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Drinking in the dark

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Text by Sarah Phelan.
Q. “How many Irish does it take to change a light bulb. “
A. “Never mind, we’ll drink in the dark.”

I was reminded of this (potentially racist, but I’m part Irish, so screw it) joke yesterday during a two-hour conversation about the Chronicle that took place, mostly between media people, in the basement of the library, on St Patrick’s Day.

The fact that any reporters showed up to talk about journalism on St Paddy’s Day is a good indicator of just how troubled they are feeling about the state of the news industry.

Normally, reporters would be writing about folks drinking too many Irish car bombs, or, if they weren’t working that night, drinking too many green beers themselves.

Instead, they sat and talked about the challenges facing San Francisco’s main daily newspaper, and the future of journalism in the Internet age.

Now, you’d think this would be easy for a bunch of folks who are used to digging into other people’s business and publishing what they find out, including the for-profit-driven doings of this or that evil corporation.

Only this time, the folks being bullied are the workers at the San Francisco Chronicle, which is owned by Hearst. a privately held corporation. This means the Chronicle won’t be publishing the findings of its own journalists’ findings on this matter. Instead, it’s been running reports that have no bylines and sound like Hearst press releases.

And then there’s the disquieting reality that Hearst has refused to open its books to the unions that represent the workers at the Chronicle. This means that all Hearst’s claims, including the statement that the Chronicle is losing $50 million a year, remain just that: claims, until proven otherwise.

No one is disputing the fact that newspapers have been losing advertising revenue to the Internet. Or that few of us have figured out ways to recapture that revenue. Or that many of us have been laid off, suffered pay cuts and/or seen an end to our careers, even as more people read our stuff than ever.

So, are we going to drink in the dark, or shine some light on the situation?

Personally, I don’t want the Chronicle to die. I want it to improve. And, as an investigative reporter, I want proof that Hearst’s financial claims are real.

Long time Chronicle reporter Carl Hall, the local representative of the California Media Workers Guild, confirmed last night that Hearst refused the Guild’s requests to open its books.

Hall also confirmed that Guild members voted to accept the loss of 150 jobs and the elimination of seniority rather than risking calling Hearst’s bluff over the corporation’s threats to close or sell the Chronicle.

Of course the workers did. They’re newspaper men and women. Like doctors and teachers, they love their jobs, no matter who is running the hospital, school or newspaper.

But I wonder if the rest of the media have fallen down on the job, by not challenging Hearst’s unsubstantiated claims, even as the entire nation is discovering that it has been Ponzi-schemed up the kazoo.

I was heartened to hear Chronicle forum panelist and social entrepreneur Tom Murphy point out that some of the industry’s current problems are related to the newspaper-buying binges that Hearst Corp. and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews indulged in during the past decade.

And it was interesting to hear Oakland Tribune editor Martin Reynolds, which itself got swallowed up by Singleton in recent years, admit that many newspapers chains are in a similar situation to the owners of foreclosed homes: “They are upside down on their mortgages, right now,” Reynolds said.

Connect those financial dots to the fact that readership of the Chronicle is growing online, and you begin to realize that there is a way forward through all this, even if we haven’t figured it all out yet.

As Center for Investigative Reporting cofounder and forum panelist David Weir put it last night, ‘Don’t blame the Internet for journalism’s demise. The Internet is not a choice, it is a fact. It is a technical and historical reality.”

The rise and fall of a Polk Street hustler

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› news@sfbg.com

Last June, a small group of costumed 20-something activists from Gay Shame — wielding saxophones, loudspeakers booming electronica, and bullhorns — held a "séance" on Polk Street to "summon the ghosts of Polk Street’s past."

They performed in front of the recently constructed First Congregational Church — what they call "ground zero" for Polk Street gentrification — built over the remains of what they characterize as a gay hustler bar pushed out of the area by Lower Polk Neighbors (LPN), an organization not coincidentally holding its monthly meeting just a few feet beyond the window during the ear-splitting performance.

It was one of many ongoing clashes as new condos, upscale businesses, and trendy "metrosexual" bars replace Polk Street’s SRO apartment buildings, shuttered businesses, and hardscrabble hustler bars.

Protesters blamed the transition on LPN, a "pro-gentrification attack squad" working to transform the city’s "last remaining public gathering place for marginalized queers." New business and neighborhood associations counter that they are only working to beautify, make safer, and "revitalize" the area — a benefit to everyone, including the street’s marginal residents.

But what has been lost in the noise of this high profile, ongoing clash are the stories, needs, and wishes of the very people purportedly at the center of this conflict: the "marginal queers" and the homeless.

I conducted interviews with more than 60 people during the past year, including sex workers, merchants, the homeless, and social service providers — thanks to a grant from the California Council for the Humanities and the sponsorship of the GLBT Historical Society. And I learned that changes on Polk Street stem from a collapse of the area’s community-based economic and social safety nets in the 1990s, combined with the absence of a viable alternative from the city, the neighborhood, or an increasingly affluent gay political establishment.

That trend is illustrated by the story of one such "marginal queer," known on the street as "Corey Longseeker." In a changing neighborhood divided by distrust and tension, it seems that even people from opposing viewpoints are united in their familiarity with a story that has become the stuff of legend: the most beautiful, most successful boy on Polk Street who became the saddest, poorest homeless man in the neighborhood.

Now, during a time of recession and drastic budget cuts to mental health, drug abuse, and HIV-related services, Corey’s story traces the neighborhood’s history and its present challenges.

THEN AND NOW


Corey, now 39, is a constant presence in the neighborhood. He’s always alone when I see him, sometimes sitting on the sidewalk, his head of long stringy hair in his lap, rocking back and forth slightly. Or walking up and down the alleyways, sometimes stooping over and making cupping motions with his arms — picking up imaginary children, I’m later told. Or walking slowly, alone, near City Hall, his arms straight by his side, his body hunched.

"I came to San Francisco because I wanted to be an artist," he told me. He speaks slowly, softly, laboring, with long pauses. "When I first got here, there were a lot more people. We used to play guitars and drink beers or smoke a joint and just hang out and stay out of trouble."

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, compounded by years of methamphetamine use and complications related from AIDS — a triple diagnosis that is unusually common among homeless people on Polk Street. Corey’s flashes of clarity alternate with moments in which memories blend into different times and places, and seemingly into dreams and fantasy: "I’ve been trying to protect my little self and my little brother and I’m about 500 homicides behind and I don’t know how to bump and grind to pick up the little morsels and the pieces of the people I liked and loved the way I used to know how to." He paused. "So I just keep on."

Dan Diez, now the co-chair of LPN, believes that homeless on the street such as Corey are negatively affecting businesses and residents who "should not have to put up with people sleeping in their doorways." He even talks of moving the homeless to facilities on Treasure Island as one solution. "I think it’s one of the reasons why these condos that have gone up have not been filled."

Corey and Diez may seem to have little in common, but they maintained a close relationship with each other for more than a decade, and Diez felt so close to him that he characterized himself as part of Corey’s "surrogate family."

It was 19 years ago that Diez first laid eyes on Corey, then a fresh-faced 19-year-old who had just moved to San Francisco. Diez, then a city government employee living in the East Bay, was sitting in the Q.T. II, Polk Street’s premier hustler bar — on the very plot of land where protesters later clashed with the LPN meeting.

Corey "wasn’t what I expected someone like a hustler to look like," Diez said. "I cannot tell you, this kid had movie star written all over him. He was extremely clean and very attractive and he just looked like somebody who walked out one of these suburban towns."

Dan befriended Corey, taking him to Burger King, listening to rock music in his car while Corey drew and writing poetry. Dan slipped him $20 bills and took him to movies. With time, he also brought him to the spas to clean Corey up, took care of his laundry, and bought him clean underwear and food.

"A lot of the kids on the street were hustling," Diez said, "but I did not pick up at that time. Corey was the only person I was really interested [in] ‘cuz he was something different. He was a person with a creative bent, which I really admired."

Diez says their relationship was not sexual, though he did enjoy being physically close with Corey. "He was someone I liked being around. It was just really a nice relationship."

In a letter Corey wrote in the late 1990s, he calls Dan one of his "sponcers" [sic], along with another man Diez said is a "multi-multimillionaire" and "very well known in San Francisco." This man bought Corey a car and provided him with plenty of cash and drugs as one of his clients. In Corey’s letter, he says the man "made me into a liveing legand [sic] at the age of twenty two years old by letting me have enough money." Corey listed as his "Boss" a bartender at the Q.T., widely known for facilitating hookups between johns and hustlers, and spoken of warmly by many as being a "big mama" to kids on the street.

By this time, many of the buildings that had held thriving businesses in the ’70s and ’80s were shuttered, leaving sex work and drug sales as a few of the street’s dominant economies. People such as Corey, widely considered to be the most beautiful and lucrative sex worker at the time, were Polk Street’s economic engines.

In fact, Q.T. manager Marv Warren was president of the merchant’s association in the 1990s. The sex trade turned profits on the streets and in the bars. "Most of us didn’t like the idea of these kids hanging out because it didn’t look good," Steve Cornell, owner of Brownies Hardware, recalled. "[But] if there are male prostitutes out there and there are businesses that thrive on that, they’re part of the business association too."

THE BOTTOM LINE


The current conflict on Polk Street has been framed as one between profit-hungry business owners and marginalized queers. But on Polk Street, a coveted bloc of city space long zoned as a commercial corridor, the buck has always been the bottom line.

This is not to discount the deeply emotional ties many have to the area, many who reported escaping abusive families and discrimination to find themselves and their first real family in Polk Street. Just the opposite: the history of Polk Street shows that community and commerce were closely linked.

In the early 1960s, gay men bought up failing shops along the street and created posh clothing stores, record shops, and elegant restaurants. Failing bars and taverns cashed in on gay consumer power. The community combined economic and political power to win major gay rights battles.

Most famously, bartenders formed the Tavern Guild in 1962, the nation’s first gay business association, which combined economic self-interest with charitable support for the nascent gay community. According to historian Nan Alamilla Boyd, the Guild "represent[ed] a marketplace activity that, in order to protect itself, evolves into a social movement."

The Imperial Court, part of the Guild’s fundraising arm, elected Empresses who raised funds for people in the community who needed housing, drug treatment, mental health services, or help with their medical bills. In the ’70s and ’80s, the Polk Gulch was a magnet for young people around the country escaping abusive homes and discrimination, and who therefore did not have the educational or employment background to make it on their own in the city.

Anthony Cabello came to Polk Street from a working class family in Fresno as a teenager in the late 1960s, dining as the guest of an older lover at the posh P.S. Lounge. As a student at a nearby college, he formed lifelong relationships with men on the street who took him to fancy hotels, plays, and dinners. "I did not mind the monetary help, but that wasn’t my primary concern," he said. "I was getting exposed to things that normally, I wouldn’t have the ability to do." He toured Europe in a theater troupe, worked a number of jobs on Polk Street, and now manages the neighborhood’s Palo Alto Hotel, which continues to house people living with AIDS and people of meager means.

Coy Ellison found a safe haven in Polk Street as a teenager in 1978. He did under-the-table work at gay businesses through an unofficial job pool at the street’s bars. That allowed him to avoid being caught by the police and sent back to an abusive home. "There were a lot of people doing that at the time," he said. "Let’s say you needed your apartment painted, was there a kid here who knows how to paint and [the bartenders would] send him off." He later climbed the employment ladder through the bars by working as a bouncer, providing support for new young people coming to the area. He now lives a few blocks away with his partner.

Kevin "Kiko" Lobo moved from San Francisco’s Mission District to Polk Gulch in the early 1980s and found work on the street as a sex worker in bars like the Q.T. "Nobody lost because the bar made money, I got a few drinks, and I met clients." He pooled money with his "street family," made up of teenagers escaping abusive homes and discrimination. On the street, "everything was family," Lobo said. "We all looked out for each other. If you didn’t make any money that day it didn’t mean you were going to sleep on the street." Kiko eventually worked his way into the bar business, becoming a bouncer and later a DJ.

COREY’S STORY


Diez learned that Corey grew up in a deeply religious family in a small town in Minnesota. His mother and father worked in factories, and hunted and fished in the countryside. But "something happened in that family," Diez said. "Either he did something really wrong and they could not put up with him, or they did something wrong and he could not put with up with them, or both — I don’t know." Corey never graduated high school, instead leaving Minnesota for San Francisco.

Corey gave Dan clues as to his move in a series of letters he wrote him from jail, where he was sent on a series of drug charges in the late 1990s. He wrote about three "childhood nightmares" that were "true life stories" and "part of my past survived existence."

He wrote of being part of a "bunch of little gay boys" in high school who "were not allowed to live a normal life one on one with their partners, among lost immediate family, and unforgiven [sic], misunderstanding, or nonaccepting [sic] religious traditional old fashioned folks.

"Our very own parents used to laugh and giggle, and be cruel to us. And no matter how gifted each child was, our parents watched us and made harsh comments, and truly not funny jokes, and then forced us by broken pride, trust, and rejection to survive in Satan’s swamp.

"Some parents are not willing to understand the flower children of the nineties," Corey wrote, but now "I am trying to step out of a nightmare and back into a Dream … [to] kickstart the new flower child era" in San Francisco, "like the hippies once did, so will we rise above once again."

A San Francisco State University study published in Pediatrics in January found that LGBT youth who reported higher rates of family rejection were eight times more likely to report having attempted suicide, and more than three times more likely to use illegal drugs and have unprotected sex, compared with their peers who reported lower levels of family rejection.

Those escaping persecution also appear more likely to be runaways or homeless. While approximately 3-10 percent of the U.S. population identifies as lesbian or gay, 30 percent of youth served by San Francisco’s Larkin Street Youth report that they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex.

POLK FALLS APART


By the time Corey arrived in 1990, the twin epidemics of AIDS and methamphetamine addiction were wreaking havoc on Polk Street.

Harvard-educated ethnographer Toby Marotta, who worked on several federally funded research projects in the Polk Gulch, said that by the mid-1980s "the whole southern end of Polk Gulch was being transformed because of methamphetamine use."

Speed was the perfect drug for the early days of AIDS, when people were terrified and confused: it produced feelings of euphoria, a sense of invulnerability, focus, and a desire for sex. But while the drug "produced long mind-escapes" for people who used it, Marotta said, it "completely undercut the personal relationships and social obligations essential to functioning community."

Combined with a national recession and a rash of Polk Street business closures, the economic health of the street, and the support systems enabled by it, suffered a tremendous blow. The money, energy, guidance, and options for street youth employment through local bars and businesses were quickly disappearing.

By the late 1970s, the city’s gay political center had moved to the more affluent Castro District. "For those of us that depended on the street to survive, the money was harder and harder and harder to make," Lobo said. "And that’s what [began] the downward spiral. Some very pretty boys have become very ugly people because of the … loss of the great community."

A large homeless shelter moved onto Polk in 1990, along with much of the hardscrabble Tenderloin population. A different kind of john came to the street, and there was less respect for sex workers, leading to more escape through drug use. Ellison left his work at the bars in the 1990s, when the community of bartenders that had kept violent crime in check on the street broke down. Sex workers increasingly started advertising in newspapers, and later on the Internet.

Corey began using the speed that was rampant on the block, quickly becoming addicted. Diez worried that by continuing to give Corey money, which he used for drugs, he was "keeping him where he was at" instead of helping. "I eventually always gave in because I always wanted to see him have something better," Diez said. "I just enjoyed being with him. Even if we weren’t talking and he was just writing, I just liked him being there. He was company."

As Corey began using more speed, his artwork "became wilder and wilder." He started to lose his teeth, and his blonde hair turned brown. "He went down, I would say, fairly fast," Diez recalled. Spas began to refuse to serve him. He would wander into the street to pick up imaginary children, and began to be more difficult to talk with. "He went into a lot of gibberish or psychobabble," Diez recalled. "He started to look almost Charles Manson-like."

James Harris, a Polk Street community member since 1978, met Corey when he came to the city in 1990. Harris left in the mid-’90s, and when he returned in 2001, he barely recognized Corey. "I just could not believe what I was seeing. What was once a strapping, good-looking, young man had been reduced to this homeless, toothless guy. It freaked me out so bad. It took me a little while to get over it."

Harris has no doubt that Corey’s decline was linked to the breakdown of the Polk community. "If Corey came to Polk Street in 1980, he would have a job as bartender maybe, working somewhere, maybe living in the Castro," he said. "No question about it." Many people who now work in Polk Street businesses and social service organizations started as runaways and sex workers on Polk.

"In the ’60s and the ’70s, it was like a big party atmosphere. I, fortunately was taken under several people wings," said Cabello, the Palo Alto Hotel manager. "Now people don’t have the cash flow, ‘cuz economically times have really changed. People who were out partying and being able to take somebody home and help them find a job are basically waiting in line at Social Security and making sure that their housing is together."

INTO THE SYSTEM


Gay bar patronage decreased citywide in the 1980s and 1990s, the result of AIDS-related deaths, a generational shift, and later the rise of the Internet. The Tavern Guild disbanded in 1995, and by the late 1990s, most of the Polk Street bar owners had either died or retired. Most of the remaining gay bars were remade into upscale heterosexual or mixed drinking establishments, serving new residents attracted by low rents during dot.com era.

Lower Polk Neighbors represented this new bloc of business owners. Diez joined LPN in 2001, when he retired and moved to Pacific Heights. They planted trees, cleaned sidewalks, and successfully pressured the city officials to increase the number of police patrols in the area. In one of their most controversial actions, they opposed the relocation of the RendezVous bar, which they blamed for nurturing the street and hustler population.

Corey and people like him, once the street’s economic engine, were now bad for business. After his string of arrests on drug charges in the late 1990s, Corey always came back to Polk Street after being released. In 1997, he was arrested, diagnosed with HIV while in jail, and sent to a psychiatric hospital.

The most recurrent theme in Corey’s letters from this period were finding love and proving to himself that his love was okay. In a poem, he wrote, "God’s gift a soul /it was not shattered, battered, but whole / … My love from within /was not curse … scattered, tattered, or sin/than [sic] I found I did win /see like yang of yin /by forgiving within /my mind and my kin. I’m forgiving their sins."

When the Rev. Megan M. Rohrer, director of the Welcome Ministry, first met him in 2001, Corey was having "loud, yelling conversations" on the sidewalk outside Old First Presbyterian Church, where he often slept at night. "He was having the conversation of the day he came out to her, and his Mom was always trying to tell him why he couldn’t be gay, and why it was a bad thing. He was always trying to have the conversation that that was who he was, and it was how he loved, and he just kept having the conversation over and over and over, trying to have a different result, which never happened."

The organization formed in the late 1990s as a result of complaints about the increasing number of homeless in the area. Rohrer estimates that 98 percent of the homeless who live in the Polk Gulch and come to the Welcome Ministry have been part of the Polk Street sex work industry. Like Corey, they had aged into the general homeless population.

For four years, Rohrer tried unsuccessfully to place Corey in a hospital or get long-term treatment from the city. Ironically, it was the result of increasing neighborhood complaints that he finally found this. "The neighbors were getting really angry and wanted to get rid of the homeless from the area," Rohrer recalls. In 2005, Corey was arrested on drug charges as part of what she characterized as a sting operation.

The breakthrough came when he was arrested and declared mentally unfit to stand trial for the first time since 1997. The court sent him to Napa State Hospital, a secured mental facility where he was required to take medications. "Finally Corey was getting the mental health services he needed," she said.

In the absence of sufficient social services, this has become standard policing practice, according to Al Casciato, who heads San Francisco Police Department’s Northern Station. "We do not have a front end to the criminal justice system in the health arena that allows us to take these people and put them in a secure facility," he told the Guardian.

"What happens is that we wait until they get in trouble in order to put them in jail to get them off the street and then try to get them into services. We should be trying to get them into services first, but we do not have the capacity to accept everybody into services." Even after police convince a person to use services, during the long waits due to the lack of services, sometimes months at a time, "they fall back into their pattern of either drug abuse, or if they have a mental health issue, their depression starts to spin out again."

Corey was at Napa State for nearly a year on medications. "Corey make some really good strides there," Diez said. "He was also at his artistic high points … he built balsawood airplanes that he gave to children." When he was declared competent to stand trial and sent back to San Francisco, "he was like a completely different person," Rohrer recalled. "He was so with it. He was really clear about what he wanted and where he wanted to go."

But Rohrer spent two months navigating the bureaucracy to get Corey the medication he needed, during which he had slid back into schizophrenia and was no longer willing to take his prescriptions. "It was like watching Corey emerge in this beautiful way and then to disappear," Rohrer said. He’s never been back on medication, and his condition has not improved.

Rohrer was able to find him housing in a nearby SRO hotel through the Homeless Outreach Team, instituted in 2004 as part of Care Not Cash — part of a dramatic move indoors for the homeless in the area. It was an improvement from the streets, on which the supportive "street families" had now broken down. But it’s unclear whether Corey is capable of living on his own, or whether the case managers assigned to him are sufficient.

"They weren’t there," Diez says. "Because I was vacuuming his floor, I was cleaning his sink, I was taking his dirty clothes out. As much as I hate to say it, Corey needs to be in a medical facility where he can have some psychiatric help."

When I visited Corey in his apartment a few months ago, cartoons played on the television, the only piece of furniture other than his bed. His walls were bare and the sink fastened to the wall was clogged with brackish water. The carpet was filthy with cigarette butts and a mouse ran over my feet.

BOTTOMING OUT


Now, with major budget cuts across the board, services are being cut at the time when they are most needed. This will have a tremendous negative impact not only on people like Corey, but also on business owners and service providers in the Polk neighborhood.

The Welcome Ministry will lose big grants next year, Rohrer said. Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, says that budget cuts in the works will have a "huge and dramatic impact" on people like Corey and will "devastate" mental health treatment services — with as much as a 44 percent reduction in the publicly-funded mental health treatment system and similar reductions for substance abuse treatment.

Ann R.P. Harrison, director of New Leaf, a mental health organization that serves 1,500 LGBT people a year, says they recently reduced staff hours and the amount of services offered, and, like most nonprofits, are looking at up to a 20 percent budget reduction starting July.

Toby Eastman of Larkin Street Youth, which serves youth under 25, says that $100,000 in HIV prevention services cuts from the Department of Public Health mean "significantly reduced the prevention staff." Eastman expects the cuts to increase next year, at a time when she sees other smaller agencies closing their doors.

Diez and Rohrer take away different lessons from their experiences with Corey. Diez says he has "hardened" about homelessness and has stopped talking with Corey. "I was an enabler for him, which I didn’t like doing but I was always hoping that what I was doing was helping him," he said. "But maybe not. Corey made choices, and maybe they weren’t good choices. And you can’t blame that on the city. It’s gotta go both ways." Once the keeper of Corey’s Social Security card, money, and other personal items, he has now handed that responsibility to Rohrer.

Rohrer sees a failure of the social safety net. "There’s a barrier to getting mental health services that seems like it’s set up so that people will fail," she said. "Places that accept MediCal or city patients can take two months before they can get an appointment. The hospital does not even have the capacity to help those police deem a threat to themselves or others."
"There were gay bars here, and there were affluent men, and that’s not here anymore," Diez said. "The bars are gone, those people who went to those bars don’t come anymore, and Corey’s just a remnant. He’s just existing. He’s surviving. He’s just something that’s eventually going to disappear from the scene."
For now, Corey poses both a challenge for the emerging Polk community and an opportunity for a divided neighborhood to find common ground. He still has dreams, Rohrer says, even if they might not be realistic. "We’re not expecting him to be a Wall Street CEO," she said. "But he’s always going to be stuck in the past if he doesn’t achieve some of his future hopes."
Joey Plaster is curator of "Polk Street: Lives in Transition," an exhibit open through May 31 at the GLBT Historical Society. More information at www.glbthistory.org/PolkProject.

Save the Chronicle!

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EDITORIAL The San Francisco Chronicle story March 15 on Mayor Gavin Newsom’s frequent absence from the city drew comments from many who believe the mayor is out of touch, wandering the state seeking votes for governor at a time when the city is facing a historic financial crisis. The news was really nothing new — we’ve been reporting for months now that the mayor is disengaged in the business of running the city. But it appeared on the front page of the local daily newspaper, and that put the story right in the center of civic discourse.

We’ve been as critical of the Chron as anyone in town. For 42 years, we’ve been reporting on the failures of the daily newspapers in San Francisco, and we regularly blast the Hearst-owned near-monopoly daily for its failure to cover major stories and its biased slant on others.

And as the first alternative newspaper in the country founded specifically to provide an editorial and advertising alternative to the moribund dailies, we’re the first to agree that the Chron doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have the final word on what’s important in this city. We’re big supporters of all sorts of alternative media, and we’re glad to see that Web-based news publications, some of them daily, are appearing and offering different ways for people to find information.

But if the Chronicle dies, the city will lose an important, if often infuriating, civic institution. Hearst should not be allowed to turn San Francisco into the first major American city with no major daily newspaper — not without extensive oversight, hearings, and a chance for somebody else to take over the paper and try to make it work.

Hearst is complaining that the Chronicle is losing about $50 million a year. Of course, Hearst, a private corporation, won’t show anyone, even its own unions, its books.

We realize the newspaper business is rough right now, but we’re not convinced that running a daily paper in San Francisco is a doomed proposition. This is one of the wealthiest, best-educated markets in the world — and the fact that Hearst can’t sell enough newspapers and ads to float its operation is in significant part a sign of how miserable the paper’s management has failed. It tried to be a regional paper, which flopped. It’s become so politically conservative that progressives, particularly young progressives who make up the future of its demographic base, see little reason to subscribe.

And let’s not forget — Hearst has made a fortune in San Francisco. In 1965, the Hearst-owned Examiner and the family-owned Chronicle formed a joint operating agreement — a government-sanctioned monopoly, blessed by special legislation, that allowed two ostensibly competing companies to fix prices, share markets and pool profits. For the next 26 years, the JOA was a license to print money. Local advertisers paid billions in high rates to the newspaper combine, and those profits far, far eclipse anything the Chron has lost since Hearst bought it.

When the New York company bought out the deYoung Thieriot family in 2001, it sought to create a true monopoly by shutting down the Ex entirely. A local outcry, a lawsuit by Clint Reilly, and threats by federal regulators forced Hearst to sell the bones of the Ex to the Fang family, which essentially got the paper free and was given a $66 million subsidy to run it.

Now, after all this, Hearst is threatening to close shop and walk away, destroying hundreds of union jobs and wiping out a newspaper that is, by its nature, something of a public utility. And once again — ironically, just as the Chron reported — Mayor Newsom is missing in action. Newsom should be taking the lead on preventing the loss of a major local business. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is asking the Justice Department to relax anti-competitive rules on newspaper ownership (a bad idea), should instead push legislation barring a daily newspaper in a one-paper town from closing down unless and until the owners offer it for sale at a fair price and give someone else a chance to run it. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer should join her.

The Chron unions have talked of an interest in buying the paper. Financier Warren Hellman confirmed to us that he supports creating a nonprofit entity to take over Chronicle operations. Hearst Corp., which has almost certainly already written off its $600 million purchase as a tax loss, should be forced to work with potential buyers — and give them a deal no worse than what the Fangs got in 2001.

The future of the Chron has implications for the entire industry — and if Hearst is going to carry out the assassination of a newspaper, it should be done in a fishbowl. Congress, the state Legislature, and the San Francisco supervisors should hold hearings, subpoena the Hearst executives, and push alternatives. And Newsom needs to quit gallivanting around the state and start working on his own city’s problems. *

Editor’s Notes

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› Tredmond@sfbg.com

My sister did a sociology project in college that involved the culture of laundromats. Nothing revolutionary, and I suspect it’s been done before, but she hung out in coin-ops and watched what happened when somebody ran out of money before the final load. What she discovered (again, nothing that sociologists haven’t written about for years) was that the less money patrons had, the more likely they were to lend it to someone else. You can imagine what the poorer folks told her: "Hey, last week that was me needing a quarter."

I know this is a huge, vast, sweeping generalization, but I’ll cop to it: Poor people are better at building communities than rich people. If you’re someone who is always living on the edge, always one step away from economic disaster, you’re more likely to play a role in a community that helps others in your situation.

So check out our cover story this week, because it gives some perspective on the evils of gentrification.

In the 1980s, lower Polk Street had an active sex-worker community. Hustlers and bartenders and guys looking for hustlers took care of each other. New kids in town, many of them runaways fleeing homophobic and abusive situations, got connections, work (not always sex work), and a chance to build a life. There are quite a few prominent, successful San Franciscans who came out of that world. It wasn’t always pretty, and was often dangerous, but it was a legitimate community.

But as more upscale businesses and residents started to displace the hustler bars and push the kids off the streets, the community fell apart. It didn’t help that the drug of choice was changing from pot to meth, and that AIDS was ravaging queer San Francisco, particularly places like Polk Street, and a lot of the damage would have occurred anyway. Still, the gentrification made it worse.

And as organic, self-sustaining communities made up of people who help each other are riven by economic displacement, the costs are shifted to the public sector. In other words, gentrification is bad for the taxpayers.

I saw this happening way back in the early 1980s, when I was a volunteer with the Haight Ashbury Switchboard. We saved the city millions, mostly by helping people in the neighborhood help each other. My friend Jasin, who was living on SSI, had a flat with some extra space, and we sent homeless crashers to stay with her while they got on their feet. A few of the local communes took in crashers too. We told people how to work the system, how to say out of trouble, how to survive in the big city.

But as rents went up, and people who had plenty of time to volunteer either left town or had to take full-time jobs, and the communes and food conspiracies disappeared, and SSI no longer paid for a five-room flat — as the Haight gentrified — that model fell apart. There are still plenty of community-based services and organizations in the Haight and elsewhere, but it’s harder, much harder. And the sense that we’re all in this together, that we’re all kind of struggling but we’re all going to help each other make it through, is almost gone.

I don’t know. Maybe the depression brings it back. *

Read Pelosi’s letter, attend Chron forum, reaffirm love of newsprint.

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CHronbuilding.bmp
Discuss the future of the Chronicle and other print media organizations at the SF Public Library, TONIGHT!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, seeking changes to the antitrust restrictions that govern newspapers, is a revealing document.

Pelosi states that her decision to write Holder wasn’t just prompted by the economic challenges facing the San Francisco Chronicle and other Bay Area news organizations, “but also by major news organizations across the country.”

“I am sure you agree that a strong, free and independent press is vital for our democracy,” Pelosi continues, noting how newspapers have been, “the indispensable source of public information and a check on the abuses of government and other powerful interests,” for more than two centuries.

And then she signals that the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy, which is chaired by Rep. Hank Johnson, (D-Ga.) will soon hold a hearing and discuss the implications of newspaper survival for antitrust policy.

Pelosi acknowledges that “antitrust laws have been an essential protector of competitive choice in the newspaper business,” and that, “the antitrust laws are every bit as vital in this industry as elsewhere in the economy, and perhaps more so given the First Amendment issues that are also at stake.”

But then she asserts that she is, “confident” that the AntiTrust Division, “in assessing any concerns that any proposed mergers or other arrangements in the San Francisco area might reduce competition, will take into appropriate account, as relevant, not only the number of daily and weekly newspapers in the Bay Area, but also the other sources of news and advertising outlets available in the electronic and digital age, so that the conclusions reached reflect current market realities.”

“This is consistent with antitrust enforcement in recent years under both Republican and Democratic administrations,” Pelosi concludes. “And the result will be to allow free market forces to preserve as many news sources, as many viewpoints, and as many jobs as possible. We must ensure that our policies enable our news organizations to survive and to engage in the news gathering and analysis that the American people expect.”

Pelosi reportedly released this letter, which you can read here, after meeting with Hearst general counsel Eve Burton and Chronicle at-large editor Phil Bronstein in D.C. last week, where they discussed the future of the Chronicle as well as federal media shield legislation.

Her letter immediately fueled rumors that Dean Singleton’s MediaNews chain, which already owns the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune, and Hearst, which has a one-third stake in Singleton’s non Bay Area papers, are hoping to consolidate operations.

If so, that’s doesn’t bode particularly well for newspaper workers, who have only lost jobs, suffered pay cuts and seen reduced investigative reporting under both regimes. But maybe they can use Pelosi’s letter to open up a much needed public discussion of the future of newsprint.

Ironically, that discussion is already going on within the blogosphere. And judging from the comments, some folks don’t give a toss if print newspapers die, right here, right now.

Cruising Craigslist: Breakfast of champions

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Each week, Justin Juul combs the SF Craigslist Personals and Missed Connections for true gems that prove there’s enough love for everyone. View his last installment here.

morningsex41a.jpg

If there’s one thing that sucks about living in San Francisco it’s the fact that most of us have to hustle our asses off just to make rent every month. We have to work shitty side jobs to avoid homelessness through grad school or we have to hold down three careers simultaneously just so we can maintain one that makes us feel good. It wouldn’t be so bad if our bodies and minds were designed to handle such frantic schedules, but the fact of the matter is that they’re not. We have to sleep at least 20 hours a week and we have to eat at least once a day. And yes, we have to have sex sometimes too. The question is, “When?”

Well, if you’re life is anything like ours, the only time of day that’s almost always open is dawn. You don’t have to be anywhere, you don’t have to answer any emails, etc. With a small tweak to your sleep schedule, you can transform your early mornings from the nicotine-and-caffeine binges they are now into the hot and heavy love sessions you’ve been missing out on. The only problem is, where the hell are you going to find a compatible sex partner at 5am?

Craigslist, duh.

Early morning discreet fun – m4w – 28 (san Jose east)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-03-05, 10:46PM PST

Hi, thanks for taking the time to check out my post. I am looking for a discreet encounter w/ a sexy woman who would like me to come over around 5 am and leave around 6:30 am. I am very oral and love to make a woman moan with pleasure as I lick you to ecstasy. I am not picky, just want clean, disease free, 420 friendly woman. fairly open minded pls feel free to email me if you have questions.

Early AM Oral – m4m – 44 (redwood city)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-03-05, 9:39PM PST
I love the taste of cock in the morning – can I taste you Friday around 7am? I will be on my way to work in RWC, near oracle, and would love to have a hard one shoved down my throat until I gag but service that dick until it shoots cream that I swallow. Sound like a good time? Write me back and I will answer in the AM – or send me a location to meet you and I will take care of your stiff dick.

The best thing to do right when you wake up… – w4m – 24 (mountain view)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-03-06, 9:32PM PST
It’s extra early, and I’m extra horny! Looking for someone to hook up with this morning! 40 and over, pic w/ reply!

Early morning suck – m4t– 22 (Vallejo / Benicia)
Reply to: [redacted]
Date: 2009-03-07, 2:21AM PST
Lets see i am visiting the bay area looking for a early morning fun. basically I want you to come suck me off and leave no more no less I want to use you and kick you out this is a huge fetish for me please help me I’m 5’9″ one sixty five pounds I am straight but I have a weakness for you T girls. I am only visiting this month. Haven’t had me a Cali T-girl yet so prove to me you better then the girls back home.

your pik gets mine no pik no reply

Johny

Printless in Seattle

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Unable to find a buyer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which it put up for sale in January, Hearst is kiling P-I’s print version. Starting tomorrow.

Hearst’s chief honchos, Frank A. Bennack, Jr., vice chairman and chief executive officer, Hearst Corporation, and Steven R. Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, tried to give the announcement a positive spin, stating that the P-I “will become the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.”

(But for those of us who love and appreciate everything about newsprint, this is like saying, it’s too expensive to grow flowers anymore, but hey, you will be able to see cyber flowers online.)

“The P-I has a rich 146-year history of service to the people of the Northwest, which makes the decision to stop publishing the newspaper an extraordinarily difficult one,” Bennack said. “We extend our profound gratitude and admiration to our P-I colleagues who have done such an exemplary job under extremely difficult circumstances over the past several years. Our goal now is to turn seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region.”

“Seattlepi.com isn’t a newspaper online—it’s an effort to craft a new type of digital business with a robust, community news and information Web site at its core,” said Swartz.

“On the business side, we are assembling a staff to form a local digital agency that will sell local businesses advertising on seattlepi.com as well as the digital advertising products of our partners: Yahoo! for display advertising, Kaango for general marketplaces and Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com for search engine marketing,” Swartz said.

Hearst also noted that in January, Nielsen ranked seattlepi.com among the top 30 newspaper Web sites with 1.8 million unique users. The site has an average of 4 million monthly visitors, according to internal Hearst tracking.

You can read Hearst’s full statement about the Seattle P-1 here.

The annoucement came two days after workers at the San Francisco Chronicle voted 10-1 to accept Hearst’s proposal to cut 150 jobs and end seniority, moves Hearst Corp. stated were necessary to avert the immediate closure and/or sale of the city’s major daily newspaper. But even Guild workers were clear that voting to accept Hearst’s proposal was no guarantee that the Chronicle would thrive, unless a new business model can be found.

Carl Hall, the Guild’s lead negotiator for workers at the Chroncile, said that no amount of concessions can prop up a failed business model for long.

“This is the start of the real battle,” Hall said. “We have to find a solution, a real solution, to save what we really care about here – quality journalism and quality jobs.”

.

Why Chronicle workers need to see Hearst’s books

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redflagjpg.jpg
Hearst and the Chronicle’s refusal to share its audited books should raise serious red flags for workers.

Text by Sarah Phelan.

We all know that the economy is in bad shape and that the newspaper industry is hurting. But before Guild members vote this Saturday at the Parc 55 Hotel on whether to accept a deal that cuts 150 jobs and eliminates seniority, they should demand to see the audited records of both the Hearst and the Chron.

Back in 2005-2006, Local 4, which represent pressmen at the Chronicle, hired Peter Donahue of PBI Associates to assess allegations that the Chron and/or Hearst could not meet its obligations to the pressmen and other Chronicle employees.

To assess these claims, Donahue suggested the union should request audited financial statements for Hearst for the past ten years, audited financial statements for the Chron, and detailed statements of non-operating and operating costs, “distinguishing clearly between actual expenditures, set-asides and inter-corporate transfers” for Hearst, the Chron, SFgate and the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, for the past 10 years.

“No such information was provided by Hearst,: Donahue advised Local 4’s then President Anthony Price. “Without such information, allegations that the newspaper or the Corporation are unable to meet their obligations are unfounded, only repeat claims that the company has been unwilling and unable to support with credible evidence.”

To see the full text of Donahue’s letter, click here.

Spin vs. substance

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› rebeccab@sfbg.com

Hollywood paparazzi crews are beginning to follow high-profile politicians, such as Mayor Gavin Newsom, the same way they track the likes of Britney Spears, the San Francisco Chronicle reported recently. And when a celebrity gossip photographer surreptitiously aims the lens at a political leader, the picture that emerges isn’t always flattering.

Likewise, the documents that can be extracted through public records laws — including the federal Freedom of Information Act, California Public Records Act, and San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance — don’t always paint political figures in the most favorable light.

Both end products leave the same impression of a glimpse behind the curtain — consumers feel they’re privy to the raw, unpackaged truth. But while photos may show politicians looking silly or meeting with controversial power brokers, documents show how the people’s business is being conducted. So the willingness of officials to promptly comply with requests for documents and information says a great deal about whether their public statements match their private deeds.

Nathan Ballard, Newsom’s press secretary, characterizes (through e-mail, the medium through which he insists on dealing with the Guardian) the mayor’s commitment to open government as being "as strong or stronger than any public official in this country."

But to hear some proponents of open government tell it — and in our experience here at the Guardian — the Newsom administration keeps much of the mayor’s business under wraps, leaving many info-seekers in the dark or reliant on Ballard’s spin. Responses to requests for public records tend to be delayed and incomplete, and queries directed to the mayor’s office of communications are often returned with terse, one-line e-mails that obscure more than illuminate.

Rick Knee, a longtime member of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force — the city body charged with upholding the open-government rule — says Newsom has been in violation of the Sunshine Ordinance on several occasions. "Mayor Newsom’s actual practices regarding Sunshine have been, shall we say, less than what one would desire of him," Knee says. Despite those violations, he adds, the mayor "continues to refuse to provide what remedies the task force calls for on his part."

Under Proposition 59, a state constitutional amendment that won overwhelming voter approval in 2004, the records kept by public officials are considered to be "the people’s business." In practice, however, it doesn’t always pan out that way.

For example, a group of citizens informally known as the Sunshine Posse who have made it a personal quest to improve government transparency by peppering city departments with Sunshine requests, have sounded alarm bells over the mayor’s refusal to release a more detailed daily calendar. One Sunshine Posse member began seeking more fleshed-out mayoral itineraries back in 2006, according to group member Christian Holmer, to gain an understanding of whom the mayor had met with and what had been discussed.

But he quickly ran into a slew of difficulties. "The Mayor’s Office ignored our simple request for 255 days," Holmer told the Guardian. "We sent weekly reminders to most of his staff and key members of the city attorney’s executive and government teams for months and months." After bringing the matter to the attention of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, Holmer says, a new set of problems cropped up. "For the Mayor’s Office, it was an ongoing tale of crashed hard drives, changing office personnel, lost documents, overt/covert confusion, and best intentions."

Nearly three years later, the scrutinizing crew remains frustrated with the results, saying the Mayor’s Office has only come forth with a watered-down schedule, called the Prop. G calendar ("scrubbed" and "virtually useless," in Holmer’s opinion), rather than the more descriptive document known as the working calendar. Many days, Newsom’s Prop. G calendar is blank, and seldom is there more than a few hours worth of activities, each one usually described in just a few words.

The Prop. G calendar seeks to comply with the minimum standards for calendars set forth in the city’s 1999 sunshine law: "The mayor … shall keep or cause to be kept a daily calendar wherein is recorded the time and place of each meeting or event attended by that official…. For meetings not otherwise publicly recorded, the calendar shall include a general statement of issues discussed."

The working calendar is a confidential document, the Mayor’s Office held in a letter responding to the Sunshine Posse’s complaint that the mayor was withholding public information. "The Mayor’s Office prepares a working calendar that is extremely detailed and accounts for his time from departure from home until his return in the evening," the letter states. "The working calendar contains not only the mayor’s meeting schedule, but also confidential information such as the officers assigned to protect him, security contact numbers, the mayor’s private schedule, details of his travel [etc.]. As with past administrations, the mayor’s staff keeps the working calendar and its contents confidential…. The computer system automatically deletes the working calendar after five days."

Despite this defense, the task force determined that the working calendar is in fact a public document that should be provided to the citizens. Doug Comstock was task force chair when the issue was heard. "We made it very clear that they have to turn over those documents," he says. "If there’s a document that’s being created using public monies and public funds, that is a more specific calendar, that’s the document that needs to be provided." Comstock also noted that it is possible for the Mayor’s Office to redact sensitive information that could pose a security risk. Nonetheless, he says, three years have passed and "the real calendar remains hidden from view."

When asked about the complaints regarding the calendar, Ballard responded, "Their criticism is baseless. We exceed far [sic] the requirements of the Sunshine Ordinance with the level of disclosure that we provide."

Erica Craven, an attorney who sits on the task force, believes there’s room for improvement on the mayor’s practices regarding sunshine. "My instinct is that there are a lot of people who work in the Mayor’s Office who are committed to open government," she says. "But there are some troubling things we’ve seen as well, such as complaints where the Mayor’s Office hasn’t sent a representative to respond to allegations. I would like to see a little bit more commitment and leadership on open government from the Mayor’s Office — I think it would set a good tone in City Hall."

In recent weeks, interest in the mayor’s schedule has intensified once again in light of the city’s financial predicament. In the face of a looming budget deficit of unprecedented size and with the economy in shambles and jobs at stake, journalists and affected citizens are seeking details about how the conundrum is being dealt with inside City Hall.

Last month, the Guardian filed a request under the Sunshine Ordinance for details on the mayor’s meetings about the budget, asking for "a list of all the labor and business leaders and supervisors that he’s met with about the budget, the dates of those meetings and how long they lasted, all documents associated with those meetings (including any agendas, communications to set up those meetings and follow-up communications after the meetings), and summaries of what was discussed at those meetings, including any outcomes or agreements."

Under the Sunshine Ordinance, such "immediate disclosure" requests are supposed be honored in two days’ time, but it took five days and a Guardian reminder for the Mayor’s Office to respond via e-mail, saying: "As you know, the Sunshine Ordinance does not require us to create documents. If you can point to a specific document that you’re seeking, I’d be happy to try and locate it for you."

Three days later, the Mayor’s Office forwarded the Prop. G calendar, which revealed that the mayor booked 7.5 hours of meetings about the budget crisis over the course of 17 days, none with labor representatives (whom Ballard said Newsom had met with). It included one-line entries disclosing whom he met with and when, but no information concerning the substance of the discussion. When the Guardian pressed for more information, the Mayor’s Office said there were no other documents associated with those meetings or any other information they were willing to provide.

Similarly, just last week, the Guardian tried to find out what the Mayor’s Office was doing about reports that Caltrain and the California High-Speed Rail Authority were balking at using the Transbay Terminal, citing technical concerns. On March 6, we asked who was working on the issue, what communications there had been with these agencies, and other basic information.

Ballard would say only that "The mayor is fully engaged in finding a comprehensive regional solution that ensures that high speed rail will come to the Transbay Terminal," and denied further requests for more substantive information.

Ballard acknowledges that the Mayor’s Office has "occasionally" been found to be in violation of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. However, he noted, "I can’t remember a time when the Ethics Commission did not overturn a task force decision against our office. In other words, most if not all task force decisions against us have, upon review, been found to be without merit."

Actually, the chronically under-funded Ethics Commission isn’t charged with judging whether SOTF findings have merit. The SOTF is the arbiter of whether the Sunshine Ordinance was violated, but it has no enforcement authority and therefore must rely on Ethics to pursue violations — if it has the will and resources to do so.

This touches on a trend that Knee says is a fundamental challenge to upholding the Sunshine Ordinance. "If the [task force] finds that there has been a willful violation … we can refer our findings to any or all of four entities: Ethics, the Board of Supervisors, the District Attorney, and the California Attorney General," Knee explains. "At one time or another we have made referrals to any or all of those organizations. And every single time, those entities have thrown out our findings. Not one complaint we have submitted has been upheld."

To remedy this, he says, a package of proposed reforms is in the works. "We want to give the task force some teeth," he says. "We want enforcement power of our own."

Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

Letters

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THE VICE MAYORS


Thanks so much for the great article on Climate Theater ("Still crazy after all these years," 2/25/09). I’ve lived and worked in SoMa since 1973 and can think of no art venue that has done more to create a vibrant, inspiring community.

If playa types like Suck Up Willie Brown (I’ve seen him at Hollywood parties) and our current mayor, The Talking Haircut, could live in Climate World for six months, they might develop souls.

Joegh Bullock and Marcia Crosby are the co-mayors, or shall I say vice-mayors, of South of Market. Thanks for giving them props.

John LeFan

San Francisco

THE FATE OF THE CHRON


Good riddance to the San Francisco Chronicle and good luck finding a buyer.

I know of one union that has already been cut to the bone — pressmen and prepress workers, Local 4N. As a matter of fact, there will be about 200 press workers out of a job in June when the Canadian Company Transcontinental starts printing the Chronicle at the new printing facility in Fremont. Not one member from the San Francisco Local has been hired.

All production department union jobs are being outsourced. This includes mailers, machinists, and electricians. I wouldn’t count on any of them giving anything up since they are going to be unemployed come June 29th.

Maybe the Hearst Corporation should cancel the 15-year, $1 billion contract it signed with Transcon. I’m sure all the unions that will be out on the street come June would be willing to sign contracts for a lot less.

Bruce Carlton

Local 4N retiree, San Francisco

SF’S SLEEPING GIANT


Paging Matt Gonzalez! If truth is the first casualty of war, what is ceded in total occupation? Calvin Welch’s op-ed ("It’s a recession, let’s get cracking," 2/25/09) reflects the nascent realization that what San Francisco lost in electing Gavin Newsom over Gonzalez, the nation has now lost in validating the pro-corporate centrist DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) wing of the Democratic Party on a grand scale.

The opposition from the right is inarticulate and, as Welch notes, the truly democratic left is hopelessly inarticulate. Sustainability, of our environment, our economies, and our health is the challenge that must be met. It wasn’t that long ago that "a sleeping giant stirred in San Francisco." Can it happen again? Paging Matt Gonzalez!

Poplicola

From sfbg.com

The Guardian welcomes letters commenting on our coverage or other topics of local interest. Letters should be brief (we reserve the right to edit them for length) and signed. Please include a daytime telephone number for verification.

Corrections and clarifications: The Guardian tries to report news fairly and accurately. You are invited to complain to us when you think we have fallen short of that objective. Complaints should be directed to Paula Connelly, the assistant to the publisher. We prefer them in writing, but Connelly can also be reached by phone at (415) 255-3100. If we have published a misstatement, we will endeavor to correct it quickly and in an appropriate place in the newspaper. If you remain dissatisfied, we invite you to contact the Minnesota News Council, an impartial organization that hears and considers complaints against news media. It can be reached at 12 South Sixth St., Suite 1122, Minneapolis MN 55402; (612) 341-9357; fax (612) 341-9358.

BVHP realtors to discuss black crisis

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Diane Wesley Smith, owner/broker of DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services, says that a newly formed group, the Bayview Hunters Point Real Estate Professionals, will meet at 1 PM, Friday, March 6 to discuss the current real estate situation in Bayview Hunters Point and how folks can help protect the BVHP community.

Afraid that the current redevelopment plans for the BVHP won’t help folks who grew up and live in the community to get jobs or stay in the BVHP, including those who hope to live in public housing, but have felonies on their record, Wesley Smith believes the time is right for concerned citizens to come together and brainstorm about this ongoing crisis.

Part of this crisis has been documented by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s African American Outmigration task force, which showed that African Americans are leaving San Francisco at a higher rate than any other U.S. city. But a visit to the taskforce’s website suggests that the taskforce has not met since December 2007. Equally disturbing is the fact that the task force did not present its findings to elected officials until August 2008. In other words, voters were not able to access relevant data about the plight of their city’s African American community, until six weeks after they had voted on–and endorsed–a conceptual framework that is now being used to drive an urban design plan that has environmental and social justice groups raising their eyebrows.

Fast forward to March 2009 and Diane Wesley-Smith is hoping that folks can come together and reach out to the Obama administration to make sure that the federal government realizes that the city is moving forward with plans to simply cap a radioactively contaminated landfill in the BVHP, even though the mess was created by the federal government, lies next to the San Francisco Bay and will be capped adjacent to a massive condo development.

“At the very least, Lennar should have online disclosures about the condition of the land they plan to develop,” says Wesley Smith, noting that she is concerned about all the people living in the BVHP.

The Bayview Hunters Point Real Estate Professionals will meet at DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services, 4636 Third Street at Newcomb Avenue.

Warmest Regards,

Diane

Diane Wesley Smith, Owner/Broker
DWS/BVHP Real Estate Services
4636 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94124
415 821-2847 Office
415 342-5970 Cellular

Retired Chronicle pressmen suspect Hearst

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by Sarah Phelan

Chronicle employees have remained silent about Hearst Corp.’s claims that it needs to make major cuts now, or it will sell or shutter the paper. Their silence is understandable: folks everywhere are afraid of losing their jobs in a major recession. And, as the California Media Workers Guild reports, talks with Chronicle management representatives continue, focusing on management’s latest response to the Guild’s proposals to minimize job losses through cost cuts and business-recovery initiatives.

The Guild previously reported that their negotiators had offered Chronicle management representatives, “a comprehensive package of proposals to cut costs, minimize layoffs, generate new revenues and speed the transition from newsprint to online communications,” but Chronicle management expressed doubts about whether the would be enough to avert deep job losses in the Guild’s ranks.

But while Chronicle workers remain mum, and Chronicle editor-at-large Phil Bronstein tries to take credit for this crisis, Denis Mosgofian, a past president of Local 4, which has represented pressmen in the Bay Area for 110 years, has shared his theory about what just happened.

Mosgofian, who has been in the printing trade since 1972 and with the Chronicle since 1987 until he retired in 2001, believes Hearst may be overstating just how bad its finances really are. He also doubts whether Hearst is sharing its books with the Chronicle in a way that would help the newspaper evaluate Hearst’s claims. Here’s what he said:
March 2, 2009

“The Hearst Corporation announced early last week that they would either get concessions from the unions at the San Francisco Chronicle and be able to cut costs or the Hearst Corporation would seek a buyer or shut the paper down.”

“This announcement comes at the midst of the recession/depression. It comes after the Chronicle has already shut down its Richmond and San Francisco production operations and just four months before closing its very large Union City production plant and outsourcing its production to a Canadian non-union printing company named Transcontinental, which has built a brand new production plant in Fremont, California, scheduled to begin production of the Chronicle on June 29, 2009.”

It’s a depression. Let’s get cracking

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By Calvin Welch


OPINION It’s time we called it what it is: this is a depression. And we need to figure out the politics of the new age we are entering, especially in cities, which will be the ground zero for economic hardship.

While President Obama and the media continue to use euphemisms (the "subprime mortgage collapse," "the recession," "the credit crunch") for fear of causing a panic. But the recent tsunami of lost jobs and frozen credit, coupled with the long-standing structural problems of nearly 30 years of Republican magic-of-the-marketplace economic policies — shrinking real incomes for 90 percent of Americans, an obscenely expensive healthcare system that neither businesses nor workers can afford, and an outmoded and deadly carbon-based energy system — have created a new global depression, one the experts said could never happen again.

The current global depression differs in three important ways from your grandparents’ (or great-grandparents’) depression.

First and foremost, this depression was worldwide from the start. Although made in America, the global financial capital system infected the world economy one trading day after it affected ours. Second, the Great Depression was agricultural- and industrial-based, hitting small towns and the countryside the hardest. The current depression is financial service-sector based, and will hit cities and suburbs the hardest, especially the housing, real estate ,and retail sectors. Since the nation is far more urban than it was in the 1930s, our depression will put far greater strains on our urban politics and life-supporting social services to low income people, than anything that occurred during the Great Depression. Finally and saddest, this depression comes at a time when organized labor is weak, divided, and confused.

San Francisco leaders seem unequal to the challenges confronting us. Recently Mayor Gavin Newsom has come up with the usual policies that transform a bad recession into an even greater depression: cut urban health and human services, lay off city employees, and massively accelerate speculation in condo conversions in the midst of cratering real estate values and zero mortgage lending while providing an anemic stimulus proposal for a handful of small businesses that pay their workers very little and are no longer capable of providing health care.

But in the land of the blind, the one-eyed person is king. What is the progressive answer to these mindless proposals? The usual default answers: no cuts, no layoffs — and silence on all the other issues confronting us. This simply won’t do this time. Its not about the budget, folks, it’s about the economy.

We need to start talking with each other — now — about how we rebuild a sustainable urban economy that runs on renewable energy, provides health care for our people, and houses us all. Lets get cracking. *

Calvin Welch is a community organizer and resident of San Francisco.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

When the news broke last week that Hearst Corporation was threatening to shut down the San Francisco Chronicle, the pundits across the country raised the obvious question: will San Francisco become the first American city without a major daily newspaper?

I think it’s a little early to say that Chron is actually going to vanish; part of what’s going on is clearly a shot across the bow of the paper’s unions, a warning on the part of tough-guy publisher Frank Vega that he’s deadly serious about cutting costs. That will mean widespread layoffs, outsourcing of union jobs, etc. Hearst is a big corporation run by bean counters, one that has major financial problems at many of its media properties. It’s not going to keep sustaining $50 million a year losses in San Francisco.

But Hearst is also a major political player in the United States, California, and San Francisco, and a big-city newspaper carries with it a lot of influence. Shutting down the Chron would be a huge step, one that the Hearst board members, who include William Randolph Hearst 3rd, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, are going to do only as an absolute last resort.

What happens if we lose the Chron? Well, in the short term, we’re stuck with the Examiner, which recently lauded Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s CEO as an icon of alternative energy. I need say no more. In the longer term, something will arise to replace the Chron, probably several Web-only daily newspapers, but they’ll never achieve the clout an old-fashioned morning paper had on the political, cultural, and civic dialogue. Those days are numbered anyway; the urban news media of the future will be smaller, less concentrated, and less individually influential.

I’m not a huge fan of Hearst’s San Francisco flagship, but it’s always a shame to see a newspaper die. And I’m convinced that the creaky old Chron could still survive. But it will need major surgery — not just on the finances, but on the content. Because these days, nobody I know under 30 bothers to read it.

So for Mr. Vega and his editor, Ward Bushee, allow me to offer some hints at reviving the moribund publication:

1. Become a San Francisco paper. Nobody reads the Chron for national news any more. You can get The New York Times delivered or read it on the Web and get far better coverage than anything the Chron offers. So give it up. Go local. And by local I don’t mean Walnut Creek and Orinda; forget the suburban readers and try to convince people in your central circulation area that you have something worth reading every day.

2. Trade C.W. Nevius to the Examiner for a draft choice and a writer to be named later and hire seven young, progressive columnists who can talk about issues that people in one of America’s most liberal cities actually relate to. Run a front-page opinion column every day, by a different one of them — make every powerful interest in the city nervous.

3. Redirect the energy and money from the national news to local investigative reporting. A team of five reporters can break a dozen major stories a year. We do it here on much less.

4. Since David Lazarus left for the L.A. Times, there’s not much muckraking on the business desk. Forget the wire stories and the puff — kick some corporate asses.

5. Hire a liberal editorial page editor.

6. Ray Ratto. Go team.

The Rainy Day Fund — a better way?

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By Tim Redmond

I get the concerns about Sup. Chris Daly’s proposal to amend the city’s Rainy Day Fund. But in the end, there’s probably a way to make it work that’s better than a lot of unpleasant alternatives.

The Rainy Day Fund was Tom Ammiano’s gift to San Francisco, a brilliant piece of legislation that has saved the public schools and will save hundreds of jobs and critical public services this year. The bill ensures that the city sets aside some of its money in good years, so there’s something to draw on in really bad times.

And these are really bad times.

Last year, money from the Rainy Day Fund saved the school district from laying off hundreds of teachers. In the wake of the governor’s assault on public education, the local schools will need another allocation to prevent this year’s disaster.

The way the bill works, the city can take up to half the money in the fund in dire times, and the schools can get up to 25%. That means there’s no temptation to raid all the money at one time.
If we hadn’t had the fund – and there were plenty of people who didn’t think it was a good idea when Ammiano introduced it – we’d be in way worse shape now.

What Daly wants to do – with the support of city employee unions – is amend the legislation to allow the supervisors, by majority vote, to take as much of the money as they need to preserve health and human services if the city’s deficit exceeds $250 million.

Ammiano is against that; he sees it as an attack on the idea of the fund, which is supposed to ease budget problems not just in one year but for the future as well. Sup. David Campos, who I respect and trust, is also against the Daly measure. “This year is bad, but next year is going to be bad, too,” he said.

And I get that, and I get that labor wants to preserve services (and jobs) right now, because once those jobs and services go away, it’s really hard to get them back.

So let’s recognize that both sides have a point, neither side is bad or evil, there are good progressives who disagree on this – and take a look at the numbers.

Margaret Brodkin, former DCYF director, honored as ‘Community Builder’

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By Rebecca Bowe

A little more than a month after Mayor Gavin Newsom asked former Department of Children, Youth and their Families director Margaret Brodkin to step down from her post, community support for her work is still very much in place. At an annual fundraising event called Soul of the City, hosted by the San Francisco Organizing Project on Feb. 23, Brodkin was honored with a Community Builder Award.

Brodkin, who is currently serving as director of the New Day for Learning Initiative, a project aimed at galvanizing efforts for a more just and comprehensive educational system in the city, thanked the crowd who had gathered at a Mission District restaurant for the Soul of the City celebration. But she also expressed disappointment about being removed from her position at DCYF, which she was appointed to in 2004. “I lost a job that I was very devoted to and felt I’d lived a lifetime to do,” she said. On the day that she was asked to step down, the mayor’s office issued a press release to put a good face on it, but Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth worried that her dismissal set the stage for a “possible raid, erosion, or elimination of the children’s fund and other critical services for our kids and families.”

Meanwhile, members of SFOP and others working on education issues in the city are gearing up for tough work ahead on pending budget cuts that could affect schools and youth programs. The coalition has had success in the past: Last April, the organizing project spearheaded an effort to protect the jobs of 535 teachers from seven schools in the county whose employment was threatened by state budget cuts. Facing pressure from parents and teachers, city officials agreed to release $20 million from the city’s Rainy Day Reserve to reinstate the teachers’ salaries. But with the dismal financial landscape on the state and local levels, another battle looms ahead. “How can I tell my daughter to do the best she can when the education is not available?” asked Michelle Antone, a SFOP community leader, whose daughter attends school at Sanchez College Preparatory School.

Losing the tax argument

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EDITORIAL The lead topic on the local cable TV show City Desk News Hour Feb. 21 was the state budget, and a panel of local reporters were talking about the mix of tax increases and service cuts the Legislature finally passed. After a bit of back and forth, Scott Shafer, host of KQED’s California Report, piped up. "Everyone knows it’s a bad idea to raise taxes in a recession," he said.

Shafer, who was a press secretary to former Mayor Art Agnos, is hardly a conservative commentator. In fact, at the risk of damaging his credentials as an unbiased reporter, we might even call him a liberal. And to judge from the response of most of the panel, nothing he said was particularly controversial. Sure, raising taxes in a recession is bad; so is cancer, and violent crime. Next question.

But that’s not just a limited viewpoint — it’s factually inaccurate. Raising taxes during a recession can be an excellent economic idea, if it’s done right. Because the one thing almost every credible economist outside of the far-right intellectual swampland agrees on these days is that cutting government spending during a recession is a terrible idea — and if the only way to keep the public sector jobs, the social services, and the welfare payments going is to raise taxes, then raising taxes on those who can afford to pay is not only good politics, it’s good policy.

And it’s infuriating that this point seems to have dropped out of the mainstream of debate. That’s a major failure of the Democratic leadership, in California and nationwide.

Historians can argue forever about the direct impact the New Deal had on ending the Great Depression. But it’s pretty clear that what Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman calls the great jobs program of World War II turned the American economy around. And during World War II, tax rates, particularly on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, were exceptionally high. The top marginal income tax rate exceeded 80 percent. Corporations that made more than a modest return paid a high excess-profits tax. The high income tax rates on the richest Americans remained through the postwar boom era, a time when inequality declined and overall wealth grew.

That money went into the public sector, not just for the war but for retooling and rebuilding U.S. industry. High taxes on the rich paid for the interstate highway system, the University of California system, the California Water Project, the birth of the Internet. It took almost half a century for the Republicans and no-taxers to wreck the economic gains of that high-tax era.

And yet, despite all the consistent, clear evidence, we still hear the news media, the commentators, and even liberal Democrats saying that tax cuts are good for the economy and tax hikes are bad.

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

One of the most important goals of the next year or two, under the Obama administration, is to change the national debate over public and private priorities. That won’t be easy. President Obama has started off in the right direction, although the Republicans forced him to include several hundred billion in wasteful tax cuts in his stimulus bill. The tax hikes in the state budget plan are almost entirely regressive (sales taxes and a flat increase in the income tax.)

Here in California, and here in San Francisco, elected officials who claim to represent the Democratic Party’s future need to stop mouthing the old Republican line. None of the Democratic candidates for governor, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, have been our front about the need for more government spending, even if it means higher taxes on the wealthy (say, a business tax that hits harder on the biggest and less so on the small). In fact, Newsom has taken the opposite line, writing in a Feb. 13 San Francisco Chronicle op-ed piece that "we have to reduce spending." The San Francisco supervisors are at least talking about new revenue sources, but polls show that will be a hard sell.

Why do the polls show that? Because people like Newsom — and to some extent, the supervisors — aren’t using their bully pulpits to change the tone of the discussion, to make the case for economic sanity, to challenge the demented wisdom that’s brought us to this nightmare.

That has to change, now, or there will be no way out. *

‘The end of the goddamn family dog’

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› news@sfbg.com

Former Bottom of the Hill and DNA Lounge doorperson Greg Slugocki wakes up every morning at 4 a.m. to feed and care for 75 rescued dogs at Milo Sanctuary, one of the largest dog and cat rescue sanctuaries in the country. It’s one-third the size of Golden Gate Park and tucked in the mountains of Mendocino County, north of Ukiah.

Slugocki has worked like a dog since he was hired last November, part of a crew of two who cover 283 acres of mountainous terrain. But it’s something else that has recently made his head spin.

"The rate of animals we’ve had to take because of foreclosures is astronomical," Slugocki said. "I’ve taken more dogs in the last three months than in the last two years."

Milo Sanctuary holds adoptions in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Rafael, and he communicates daily with Bay Area shelters and rescues, which also have reported unprecedented increases in animals reluctantly turned over by their desperate owners.

Slugocki may be in the backwoods of Mendocino County, but he’s not alone in this dilemma. Shelters all over the country are reporting rising numbers of dogs, cats, horses, and all kinds of family pets made homeless by the home foreclosure crisis.

In January, San Francisco Animal Care and Control — the municipal shelter and adoption department obligated to take all animals — documented, for the first time, an unprecedented increase in owner-surrendered animals. The report found that since August 2008, there’s been steady monthly increase in such animals, amounting to a 13 percent average rise since last year. Last month saw the highest number of owner-surrendered animals, with an increase of 35 percent.

Though there may not be a clear, quantifiable way of determining whether those owner-surrendered animals are in fact casualties of the foreclosure crisis, animal rescue folks say there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence that this is the case. "Our rescue partners are stretched," SFACC director Rebecca Katz told the Guardian. "We’re stretched."

Indeed, almost every kennel contains a dog with a tag reading "owner- surrender." Animal Care and Control runs a "no kill" shelter — which means animals are euthanized only if they are too sick to be treated or too aggressive to qualify for adoption — has had to spill some of its new arrivals over into its adoption kennels rather than give all the new arrivals a chance for the owners to reclaim them.

"I’ve been dealing with this shelter for 15 years," said Paley Boucher, founder of volunteer-run Rocket Dog rescue, which saves almost 200 dogs from lethal injection each year. "It used to stand out when you saw a dog that was owner-surrendered. But now almost all of them are." Linda Pope with Nike Animal Rescue Foundation says dogs adopted and returned due to foreclosures is an entirely new phenomenon to the center.

Cat Brown, deputy director of the San Francisco SPCA, reported a rise in owner-surrendered animals. "We feel it’s directly related to the economy," she added. "It’s about people losing their jobs and thinking about what they can give up."

Gary Tiscornia, executive director of Monterey County’s SPCA, says there have been a high number of foreclosure animals and a lack of communication between the shelters and the banks, real estate agents, property inspectors, and other entities that find abandoned animals in vacated homes.

Tiscornia said that Realtors in California have found animals in all kinds of conditions in vacated homes, including rottweillers abandoned with a few bags of food and a tub of water, and a dog left for dead in an empty house. It hasn’t always been the case that such incidents were reported to animal shelters.

The disconnect between corporate entities and shelters has been exacerbated by California laws requiring that inspected property, including animals, be left untouched. A new law that went into effect last month addresses the problem. Assembly Bill 2949 requires anyone who encounters an abandoned animal in a property that has been vacated through lease termination or foreclosure to immediately contact a local animal control agency.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) issued a statement on foreclosure animals Jan. 29, offering the following advice to those facing foreclosure or eviction: Check with friends, family and neighbors to see if someone can provide temporary foster care for your pet until you get back on your feet. Make sure pets are allowed — and get permission in writing — if you are moving into a rental property. Contact your local shelter, humane society, or rescue group in advance of moving, and provide your animal’s records to help it get placed in an appropriate home.

To love and lose a home is a hard thing, but to love and lose a home and a furry family member is worse, especially when people don’t know where their pet will end up. "People don’t know what to do," said Boucher, citing an example of a Bay Area woman who kept her dog in the backyard of her foreclosed home long after she had moved, and another of a family that asked the subsequent owners of their foreclosed home to care for their dog.

"We’re perceived as a no-kill city, but that’s just not true," said Boucher, who rescues pit pulls, the most frequently euthanized of all dogs. Like many rescue agents, Boucher disagrees with the standards set by the temperament tests that determine whether a dog is suitable for adoption, arguing that many perfect dogs would not pass the test.

Slugocki also takes issue with temperament tests. "Let’s say I’m a dog that hasn’t eaten for weeks and I get picked up and taken to a shelter and they put down a bowl of food as part of the temperament test. Take it away and see what I’ll do."

"This is a huge disaster, a quiet emergency," Boucher said. "I hope people can open their minds to fostering an animal."

Despite the spike in economy-related homeless animals, Katz says SFACC is still under control, at least for the time being. "We have not seen an increase in euthanasia and we hope not to." About 84 percent of animals that end up at the SF shelter are saved, compared to the depressing national average of 30 percent.

"We do everything we can to save animals’ lives. We reach out to every rescue we know of," Katz said.

But with shelters, rescues, and sanctuaries swamped with a growing wave of owner-surrendered pets, caring for the displaced animals is bound to get tougher, particularly if foreclosure crisis gets worse, as many economists predict. And with budget cuts in the offing in the city, SFACC staff fear cutbacks could drive up euthanasia rates.

Slugocki says his sanctuary has something other shelters don’t: space. He has 283 redwood-adorned majestic acres of it, and he’s willing to take every dog, no matter how many have failed the temperament tests that would guarantee a swift lethal injection at the pound.

"I can take dogs that don’t stand a chance. I can take them crippled, heart worm positive, deaf, blind, you name it," Slugocki said. Half of the 75 dogs at Milo are unadoptable and will live peacefully among the redwoods for the rest of their days. He says he can take up to 1,000 dogs but he’s missing one thing: sufficient staff to build enough dog pens and feed and care for a small city of dogs every day.

"I desperately need volunteers," Slugocki said. "I know there is a crowd of people, that 30 to 60 tattooed, pierced, old rock ‘n’rollers, new Buddhists, lifelong punks who are older and maybe have kids now." For now he’s taking as many dogs as he has pens for and is working 14-hour days to help save the discarded critters of the economic crisis.

"It’s the end of the goddamn family dog," Slugocki lamented. "Nobody who has a dog and has lost a home will ever think about having a dog again."

To contact Greg Slugocki, call (707) 459-0930 or email milo.sanctuary@yahoo.com.

Dick Meister: Sit Down! Sit Down!

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Once, autoworkers overcame even greater hardships than they face today

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for more than a half-century.)

This is not a happy time for American autoworkers. Their employers are cutting thousands of jobs, closing plants, and demanding ­ and getting ­ major pay and benefit concessions from their union.

Normally, February would be a time of celebration for the union, the United Auto Workers ­ a time to mark the anniversary of a UAW victory in a sit-down strike in 1937 that led to making its members the world’s most secure and most highly compensated production workers.

Layoffs take effect tomorrow for 236 city employees

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By Rebecca Bowe

February 20 is a date that many city workers have probably looked toward with anxiety ever since Mayor Gavin Newsom first announced the 2008-09 midyear budget cuts. Tomorrow, 236 layoffs of city employees will take effect, signifying the first (but not the worst) of several waves of job cuts that will be dealt in an effort to remedy budget shortfalls for the current fiscal year and the 2009-10 fiscal year. On March 20, another 22 city employees will lose their jobs, and two months from now, yet another 94 layoffs will become effective, according to Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda. All of these pink slips are being distributed to address the current year’s budget deficit.

Many of the layoffs that will take effect tomorrow are concentrated in the Department of Public Health. According to a breakdown of layoffs by department provided by the City Controller’s office, 49 are unit clerks in DPH, another 21 are nursing assistants and 13 are licensed vocational nurses. (These numbers don’t include unfilled positions that were eliminated from the budget.)

But these blows won’t be the heaviest: On May 1, an unknown but likely much larger number of layoffs will take effect as part of the city’s attempt to remedy the 2009-10 budget shortfall, which is projected to be more than $500 million. “I’m assuming that’s going to be much larger because we are working with a larger deficit,” Zmuda said, but added that she did not yet know what that number would be.

The wheels come off

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Criticism of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s handling of the city’s budget crisis has intensified since the mayor refused to attend consensus-building sessions at City Hall, instead choosing to promote his gubernatorial bid and push a flawed "local economic stimulus package" that will only make the deficit larger.

The wheels began to come off Newsom’s public relations machine when news hit that Newsom refused to attend roundtables that board president David Chiu convened to discuss the city’s financial emergency. These meetings marked the first time business and labor leaders were brought together since the mayor announced the city’s $575 million deficit two months ago.

"I’ve asked the mayor to convene these meetings, but obviously that hasn’t happened," Chiu told the Guardian last week. "He has said he plans to convene them soon."

Insiders say Chiu was told that the mayor, his chief of staff, and his budget analyst will not attend the roundtables until a June special election is off the table, but that Newsom is open to considering revenue measures for a November election. As a compromise, Chiu proposed moving the election to late summer.

Mayoral spokesperson Nathan Ballard told the Guardian that the mayor has been holding a series of meetings with labor, business, elected officials, and community leaders on the budget, but Ballard hasn’t yet fulfilled the Guardian‘s Sunshine Ordinance request for details and documents connected to those meetings.

"Some of those meetings have included Supervisor Chiu and other supervisors," Ballard said. "However, the mayor is not scheduled to attend meetings about a summer special election to raise taxes, which he opposes."

That position places Newsom squarely with the business community, which continues to maintain that it is too early to develop revenue measures and that structural budget reforms should be considered first.

On Jan. 29, Steve Falk, executive director of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, wrote to Chiu that "Any action to call a special election without the specifics of proposed tax measures and Charter amendments would be premature and doomed to failure. City government can take steps that either help to stimulate a quick recovery or, through the wrong actions, extend the downturn by placing greater burdens on local employers."

But labor groups believe that revenue boosts are necessary if San Francisco is to weather the economic tsunami, and that it’s unreasonable to demand that their members give back millions in negotiated pay raises while forgoing revenue options. These concerns, attendees report, are publicly aired at Chiu’s roundtables, and Newsom’s refusal to participate has left city workers feeling alienated.

"He wants Labor to come to the table, but the problem is, his whole approach is all stick and no carrot, all doom and gloom and no hope that there is revenue on the horizon," SEIU Local 1021’s Robert Haaland told the Guardian.

Noting that labor anticipates 2,500 layoffs in the coming year, on top of the 400 city workers who were laid off this month, Haaland said, "Our people provide frontline services. This is about the wheels of government coming off."

Sup. Bevan Dufty, who participated in Chiu’s roundtables with Sups. John Avalos and Sean Elsbernd, praised Chiu for bringing together stakeholders, even as he extended hope that Newsom will assume the leadership role. "It always helps to have people face-to-face," Dufty said. "David primed the pump, got people to start talking. I’m looking forward to the mayor taking it to the next level."

Dufty said Newsom was "disappointed with the board’s override of his veto [of the June special election], doesn’t see a June election working, and doesn’t understand why the board is reluctant to let it go…. But from our point of view, it’s hard to ask employees to give back $90 million in negotiated benefits if they are going to be laid off in three months anyway."

Falk, who represents almost 2,000 local businesses, wrote that "The business community recognizes that a $500 million budget shortfall can only be bridged through a combination of reductions in the size of city government, program consolidations, work-rule reforms, and new fees and revenues. However, any solution must be the product of discussions with all affected parties at the table. To date, these meetings have not happened."

Chiu replied to that letter by inviting key business and labor groups to his Feb. 8 City Hall roundtable. Attendees report that a productive dialogue ensued, and two days later, when the board overturned Newsom’s veto of its special election legislation, the impacts of that first roundtable were palpable.

"I respect the mayor’s perspective, but I believe that by getting on with the election, less damage will be done," Chiu explained as the supervisors pushed ahead with their plans to hold a special election this summer.

Elsbernd opposed the election but expressed frustration with the current situation: "The city is facing a multi-year problem. People are missing the big picture here. I don’t want to be part of brokering a deal that is simply going to be a Band-Aid. Let’s fix the problems now. "

"You could tell the impact of Sean having sat in on the discussions," Dufty observed. "Instead of ‘Get over it, this is the way it’s going to be,’ he understands that we have to work together."

Falk told the Guardian that he found Chiu’s roundtable "very productive."

"Everyone is feeling the pain of this recession," Falk continued. "People are losing jobs, businesses are losing sales, which results in layoffs, which results in a bigger strain on the city’s services. It’s all connected."

But he also noted that a special election on taxes requires a two-thirds vote. "That is a very difficult hurdle," Falk noted, "which is why we have to consider all the pieces, and as we do, the more we realize that June is out of the question."

Chiu continues to reach out to his critics, countering arguments that a special election will cost $3.5 million — and will be impossible to do by summer — with the observation that, done right, it could result in $50 million to $100 million in additional revenues and thereby spare some vital jobs and programs.

"We’re facing a $565 million budget deficit, so if we can raise $100 million, we’ll still have to cut $465 million. But it would save us from making the most painful cuts," Chiu said, noting he would support pushing the election to no later than Aug. 31 "if there were more firm agreement on elements of a plan that must include structural reforms, layoffs and wage concessions, and new revenues."

But Ballard said, "The mayor doesn’t support more revenue without real reform," while promising that Newsom would shortly announce "new cost-saving reforms."

Unveiled the next morning, Feb. 11, during a mayor’s breakfast with business leaders, Newsom’s so-called local economic stimulus package included more spending on tourism marketing, targeted reduction in the payroll and property taxes, a $23 million interest-free revolving loan program for local businesses, and tax relief for Healthy San Francisco participants. The package, which must be approved by the board, would actually increase the city’s budget deficit.

Chiu says he is open to discussing most ideas in Newsom’s economic stimulus package, but that he’s concerned about widening the deficit, telling us, "That is why this needs to be done in the context of an overall revenue package and not in a vacuum."

Wrecked park department

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› news@sfbg.com

On Feb. 13, in a fourth floor hearing room in City Hall, large crowds of San Francisco Recreation and Park Department workers and supporters showed up on short notice to hear how the department was going to be gutted by deep budget cuts.

Overflow crowds of spilled into adjacent rooms to hear interim department director Jared Blumenfeld announce impending cuts to staff and hours. Although the department’s Web site stresses that "all parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, pools, golf courses, gyms, art centers, senior centers, and clubhouses will remain open," the cuts are so deep that all involved knew that the services and facilities will be shadows of their former selves.

Many people told the Guardian that they are also concerned that the process is intended to facilitate privatization of many Rec and Park functions, giving city jobs to contract workers who will not be able to duplicate the experience or connection to communities of the city workers they replace.

The Rec-Park Commission will have another hearing on the cuts at 2 p.m. Feb 19 in City Hall, Room 416, with more time for public comment. Activists working for more equitable cuts will stage a protest rally beforehand across from City Hall at 1 p.m.

At the meeting, numerous youngsters and their parents spoke of recreation directors mentoring kids who have few other positive influences in their lives. Many of these Rec and Park workers will be on the receiving end of pink slips at the end of the month. Blumenfeld announced that 51 full-time equivalent recreation director positions would be cut (the actual number of layoffs will be even higher given than many of the workers are part time).

Blumenfeld explained that $11.4 million needs to be cut from Rec and Park’s budget of the total budget about $140 million. He described some new ways to raise revenue, including charging entrance fees for the Botanical Garden, increasing pool fees, and charging the SF Public Library rent for the 32,000 square feet where local branches operate on public park land.

But even critics of the department say Blumenfeld is more accessible than his predecessor, Yomi Agunbiade, who was forced out last year after he came under fire for some of his privatization schemes and personnel issues. But raiding library funding, which is protected by voter-approved budget set-asides, is likely to create a backlash from the public.

Blumenfeld said he regretted tapping library funds, but said the move is being forced by budgetary realities. "Ultimately, this is a Lord of the Flies situation," he said.

Leah Grant of the group Friends of Potrero Hill told the Guardian at the hearing that the playground near where she lives was recently chained shut, leaving at-risk kids locked out. In an e-mail after the meeting, she wrote that it is "very, very difficult to accept that the programs for the disabled and at-risk children are going to be thrown under the bus while the privatization continues to the advantage of the wealthy and the taxpayers of San Francisco are literally being robbed of our public parks."

Grant also expressed concern that the City Fields Foundation, backed by Gap, Inc. founder Donald Fisher, a controversial funder of conservative causes in San Francisco, has essentially been taking over parks across the city and would further benefit from this year’s restructuring by filling the void with privatized services.

Blumenfeld insisted that "rumors" of privatization were unfounded, but admitted that Mayor Gavin Newsom’s nonprofit public-private partnership Rec Connect model is a key part of the mix in the new budget arrangements. As the Guardian reported ("Connect the connects," Oct. 17, 2007), the Rec Connect model is "private, funded by undisclosed corporate donations, staffed by volunteers who are often city employees or [Newsom’s] campaign donors, and unaccountable to any internal controls or outside scrutiny."

One department employee, who spoke off the record due to concerns about job security, told the Guardian that "there is not the same level of accountability for those in the Rec Connect program. If they leave the building where they are working, there is not necessarily anyone who is watching them."

Sources within the department say there will be 10 new Rec Connect sites opened to offset the budget cuts, a move that comes at a time when Newsom is trying to raise significant money for his nascent gubernatorial campaign.

"I feel like they’re using the financial crisis to push something they’ve been trying to accomplish for a long time," the source said. "And with this model, there are three to four layers of paid bureaucracy before these monies get to the kids. What they aren’t telling the public is that it is actually cheaper to allow Rec and Park workers to do our job than to pay the nonprofits, even though the workers the nonprofits contract out are making a lower hourly wage."

Lorraine Hanks, a recreation director who has worked with Rec and Park for 16 years, shared similar dissatisfaction with the Rec Connect program. In a phone interview, Hanks told us that "Rec Connect was supposed to come in and create innovative programs. They didn’t do that. They wound up doing the same things we were already doing."

Rec Connect spokesperson Jo Mestelle didn’t return Guardian calls for comment by press time.

Hanks also noted that "under Proposition J, 50 percent of funding was supposed to go to Rec and Park, and 50 percent was supposed to go to DCYF [Department of Children, Youth and their Families]. If we had that original 50 percent, we wouldn’t have to lay anyone off."

On the way out of Friday’s meeting, Betty Traynor of Friends of Boeddeker Park told us that many seniors and youngsters in the Tenderloin will have no park or safe public space to go to if the proposed cuts to hours go through, and that important programs for kids and seniors will be eliminated. Traynor added that the cuts "will also reduce hours for adult users of the park who have no other open green space in the Tenderloin."

Rec and Park employee Brando Rogers said the cuts would hurt youth who have developed relationships with employees and value these after school programs. "These are long-term relationships," she told us. "They can’t be replaced by seasonal contract workers. I’m worried that if these precious mentors have their jobs eliminated, the neighborhoods will just be decimated."

Is inequality making us sick?

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OPINION The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets squeezed. It’s gone on so long, we hardly get angry anymore. But we do get sick.

Several recent studies indicate that the life expectancy gap between the most and least deprived Americans has widened since the early 1980s, paralleling the growing economic inequality during the same period. And, if the past is an accurate gauge, today’s economic crisis will only make things worse.

The wealth-health gradient is evident everywhere, even here in San Francisco. According to the SF Department of Public Health, rates for congestive heart failure are 42 percent higher in the Sunset than St. Francis Wood/West Portal; 131 percent higher in Mission/Bernal Heights, and 279 percent higher in Bayview/Hunters Point.

Contrary to myth, it’s not the CEOs who are dropping dead from heart attacks; it’s their subordinates. And it’s not violence or drugs that are the biggest killers in poor neighborhoods but chronic diseases.

Some point the finger at our broken health insurance system. But studies suggest medical care accounts for only about 15 percent of our health gap. That’s because health care repairs our bodies when they break down; it doesn’t affect what makes us sick in the first place.

What about making healthy choices? Don’t the poor smoke more and eat unhealthy foods? True — it’s hard to eat well if you live in a food desert like the Bayview, where there are no supermarkets. But even after correcting for individual behaviors, health inequalities remain. Poor smokers are more likely to get sick than rich smokers.

Many factors affecting health have little to do with individual behaviors. They include exposure to lead and other toxics; the quality of schools; the outsourcing of jobs; proximity of parks; the wages and benefits companies pay; exposure to discrimination; secure, quality housing; affordable preschool … When these conditions are distributed unequally, so is our health.

A century ago, U.S. life expectancy was about 48 years. Much of the 30-year increase since is due not to new drugs or medical technologies, but to improved living conditions. The abolition of child labor, the eight-hour workday, housing and sanitation codes, and other reforms won working Americans a bigger share of our growing prosperity.

By 1976, thanks to civil rights, Medicare, and other progressive policies, economic inequality had reached a 20th century low. The health gap between rich and poor, as well as that between whites and African Americans narrowed between 1966 and 1980.

Then we reversed course. While most European countries were providing paid parental leave, universal preschool, four or more weeks of paid vacations, and guaranteed health care, the United States, starting with the Reagan administration, cut taxes on the rich, slashed social programs, and deregulated business and banking. Economic inequality in the U.S. is now greater than it’s been since the 1920s. The consequence? The health gap is growing again too.

The wide class and racial inequities in the U.S. and the health inequalities they drive are not natural. They are the products of social policies that we as a society have made — and can make differently. We once did. Solutions lie not with new drugs or technologies, but our political priorities.

Larry Adelman is executive producer of the documentary series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (www.unnaturalcauses.org ) Find out more about the health of San Francisco neighborhoods at www.thehdmt.org and www.healthmattersinsf.org.

Money talks

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› news@sfbg.com

The economy’s a mess, and the housing crisis, financial meltdown, and skyrocketing unemployment rates have left a lot of San Franciscans short of cash. But the flow of big downtown money into political campaigns hasn’t slowed a bit.

In fact, a tally of all 2008 monetary and in-kind political contributions logged in the SF Ethics Commission Campaign Finance Database shows that even in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, money spent on local political campaigns in the city swelled to a whopping $20.6 million. That grand total, which does not include loans or so-called "soft money" like independent expenditures, is higher than that of any previous year recorded in the Ethics database, which tracks campaign spending back to 1998.

A review of the entire database paints of picture of how influence money flows in San Francisco: Six of the top 10 donors over the past 10 years are big businesses and downtown organizations that promote the same conservative political agenda. The campaign cash often wound up in the same few political pots — a handful of supervisorial campaigns and some coordinated political action committees.

And despite spending ungodly sums of money, downtown lost more races than it won.

More than half the total money spent in 2008 came from one source: Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which plunked down $10.2 million last fall for the No on Proposition H campaign against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. That November ballot measure, which lost under PG&E’s barrage, would have paved the way for public power, initiating a process to make the city the primary provider of electric power in San Francisco with a goal of 50 percent clean-energy generation by 2017.

The powerful utility wasn’t only the biggest spender last year — it claims the No. 1 slot on a list of all campaign contributions spanning from 1998 to 2008, which the Guardian compiled using Ethics data. PG&E dropped a juicy $14.7 million into local political campaigns over that period, beating out runner-up Clint Reilly by more than $10 million.

Below are brief introductions to the 10 biggest spenders, 1998-2008.

They’ve got the power. The colossal sums PG&E has forked over to influence ballot measures over the years puts the utility in a category all its own. SF isn’t the only municipality where the company has poured millions into defeating a public power proposal. In 2006, when Yolo County put measures on the ballot to expand the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which would have edged PG&E out of the service area, the utility spent $11.3 million to try and keep it from happening.

Pay to the order of Clint Reilly. Reilly, the former political consultant, now runs a successful real estate company. While his name routinely comes up on the roster of campaign contributors, he owes his status as No. 2 to his 1999 campaign for SF mayor, into which he poured some $3.5 million of his own money. "Most of the money we give is for Democratic candidates or progressive politicians, or neighborhood-oriented issues," said Reilly, who also served as president of the board of Catholic Charities.

Committee on really high-paying jobs? Third in line is the Committee on Jobs, a political action committee that aims to influence local legislation affecting business interests. The PAC is bankrolled in part by the Charles Schwab Corporation, Gap, Inc., and Gap founder Don Fisher — all of whom surface on their own in our Top 30 list. With a grand total just shy of $3 million, the committee coughed up about $100,000 in campaign-related spending in 2008. Much of that funding went to similar political entities, including the SF Coalition for Responsible Growth, the SF Chamber of Commerce 21st Century Committee, and the SF Taxpayers Union PAC (see "Downtown’s Slate," 10/15/2008). This past November, the COJ also backed the Community Justice Court Coalition, formed to pass Proposition L, which would have guaranteed first-year funding for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s small-crimes court in the Tenderloin. Prop. L failed by 57 percent.

Bluegrass billionaire. San Francisco investment banker and billionaire Warren Hellman has dropped nearly $1.2 million over the years into local political campaigns, our results show. Dubbed "the Warren Buffet of the West Coast" by Business Week for his sharp financial prowess, Hellman co-founded Hellman and Friedman, an investment firm, in 1984. Hellman is known for putting on Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, an annual SF music festival. While he tends to contribute to downtown business entities such as the Committee on Jobs and the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, in 2008 he devoted $100,000 to supporting a June ballot measure, Proposition A, that increased teacher salaries and classroom support by instating a parcel tax to amp up funding for public schools.

Fisher king. Don Fisher, founder and former CEO of Gap, Inc., is another one of SF’s resident billionaires. While Gap, Inc. turns up in 17th place in our results, Fisher himself has poured more than $1.1 million into entities such as the Committee on Jobs, SFSOS, the San Franciscans for Sensible Government Political Action Committee, and other conservative business groups. Fisher’s total includes money from the "DDF Y2K family trust," a Fisher family fund that shows up in Ethics records in 2000. In that year, $100,000 from that trust went to support the Committee on Jobs’ candidate advocacy fund, and another $40,000 went to a pro-development group called San Franciscans for Responsible Planning.

Not a very affordable campaign, either. Sixth up is Lennar Homes, the developer behind the massive home-building project at Hunters Point Shipyard, which the Guardian has covered extensively. The vast majority of its $1 million reported spending was directed to No on Prop. F, a campaign sponsored by Lennar to defeat a June ballot measure that would have created a 50 percent affordable-housing requirement for the Candlestick Point and Hunters Point Shipyard development project. The measure failed, with 63 percent voting it down.

Chuck’s bucks. Charles Schwab Corp., which set up shop in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, is an investment banking firm that reports having $1.1 trillion in total client assets. The corporation ranks seventh in our Top 30 list, with some $973,000 in donations. In 27th place is Charles R. Schwab himself, the company’s founder and chairman of the board (and the guy they’re referring to in those "Talk to Chuck" billboards posted all over SF). If Schwab’s individual and corporate donations were combined, the total would be enough to bump Warren Hellman out of fourth place. Schwab’s dollars are infused into the Committee on Jobs, the San Francisco Association of Realtors, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, SF SOS, and other downtown-business interest organizations. "We’re a major company here in the Bay Area and a major employer," company spokesperson Greg Gable told the Guardian. "We’re interested in political matters across the board — it’s not limited to any one party." But it’s limited to one pro-downtown point of view.

The brass. The San Francisco Police Officer’s Association is another major player, spending some $913,000 since 1998 on political campaigns. The organization backed candidates Carmen Chu, Myrna Lim, Joseph Alioto, Denise McCarthy, and Sue Lee for supervisors in 2008, contributions show. All but Chu lost.

At your service. SEIU Local 1021 and SEIU 790 crop up frequently in Ethics data, with a grand total of about $860,000 in spending over the years. SEIU representatives recently turned out en masse at a Board of Supervisors meeting to urge the supervisors to support a June 2 special election to raise taxes in order to boost city revenues and save critical services from the hefty budget cuts that are coming down the pipe.

Friends in high places. No real surprises here: the Friends and Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library contributed its money to, well, ballot measures that would have affected the library. In 2000, for example, the F and F plunked $265 thousand into an effort called the "Committee to Save Branch Libraries — Yes on Prop. A."

Top 30 San Francisco campaign donors, 1998-2008

1. Pacific Gas & Electric $14,831,486
2. Clint Reilly $4,138,089
3. Committee on Jobs $2,970,857
4. Warren F. Hellman $1,191,970
5. Don Fisher (incl. Don & Doris Fisher Y2K trust) $1,164,286
6. Lennar Homes $1,002,861
7. Charles Schwab Corporation $973,176
8. S.F. Police Officers Association $913,834
9. SEIU Local 1021 & SEIU Local 790 $860,979
10. Friends & Foundation of the S.F. Public Library $858,082
11. California Academy of Sciences $818,154
12. Residential Builders Association of S.F. $753,857
13. Steven Castleman $665,254
14. S.F. Association of Realtors $647,299
15. S.F. Chamber of Commerce $614,824
16. SEIU United Health Care Workers West & Local 250 $585,937
17. Gap, Inc. $573,959
18. California Issues PAC $556,238
19. Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums $541,474
20. Wells Fargo $464,899
21. Building Owners & Managers Association of S.F. $464,027
22. Bank of America $429,316
23. Golden Gate Restaurant Association $422,685
24. SF SOS $407,491
25. AT&T Inc. and affiliates $404,704
26. Clear Channel $391,783
27. Charles R. Schwab (individual) $362,250
28. Yellow Cab Cooperative $344,907
29. S.F. Apartment Association $280,376
30. San Franciscans for Sensible Government PAC $279,009

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