Jane Kim

Cyclists testify to SFPD bias as supervisors call for reforms

Sasha Cuttler
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Cyclists testify to SFPD bias as supervisors call for reforms

The cyclists of San Francisco were angry. Sup. Jane Kim was skeptical. Sup. Scott Wiener was unconvinced. Sup. Eric Mar said bikers were “pissed.” Deputy Chief of Police Mike Biel said he was too, but his anger could have just as easily been attributed to the 35 minutes he spent at the stand, acting as a whipping post for frustrations with the SFPD, as it could be to the department’s mistreatment of San Francisco cyclists.

Either way, the cyclists ruled the day.

During Thursday’s (10/3) Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee, Sup. David Campos called for a joint Board of Supervisors-Police Commission hearing regarding SFPD investigation protocol for bike accidents, but no immediate timetable has been set for the matter.

Without Police Chief Greg Suhr in attendance — his chiefly presence was required “reading to the children,” as Biel noted multiple times — Biel was left to stand solo in front of both frustrated supervisors and an incensed public.

At one point, following a particularly ambiguous response from Biel regarding accident checklists, Wiener asked bluntly, “Do you think there’s enough traffic cops in San Francisco? I don’t see bike cops, personally.”

To which Biel responded, “I’d like to see more.”

In fact, there was little defense on the part of Biel — and by extension, the Police Department — when it came to the seemingly lax (at best, malicious at worst) approach the SFPD has taken toward bike accidents in the past four years.

He even echoed Mar’s “pissed” comment, saying, “I was pissed too,” in regards to both what Mar called the “supposed investigation” of the Aug. 14 death of 24-year-old Amelie Le Moullac and the flippant attitude some in the department had taken towards cyclists in the days and weeks following. But he also stated that he didn’t think there was a negative bias in the SFPD.

The board’s decision to continue the conversation was bolstered by nearly 40 often-horrific testimonials regarding police treatment of cyclists in the City. And nearly all the stories could make the average person cring with the frustration, anger, and outrage they had the power to illicit.

Leah Shahum, executive director for the San Francisco Bike Coalition, told a story of a woman who was unable to make it to the hearing due to the injuries sustained in an April accident.

The woman, whom she didn’t identify, was biking in Golden Gate Park with her husband and son — the son was on the back of the woman’s bike — when she was hit from behind by a car, while she was stopped in the designated bike lane.

Witnesses stated that the driver was at fault. Her husband said the same thing. The police insisted on questioning the two of them more about their helmet usage — “which they were wearing,” according to Shahum — than they did about the actual events of the accident. Incidentally, adults aren’t required to wear bike helmets in California.

Robin Levitt, a Hayes Valley resident, talked about the strange “culture of blaming the victim” that has seemingly been propagated in the City, and how “in Germany, it’s immediately assumed that the vehicle is at fault, so drivers are safer.”

(And for what it’s worth, when Biel denied that same sentiment’s existence earlier with the committee, supervisors didn’t seem too convinced either. Mar even asked Biel, “Is there a bias or blame-the-victim attitude in the San Francisco Police Department?” which Biel promptly denied.)

And then there was Edward Hasbrouk, a former professional cyclist who has “never owned a motor vehicle.” He was biking home from work one evening when his progress in a Valencia Street bike line was impeded by a double-parked car in line for a valet service.

(Wiener has called for increased police enforcement of laws against double-parking. During today’s (Tues/8) Board of Supervisors meeting, he asked Mayor Ed Lee to support the effort, noting that SFPD rarely issues tickets to double-parkers despite “its impacts on traffic, Muni, cycling, and pedestrians.”)

Hasbrouk said that after a somewhat heated back-and-forth between the valet drivers, he flagged down a police officer to help him resolve the dispute, but the officer instead made Hasbrouk “carry [his] bicycle to the sidewalk.” Hasbrouk then said, “What would I have to do to get you to ticket these cars double-parked?” That comment got him arrested for felony vandalism, according to Hasbrouk. Expunging the arrest cost him nearly $3,000 and a night in jail.

But given the SFPD’s lack of pragmatism when it comes to investigating these accidents (for instance, Biel said SFPD doesn’t require a continuing education for officers assigned to traffic enforcement, despite what Shahum says are complex issues surrounding a rapidly growing population of cyclists), and it’s boorish behavior following the Le Moullac tragedy in August, it’s high time for change.

And a joint hearing could be just the place to start.

Supervisors examine anti-cyclist bias at SFPD

Michael Redmond
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The Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee held a high-profile and well-attended hearing Oct. 3 to examine how the San Francisco Police Department investigates motorist versus bicyclist collisions. Sup. Jane Kim called the hearing following revelations about shoddy police work and anti-cyclist bias in the Aug. 14 death of cyclist Amelie Le Moullac.

Dozens of cyclists told horror stories of being hit by cars and then treated badly by police, which routinely absolves motorists of responsibility even in cases where they are clearly at fault.

Deputy Police Chief Mike Biel admitted some shortcomings in their investigations and promised to do better, and he apologized for the absence of Police Chief Greg Suhr and Sgt. Richard Ernst, who showed up at an Aug. 21 memorial event for Le Moullac to make inaccurate and insensitive comments criticizing cyclists. Kim had requested testimony from both men. Sup. David Campos pledged to hold another hearing on the issue, this time at a rare joint hearing of the Board of Supervisors and Police Commission.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum urged the SFPD to, “Focus limited traffic enforcement resources on known dangerous intersections and known dangerous behaviors.” (Read Shahum’s op-ed on the hearing.)

Concerns about selective enforcement and anti-cyclist bias by the SFPD were heightened in the week before the hearing when officers started enforcement stings focused on stop sign-running cyclists riding the Wiggle, one of the city’s most popular and heavily traveled bike routes.

Among those stopped and given a written warning — one of 534 written warnings and 16 citations the SFPD reported giving out to cyclists in September — was Guardian Editor Steven T. Jones, whose Oct. 1 blog post on whether SFPD should strictly enforce laws requiring cyclist to completely stop at stop signs was the most commented SFBG.com post of the last week.

Shahum told us that the Bike Coalition has done education campaigns urging cyclists to yield to pedestrians on the Wiggle, but that none of the seven intersections on the Wiggle meet the SFPD’s own stated goals of focusing enforcement on the five most dangerous intersections in each police district. “When you look at the data on the Wiggle,” Shahum said, “it’s not a high collision area.”

SFPD targets bikes before hearing on its anti-cyclist bias

Sasha Cuttler
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SFPD targets bikes before hearing on its anti-cyclist bias

As it prepares for this Thursday’s Board of Supervisors hearing examining allegations that its officers are biased against bicyclists, the San Francisco Police Department has quietly started enforcement stings focused on cyclists riding the Wiggle, one of the city’s most popular and heavily traveled bike routes.

I was among a series of cyclists stopped by one of two motorcycle cops on Saturday night as they stood on Waller Street waiting for cyclists to make that left turn off of Steiner, the first in a series of five turns known as the Wiggle, a key bike route connecting the east and west sides of town.

The sting operation — a term that Officer R. Scott, who stopped me, denied, although that’s clearly what it was — was like shooting fish in a barrel for these guys, given that thousands of cyclists a day roll through the stop signs on the Wiggle on their way to work, school, or errands.

Since being pulled over, I’ve heard this was part of several recent enforcement actions targeting cyclists on the Wiggle, supposedly driven by neighborhood complaints. Although Scott took down my driver’s license information, entered my information into the system, and issued me a citation — lecturing me along the way, and getting an earful from me in response — he waited to the end to tell me it was only a warning (actually, it was his partner who said that he should give me a ticket rather than a warning because of how I was expressing myself, but Scott said it was too late).

I’ve asked the SFPD a series of questions about the reasons for and goals of this stepped-up enforcement against cyclists, as well as about the timing, stats, and other information. I’ll update this post if and when I get a response.

For conservative law-and-order types, it probably doesn’t seem like there’s much to discuss here. Cyclists run stop signs, that’s against the law, end of story. But if San Francisco is going to continue to encourage people to ride bikes — with all the societal benefits that brings — it needs to take a more realistic and progressive approach to this issue.   

The California Vehicle Code Section 22450(a), which I was accused of violating, doesn’t distinguish between cars and bikes when it states, “The driver of any vehicle approaching a stop sign at the entrance to, or within, an intersection shall stop at a limit line, if marked, otherwise before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection.”

Unlike the traffic laws in Idaho, which do have different standards for bikes and cars and where my approach of yielding but not stopping would have been legal, California has traffic laws that are hopelessly mired in another age, before global warming, air pollution, traffic gridlock, skyrocketing automobile fatalities, and other factors caused society to rediscover and embrace bikes as a beneficial mode of everyday transportation.

And when state or federal laws have lagged behind public opinion and behaviors, San Francisco has often been at the forefront of radical reform, as we have done on immigration, marijuana, civil liberties, rent control, marriage equality, and other issues where we have refused to go along with an unjust or unrealistic status quo.

How we get around, and the right to be treated with dignity and respect for the reasonable choices that we make, belongs on that list. The number of cyclists on the streets of San Francisco has surged in recent years, and it’s the official policy of the city to favor that mode over the automobile and to work toward the goal of having 20 percent of all trips be by bicycle by the year 2020.

That probably won’t happen without many more bike lanes — and it definitely won’t happen if bicyclists are expected to stop at every stop sign. Momentum matters on bikes and they become a far less appealing mode of transportation if we’re forced to come to a complete stop at every intersection, an unrealistic approach that impedes the smooth flow of not just cyclists, but motorists, Muni, and pedestrians as well.

Sup. Jane Kim called the hearing on how the SFPD handles cyclists — which is scheduled for this Thurday at 10am before the board’s Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee — after the Guardian helped expose some truly appalling anti-cyclist bias by the SFPD.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said that cyclists will call for better training and investigations of traffic collisions involving bikes, as well as a shift in how the SFPD polices the streets. She said her message will be, “Focus limited traffic enforcement resources on known dangerous intersections and known dangerous behaviors.”

And she said the bicyclists on the Wiggle just don’t meet those criteria. “When you look at the data on the Wiggle, it’s not a high collision area,” Shahum said, confirming reports that the SFPD has done bicycle stings on the Wiggle on at least two days in the last week.

Shahum acknowledges that there are sometimes conflicts and that bicyclists aren’t angels, noting that the SFBC has recently done events on the Wiggle encouraging bicyclists to ride carefully and yield to pedestrians and motorists when they have the right-of-way.

But she that Police Chief Greg Suhr has repeatedly called for each police district to “focus on five,” using traffic data to target the five most dangerous intersections in each district. As she said, “We’re asking the police to live up to have they’ve said, over and over.”

As for changing state law to adopt Idaho’s bike standards, Shahum said that the difficult, multi-year effort just to get a weak bike buffer law recently signed into law shows that’s probably not realistic. But here in San Francisco, there’s much more we can do to encourage safer cycling and road sharing.

SF supervisors approve policy of denying federal immigration hold requests

Sasha Cuttler
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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Chambers erupted in raucous celebration and chants of “Si se puede!” this afternoon as the board gave unanimous approval to a new city policy of refusing most detention hold requests from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has used its controversial Secure Communities program to learn when undocumented immigrants end up in local jails and to have them held for deportation.

The legislation by Sup. John Avalos is intended to build trust between law enforcement and immigrants, which can be reluctant to report crimes such a domestic violence or buglaries for fear of deportation. “People who have to deal with the devastation that Secure Communities causes, they’re the ones who brought this forward,” Avalos said.

Those advocates had to wait a week for this momentus occasion because of amendments that were introduced last week, prompted by opposition to the measure by Mayor Ed Lee and Police Chief Greg Suhr, who expressed concern that it would shield violent felons from deportation.

Those amendments were introduced by Sup. Jane Kim, who had supported the original measure without them but sought to broaden support for the measure. Her amendments make exceptions for those convicted of violent felonies, sex trafficking, child molestation, and use of a gun in commission of a felony, although they call for police to consider factors such as a dependent child before allowing ICE to take custody of an undocumented immigrant.

Avalos opposed the amendments, saying “any carve-outs deter the victims of crimes from reaching out to law enforcement.” The amendments were also criticized by Sup. David Campos, who called them “counterproductive to public safety.” But both accepted them and called the measure an important victory.

“What’s happening in this chamber is a victory for the immigrant communities of San Francisco and all communities in San Francisco,” Campos said in English before repeating it in Spanish. “Let’s emphasize the common ground that we have found.”

The ordinance is set to receive final approval next week when it’s heard on second reading. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi — who has supported the legislation since its inception and who will oversee its implementation in the jail — said his office had just received the latest amendments and is still reviewing them.

“It’s the unintended consequences that bring me here before you today,” Mirkarimi told his former colleagues at the board, saying he wants to make sure the new policy is clear enough so that even deputies working in the middle of the night would know how to handle ICE requests. “Changes in the legislation do pose some operational concerns.”

Mirkarimi had already instituted policies of resisting many federal immigration hold requests, joining with San Jose, Berkeley, and other cities who oppose the S-Comm program, and this ordinance broadened and codified those policies.

The legislation was strongly supported by the city’s Domestic Violence Consortium, representing an ironic turn of events when Mayor Lee — who waged a protracted and unsuccessful campaign to remove Sheriff Mirkarimi from office for grabbing his wife’s arm last year — threatened to veto it. Avalos also placed second in a crowded field of candidates when Lee was elected mayor in 2011.

It was Lee’s veto threat that ultimately weakened the legislation, a move opposed by activists who work on domestic violence issues. But Kim made clear that despite her amendments, she strongly opposes S-Comm and its local impacts.

“We believe the S-Comm program is deeply flawed,” Kim said, telling the story of a constituent who feared calling the police after their home had been burglarized. “No one should fear calling the police when they need help.”  

Immigration detainer limits watered down

Michael Redmond
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Sup. John Avalos’ Due Process for All ordinance, legislation barring San Francisco law enforcement agencies from honoring detainer requests issued by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the federal Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, faced obstacles at the Sept. 17 Board of Supervisors meeting.

But an amended version returned to the board on Sept. 24, where it was expected to be approved (after Guardian press time for this issue, so check out the SFBG.com Politics blog to see what happened).

The legislation initially had enough support for a veto-proof supermajority, but opposition has surfaced to prevent the legislation from winning approval as written, most notably from Police Chief Greg Suhr and Mayor Ed Lee, who threatened to veto the legislation.

At issue was whether to amend the legislation by including “carve-outs” — exceptions requiring law enforcement to honor ICE requests in cases where offenders are suspected of serious violent crimes, child molestation or human trafficking. Sup. Jane Kim offered amendments giving the Sheriff’s Department discretion in such cases, which she characterized as “thoughtful and limited,” but which were opposed by Avalos and Sup. David Campos.

In San Francisco, ICE detainer requests issued under S-Comm have resulted in at least 784 deportations since 2010. Avalos’ legislation seeks to extend due process to all San Franciscans by making it illegal for local law enforcement to comply with such requests.

–Reed Nelson

Due Process For All must wait another week

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Sup. John Avalos’ Due Process for All ordinance, legislation barring San Francisco law enforcement agencies from honoring detainer requests issued by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the federal Secure Communities (S-Comm) program, faced obstacles at the Sept. 17 Board of Supervisors meeting and was ultimately continued to the following week.

The legislation initially had enough support for a veto-proof supermajority, but opposition has surfaced to prevent the legislation from winning approval as written.

In a recent editorial, Police Chief Greg Suhr called for it to be scaled back. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association came out against it and Mayor Ed Lee threatened to veto the legislation in its current form.

At issue was whether to amend the legislation by including “carve-outs” — exceptions requiring law enforcement to honor ICE requests in cases where offenders are suspected of serious violent crimes, child molestation or human trafficking.

District 6 Sup. Jane Kim, an initial supporter of Avalos’ Due Process for All Ordinance, proposed an amendment that would grant the Sheriff discretion to honor ICE detainer requests in cases where the offender had been convicted of one of the aforementioned crimes in the past seven years.

Kim characterized her amendment as “thoughtful and limited,” but the proposal met with resistance from Avalos and Sup. David Campos. “I am afraid that in the process of trying to do the right thing, we’re going to end up with unintended consequences,” Campos said.

Board President David Chiu indicated that he agreed with including carve-outs in narrow circumstances.

Under S-Comm, if an arrestee shows up in a shared database as an undocumented immigrant, ICE can ask the arresting local law enforcement agency to detain the person in question, even after they would be otherwise eligible for release. Detainer requests, which police have no legal obligation to comply with, are routinely issued without warrants or a requirement to show probable cause.

Avalos’ legislation seeks to extend due process to all San Franciscans by making it illegal for local law enforcement to comply with such requests. In San Francisco, ICE detainer requests issued under S-Comm have resulted in at least 784 deportations since 2010.

The Board Chamber at City Hall was filled to capacity with supporters of Avalos’ legislation before the hearing even began. The line to get into the main chamber stretched all the way down the hallway to the first overflow room, which had standing room only just five minutes after the meeting began. When Avalos initially stood to speak, the chamber resonated with chants of “Si se puede! Si se puede!”

 

Cinthya Muñoz, Immigrant Rights Organizer with Causa Justa, remained hopeful despite the setbacks. “We’re excited that we were able to push back on the amendments being proposed because of how they would impact the vast majority of our communities,” she said. “And we’re still hopeful that we’ll be able to get our Due Process for All policy passed next week.”

Up until recently, Lee lacked veto power due to the ordinance’s supermajority approval. But when Avalos lost his supermajority support due to what he called “political pressure,” Lee regained that power. “Whether it’s relationships directly with the police chief, the mayor, the Police Officers Association,” Avalos told the Guardian, “[the pressure] kind of withered eight sponsor support for not having carve-outs.”

Not to be deterred, however, are those groups and individuals fighting for Due Process for All. Following the continuation announcement, the throngs of supporters filed out of the main chamber and down into the lobby of City Hall, where they gathered and prepared for another hearing, same time, same place.

“It’s actually really great because I think it gives us a bigger chance for the supervisors to hear from community members,” Muñoz said. “That what community wants is Due Process for All, everybody to be treated equally and to not make a differentiation between who’s worth it in our communities.”

Expand protections for small businesses

Sasha Cuttler
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EDITORIAL Corporations and chain stores are crafty, and they can always find creative ways to get around whatever barriers that cities and counties erect to protect their local small businesses. And such barriers are important because most large corporations enjoy economies of scale, the ability to absorb sustained losses while gaining market share, and other unfair competitive advantages.

San Francisco voters and legislators have approved and expanded so-called formula retail legislative protections over the last decade, requiring stores with 11 or more locations that want to open in neighborhood commercial districts to obtain a conditional use permit, allowing the public to weigh in and city officials to reject disfavored projects.

But as we observed in last month’s saga involving chain store men’s clothier Jack Spade’s planned move into the old Adobe Bookstore space on 16th Street near Valencia, it’s still too easy for deep-pocketed corporations to make stealthy inroads into some of San Francisco’s most beloved and sensitive commercial districts.

First, Jack Spade disguised its corporate connections in pulling a building permit, then it won over the zoning administrator by claiming only 10 stores (despite the fact that it’s a national chain owned by Fifth & Pacific, aka Liz Claiborne, which also has a string of Kate Spade women’s clothing stores), and then, even when activists and small businesses won the argument and a 3-2 vote by the Board of Appeals on Aug. 21, that wasn’t the supermajority needed to overturn the flawed decision.

As they say in the neighborhood: That shit ain’t right.

Clearly, something needs to change because Jack Spade isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, corporate-owned chain store that wants to move into the Mission and other gentrifying commercial districts in the city, including Western SoMa (where development forces have been unleashed by the city’s approval of its local area plan earlier this year), Hayes Valley, Polk Gulch, and the Divisidero corridor.

And when one deep-pocketed chain store moves in — a corporation that is willing to invest early in an up-and-coming neighborhood — it creates a strong upward pressure on commercial rents that forces out small businesses, nonprofits, and community-based organizations. And then residential rents follow suit.

Only governmental and political will can break this pattern, and it’s a pattern that must be broken if San Francisco is going to retain its economic vitality. Study after study shows that small businesses circulate their revenues within the community instead of siphoning them off to Wall Street and the corporate headquarters, and that helps the overall local economy.

Flawed ideas about consumer choice and the supposed wisdom of the supposedly free market shouldn’t distract San Francisco and other cities from focusing their economic development efforts on local small businesses, a sympathetic symbol that gets disingenuously trotted out in the rhetoric of Mayor Ed Lee and his allies even as he stacks the Small Business Commission with bankers and right-wing ideologues.

Now, with the Board of Supervisors back from its summer recess, is the time to redouble our efforts to resist corporate dominance. That should include support for Sup. Eric Mar’s legislation to change the metrics for what’s considered “formula retail,” support for Sup. London Breed’s efforts to expand protections in Hayes Valley and Sup. Jane Kim’s similar efforts along Market Street, and consideration of changing the vote threshold for the Board of Appeals and giving neighborhoods more tools to resist stores like Jack Spade.

Nothing less than the soul and face of San Francisco is at stake, and it’s up to all of us to fight for it and not be fooled by self-serving and simplistic “jobs” rhetoric. We need to call a Spade a Spade, and a corporation a corporation, and defend what makes San Francisco special: real, local people serving real, local people, not the interests of Wall Street.

 

 

Kim calls for hearing on how SFPD investigates cyclist fatalities UPDATED

Sasha Cuttler
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Kim calls for hearing on how SFPD investigates cyclist fatalities UPDATED

UPDATED In the wake of revelations of shoddy and insensitive police work related to the Aug. 14 death of 24-year-old bicyclist Amelie Le Moullac, who was run over by a commercial truck driver who turned right across her path as she rode in a bike lane on Folsom Street at 6th Street, Sup. Jane Kim today called for a hearing on how the SFPD investigates cyclist fatalities.

The issue has lit up the Bay Guardian website with hundreds of reader comments after we wrote a series of blog posts and our “Anti-cyclist bias must stop” editorial, including our revelation that the SFPD failed to seek surveillance video of the crash even as its Sgt. Richard Ernst showed up at an Aug. 21 memorial to Le Moullac to denigrate cyclists and make unfounded statements about the fatal collision.

Police Chief Greg Suhr later apologized for Ernst’s behavior and the flawed investigation and said that surveillance video unearthed by cycling activists led to the conclusion by a police investigation that the driver who killed Le Moullac was at fault, according to Bay City News and SF Appeal, which also reported on Kim’s call for a hearing.

As we reported, motorists are rarely cited in collisions with cyclists or pedestrians, even when there’s a fatality involved and the motorist didn’t have the right-of-way, which appears to the case in Le Moullac’s death. The District Attorney’s Office, which did not immediately return a call from the Guardian, is considering whether to bring criminal charges in the case.

UPDATE: We just heard from DA’s Office spokesperson Stephanie Ong Stillman, who said, “The San Francisco Police Department has delivered a preliminary investigative package and we are in the process of reviewing it to determine what additional investigation is necessary.”

UPDATE 9/5 5pm: San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum says she welcomes Kim’s hearings, which are long overdue. “We’re really thankful to Jane for bringing this forward,” Shahum told the Guardian, saying she hopes the hearing results in changes to how the SFPD investigates cyclist fatalilties. “We want to make sure there is ongoing accountability.”

She also said the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has indicated to SFBC that it is working on near-term and long-term improvements on both Folsom and Howard streets, where cyclists in bike lanes must regularly contend to drivers cutting them off. The city does seem committed to a significant pilot of better bikeways there.”

Meanwhile, as the San Francisco Examiner reported today, Le Moullac’s family has filed a civil lawsuit against the driver who killed her, Gilberto Oriheaula Alcantar, as well as the company that he was driving for, Daylight Foods Inc., alleging that he was negligent in driving too fast and failing to pulled into the bike lane before making a right turn from Folsom onto 6th Street.

Still secret

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Still secret

news@sfbg.com
A high-profile local civil rights ordinance passed last year to shine light on the San Francisco Police Department’s joint activities with the FBI has been undermined by the SFPD’s refusal to disclose its surveillance activities. This comes at a time when the public is learning more than ever about the federal government’s intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding US citizens.

In May 2012, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the Safe San Francisco Civil Rights Ordinance, which Mayor Ed Lee signed in a photo-op ceremony with Police Chief Greg Suhr and the activists who supported it. They claimed the board’s passage of the ordinance ushered in a new era of transparency over the SFPD’s previously secretive work with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“The ordinance basically requires three things,” Nasrina Bargzie, a civil rights attorney at the Asian Law Caucus who worked on the measure, told the Bay Guardian. “The first part requires that the Police Department work with the JTTF has to follow the California constitutional rights of privacy, so they’re not following the lax standards of the [US] Department of Justice. The second part is that they can no longer enter into any secret agreements with the FBI; it has to go before the Police Commission in a public setting. The final part of the ordinance exists to make sure the rules are being followed, so there is a requirement for a yearly report.”

At the time of its passage, activists told the Guardian that the ordinance was only as strong as the SFPD’s willingness to disclose its activities (see “Mayor Lee signs watered-down limits on SFPD spying,” 5/9/12). But the SFPD’s refusal to disclose even minimal, basic information calls into question the ordinance’s value.

After the release of multiple reports earlier this year that activists called inadequate, Suhr is now maintaining silence regarding the JTTF, while claiming the department is in full compliance with the ordinance. According to Bargzie, Suhr told her the FBI is barring him from disclosing the requested information.

Following multiple efforts by the Guardian to get a comment out of SFPD about the ordinance and whether the department was indeed taking a subservient role to the FBI, SFPD Sgt. Dennis Toomer told us, “We’re not talking about that at all.”

LACK OF RESPONSE

Activists have sparred with Chief Suhr over implementation of the ordinance and its required annual report since at least the beginning of 2013.

Deputy Chief John Loftus presented the first report to the Police Commission on Jan. 23, which claimed the SFPD was in “full compliance” with the ordinance without providing any details. Activists and the public quickly demanded a real response.

“The commission presented this short oral report, which was a little short of two minutes long,” Bargzie told us. “There was no data that we were not already aware of. It was just basic statements claiming that they were complying with the ordinance.”

Suhr apologized for the omissions while stating his department was still in compliance with the ordinance’s guidelines, pledging to be more forthcoming. At this time, SFPD Sgt. Michael Andraychak told the Guardian: “The Chief’s Office is in the process of scheduling meetings with Nasrina Bargzie [of the Asian Law Caucus] to develop a report with more detail so those concerned and the public can be as informed as possible. Chief Suhr is committed to remain in compliance with the ordinance.”

The Coalition for Safe San Francisco, an activist group consisting of Muslim Legal Fund of America, Asian Law Caucus, and dozens of other groups, met with Suhr to discuss setting up a template for the reports.

Suhr then released a second report, which contained more relevant information, stating that SFPD officers did not act as informants in 2012 and three full-time SFPD officers were assigned to the JTTF.

But the report still omitted key oversight information, such as whether any prosecutions resulted from JTTF and SFPD investigations, which would allow the Muslim Legal Fund of America and other groups to determine who the SFPD is arresting and why.

Last year, Suhr told a San Francisco Examiner reporter that his officers followed up on 2,000 tips regarding counterterrorism activities. However, this information curiously did not make it into the official report.

“We contacted the chief to let him know we were not okay with this. We had another meeting with him and he said he’d think about it and get back to us and now he is claiming he cannot honor a basic component of the ordinance,” Bargzie told us. “He asserts in writing this is because the FBI will not let him share the basic information.”

WEAKENED LEGISLATION

The weak efforts behind the implementation of the SSFCRO date back to Mayor Lee’s veto of a stronger ordinance in April 2012, which would have codified privacy protections and given the Police Commission more power to stop FBI-SFPD activities that did not comply with Department General Order (DGO) 8.10, the 1990 policy aimed at protecting First Amendment activities. After Lee’s veto, the Board of Supervisors passed a weaker version. Both were sponsored by Sup. Jane Kim.

John Crew, a former police practices expert with the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, raised concerns to the Guardian about the weakened legislation. “It is a step in the right direction, there’s no doubt it’s progress,” Crew told us at the time. “But whether it’s real progress depends on the implementation. Ultimately, it will come down to political will at the Police Commission to enforce privacy protections.”

Much of the ordinance’s failure stems from the apparent lack of real intent to disclose what the activists sought. Critics painted the SSFCRO signing ceremony as a hollow symbolic act, a way for Mayor Lee and Chief Suhr to publicly promote civil rights and progressive ideals with an ordinance they purposefully weakened.

“My sense is that [the SFPD] is not taking this seriously,” Bargzie told us. “I think they probably believe that they are providing as much information as the FBI will let them and Chief Suhr thinks it’s fine that the FBI can tell him to share what they tell him to.”

The lack of transparency regarding the JTTF’s work with the SFPD requires the public to trust the federal government to safeguard civil liberties. But in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leak exposing the expansive surveillance system by the National Security Agency and the SFPD’s notorious history of illegal surveillance and racial profiling, the public has little reason to trust the authorities.

HISTORY OF SPYING
The passage of the SSFCRO is the latest effort to counter a long history of racial profiling, spying on radical political groups, and other constitutional violations, episodes that have been followed by progressive reforms in San Francisco.
Prior to the passage of DGO 8.10 in 1990, the SFPD notoriously participated in the surveillance of non-criminal, pacifist political organizations. During the 1984 Democratic National Convention, the SFPD carried out surveillance on law-abiding organizations and, throughout the 1980s, it created files on civil, labor, and special interest groups in the Bay Area, revelations that led to the adoption of DGO 8.10.
But even after that, disclosures surfaced showing that the SFPD was blatantly violating its own rules. They included then-Police Chief Tony Ribera admitting that files on non-criminal political activity were not destroyed (as required by the ’90s reforms), the selling of confidential intelligence material to foreign governments and private entities, and the actions of SFPD Intelligence Officer Tom Gerad, who informed on local political groups for the FBI.
In the subsequent years following the Gerad scandal, San Francisco sought to strengthen DGO 8.10, requiring more transparency and oversight. But this progress was undercut in 2007 when the SFPD secretly signed a secret JTTF Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) undermining DGO 8.10.
San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission held hearings in which the community voiced concerns over illegal police and federal surveillance. In response, the SFPD said they were unable to discuss arrangements with the JTTF without the permission of the FBI.
In 2011, the previously secret MOU was unearthed by the ACLU (see “Spies in blue,” 4/26/11), prompting Suhr to issue Bureau Order #2011-07, which reinforced that SFPD personnel were under the jurisdiction of local and state privacy protections and did not spy on law-abiding groups. SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza said the order reversed the language of the 2007 memo.
Part of Suhr’s amendment to SFPD policy at the time included the necessity of a predicate offense in all SFPD investigations. Thus, the SFPD could not investigate or spy on those who were not suspected of violating the California Penal Code or federal law.
Activists wanted those protections enshrined in city law, which resulted in last’s vetoed ordinance and passage of the watered down Safe San Francisco Civil Rights Ordinance in 2012, which activists now say they feel duped by.
“We have been extremely disappointed at the lack of information that has been included in the reports,” Summer K. Hararah, Regional Director for the Greater San Francisco Area Muslim Legal Fund of America told us. “If the SFPD is going to violate rights of Arab-Americans, the police chief has a responsibility to stand up to the FBI.”

POST 9/11 WORLD
Lax federal guidelines for counterterrorism have been building since the Bush Administration began implementing emergency measures after 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. In San Francisco’s case, the FBI has subjected local law enforcement to these rules.
Since 9/11, both the ACLU of Northern California and the Human Rights Commission have publicized cases of racial profiling and surveillance of pacifist, non-criminal Muslim and Middle-Eastern groups in San Francisco. A 2007 FBI memorandum illustrated a prominent instance of this profiling in which FBI agents attended Ramadan Iftar dinners in San Francisco purportedly as part of the FBI’s mosque outreach program. Under this guise, the agents collected data on certain attendants, including names, the content of conversations, and other information covered by the First Amendment. According to the FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the JTTF is permitted to conduct surveillance of this nature, by identifying “locations of concentrated ethnic communities in the Field Office’s domain, if these locations will reasonably aid in the analysis of the potential threats and vulnerabilities, and, overall assist domain awareness for the purpose of performing intelligence analysis.” These policies directly contradict SSFCO, DGO 8.10, and the California Constitution’s privacy protections. In Portland, Ore., the local government successfully fought this issue by bifurcating local law enforcement from the JTTF after the public and the ACLU raised concerns over similar constitutional violations and racial profiling. This Portland model is now a precedent for activist groups nationwide, seeking to end the lack of oversight permeating their local police departments. “Portland has been a great model,” Hararah told us. “When the FBI began to interview Muslim men in mass after 9/11, Portland was one of the few that said ‘absolutely not.'” But in San Francisco, Lee (whose office also didn’t respond to our request for comment) and Suhr’s symbolic promotion of civil rights has diminished into a case of them basically bullshitting the public. “Civil rights is not a symbolic issue,” Hararah told us. “The mayor backed this legislation and we want to see that the commitment is put forth with global insurance. The first step is having info about what the JTTF is doing to be sure it abides by human rights protections and is appropriate.”

Immigrants vulnerable to domestic violence

Michael Redmond
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0

In San Francisco Sup. John Avalos’ District 11, half of all residents were born outside the U.S. In Sup. Jane Kim’s District 6, more than a third of residents are foreign-born, and almost half speak a language other than English.

Given the sizable immigrant population in San Francisco, it may not come as a surprise that Secure Communities (S-Comm), a federal immigration program administered by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is highly unpopular. What might not be so obvious is how dramatically S-Comm can impact the lives of foreign-born women who are survivors of domestic violence.

The reason for this is simple. “If you are a victim or a survivor of domestic violence and you call the police, you do not want to end up deported,” Beverly Upton of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium explained at a July 23 rally, where advocates from organizations such as Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Causa Justa, the Filipino Community Center, and others stood and held banners demonstrating opposition to S-Comm. “We want it to be safer to call the police, not less safe.”

A member of Mujeres Unidas y Activas who introduced herself as Lourdes and spoke through a translator delivered a personal account of feeling fearful of police as well as an abusive partner. “Many times, abusers tell us not to call the police, because the police will not believe us. They say the police will probably deport us.”

The domestic violence and immigrant community advocates were there to champion Avalos’ Due Process for All Ordinance, which is being introduced at today’s Board meeting and is co-sponsored by seven other supervisors, essentially guaranteeing its passage. Avalos himself didn’t speak, and Sups. David Campos and Board President David Chiu, co-sponsors of the legislation, sent female staff members to make statements on their behalf as part of the all-female roster of speakers.

The legislation prohibits law enforcement officials from detaining individuals solely in response to immigration detainer requests issued by immigration authorities under S-Comm. As things stand, “the request has been honored in many cases,” Avalos explained in comments to the Guardian, even though California Attorney General Kamala Harris has affirmed that local law enforcement agencies are not obligated to comply with ICE detainers because they are mere “requests” and not legally binding. Since 2010, according to data provided be Avalos’ office, 784 San Franciscans have been deported after being turned over to federal authorities due to ICE detainers.

Sup. Jane Kim called S-Comm “a giant step backward when it comes to equality and fairness,” and added that S-Comm “makes our neighborhoods less safe.”

Legal Counsel Freya Horne read a statement on behalf of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, stating that the sheriff has reduced the number of ICE detainers leading to deportations, and was supportive of Avalos’ legislation. She added that Mirkarimi had made it a policy to honor immigration detainer requests only in cases of criminal convictions of serious or violent felonies.

Avalos said he was compelled to move the legislation forward because “I’ve talked to so many people whose families have been separated, and have been devastated,” due to deportations under S-Comm. “We want to make sure we’re maintaining a level of due process,” he added, since the detainer requests are routinely issued without warrants or a requirement to show probable cause.

Chiu: centrist compromiser, effective legislator, or both

Michael Redmond
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0
Chiu: centrist compromiser, effective legislator, or both

At the start of this year, when I wrote a Guardian cover story profile of Sup. Scott Wiener (which SF Weekly and San Francisco Magazine followed shortly thereafter with their own long Wiener profiles), he seemed like the one to watch on the Board of Supervisors, even though I noted at the time that Board President David Chiu was actually the more prolific legislator.

Now, it’s starting to seem like maybe we all focused on the wrong guy, because it is Chiu and his bustling office of top aides that have done most of the heavy legislative lifting this year, finding compromise solutions to some of the most vexing issues facing the city (ironically, even cleaning up some of Wiener’s messes).

The latest example is Wiener’s CEQA reform legislation, which the board unanimously approved on July 23, a kumbaya moment that belies the opposition and acrimony that accompanied its introduction.

That effort comes on the heels of Chiu’s office solving another big, ugly, seemingly intractable fight: the condominium lottery bypass legislation sponsored by Wiener and Sup. Mark Farrell. To solve that one in the face of real estate industry intransigence, Chiu showed a willingness to play hardball, winning over swing vote Sup. Norman Yee to get six votes using some hostile amendments.

In the end, Chiu won enough support to override a possible veto by the waffling Mayor Ed Lee, who has always echoed Chiu’s rhetoric on seeking compromise and consensus and “getting things done,” but who lacks the political skills and willingness to really engage with all sides. For example, it was Chiu — along with Sups. Farrell and David Campos — who spent months forging a true compromise on the hospital projects proposed by California Pacific Medical Center, replacing the truly awful CPMC proposal that Lee readily accepted.

“It’s been a very long year,” Chiu told the Guardian. “It’s been important for me to not just to seek common ground, but legislative solutions that reflect our shared San Francisco values.”

Next, Chiu will wade into another thorny legislative thicket by introducing legislation that will regulate the operations of Airbnb, the online housing rental corporation with a problematic business model.

After posting the preceding analysis of Chiu on the SFBG.com Politics blog on July 23, we heard lots of back channel concerns and complaints from progressive San Franciscans (and even some from moderates and conservatives who consider Chiu a raving socialist for helping suspend the condo lottery).

Nobody really wanted to speak on the record against Chiu, which is understandable given the powerful and pivotal position that he’s carved out for himself as a swing vote between the two ideological poles and on the Land Use Committee, whose makeup he personally created to enhance that role.

The main issue seems to be that Chiu allows both progressive and anti-progressive legislation to be watered down until it is palatable to both sides, empowering the moderates over the progressives. That’s a legitimate point. It’s certainly true that Chiu’s worldview is generally more centrist than that of the Guardian and its progressive community, and we’ve leveled that criticism at Chiu many times over the years.

The fact that he ends up in a deciding role on controversial legislation is clearly a role that Chiu has carved out from himself, no doubt about it. And that’s certainly why he played the pivotal role that he has this year. But when he uses that role to empower and support tenant groups, as he did on the condo lottery bypass measure, I think that’s something worth noting and praising.

On the CEQA reform legislation, it’s also a valid criticism of Chiu to note that Sup. Jane Kim had five votes for her legislation and that it was only Chiu who stood in the way of its passage (whether Mayor Ed Lee would have vetoed it, necessitating the need for two more votes, is another question).

In the end, Chiu can be seen as an effective legislator, a centrist compromiser, or both. Perspective is everything in politics.

Is the Guardian empowering Chiu or just recognizing his power?

Sasha Cuttler
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67
Is the Guardian empowering Chiu or just recognizing his power?

I’ve been hearing lots of back channel complaints and concerns from progressive San Franciscans since last week’s blog post on Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and the role he’s played forging compromises on controversial pieces of legislation this year.

Some have even suggested that the Guardian has gone centrist under my freshly minted editorship, which I actually find kinda funny given my history, perspective, and the righteously anti-corporate and progressive perspective stories that I’ve written and edited in recent weeks. I can honestly tell you that I call ‘em like I see ‘em, now as always, even if that doesn’t always hew to the progressive orthodoxy of some.

Nobody really wants to speak on the record against Chiu, which is understandable given the powerful and pivotal position that he’s carved out for himself as a swing vote between the two ideological poles and on the Land Use Committee, whose makeup he personally created to enhance that role.

So for now, let me just air some of the criticisms and offer some responses and perspective. The main issue seems to be that Chiu allows both progressive and anti-progressive legislation to be watered down until it is palatable to both sides, empowering the moderates over the progressives.

That’s a legitimate point, it’s certainly true that Chiu’s worldview is generally more centrist than that of the Guardian and its progressive community, and we’ve leveled that criticism at Chiu many times over the years. The fact that he ends up in a deciding role on controversial legislation is clearly a role that Chiu has carved out from himself, no doubt about it. And that’s certainly why he played the pivotal role that he has this year.

But when he uses that role to empower and support tenant groups, as he did on the condo lottery bypass measure, I think that’s something worth noting and praising, particularly in my quick little blog post that seems to have grown in perceived significance beyond what I may have intended.   

Many of the criticisms involved the CEQA reform legislation that was unanimously approved by the board last week after progressives opposed its initial iteration by Sup. Scott Wiener.

As some have suggested, Sup. Jane Kim does deserve tremendous credit for resisting the initial legislation and working with activists on an alternative, and I included that recognition in my initial story on the legislation. And it’s valid criticism of Chiu to note that Kim had five votes for her legislation and that it was only Chiu who stood in the way of its passage (whether Mayor Ed Lee would have vetoed it, necessitating the need for two more votes, is another question).

But I quoted Eric Brooks, an activist who spent months working on the compromise, as saying the CEQA legislation ultimately does make it easier to oppose bad projects. And when it was approved unanimously by the board, I figured it was safe to place that piece of legislation on the list of Chiu legislative accomplishments for the year.

We at the Guardian will make mistakes, as we always have from time to time. But I’m going to try to err on the side of open, transparent public debates — while supporting a rejuvenation of the city’s progressive movement, so that it is able to start playing offense and protecting this city’s diversity, vitality, and progressive values.

And if you have any criticisms or advice for the Guardian, please come to our forum on Wednesday or offer them to me directly. Thanks for reading.

After Oscar, after Trayvon…

Michael Redmond
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49

rebecca@sfbg.com

Even before Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson picked up the phone on Feb. 27, 2012, he wasn’t having an easy day. His nephew, Oscar Grant, would have celebrated his 26th birthday on that date if he had not been killed by a gunshot wound on Jan. 1, 2009.

Grant was shot by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle while lying face down on a train platform, an incident that was caught on film, prompted riots in Oakland, drew international scrutiny, and became the subject of the award-winning film Fruitvale Station by Oakland filmmaker Ryan Coogler.

In the years since Grant’s death, Johnson and his wife, Beatrice X, founded the Oscar Grant Foundation to develop a support network for families who’ve lost loved ones due to police violence. It was his involvement in this work that led Johnson to be contacted that day, and informed that a 17-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin had been gunned down in Florida one day earlier.

It wasn’t a police shooting but nevertheless, “We knew at this point that we had to go to Florida,” Johnson recalled. “What we’ve decided is that whenever a family experienced that, we would definitely try and get to them.”

Fast forward to July 13, almost exactly three years after violent protests erupted in Oakland following the news that Mehserle, who was charged with second degree murder, had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter instead. A new wave of demonstrations flared up as word spread that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed Martin, had been acquitted.

“We weren’t surprised,” Johnson, who returned to Florida last month to observe the jury selection process for Zimmerman’s trial, told the Guardian. “But it was still painful.”

The verdict in this high-profile case has brought discussions about racial profiling and unequal treatment in the criminal justice system to the forefront. Even President Barack Obama touched on the theme in comments to White House reporters on July 19, saying, “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

At the national level, new findings on “implicit bias” — unconscious prejudices that research in psychology has shown can persist in individuals (including poorly trained police officers), even if they consciously reject racial stereotypes — has started to inform policy debates around racial profiling.

“Policy needs to recognize that implicit bias exists,” Maya Wiley, founder and president of the New York City-based Center for Social Inclusion, told us. “Rep. John Conyers introduced a bill last year to prohibit racial profiling in law enforcement. That bill, if made law, would collect data on stops by race, as well as provide resources for training. That is a step in the right direction.”

But things get complicated, Wiley says, because “research shows that people of color, women, the elderly, may all experience discrimination as a result of implicit bias. There is no remedy in the law for this. … I think what is important now is to fight Stand Your Ground Laws which empower people to act on their implicit biases.”

At a July 16 rally held on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, Rev. Malcolm Byrd, pastor of San Francisco’s First A.M.E. Zion Church, illustrated his point about racial profiling by donning a hoodie and sneakers at the rally.

“I wanted to come looking suspicious,” he explained. “I wanted to give you an image that America has of young black men. I look suspicious. This is my country. I love my country. Yet, I look suspicious.”

Last year, Mayor Ed Lee’s proposal to introduce a stop-and-frisk policy, which would have allowed police officers to randomly stop individuals who appeared to be suspicious in an effort to get weapons off the streets, was abandoned in the face of widespread community concern.

Officers who undergo training at the San Francisco Police Department Academy must complete 52 hours of “cultural diversity” training, according to SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Dennis Toomer, which includes a mandatory four-hour intensive geared toward preventing racial profiling. State law mandates just 16 hours for such training for law enforcement agencies, Toomer told us.

But despite supplemental police training and the efforts of grassroots organizations that carefully monitor police activity, the Bay Area has witnessed a number of fatal shootings at the hands of police since Grant’s death, and many draw a link between these cases and the broader issue of racial profiling.

When asked about the outreach efforts of the Oscar Grant Foundation, Johnson began to rattle off a long list of names — mostly young black men, from places ranging from Oakland to Vallejo to Stockton to San Leandro — who were killed by police, and whose families his organization has reached out to.

They have also been in touch with several families in New York City who lost loved ones in similar situations, Johnson said. In many cases, the individuals were killed despite being unarmed, and officers later explained their actions by saying they’d mistakenly believed the shooting victims had firearms.

After several years of taking an up-close look at the investigative and legal proceedings that unfold in the aftermath of officer-involved shootings, Johnson has reached the conclusion that from case to case, “The playbook is pretty much the same. The officer first alleges he felt threatened — it’s all about the thought process of the officer. It’s always found to be justifiable because the officer feared for his life.”

One long-term goal of the Oscar Grant Foundation is to build up a coalition that can mount a meaningful challenge to the California Peace Officers Bill of Rights, a law enacted some 30 years ago that affords special protections for law enforcement officers facing misconduct charges. Johnson and others are critical of provisions such as officers’ rights to keep confidential information out of their personnel files, which can prevent significant information from being disclosed during a criminal trial. Meanwhile, others throughout the Bay Area seem primed to push for change in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict. “On Sunday, every black church in the nation was talking about what? Trayvon Martin, and what we need to do,” Andrea Shorter, a member of the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women, said during the July 16 rally. “Two weeks ago, and we were all standing here as San Franciscans to rejoice … because we knew that LGBT people could be treated as first class citizens. The job is not done.” San Francisco NAACP President Rev. Amos Brown, who organized the rally, vowed that his organization “will push for a civil suit to bring this Zimmerman gentlemen to justice.” The national NAACP is petitioning U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to open a civil rights case against Zimmerman. Sups. London Breed, Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, and David Campos also delivered speeches at the rally. “For the first time in my life, after growing up and going to funeral after funeral after funeral after funeral, of all boys and black men throughout my life, I see people in this audience who are not African American, who are just as hurt as I am, who are just as sick of this as I am,” Breed said. “And we are all in this together. We have got to work together if we want to change it.”

Due Process for All ordinance may offer better protection for domestic violence victims

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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7

In San Francisco Sup. John Avalos’ District 11, half of all residents were born outside the U.S. In Sup. Jane Kim’s District 6, more than a third of residents are foreign-born, and almost half speak a language other than English.

Given the sizable immigrant population in San Francisco, it may not come as a surprise that Secure Communities (S-Comm), a federal immigration program administered by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is highly unpopular. What might not be so obvious is how dramatically S-Comm can impact the lives of foreign-born women who are survivors of domestic violence.

The reason for this is simple. “If you are a victim or a survivor of domestic violence and you call the police, you do not want to end up deported,” Beverly Upton of the San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium explained at a rally this afternoon, where advocates from organizations such as Mujeres Unidas Activas, Causa Justa, the Filipino Community Center and others stood and held banners demonstrating opposition to S-Comm. “We want it to be safer to call the police, not less safe.”

A member of Mujeres Unidas y Activas who introduced herself as Lourdes and spoke through a translator delivered a personal account of feeling fearful of police as well as an abusive partner. “Many times, abusers tell us not to call the police, because the police will not believe us. They say the police will probably deport us.”

The domestic violence and immigrant community advocates were there to champion Avalos’ Due Process for All Ordinance, which is being introduced at today’s Board meeting and is co-sponsored by seven other supervisors, essentially guaranteeing its passage. Avalos himself didn’t speak, and Sups. David Campos and Board President David Chiu, who were co-sponsors of the legislation, sent female staff members to make statements on their behalf as part of the all-female roster of speakers.

The legislation prohibits law enforcement officials from detaining individuals solely in response to immigration detainer requests issued by immigration authorities under S-Comm. As things stand, “the request has been honored in many cases,” Avalos explained in comments to the Guardian, even though California Attorney General Kamala Harris has affirmed that local law enforcement agencies are not obligated to comply with ICE detainers because they are mere “requests” and not legally binding. Since 2010, according to data provided be Avalos’ office, 784 San Franciscans have been deported after being turned over to federal authorities due to ICE detainers.

Sup. Jane Kim called S-Comm “a giant step backward when it comes to equality and fairness,” and added that S-Comm “makes our neighborhoods less safe.” 

Legal Counsel Freya Horne read a statement on behalf of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, stating that the sheriff has reduced the number of ICE detainers leading to deportations, and was supportive of Avalos’ legislation. She added that Mirkarimi had made it a policy to honor immigration detainer requests only in cases of criminal convictions of serious or violent felonies.

Avalos said he was compelled to move the legislation forward because “I’ve talked to so many people whose families have been separated, and have been devastated,” due to deportations under S-Comm. “We want to make sure we’re maintaining a level of due process,” he added, since the detainer requests are routinely issued without warrants or a requirement to show probable cause.

Call to action issued at San Francisco vigil for Trayvon Martin

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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102

A group of African American community leaders gathered outside San Francisco City Hall July 16 for a rally and candlelight vigil in memory of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black youth who was gunned down in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman. Protests have flared up throughout the nation since Zimmerman was acquitted on a second-degree murder charge this past weekend, spurring renewed dialogue about race.

Rev. Amos Brown, president of the San Francisco NAACP, introduced a host of speakers including pastors from black churches, the San Francisco Interfaith Council, members of the Bayview Hunters Point Community, and others. While speakers touched on a variety of topics including San Francisco’s dwindling black population and the economic pressures facing those unable to find work in an increasingly unaffordable city, much of the discussion revolved around a need to mount a significant challenge against racial profiling and to seek a different outcome in Zimmerman’s case.

The NAACP “will use all of our legal and moral resources at the national level, and will push for a civil suit to bring this Zimmerman gentlemen to justice,” said Brown. The national NAACP has created a petition urging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to open a civil rights case against Zimmerman.

Sups. London Breed, Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, and David Campos also delivered speeches at the rally.

“The injustice in Florida is a threat to all of us,” Breed said. “The injustice in Florida is a threat to African American boys. The fact that we have to look our children in the eye and explain why somebody can kill a kid and get away with it and not be charged and walk out of the courtroom a free man, how do you explain that?”

Rev. Malcolm Byrd, pastor of First A.M.E. Zion Church in San Francisco, illustrated his point about racial profiling by wearing a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers to the rally. He opened with comments referencing how Martin was deemed “suspicious” due to his appearance. His comments also alluded to the idea that Zimmerman was allowed to walk free in Florida, the same state where a woman was sentenced to three years in prison for shooting and killing a pit bull.

Despite the very real sense of outrage that many people expressed, some spoke about using the Zimmerman verdict as an opportunity to push for broader social change.

“In San Francisco, we know how to lead the way,” said LGBT activist Andrea Shorter. “On Sunday, every black church in this nation was talking about what? Trayvon Martin.” Shorter added that community members had succeeded in halting a proposal to introduce a stop-and-frisk policing policy that had the potential to increase racial profiling, and that there was momentum in place for a national effort to “dismantle racist profiling policies” and repeal stand-your-ground laws.

“For the first time in my life, after growing up and going to funeral after funeral after funeral after funeral, of all boys and black men throughout my life, I see people in this audience who are not African American, who are just as hurt as I am, who are just as sick of this as I am,” Breed noted. “And we are all in this together. We have got to work together if we want to change it.”

Cohen sounded a similar note. “I think one of the things that have transpired now that the verdict has come out is that there has been a serious call to action,” she said.

“Being black in America is to be the beneficiary of great inheritance,” said Obai Rambo of the San Francisco Black Young Democrats. “History will mark this day as one of the greatest opportunities for building equality and justice.”

Photographs by Justin Benttinen. Audio slideshow by Rebecca Bowe.

CEQA reform battle sparks welcome changes even before final compromise

Sasha Cuttler
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32

UPDATED When Sup. Scott Wiener last year introduced legislation that would limit people’s ability to appeal development projects by reforming the California Environmental Quality Act’s local procedures, progressives and neighborhood activists rose up in strong opposition. But now, with that measure and a competing alternative up for approval by the Board of Supervisors tomorrow (Tues/16), there is a compromise in the offing that all sides may see as an improvement on the status quo, particularly given administrative changes that the Planning Department has made along the way.

“We made a series of amendments in April that addressed almost all the concerns raised by the neighborhood activists,” said Judson True, the top aide to Board President David Chiu, who has once again taken the lead role in crafting a compromise on controversial legislation. 

Final details of the deal are still being worked out, but sources on both sides say there is an agreement on the broad outlines of a true compromise. It would accomplish Wiener’s main goal of limiting the current ability of project opponents to file a CEQA appeal at any time while also improving the public notification process.

“It’s still pretty fluid now, but we’re working to get to a consensus measure, we hope,” True told us.

Wiener has always emphasized that his legislation applies only to relatively small projects, those that are “categorically exempt” under CEQA from having to do detailed environmental studies. And he said the compromises now being developed appear to meet his initial goals.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be approved,” Wiener told us, adding that, “If this turns out to be a kumbaya moment, that will show the legislative process works.” [UPDATE: The compromise legislation was unanimously approved by the board.]

One byproduct of that process was recent changes on the Planning Department’s website that make it much easier for activists to track the status of projects — with a new map showing projects that have been granted CEQA exemptions that would move forward unless challenged — which activists requested during the Land Use Committee hearings on this legislation.

“We heard from members of the public that our existing posting process was cumbersome. It was also time-consuming for staff. We decided to revamp the system, using technology we’ve developed in recent years. By converting the checklist into electronic format and having it searchable by location, it’ll be easier for the public to search for a particular project and more efficient for staff to process,” Planning Department spokesperson Joanna Linsangan told us.

True said the hearings on the legislation have helped to illuminate problems that could be addressed administratively: “There’s been a real push from supervisors and the Planning Department itself to improve noticing.”

Eric Brooks, who has been working with the 42 groups that coalesced to oppose Wiener’s legislation — including environmentalists, neighborhood groups, labor, and historic preservationists — said ensuring proper noticing was half the battle. He gave credit to Sup. Jane Kim for resisting the Wiener legislation and working with activists to put forward a competing measure, sowing the seeds for the Chiu compromise.

“This was  a real community process and Jane Kim needs to be lauded for taking part in this,” Brooks said, although he later added, “Whatever happens with this, David Chiu owns it because he’s put himself in the middle of this.”

One key piece of the puzzle that might not be resolved tomorrow is with what has always been the biggest concern for activists, which is how the legislation limits appeals to a project’s initial approval. “We knew that it would be way too early and it cuts off our ability to negotiate with developers,” Brooks said.

For complicated legal reasons, it was difficult to build into this legislation a process for activists to challenge a project that changes after its initial approval, so Kim has introduced trailing legislation that would do so (which is set to be heard Wednesday by the Historic Preservation Commission and Thursday by the Planning Commission).

It would allow activists to appeal changes to a project that they find environmentally significant, even if city staff doesn’t (or, in planning parlance, to appeal the environmental review officer’s categorical exemption determination — to that same officer).

“If the environmental review officer has to suffer the hearing if she makes a bad call, she will make fewer bad calls,” Brooks said. “And if we don’t change the environmental review officers’ mind, we’ll be able to take it to court.”

Everyone but Mayor Lee sees SF’s worsening “housing affordability crisis”

Sasha Cuttler
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43

There was a clear theme that ran through yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting from beginning to end, something understood equally by renters, homeowners, and politicians from across the political spectrum: San Francisco has a crisis of housing affordability that is forcing people from the city.

And the only person who doesn’t seem to understand or care about that is the person with the most power to deal with the situation, Mayor Ed Lee, who opened the meeting by essentially dismissing both short- and long-term gentrification forces and claiming “our city has some of the toughest anti-displacement laws in the country.”

It was a claim that Lee made twice, first in response to a question by Sup. Eric Mar about Plan Bay Area and the massive displacement of current San Franciscans that it would create by 2040. And it was also how he answered a question by Sup. John Avalos about rents that are now skyrocketing beyond what most San Franciscans can afford.

I followed Mayor Lee back to his office, asking him to explain his claim, and he cited the city’s “elaborate” rent control laws and the Rent Board recently hiring new personnel as he briskly retreated toward his office. But surely he’s aware that displacement is already happening and getting worse, I told him, citing Rent Board figures showing that evictions are now at a 12-year high.

Lee looked at me dubiously and said, “I’ll have to check the figures on that.” I followed up today with Press Secretary Christine Falvey to ask whether Lee did check those figures — which show 1,757 evictions in the last year, up from 1,395 the previous, both numbers representing returns to the mass displacement of the last dot-com boom — and I’ll update this post if/when I hear back.

“It shows he’s out of touch with what’s happening in San Francisco,” Avalos told me in response to the mayor’s remarks.

Lee seemed to bristle at the suggestion that his aggressive economic development policies might have a downside that he’s going to have to deal with at some point. He touts the 44,000 jobs the city has added during his mayoral tenure, even deflecting criticism that he’s too focused on the technology industry by citing estimates that every tech job creates at least four other jobs (seemingly oblivious to the fact that most of these are low-wage service sector jobs, the very people who are being forced from the city).

“I’m just hoping you’re not blaming the 44,000 jobs we helped created,” Lee told Avalos, saying that he understands the concern about the rising cost of living, “but those are 44,000 people drawing a paycheck and taking care of their families.”

Yes, Mr. Mayor, but those paychecks are having an increasingly tough time paying for housing in San Francisco. That concern animated the condo conversion debate that took place later in the meeting, voiced by those focused on the lack of affordable homeownership opportunities and those focused on reducing the city’s rental stock to create those opportunities.

“I don’t think saying ‘it’s good that we have a growing economy’ is enough to address the issue,” Sup. David Campos said during the condo debate, referring to Lee’s earlier remarks.

Speaking near the end that discussion, Campos summarized the concerns expressed by both sides and sought to put the legislation into perspective: while important, the condo deal is a drop in the anti-displacement bucket. “We are only dealing with the issue of affordability in San Francisco on the margins,” he said, later adding, “I don’t think we’re doing enough to deal with the fundamental issue of who gets to live in San Francisco.”

The debate on the condo conversion began with its original author — Sup. Mark Farrell, who represents District 2, the wealthiest and most conservative in the city — explaining his desire to help middle class people who want to own homes remain in the San Francisco.

“This is the most affordable form of home ownership in San Francisco today,” Farrell said of tenancies-in-common, the fiscally and legally precarious middle step between an apartment and condominium. Later, he said, “We need more affordable homeownership opportunities and not less.”

Farrell argued that “this didn’t need to be a zero sum game,” but that’s exactly what the stock of rent-controlled apartments is in San Francisco, where only housing built before 1979 is protected from the market forces that can drive rents up to whatever a landlord demands.

“We have a fixed rent control stock. Every apartment that converts to a a condo is one less unit,” said Board President David Chiu, who worked with Sups. Jane Kim and Norman Yee and tenant group to amend Farrell’s legislation to help both renters and homeowners.  

“These units were once the homes of tenants who were displaced,” Kim said, objecting to the notion that one person’s apartment should be another person’s affordable homeownership opportunity and arguing that the city should be building more condos for first-time homebuyers instead of cannabalizing the homes of the nearly two-thirds of city residents who rent.

Like Chiu and Kim, Yee said that he wanted to help the TIC owners of today without simply clearing out of the backlog and letting the condo lottery continue unabated, which would green-light even more conversion of apartments. “We want to curb the speculation,” Yee said.

That idea that the city should help people who live in the city, without simply feeding the speculative investors who profiteer off of housing in San Francisco, was a strong theme among critics of condo conversion.

A pro-tenant crowd packed the Board Chambers. Although barred by board rules from addressing the condo legislation directly (that occurred at the committee level), one commenter said, “Giving any more power to the real estate market in San Francisco should be considered a crime.”

To help ward off real estate speculators once the annual condo conversion lottery resumes in 2024, the legisation also limited future conversions to buildings of less than four units, instead of the current cap of six units, a change that Farrell resisted.

“This is not an academic exercise anymore,” Farrell said of the condo conversion restrictions that were added to the legislation. “This will negatively impact thousands of TIC owners in the city.”

Farrell’s original co-sponsor, Sup. Scott Wiener, had a more pro-tenant point-of-view, objecting to the changes that Chiu inserted on more narrow grounds. In his comments, he noted how close the two sides were and how they share the same basic goal: preventing displacement of current city residents.  

“The one thing we can all agree with is we have a housing affordability crisis,” Wiener said, praising the city’s rent control and tenant protection laws, but adding, “TIC owners are also part of this city.”

The price of dealing with the rapid growth in the city — whether it comes to infrastructure or housing affordability — was also a point that Wiener made earlier in the meeting as the board approved the term sheet for a massive office and residential development project proposed at Pier 70.

“We are not doing what we need to do to support the public transportation needed for those projects,” Wiener said, also referring to other projects along the waterfront (the Warrior Arena at Pier 30 and the Giants/Anchor Steam project at Pier 46) and in the southeastern part of the city. “We don’t have the transit infrastructure to support our current population, let alone new growth.”

It’s about striking a balance, as Chiu said he did with the condo legislation, and not just a balance between renters and TIC owners. It’s about striking a balance between how to protect the San Francisco of today while planning for the San Francisco of tomorrow.

Yes, that means working with market rate housing developers, and it also means diverting some of their would-be profits into the city’s affordable housing fund and its infrastructure needs. Yes, it means private-sector job creation, but it also means more public sector jobs and providing a safety net for people without jobs or who work as artists or social workers or other professions that are being driven from the city. And it means beefing up our public housing and turning around the exodus of African-Americans, concerns raised at the meeting by Sup. Malia Cohen.

We at the Guardian last year looked at how Oakland has become cooler than San Francisco, largely because of the displacement from here. And now, even many people within the tech community have begun to decry the gentrifiction that is being driven by Mayor Lee’s narrow economic development vision.

“Plan Bay Area is an opportunity to think regionally and strategically about planned growth,” Lee said when addressing Mar’s question, sidestepping the direct answer that Mar sought on a set of specific proposals for mitigating some of the displacement planned for San Francisco and maintaining this city’s diversity.

Yes, we do have an opportunity to think strategically about the city we’re becoming and who gets to live in it, but only if we don’t think “jobs” is the answer to every question.

Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

Sasha Cuttler
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64
Supervisors approve condo legislation with veto-proof majority

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted to approve compromise legislation that will allow more than 2,000 tenancy-in-common homeowners to convert to condominiums in exchange for a 10-year moratorium on the city’s current condo conversion lottery that now allows 200 conversions annually.

Approved by a veto-proof 8-3 majority after some last amendments were shot down by the six supervisors who most steadfastly supported the version that Board President David Chiu took the lead on crafting, this was a big victory for tenant groups who strongly opposed the original legislation, which did not include the moratorium and other restrictions.

“It’s great. We’re going to see a significant drop in condo conversions in the future. All of us tenants are very happy,” San Francisco Tenants Union head Ted Gullicksen told us after the hearing, which was packed with tenant supporters.

Sup. Mark Farrell, who sponsored the original legislation, decried how divisive the issue had become, criticized the approved version as deviating from his original intent of helping TIC owners in exchange for a fee that would help fund new affordable housing, and said, “This doesn’t need to be a zero sum game.”

But Chiu and the five supervisors who supported his version – Jane Kim, Norman Yee, David Campos John Avalos, and Eric Mar – noted the finite number of rent-controlled apartments in the city and the need to protect them from being converted into condos.

“How do we balance the needs of tenants who fear being evicted with TIC owners looking for relief?” Chiu said of the balance he aimed to strike, which he continued to tweak with new amendments today, including allowing TICs with all owner-occupied units to move forward if the legislation is challenged in court, an event that would otherwise freeze all condo conversions until the lawsuit is resolved.

Sup. London Breed wanted even greater flexibility in that so-called “poison pill” aspect of the legislation, which tenant groups had insisted on to prevent the bypass from going through even if the moratorium was challenged. Breed proposed allowing condo conversion applications to proceed for a year after a lawsuit was filed, but Chiu said that would let TIC owners convert to condos while challenging other aspects of the legislation, such as the lifetime leases for tenants in converted buildings.

Breed and Sup. Malia Cohen, who privately and rather grimly conferred with one another and sometimes Chiu before the item began a little after 4pm, were clearly the two swing votes on the question of whether the legislation would reach the crucial eight-vote threshold needed to override a possible mayoral veto. Mayor Ed Lee has refused to take a position on the issue, leaving both sides in the dark.

But after the motion to insert Breed’s amendments failed on a 5-6 vote, the board voted 8-3 to approve Chiu’s version of the legislation, with Sups. Farrell, Scott Wiener, and Katy Tang opposed. A subsequent vote on a version of the legislation backed by Farrell and Wiener – which contained a weaker poison pill and more flexible owner-occupancy provisions – then failed on a 4-7 vote, with Breed joining the three dissenting supervisors.

Underscoring this legislation was what some supervisors called a “housing affordability crisis” in San Francisco, an issue that Mayor Lee was asked about at the start of the meeting, which he deflected by claiming “our city has some of the toughest anti-displacement laws in the nation.”

We’ll analyze that discussion and offer more details on the condo conversion debate and the politics behind it tomorrow in the space, so check back then.      

Rival condo conversion measures finally up for board vote

Sasha Cuttler
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58

Controversial condominium conversion lottery bypass legislation is finally headed for a vote by the full Board of Supervisors this Tuesday. Befitting legislation that has stirred strong emotions and traveled a twisting political path over the last six months, there are new dramas and uncertainties cropping up at the last minute, including the lingering unknown of where Mayor Ed Lee stands.

Originally co-sponsored by Sups. Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener, the legislation was intended to allow 2,000-plus tenancy-in-common owners to buy their way past the city’s lottery that allows 200 conversions to condominiums each year. But tenant groups and their progressive allies strenuously opposed the idea, and it was amended by Sups. David Chiu, Jane Kim, and Norman Yee working with tenants to couple the bypass with a 10-year moratorium on new conversions, thus clearing the backlog without opening the door to speculators taking more rent-controlled apartments off the market.

The Land Use Committee voted June 3 (2-1, with Chiu and Kim voting yes and Wiener opposed) to send the tenant-supported legislation to the full board and keep a Wiener-backed rival measure stuck in committee. But since then, Wiener invoked a board rule allowing four supervisors to pull the stalled legislation out of committee, getting Farrell and Sups. Katy Teng and London Breed to place that rival measure on Tuesday’s agenda as well.

Tenant groups decried the move and have put out the call for supporters to flood City Hall for the 2pm meeting, but Wiener told us that the differences in the two pieces of legislation are minor. One difference deals with whether transfers of ownership interest will affect an applicant’s spot in the queue and the other involves the so-called poison pill inserted by tenant groups, which would freeze the conversion process if anyone challenges the legislation in court, as real estate interests have threatened to do.

Wiener said the tenant-backed legislation’s changes to condo conversion eligibility, such as a 10-year wait period and banning future conversions of buildings with more than five units, that would remain in place after a successful legal challenge is an unfair overreach. But Chiu said tenant groups have already compromised as much as they can and they need this protection: “This is a carefully constructed compromise, and for the first time tenants groups are supporting thousands of condo conversions.”

Breed’s concerns about the poison pill provision — which was why she said she went along with Wiener’s play to bring up the rival measure — go even beyond Wiener’s. While most concerns involved a lawsuit from real estate interests, Breed worries about a pro-tenant litigant who wants to stop all condo conversions.

“If anyone chose to sue, it would help renters by shutting down everything completely. Where is the incentive not to sue?” Breed told us, noting that she still doesn’t have a solution to the problem, but she wanted the leverage of rival measures in order to address the issue. “I’m hoping it’s a win-win for renters and TIC owners,” she said. “Everyone else is not my concern right now.”

But the real estate interests will almost certainly try to preserve an ability for speculators to continue funneling more rent-controlled apartments into the real estate market, and just yesterday, the San Francisco Association of Realtors announced the hiring of an influential new point person on lobbying and housing issues: Mary Jung, a former spokesperson for then-Mayor Gavin Newsom before moving over to represent PG&E, and who was last year elected chair of the Democratic County Central Committee.

That could make a difference when it comes to Mayor Lee, who has resisted efforts by both sides to weigh in on the issue, saying only that he supports both tenants and TIC owners and that he understands the concerns about opening the door to a flood of new conversion requests.

“The one wild card here is no one know where the mayor is,” Wiener told us, noting that neither side is likely to get the eight votes that would be needed to override a veto. “The mayor, if he wanted to, could have significant leverage in crafting a compromise.”
Chiu said that he’s confident that his version of the legislation has the six votes needed to pass, but that it is still unclear what Mayor Lee will support, despite Chiu asking Lee to weigh in publicly in February and privately during a meeting yesterday. As Chiu told us, “We’ll see.”

No security

Andrew Lam
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3
No security

rebeccab@sfbg.com

To qualify for his job as a security officer, Jerry Longoria had to obtain a license, undergo a background check, and take a drug test. He’s required to wear a suit to work. He’s stationed at a downtown San Francisco high rise that houses Deloitte, a multinational consulting, finance, and real-estate firm that reported $31.3 billion in revenues last year. His employer is Universal Protection Services, a nationwide security contractor with a slick online marketing pitch emphasizing that all guards are “electronically supervised around the clock,” and “kept accountable on the job through our 24-hour command center.”

If an intruder showed up at his office building brandishing a firearm, it would be Longoria’s problem; that’s the job. Nevertheless, he says he doesn’t earn enough to cover rent for an apartment in San Francisco. Instead, he stays in a single room occupancy hotel near Sixth and Mission streets, an area known for a high rate of violent crime. Walking home still wearing the suit makes him stand out on the street.

He’s lived in the 150-unit building, which has shared bathrooms and a shared basement-level kitchen, for 11 years. “It’s affordable for me, and it allows me to be closer to work,” he explains. He can’t afford a car, and says a public transit delay could prove disastrous if he relocated outside the city. “If you’re late to your post, you get fired.”

At press time, about 7,000 security officers throughout the Bay Area and Los Angeles were gearing up for a strike that could begin any day. Members of United Service Workers West, affiliated with Service Employees International Union, authorized their bargaining committee to call for the work stoppage because officers have been without a contract since the end of 2012.

The starting wage for a security officer is $14 an hour in the city, which comes to slightly more than $29,000 a year before taxes. In some places that would be sufficient to meet basic needs. In San Francisco, where the median market rate on rental units recently peaked above $3,000 a month, it doesn’t go very far. “With the cost of living here in San Francisco, $14 an hour is simply not enough to make ends meet,” Kevin O’Donnell, a USWW spokesperson, told us.

The security officers’ threats to strike coincided with a second worker action in the Bay Area last week. Despite lacking any form of union representation, Walmart associates from stores in Richmond, Fremont, and San Leandro affiliated with the nationwide organization OUR Walmart joined 100 employees from across the country in walking off the job and caravanning to Bentonville, Arkansas to raise awareness about their poverty-level wages and insufficient benefits at Walmart’s annual shareholders’ meeting. But first, they paid a visit to the Four Seasons in downtown San Francisco, which houses the 38th floor penthouse apartment of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, a Walmart director.

Despite seeking full-time working opportunities and staying with the company for years, a handful of associates we interviewed said they can’t earn enough at Walmart to cover basic needs, so they rely on government assistance or help from extended family to make ends meet. Some said they had witnessed their coworkers get fired after participating in OUR Walmart activities.

Walmart associates in the Bay Area are in a considerably more precarious situation than the security officers, earning lower hourly wages. But in the pricey Bay Area, security officers, Walmart employees, and scores of other low-wage private sector workers all share something in common. Despite reporting to work every day and working long hours in many cases, they’re forced into impoverished conditions due to economic circumstances, while a middle-class existence remains far out of reach.

FIGHTING FOR STABILITY

ABM Security and Universal Protection Services are the largest employers in the private security contractor industry; in the Bay Area, the majority of guards are stationed at office buildings in downtown San Francisco. On May 30, Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos, David Chiu, Jane Kim and Scott Wiener all voiced support for the guards at a rally outside City Hall. “Better working conditions for security officers mean more stable, family-supporting jobs, less turnover, and more ability to handle challenges at work,” Avalos said.

Matt Roberts has been working as a security officer for years, and originally moved into his unit in a San Francisco SRO in a financial pinch. “I figured, I’ll get out of this rut eventually. And here I am, seven years later, still paying $1,000 a month for a space that’s really not much bigger than a walk-in closet,” he told us. Roberts was terminated recently, and believes it’s because he spoke up to his site director about workplace issues his fellow guards felt needed to be addressed.

In Roberts’ view, the situation he’s found himself in is reflective of the broader erosion of the middle class, which is particularly acute in an area with a soaring cost of living. He was born and raised in San Francisco’s Crocker Amazon district, with a father who worked as a firefighter and a mother who worked as a clerk typist at the Cow Palace.

“They were able to achieve the American dream,” he said. “They had a house, they paid their mortgage off in 25 years, they were able to send me and all my three siblings to good schools. I realized when I was still in my 20s that I’m probably going to be a renter the rest of my life. The American dream is totally eclipsing my generation.”

Keven Adams, a security officer of 23 years who lives in Oakland, also attended the City Hall rally on May 30. “We’re fighting for wages, health care, and stability in the workplace,” Adams said. “We’re in a city we love so very much, but the community and the middle class is shrinking.” Adams said he was once held at gunpoint for four hours during a work shift. He’d love to live in San Francisco, he said, but can’t afford it.

According to a June 3 media advisory, unions throughout the Bay Area were preparing to demonstrate support for the security officers as they geared up to strike. “The support could come in the form of workers attending rallies, non-violent civil disobedience or perhaps even non-security workers refusing to cross picket lines,” according to USWW, “and walking off their own jobs in solidarity.”

‘STAND UP, LIVE BETTER’

Among the small group of protesters who had assembled on the sidewalk far below Mayer’s San Francisco penthouse on May 29 were associates who had taken the drastic and unusual step of going on strike from Walmart — the nation’s largest private employer. Clad in bright green shirts and waving signs, they chanted, “stand up, live better,” a play on Walmart’s slogan, and also, “What do we want? Respect.”

Dominic Ware, who works part-time at a Walmart in San Leandro, led chants and sounded off on a megaphone about the need for greater respect in the workplace. Ware, who’s been involved with OUR Walmart activities on a national level, said he earns $8.65 an hour and stays with his grandmother, since his paycheck isn’t enough to cover rent. He estimated that roughly half his earnings go directly back to Wal-Mart, where he purchases groceries and other basic items. Asked what motivated him to strike, Ware mentioned his daughter, who turned eight on June 1. “What if she has to work there some day?”

He added that some elderly colleagues were experiencing problems such as being unable to get a shift changed so as to catch a bus home at the end of the night. Another one of his coworkers was let go after it became clear to management that he was participating in OUR Walmart activities, Ware said.

While only a tiny fraction of Walmart’s 1.4 million workers took action to strike, their campaign appears to resonate in high places. A report recently released by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce seized on Walmart’s low wages, emphasizing that so many of its workers are forced to turn to government assistance that it is resulting in a collective drag on taxpayers.

“Rising income inequality and wage stagnation threaten the future of America’s middle class,” the report notes. “While corporate profits break records, the share of national income going to workers’ wages has reached record lows. Walmart plays a leading role in this story. Its business model has long relied upon strictly controlled labor costs: low wages, inconsiderable benefits and aggressive avoidance of collective bargaining with its employees. As the largest private-sector employer in the U.S., Wal-Mart’s business model exerts considerable downward pressure on wages throughout the retail sector and the broader economy.”

Clock ticks, ground breaks: SFMOMA kicks off its two years of renovations with 24-hour party, glitter bomb

Andrew Lam
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0
Clock ticks, ground breaks: SFMOMA kicks off its two years of renovations with 24-hour party, glitter bomb

The students from SoMa’s Bessie Carmichael Elementary, against my better judgement, were to ones to push down the level detonating… whatever was going to mark the groundbreak of SFMOMA’s planned two-and-a-half years of closure for massive renovations expansions this morning.

When glitter cannons took the place of the further obliteration of the building behind Supervisor Jane Kim and the museum trustees with their hard hats and decorative shovels, I breathed a sigh of relief. I should have known any cultural institution with the foresight to build a DIY graffiti wall made of cookies wouldn’t allow minors to be injured. 

You’ll probably want to say hasta luego to the Bay Area’s premier contemporary art museum by attending the Countdown Days celebration, which’ll bring ecosexual performance artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, dancer-force Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Homobiles, TCHO Chocolate, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, one-canvas docent explorations, and much more, culminating in a 24-hour extravaganza, to the soon-to-be-shuttered atriums and galleries Thu/30-Sun/2.

Dry your eyes though kitty-cat, when the museum returns, it’ll be free to visitors under 18 and larger by 225,000 square feet at an estimated cost of $610 million. 41,000 square feet of free-access public space has been promised, in addition to a new seventh floor outdoor terrace and massive vertical gardens.

While we wait for 2016 to arrive, art fans are invited to enjoy special roaming installations, like the Mark di Suvero sculptures already gracing Crissy Field.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Asian Art Museum, and other venues will be hosting special SFMOMA collaborations. 

Here’s what we have to look forward to with the new design, courtesy its creators, Norway’s Snøhetta architecture firm.

Turn around girl… 

… There it is.

Today’s groundbreaking included aforementioned cookie wall, accompanied by some sadly impotent spray cans of edible spray paint. Groundbreakers were encouraged to spray, then walk off with a souvenir “brick” baker by Blue Bottle Coffee pastry chef Caitlin Freeman. I ate mine when it feel apart in my hands: a delicious impermanence, sonly slightly troubling in that the cookie wall was meant to mimick Snøhetta’s architectural style. 

Delicious cookie wall

I’m sure it will be fine. Here are the little ones charged with ushering the SF arts scene into the future. 

And Supervisor Kim, in a chain metal scarf-necklace that topped off the single best outfit I’ve seen a city politician sport. 

Museum trustees and officials praised the city’s “universal support” towards getting the renovations funded, which was also supported by private donors, including $5 million from anonymous sources. An estimated 1,400 construction jobs wil be created by the project, say museum PR materials. 

Swing through for one last look at the current facilities, and check out the future if you’re so inclined. Download this app by Brooklyn’s Will Pappenheimer and John Craig Freeman and pull out your phone at 10 points throughout the SFMOMA to view: 

Artist-created motifs that riff on features of the museum—such as plants from the new vertical garden and fragments from the current building—merge with iconic images from the Bay Area’s natural and tech environments to create a circling vortex of animation through and around the building, as well as floating off into space. 

SFMOMA Countdown Celebration

Thu/30-Fri/31, 10am-9:45pm; open continuously Sat/1, 10am-Sun/2, 5:45pm

SFMOMA

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org

New designers show their stuff at this weekend’s Asian Heritage Street Celebration

Andrew Lam
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2

The annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration and fashion fever may not be automatically associated in the brains of Bay Areans. But then, most Bay Areans probably are unacquainted with the work of Runway Couturier — the group behind this year’s festival finale, featuring local designers from all across the SF fashion world, on Sat/18.

The show is what Runway’s executive producer Fritz Lambandrake dubs a “little fashion show that could.” But in actually, this is one catwalk that’ll help small-scale fashionistas to realize large-scale dreams. Presenting various Bay Area designers, Runway Couturier promotes young hopefuls free of charge — and even supplies them with fabric, courtesy of sponsor Linda Blake of Discount Fabrics. It is Lambandrake’s goal to “to use fashion as a bridge between cultures and communities”, as he told the Guardian, which explains the show’s presence at this weekend’s Asian Heritage Street Celebration. The fair will also feature cooking demos, live musical performances, a car show, craft market, a blessing by Thai monks, and food galore.  

Although Lambandrake’s heritage lies elsewhere than the Asian continent, he says he feels honored to be a part of the event. San Francisco supervisor Jane Kim was the one responsible for hooking up Lambandrake and Asian Week Foundation, who produces the yearly street fair. “You should see her stiletto heels!” says Lambandrake of his well-shod politician connection.

Making their debut at the show three new designers: Sam Shan, Tina Maier, and Huab Vue. Shan, a 21-year-old Burmese political refugee, shows a collection inspired by the folktales of his homeland. Maier, a self-educated fiber artist, is a master manipulator of materials, and her collection is sure to be high-minded yet grounded, with a mishmash of thrift store finds, unique textiles., and re-purposed upholstery. Check out the AHSC site for a full list of designers. 

A preview of Tomboy Tailors‘ highly anticipated genderqueer debut collection will stalk the catwalk, and there will be a competition for the best designs of the day, judged by a discerning panel including drag mistress Donna Sachet and Supervisor Kim.

Runway Couturier at the Asian Heritage Street Celebration

Sat/18, 3:30pm

Larkin and Eddy, SF

www.runwaycouterier.com

 

Condo bypass legislation now before the full board

Sasha Cuttler
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196
Condo bypass legislation now before the full board

Controversial condominium lottery bypass legislation — sponsored by Sups. Mark Farrell and Scott Wiener but substantially modified by tenant group that strongly opposed the original legislation, with the help of Sup. David Chiu, Jane Kim, and Norman Yee — is finally coming to the full Board of Supervisors today (Tues/7, starting at 2pm).

Those involved in the negotiations say the legislation will likely to be returned to the Land Use Committee because of amendments being introduced today that the City Attorney’s Office has deemed substantial enough to require another public hearing. [UPDATE: The board voted unanimously to send this back to committee, which will consider it on Monday the 13th].They include a provision pushed by tenant groups that would scuttle the lottery bypass if the 10-year lottery moratorium is challenged in court. 

That moratorium was pushed by tenants and their supporters as a tradeoff for letting a backlog of around 2,000 tenancy-in-common owners buy their way out of the city’s lottery for the annual allowed conversion of 200 TICs into condominiums, which are more valuable and easier to sell and finance than TICs.

Farrell told the Guardian late last week that he was still negotiating with both sides and hopeful that he might be able to support the legislation, despite the hostile amendments that Chiu made which were opposed by Farrell and Wiener in committee.

San Francisco Tenants Union head Ted Gullicksen told us that the tenants’ side was willing to accept a couple of the technical amendments that Farrell proposed during negotiations with them, including exempting from the bypass fee the 19 building that have awaited conversion the longest and allowing some owner-occupier changes as the bypass is phased in over six years.

He said Farrell also proposed that if less than 2,000 condos opt for the bypass, then the difference in numbers would be added to the allowable number of condos in the first year that the lottery is restored, which the tenants’ groups haven’t yet agreed to.

Farrell and Wiener are also expected to offer other amendments, but the tenant groups have said they’ve gone as far as they’re willing to in allowing any increase in condo conversions, and they seem to have six solid votes lined up on the board.

Yet it’s still an open question how new amendments might affect those political dynamics, how the real estate industry (which simply wants as many condo conversions as possible) will respond, whether Mayor Ed Lee (who has avoided taking a position on the legislation) will sign or veto whatever emerges, and whether whoever is left unsatisfied by this deal will try to go to the ballot.

In other words, there may be some tricky political maneuvering ahead, so stay tuned. 

A win for the tenants

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EDITORIAL In a stunning victory, tenant advocates have managed to derail a terrible piece of condo-conversion legislation — and replace it with a compromise that actually improves the current situation and could help slow the wave of speculative evictions.

The supervisors need to support the revised version of the bill — and if Mayor Lee wants to have any credibility at all with tenants, he needs to sign it.

For some 30 years, San Francisco has had a strict policy limiting the conversion of rental apartments to condominiums. Only 200 units a year get permission, through a lottery.

But thanks to the popularity of tenancies in common (a backdoor way around the limit) and the state’s Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict all their tenants and sell the units as TICs, there’s now a long waiting list.

TIC owners say it’s unfair that they have to accept (somewhat) higher mortgage payments and reduced value on their homes because the wait for a conversion permit has grown to ten years or more. Real-estate speculators see huge profits in clearing buildings of long-term tenants with rent-controlled apartments and selling the places as TICs.

When Supervisors Scott Wiener and Mark Farrell first proposed allowing more than 2,000 tenancy-in-common units to bypass the lottery, tenant advocates began organizing to defeat the bill. Nobody thought a compromise was possible — particularly when the landlord-backed Plan C refused to negotiate in good faith and look for a solution everyone could accept.

But with the help of Supervisors Norman Yee, Jane Kim, and David Chiu, the tenants were able to craft a deal that clears up the backlog — and then prevents any further conversions for at least a decade. That’s fair: If the limit is 200 a year, and TIC owners want to clear up a backlog of 2,000 all at once, a ten-year moratorium makes sense. The tenant package also bars conversion of any buildings with more the five units and includes more protections for existing tenants.

If this proposal is really about helping TIC owners who face a long and uncertain time on the conversion list, then the compromise ought to be fine — and indeed, many TIC owners support it. The real-estate speculators who want to see evictions continue at a rapid pace hate it — this would make TICs less appealing and less valuable. But that’s fine: Buying a TIC has never been, and should never be, based on a future promise of condo conversion. And if this slows down the horrifying epidemic of evictions and displacement, it will be a very positive change.

Wiener and Farrell didn’t accept the compromise, but it was amended into their legislation anyway. The new version will come before the supervisors May 7. The supervisors should see this for what it is — greedy speculators against everyone else — and vote yes.

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