it,” Adelfo Antonio told the Guardian. He has worked these fields for 20 years, the last five as a supervisor. His high regard for his job and employers is apparent. As we talked, he kept at least one eye fixed on his coworkers, who stretched plastic sheets across the dirt of the field to protect their rows of seed from the coming autumn winds.

Antonio said he appreciates the culture of mutual respect on this farm. “People like how they are treated here. When conflicts come up, our management is open to working through them,” he said. A few minutes later, a break was called, illustrating his point. There had been some disruptive behavior in the company housing and a discussion ensued between the crew and one of the farm’s owners about house rules. The group formulated a plan to avoid trouble in the future.

But Swanton’s egalitarian fields are the exception among American organic farms. The average salary of the estimated 900,000 farm workers in California — the birthplace of the organic and farm labor movements in the U.S. — is around $8,500, more than $2,000 below the federal poverty line.

In 2006, the California Institute for Rural Studies put out a rare study of working conditions on the state’s 2,176 organic farms that suggested that in some respects, workers are better off on conventional farms. Although the average wage was higher on organic fields — $8.20 for entry-level work, compared with $7.91 on conventional farms — traditional agriculture outstripped organic on certain employee benefits. A mere 36 percent of organic businesses were found to provide health insurance to their employees, as opposed to 46 percent on conventional farms.

Unable to rely on chemicals for pest control, organic farms often face higher labor costs in the fields. “Wages and benefits should always be viewed in the wider context of sustainability, and that includes a farm’s ability to stay in business from one year to the next, i.e. its profitability,” said Jane Baker, a spokesperson for California Certified Organic Farmers, the state’s major organic certification agency.

The inequity faced by farm workers belies the fact that the organic movement began as an alternative to the industrialized food system. “Back then, we never would have imagined that you’d be buying an organic product that was built on the backs of workers. For us, social justice was every bit as important as the environmental part,” said Marty Mesh, an organic farmer since 1973 and executive director of Florida Certified Organic Growers & Consumers.

Mesh was involved in the debates over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s first codification of the National Organic Program. He said that although many farmers advocated for regulations surrounding working conditions, the federal government found it hard to stomach labor stipulations. Many involved felt their inclusion would hurt the growth of the organic industry. So the social movement aspect of organic farming was left on the cutting room floor.

That has not been the case overseas. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, whose organic label is recognized worldwide, adopted explicit social justice language in its basic standards in 2003, stating in their “Principles of Organic Agriculture” document that “organic agriculture should provide everyone involved with a good quality of life and contribute to … reduction of poverty.”

CCOF now offers a dual track certification process wherein California farms can forgo specific IFOAM requirements. The lack of guidelines of worker treatment has led to some problems. “We’ve seen many of the same issues on organic farms that we do in conventional agriculture, on small and big farms alike,” Michael Marsh, directing attorney of California Rural Legal Assistance, told us. CRLA is an organization that regularly provides low cost legal assistance to agricultural workers, whom Marsh has seen bring charges against organic farmers for cases of sexual harassment, underpayment, and job safety concerns.

Sometimes the organic label is even used to justify vioutf8g workers rights. In 2003, the California Legislature considered a bill that would ban “stoop labor,” activities like hand-weeding which require working in bent positions that can cause musculoskeletal degeneration. Organic farmers’ associations lobbied against the bill, claiming that pesticide-free agriculture would suffer under such restrictions. Also, although chemical pest-killers are banned from organic farming, some popular natural pesticides like copper and sulfur have been known to cause irritation of the throat, eyes, and respiratory system.

“This is one of the hardest nuts to crack in the sustainable food world,” said Michael Dimock, executive director of Roots of Change, a San Francisco-based foundation that has developed campaign strategies for improving agricultural working conditions. Three years ago, Dimock left his post as chairman at Slow Food USA, at a time when farm labor conditions “were generally not at the top of the list. Slow Food as an organization is just beginning to figure out what it can do in a meaningful way on this issue.”

Roots of Change has found some success in identifying farm labor challenges and possible solutions through a series of worker-grower forums. It has pinpointed immigration reform as one key to progress. Anywhere from 50 to 90 percent of farm workers in California are undocumented, which puts even fair bosses at risk of being prosecuted for employing illegal immigrants.

Many farm owners turn to labor contractors — essentially agricultural temp agencies — to supply field hands. Use of these middle men largely shields the owner from legal responsibility for illegal hiring, but “the bad farm labor contractors cheat workers, take their pay, and risk their health and safety,” Dimock said.

Some Californian farm labor contractors have become notorious for their disregard of minimum wage and other labor standards, taking advantage of workers who are discouraged to seek help for fear of deportation. The role played by irresponsible contractors is one of many issues that can remain unseen by the buyers of food from farms that rely on the inadequate public information available on agricultural working conditions.

WHEN BUSINESS AND LABOR COLLABORATE

Food management company Bon Appetit in Palo Alto has built a good reputation as a sustainable company, buying its produce and other foodstuffs as locally and organically as possible. “I’ve learned a lot working here,” said Jon Hall, head chef of Bon Appetit’s University of San Francisco cafeteria. “In other kitchens, if you can get something for five cents a pound cheaper, that’s what you buy. If I did that here, people would notice. [My bosses at Bon Appetit] would say, ‘Why’d you buy that?’ ”

But when Bon Appetit executives decided to take on the issue of worker treatment on the farms that supplied their food, they found it difficult to find reliable information on the subject. “We always felt like there was something there that needed to be done and change that needed to take place,” said vice president Maisie Greenwalt. “But we didn’t know who to talk to.”

Her cue to act came from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group from Immokalee County, Fla. The farm workers’ organization brought nationwide publicity to the slavery-like conditions in the area’s tomato fields. Greenwalt accompanied the group on an information-gathering trip to Immokalee and saw firsthand the places where recent immigrants were held to work against their will, living in squalor and being paid little as $20 a week.

Greenwalt saw the travesty as a wake-up call. Collaborating with the Immokalee activists, Bon Appetit developed a workers’ rights contract that all their tomato suppliers must now sign. “After Bon Appetit sent me the contract, I sort of at first didn’t see the point. But then I spoke with the [Coalition of Immokalee Workers] and it made sense. Worker abuse has been around for centuries,” said Tom Wilson of Alderman Farms, one of the company’s tomato growers.
Greenwalt says Bon Appetit cafeterias were prepared to eliminate tomatoes from their menus. “Every chef and manager I talked to said they would rather not serve tomatoes than serve the tomatoes that were coming from these conditions.” But every one of their suppliers signed, agreeing to conditions such as a mandatory worker-controlled safety committee and a “minimum fair wage.”

The success convinced Bon Appetit that this style of food buyer participation is crucial to making positive progress on farm worker treatment. The company is now conducting a nationwide survey of working conditions on organic farms. “Labor’s not a new issue,” said Carolina Fojo, one of the company’s researchers. “But for some reason, people are just now talking about it. We’ve found it can be a sensitive topic for a lot of farmers.”

Visually, Hall’s USF food court is similar to traditional college eateries. But plate-side, Bon Appetit’s commitment to sustainability is clear; specials vary seasonally and food is sourced locally whenever possible. The price for a semester’s meal plan is $3,810, more than twice that of San Francisco State University. Hall’s customers, college students who may eat three meals a day here, often approach him with questions about their food. Queries range from where to how the food was grown, but in no instances that Hall has been aware of, about the workers who grew it.

Labor issues are not the popular cause these days, at least in the sustainable food movement. Unlike the “eat local” and organic food movements, equitable treatment of farm workers has yet to spawn trendy slogans for tote bags or a book on the best-seller list.

One UC Santa Cruz study found that, when asked to rank their concern about food system related topics, Central Coast grocery shoppers assigned higher concern levels to animal treatment on farms than that of humans. But Hall is confident this will change as Bon Appetit and others continue to bring attention to the economically disadvantaged on the front lines of our local and organic food systems.

“This is the next frontier,” he said. “I can see it brewing.”

SERVING THE CHILDREN

In school cafeterias across the city, a different low-income group has its own challenges fitting into the sustainable food movement. San Francisco Unified School District manages one of the city’s most important food sources.

Every school day, Student Nutrition Services dishes out 31,000 cafeteria meals; of those, 84 percent go to students who qualify for free lunch or for the reduced price of $2 for elementary school students. It is not a stretch to say that for many of these kids, this is their one chance at healthy food for the day — certainly their only chance to learn about local and organic food. But the school district faces one of the major issues the sustainability movement has yet to resolve. Local and organic food costs a lot to produce, which makes it more expensive. If pricing was more socially equitable and accounted for living wages for farm workers, costs might rise even more. This is a problem. Federal funds supply about $2.49 for each free student lunch in San Francisco and less for the meals of students who do not qualify for reduced prices. After logistical costs like labor and transportation are accounted for, 90 cents per meal is left over for the food itself.

This is not enough to fund a menu like Hall’s. Given the numbers, it should come as no surprise that examining an average SFUSD school lunch — as San Francisco Chronicle food critic Michael Bauer did in his Oct. 29 “Between Meals” online column — turns up a lot of recently thawed, bland food matter. But this is not to say that cafeteria meals have not seen progress. Student Nutrition Services eliminated junk food in 2003, signaling a new attention to nutrition on a menu previously dominated by pizza and french fries.

Unlike working conditions for farm workers, school lunches have the benefit of visibility to middle class consumers and activists. Demonstrable efforts are being made to send some of that 90-cent budget toward local food. But with such a limited budget, institutions like SFUSD can only address a small slice of what is important about sustainable food. Yes, efforts are being put toward buying kids local, pesticide-free food that doesn’t further jeopardize their future by using excessive fossil fuel on transportation. But these limited efforts do nothing to affect the social aspect of sustainability — those who produce the food are again left invisible.

The school salad bar program, started in 2007, uses organic and local vegetables in its buffet line as much as possible. The majority of the bars are strategically located in schools where more than half the student body qualifies for free and reduced-price lunches, a response to a Community Healthy Kids survey that put the number of ninth-graders who had eaten a single vegetable in the last week at 29 percent. Student reaction to the bars has been encouraging. Many poor families credit them with increasing the amount of produce in their kids’ diets.

“This program is an anomaly,” said Paula Jones, director of San Francisco Food Systems. “Other schools around the country just don’t see things like this.”

But a generation’s worth of antitax sentiment has limited the variety of the salad bars and other attempts at getting fresh food onto kids’ lunch trays. Due to high labor costs, the school district buys pre-chopped vegetables, severely limiting sourcing options. In the meantime, another generation of low-income kids is growing up on processed, packaged foods. Jones said making sustainable food available to all children is an issue the community must help take on. “The bottom line is, it’s going to take a lot of people talking about this to realize this is not just the school district’s problem.”

Jones’ organization works on getting healthy food to the city’s underserved populations. Nutritionally, this is the salient mission of our age. Despite its current vogue, only 10 percent of Americans buy organic, and shoppers who consistently choose healthy foods usually find themselves spending 20 percent more. Several California studies have indicated that socioeconomically depressed neighborhoods have disturbingly high rates of food insecurity and obesity.

Despite the enormity of the challenge, Jones remains positive. “We lead in this issue. San Francisco is ready, and we have the will.” She counts among the city’s biggest successes in this area the fact that all farmers markets, typically more expensive than average supermarkets, now accept food stamps.

THE FRESHEST FOR THE POOREST

On a bright autumn Wednesday, market assistant manager John Fernandez stands outside his “office,” a white van with the Heart of the City logo. The Heart of the City Farmers Market takes place in a plaza just between City Hall and the Tenderloin twice a week, year-round. Fernandez said it has the highest food stamp sales — second only to that of the Hollywood market — in California and has played a role in allowing low income families and individuals in the area to fit local and organic food into their budget.

Fernandez has worked here for 13 years, and said that the use of food stamps has doubled since last summer. Most of his food stamp customers are families and individuals coming back week after week. They pass by the van to have Fernandez swipe their food stamp cards through a machine and hand them the yellow plastic coins used to buy everything from persimmons to what is far and away the market’s most popular item: the live chickens that squawk from cages at one end of the line of stalls.

Efreh Ghanen was one of the shoppers we talked to who felt that being able to use her food stamps at the farmers market had improved the health of her family. Ghanen, who shops with her mother and sister, likened Heart of the City to the Yemeni markets where they bought their food growing up. “The honey, fruit, and vegetables here are fresher,” she said. “They just taste better.”

“I definitely wouldn’t be able to shop here if it weren’t for the food stamp program,” echoed Shana Lancaster. She teaches at Paul Revere Elementary School in Bernal Heights, a position funded through AmeriCorps whose low pay automatically qualifies her for the food stamp program. She selects an armful of organic Gala apples while noting the value of shopping local for working people like herself. “I like supporting the farmers. Everyone here at the market has a story. These days, everyone is struggling.”

But both Lancaster and Ghanen tell us that when they can’t afford to shop at the farmers markets, they head straight for corporate retailers like Safeway and Walgreens, buying whatever they need to get by.

Programs like these are essential if the sustainability movement is to remain relevant and widen its reach. Just as the environment will degrade if industrial agriculture continues unabated, so too will local and organic food sources falter if the majority of our society cannot afford to buy their wares.

In the end, the obstacles are about class. Low-income groups, be they the people who grow the organic food or the schoolchildren who benefit from eating it, need to become more of a focus of the “good food” movement. What Slow Foodies and other activists must keep in mind is that over-accessorizing a cause (as with esoteric artisan products and exclusive dining experiences) makes it less a vehicle for change and more like reshuffling of the same old injustices. Social change, by definition, has to be for everyone. Because elitism tastes as bad as it always has.

For more information, check out “Fair Food: Field to Table,” a multimedia project recently released by the California Institute for Rural Studies. CIRS is one of the leading researchers of working standards on Californian farms and its data is found throughout this article. Watch the Fair Food documentary for free at www.fairfoodproject.org.

Attack of the 50-foot MILF

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Attack of the 50-foot MILF

andrea@mail.altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I initially missed the hot-for-friend’s-mother definition of MILF, and was introduced to the phrase, sweetly, by a former lover. He wasn’t trying to separate the fuckable mothers from the nonfuckable, or fetishizing fecundity. Since we were both middle-aged, he wasn’t designating me a MILF based on the understanding of it that you and the writer of “Still Hot” hold [“Milfbone,” 11/18/09]. He simply meant that my being a mother was one of the things he found attractive about me — he is a devoted father — and that he wanted to fuck me. When you are covered with spit-up or finger paint, when most of your social events involve the PTA, it’s nice to know you’re still hot — maybe even hot because, rather than in spite of, your momitude.
His use of MILF made me feel attractive and desirable. It told me I was still sexy. Indeed, it implied that part of my appeal was my maturity: not the maternal qualities in an icky, “I want to suckle your milk-filled breasts” way, but that he preferred me to young ’uns and to the big-boobed brainless bimbos. “I think Stacy’s mom is way hotter than her teenage daughter; I’d rather F her, because, while society says I should de facto be more attracted to the young girl, I’m more into the woman my own age.” I doubt very much that I’m hot to a 14-year-old. But I might want to be to his dad.
So although I understand your discomfort with the acronym and the letter- writer’s outrage, I have a fondness for the term. When you are a mother, you’re different from when you weren’t a mother — not better or worse, but changed. If someone wants to F you, for whatever reason, you are by definition, a M he-or-she would L to F.
Finally, I don’t dismiss the power of words or names. I instruct young people not to use terms like “wife-beater.” I find it incredibly offensive to equate a still-libidinous woman over 40 with a predator, especially since she is simultaneously the object of contempt and ridicule. I get how insulting it is to be objectified and demeaned through language. And I am aware of the implicit sexism and cultural disregard for — -if not downright fear of — women’s sexuality. But.
Does everything have to be so complicated? Can we stop looking for reasons to be outraged?
Love,
Glad 2B
Dear B:
Certainly! But I don’t think “Still Hot” was outraged as much as she was puzzled and maybe made a little irritable by trying to figure out if she still rated as an attractive woman or only, now that she had a kid, as one of the scarce-enough-to-be-worth-a-special-coinage exceptions to a perceived rule (moms are not sexy). For myself, I at least hope I don’t go around wasting my outrage on silly examples of what I’m going to term “folk demographics,” terms spawned by popular culture to describe human phenomena of current cultural interest. Children dying for lack of health care? Outrage. New(ish) and offensive ways to categorize women by perceived attractiveness, not too different from the old ways? Annoyance. And by the way, I pretty much ceded you the column this week and think highly of you, but I was reading along, nodding happily, when I stumbled over “big-boobed brainless bimbo” and landed — thud — wondering how “B-B B B” is any less misogynist than “cougar.” It isn’t, of course. That sort of casual disparagement of other women is so pervasive it’s invisible, and so unquestioned we (all) do it ourselves without even noticing. But we could put “quit that” on our New Year’s resolution lists.
This whole subject reminds me of the time the first friend of ours to get pregnant (we are late bloomers) found herself wailing, hormonally, something like “I don’t want to be attractive just to the sort of people who would want you to know that they find pregnant women attractive!” Likewise, many an older woman could find herself lamenting being attractive only to the sort of men who would want you to know that they find older women attractive. One wants to be found attractive. One does not wish to be exoticized or, God forbid, humored.
I appreciate your spin on the phrase, and am glad you had the enviable experience of being found sexy for being exactly who you are. I don’t think MILF can be redeemed, though.
I recently read on one of the feminist blogs a post attempting to reframe the misogynist use of “douche” as invective (“Ew! It’s for vaginas!”). “Douches are bad for your ladybits,” reasoned the writer (more or less), “so it’s not anti-woman to call a smarmy, self-satisfied jerk a ‘douche.’ It’s pro-woman! Because douches are bad!”
Nice try, I thought. But calling a dude a douche is still pretty sexist. As for the fact that I also think it’s hilarious, well, please don’t be outraged!
Love,
Andrea

Editor’s Notes

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Editor’s Notes

The people aren’t that weird in Oregon. They drink the same coffee we do, and the same beer, and they’re just as surprised as we are that a team from the land of Beavers and Ducks will be playing in the Rose Bowl. It rains a lot, so they don’t worry about water the way we do — in some places, you can actually take a shower with an old-fashioned spigot that pours an unconstrained and luxurious flow that would be illegal in most of California — but generally speaking, it’s not like an alien territory.
But the Oregon government took a radically different approach to the state’s budget problems over the summer. The governor and the Legislature passed measures to raise taxes on households with incomes of more than $260,000 a year and corporations with profits of more than $10 million. The bills also cut taxes on unemployment benefits. The deal would bring in $737 million and avoid deep cuts in essential public services.
Of course, some things don’t stop at state lines: antitax activists have forced a referendum on the new taxes, and in January, in a vote-by-mail ballot, Oregonians will decide whether to reject the tax plan. The newspapers are full of discussions on the impact, and the message is clear: Scrap the taxes and teachers will face layoffs, schools will face serious problems, and other public services will suffer.
I was up visiting over Thanksgiving, and I asked a friend what he thought would happen. He was pretty confident that the taxes would be retained: “I don’t know anyone who makes more than $260,000 a year.”
Of course, they don’t have a two-thirds majority requirement to raise taxes — and while Republicans all over have become little more than obstructionist troglodytes, Oregon Republicans haven’t all signed the “no-new-taxes” pledge required of every GOP legislator in California.
Even so, you have to wonder: Why can’t we do that here?
The answer, I think, is that we can — not necessarily on a statewide level (where anything progressive seems almost impossible today) but right here at home in San Francisco.
A poll commissioned by SEIU Local 1021, which came out while I was away, showed that a majority of San Francisco voters would support a broad range of new taxes, from a five-cent-a-drink tax on alcoholic beverages to a $10 a car tax on motor vehicles to an increase in the hotel tax. The poll didn’t ask about a tax on incomes of more than $260,000, but I bet the results would be about the same.
So what’s headed for the June ballot? Well, at this point all I hear is that the mayor wants to fund the expansion of Moscone Center with $140 million in revenue bonds — and might want to designate a hike in the hotel tax to pay for it. That’s a great way to set priorities — the health care system is in total collapse, Muni lines are getting shut down … and we’re going to use new tax revenue for a convention center expansion.
This comes just after the mayor announced he wasn’t going to spend the money to save critical public health services. Perhaps he’ll find some spiritual guidance on his trip to India.

Alerts

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Alerts

alerts@sfbg.com

Wednesday, Dec. 2

Battle for Whiteclay
Attend a screening and discussion of this documentary, which follows Native American activists to Nebraska’s state capitol to end alcohol sales to residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation by stores in the neighboring town of Whiteclay. The film serves as an inside look at the conflict between Native Americans’ rights and state and local governments’.
7:30 p.m., $6 suggested donation
Artists’ Television Access
992 Valencia, SF
(415) 821-6545

Thursday, Dec. 3

Die-in for Bhopal
Join a die-in to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Union Carbide’s (now Dow Chemical) gas tragedy in Bhopal, India. Honor the thousands who died in the tragedy and protest the abandoned chemicals that continue to pollute the groundwater.
Noon, free
Union Square
Powell at Geary, SF
Bhopal.net
Prison Reduction Plan
Michael Bien, lead counsel in Coleman vs. Schwarzenegger, answers questions about the implementation of the California Prison Population Reduction plan. Judges in the case ordered the state to reduce its inmate population because of prison overcrowding. Sponsored by the Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) Coalition.
6 p.m., free
CURB Office
1904 Franklin, # 504, Oakl.
(510) 444-0484

Friday, Dec. 4

Oaktown on wheels
Participate in a community bike ride through Oakland to display, promote, and celebrate healthy transportation. Ride ends at the Art Murmur community street party
6 p.m., free
Meet at Frank Ogawa Plaza
14th and Broadway BART station, Oakl.

Saturday, Dec. 5

Celebrate free clinic opening
Attend opening day of the Mabuhay Health Clinic and its services, a free, student-run community health clinic that aims to reduce health disparities in the SoMa district. The clinic is in partnership with the South of Market Health Center, the Bayanihan Community Center, and UCSF. Sup. Chris Daly and staff from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office will be present. Also features food and entertainment.
2 p.m., free
Mabuhay Health Clinic
1010 Mission, SF
(415) 336-5277
Backpacks for the people
Help assemble "warm wishes" packs filled with gloves, socks, scarves, and more to be distributed to 4,000 homeless men, women, and children in the Bay Area.
8 a.m., free
Unity in Marin
600 Palm Drive, Novato
(415) 472-0211

Sunday, Dec. 6

Help class-war prisoners
Attend this fundraiser for the Partisan Defense Committee’s Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund, which helps victims of racist prison and death sentences. Featuring a buffet, door prizes, silent art auction, and more.
3 p.m., $10
Women’s Building
3543 18th St., SF
(510) 839-0852
Fast for our climate
Send a message to the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen that the world needs to make a strong commitment to reduce emissions at this afternoon of fun sans food. Show solidarity with 21 other countries staging hunger strikes.
1 p.m., free
U.N. Plaza
Market at Hyde, SF
(484) 319-1115<0x00A0><cs:5>2<cs:>
Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 255-8762; or e-mail alerts@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Poll showed SF voters had favorable attitude toward new revenue measures

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By Rebecca Bowe

taxtini.jpg
Would you pay five cents more for this if it was going to fund local health care services?

So the city of San Francisco is staring down a $522 million deficit for next year. Does this mean local elected officials are seriously exploring options for new revenue measures? When we asked Board President David Chiu last week if new revenue options were in the cards for next year, he replied, “that has to be one part of the equation.”

David Metz, a partner in Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, says he discovered that a majority of San Franciscans supported certain revenue-generating options after his firm was commissioned by the San Francisco Labor Council to conduct a poll. FMMM&A has conducted polls on hundreds of tax and bond measures since 1980, when the firm was established.

“There was a majority of support for a number of different options,” Metz told the Guardian. FMMM&A asked 600 “likely voters” in San Francisco in July if they would approve temporary tax increases that would be imposed for no more than three years to help prop up city services. Tossing out a few ideas for bringing in more money, this is what they found:

· 72 percent of respondents said they would support a nickel-per-drink tax on alcoholic beverages in bars, in order to bolster city health-care services. 27 percent were opposed.

· 58 percent said they would vote for an increase in tax charges to hotel / motel guests. 37 percent said nay.

· 60 percent said they’d support a temporary half-cent sales tax increase. 38 percent opposed it.

· 53 percent said they’d support a 2 percent, temporary tax on the value of cars registered in San Francisco, while 44 percent said they’d reject it.

Time for serious budget reform

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Time for serious budget reform

EDITORIAL Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, likes to say that politicians should never let a crisis go to waste — but that’s what happened in San Francisco last summer, when the mayor and the supervisors approved a budget deal that didn’t involve any real structural reform, didn’t solve any long-term problems, and didn’t even last six months.

Now there’s a new crisis, one that, if anything, is worse. Cutting almost a half-billion dollars from the city budget last year was absolutely brutal. But cutting another half-billion, which is what the controller is now talking about, seems almost inconceivable.

It’s time to quit with the patches, quit with the one-time solutions and fee hikes. And with the mayor missing in action, the supervisors simply have to take the lead here and begin working on major systemic changes that shift the way the city is financed and the way money is spent.

The biggest problem with last summer’s deal was the lack of any serious attempt at bringing in new revenue. Newsom and his advisors all said that tax hikes weren’t looking good in the polls and probably wouldn’t get voter approval, but election results around the Bay suggest otherwise: In city after city, voters approved new taxes to fund essential public services.

And Newsom never gave the revenue side of the equation a fighting chance. He never made any personal effort to lobby the three supervisors he had appointed to the board, who were all reluctant to put emergency tax measures on the ballot. He just let the idea die.

And now the city is paying the price. Everyone with any sense knew last summer that the recession wasn’t going to magically end in time to make this budget work. It was clear that property tax and sales tax revenue would drop even further — and that the only way to avoid brutal midyear cuts was to look for new sources of money. Now the mayor and the board have to slice close to $50 million to keep the red ink at bay, and next year’s deficit is pegged at 10 times that much.

The other glaring problem with the mayor’s budget approach is that it sought to cut only from the front lines. But the highest-paid workers, the folks who make way more than $100,000 a year, the management ranks that have become very well staffed in recent years, were largely untouched. And frankly, there are a lot of people in that category who don’t do much of anything that’s essential to the functioning of the city.

During the dot-com boom, when Willie Brown was mayor and the city was awash in cash, the ranks of the politically appointed managers grew dramatically. Some of those folks are still around. Newsom has added his own. And the structure of management and organization in this city has never been a model of efficiency. So if the mayor wants another round of deep cuts — 20 percent from every department — he should start with a management audit of some of the biggest departments and take a hard look at exactly what all those senior employees do all day — and whether their work might be less important than, say, nurse aides who take care of the sick elderly.

As a simple show of good faith, Newsom shouldn’t replace Nate Ballard, the press secretary, or Kevin Ryan, his criminal justice advisor. There are still four other people in the mayor’s press office, more than any mayor in modern history has ever needed. And the city already has a police chief, police commission, district attorney, and sheriff. Why the mayor needs his own criminal justice office is a mystery to us.

There are other policy issues that need to be examined. The current budget shortfall memo from the city controller notes that some departments are already over budget — the Sheriff’s Office, for example, needs an additional $2.7 million dollars. The public defender and the courts need and additional $4.9 million. Why? Well, one reason is the new police chief’s crackdown on drug sales in the Tenderloin — which is packing the jails. "We’re defiantly looking at a lot of new drug cases," Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who has had to open three new housing units to fit all the prisoners, told us. The crackdown may be good public policy (or not) — but there was never any discussion of how much it would cost. And the mayor and the chief never asked the supervisors to authorize adequate spending for it.

So as a matter of policy, the mayor apparently thinks it’s worth $7 million to arrest drug dealers — but not worth $7 million to keep public-health workers who save lives every day on the job. That’s a policy decision that was made arbitrarily — and that kind of discussion needs to happen on a dozen or more fronts.

The mayor told his department heads Nov. 19 to expect 20 percent cuts — and to prepare for as much as 30 percent. But that’s not going to happen across the board. Unless the police stop arresting people, for example, the sheriff won’t be able to cut 20 percent of his budget without letting prisoners go. The mayor won’t take the political heat for cutting that much from cops and fire. So the burden will fall on public health, Muni, human services, recreation and parks, and other smaller departments. And the level of cuts will render those agencies unable to provide basic services.

So let’s be honest: there is simply no way to close a deficit this large without new taxes. That’s just reality, and anyone who denies it is refusing to face facts. San Francisco can’t survive with basic services — like police, fire, and public health — intact on the amount of money the controller projects the city will collect in the next year.

Newsom will be guilty of destroying the entire social service infrastructure in this city if he refuses to push tax hikes. And he’ll be damaging the local economy if he does it piecemeal.

We’ve been clamoring for years for an overhaul of the city’s tax structure, and now there’s a hurricane-force fiscal storm forcing the issue. If Newsom doesn’t announce plans to hold open, public discussions and draft a new tax policy for the city (and we doubt that will happen) then the supervisors must act, now. Board President David Chiu already had a broad-based committee work on tax reform. Now the board needs to begin drafting comprehensive legislation to change the way the city collects money — with the aim of putting a measure on the ballot as early as possible next year.

The goal should be not only to bring in another $250 million (at least) in new revenue, but to shift the tax burden away from small businesses and the poor and middle class and onto the wealthy. A big first step: get rid of the flat business tax and replace it with a progressive gross receipts tax that charges the biggest companies a higher percentage. Other cities have found numerous other ways to raise money — such parcel taxes, which aren’t quite as fair as ad valorem property taxes, but at least tax property owners, who in general are a wealthier class. A properly written utility users tax would hit big companies that use (and sometimes waste) a lot of power. And of course, a tax on income earned in the city — which would cover commuters who use city services but don’t pay city taxes — is among the most progressive ways to bring in new money.

Meanwhile, let’s remember: fee hikes (for Muni rides, for use of city pools and playing fields etc.) are just hidden taxes — on the poor and middle class.

State law makes it hard to raise taxes; any measure would have to go to the voters. But a major tax-reform overhaul that doesn’t just raise a few taxes on a targeted group but makes the entire system more fair for everyone, ought to be a ballot-box winner — particularly if the mayor is willing to raise money and lead the battle to pass it.


In a Nov. 18 interview with Hank Plante, the KCBS political editor, a testy and impatient Newsom ducked specific questions about how he was going to solve the budget shortfall. After saying that he doesn’t read the newspapers (which, frankly, is either a lie or utterly shameful for a big-city mayor, and leaves him looking as ill-informed as former President Ronald Reagan) he simply said the deficit would be "a lot of work."

That’s an understatement — and Newsom needs to do more than sit in his office and whine about the media. He needs to be out in public, addressing the budget crisis — and he needs to let reporters and residents and business people and the supervisors ask questions and get straight answers.

It’s fine to say that at this point, nobody knows how to solve the problem. It’s not okay to say: trust me, I’ll get back to you on that. This is a citywide crisis, and it’s essential that the public feels involved.

This is the biggest crisis since Gavin Newsom took office. It’s time he started acting like it.

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