Labor

Processing the mayoral transition

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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Processing the mayoral transition

The question of who will be the next mayor of San Francisco wasn’t any clearer by the end of the Nov. 16 Board of Supervisors meeting, but many expressed a desire for an open and transparent process with accountability to the public. The board approved a motion by Board President David Chiu to have the Clerk of the Board propose an process for selecting a successor mayor, which will come under consideration at the next meeting. But with only a handful of board meetings left before the new board is sworn in on Jan. 8, there is a high level of anticipation.

Clerk of the Board Angela Calvillo confirmed that her office is drafting a proposed process for mayoral selection. Calvillo said the proposal would be submitted for consideration at next week’s meeting, and it will be available to the public on the city website by Friday, Nov. 19.

Essentially, the board could choose from a number of options at its next meeting on how to appoint a successor mayor once Mayor Gavin Newsom vacates office. Whatever the Board decides prior to Jan. 3, when Newsom is sworn in as Lt. Governor, will not have the force of law, since there won’t yet be a vacancy. So a second vote will have to be taken Jan. 4 to make the official appointment. Newsom has said he is “99 percent sure” that he will vacate the Office of the Mayor on Jan. 3.

According to Santa Clara County attorneys — who are filling in for City Attorney Dennis Herrera since he has a conflict-of-interest as a mayoral candidate — neither the Charter nor the Municipal Code dictates a specific process for the Board to use in selecting a successor mayor. So, the board could either follow the regular appointments procedure under the current Board Rules, or it could devise its own process.

The Clerk of Board is now hammering out that unique process, as directed by the board, and the board may vote to modify and adopt that process next week — but since a vote to adopt it would constitute an amendment to the board rules, it would require a super-majority of eight votes.

If there aren’t eight votes, then the board may still opt to set forth an appointment process under the current board rules. “I strongly believe that we do have the ability to effectuate an appointment without amending the board rules,” Sup. Chris Daly said. Daly told the Guardian that he has submitted a motion to take nominations and appoint a successor mayor, which will appear on the adoption without committee reference calendar at next Tuesday’s Board meeting. However, a similar motion put forth by Sup. John Avalos wasn’t able to gain the needed support.

If the board went through the normal appointments process, it would require sending nominees through the Rules Committee for consideration – but since it wouldn’t be practical to have just three members of the board recommend a mayoral appointment to the full board, all 11 supervisors could sit as a Committee of the Whole instead.

The timing is important because if supervisors cannot agree upon a process, or gain enough support for a single nominee, then the task will fall to the new Board of Supervisors, who will be sworn in Jan. 8. If the current board doesn’t reach a decision by Jan. 4, Board President David Chiu will automatically become acting mayor. Once the new board is sworn in, it can continue whatever appointment process has been set in motion or decide to initiate a new process for appointing a successor mayor. If the current board appoints a successor mayor, however, the new board cannot revoke or otherwise affect that appointment.

There are a slew of questions still at play. For example, under conflict-of-interest laws, when some one is nominated as successor mayor, he or she must leave the room and is barred from influencing the process in any way. The idea was bandied about at the Nov. 16 Board meeting to require nominees to respond to questions from the board as part of a public forum, but it’s unclear how a supervisor who has been nominated could respond to questions from his or her colleagues while being sequestered and prohibited from influencing the process.

Although word went out that interested members of the public should show up at City Hall around 4 p.m. Nov. 16 to weigh in on the discussion about appointing a successor mayor, the conversation didn’t get underway till much later.

Sup. John Avalos had submitted a motion to vote on an interim mayor and then vote a second time to ratify that appointment once Mayor Gavin Newsom had vacated office. However, his motion was amended to simply take public input and discuss the process of appointing a successor mayor.

Members of the public waited patiently, and when it was time, they lined up behind the speakers podium wearing neon sunburst stickers that read, “Let the Sun Shine In!” Local writer, artist, and activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca even sang the refrain of the song by that name, before imploring the Supes to “Get this done now, and give us a good, progressive interim mayor.”

Labor activist Gabriel Haaland urged the current board to agree upon an appointment instead of handing the responsibility over to the next board. “People who’ve never held an office hour in their life should not be making this decision,” Haaland said.

Christopher Cook highlighted the challenges that the new mayor would face. “We’re talking about a less-than-average amount of time to prepare for an absolute maelstrom,” with regard to the city budget, Cook noted.

“Let the sun shine in” seemed to be the catchphrase of the evening. Before the public weighed in, Sup. Chris Daly called for an open, transparent process for the appointment of the new mayor. “Conversations about mayoral transition have been happening behind closed doors, not in public session, for the better part of this past year,” Daly charged. “It’s time to hear from the public.”

But just how, exactly, the appointment process will work is anything but clear and sunny – at least for the time being.

Meanwhile, Judge Quentin Kopp, who was a member of the Board of Supervisors when a successor mayor was appointed on Dec. 4, 1978 — one week after the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk — said the process of choosing a new mayor was simpler back then.

In that case, then-Sup. Dianne Feinstein was the only nominee. She was appointed with six votes. Two, including Kopp, voted no, and there were two absences (Harvey Milk had been assassinated one week prior, and Dan White was in jail). Feinstein, who was made to leave the room during the vote, abstained. However, before the vote was called, Feinstein was able to vote against a motion for a continuance — a power she likely would not have had if current political-reform laws were in place.

“It’s simple,” Kopp said. “Why are they complicating it?”

He scoffed at the circuitous discussion happening now, and said some one else had called him with the same inquiry earlier that same day. “Once again, our overpaid supervisors are making work for themselves,” he said. “It’s called busywork.”

And that might be the most insightful statement yet – after all, while the process points are debated over and over again, there is more time for supervisors to determine just who might be able to collect the six votes needed to be elected mayor of San Francisco.

From second to first

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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5
From second to first

steve@sfbg.com

In Oakland and San Francisco, the big story of this election was ranked-choice voting, a system that allowed Jean Quan to overcome a nearly 10-point election-night deficit to become Oakland’s next mayor and enabled come-from-behind victories in two races for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Those who never liked this system of letting voters rank their top three candidates — a group primarily affiliated with downtown and the moderates who did well under the old system of low-turnout, big-money runoff elections — felt validated by the outcomes. “Ranked-choice voting an undemocratic nightmare” was the headline on Examiner columnist Ken Garcia’s Nov. 11 column.

But for those who understand this system — a product of the progressive movement — and have supported it, this was a watershed election that showcased RCV’s populist possibilities. In Quan’s smart use of an RCV strategy and the huge gap she overcame to topple Don Perata, they see an opportunity for political coalition-building that could influence next year’s San Francisco mayor’s race and beyond.

Besides Perata, if there’s anyone who could justifiably be unhappy with how RCV worked in this election, it would be Tony Kelly. He finished in first place in the D10 supervisorial race on election night only to be defeated by Malia Cohen, who climbed out of fourth place on the strength of those who ranked her second or third. But Kelly is perfectly happy with how RCV worked.

“I supported it before and there’s no reason not to support it now, even though I’m on the edge of this,” Kelly told the Guardian. In fact, he said the only reason he ran for public office in San Francisco was because of progressive electoral reforms such as RCV, district elections and public financing of campaigns. “These are all things that help grassroots candidates.”

Kelly had a ranked-choice strategy; he and Marlene Tran each encouraged their supporters to rank the other second. The alliance might have been a way to overcome the strength of the district’s strong African American voting bloc, which favored Cohen (she got her biggest and most lopsided bumps when Dewitt Lacy and Lynette Sweet were eliminated). But most of Tran’s votes were exhausted when she was eliminated, meaning that many of her voters didn’t list any second and third choices.

“Without RCV, that black vote would have never come together. It would have splintered,” said Steven Hill, a progressive activist who helped design the system.

In Oakland, progressives and other blocs of voters wanted anybody but Perata, a Democratic Party power broker. So Quan reached out to all voters and was particularly helped by a progressive base that she shared with fellow Oakland City Council Member Rebecca Kaplan.

“One thing Jean Quan does consistently at events is say, ‘I would like your first place votes, and if I don’t get that, I would like your second place votes,” Kaplan told the Guardian. “It was striking to me that she consistently asked for No. 2 votes.”

That strategy, along with Quan and Kaplan running mutually supportive races and encouraging their supporters to list the other second, clearly paid off.

“It rewrites the textbook for how to win with ranked-choice voting,” Hill said.

Hill and Kaplan said Oakland voters proved themselves adept at using the ranked-choice system on its debut there. Hill noted how few exhausted ballots there were, showing that voters understood and used their full options — more so than have voters in San Francisco, which has had the system in place since 2004.

“I think what this says is that RCV worked. Voters overwhelmingly filled out their ballots correctly,” Kaplan said. She also noted how the election demonstrated the possibilities of political coalition-building: “It isn’t so much the coattails of the candidates as the coalition of the supporters.”

But many observers also say the situation in Oakland was a perfect storm of opposition to a single candidate, Perata, who professed ignorance about how RCV worked.

“I don’t think we’ll see something like this again, but it adds to what’s possible,” said David Latterman, a political consultant who works primarily with downtown-backed candidates.

Jim Stearns, a consultant who represents more progressive candidates, said moderate candidates with money usually prevail in runoff elections, and that probably would have been the case in Oakland if voters hadn’t switched to RCV: “I think you would have had a very different result if you’d had a runoff.”

Yet most political consultants still don’t like RCV, particularly those who work with downtown candidates. “RCV just probably won two races for me, coming from behind, and I still don’t like it,” said Latterman, who worked with Cohen and D2 winner Mark Farrell. “I like runoffs. I like candidates having to reach out and prove themselves.”

Of course, that system favored candidates who have the resources to reach out and target a voter base that is generally smaller and more conservative than in regular elections. But all the consultants are now trying to figure out how to make RCV work.

“The priority of any candidate in ranked-choice is to build your base,” Stearns, who is now working on Leland Yee’s mayoral campaign, told us. After that, the strategy is about identifying other candidates whose bases would also support your candidate and figuring out how to reach them. “Ranked-choice voting is a labor-intensive thing because you have to talk to everyone within that short window.”

But even Latterman said RCV will be a factor in next year’s San Francisco mayor’s race given what happened in Oakland this year. “For the first time a second place strategy worked and it can’t be ignored anymore,” Latterman said.

Hill said the progressive candidates and political consultants in San Francisco still need to learn how to work together to increase the turnout of their voters, sell swing voters on the progressive message and policies, and seek to win the race without undercutting those first two goals.

“How do you broaden your coalition and can you do that by having other progressives in the race?” Hill said. “These are the sorts of questions that progressives have to ask.”

Unfortunately, Hill hasn’t seen evidence that progressive campaigns in San Francisco have figured this out, noting how progressive supervisorial campaigns have instead criticized each other in the last few election cycles, such as this year’s D6 race between Jane Kim and Debra Walker.

“That’s the kind of behavior we still see from progressives in San Francisco, but that progressives in Oakland have already overcome,” Hill said. “Unfortunately, conservatives may figure this out first.”

Ultimately, Hill said that for progressive candidates to run strong ranked-choice voting campaigns against better-financed moderate candidates in a high-stakes election like the mayor’s race, they need to be a little bit selfless: “The progressive candidates need to care less about whether they win individually than that a progressive wins.”

Rebuilding the labor movement

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

Unions, as you might certainly expect, have been having a rough time during the current recession. How rough? Well, overall union membership declined by a whopping 771,000 over the past year.

The number of workers in unions is still large, around 15 million. But that’s only a little more than 12 percent of the country’s workforce. There is one bright spot: More than one-third of public employees are in unions.

The figures for workers in private employment, however, show that only about 7 percent of them are in unions, That’s the lowest percentage of unionized workers in private employment since 1900. That’s right – the lowest percentage in 110 years.

Unions are fighting hard to reverse the downward trend, and though many outside the labor movement openly doubt – or at least wishfully think – that it can’t be done, I think they’re wrong. The doubters are forgetting that it’s been done before  – and done in the face of obstacles that were at least as great as those confronted by union adherents today.
It began 75 years ago this month, in November of 1935, when eight affiliates of the American Federation of Labor – the AFL – put together what soon became the independent Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO. Their aim was to mobilize the racially and ethnically mixed mass of generally unskilled workers in steel, rubber, auto, meatpacking and other basic industries.

The AFL had largely ignored the industrial workers in favor of skilled and semi-skilled white craftsmen who were organized into separate unions according to their trade – plumbing, printing, carpentry and so forth – rather than by industry.

That kept most workers isolated from each other and enabled the industrial corporations that dominated the economy to unilaterally set pay and working conditions at the lowest possible levels.

The CIO leaders believed that workers could not make a decent living and that the labor movement could not grow and possibly not even survive unless workers were brought together in tight solidarity through industrial as opposed to the craft unionism. of the AFL.

The issues today are different. But the basic need for solidarity remains, as does the need to organize workers whatever their occupation.

That won’t be easy, with only about 12 percent of today’s workforce in unions. But when the CIO began in 1935, less than 10 percent of the country’s workers were in unions, and they faced a Great Depression that was much worse than today’s Great Recession.

The labor movement hit rock bottom during the Depression of the 1930s. But finally unemployment became so widespread and pay and working conditions so bad that large numbers of workers rebelled – most under the banners of the CIO.

 President Franklin Roosevelt, fearing revolution, quickly pushed through Congress bills that in effect put the government behind the workers attempts to organize. They were granted the legal right to organize and to strike – and to choose by majority votes unions to represent them in collective bargaining with their employers.

Millions of workers flocked to unions, CIO and AFL unions alike. Millions engaged in strikes and other militant actions to press their bargaining demands. Pay rose substantially. Workers won unheard of fringe benefits. Working hours were reduced without reductions in pay. Grievance procedures were instituted. Job security was greatly enhanced.

Most important, the living standards of ordinary Americans were raised. And the United States at last had a true middle class.

As the CIO grew, so did the AFL. By the time the competing organizations merged in 1955 to form the AFL-CIO, one of every three U.S. workers belonged to a union.

The vital, demanding and essential task of today’s labor leaders is nothing less than to do what was done by their predecessors when they formed the CIO three-quarters of a century ago . . . nothing less than to bring new life to the American labor movement.


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

Portrait of a San Francisco construction worker

Mary Magee
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Portrait of a San Francisco construction worker

One of the many fascinating pieces of data to emerge in the discussion about Sup. John Avalos’ proposal to mandate local hiring is a recently published analysis of the characteristics of construction workers whose primary workplace is San Francisco.

In October, L. Luster & Associates published a labor market analysis, using data from EDD payrolls and the U.S. Census American Community Survey, that shows there were 14,629 construction workers employed in San Francisco in June 2010. And that five trades currently dominate this workforce and constitute more than 75 percent of the total numbers of construction workers employed in the city.

Carpenters are the biggest group (4,623 workers) followed by construction laborers (2,796 workers) painters (1,459 workers), electricians (1,119 workers) and plumbers, pipe fitters and steamfitters (1,023 workers).

But while this population shows racial diversity (whites and Latinos each make up about 40 percent of the workforce, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders at 17 percent) African Americans and women each account for only 3 percent of this market. In other words, only 440 African Americans and 405 women were construction workers in June 2010, compared to 5,830 Latinos, 5673 whites, 2,528 Asians and Pacific Islanders.

So, how do these ethnic percentages compare with San Francisco’s overall distribution?
 “Latinos make up a considerably larger portion of workforce than they do the overall population (40 percent of construction workforce v. 13 percent of city’s population),” the Luster report states. “ All other major racial categories constitute a smaller portion of the construction workforce than they do of the total population: Whites (39 percent of construction workforce compared to 49 percent of city population overall) followed by Asian and Pacific Islanders (17 percent compared to 28 percent overall) and African Americans (3 percent compared to 6 percent overall.)

(That last statistic should be a shocker: What?! Only six percent of San Francisco’s current residents are African American?! But the city produced a report two years that detailed the “black out migration” –but provided little money or authority to help follow through on the report’s various recommendations).

Meanwhile, Luster’s report concludes that, “the main imbalance between the employed construction workforce and the San Francisco population lies with the gender distribution. Women comprise only 3 percent of the 14,629 construction workers in San Francisco, whereas they account for nearly half of the overall population.”

Next up in the Luster report was the question of residency. And according to its findings, only 39 percent of workers employed in San Francisco’s construction industry call the city and county of San Francisco their home.

San Mateo County is home to 18 percent of this workforce, Alameda County accounts for another 17 percent, Contra Costa County is home to 13 percent, Sonoma and Marin each are home to 8 percent, and Napa and Solano County each account for a further 5 percent.

These numbers are significant in a number of ways. For instance, 2, 636 workers commute in from San Mateo, 2,418 from Alameda, 1,929 from Contra Costa, 1,197 from Sonoma and Marin, and 773 workers from Napa and Solano, all of which adds up to wear and tear on roads, impacts on air quality, and increased levels of greenhouse gas generation (depending on whether these workers take public transit, car pool or drive the freeways solo, of course).

It also means that when communities oppose aspects of a local construction project—be it a proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough, or a proposed mega-hospital on Cathedral Hill—they are likely to encounter opposition from a workforce that increasingly lives outside San Francisco,  faces a 40 percent unemployment rate, and can be mobilized to show support for these projects, either through showing up physically at meetings or through union dues that can be used to wage political wars with far-reaching percussions for the ability of local residents to influence local land use and economic development decisions.

So, why do so many construction workers live outside San Francisco? The obvious reasons are their relatively low income levels and their related inability to afford housing in the city.
According to Luster’s report, “nearly 33 percent of these workers report earnings of less than $30,000 per year” (based on data that incorporates union and non-union workers, and part-time workers).

Another way of looking at this is to study Luster’s analysis of construction workers who currently live in San Francisco.

“From EDD payroll data and from historic employment relationships between San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties, we estimate there were 7,855 construction workers residing in San Francisco and who were employed as of June 2010—roughly 1 percent of total residents in the city,” Luster reports.

The Luster report also notes that the same five trades make up an even higher proportion of the resident employed construction workforce than they did the total employed construction workforce in the city (86 percent v 75 percent). But now the top two places are reversed: Construction Laborers is the largest trade with 2,442 workers, followed by Carpenters (1,914 workers), Painters (1,122 workers), Electricians (814 workers) and Plumbers (484 workers).

The ethnic distribution of these resident workers is also diverse. Whites (34 percent,) Latinos (31 percent), Asians and Pacific Islanders (30 percent, which is considerably higher than for the overall workforce employed in San Francisco) and African Americans (5 percent).

But women, once again, make up only 3 percent of residents in construction employment.

The Luster report takes the analysis one step further by looking at age distribution. This criterion reveals that the white resident construction workforce is aging, as is the Asian resident construction workforce, though to a lesser extent.

“By contract, the Latino workforce is concentrated among the younger age groups, particularly among the 25-34 age group,” Luster notes. “Of note, 47 percent of the resident San Francisco construction workforce is over the age of 45. Moreover, 23 percent is already 55 years and older. Currently, the number of workers aged 55-64 is 1,544 and declines to 264 for workers aged 65 and older, dropping from 20 percent of the workforce to 3 percent. If construction workers continue to leave the sector in the same proportions by the time they reach 64, a sizeable number of new openings will be created.”

The report, which goes into detailed breakdowns of apprentices (each of the four largest ethnic groups have almost equal shares, and women have 10 percent), the construction trades (which has a greater participation of white workers) and journey people, also gets into workforce projections (the bulk of the jobs generated by the city’s Capital Plan will be generated within the first five years) local hire programs and policy issues. As such, it’s  a must-read for those following Avalos’ proposed local hire legislation, and you can view the full report by clicking here.

Dodging bullets

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Dodging bullets

steve@sfbg.com

Progressives in San Francisco dodged a few bullets on election night, which was the highest hope that many held in a campaign season dominated by conservative money and messaging. The Board of Supervisors retained a progressive majority, Prop B’s attack on public employees went down, the wealthy will pay more property transfer taxes, and — perhaps the best news of all — Gavin Newsom is leaving for Sacramento a year before his mayoral term ends.

But economically conservative and downtown-backed campaigns and candidates scored the most election-night victories in San Francisco, killing a temporary hotel tax hike pushed hard by labor and several progressive-sponsored ballot measures, and winning approval for the divisive sit-lie ordinance and Prop. G, removing Muni driver pay guarantees, which had the widest margin of the night: 65-35 percent.

“Ultimately, downtown did well,” progressive political consultant Jim Stearns told us on election night, noting how aggressive spending by downtown business and real estate interests ended a string of progressive victories in the last several election cycles. He cited the likely election of Scott Wiener in District 8 and the strong challenge in District 2 by Mark Farrell to perceived frontrunner Janet Reilly, who had progressive and mainstream endorsements.

A preliminary Guardian analysis of reported spending by independent expenditure committees shows that groups affiliated with downtown or supporting more conservative candidates spent about $922,435, the biggest contributions coming from conservative businessman Thomas Coates and the San Francisco Board of Realtors, compared to $635,203 by more progressive organizations, mostly the San Francisco Democratic Party and San Francisco Labor Council.

That spending piggy-backed on national campaigns that were also skewed heavily to conservative and corporate-funded groups and messaging that demonized government and public employee unions, playing on people’s economic insecurities during a stubborn recession and jobless recovery.

Stearns said voters are having a hard time in this economy “and they don’t like to see the government spending.” He said national polls consistently show that people are more scared of “big government” than they are “big corporations,” even if San Francisco progressives tend to hold the opposite view.

And even that narrow defeat came after an almost unprecedented opposition campaign that included every elected official in San Francisco except the measure’s sponsor, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and both the labor movement and many moderate groups.

“The campaign on this was extraordinary and caught fire at the end,” Alex Clemens, founder of Barbary Coast Consulting, said at SPUR’s Nov. 4 election wrap-up event. In particular, the message about how much Prop B would increase the health care costs on median-income city employees seemed to resonate with voters.

“We are really happy that Prop. B is going down because it was such a misguided measure. It was not well thought through,” Labor Council President Tim Paulson told the Guardian at the election night party labor threw with the San Francisco Democratic Party at Great American Music Hall. “San Francisco voters are the smartest in America.”

Paulson was also happy to see those voters approve taxing the transfer of properties worth more than $5 million, “because San Franciscans know that everyone has to pay their fair share.”

In the Board of Supervisors races, it was basically a status quo election that shouldn’t alter the body’s current politics dynamics much. Sup. Bevan Dufty will be replaced with fellow moderate Scott Wiener in D8 and Sup. Chris Daly by progressive Jane Kim in D6. The outcome of races to replace ideological wobbler Sup. Sophie Maxwell in D10 and conservative Michela Alioto-Pier in D2 may not be conclusively known for at least a few more days (maybe longer if the close races devolve into lawsuits), but neither is a seat that would diminish the board’s progressive majority.

Progressives could have made a gain if Rafael Mandelman had won in D8, but he was seven points behind Wiener on election night and even more after the initial ranked choice tally was run on Nov. 5. And in D6, fears that downtown-backed candidate Theresa Sparks might sneak past dueling progressive candidates Jane Kim and Debra Walker never materialized as Sparks finished far behind the lefty pair.

Consultant David Latterman, who worked for Sparks, told us on election night that he was surprised to see that Kim was the choice of 32 percent of early absentee voters “because we targeted those voters.” By comparison, Walker was at 20 percent and Sparks was at 21 percent in the initial returns, which tend to be more conservative. By the end of the night, Kim had 31.3 percent, Walker 27.7 percent, and Sparks just 16.5 percent.

“If she did that well with absentees, it seems like it was Jane’s race to win. If they choose Jane, they wanted Jane. It’s just that simple,” Latterman told us on election night.

At her election night party, Kim credited her apparent victory to a strong campaign that she said fielded 400 volunteers on Election Day, most wearing the bright red T-shirts that read “See Jane Run” on the back. “I feel good,” Kim told the Guardian. “What I’m really happy about is we ran a really good campaign.”

In the end, Kim’s campaign was put over the top by the second-place votes of Sparks’ supporters, with 769 votes going to Kim and 572 to Walker in the first preliminary run of ranked-choice voter tabulations. But despite the bad blood that developed between progressives in the Kim and Walker campaigns, Board President David Chiu, an early Kim supporter, sounded a conciliatory note, telling the Guardian on election night, “Given where Debra and Jane are, I’m glad that we’re going to keep this a progressive seat.”

Prison for killer cop

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Prison for killer cop

rebeccab@sfbg.com

On Nov. 5, former BART Police officer Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to two years in state prison for fatally shooting Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American rider, on the Fruitvale train platform on New Year’s Day 2009.

Mehserle, who is white, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July in an incident that has become charged with racial undertones. He received credit for 292 days served in jail so far, which will considerably reduce his time in prison. It was the lightest prison sentence he could have received for the crime.

Grant supporters gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland to express anger and sorrow upon hearing news of the sentence. “I’m not shocked,” said Cat Brooks, who helped organize an afternoon rally for the Coalition for Justice for Oscar Grant. “But I’m disgusted and distraught. It seems like the justice system didn’t work.”

After the rally came to a close and night fell, protesters spilled into the streets and marched toward the Fruitvale BART Station, the scene of the crime. But after a dozen car windows were smashed along the way, police officers in riot gear corralled the group into a residential neighborhood. Police then placed 152 protesters under mass arrest, mostly on charges of unlawful assembly. Roughly two-thirds of those arrested were Oakland residents, according to the Oakland Police Department, while others were from Berkeley, San Francisco, Hayward, and other local cities.

 

COMMUNITY RESPONDS

A stage outside Oakland City Hall was transformed into a venue for personal expression in the wake of the sentencing. Community members lined up to air their frustrations and resolve to keep fighting. They piled flowers onto a shrine that had been created with a picture of Grant’s face. Some painted pictures, while others gave spoken word or hip-hop performances. Several told stories of loved ones who’d died in police shootings.

Cephus Johnson, Grant’s uncle, was at the Los Angeles courtroom where Mehserle was sentenced, but shared some thoughts with the Guardian beforehand. Asked what he’d thought when the verdict had been announced, Johnson said, “My first thought was that we’re witnessing the criminal justice system failing to work as it should have worked.” If the sentence fell short of the 14-year maximum, he said, “it will be another slap in the face, signifying that black and brown men are worthless.”

East Bay labor organizer Charles Dubois was among those attending the Nov. 5 rally. “Every black parent, every brown parent, lives with this nightmare of their children being killed by some cops because they thought they had a gun,” Dubois said in an interview with the Guardian. “It’s been happening since I was a kid. It’s been happening then and it’s happening now, and it’s going to keep happening until we do something.”

California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) also weighed in during a phone call with the Guardian. “This verdict is outrageous,” he said. “It’s Dan White all over again.”

 

JUDGE DROPS GUN ENHANCEMENT

Judge Robert Perry sided with arguments presented by Mehserle’s defense attorney, Michael Rains, when he levied a reduced punishment. Mehserle could have served up to 14 years prison for involuntary manslaughter committed while wielding a gun, but Perry tossed out the firearm enhancement.

“No reasonable trier of fact could have concluded that Mehserle intentionally fired his gun,” the judge was quoted in media reports as saying. But that appears to be what the jury found, as the prosecution argued in a presentencing memorandum.

“The evidence was presented regarding the use of the gun, and in discussing the use of the gun in the jury room, somehow or another the jury decided he had used the gun illegally,” criminal defense attorney and National Lawyers Guild observer Walter Riley told the Guardian. “One has to believe the jury expected him to have exposure to a greater amount of jail time because of that.”

Perry said he believed Mehserle suffered a “muscle memory accident” that led him to draw and fire his service weapon instead of his Taser, a cornerstone of the defense’s case.

Rains wrote to the court prior to sentencing that jurors should never have been allowed to apply the firearm enhancement to an involuntary manslaughter conviction “because in this case, there is no logical way to square a verdict of involuntary manslaughter and a finding that Mehserle intended to use his gun.”

Prosecutor David Stein of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office countered that the jury’s conviction showed they believed Mehserle intended to shoot, but not to kill, Grant. Yet Perry agreed with the defense, conceding he had mistakenly permitted the jury to enhance Mehserle’s sentence.

Riley said he sympathized with frustrations over the gun enhancement getting dismissed. “The use of guns is too prevalent in circumstances where law enforcement comes in contact with young black people,” he said. “Our society — our civil society, our judicial authority, and our communities — have to hold government and law enforcement officers to a higher level of accountability in their interactions with citizens. When people with guns shoot an inordinate number of people of one group, it’s worth tremendous scrutiny.”

 

ANOTHER NIGHT IN JAIL

Twice before, activists took to the streets in furious protest over this case. In January 2009, things escalated to the point where cars were set ablaze. In July 2010, a street rally gave way to rioting and looting. So on Nov. 5, many downtown Oakland storeowners boarded up and closed business early in anticipation of a third wave of vandalism.

Yet the turnout was smaller than the previous events. And while there were reports of smashed car windshields and other instances of vandalism along the circuitous path of the march, there was far less property destruction.

The community affair outside Oakland City Hall ended around 6 p.m., when the permit expired. Soon after, activists spilled into the intersection of 14th and Broadway streets, then began advancing down 14th Street chanting “No Justice! No Peace!” and “The whole system is guilty!” The march turned right onto Madison Street, then left onto 10th Street.

A police helicopter with a spotlight kept pace overhead while it progressed, and when protesters reached Laney College, police officers in riot gear blocked them in. So protesters cut through a park and wandered in a pack until they reached the intersection of East 18th Street and Sixth Avenue in a residential neighborhood. Once again, police surrounded the protesters. This time, the crowd was trapped.

Rachel Jackson, an activist who was barricaded in, began sounding off. “We were going to Fruitvale,” she explained. “We wanted to go to the scene of the crime. All night the police have been trying to suppress our free speech.” When a nearby TV news reporter asked her about windows that had been busted along the march, she was incensed. “We will not equate glass with Oscar Grant’s life!” she responded. “If we have to come out ourselves and board up windows, we’ll do that. But what we are concerned with right now is murder.”

Reporters were allowed to exit the confined area, but if anyone else had been inclined to leave peacefully, they were unable to. Police issued a call on a megaphone telling activists, “You are all under arrest. Do not resist arrest.” By the time the mass arrest was underway, public information officer Jeff Thomason told a group of reporters that there were more police officers on the scene than protesters.

“When the rocks were being thrown, it was declared an unlawful assembly,” Thomason explained. He said a dispersal order had been issued simultaneously. Yet it would have been impossible for the trapped crowd to comply with such an order.

Meanwhile, a resident of the Oakland neighborhood who had come outside when the commotion began told the Guardian that she sympathized with the protesters. “The only thing I don’t condone is the vandalism,” said Dyshia Harvey, who surveyed the scene from behind a fence with her six-year-old son.

Harvey had been anticipating word of Mehserle’s sentencing. “I was upset. I was frustrated, angry, and hurt” by the outcome, she said. But she wasn’t surprised. “I already knew we weren’t going to get no justice,” she said. “For taking a life, 14 years isn’t enough. It makes you feel like there’s no justice in the justice system.”

 

NOT OVER YET

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley has not stated whether her office will appeal Perry’s ruling. Rains told reporters in L.A. that he would appeal Mehserle’s involuntary manslaughter conviction.

Meanwhile, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice released a statement indicating that a federal investigation is in the works. “The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California have been closely monitoring the local prosecution of this case,” a USDOJ prepared statement notes. “Now that the state prosecution has concluded and consistent with department policy, we will thoroughly review the prosecution and its underlying investigation to determine whether further action is appropriate.”

BART settled a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Grant’s daughter in January that is likely to total $5.1 million, according to civil rights attorney John Burris’ website. Two other lawsuits, one on behalf of Grant’s mother and one on behalf of five other men on the Fruitvale station platform that night, have been consolidated into a single trial that will begin in May 2011, Burris told the Guardian.

Meanwhile, Grant’s death marked just one of three police shootings that occurred Jan. 1, 2009 — the other two cases also sparked allegations of civil-rights violations, since both victims were African American men. Adolph Grimes, 22, was fatally shot 14 times, including 12 times in the back, by a group of New Orleans police officers, who erroneously believed he was a suspect who’d fled the scene of a shooting.

The same night, Robert Tolan, 23 — the son of a Major League Baseball player — was shot and seriously injured outside his home in an upscale Houston suburb by a police officer who mistakenly believed Tolan had stolen the vehicle he was driving. Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton, the white officer who shot him, was ultimately acquitted.

 

CREATIVE OUTLET

Not everyone in Oakland reacted to Mehserle’s sentence by charging through the streets. The Oscar Grant Foundation, which facilitated live art performances at Frank Ogawa Plaza Nov. 5, is calling for youth groups, Bay Area schools, and adults to participate in an art and poetry showcase inspired by Grant. Information can be found online at IamOscarGrant.org. The foundation is advertising a $1,000 grand prize. Three artists from the Trust Your Struggle Collective didn’t wait to join a contest, however, and spent the afternoon of Nov. 5 adorning plywood covering the Youth Radio building windows at 17th Street and Telegraph Avenue, a few blocks from Frank Ogawa Plaza.

The mural displayed a prominent image of Grant holding his daughter, Tatiana, who was four years old when Grant was killed. The pair are flanked by the names and figures of more than 20 people killed by police.

“We asked the youth inside what they wanted to see,” Miguel Perez, an artist with the Trust Your Struggle Collective, told the Guardian as he looked over the mural. “They said they wanted to see the names of people killed by police nationwide, not just in the Bay Area. The list is so huge, it’s hard to pick out specific names.”

Perez said Trust Your Struggle is a group of artists and educators with social-justice backgrounds who create art as activism. “Being a person of color, I’ve had racist stuff said to me by the police,” Perez said. “It seems like it’s slowly been changing for the past hundreds of years, but it’s still not enough — enough being fairness.” *

The next mayor

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The next mayor

tredmond@sfbg.com

By the time a beaming Mayor Gavin Newsom took the stage at Tres Agaves, the chic SoMa restaurant, on election night, enough results were in to leave no doubt: the top two places on the California ballot would go to the Democrats. Jerry Brown would defeat Meg Whitman in the most expensive gubernatorial race in American history — and Newsom, who once challenged Brown in the primary and dismissed the office of lieutenant governor, would be Brown’s No. 2.

It might not be a powerful job, but Newsom wasn’t taking it lightly anymore. “We can’t afford to continue to play in the margins,” he proclaimed proudly, advancing a vague but ambitious agenda. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with California that can’t be fixed with what’s right with California.”

But around the city, as results trickled in for the local races, the talk wasn’t about Newsom’s role in the Brown administration, or the change the Democrats might bring to Sacramento. It was about the profound change that could take place in his hometown as he vacates the office of mayor a year early — and opens the door for the progressives who control the Board of Supervisors to appoint a chief executive who agrees with, and is willing to work with, the majority of the district-elected board.

At a time when the Republican takeover of Congress threatens to create gridlock in Washington, there’s a real chance that San Francisco’s government — often paralyzed by friction between Newsom and the board — could take on an entirely new direction. It’s possible that the progressives, long denied the top spot at City Hall, could put a mayor in office who shares their agenda.

This could be a turning point in San Francisco, a chance to put the interests of the neighborhoods, the working class, small businesses, the environmental movement, and economic justice ahead of the demands of downtown and the rich. All the pieces are in place — except one.

To make a progressive vision happen, the fractious (and in some cases, overly ambitious) elected leaders of the progressive movement will have to recognize, just for a little while, that it’s not about any individual. It’s not about David Chiu, or Ross Mirkarimi, or Chris Daly, or John Avalos, or Eric Mar, or David Campos, or Jane Kim, or Aaron Peskin. It’s not about any one person’s career or personal power.

It’s about a progressive movement and the issues and causes that movement represents. And if the folks with the egos and personal gripes and career designs can’t set them aside and do what’s best for the movement as a whole, then the opportunity of a generation will be wasted.

Folks: this is a hard thing for politicians to recognize. But right now it’s not about you. It’s about all of us.

It’s an odd time in San Francisco, fraught with political hazards. And it’s so confusing that no one — not the elected officials, not the pundits, not the lobbyists, not the insiders — has any clear idea who will occupy Room 200 in January.

Here’s the basic scenario, as described by past opinions of the city attorney’s office:

Under the state Constitution, Newsom will take office as lieutenant governor Jan. 3, 2011. The City Charter provides that a vacancy in the Mayor’s Office is filled by the president of the Board of Supervisors until the board can choose someone to fill the job until the end of the term — in this case, for 11 more months.

So if all goes according to the rules (and Newsom doesn’t try to play some legal game and delay his swearing-in), David Chiu will become acting mayor on Jan.3. He’ll also retain his job as board president.

On Jan. 4, the current members of the Board of Supervisors will hold a regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting — and the election of a new mayor will be on the agenda. If six of the current supervisors can agree on a name (and sitting supervisors can’t vote for themselves) then that person will immediately take office and finish Newsom’s term.

If nobody gets six votes — that is, if the board is gridlocked — Chiu remains in both offices until the next regular meeting of the board — a week later, when the newly elected supervisors are sworn in.

The new board will then elect a board president — who will also instantly become acting mayor — and then go about trying to find someone who can get six votes to take the top job. If that doesn’t work — that is, if the new board is also gridlocked — then the new board president remains acting mayor until January 2012.

There are at least three basic approaches being bandied about. Some people, including Newsom and some of the more conservative members of the board, want to see a “caretaker” mayor, someone with no personal ambition for the job, fill out Newsom’s term, allowing the voters to choose the next mayor in November, 2011. That has problems. As Campos told us, “The city has serious budget and policy issues and it’s unlikely a caretaker could handle them effectively.” In other words, a short-termer will have no real power and will just punt hard decisions for another year.

Then there’s the concept of putting in a sacrificial progressive — someone who will push through the tax increases and service cuts necessary to close a $400 million budget gap, approve a series of bills that stalled under Newsom, take the hits from the San Francisco Chronicle, and step out of the way to let someone else run in November.

The downside of that approach? It’s almost impossible for a true progressive to raise the money needed to beat a downtown candidate in a citywide mayor’s race. And it seems foolish to give up the opportunity to someone in the mayor’s office who can run for reelection as an incumbent.

Which is, of course, the third — and most intriguing — scenario.

The press, the pundits, and the mayor have for the past few months been pushing former Sup. Peskin as the foil, trying to spin the situation to suggest that the current chair of the local Democratic Party is angling for a job he wouldn’t win in a normal election. But right now, Peskin is no more a front-runner than anyone else. And although he’s made no secret in the past of wanting the job, he’s been talking of late more about the need for a progressive than about his own ambitions.

“If the board chose [state Assemblymember] Tom Ammiano, I would be thrilled to play a role, however small, in that administration,” Peskin told us.

In fact, Peskin said, the supervisors need to stop thinking about personalities and start looking at the larger picture. “If we as a movement can’t pull this off, then shame on us.”

Or as Sup. Campos put it: “We have to come together here and do what’s right for the progressive movement.”

Two years ago, the San Francisco left was — to the extent that it’s possible — a united electoral movement. In June, an undisputed left slate won a majority on the Democratic County Central Committee. In November 2008, Districts 1, 3, 5, and 11 saw consensus left candidates running against downtown-backed opponents — and won. In D9, three progressives ran a remarkably civil campaign with little or no intramural attacks.

The results were impressive. As labor activist Gabriel Haaland put it, “we ran the table.”

But that unity fell apart quickly, as a faction led by Daly sought to ensure that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi couldn’t get elected board president. Instead that job went to Chiu — the least experienced of the supervisors elected in that class, and a politician who is, by his own account, the most centrist member of the liberal majority.

This fall, the campaign to replace Daly in D6 turned nasty as both Debra Walker and Jane Kim openly attacked each other. Walker sent out anti-Kim mailers, and Kim’s supporters charged that Walker was part of a political machine — a damaging (if silly) allegation that created a completely unnecessary rift on the left.

And let’s face it: those fights were all about personality and ego, not issues or progressive strategy. Mirkarimi and Daly have never had any substantive policy disagreements, and neither did Walker and Kim.

In the wake of that, progressives need to come together if they want to take advantage of the opportunity to change the direction of the city. It’s not going to be easy.

“We’re good at losing,” Daly said. “I’m afraid we’re doing everything we can to blow it.”

The cold political calculus is that none of the current board members can count on six votes, and neither can Peskin or any of the other commonly mentioned candidates. The only person who would almost certainly get six votes today is Ammiano — and so far, he’s not interested.

“I know you never say never in politics, but I’m happy here in Sacramento. Eighty-six percent of the voters sent me back for another term, and I think that says something,” he told us.

It’s hardly surprising that someone like Ammiano, who has a secure job he likes and soaring approval ratings, would demur on taking on what by any account will be a short-term nightmare. The city is still effectively broke, and next year’s budget shortfall is projected at roughly $400 million. There’s no easy way to raise revenue, and after four years of brutal cuts, there’s not much left to pare. The next mayor will be delivering bad news to the voters, making unpleasant and unpopular decisions, infuriating powerful interest groups of one sort or another — and then, should he or she want the job any longer, asking for a vote of confidence in November.

Yet he power of incumbency in San Francisco is significant. The past two mayors, Newsom and Willie Brown, were reelected easily, despite some serious problems. And an incumbent has the ability to raise money that most progressives won’t have on their own.

Chiu thus far is being cautious. He told us his main concern right now is ensuring that the process for choosing the next mayor is open, honest, and legally sound. He won’t even say if he’s officially interested in the job (although board observers say he’s already making the rounds and counting potential votes).

And no matter what happens, he will be acting mayor for at least a day, which gives him an advantage over anyone else in the contest.

But some of the board progressives are unhappy about how Chiu negotiated the last two budget deals with Newsom and don’t see him as a strong leader on the left.

Ross Mirkarimi is the longest-serving progressive (other than Daly, who isn’t remotely a candidate), and he’s made no secret of his political ambitions. Then there’s Campos, an effective and even-tempered supervisor who has friendly relationships with the board’s left flank and with centrists like Bevan Dufty. But even if Dufty (who I suspect would love to be part of electing the first openly gay mayor of San Francisco) does support Campos, he’d still need every other progressive supervisor. Campos also would need Chiu’s vote to go over the top. Which means Chiu — who needs progressive support for whatever his political future holds — would have to set aside his own designs on the job to put a progressive in office.

In other words, some people who want to be mayor are going to have to give that up and support the strongest progressive. “If there’s someone other than me who can get six votes, then I’m going to support that person,” Campos noted.

Then there are the outsiders. City Attorney Dennis Herrera has already announced he plans to run in the fall. If the board’s looking for a respected candidate who can appeal to moderates as well as progressives, his name will come up. So will state Sen. Mark Leno, who has the political gravitas and experience and would be formidable in a re-election campaign in November. Leno doesn’t always side with the left on local races; he supported Supervisor-elect Scott Wiener, and losing D6 candidate Theresa Sparks. But he has always sought to remain on good terms with progressives.

All that assumes that the current board will make the choice — and even that is a matter of strategic and political dispute. If the lame duck supervisors choose a mayor — particularly a strong progressive — you can count on the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsom, and the downtown establishment to call it a “power grab” and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the winner.

“But choosing a mayor is the legal responsibility of this board and they ought to do their jobs,” Peskin said.

The exact makeup of the next board was still unclear at press time. Jane Kim is the likely winner in D6 and has always been a progressive on the School Board. She’s also close to Chiu, who strongly supported her. If Malia Cohen or Lynette Sweet wins D10, it’s unlikely either of them will vote for a progressive mayor.

Newsom also might try to screw things up with a last-minute power play. He could, for example, simply refuse to take the oath of office as lieutenant governor until after the new board is seated.

Chiu’s allies say it makes sense for the progressives to choose a mayor who’s not identified so closely with the left wing of the board, who can appeal to the more moderate voters. That’s a powerful argument, and Herrera and Leno can also make the case. The progressive agenda — and the city — would be far better off with a more moderate mayor who is willing to work with the board than it has been with the arrogant, recalcitrant, and distant Newsom. And if the progressives got 75 percent of what they wanted from the mayor (as opposed to about 10 percent under Newsom), that would be cause to celebrate.

But to accept that as a political approach requires a gigantic assumption. It requires San Franciscans to give up on the idea that this is still, at heart, a progressive city, that the majority of the people who live here still believe in economic and social justice. It means giving up the dream that San Francisco can be a very different place, a city that’s not afraid to defy national trends and conventional wisdom, a place where socioeconomic diversity is a primary goal and the residents are more important than the big companies that try to make money off them. It means accepting that even here, in San Francisco, politics have to be driven by an ever-more conservative “center.”

It may be that a progressive can’t line up six votes, that a more moderate candidate winds up in the Mayor’s Office. But a lot of us aren’t ready yet to give up hope.

Additional reporting by Noah Arroyo.

The “Democratic Machine” myth

Zelda Bronstein
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34
The “Democratic Machine” myth

Okay, I read the gloating from Randy Shaw about Jane Kim defeating the “Democratic Party Machine,” which, as far as I can tell, seems to consist of the Democratic County Central Committee and the Bay Guardian. (As I’ve said before, if I were that powerful, things would change around this city ….)


It annoys me because machine politics were once a harsh reality in this town. But not these days.


Let’s look seriously at the supposed immense clout of the DCCC. Everyone from Shaw to The Chron’s C.W. Nevius has been freaking out over the ability of the local Democratic Party to control who gets elected to the Board of Supervisors. And while I think it’s a good idea to have prgoressives control the local party (this is, after all, San Francisco), even a cursory look at election results suggests that this vaunted machine isn’t really running much of anything.


In every contested race for supervisor — every single one — the candidate endorsed first by the DCCC appears headed for defeat. It’s not just D6; The DCCC endorsed DeWitt Lacy in D10, and he finished well out of the picture. The person leading that race today, Tony Kelly, wasn’t even in the DCCC’s top three. The panel backed Rafael Mandelman in D8; Scott Wiener won. The party gave its nod to Janet Reilly in D2, and if early RCV results hold, she’s in serious trouble.


Here’s the facts: With district elections, and a weak mayor, power is far too diffuse in San Francisco today for anyone to operate a political machine. District races this time around weren’t about the DCCC; they were about local campaigns organizing around local issues.


The DCCC helped Debra Walker somewhat in D6 , but it also hurt: In the end, Kim won with a campaign that painted Walker as an old-school machine party politician — and, interestingly enough, according to Paul Hogarth, she won by reaching out to the more conservative voters:


We focused on pitching her biography as a Stanford and Berkeley graduate, who is a civil rights attorney. And Jane Kim was the kind of young professional these voters could relate to. 


If Randy Shaw was right, and a powerful Democratic party machine ran city politics, we wouldn’t all be scratching our heads and wondering who the hell the next mayor will be. I can tell you right now: Aaron Peskin, the titular head of this mighty machine, is pretty far out of the running. Sup. David Chiu, who has pretty much cut ties with Peskin and worked to elect Kim, is one of the top mayoral contenders. It’s also entirely possible that Mark Leno — who is by no means part of any Peskin operation — will wind up in Room 200.


Labor — supposedly part of this machine, too — can’t even agree half the time on its own endorsements — witness the United Healthcare Workers local splitting dramatically with its Local 1021 brothers and sisters in SEIU. UHW backed Wiener, Theresa Sparks and Steve Moss — all candidates opposed by Local 1021.


It’s an unsettled time in local politics, and I hope that the progressives who care about issues, not personalities and silly labels, can come together and choose a mayor who will support a progressive agenda. But that will be a close call, and no doubt will involve a temporary coalition that will fall apart as soon as the deal is done.


Because right now, nobody’s calling the shots in local politics. Just look at the facts on the ground. 

Election over, what next?

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

OK, the election is over and labor, Democrats and the other good guys came up a bit short. But what now? What next for the good guys?

 Well, for starters, organized labor and its Democratic Party allies must be ready to block Republican plans to try to enact legislation that would cut taxes for the very wealthy, slash Medicare funding, and possibly even privatize Social Security. I know that may sound alarmist and far-fetched. But that’s what Republican leaders are actually talking about.

After all, the GOP’s anti-labor corporate allies spent nearly a billion dollars on the election and they damn well want their money’s worth.  Larry Cohen, president of the communications workers union, thinks it’s getting like the way elections were 100 years ago when the big trusts and robber barons made sure their voices were the only ones heard during election campaigns.

Not yet, Larry. Not quite. Unions were able to make a lot of highly effective noise that helped elect some important pro-labor Democrats and defeat several Tea Party candidates and other anti-labor wackos who argued, as the AFL-CIO’s Mike Hall notes, “that government should do nothing to improve the economy or protect working families during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

Let’s me take a little closer look at how the election went for organized labor and its political friends in two of the country’s most important states politically, numbers one and two in population, California and Texas.

In California, as the AFL-CIO says, unions were a key factor propelling notably pro-labor Democrat Jerry Brown to the governorship and pro-labor Democrat Barbara Boxer to a third term in the Senate. Those victories were especially sweet, since the opponents of Governor-elect Brown and Senator Boxer were former business executives with tons of money, including their own, to spend on their campaigns.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman spent more than $141 million of her own money on her losing campaign against Jerry Brown for governor. And though Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO, spent several million of her own money on her campaign, the total was nowhere near the obscene amount that Whitman pulled from her own pocket for her campaign.

Anyway, Meg Whitman lost, and good for Californians for making that happen.  Labor couldn’t imagine a worse anti-labor governor than Meg Whitman, or more labor-friendly governor than Jerry Brown, a worse anti-labor senator than Carly Fiorini, or more labor-friendly senator than Barbara Boxer.

It was a bit different in most other states. As Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro of the California Nurses Association notes, the election of Democratic, pro-labor candidates in California “provided a national alternative to the conservative, corporate-oriented economic program that won so many other races nationwide.”

DeMoro praised California’s voters “for seeing through the fool’s gold promises that the path to economic recovery and job creation is through corporate tax breaks and shifting more wealth and resources to those who need it the least.”

The news isn’t so good out of Texas, where, as Jim Lane of the People’s World  says, “the second largest delegation to the U.S. House of  Representatives, already heavily leaning to the right, tilted drastically further on November 2 – plus, many of the most popular Texas Democratic leaders were defeated.

The re-election of Gov. Rick Perry was more bad news for labor and its allies, given what the People’s World’s Lane notes as Perry’s “far-right, anti-worker vision.” Reporter Lane says “progressive Texans are not looking forward to extending the years of being shamed about their home state, as we have been since GW Bush took the national stage.”

But at least the Texas labor movement was able to run what Lane calls “a strong and largely independent political campaign.”  Unions even dared to run “one of their own,” former national AFL-CIO official Linda Chavez-Thompson, for lieutenant governor. But, as Lane notes, “Like all other statewide Democratic candidates, Chavez-Thompson’s campaign was buried by big money.”

So, what next for Texas, California – the whole country?

What’s next should be in large part to carry out what AFL-CIO and Democratic Party leaders have been advocating for many years – rebuilding of our long crumbling infrastructure

 President Obama has a plan that calls for rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, laying and maintaining 4,000 miles of railway tracks, restoring 150 miles of airport runways and , in doing so, providing badly needed jobs for many of the country’s millions of unemployed workers.
 
That’s how labor and political leaders can – and must – begin to deliver on their election campaign promises to, above all, do what it takes to create “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

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

$100,000 -A-Year Women

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

Unfortunately, as we all know – or should know – working women generally make less than working men, currently 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. But now come new census figures showing that in at least one regard, women are forging ahead of their male counterparts. They’re doing much better than men among higher paid workers.

It turns out that the number of women with six-figure incomes is rising at a much faster pace than is the number of men making six-figure incomes.

Nationwide, it looks like this: About one in 18 women working full time – about 2.5 million women in all – earned $100,000 or more in 2009, a jump of 14 percent from two years earlier. Only one in seven men, a total of about 8 million, made that much, an increase of just four percent.

How did that happen? Why so many higher-paid women? The most important reason seems to be the steady growth over the past three decades of women with the academic credentials to qualify them for higher-paying work. Women, in fact, now outnumber men at just about every level of higher education, with three women attending college and graduate school for every two men doing so.

Women earn more master’s degrees and more PhDs. Most law school students are women. So are almost half of the country’s medical students. Law and medicine are, of course, the academic fields that generally lead to higher paying professional jobs.

The two Washington Post staff writers who reported the Census findings, Carol Morello and Dan Keating, caution, however, that the wage gap between men and women “remains stubbornly persistent”. And despite women’s increased pay generally, women are only sparsely represented at the higher levels of business. For instance, just 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.

lIene Lang, president of Catalyst, a group that’s working to improve business opportunities for women,  is cautious as well. It’s no surprise to her that as women get more education, they earn more. But, she said, “women have been getting these degrees for a long time. And they’re still hitting a glass ceiling.”

We should take into account the impact of the current recession, which has hit men much harder than women. Median pay and hours worked fell twice as much for men as for women. The share of workers earning annual pay of $50,000 or more has stayed pretty much the same for men throughout the recession, but has risen 5 percent for women.

There’s another matter to consider. The fields with more men than women – manufacturing and construction, for example – have been declining throughout the recession, at the same time that there’s been a steady increase in jobs requiring the higher levels of education that more women have reached. So working women, although still far behind working men in compensation, are steadily gaining.

Women still have got a long, long way to go before reaching wage equality, but they’re on the way. Finally.

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

Election 2010: Labor and progressives dodge a bullet

Sasha Cuttler
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Bucking a national conservative, anti-government political trend, San Franciscans stayed with some fairly progressive politics on election night, rejecting a measure to demonize public employees (Prop. B), giving progressive John Rizzo far more votes than his City College of San Francisco board rivals, and taking far more liberal positions in state ballot measures and candidates than California voters, who were already far to the left of national voters.
“We are really happy that Prop. B is going down because it was such a misguided measure. It was not well thought through,” San Francisco Labor Council President Tim Paulson told the Guardian at the party labor threw with the San Francisco Democratic Party at Great American Music Hall. “San Francisco voters are the smartest in America.”
Paulson was also happy to see those voters approve Prop. N, taxing the transfer of properties worth more than $5 million, “because San Franciscans know that everyone has to pay their fair share.”
Another labor priority, Prop. J, the temporary hotel tax increase, lost by a narrow margin after Mayor Gavin Newsom and his downtown allies opposed it, and the online travel company spent millions of dollars to bury Prop. K – a Newsom-created rival measure that would have closed a loophole that lets the company avoid paying the hotel tax.
Rizzo said he was happy to far outpoll Lawrence Wong and Anita Grier as the three incumbents ran uncontested for their City College board seats, which should put him in a leadership position in the troubled district. “There is a tradition at City College that the highest vote getter gets the presidency, so I’m pretty happy,” Rizzo told us on election night.
There were some conservative victories in San Francisco, including approval of Prop. L, which criminalizes sitting or lying on sidewalks, and Prop. G, which will reduce Muni operator wages and change work rules after getting the approval of about 63 percent of voters.
“Ultimately, downtown did well,” progressive political consultant Jim Stearns said, noting how aggressive spending by downtown business and real estate interests ended a string of progressive victories in the last several election cycles, including the likely election of Scott Wiener in D8 and the strong challenge in D2 by Mark Farrell to perceived frontrunner Janet Reilly, who had progressive endorsements.
Stearns said national polls have shown that people are more afraid of big government than big corporations, whereas progressives tend to hold the opposite view. “That national atmosphere definitely had an impact on even races locally,” Stearns said.
But in San Francisco, the progressives retain a strong position in the political debates to come.

Election 2010: Loose crowd, few conclusions at the Labor-Dems party

Andrew Lam
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SF Democratic Party chairperson Aaron Peskin made it to the Labor Council-Democratic Party soiree at the Great American Music Hall a little late. Of course, he didn’t miss much yet. Ask him how things are going tonight and he says “I’ll tell you on Friday.”

It’s a somewhat anti-climatic election night for followers of the tightly contested supervisoral races. Peskin told us he doubts that the close calls will be settled until later this week.

But the tardy tidings hardly seem to be stopping the party at GAMH. An abrasive little man who has unfortunately gotten his hands on a video camera shouts over the crowd at Peskin as he makes his way through the throngs. “You gonna pretend like you didn’t see me? You bitch!” Debra Walker, a candidate in the race for District 6, enters to a smattering of applause around 10:30 p.m. Drinks all around.

Film Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. The film intern is Ryan Prendiville. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide at www.sfbg.com. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

OPENING

The Blue Tower Smita Bhide’s debut film, The Blue Tower, part of the 3rd I South Asian International Film Fest, begins with Mohan (Abhin Galeya) in the sort of loveless marriage that has become a standard cliché. It’s unnecessary to give any reason why the relationship is failing; as a viewer I accept it just as easily as I realize that with the introduction of Judy (Alice O’Connell), a young white nurse working for Mohan’s overbearing Auntie, Mohan will have an affair. However, this predictable fare, like a straight version of My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), takes a dark turn about halfway through, as every character and plot point emerges as more nefarious and twisted than originally imagined, and Mohan finds himself in a situation full of Lynchian perversion and Kafkaesque disorientation. The boldness and speed at which developments occur shifts the deadpan, suburban drama into a black-humored, grotesque ride — the sort you half want to stop, and you half want to see where it’s going. (1:25) Castro. (Prendiville)

*Brutal Beauty: Tales of the Rose City Rollers Focusing on Portland-based league Rose City Rollers, Chip Mabry’s Brutal Beauty offers some insights into the recent roller derby revival. The documentary follows the league travel team’s attempt to make it to Nationals over the course of the 2009 season. Ultimately though, the narrative really isn’t all that exciting (spoiler alert: they don’t make it very far). The real heart of the movie lies in the backgrounds and interviews of the tatted-up, foul-mouthed, dyed-haired derby girls from teams like the Break Neck Betties and Guns ‘N’ Rollers. Their personalities and stories of how derby helped shatter their ideas of self-expression and traditional gender norms helps keep the majority of the film’s 80-minute running time interesting, even when the action is not. (1:20) Red Vic. (Landon Moblad)

Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town This documentary follows the life and death of a great American mining town, following Butte, Montana’s rise as a mining town through to its inevitable environmental collapse. Once home to one of the world’s largest (and most dangerous) copper mines, Butte saw an influx of immigrants drawn to “the richest hill on earth.” Its story is definitely rich in terms of subject matter, particularly with the town’s role in the labor struggle; it could easily be the background for great early 20th century stories (as is the case with Atlantic City in HBO’s current Boardwalk Empire). But Butte, America is decidedly not cinematic, despite the voice-over narration by Gabriel Byrne, and is better suited to PBS than the big screen. (1:06) Victoria. (Prendiville)

Carlos Carlos, Olivier Assayas’s biopic of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, begins with a warning, that while the film is the subject of historical and journalistic research, “relations with other characters have been fictionalized.” In other words: there be contradictions ahead. But I suppose that’s the least you can expect when you’re watching a 330 minute theatrical miniseries that gives the rock ‘n’ roll biopic treatment to a terrorist who, under an alias, professes “the pleasure of doing one’s duty in silence.” Much of this is intentional, questioning the convictions of extremists. One particularly well-shot scene involves Carlos (Édgar Ramírez) sexually dominating a cell member, only moments after she admits to being a German feminist. After about four hours, though, the intellectual irony begins to feel more like a filmmaker attempting to cover his bases. Carlos is an idealist, but also a sellout. An egalitarian revolutionary, but also a sexist bigot. (And so vain.) Still, the film, full of actors speaking a bevy of languages and propelled by a international punk rock soundtrack, manages to be engaging. Keep in mind, though, that the miniseries was originally aired in three parts, and viewing Carlos in one sitting should be left to the cinemasochists. (5:30) Sundance Kabuki. (Prendiville)

Due Date Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis star in this Todd Phillips-directed road trip movie. (1:35) Four Star, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Fair Game Doug Liman’s film effectively dramatizes yet another disgraceful chapter from the last Presidential administration: how CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), who’d headed the Joint Task Force on Iraq investigating whether Saddam Hussein had WMDs, was identified by name in the Washington Post as a covert agent — thus ending her intelligence career and placing many of her subordinates and sources around the world in danger. This info was leaked to the press, it turned out, by highest-level White House officials as “punishment” for the New York Times editorial former ambassador Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) — Plame’s husband — wrote condemning their insistence on those WMDs to justify the Iraq invasion by then already well in progress. (The CIA task force had also found zero evidence of mass-destruction weapons, but Bush and co. chose to come up with their own bogus “facts” to sway US public opinion.) Purportedly, Karl Rove clucked to CNN’s Chris Matthews that Wilson’s awkwardly-timed dose of sobering truth rendered his spouse “fair game” for exposure. Unfortunately opening here several days after it might theoretically have done some election-day good — not that many Republican voters would likely be queuing up — Fair Game may be a familiar story to many. But its gist and details remain quite enough to make the blood boil. While the political aspects are expertly handled in thriller terms, the personal ones are a tad less successful. That’s partly because we never quite glimpse what brought these two very busy, business-first people together; but largely, alas, because so many of Wilson’s diatribes come off all too much as things that might be said by Sean Penn, Rabble-Rouser and Humanitarian. This is perhaps a case of casting so perfect it becomes a distracting fault. (1:46) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

For Colored Girls Sprinkling many tears and Janet Jackson’s blue steel throughout his high-camp, muy melodramatic adaptation of Ntzoke Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Tyler Perry deserves at least an E for effort in attempting to bring Shange’s choreopoem masterpiece to the screen. The result is a free-floating, somewhat tortured contemporary collection of vignettes centered on a clutch of African American women residing in an Harlem apartment building — a structure that remotely evokes an early Wong Kar-Wai omnibus like Days of Being Wild (1991), sans the narrative ambiguity and sublime cinematography — with its “colored girls,” each representing a hue in Shange’s rainbow, occasionally pouring out the poet’s original verse. Crystal (Kimberly Elise) appears to have it the hardest, burdened with an abusive baby daddy (Michael Ealy), a veteran dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dance teacher Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose) is the beacon of positivity who finds her trust horribly betrayed. Tangie (Thandie Newton) is the saucy slut, baby sister Nyla (Tessa Thompson) is the good girl with a secret, and their mother Alice (Whoopi Goldberg) is the building’s extremely annoying holy roller. Overseeing all is the apartments’ de facto matriarch Gilda (Phylicia Rashad), safe sex activist Juanita (Loretta Devine), and social worker Kelly (Kerry Washington). Oh, yes, and there’s Miss Jackson, who plays the leather-tough, magazine-editing devil wearing Prada, and spends most of her time looking wrecked about possibly ruining her makeup with an actual facial expression. Yes, they will survive, hey, hey, and though Perry may not have been the best moviemaker to adapt Shange’s groundbreaking work, a few of his players, particularly Newton and Elise, rise above the rainbow with wrenching, scene-stealing performances. (2:00) (Chun)

Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer Everyone of a certain age or with morbid curiosities has heard of R. Budd Dwyer, thanks to the very public way he died — by committing suicide at a televised-live press conference. The 1987 footage, of a portly middle-aged man with anguish in his eyes and a finger on the trigger, has been recycled in a number of contexts; thanks to the internet, it’s now freely viewable for shock value more than anything else (the incident created a controversy as to how much should be shown during news replays — when Dwyer takes out the gun? When he sticks it in his mouth?) Along the way, who Dwyer was, and why he shot himself, have kind of been lost by the general public. However, as director James Dirschberger discovers, the Pennsylvania politician’s widow, children, colleagues, and even the man whose testimony lead to a conviction in Dwyer’s corruption trial have never forgotten him. Honest Man suggests that Dwyer was actually innocent, but decided in despair to end his life before he’d been removed from office, thus allowing his family to collect full benefits. The full story will probably never be known, but Honest Man‘s attempts to show the man behind the gruesome film clip are sincere, if couched in the understanding that he’ll always be first associated with his infamous, well-documented death. (1:16) Red Vic. (Eddy)

*Megamind Be careful what you wish for, especially if you’re a blue meanie with a Conehead noggin and a knack for mispronunciation and mayhem. Holding up hilariously against such animated efforts as The Incredibles (2004) and Monsters, Inc. (2001), Megamind uses that nugget of wisdom as its narrative springboard and takes off where most superhero-vs.-supervillain yarns end: the feud between baddie Megamind (voiced by Will Farrell) and goody-two-shoes Metro Man (Brad Pitt) goes waaay back, to the ankle-biter years. They’ve battled so often over intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fay) that she’s beyond bored by every nefarious torture device and disco crocodile the Blue Man throws at her. When Mega finally, unexpectedly vanquishes his foe, he finds himself with a bad case of the blues. With the help of his loyal Minion (David Cross), he decides to change the game and create his own worthy opponent, who just happens to be Roxanne’s schlubby cameraman (Jonah Hill). Chortles ensue, thanks to the sarcastic sass emanating from the Will and Tina show, although the 3-D effects seem beside the point. The resemblance to this year’s Despicable Me is more than a little passing, from the bad guy on the moral turnaround to the adorable underlings, but Megamind‘s smart satire of comic hero conventions, its voice actor’s right-on riffs, and the rock and pop licks on the soundtrack make it the nice and nasty winner. (1:36) Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Monsters After a NASA space pod bearing samples of extraterrestrial life crashes in northern Mexico, a large swath of the now massively walled-off U.S. border area becomes an “Infected Zone,” with frequent unpleasant contact between humans and giant octopus-like creatures. Photographer Andrew (Scoot McNairy) is reluctantly charged with delivering his publisher’s daughter Sam (Whitney Able) to safety. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. The duo find themselves making a dangerous journey northward straight through the Zone, right at the start of an annual “migration season” that always makes the critters especially ornery. Just as 2009’s District 9 commented obliquely on Apartheid, Gareth Edwards’ feature similarly riffs on our own illegal-alien debate. But there’s no need to look for deep meanings here. Taken as a slow build (sometimes a little too slow) toward the inevitable perils, Monsters is a successfully low-key, lower-budget spin on aspects of The War of the Worlds, Cloverfield (2008), The Mist (2007), etc. Those looking for lots of graphic horror-fantasy content may be frustrated, but on its own terms the film is creepy and credible enough. (1:33) California, Lumiere. (Harvey)

*36 Quai des Orfèvres It’s taken six years for this major French policier to get a proper U.S. release, which is a little strange considering its genre appeal and lack of conflict with an English-language remake (Martin Campbell, director of 2006’s Casino Royal, might make one within the next couple years). Leaving for another post, Paris’ Chief of Police (Andre Dussolier) wants to wrap things up tidily before he goes, and that means nailing the violent gang that’s been robbing armored trucks and killing their guards. Though he’d prefer his post be inherited by the honorable Leo Vrinks (Daniel Auteil) rather than the latter’s ex-friend, shamelessly ambitious and underhanded Denis Klein (Gerard Depardieu), internal politics necessitate he give it to whichever man and his team end this crime spree. When a con (Roschdy Zem) gives Vrinks a tip — albeit under seriously compromising, blackmail-ready circumstances — it seems the murderous gang will be caught under his supervision. Drunk and raging with envy, Klein pulls a stunt that has catastrophic consequences. Yet a chance windfall allows him to turn things to his advantage, and greatly against Vrinks. To a point the story is very loosely inspired by events that actually occurred in the mid-1980s, when director-writer Olivier Marchal was a Parisian cop. His script (penned in collaboration with three others) is intricate and dramatic, with some startling twists of fate; the casting, which includes a number of other leading French actors, is impeccable. 36 has been called a Gallic Heat — though it lacks the visually and thematically epic, larger-than-life qualities Michael Mann provided that film. Which leaves it a very good story competently executed, but not the great movie it could have been. (1:51) Roxie. (Harvey)

Tibet in Song It’s often a bad sign when directors are subjects in their own documentaries. With Tibet in Song, Ngawang Choephel has good cause to disprove this theory. In 1995, he returned to Tibet for the first time since fleeing with his mother as a child. An ethnomusicologist and Fulbright scholar, he wanted to record traditional Tibetan music. Instead he was arrested, lost half his footage, and charged with spying, eventually serving six years in jail. Tibet in Song is the completion of his original project, and although the director does give due attention to the circumstances of his own story, it’s always within the larger context of the music, as a culture is being held captive by Chinese pop and propaganda. As Choephel argues that the traditional Tibetan music has been manipulated to change the country’s identity generation by generation, we don’t just hear the music, but understand what it means. (1:26) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Prendiville)

ONGOING

Cairo Time (1:29) Opera Plaza.

Conviction (1:47) Empire, Piedmont, SF Center.

*Easy A (1:30) Shattuck.

Enter the Void (2:17) Lumiere.

*The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest If you enjoyed the first two films in the Millennium trilogy — 2009’sThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire — there’s a good chance you’ll also like The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Based on the final book in Stieg Larsson’s series, the film begins shortly after the violent events at the conclusion of the second movie. There are brief flashes of what happened — the cinematic equivalent of TV’s “previously on&ldots;” — but it’s likely an indecipherable jumble to Girl first-timers. Hornet’s Nest presents the trial of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the much-abused, much-misunderstood, entirely kick-ass protagonist of the series. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his sister Annika (Annika Hallin) as her lawyer, Lisbeth finally gets her day in court. The conspiracy that drives the story is somewhat convoluted, and while it all comes together in the end, Hornet’s Nest isn’t an easy film to digest. Still, it’s a well-made and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy — as long as you caught the beginning and middle, too. (2:28) Bridge, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

Hereafter (2:09) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

Inside Job (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

*Jackass 3D (1:30) 1000 Van Ness.

*The Kids Are All Right (1:47) Red Vic.

*Leaving Few beauties — French, English, French-English, or otherwise — have managed the transformation Kristin Scott Thomas has, in using her considerable beauty to convey unfathomable hunger. In this romantic thriller with a touch of Madame Bovary and more than a dab of noir, Scott Thomas is Suzanne, the efficient if somewhat taken-for-granted wife of a doctor (Yvan Attal, director of 2001’s My Wife Is an Actress and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s partner), whose marriage resembles a business arrangement more than a love match. The couple enlist Catalan ex-con Ivan (Sergi Lopez) to build an office for her budding physical therapy practice, and after a minor car accident, Ivan falls into Suzanne’s care, and as she grows to care more deeply about him, an affair begins. Director Catherine Corsini’s tough-eyed look at what follows — concerning the economics of marriage and the price of one woman’s individuation and passionate choices — calls to mind women’s melodramas of the ’40s and ’50s, though Corsini renders her oft-told tale of awakening with considerably less heavy-handedness and minimal condescension. That approach and Scott Thomas’ performance — the movie almost turns on the motionless, slowly evolving look in Suzanne’s eyes when she realizes what she must do — makes Leaving a departure from your average coming-of-liberation romance. (1:30) Albany, Clay. (Chun)

Let Me In (1:55) Four Star.

Life as We Know It (1:52) 1000 Van Ness.

*Mademoiselle Chambon (1:41) Opera Plaza.

My Dog Tulip (1:22) Smith Rafael.

Never Let Me Go (1:43) Four Star, Lumiere.

*Nowhere Boy (1:37) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

Paranormal Activity 2 (1:45) California, 1000 Van Ness.

Red (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Saw 3D (1:31) 1000 Van Ness.

*Secretariat (1:56) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*The Social Network (2:00) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Stone (1:45) Opera Plaza.

The Town (2:10) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck.

*Waiting for “Superman” (1:51) Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2:13) Presidio.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (1:38) Albany, Opera Plaza, Presidio.

Election 2010: Wiener confident in D8, but Mandelman not giving up

Sasha Cuttler
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Election 2010: Wiener confident in D8, but Mandelman not giving up

The mood was buoyant in Harvey’s bar in the Castro, where D8 supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener had 54 percent of the vote in early returns when he arrived around 9:30 pm. His lead over progressive candidate Rafael Mandelman has narrowed since then (45-33 percent at last count), and that campaign was still hopeful at its party at Pilsner Inn on Church Street.
“The question is does it get tight enough that the number two votes make a difference,” Mandelman told the Guardian, referring to the ranked choice election and showing hope that many of Rebecca Prozan’s second choice votes would go to him. Mandelman noted that his campaign had a solid volunteer effort and good turnout in the district. “We think it’s going to be closer than in looks right now.”
But Wiener expressed confidence that he will prevail. “I feel really good about it,” he told the Guardian. The race was fairly cordial among the candidates, but Wiener got hit pretty hard by mailers from labor and tenant groups attacking him as hostile to progressive priorities.
“It got negative toward the end, and I think that’s unfortunate, but that’s modern politics and the truth prevailed,” said Wiener, who has argued that his record of votes on tenant issue while serving on the DCCC was better that it was represented in this election. In fact, even some progressives think Wiener might be a better vote on tenant issues than incumbent Bevan Dufty, who was consistently a swing vote against tenant protection legislation.
In fact, Wiener campaign manager Adam Taylor, who is a renter, told us that he wouldn’t have worked on the campaign if he didn’t believe Wiener would stand up for renters’ rights. “We expected certain falsehoods to count out and they did,” said Taylor, who was running his first campaign in San Francisco. “I’m proud of how we kept our head held high.”

Election 2010: Wait is on for Labor-Dems

Andrew Lam
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Election 2010: Wait is on for Labor-Dems

Labor Council executive director Tim Paulson isn’t quite ready to give up the ghost on this one, despite a reported 196 Republican seats already won in the House.  “We really don’t know what the final answers are… some things are going well, some things are going not as well.” Most of labor’s most pressing local races – Paulson cited Measure B and the District 6 and District 8 races as examples – have yet to be decided and may possibly not have a confirmed winner until tomorrow. Measure B is going down at the moment, by the way – 51.6 percent “no” votes, still not enough reported at this point to call the race.

So for now, the Labor Council-Democrat Party party at the Great American Music Hall is contenting itself with crudites and tunes by young rock-women, The She’s. Fiona Ma made it up to congratulate everyone who got out the vote for the Dems – Jerry Brown, Pelosi, and Boxer have cinched their races — but Aaron Peskin of the DCCC hasn’t yet made an appearance. Maybe it’s just the dedication showing. “Aaron doesn’t know the polls closed awhile ago,” Paulson announces. 

 

GOLDIES 2010 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Marc Huestis

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2010 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Marc Huestis

“What a swimmer is Dracula’s daughter!,” exclaims John “the Cool Ghoul” Zacherle, as “Dinner With Drac” blares from the speakers in Marc Huestis’ Redstone Labor Temple office. ‘Tis the season for Huestis’ tribute to Poltergeist‘s Jobeth Williams, and the activist, filmmaker, and camp impresario is in the final stretches of preparing for the big night.

What hasn’t Marc Huestis done? As a youngster, he arrived in San Francisco from Long Island, New York, unafraid to recite poetry while sporting a pompadour that would make any Elvis impersonator feel size envy. Soon you could see him singing in drag or writhing around on stage in a dirty diaper in Angels of Light productions. But from the very beginning, film was at the heart of Huestis’s life. His father was an editor who worked on the ’60s teen music TV show Hullabaloo, while his mother was a showgirl. “I have a little bit of both in me,” he jokes, and it’s the truth — a Marc Huestis extravaganza involves informed editing and explosive creative freedom.

One of Huestis’ first notable celebrations was the San Francisco Gay Film Festival, now known as the Frameline fest, which he and his non-biological twin-of-sorts Daniel Nicoletta (born just three days apart from him) began with other like minds in 1976. “It was fun, a bunch of kooky hippie kids who wanted to get their movies shown,” he remembers. “There was no pretense, and the group of us were able to get together to do it. It’s great to see what it has evolved into, and feel a bit like a patron saint. Some people will always hate you, but at this age” — Huestis is 55 — “you get to the point where some people respect you. And you respect yourself.”

In 1982, after making some short films, Huestis wrote and directed Whatever Happened to Susan Jane?, his distinctly San Francisco answer to the kinds of antic comedies John Waters was making on the East Coast. In recent years, the movie has found a new audience amongst music lovers devoted to San Francisco’s new wave heyday — one of its strongest aspects is its documentation of wild performances from Tuxedo Moon and other groups of the day. “It was a great combination of gay culture and punk culture,” Huestis says of the era. “There’s a kindness to it, and it was very smart.”

Huestis’s next feature-length movie, 1993’s Sex Is… is very much a film of its time. A direct look at and discussion of the experience of gay sex and intimacy amid the AIDS crisis, it was also a do-it-yourself, many-year labor of love, with DIY aesthetics one common thread throughout Huestis’s creative life. “It’s very heartfelt,” he says of the film. “It was an important film when it came out because no one was talking about sex, and if they were, it was really hypocritically. The high point of my life was to be at the Berlin Film Festival for the world premiere, and then several days later, be at the awards presentation with Billy Wilder sitting nearby. For me, having HIV, and not thinking I was going to live, that moment was a gift.”

One year later, Huestis moved into his office in the Labor Temple, a treasure trove of film memorabilia where the walls are lined with autographed photos, and VHS tapes, DVDs, VCRs and DVD players are stacked on top of each other — in a well-organized fashion. The site is his base for the celebrity events that he puts on at the Castro Theatre, theatrical and cinematic programs that have blazed a trail for another generation of movie mayhem purveyors such as Jesse Hawthorne Ficks and this year’s Goldie winner Joshua Grannell, a.k.a. Peaches Christ.

Old media surrounds us as we talk, but there is little doubt that Huestis, experienced at putting together political and community fundraisers, is always focused on the present and future as well. “I love new media,” he says. “I could not do what I do if I didn’t have knowledge. I design the posters, I do the clip reels, I get the music together, I do the PR. I would sell the popcorn if I could. I love it. I never get tired of movies.”

It’s fitting, then, that Huestis gets to call one of this country’s oldest and most beautiful movie palaces, the Castro Theatre, home. “One of the first shows I put on there was when the Republicans took control of Congress, so everything comes around,” he says. “The best thing is seeing someone go there for the first time. To me it’s like the town barn, but it’s an amazing, beautiful place.”

If star power can me measured in size, some of the players that Huestis has brought to the Castro over the years — Debbie Reynolds, Jane Russell, Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie, Patty Duke — rival the size of the fabled venue. He’s also given eccentric talents such as Sylvia Miles and Karen Black the type of spotlight they deserve. In the end, it’s about gratitude, on his part, on behalf of the audience, and hopefully, from the subjects of his tributes. Huestis’ night for Tony Curtis resulted in him being hired by the actor to create a clip retrospective that ultimately wound up being shown at Curtis’s funeral. “I had a great fondness for and connection with him,” he says. “I love it when they’re thankful, because no one shows gratitude, the world is so entitled. After the [Castro] show, he [Curtis] held my hand really hard, looked me straight in the eyes, and said, ‘Thank you.'”

Thank you, Marc Huestis.

www.myspace.com/marchuestispro  www.youtube.com/user/hostesshue

>>MORE GOLDIES 2010

Election 2010: Early SF results

Zelda Bronstein
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The absentee votes are in, and it’s a very mixed bag. If trends hold, and the absentees represent the most conservative votes, Prop. B is going down — the result of a very successful labor campaign. Prop. L, the sit-lie law, is solidly ahead. The two hotel tax measures are both losing by about the same percentage, suggesting that the anti-tax group’s focus on just Prop. K, which liberals also opposed, was effective. But it’s still to early to call those.

In D2, Janet Reilly is well ahead. In D8, Scott Wiener is ahead of Rafael mandelman 54-22; that’s going to be hard to make up, even though Mandelman had a strong GOTV drive today.

D6 and D10 are still way up in the air. Jane Kim is ahead in D6, and Marlene Tran — the only Asian in the race, is winning in D10, a testament to the fact that 10 is becoming an increasingly Asian district. But neither of those two will be over tonight, and will come down to ranked-choice voting. 

Locals for hire

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Locals for hire

sarah@sfbg.com

It’s no secret that San Francisco’s construction industry is going through hard times, a situation that translates into lost opportunities for working class San Franciscans. But that bad situation is being made worse by contractors on local projects hiring workers from outside the city.

Recent studies reveal that under the city’s First Source program, which requires contractors to make “good faith efforts” to reach the goal of hiring 50 percent of their workers from within the city, San Francisco has failed to meet its goals on publicly funded projects.

Sup. John Avalos has introduced legislation that seeks to address this shortfall by requiring contractors to meet the city’s hiring goals or face fines. But some union leaders whose members don’t live in San Francisco are grumbling that the proposal is not workable.

Local unemployed workers are expressing support for the Avalos legislation, as they step up efforts to get UC San Francisco to commit to local hiring plans at its $1.5 billon Mission Bay hospital construction site, which lies a Muni T-Third ride away from some of the city’s most economically distressed neighborhoods.

And now everyone is anxiously wondering where Mayor Gavin Newsom will land on the legislation and on UCSF’s hiring goals in what may be his last weeks as chief executive of San Francisco.

As of press time, Newsom was running neck-to-neck with Abel Maldonaldo in the lieutenant governor’s race, leaving voters uncertain whether Newsom will be mayor in January or second-in-command statewide — a promotion that would land him a seat on the UC Board of Regents but shift his primary allegiance from the City and County of San Francisco to the entire state of California.

When Avalos stood outside City Hall last month and announced his proposal to mandate local hiring on publicly-funded construction projects, he was joined by Sups. Sophie Maxwell and David Campos, Board President David Chiu, community advocates, construction contractors, neighborhood leaders, and union members.

“My legislation will ensure that San Franciscans have a guaranteed shot to work on the city’s public works projects and that the local dollars invested in public infrastructure will be recycled back into San Francisco’s economy and local communities,” Avalos said.

Avalos’ legislation came in the wake of two reports confirming that local construction workers were having a hard time getting work. A report that Chinese Affirmative Action and Brightline Defense released in August estimated that only 24 percent of workers on publicly funded sites are local residents.

And a report released by L. Luster and Associates in mid-October, at the behest of the Redevelopment Agency and Office of Economic and Workforce Development, found that only 20 percent of workers hired at 29 publicly funded construction projects in the past year were local residents.

Avalos’ legislation would mandate assessment of liquidated damages against contractors and subcontractors who fail to meet minimum local hiring requirements and establish monitoring, enforcement, and administrative procedures in support of this policy. It would phase in these requirements over three years, starting at 30 percent the first year.

Avalos noted that his legislation was developed through a series of meetings with city agencies, the Mayor’s Office, labor and building trade unions, the environmental community, neighborhood advocates, contractors, local hiring advocates, and unemployed workers. And he vowed to keep the roundtable approach.

Patrick Mulligan, financial secretary of Carpenters Local 22, told the Guardian that his union, whose members are specific to San Francisco, generally supports local hiring. “But there are some general concerns with the legislation,” said Mulligan, who has lived his whole life in San Francisco and got his first job through a local hiring program. “We have standing contractual agreements with contractors, so whatever legislation gets passed, it will have to be meshed with the existing situation. If these were boom times, people might see it differently. But it’s hard times at the union hall.”

Mulligan also lamented the lack of process for the community to vet whether UC has a local hiring plan at construction projects that impact their neighborhood. “But contractors want the best workforce they can get. And in lean times, they can afford to be more selective and don’t necessarily want to include training time on the job,” he said. “But we feel that it’s inappropriate for contractors to bring their entire crew from outside of town.”

Michael Theriault, secretary-treasurer of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, told the Guardian that Avalos’ legislation was unworkable because construction workers cannot afford housing in San Francisco and too few qualified workers live in the city.

“We take workers from San Francisco into our apprenticeship program constantly, but they get to a certain point in their careers and find that the city builds well on the low-end and the high-end, but doesn’t build workforce housing. So they end up in Antioch, Vallejo, Fairfield, and Modesto, and commute back in,” Theriault said. “That problem has not been addressed by the city, and it’s at the root of why local hiring programs aren’t working.”

Newsom spokesperson Tony Winnicker said the mayor “supports stronger local hire requirements” even as he expressed concerns with Avalos’ proposal. “We’ll continue to work with the supervisors, the building trade unions and the community on legislation that achieves both realistic and legally enforceable local job guarantees for city projects,” he said.

Winnicker noted that the city already supports local hiring through CityBuild and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “But we believe we can do better,” he added.

Avalos, whose legislation is scheduled for a Nov. 8 hearing of the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee, said he sees his proposal as a starting point. “We’ll see where it ends up,” Avalos told the Guardian. “We could pass legislation that wants 50 percent local hiring next year, and it would probably get vetoed and it wouldn’t be realistic. So we have to phase it in and make sure we are creating a system that is going to push the trades to be more inclusive of local residents.”

Meanwhile, unemployed workers — some in unions, others not — continue to protest the lack of a local hire plan at UCSF’s $1.5 billion Mission Bay hospital project, which is funded through debt financing, philanthropic gifts, and university reserves.

“We want to make sure folks get trained and everything that’s necessary, so there is no dispute,” Aboriginal Blacks United member Alex Prince said at an Oct. 27 protest at the Mission Bay site. The protest came one month after Newsom wrote to UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann noting that the hospital was breaking ground “just as continuing high unemployment rates were devastating the city’s most distressed communities,including neighborhoods impacted by the Mission Bay expansion.”

“There are estimates that up to 40 percent of the members of our local construction trade unions are currently out-of-work,” Newsom wrote. “It would be helpful if you could share the commitments that UCSF has made on the issue of local hiring, particularly around employing residents of San Francisco’s most distressed communities in southeast San Francisco, and the results of those efforts to date.” Winnicker said UCSF has not yet responded.

Barbara French, UCSF’s vice chancellor for university relations, told the Guardian that UCSF is working to evaluate hiring needs for phase of the project, talking to the unions, and intends to make its findings public in December.

“We have had a voluntary local hiring policy since 1993,” French said, confirming that in the past 17 years, the university has reached a 12 percent local hire rate on average. “Sometimes it was 7 percent, sometimes it was 24 percent … Our [goal] is to reach a number that is beyond what we reached before but which is realistic.”

Recently French told community-based organizations that UCSF hadn’t signed a contract with the contractor at its Mission Bay hospital project, didn’t have the permits yet, and that the recent community celebrations didn’t mark the start of active construction at the site.

French said general hiring at Mission Bay will begin in December. “We don’t get any city funds at this site, so our commitment is voluntary. But we feel very strongly that we have to reach out,” she said.

Avalos acknowledged that UC is not under San Francisco’s jurisdiction and can’t be compelled to do more local hiring. “But we know that they are doing a critical amount of building and investing taxpayer dollars, and that this land use impacts the surrounding community. So it makes sense that we have local hire legislation and access to serious end-use jobs at the hospital.”

Editor’s Notes

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Editor’s Notes

tredmond@sfbg.com

Here’s what really scares me about Republicans in Washington: they don’t want the economy to get better.

I’m not just saying that they’re wrong on the issues, or that their prescriptions — tax cuts for the rich, fewer regulations for big business, privatization of health care and Social Security — will only make things worse. I’m saying that, right now, in November 2010, the GOP leaders want continued high unemployment. They want Americans to suffer. They want conditions to get worse and worse — because all they really care about right now is defeating Barack Obama in 2012. And they know and I know and everyone else knows that if the economy improves, he’ll be a two-term president.

I’m not the only one who sees this open conspiracy. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has been Twittering about it, and bloggers have been floating it out, but the mainstream news media doesn’t’ seem to want to take the risk of saying what’s right in front of everyone’s face: Republicans are lying, outright. They’ve campaigned on the promise that their ideas and agenda will put America back to work — but they know that’s not true. What the agenda is going to be is obstruction.

The Democrats have never done that, at least not in recent history. Oh, they fought W. on all sorts of policy issues, but they never tried to make sure that the country collapsed. That’s a big difference between the two parties, and it comes down to a basic question: How many people are you willing to hurt, how much suffering are you willing to promote, just to get back in power??

I’ve been talking to a lot of political activists, elected officials, and outside agitators of late about the next president of the Board of Supervisors (with all that implies) and I keep hearing the same name: David Campos.

Campos has been one of the great success stories of the class of 2008, an effective legislator who can work with just about everyone. He’s a solid progressive, but with a gentle personality — someone who sticks to his principles but doesn’t pick personal fights. I don’t know how he puts together six votes, but he might surprise us.

I’m writing this the day before the election and it comes out the day after, by which time Jerry brown will be the governor-elect, Barbara Boxer will have won another Senate term, and the Giants will be holding their World Series victory parade. You read it here last.

Election Night Parties

Sasha Cuttler
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7

These are heady days to live in San Francisco, what with the Giants’ World Series victory last night, Halloween festivities the night before, and today’s Dia de los Muertos, which I believe is Spanish for Election Night (okay, we know they’re different, but given this year’s electoral slate, we couldn’t resist). It’s also a big election for The City, with our own Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris seeking statewide office, a pivotal Board of Supervisors election, and some controversial propositions.

As usual, we’ll be covering and blogging all the election action live on this site. But if you’d like to get out there and mix and mingle with the politicos yourself, here’s the list of parties, which will be updating as we learn about more of them:

Board of Supervisors

D2

Janet Reilly – La Barca Restaurant, 2036 Lombard St. @ Fillmore

D6

Debra Walker- 8-10pm Outsider (894 Geary) and 10-12:30am, Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell

Jane Kim: Public Works, 161 Erie Street @ Mission

Jim Meko- Campaign HQ, 364 10th Street

James Keys- Amsterdam Cafe (937 Geary, between Larkin and Polk)

Theresa Sparks: Don Ramon’s, 225 11th Street

Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde: Eagle Tavern, 12th and Harrison

D8

Rafael Mandelman – Pilsner Inn, 225 Church St., @ Market

Scott Weiner: Harvey’s. 500 Castro @ 18th

Rebecca Prozan: Noe Valley Tavern, 4054 24th St., between Noe and Castro

D10

Lynette Sweet: Campaign HQ, 1 Rhode Island

Chris Jackson: Campaign HQ, 93 Leland Ave.

Dewitt Lacy: Bloom’s Saloon, 1918 18th @ Missouri

Steve Moss: Goat Hill Pizza, 300 Connecticut

Tony Kelly, Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, 953 DeHaro,

Malia Cohen: Poquito’s, 2368 3rd Street

SF School Board

Kim-Shree Maufas – Circulating with stops at Walker Democratic Party parties.

Hydra Mendoza: Mercury Lounge, 1582 Folsom St., @ 11th St.

Margaret Brodkin: home, 45 Graystone Terrace

Emily Murase: 6-9pm 142 Clearfield Drive (Between Ocean and Eucalyptus

Interest Groups

SF Labor Council/Democratic Party: Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell St.

League of Pissed Off Voters: El Rio, 3158 Mission

Conservatives/Tea Party California Council: Pirro’s Restaurant, 2244 Taraval

SF Propositions

No on B – Great American Music Hall, with Dems/Labor

Yes on Prop B/Adachi: Lava Lounge, 527 Bryant Street

Yes on D, Mercury Lounge, 1582 Folsom @ 12th

No on L: Great American Music Hall, with Dems/Labor

Yes on L: Hobson’s Choice, 1601 Haight

State and Federal Races

John Dennis for Congress: Nectar Wine lounge, 3330 Steiner (off Lombard)

Jerry Brown for Governor: Fox Theater, 1807 Telegraph Ave, Oakland

Gavin Newsom for Lt. Gov: Tres Agaves – La Plaza De Agave Room, 130 Townsend @ 2nd

Kamala Harris for Attorney General, Delancey Street Foundation, 600 Embarcadero

 

Rebecca Kaplan for Oakland Mayor: Everett & Jones BBQ, 126 Broadway, Oakland

Sorting out the Kim and Walker claims

Sasha Cuttler
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2

As the District 6 supervisorial race winds down, we at the Guardian have been inundated by calls and messages by Debra Walker supporters saying how nasty Jane Kim supporters are being, and by Kim supporters complaining that Walker’s people are being mean. And while we’d be the last ones to say that we told you so, everyone should remember that politics is nasty business, particularly when two progressive candidates are targeting the same voters.

It’s not worth trying to sort out the street-level accusations, but it’s worth pointing out some dubious claims in the mailers both sides have sent in recent days, punches and counter-punches that began last week with a mailer by Walker’s camp claiming Kim moved into the district to run for office. Kim’s people dispute that she moved into D6 simply to run, and they note that progressive politicians such as Chris Daly and and Matt Gonzalez were also recent transplants when they decided to run for supervisor.

Yet it’s probably going too far to label this “last-minute lies being spread,” as the latest Kim mailer contends. Another Walker mailer says that Kim is under investigation by the Ethics Commission for illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure mailer funded partially by Willie Brown, which Kim’s camp calls another lie.

It was a story first reported by the Guardian, then picked up by the Bay Citizen, which quoted Ethics head John St. Croix as saying the situation appeared to violate campaign finance law and “warrant an investigation.” Ethics can’t confirm when it is doing investigations, so it might be going to far to say Kim is under investigation, although the incident does appear to involve improper behavior that is probably fair game for criticism.

The mailer also included a Walker campaign accusation that Kim “took off on an all-expenses-paid trip to Vegas – and charged it to the School District” while it was laying off teachers and wrestling with a $40 million deficit. That also has a kernel of truth to it, even that it sounds worse than it was and is probably being blown out of proportion.

The Kim campaign says the trip to speak at a national education conference was paid for jointly between the conference organizers and the school district, which covered about $600 worth of hotel and meal expenses. Again, the accusation has some nasty implications, but it’s probably not an unreasonable accusation during the heat of an election season.

The hit on Walker that the Kim campaign sent out in response also seems to fudge the truth just a bit, but in this case it was in exaggerating Kim’s experience not in criticizing Walker (except for the line that Walker was “Appointed by City Hall insiders” to her spot on the Building Inspection Commission, rather than “Elected by the people,” as Kim was to the school board).

But three of the five claims that Kim makes seem to apply more to Superintendent Carlos Garcia and his administrative staff than to the part-time school board members: “Experience Administering A Budget of $400+ Million,” “Experience Overseeing Over 1,000 Employees,” and “Experience Bargaining With Labor Unions.”

Yet by tonight, all these claims and counter-claims, and all the street-level mudslinging that has been going on, will hopefully fade into memories of a heated political campaign. Hopefully. But if this inter-progressive-movement fight ends up handing this seat over to downtown-backed candidate Theresa Sparks, then the nastiness could be just beginning, because both campaigns will have some explaining to do.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer comes to San Francisco

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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3

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer came to San Francisco Nov. 1 to attend a federal hearing on SB 1070, the controversial immigration law that critics say will encourage racial profiling. The law was partially struck down this past July when District Court Judge Susan Bolton ruled that it was unconstitutional. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder brought the case against the state of Arizona and Brewer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco began hearing arguments Nov. 1 concerning Arizona’s appeal of the ruling. Apparently, word spread far and wide that Brewer would be in the city, and a boisterous crowd of SB 1070 opponents crowded outside the federal courthouse. They chanted, displayed signs, and some wore black-and-white face paint in honor of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday celebrated Nov. 1 and 2.

At one point, SB 1070 opponents rushed into the middle of the street and unfurled a giant banner which read, “Stop Family Separations.” Representatives from immigrant rights coalitions, social-justice groups, and labor unions joined hands, sang chants, jumped up and down, and cried out in Spanish that they were all together in the struggle. Camera people and police officers wove through the crowd.
 
Rev. Jacqueline Duhart, a Unitarian Universalist, joined Rev. David Takahashi Morris in displaying a bright yellow banner proclaiming, “Stand on the Side of Love.”
 
Duhart said she was against SB 1070 because it “causes hate to be a primary motivator,” and “denies the worth and dignity that we all have.”

Supporters of Arizona’s law showed up to wave signs, too. They were outnumbered by opponents, but voiced their opinions at high volume. One woman, gesturing toward protesters who waved banners denouncing SB 1070 as racist and a modern-day version of Jim Crow, leaned backward and belted out, “This is nothing like the civil rights movement!” and let out a peal of laughter. She was holding one side of a giant Arizona flag that had been altered with a picture of a rattlesnake and the words, “Bite Me.”

Critics of the law say it law would open the door to racial profiling and result in tearing families apart.

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