Media

English is dead

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION By the time English truly is a dominant language on the planet, it will no longer be English. Instead, say a group of linguists interviewed in a recent article by Michael Erard in New Scientist, the language will fragment into many mutually-unintelligible dialects. Still, some underlying documents will supply the grammatical glue for these diverse Englishes, the way Koranic Arabic does for the world’s diverse Arabic spinoff tongues. English-speakers of the future will be united in their understanding of a standard English supplied by technical manuals and Internet media.

People like me, native English speakers, are heading to the ashcan of history. By 2010, estimates language researcher David Graddol, 2 billion people on the planet will be communicating in English — but only 350 million will be native speakers. By 2020, native speakers will have diminished to 300 million. My American English, which I grew up speaking in an accent that matched what I heard on National Public Radio and 60 Minutes, is already difficult for many English-speakers to understand.

Hence the rise of Internet English. This is the simple English of technical manuals and message boards — full of slang and technical terminology, but surprisingly free of strange idioms. It’s usually also free of the more cumbersome and weird aspects of English grammar.

For example, a future speaker of English would be unlikely to understand the peculiar way in which I express the past tense: "I walked to the store." Adding a couple of letters (–ed) to the end of a verb to say that I did something in the past? Weird. Hard to hear; hard to say. It’s much more comprehensible to say: "I walk to the store yesterday." And indeed, that’s how many non-native speakers already say it. It’s also the way most popular languages like the many dialects of Chinese express tense. The whole practice of changing the meaning of a word by adding barely audible extra letters — well, that’s just not going to last.

When I read about the way English is changing and fragmenting, it has the opposite effect on me than what you might expect. Although I am the daughter and granddaughter of English teachers and spent many years in an English department earning a PhD, I relish the prospect of my language changing and becoming incomprehensible to me. Maybe that’s because I spent a year learning to read Old English, the dominant form of English spoken 1,000 years ago, and I realize how much my language has already changed.

But my glee in the destruction of my own spoken language isn’t entirely inspired by knowing language history. It’s because I want English to reflect the lives of the people who speak it. I want English to be a communications tool — like the Internet, a thing that isn’t an end in itself but a means to one. Once we all acknowledge that there are many correct Englishes, and not just the Queen’s English or Terry Gross’s English, things will be a lot better for everybody.

I’ll admit sometimes I feel a little sad when my pal from Japan doesn’t get my double entendres or idiomatic jokes. I like to play with language, and it’s hard to be quite so ludic when language is a tool and nothing more. But that loss of English play is more than made up for by the cross-cultural play that becomes possible in its stead, jokes about kaiju and non-native snipes at native customs. (My favorite: said Japanese pal is bemused by American Christianity, and one day exclaimed in frustration, "God, Godder, Goddest!")

For those of us who spend most of our days communicating via the Internet, using language as the top layer in a technological infrastructure that unites many cultures, the Englishes of the future are already here. In some ways they make a once-uniform language less intelligible. In other ways, they make us all more intelligible to one another.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd whose English is obsolete.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I was away with the kids and missed the state Democratic convention in San Jose, but from what I hear, it was quite the show. The big local news, of course, was that Assemblymember Mark Leno blocked State Senator Carole Migden from winning the party’s endorsement for her reelection bid. That’s a big victory for Leno, who is trying to unseat her.

And the way a lot of my favorite blogs told the story, it was also a victory for the grassroots activists in the party: the Sacramento establishment, they say, was working for Migden.

I don’t think that’s entirely true; both sides had their heavy hitters. And I’m going to sound a note of caution here: Leno and his team papered the hall with some nasty negative fliers attacking Migden, not just for her travails with the Fair Political Practices Commission but for her driving record.

Leno told me he had to educate the delegates in a short period of time and that the fliers contained "nothing but facts." Which is true. But I don’t think he needs to go negative on Migden; she’s doing a fine job of that herself. And the attacks open ugly wounds in the community and could help the third candidate, Marin’s Joe Nation.

Leno needs to keep a tight leash on his campaign team as this heads for the finish.

And now we pause for a brief reflection on the First Amendment.

Matt Smith over at the SF Weekly took a shot at us last week, arguing that our lawsuit would somehow damage his paper’s ability to produce good journalism. Migden was in court this week to argue that the state shouldn’t prevent her from spending campaign money in violation of campaign-finance rules. Both claims rely on a dangerous interpretation of one of the most important pieces of law in the history of the world.

Smith’s theory: since we nailed the Weekly and its corporate parent for predatory pricing violations, we are somehow guilty of seeking to force the chain to cut back its editorial staff.

We heard the same sort of argument in court, and I suspect the Weekly‘s lawyers will trot out the First Amendment on appeal. Gee, they will say, the government can’t tell a newspaper how much to charge for its ads. That’s unconstitutional.

In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that the Weekly, not the Guardian, has been the paper attacking the First Amendment. The whole notion that James Madison had in mind when he introduced the Bill of Rights was that a free marketplace of ideas made for a more free and democratic society. Big chains that swallow independent papers limit that marketplace, particularly if, like the SF Weekly‘s owners, they enforce ideological consistency. Chains that try to kill other papers are even worse. That’s what our lawsuit was about.

Then there’s Senator Migden, whose legal papers cite one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of my lifetime, Buckley v. Valeo, which says that money is speech and that the rich can spend whatever they want on political campaigns. Again, the problem is the marketplace of ideas: if one side can corner the market with cash, there’s no free exchange. Campaign finance laws, properly written, don’t diminish the First Amendment; they enhance it. So do fair-competition laws in the media. Because both promote what Madison had in mind — a level (or at least relatively fair) playing field of ideas.

The parasitic blog

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Eric Alterman has a detailed assessment of the tie that binds newspapers and blogs in this week’s New Yorker. The Nation-blogger, prof and journo, known for his books on the media, democracy, and Bruce Springsteen, takes us back to the 1920’s, the great days of Walter Lippman and John Dewey’s battle over how engaged the public really can be in democracy. As Alterman writes, “Lippman identified a fundamental gap between what we naturally expect from democracy and what we know to be true about people.” He called the average American a “deaf spectator in the back row” and essentially said that politics and society was, for the most part, too complex for the plain folk and that the newspapers that dared wade into its nuance would never get it right. We’re only good at reporting “the score of a game or a transatlantic flight, or the death of a monarch.”

Touche.

Give me a break, Matt Smith

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I’m starting to wonder how many times I’m going have to fight this battle.

For five weeks, as our predatory-pricing case against the SF Weekly was in trial, Andy Van De Voorde, the Denver-based hit man who works for Village Voice Media, attacked me, attacked the Guardian, attacked our witnesses and attacked the whole idea that an independent paper had the right to go to court to fight a predatory attack by a national chain.

When a San Francisco jury found (by an 11-1 margin) that VVM and its local outlet, the SF Weekly, had sold ads below cost for seven years with the intent to harm the Guardian – a violation of state law – Van De Voorde attacked the judge, the jury and the law itself.

Then when we started to talk about what the verdict meant, the hit man retailed the same old arguments all over again, in yet another blog post.

And now Matt Smith, the Weekly columnist who is often wrong on the issues but generally has some sense, has jumped in with what appears to be a preview of the arguments we can expect when the Weekly pursues its appeals.

Nurses Union Alleges Intimidation by Sutter

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By Emma Lierley

As several thousand striking nurses continue to picket ten Bay Area Sutter Health hospitals this week, the California Nurses Association announced Thursday that they have filed charges against Sutter Health for mistreatment of their members.

Alleging continued harassment and threats made against striking nurses, along with failure to bargain “in good faith,” the union lodged their complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. CNA official Shum Preston told the Guardian Thursday that the charges are being brought forward on behalf of a few specific nurses who have received direct threats, as well as many nurses who faced hostile situations in their hospitals.

Amie Davidow, a striking labor and delivery nurse with California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, told the Guardian Thursday that “nurse managers are calling people at home, threatening them with losing their job, loss of health benefits, and threats of suspension.”

Davidow said that she herself has received no direct harassment but that, “there are a lot of nurses very scared about [these threats].”

When we asked CPMC representative Kevin McCormick about the charges, he strongly disputed their validity, and claimed that they were made to drum up sensational media headlines. “This is the third time our nurses have been on strike, and we have never done anything to them in the past. Why would we do something now?”

McCormick added that the dispute was with the union, and not the nurses themselves. “We want the nurses to come back to work after the strike. We want to have the best relationship we can with our nurses,” he said.

Off to Caracas!

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Last November, as attentive readers of this blog will remember, I was declared non grata (not welcome) in Caracas, Venezuela, on a special mission of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) to check on President Hugo Chavez’s accelerating crackdown on the news media.

We had been invited to come by the Venezuelan press who had hoped our mission would put international pressure on Chavez to guarantee press freedom during the upcoming referendum giving Chavez a lifetime presidency. On the first morning, our delegation found Chavez had declared us all non grata in a half-page advertisement from the Venezuelan National Assembly, in the big morning Caracas daily paper El Universal.

Today, as I prepare to fly out tomorrow for the spring IAPA assembly in Caracas this weekend,
I find that I am a “media terrorist.” Chavez has scheduled a counter convention close to our hotel called a “Latin American Meeting Against Media Terrorism.” Over the weekend, Chavez announced, Caracas “will be converted into the world capital of the struggle against media terrorism. It is necessary to discuss themes such as this,” Chavez said, “since media terrorism utilizes the means of communication–radio, press, television, to generate war, violence, fear and anxiety in our peoples.”

Well, we must have done some good last time around on our November mission. Chavez lost the election, even though the countryside and the airwaves were covered with his pictures and campaign slogans. This time around, things may be just as newsworthy. I’ll keep you posted. B3

Click here to read about IAPA’s Nov. 17 mission to Caracas.

Karaoke revolution

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>a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW The radio at my neighborhood Laundromat is a source of pop music melancholy. That a-ha song "Take on Me" gets me misty while folding socks — damn it.

Something similar happened when I first saw British artist Phil Collins’s captivating Smiths karaoke video project, dünya dinlemiyor (Turkish for "the world won’t listen") at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2006. The piece documents Turkish Smiths fans performing versions of the band’s classics in front of high-keyed landscape photo backdrops — many depicting sites far more tropical than Istanbul. Throughout the run of the exhibition, the cozy projection room was packed with people who stayed far longer than they would for more blatantly arty video pieces. They laughed with empathy — and perhaps to deflect the mix of emotions roused by their own powerful memory triggers.

Dünya dinlemiyor was just one-third of a recently completed trilogy by Collins: to bracket his shoot in Istanbul, he also conducted karaoke sessions at Bogotá, Colombia, and two Indonesian cities. All three were recently united as a triptych at the Dallas Museum of Art. That Texas metropolis — site of the 1992 concert DVD Morrissey: Live in Dallas — is a long way from here. But the monograph produced for the exhibition, Phil Collins: the world won’t listen (Yale University Press, 132 pages, $45), serves as something akin to an edifying concert brochure. This is particularly true of a historical essay (regarding the Smiths oppositional relationship to Thatcherism and corporate label hegemony) by music critic Simon Reynolds.

In addition to Reynolds’s observations, Phil Collins: the world won’t listen includes still photos from videos, related imagery, two other illuminating essays, and a particularly engaging interview with Collins. "Karaoke is a form of joyful treason in which you quite materially supplant your idol," he tells the book’s editor, Dallas Museum curator Suzanne Weaver. Her conversation with the artist illuminates his interest in mediated subjects, and positions his Smiths project as an anti–American Idol. "Every single season [American Idol] is about complete conformity around the idea of the songbook," he observes. Collins’ Smiths project shatters that conformity, presenting an international range of people swayed by the idiosyncratic, outsider, emo aura of, say, "The Boy with the Thorn in His Side."

Critic Bruce Hainley links American Idol to the George W. Bush administration in a manner that — fittingly, considering that the Smiths are a touchstone of Collins’s project — combines longing with astute social observation. "What does it take to be a celebrity (not a star), circa 2007?" he asks, and then provides the American Idol–inspired answer: "Twelve weeks, and consumers voting with more gusto than they have voted in any recent American presidential election." Just as insistently, Hainley points to the crush-generating erotic lure of pop music collateral, citing a shirtless Joe Dallesandro on the cover of the first Smiths album, as well as the camera’s apparent lust for a Smiths fan in a red T-shirt in Collins’s Bogotá-set video. Next, Liz Kotz provides descriptive insight into Collins’s other works, which subvert standard practices of popular media in their depictions of Kosovo refugees, Iraqi citizens, and people emotionally scarred by their appearance on reality TV.

Because musical performance is so central to Collins’s work, it’s a shame that this slip-cased volume doesn’t include a DVD with a few song snippets and examples of the similarities and differences between each national version of the project. But there are compensations: the book does sport images of the Smiths’ set lists, an unauthenticated 1981 handwritten note from Morrissey, and Hainley’s comic acknowledgment of Collins’s pop music namesake: "Why not Genesis karaoke?"

Don’t stop the torch protests

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EDITORIAL We (almost) sympathize with Mayor Gavin Newsom: The Olympic torch is a political nightmare. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing in one direction; Senator Dianne Feinstein is pushing in another. The local Chinese community is far from unanimous — many residents are proud of the Beijing Olympics and don’t want politics to mar the celebration, while others think the Chinese government’s actions in Tibet are inexcusable and need to be publicized. The mayor has tried to split the difference, welcoming the torch but promising (for now) to keep it out of Chinatown — and to limit protest.

In fact, the Mayor’s Office has talked of establishing isolated "free-speech zones" — an oxymoron if there ever was one — to keep the more vocal demonstrators away from the feel-good imagery of the torch passing through this city.

That’s a bad mistake.

Olympic officials and their allies like to say the games are not about politics, and that’s fine, as far as it goes — but it really doesn’t go that far. China, which has a long list of political problems, wants to use the games to burnish its international reputation. We’re not for boycotting the games (the United States’ boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 was foolish, as was the Soviet Union’s retaliation in Los Angeles four years later). But it’s entirely appropriate for critics of the host nation’s government to use the occasion to make some points.

And there’s plenty to talk about: China has sealed off Tibet to the news media, preventing the world from learning anything beyond the official line. The oppression and human-rights issues are hard to hide, though, and reminding a world audience of that battle for justice and self-determination is a worthy goal of Olympic protests. So is the situation in Darfur, where New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that "in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing is financing, diplomatically protecting and supplying the arms for the first genocide of the 21st century."

We’re a little baffled at why Newsom is so worried about the torch passing through Chinatown (where there are at least as many people who would cheer as would protest) and why he’s trying to prevent visible demonstrations as the icon is carried along the streets of one of the world’s most politically active cities. As Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, told us, "we want to allow dissent and model it for the rest of the world."

The politics are tricky, but the answer ought to be simple: forget the "free-speech zones." Bring the torch to town, publicize the route — and allow anyone who has a strong opinion on any side of the issue to show up and be heard.

Murder, revisited

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Editor’s note: The Chauncey Bailey Project just won a major national award, the Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors. The award honors “outstanding reporting covering organized crime or other criminal acts” According to the IRE press release, tho award went to A.C. Thompson, Thomas Peele, Josh Richman, Angela Hill, Mary Fricker, G.W. Schulz, Cecily Burt, Bob Butler, Paul T. Rosynsky and Harry Harris for “The Chauncey Bailey Project.” Thompson works with New American Media, Peele, Richan, Burt, Rosynsky, Hill and Harris are from the Bay Area News Group. Fricker is a retired reporter from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Bob Butler is a freelance radio reporter. Schulz works for the Bay Guardian. The coordinator of the project is Robert Rosenthal, director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. “These stories would have been difficult to pursue under any circumstances,” the organization noted, “but it took extreme dedication to get at the truth following the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey. In the tradition of the Arizona Project, this coalition of Bay area journalists delved into questionable real estate deals and contracts involving the owners of Your Muslim Bakery in Oakland. The reporters raised questions about the thoroughness of a police investigation into the group before Bailey’s murder. They probed the interrogation and confession of Bailey’s alleged killer. And they carried on the work that Bailey intended to pursue before his death. (IRE is providing data analysis and computer services for the project). “ —————————————————————- SANTA BARBARA – Police here, responding to inquiries by the Chauncey Bailey Project, have re-opened an investigation into the unsolved 1968 shooting deaths of a couple affiliated with a mosque that was the forerunner to Your Black Muslim Bakery. Detectives could arrive in Oakland as early as this week to question Abdul Raab Mohammad, 71, formerly known as Billy X Stephens. He is the brother of late Your Black Muslim Bakery patriarch Yusuf Ali Bey, who was born Joseph H. Stephens. In the mid-1960s, the brothers converted to Islam in this seaside city 90 miles north of Los Angeles and founded a now-defunct mosque, planting the seeds of what eventually became the Bey organization, its Oakland bakery and a culture of African-American defiance and self-reliance. But just as those aspects of the bakery began in Southern California, so too did allegations of intimidation and crimes ranging from fraud to murder. On Aug. 17, 1968, two members of the Santa Barbara mosque, Birdie Mae Scott, 33, and her husband, Wendell Scott, 30, were slain with a 30.30 rifle as they slept in an apartment they shared with her two children, ages 13 and 10. Though he was never named as a suspect, records show the police investigation at the time focused largely on Billy X Stephens, who was the organization’s top leader as minister. Joseph Stephens served as its secretary. No arrests were made in the case. Police reports were copied to microfilm, archived and remained untouched for decades. Nearly 200 pages of documents about the Scott killings released by Santa Barbara police to the Chauncey Bailey Project show that detectives in 1968 focused on internal mosque disputes as the motive in the Scott killings. Wendell Scott, according to police documents, had written a letter to Nation of Islam leaders in Chicago complaining that he had been forced to burn two cars belonging to the Stephens brothers’ mother so insurance money could be collected. Billy Stevens learned of the letter and suspended the Scotts from the mosque, the documents said. The couple was killed weeks later. Documents also show similarities to the Aug. 2 killing of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, who was investigating the bakery’s finances and internal disputes. A handyman at the bakery has been arrested and charged with murder in connection with the shooting. The handyman, Devaughndre Broussard, 20, told authorities he shot Bailey because he wanted to be a “good soldier” for bakery leaders; he has since recanted that confession. In both the Scott and Bailey cases, police have theorized the slayings were carried out to silence critics of the Stephens/Bey family and their organizations. Another look Santa Barbara police said they will investigate the Scott killing again. “There has been some recent information from some cases up in Oakland that have some similarities,” said Santa Barbara Police Lt. Amando Martel. Detectives will “see maybe if there are any connections with the case in Oakland and the one here in 1968.” Billy X Stephens, in a telephone interview from his home in Oakland, denied last week having anything to do with the double slaying in Santa Barbara. “I didn’t do it. I don’t know who did it, nor did I know beforehand that it was going to happen,” he said. “I don’t have anything to hide.” He said the shooting had nothing to do with the mosque and that “outsiders” committed the crime. In their 1968 reports, Santa Barbara police wrote they suspected Wendell Scott was targeted because of his complaints about Billy and Joseph Stephens. Police noted that Birdie Scott’s brother, Toby Jackson, told them Wendell Scott was “trying to drop out” of the organization. “In those days … the only way you left the Black Muslims was feet first because you were privy to information that may have involved possible criminal activity,” said retired Santa Barbara officer Keene Grand, who worked on the case. In investigating the Scotts’ killing, police found a pattern of intimidation and fear within the mosque’s members. The mosque was a closed group that resolved its own problems and had little contact with outsiders, especially police, records show. “There were a lot of discussions and rumors (in 1968) of the potential of a connection (between the killings and) the mosque and some of (its) leaders,” Martel said. “People were reluctant to talk.” Detectives also ran into a tangle of family intrigue – Birdie Scott was the sister of Billy X Stephens’ former wife, Mary. Documents show that detectives believed Mary Stephens, who still lives in Santa Barbara, may have known more about the killings than she said at the time. In a brief telephone interview last week, Mary Stephens said she would welcome justice for her late sister but declined to discuss the slaying. “It’s been 40 years and I’ve put it out my mind and I don’t want to put my mind back on it,” she said. Five weeks after the killings, Billy and Mary Stephens married for a second time. Police reports note that several people told detectives the couple remarried because Billy X Stephens believed Mary could not be forced to testify against him if she was his wife. The couple divorced again in 1976. The early investigation Much of the investigation in 1968 focused on Billy X Stephens and a phone call he made to police the night of the shooting – a call that other mosque members told police was in direct violation of Stephens’ stringent policy against bringing outsiders into mosque affairs, according to police reports. Stephens, however, said no such policy existed. “There was no rule about not calling the police,” he said last week. “You wouldn’t do it if it was a family disturbance. Any time I hear a gunshot I call the police.” Documents show that Stephens phoned police at 2:30 a.m. Aug. 17, 1968, but didn’t report hearing gunshots from the Scotts’ apartment, which was directly above his in a shoebox-shaped complex Stephens managed just yards from U.S. Highway 101. Stephens “said he just finished a business phone call and had gone to bed and was just in ‘twilight’ sleep when he heard what sounded like a door slam,” a detective wrote. Stephens told police he called the Scotts’ phone several times to inquire about their welfare and became worried when no one answered, records show. Police found the Scotts’ apartment door kicked in and the couple dead in their bed. Each was shot twice. The children in the next room were unharmed. Police began an aggressive canvas of the neighborhood at dawn. At least six people interviewed said they’d heard four gun shots roughly 20 minutes earlier than Stephens’ call to police, the reports said. One man, who lived about 75 yards away, told detectives the shots came during the climactic scene of a movie he was watching on television. The detectives contacted the Los Angeles television station that broadcast the movie and found the scene the man described aired about 2:10 a.m. Other people who lived nearby told police they also heard the shots, followed by a more dull, cracking sound, and police speculated that the gunman may have entered the apartment with a key and kicked in the door when leaving to make it look as if entry was forced, according to documents. Police noted that Stephens managed the apartment complex. Stephens said he never heard any shots and suggested the killer used a rifle with a silencer attached. “I didn’t hear any shots,” he told the Chauncey Bailey Project. “I heard them rumbling down the stairs.” There is no reference in the police reports to Stephens telling police he heard anyone on the stairs. When detectives confronted Stevens with the time discrepancy and other questions, he became angry and refused their request to take a lie detector test, according to reports. Last week, Stephens said he didn’t take the lie detector test because a woman phoned him anonymously and told him police would use the results to arrest him. “They were trying to build a case against me,” he said. Another person named in police reports in 1968 was a former U.S Army soldier named Ermond Givens. He is a retired school janitor, now 70, who changed his name to Ali Omar and lives in Alameda. He served as the mosque’s lieutenant and was responsible for what he described in a recent interview as “training the Muslim soldier.” In an interview at his Alameda home, Omar first said there were never any problems at the Santa Barbara mosque during his tenure there. When reminded of the double killing, he remembered that police had never solved the case but said he knew little about it. Police reports show that a woman named Ida Hamilton, who was also a member of the mosque, told detectives that Omar was among those closest to Billy X Stephens. Omar said last week he had no information about the shooting. Birdie Scott’s daughter, Audrey Hazelwood, who was 13 the night of the killing and in the next bedroom, cannot recall hearing the fatal shots. She said her family deserves to know who killed her mother and stepfather. “Of course we do,” said Hazelwood, now 53 and living in Santa Barbara, “My (late grandmother) always said that she would live to see the day” when the case would be investigated again. “But I guess it’ll be in my lifetime.” Investigation hits a dead end Police continued to investigate through the end of 1968, documents show, but hit a dead-end when 30.30 shell casings found in the Scott’s bedroom didn’t have any fingerprints on them. In the days before DNA testing, police were left with little physical evidence. Martel, the Santa Barbara police lieutenant, said any breaks in the case will have to come from someone with knowledge of it who talks to detectives. Detectives, he said, will question people in both Santa Barbara and Oakland, where the Stephens brothers moved in 1970 with orders from a Nation of Islam leader to open another mosque. A year later, the brothers split – Billy X became Abdul Raab Mohammad and stayed with the Nation of Islam. He served as a minister in the organization for 44 years and is now living in Oakland. Joseph Stephens took the name Yusuf Bey and broke away from the Nation of Islam. He started his own organization, which became Your Black Muslim Bakery and served as a center of empowerment and employment for African Americans in Oakland. It was one of the few places where ex-convicts could find work. Cracks in the bakery’s respectability began to appear in 1994 when four of its associates were charged with assaulting and torturing a man over a real estate deal. Bey died in 2003 while awaiting trial on statutory rape charges, and the bakery soon descended into chaos. Yusuf Bey’s hand-picked successor, Waajid Aliawwaad, 51, soon disappeared and was found five months later in a shallow grave. Another of Bey’s protégés left town after several men opened fire on him as he left his house for work. Police suspected other members of the organization were involved in both crimes, which remain unsolved, largely because police have found no one willing to provide them with information, a decades long pattern of silence that apparently began in Santa Barbara. Bob Butler is a freelance journalist. Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group. Contact Butler at bobbutler7@comcast.net and Peele at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com. The Chauncey Bailey Project is a consortium of news organizations dedicated to continuing the reporting that Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post, was pursuing when he was killed Aug. 2. For information, contact Dori J. Maynard of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education at 510-684-3071. E-mail tips to gwschulz@sfbg.com.

SXSW: This ain’t another fear and loathing praisesong

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earl_greyhound.jpg
The race is on: Earl Greyhound made an appearance at the Afro-Punk/Matrix showcase at SXSW.

By Kandia Crazy Horse

In the wake of my man John Edwards’s withdrawal from the current presidential race and subsequent taking up the torch for our fair music editor’s fellow Punahou alumnus Obama as Negro First, I officially became old. So I lacked sufficient energy and brain cells to take on SXSW 2008 – but, music ‘ho that I am, I did it anyway.

Clearly, Barack Obama’s sustained ascent as the most dissected American presidential candidate has by now confirmed his superfly rock-star status, crowding and overshadowing the field pursued by artists with recent/forthcoming new releases such as Jack White of the Raconteurs, the brers of Gnarls Barkley, Union Jack black singing cowboy Lightspeed Champion, and Saul Williams, a.k.a., Niggy Tardust – the latter two made the South By scene all around hip Austin (and Gnarls appeared via tacked-up Odd Couple lampoons, courtesy of Atlantic). I hesitated to fly down into Bush Country, considering the volatile political climate at present and the specter of terrorism making every airport visit unpleasant at best.

And, too, I had personal reservations: at the last three South By festivals, my life has fallen apart by degrees: in 2006, with the diagnosis of my late Mother’s pancreatic cancer and decision to divorce being the absolute worst. Still, I was invited to speak about press and, whether SXSW has completely devolved into “hipster spring break with bands” in recent years, the festival retains the possibility to offer exposure to unheard-of music and/or reconnect with rarely seen friends from the Left Coast and abroad.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12

Rising before cockcrow at 3 a.m., I saddled up in bespoke hat, denim and black leather to hit a too-early flight out of NY LaGuardia and made it to Austin’s Bergstrom already dazed and confused via Houston connection from George Bush Airport. After a swift check-in at the Hilton Garden Inn downtown where I happened to run into my panel mate, Nick Baily of Shorefire Media, and we concurred that we were in the dark about how to express ourselves (one of last year’s highlights was meeting O.G. Expressor Charles Wright), it was off to run the Convention Center gauntlet in pursuit of festival badges, assorted data, schwag and making it to the panelists’ green room on time. No surreys nor press satoris available. So Nick and I jes’ winged it (wung it?) before a surprisingly full room, and tried our best to respond to the artists trailing in our wake all the way back to the hotel.

Blown coverage

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Most major media outlets are cautious about the war in Iraq these days. Other than times like, say, the fifth anniversary, they don’t cover the war every day, and when they do, they usually provide some sense of the war’s enormous costs, as well as its unpopularity both here and abroad.

But that wasn’t always the case. When George W. Bush beat the drums of war five years ago, most news organizations did little to question the president’s rhetoric. Some even played an active role in selling his case to the public.

“Although some raised doubts, none of the major newspapers were completely against the war,” Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor and Publisher magazine, told the Guardian. According to a 2003 survey by Mitchell’s publication, about 24 percent of newspapers questioned Bush’s arguments prior to the invasion, while the rest supported or were impartial to them.

“Very few disagreed with Bush’s language when he used terms like axis of evil and evildoers,” said David Domke, associate professor of communication at the University of Washington. Domke analyzed 320 editorial pages of the country’s top 10 newspapers between Sept. 11 and the beginning of the Iraq War. He found very little scrutiny or questioning of the administration’s case.

Another 2003 study, this one published in the Newspaper Research Journal, examined coverage by The New York Times and Washington Post between Sept. 11 and Oct. 7, 2001. The study concluded that most editorials in the influential papers simply reiterated White House opinions. This passive acceptance of administration spin did not just influence public opinion, the Journal argued. It also set the tone for news coverage across the country.

Broadcast media mimicked the pro-war bent of the country’s major newspapers. “Overwhelmingly, the expert sources [on television] were pro-war, even [on] PBS,” said Isabel Macdonald, communications director of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

In the weeks following Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations, FAIR found that 75 percent of the 393 sources who appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS nightly news were current or former military officials. Only one speaker, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) denounced the invasion.

Since the invasion five years ago, the public’s approval of the Iraq War has gone from about 70 percent to 35 percent. Recent editorials reflect this drastic shift. A July 2007 study by Politico.com found that newspaper opinion pieces are now much more critical of the war. The New York Times called for a troop withdrawal on July 8, 2007. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which twice endorsed Bush, called for a withdrawal several months before the Times. Another traditionally conservative daily, the Dallas Morning News, also asked for troop reductions.

Once the war started going badly, “a lot of military elite jumped ship,” Robert McChesney of the media reform organization Free Press told the Guardian. “Reporters have changed their stance because their sources have given them a different point of view.”

The alternative press, on the other hand, was consistently against the war from the start, and alternative weeklies provided some of the most significant coverage of the antiwar movement. The Guardian editorialized against the war, did cover stories against the war and pushed the agenda on a regular basis – and we weren’t alone.

We emailed editors of papers belonging to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies to get a sense of how many were out in front against the invasion, and the results were impressive. All over the country, in big cities and small towns, alt-weeklies were filling the role that the daily papers and TV stations didn’t.

Among the papers that published articles critical of Bush’s war plans and that reported favorably on the protests: Tucson Weekly. Athens (Ohio) News. Boulder Weekly. Long Island Press. North Coast Journal. Monterey Coast Weekly. Random Lengths (San Pedro). Memphis Flyer. Boston Phoenix. ArtVoice (Buffalo). Rochester City Newspaper. Colorado Springs Independent.

“We came out against it immediately,” wrote Bradley Zeve, publisher of the Coast Weekly. “And we sent a report to Iraq.”

Said Robbie Woliver, editor in chief of Long Island Press: “We were on this from the start and even had some amazing ongoing coverage by a reporter who was non-embedded. Back then that was pretty rare.”

Paemla White at Boulder Weekly noted that her paper “wrote a mondo article covering every single antiwar event in the week prior to shock and awe in an effort to prove conclusively that there was opposition.”

Ken Neill, publisher of the Memphis Flyer, reminded us that his paper was “ahem, outspoken in our editorials and in coverage of marches, etc.” That’s something of an understatement – Neill and his publication were among the most vociferous opponents of the war in the country.

In fact, most of the alts were writing about the war well ahead of the invasion: “Don’t forget that we gave the anti-war perspective BEFORE the war started,” said James Allen, publisher of Random Lengths.

The Village Voice and the L.A. Weekly both had strong antiwar articles in 2003. But they’re now part of the same chain that owns the SF Weekly, and the chain (now called Village Voice Media) doesn’t allow editorials in its publications. In fact, the Weekly made fun of the antiwar protesters (including the Guardian staff).

But overall, if you wanted to find out the other side of the war story, the alternative weeklies were offering it.

Hooker science

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TECHSPLOITATION The outrage over former New York governor Eliot Spitzer hiring an A-list hooker makes me feel like throwing a gigantic, crippling pile of superheavy biology and economics books at everyone in the United States and possibly the world. Are we still so Victorian in our thinking that we think it’s bad for somebody to pay large amounts of money for a few hours of skin-time with a professional? Have we not learned enough at this point about psychology and neuroscience to understand that a roll in the sheets is just a fun, chemical fizz for our brains and that it means nothing about ethics and morality?

The sad fact is that we have learned all that stuff, and yet most people still believe paying money for sex is the equivalent of killing babies on the moral report card. And yet nobody bothers to ask why, or to investigate past the sensational headlines. As far as I’m concerned, the one unethical thing Spitzer did was to hire a sex worker after prosecuting several prostitution rings. That’s hypocritical of him, and undermines my faith in him as a politician.

But let’s say Spitzer hadn’t prosecuted so-called sex crimes before, and all he was doing was hiring a lady for some sex. Here is what I don’t get: why is this bad? On the scale of things politicians can do – from sending huge numbers of young people to be killed in other countries to cutting programs aimed at helping foster kids get lunch money – hiring a sex worker is peanuts. It’s a personal choice! It’s not like Spitzer was issuing a statewide policy of mandatory hookers for everybody.

What really boggles the mind is the way so-called liberal media like National Public Radio and the New York Times have been attacking Spitzer’s morals as much as the conservative Fox News types have. In some cases, they’ve attacked him more. The reasons given are always the same: sex work is abusive to women (male prostitutes don’t exist?), and being paid for sex is inherently degrading.

Let’s look inside one of those heavy economics books that I just beat you with and examine these assumptions for a minute, OK? Every possible kind of human act has been commodified and turned into a job under capitalism. That means people are legally paid to clean up one another’s poop, paid to wash one another’s naked bodies, paid to fry food all day, paid to work in toxic mines, paid to clean toilets, paid to wash and dress dead naked bodies, and paid to clean the brains off walls in crime scenes. My point is, you can earn money doing every possible degrading or disgusting thing on earth.

And yet, most people don’t think it’s immoral to wipe somebody else’s bum or to fry food all day, even though both jobs could truthfully be described as inherently degrading. They say, "Gee that’s a tough job." And then they pay the people who do those jobs minimum wage.

The sex worker Spitzer visited, on the other hand, was paid handsomely for her tough job. The New York Times, in its mission to invade this woman’s privacy (though in what one must suppose is a nonexploitative way), reported that she was a midrange worker at her agency who pulled in between $1000–$2000 per job. She wasn’t working for minimum wage; she wasn’t forced to inhale toxic fumes that would destroy her chances of having a nonmutant baby. She was being paid a middle-class salary to have sex. Sure, it might be an icky job, in the same way cleaning up barf in a hospital can be icky. But was she being economically exploited? Probably a hell of a lot less than the janitor in the hospital mopping up vomit cleaning up after you.

Sure, there are hookers who are exploited and who have miserable lives. There are people who are exploited and miserable in a lot of jobs. But the misery is circumstantial: not all hookers are exploited, just as not all hospital workers are exploited. It’s basic labor economics, people.

Audacia Ray, former sex worker and editor of the sex worker magazine $pread, has pointed out that the public doesn’t even seem to understand what exploitation really means. The woman who did sex work for Spitzer has had her picture and personal history splattered all over the media in an incredibly insulting way. Nobody seems to realize she’s being degraded far more now than she ever was when Spitzer was her client. And she’s not getting any retirement savings out of it, either.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who
once hired a prostitute for a few hundred bucks and had a pretty good time.

Editor’s Notes

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"At 11 a.m., Thursday, March 20, I found myself at the corner of Market and Beale streets, looking at the startling emptiness of the Financial District." (See "The days SF stood still," [03/26/03]).

That’s where I was five years ago. You remember where you were, too: it was one of those moments in time that nobody forgets. Shock and Awe lit up the sky over Iraq, President George W. Bush announced the glorious military victory that was on the way, and the politicians — even the Democrats — were so busy praising the troops in the field that nobody stopped to ask how this was all going to end.

As we report this week, the major newspapers didn’t, either. In fact, in a survey by Editor and Publisher magazine, more than 75 percent of the papers supported Bush’s arguments for war. The airwaves were filled with generals and admirals talking up the invasion; the antiwar movement was marginalized.

And while the mainstream media were waving flags and cheering, the alternative press was presenting the other side of the issue. "Bush’s war represents a dangerous turning point for the United States," we wrote on March 26, 2003.

I sent out an e-mail to my colleagues in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies this week asking how many of the weeklies were strongly against the war, and the answers started pouring in immediately. Tucson Weekly. San Diego City Beat. Boulder Weekly. Monterey Coast Weekly. Boston’s The Phoenix. The North Coast Journal. Random Lengths. The Memphis Flyer. Rochester City Newspaper. Creative Loafing. And that’s just a few of the names on the list.

Overall, the independent and alternative media were in the vanguard, providing the information that the big outfits wouldn’t.

Resistance is futile — or is it?

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Resistance is futile — or is it?

It was a time without precedent in American history. The commander-in-chief voiced his intention to take the country to war — a voluntary, preemptive war with no clear catalyst, no faraway invasion or Pearl Harbor or sinking of the Maine — and millions of people shouted their opposition. With plenty of time to avert war, the protesters warned the invasion would be a costly disaster.

They were right. And it didn’t matter.

The war in Iraq was a test of our democratic ideals. It was a test that this country failed, a failure that has been felt by the people of the United States, Iraq, and elsewhere for the last five years. For many, the refusal of the US government to heed the demands of its citizens left them disillusioned and disempowered.

But others say it sparked a political change that woke up an apathetic citizenry, pulled the Democratic Party back to the left, and may have averted war with Iran.

It’s certainly arguable that the presidential campaign of Barack Obama owes its energy and success in part to the antiwar movement — and if Obama wins, he will be the first president in a long time who took office thanks to the support of a strong grassroots progressive movement.

Nowhere was the clash of people power and government will more acute than on the streets of San Francisco, where a series of massive marches, some drawing nearly 100,000 people, filled the streets prior to the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. The onset of war led protesters to effectively shut down the city, resulting in about 2,300 arrests and millions of dollars in costs to the city.

President George W. Bush dismissed the protests, of course, but he wasn’t the only one. Political leaders such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi, then-Mayor Willie Brown and soon-to-be Mayor Gavin Newsom (who didn’t attend any of the marches, unlike progressives on the Board of Supervisors) condemned the peace movement for hurting an innocent city. But with the “battle for San Francisco” making international news, the protesters were more concerned with the global audience.

A month earlier, on the weekend of Feb. 15 and 16, there were coordinated protests against the impending war in about 800 cities around the world, drawing around 10 million people. The peace march in Rome included about 3 million people, earning a listing in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history. People have never made such a loud and clear statement against an incipient war.

Beyond the numbers, the antiwar movement was also right. On every major issue and prediction, the messages from the street proved correct while those from the White House were wrong. The US wasn’t welcomed as liberators. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq after the invasion isn’t a stable democracy or shining beacon to anyone but the new generation of jihadis Bush created.

We can blame a hard-headed president, ineffectual opposition party, failure of the national media, or the national climate of fear following Sept. 11. But rather than refighting that lost battle, now is the time to gain perspective on the events of five years ago and determine what it means for democracy and the post-Bush national agenda.

 

TO THE STREETS

There were two main umbrella groups organizing protests before the war: Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) and International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). ANSWER has remained active and DASW has recently been reconstituted for the fifth anniversary of the war, using direct action in San Francisco as well as other urban centers and outposts like Chevron’s refinery in Richmond, which has reportedly been processing Iraqi oil.

“With the fifth anniversary coming up, we’re going back to direct action on the streets,” said Henry Norr of DASW. “But I don’t have any illusions that it’s going to be like it was five years ago.”

The maddening march to an ill-advised war created a political dynamic in which a broad cross-section of Americans was willing to hit the streets.

“We had a wonderfully diverse group of people, from soccer moms to anarchists,” said Mary Bull, who cofounded DASW, a collective of various affinity groups and concerned individuals formed in October of 2002 as Bush started beating the drums of war.

It was a group fiercely determined to prevent the war — and really believed that was possible. In fact, Bull recalls how she and other members of the group burst out crying at one meeting when a key activist said the war was going to happen.

Richard Becker, who cofounded ANSWER and serves as its West Coast coordinator, said that in the summer of 2002, “we came to the conclusion that [the war] was going to happen.” The group called its first big protest for Sept. 15, 2002, and another one two weeks later. But the movement really exploded on Oct. 26 when almost 100,000 people took to Market Street, much of it a spontaneous popular uprising.

“We were overwhelmed,” Becker said. “We were in a perpetual state of mobilization to keep up with what was going on. But then it didn’t stop the war.”

Did he think they could?

“I think a lot of people thought maybe it was possible to stop it. And we thought maybe it was possible to stop it,” Becker said.

The high point, according to Becker and Norr, was Feb. 17, 2003, when the New York Times ran a front page analysis piece entitled “A new power in the streets” that claimed “the huge anti-war demonstrations around the world this weekend are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.” But then Colin Powell went to the United Nations to argue for the invasion, and the Democrats in Congress did nothing, and it became clear war was coming.

Norr stayed out there protesting, being arrested several times and even shot in the leg by Oakland police with a rubber bullet during a protest at the Oakland docks. And he thinks some good came from the experience.

“The lesson for people is the political and economic elites are committed to preserving and extending empire. And they basically say as much in their own writing,” Norr said. “Wars are not anomalies.”

Despite being a frustrating and depressing exercise, most saw benefits to the failed movement. “People got an incredible education about how the system really worked,” Becker said. “Building a movement is mostly about a series of setbacks.”

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of both Global Exchange and CodePink and fixture of the anti-establishment peace movement for years, was upbeat about the protests. “We did our job as citizens. We did what we were supposed to do: organize, get people to take action, get people onto the streets,” she said. “We did everything we could think of.

“What you take from it is we don’t have a very well-developed democracy because the people spoke and the government didn’t listen.”

25war2_Lars1.jpg The ever-evolving “Democracy Wall” on Valencia Street, March 2003, helped stir up debate (Photo by Lars Howlett)

 

FACING ARREST

The collective action of five years ago starts with a series of personal stories — tens of thousands of them — so let me briefly begin with mine.

My arrival in San Francisco was closely tied to the march to war. I was living in Sacramento and working as the news editor of the Sacramento News & Review when Bush began his saber rattling against Saddam Hussein, but by the end of 2002 I had a falling out with my boss and found myself jobless.

Like most Northern Californians who opposed the war, I came to San Francisco on Jan. 18 to make my voice heard and experienced a bit of serendipity on my way to Justin Herman Plaza: while reading the Guardian on Muni, I saw their advertisement for a city editor, a job that was ideal for me at a paper I’ve always loved. Needless to say, it was a great day, empowering and full of possibilities.

Less than two months later I was on the job, and on the second week of that job I was back on the turbulent streets of San Francisco, part of a Guardian team covering the eruption of this city on the first full day of war. When I stepped off the cable car just after 7 a.m., people were streaming up Market Street and I joined them.

When a large group stopped at the intersection of Market and Beale, I stopped too, taking notes and bearing witness to this historic, exciting event. I had a press pass issued by the California Highway Patrol that allowed me to cross police lines, so when police in riot gear surrounded us and threatened arrest, I held my ground with 100 or so protesters.

After interviewing about a dozen people about why they were there and that they hoped to accomplish (see “On the bus: Journalists, lawyers, four-year-olds — the cops were ready to bust anyone Thursday morning“), I was arrested with the others and taken to a makeshift jail and processing center at Pier 27 (no charges were filed in my case, and charges against all of the 2,300 people arrested here in those first few days of the war were later dropped).

I recently tracked down a few of the people who appeared in my article, including Daphne and Ross Miller, who were at the center of the most interesting drama to play out during our standoff with the police. She’s a family practice physician, he’s an architect, and they live in Diamond Heights with their two children, Emet, who is almost 9, and Arlen, 12, who was away on vacation when the war began.

“We were genuinely shocked that the war started,” Ross told me. “We were at some of the earlier protests and really thought there was no way [Bush] could do it.”

They woke up March 20, 2003, to news that the war had begun and immediately walked to the BART station with Emet and rode to the Embarcadero station, not really planning for the day ahead but just knowing that they had to make themselves heard.

“We were pissed as hell. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life,” Daphne said.

They quickly came up with a plan. “We basically decided that if anyone was going to be arrested, it was going to be Ross and I’d stay with Emet. But it didn’t end up that way and I ended up in the arrest circle.”

Daphne had their house keys and threw them over the police line to Ross at one point. A photographer in the circle had gotten shots of a man named Roman Fliegel being roughed up by police as they pulled him off his bicycle, which was towing a trailer with a sound system, and decided to throw his backpack with camera gear out as well. When Ross — who had four-year-old Emet on his shoulders — caught it and refused police orders to give it to them, police grabbed Emet and roughly arrested Ross, leaving a gash on his forehead.

“Rage surged through the crowd, and it seemed as if things might get ugly, but the police kept a tight lid on the situation, using their clubs to shove back protesters who had moved forward,” I wrote at the time.

Emet was delivered into the circle with Daphne as the arrests continued, many quite rough. “At that point, as a mom, I had to exercise the most restraint ever,” said Daphne, who was angry about the situation but fearful about what she was exposing her son to. “Please, don’t let any violence happen here,” she pleaded with the crowd. Eventually, commanders on the scene let the mother and child go.

“The officer who let me go said that if he saw me again out there, he would call Child Protective Services on me,” Daphne said. But two days later, still brimming with outrage at her country’s actions, she ditched a downtown medical conference to rejoin the street protests, this time solo.

The couple say they’ve lost friendships over the war and have become more engaged with politics, coming to believe that Bush and the neocons are malevolent figures who knew how badly the war would go and did it anyway to establish a large, permanent military base in Iraq.

“Since that day, we’ve been far more active,” Ross said. “We realized you can’t just trust the system. You have to push.”

But that determination was mixed with feelings of disempowerment and depression. They attended some of the protests that following year, but the couple — like most people — just stopped going at some point because they seemed so futile.

“There was a horrible sense of resignation and a genuine depression that followed,” Ross told me.

The nadir was when Bush was reelected and they considered leaving the country. But then, Ross said, “we decided we’re not just going to run away and we’re not going to accept this.” Looking back, even with the scare over Emet, they express no regrets.

“It was the right thing to do because it was the wrong war to have. I’d do it again and again and again if I had to,” Ross said

They’re guardedly hopeful that Barack Obama could begin to turn things around if he’s elected. “I think the right president can at least start to dismantle this,” Daphne said. “I think thousands of people marching in the streets is something he would listen to.”

25war3_Charles1.jpg A die-in on the streets of San Francisco in March 2007 marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion (Photo by Charles Russo)

 

WITNESS TO HISTORY

Covering the peace movement in those early days was a heady experience, like reporting on a revolutionary uprising or working in a foreign country where the people are organized and active enough to be able to shut down society and brave enough to risk bodily injury for their beliefs.

I was at the founding meeting of CodePink — which became the most effective group at personally confronting the warmongers and keeping the war in the public eye — one evening at Muddy Waters in the Mission District shortly after the war started.

Looking back, Benjamin rattled off a long list of the alliances the group built — with labor, churches, businesses, and a wide array of social movements — and creative actions intended to build and demonstrate popular support for ending the war.

“We’ve done so many things and what did we get? We got a surge,” she said. “It shows the crisis in our democracy, the crisis of the two-party system, the crisis of a dysfunctional opposition party.”

Yet she said the peace movement has been remarkably successful in convincing the public that the war was a mistake and that it’s time for the troops to come home, even if the Democrats have been slow to respond to that shift.

“The progress we’ve made is turning around public opinion and that’s going to play a big role in the upcoming elections,” she said. For Norr, the role of the news media is a particular sore spot. He was a technology reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle who called in sick on the first full day of war and was arrested on Market Street with his wife and daughter, resulting in suspension by editor Phil Bronstein for his actions.

I wrote several stories on the issue, which culminated in Norr being fired and Bronstein unilaterally banning Chron employees from peace protests. I even borrowed CodePink’s guerilla tactics when Bronstein repeatedly refused to return my calls or address why he had singled out antiwar protesters for uniquely punitive treatment. I confronted him during a speech he gave at the Commonwealth Club (see “Lies and half-truths,” 5/7/03). That was the tenor of the times: we were all tired of being lied to and we decided to push back.

Norr was particularly frustrated with his own paper’s reporting of the war and started sending articles by the foreign press to his paper’s news desk, trying to wake his colleagues up to the pro-war propaganda being passed off as journalism in this country.

He was also disappointed with the country and with the Chronicle — both the management and his fellow reporters, who did little to support him — but the experience caused him to return to his roots as a progressive activist.

“The war and losing the job and everything brought an abrupt end to my consumerist phase and dumped me back into the world of being an activist,” said Norr, who serves on the KPFA 94.1 FM local station board and has made three recent trips to the Palestinian territories while working with the International Solidarity Movement.

Benjamin said Americans shouldn’t expect the next president to end the war — not without lots of pressure from a renewed and vocal peace movement. “This is the time to set the stage for the post-Bush agenda,” Benjamin said. “Don’t put your hopes in Barack Obama in getting us out of Iraq. Put your hopes in the people.”

25war4_Lane1.jpg A rally and nonviolent direct action at the Richmond refinery targeted Chevron on March 15 (Photo by Lane Hartwell)

 

THE AFTERMATH

The San Francisco Police Department, which spent more than $2 million on overtime costs responding to peace protests between March 15 and April 16, 2003, generally behaved with restraint and professionalism, but there were several exceptions.

The most costly and disturbing incident came when Officer Anthony Nelson began aggressively swinging his long riot baton at protesters, badly shattering the arm of peaceful protester Linda K. Vaccarezza, who suffered a permanent disability in her career as a court reporter.

Nelson’s incident report falsely stated that Vaccarezza had threatened him with a sign attached to a solid pole, but video of the incident later clearly showed there was no pole and that she was retreating when he teed off on her (see “The home front,” 05/19/04).

Vaccarezza received an $835,000 settlement from the city in November of 2004. On Oct. 5, 2005, two and a half years after the incident, SFPD fired Nelson for lying about what happened that day, and the City Attorney’s Office has been successfully fighting Nelson’s appeals in court ever since, putting in more than $100,000 in attorney time and costs into the Nelson and Vaccarezza cases.

The other significant ongoing litigation from the antiwar protests involved Mary Bull, who was arrested during an early protest for pouring fake blood in front of the entrance to Chevron’s San Francisco office before being allegedly strip searched and left naked in her San Francisco Jail cell for 36 hours.

Ironically, Bull was among those who brought a successful class action lawsuit against Sacramento County after she and others protesting a logging plan were strip searched, setting a precedent and led most counties to reform their strip-search policies. She used her share of the $15 million judgment to buy an organic permaculture farm in Sebastopol.

Her San Francisco case, in which Bull won a multimillion-dollar judgment, is still under appeal and now in mediation. Bull said the protests five years ago did make a difference, something she tells those who fret about its apparent failure. “I tell them to look at what issues the candidates are talking about now and I thank them for protesting then.”

“Even though we had millions throughout the world, we were sort of blocked, but now we’re regaining that momentum,” Melodie Barclay, a massage therapist who was also arrested with me on the first day of the war, told me recently. “We can’t judge it by the fact that we didn’t get the momentum we wanted.”

Norr started his antiwar activism working with Students for a Democratic Society in Boston, protesting the Vietnam War, which he said shares many similarities with the current situation, for good or for ill. He said that people tend to forget that while the protests then were huge and helped end the war, the movement did wane after Nixon ended the draft and substituted massive aerial bombardment for boots on the ground.

“The protests dropped off considerably,” he said. “A lot of the things that drove people to take risks in the late ’60s had faded by the early ’70s.”

He thinks the current administration learned a lesson from those days: it’s easier to maintain a war effort if the average citizen isn’t affected.

But there are other factors as well keeping a lid on the antiwar outrage.

“The culture has changed too. Young people are oversaddled with debt. People in schools seem to be docile. The culture as a whole seems to be more individualist and consumerist,” Norr said.

Yet some young people have woken up and many of them are funneling their energies into a peace group that was formed in the summer of 2005: World Can’t Wait, as in: the world can’t wait for the end of Bush’s second term before we change our direction and leadership.

“We don’t just want them gone, we need to repudiate their program,” said Giovanni Jackson, a 26-year-old WCW student organizer. “If we’re going to change anything, we need the youth.”

Jackson was at WCW’s founding convention in New York City, which came just as New Orleans was being flooded and then essentially abandoned by the federal government.

“When [Kerry] lost, people felt demoralized and World Can’t Wait kind of stepped into that situation,” Jackson said. “There was a lot of demoralization in the antiwar movement at that time.”

The group organized protests and student walkouts on Nov. 2, 2005.

“Everyone has their moments of doubt,” he said, “but I’m motivated by the crimes we see everyday.”

 

THE LESSONS

One of the biggest barriers to galvanizing people and turning the fifth anniversary of the war into something that might make a difference is the presidential election, which is diverting the energy of many potential protesters — and at the same time, offering some hope that a new president may lead to peace.

After all, every single one of the Democratic presidential candidates has promised to withdraw troops from Iraq, with varying timelines and numbers of US personnel left behind. And with enough encouragement, they might be willing to help change the status quo.

Many of the activists who volunteered their time and money to help move the Obama campaign into its front-runner position came out of the antiwar movement, and Obama’s strong stand against the war has been a key factor in his popularity.

Becker and some other activists don’t have much faith that a change in presidents will change the course in Iraq, although he agrees that much of the energy now surrounding Barack Obama derives directly from the antiwar movement.

“There’s been a huge upsurge of hope for Obama and that he might bring about the kind of change we need,” Bull said, adding that she doesn’t share that hope, believing the only path to peace is to pressure Obama and other leaders to commit to more progressive positions.

Norr said, “On one level, people have illusions about the power of peaceful protests. People believe in democracy, as well they should. We feel like the rulers should be paying attention to public opinion.

“It’s a remarkable story how broadly and quickly the American people have turned against the war. Public opinion was certainly ahead of the Democrats.”

And people will only grow more disenchanted with Iraq and its multitude of costs. “The people here are paying for this war, and everyday we have new stories about health clinics being shut down,” Becker said.

Becker was amazed last March as massive demonstrations for immigrant rights seemed to explode out of nowhere. “We think there will be more things like that,” he said.

Because after five years of organizing communities to resist the military-industrial complex’s plans, Becker thinks there’s been some visible progress.

“There isn’t a town or hamlet in the US that doesn’t have activism going on, but you wouldn’t know it from the corporate media,” Becker said. “It’s a mistake for people to feel discouraged.”

SXSW: Playboy bods and yobs, “Body of War,” sniffing a Siltbreeze

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stopallwarsign.jpg
Signage modification – Austin, Texas-style. All photos by Kimberly Chun.

What a weird lil’ South By this is? Can it get any stranger than the evening of March 13, which started out at Stubb’s for a sold-out anti-war concert, “Body of War,” linked to the feature documentary on 25-year-old Tomas Young, who was paralyzed from a bullet to his spine, taken after serving in Iraq for less than a week. System of a Down’s Serj Tankian accompanied himself on piano, Billy Bragg presented a powerful “Farmer Boy,” and Kimya Dawson, Ben Harper, and RX Bandits filled out the bill. (Sightings of the Dawson’s infant being cartered by her partner, abounded throughout the fest).

excocaine.jpg
Gimme more Ex Cocaine.

Then it was off to the Siltbreeze showcase at Soho Lounge for a hand drum-driven Ex Cocaine from Missoula, Montana, and the stirring guitar-electronics invocations of Blues Control from Brooklyn. Good to see such a sizable crowd out for what many might see as a micro-niche night.

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Outta-hand Blues Control.

Made few pitstops at Friends for the soon-to-be capacity Carbon/Silicon showcase (witness the scores of disappointed Clash fans milling around before their 11:30 p.m. set outside, cordoned off by police tape just so they don’t get raucous). London’s Noah and the Whale plied their rootsy folky harmonies with sweetness and high spirits.

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Swallow this: Noah and the Whale.

More ambitious but definitely more streamlined lineup-wise, was Florence and the Machine, also from London town, over at BBC/Steve Lamacq’s event at the Rio. Like a sweet, over-the-top cross between Kate Bush and a high school musical theater star, Flo mimed drowning, quasi-tap-danced, and threw her gold-sequined jacket to an audience member when she grew encumbered. All accompanied only by ukulele. And with plenty of drama for all.

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The Fantasticks, anyone? Florence and the Machine.

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Time to queue for the Playboy/C3 (presenters of Lollapalooza, et al) ninth annual late-night party. The line wound round the block of the “301” warehouse and the media line (through the back entrance – I felt like I ought to be helping with the dishes!) was just as crazed. Once inside, after watching oodles of would-be media types getting turned away at the list, I spied Perez Hilton all in white, with white shorn locks, got my beverage (check the ample barbecue midnight snack), and studied the Heavy as they cozied up to playmates in sad drooping bunny ears and cotton tails.

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Things got Heavy.

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SXSW Interactive: The web 2.0 revolution

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by Paula Connelly

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A Guitar Hero break in between panel discussions

I’m not convinced that the web is breaking down boundaries. At the SXSW Interactive Media conference there was a sea of iPhone engaged people who represent the first generation to really harness the experience of growing up with the web and bring it to the business realm. Those who have been the most successful have achieved web fame status. On the web, success is measured by attention based on site user volume, and although that directly translates to advertising dollars it is not the most important component of internet fame. I know that I should be happy about this glorification of knowledge. I should feel optimistic that web celebrity is the result of talent stemming from mathematical and scientific ability. The truth of the matter is, we are in the middle of a revolution whether we like it or not. And as I take refuge in an Austin cafe, far, far away from the fray, I realize that something about it all makes me feel really uncomfortable.

There won’t be blood

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Michael Haneke would likely be offended if you said you enjoyed his movies — though no doubt he would enjoy hearing you were offended by them. The chill surface neutrality of a Haneke feature such as Caché (2005) is designed to intrigue and then frustrate — by depriving extreme situations of their usual sensationalism and neat narrative resolution so that we end up implicated by our own thwarted expectations. Even as a scold, Haneke is too disciplined to let us join him on his soapbox. The whole point lies in being discomfited.

The "normal" boy who kills a girl in Benny’s Video (1992); the bourgeoisie unraveling due to exposure of their own race and class prejudices in Code: Unknown (2000) and Caché; and an entire society reverting to primitive behaviors after unspecified catastrophe in Time of the Wolf (2003) are all so disturbing because they’re so banal. Even when portrayed by movie stars, these figures are willfully ordinary, observed at length performing dull tasks or making poor decisions for petty reasons. The one time he approached a conventional melodramatic arc and larger-than-life protagonist (if an antiheroine) was in the Elfride Jelinek adaptation of The Piano Teacher (2001) where Isabelle Huppert’s character embodies the masochistic role usually played by his viewers themselves.

None of these films are exactly date movies, but they still orbit an audience’s comfort zone more closely than Haneke’s most notorious film, the original 1997 Funny Games. Now, Haneke has made the seemingly perverse choice of creating a shot-for-shot remake as his first English-language feature. Actually, it’s a decision as coolly logical as any he’s made, since he has said more than once that the original is more a comment on US society and media than their Austrian equivalents.

Beyond its sheer unpleasantness, both language and subtitling prevented the original from reaching his target audience. Still, it’s unlikely people will be turning out en masse for Funny Games U.S., as the movie is being called everywhere but here. Those who do take the plunge are likely going to hate, hate, HATE it — which will be one way of gauging that Haneke’s subversion of standard genre rules is working as planned.

We meet the Farber family via eye-of-God aerial shots following their car to the exquisitely leafy countryside where their expansive lakeside summer home resides. With little Georgie (Devon Gearhart) in the backseat, Ann (Naomi Watts) and George (Tim Roth) play guess-the-classical-composer. It’s too perfect and we know it, because Haneke incongruously interrupts their banter with a jarring blast of cacophonous death metal (actually a John Zorn piece) — the only music heard in the film that’s not ostensibly played from CD by an onscreen character. Horror, it suggests, might just be a dial flip away from intruding on this cozy trio.

Stopping short of their own electronic gate, the Farbers greet strangely uncommunicative neighbors standing on their lawn with two unknown men. Later, while father and son prep the sailboat, Ann gets a visit from Paul (Michael Pitt), who says he’s staying with the aforementioned neighbors and has been sent to borrow some eggs. Apologizing profusely, he nonetheless quickly manages to turn her hospitality into sputtering rage. Meanwhile, the dog disappears. Soon Paul is joined by Peter (Brady Corbet), his doppelgänger in tennis whites and floppy bangs. They look like consummate squeaky-clean preppies — or Hitler Youth. They have a not-long-hidden agenda. Things degenerate very quickly.

For all their sadism, Peter and Paul aren’t so much conventional villains as they are abstracts — tools to indict the viewer for participating in these games, or expecting anything like the usual fictive payoffs. The casting of the instantly recognizable Watts and Roth distracts at first, but Haneke’s approach (which employs agonizingly long takes, including one extreme instance that approaches 10 minutes in duration) and the actors’ grueling expressions of physical and emotional distress hit the right note of violated ordinariness.

It’s worth noting that perhaps Haneke’s most ingenious (and frequently overlooked) gambit is that there is almost no onscreen violence. As much as Funny Games feels like particularly merciless, graphic torture porn, the actual moments of assault are almost always cut away from or just out of frame. The one exception turns out to be Haneke’s single cruelest joke — and naturally, it’s on you. Without coming right out and saying it, Funny Games is now very much an answer to Hollywood norms and a larger cultural denial: here, violence is all suffering and no spectacle. *

FUNNY GAMES

Opens Fri/14 at Bay Area theaters

wip.warnerbros.com/funnygames

The users are revolting

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› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION One of the social traditions that’s carried over quite nicely from communities in the real world to communities online is revolution. You’ve got many kinds of revolt taking place online in places where people gather, from tiny forums devoted to sewing, to massive Web sites like Digg.com devoted to sharing news stories.

And while they may be virtual, the protests that break out in these digital communities have much in common with the ones that raise a ruckus in front of government buildings: they range from the deadly serious to the theatrically symbolic.

How can a bunch of people doing something on a Web site really be as disruptive or revolutionary as those carrying signs, yelling, and storming the gates of power in the real world? By way of an answer, let’s consider three kinds of social protest that have taken place in the vast Digg community.

According to Internet analysis firm ComScore, Digg has 6 million visitors per month who come to read news stories rounded up from all over the Web. About half of those visitors log in as users to vote on which stories are the most important: the one with the most votes are deemed "popular," and make it to Digg’s front page to be seen by millions. A smaller number of people on Digg — about 10 percent — choose to become submitters of stories, searching the Web for interesting things and posting them to be voted on — in categories that range from politics to health. Digg’s developers use a secret-sauce algorithm to determine at what point a story has received enough votes to make it popular and worthy of front-page placement.

You can imagine that a community like this one, devoted to the idea of democratically generated news and controlled by a secret algorithm, might be prone to controversy. And it is.

Two years ago, I was involved in what I would consider one type of user revolt on Digg. It was a prank that I pulled off with the help of an anonymous group called User/Submitter. The group’s goal was to reveal how easy Digg makes it for corrupt people to buy votes and get free publicity on Digg’s front page. My goal was to see if U/S really could get something on the front page by bribing Digg users with my cash. So I created a really dumb blog, paid a couple hundred dollars to U/S, and discovered that you could indeed buy your way to the front page. Think of it as an anarchist prank designed to show flaws in the so-called democracy of the system.

But there have also been massive grassroots protests on Digg, one of which I wrote about in a column more than a year ago. Thousands of Digg users posted a secret code, called the Advanced Access Content System key, that could be used as part of a scheme to unlock the encryption on high definition DVDs. The goal was to protest the fact that HD DVDs could only be played in "authorized" players chosen by Hollywood studios. So it forced people interested in HD to replace their DVD players with new devices. It was a consumer protest, essentially, and a very popular one. Hollywood companies sent Digg cease-and-desists requesting that they take down the AACS key whenever it was posted, but too many users had posted it. There was no way to stop the grassroots protest. Digg’s founders gave up, told the community to post the AACS key to their hearts’ content, and swore they would fight the studios to the end if they got sued (no suit ever materialized).

Another kind of protest that’s occurred on Digg came just last month, and it was a small-scale rebellion among the people who submit stories and are therefore Digg’s de facto editors. After Digg developers changed the site’s algorithm so that it was harder to make stories popular, a group of Digg submitters sent a letter to Digg’s founders saying they would stop using the site if the algorithm wasn’t fixed. You could compare this protest to publishing an editorial in a newspaper — it reflected grassroots sentiment but was written by a small minority of high-profile individuals. Though the company didn’t change its algorithm, this protest did result in the creation of town hall meetings where users could ask questions of Digg developers and air their grievances.

Each of these kinds of protests has its correlates in the real world: the symbolic prank, the grassroots protest, and the angry editorial. So forgive me if I laugh at people who say the Internet doesn’t foster community. Not only is there a community there, but it’s full of revolutionaries who fight for freedom of expression.

Annalee Newitz (annalee@techsploitation.com) is a surly media nerd who wants a revolution.

What the verdict meant

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>>Read more at www.sfbg.com/lawsuit

› tredmond@sfbg.com

The press coverage was impressive: The San Francisco Chronicle put the story on page one. KTVU-TV made it the third item on its 10 O’Clock News. Editor and Publisher, the newspaper trade journal, picked it up, as did Forbes magazine. The San Francisco Daily used a front-page bold banner headline: "Jury punishes chain."

And indeed, as anyone who follows the local news media is aware by now, a San Francisco jury March 5th ruled that the SF Weekly and its corporate parent, Village Voice Media, illegally sold ads below cost in an effort to harm the Guardian. The jurors awarded $6.3 million in damages, and since the law allows as least part of that award to be trebled, the Weekly and VVM could be liable for as much as $15.6 million.

VVM already announced it will appeal, which means it’s unlikely the Guardian will see any cash award for several years as the case works its way through the legal system. But in the meantime, we will be asking Judge Marla Miller to issue an injunction barring any further below-cost sales.

Under state law, interest on the judgment will accrue at 10 percent a year. That means the Weekly and VVM will be paying $4,000 a day in interest for as long as they seek to dispute and appeal the jury decision.

The verdict alone sends a powerful message that goes beyond the newspaper industry. California’s Unfair Practices Act, a Progressive-era measure, forbids a big chain with deep pockets from coming into town and using predatory pricing to run a locally-owned, independent operation out of business. A San Francisco jury has confirmed that the law can be a powerful weapon against the consolidation of news media — and the chain-store assault on local merchants.

Not surprisingly, VVM’s principals have said they are going to try to invalidate the law in the courts. In a written statement posted to the SF Weekly Web site, the chain says it doesn’t think the law ought to apply to competitive markets.

Of course, the entire point of our lawsuit was that the Weekly and VVM wanted to end competition — that the chain was trying to harm its only direct competitor in the San Francisco marketplace. And that’s precisely what the law was written to prevent.

As James R. McCall, a law professor at Hastings, wrote in a 1997 article for the Pacific Law Journal, "the commercial practice of knowingly selling below cost with the intent to injure competitors or injury competition has long been considered unlawful by American courts and state legislatures."

The trial produced reams of evidence and extensive testimony on the business practices of both papers, and provided some remarkable insights into how the nation’s largest alternative newspaper chain operates. Some highlights:

•VVM, which has built highly profitable papers in many national markets, fared very differently here. The chain bought two papers that were profitable concerns — the SF Weekly in 1995 and the East Bay Express in 2001 — and turned them both into huge money losers. Over the past 12 years, the company lost some $25 million in the Bay Area, and has pumped $13 million from corporate headquarters into propping up the Weekly.

Financial data presented in court showed that in markets where the chain faces no direct competition from a strong alternative paper, VVM is practically printing money. Profits in Denver and Phoenix were sky-high, sending some $40 million back to corporate headquarters over about 10 years. But in places where a strong competitor challenged the VVM paper — San Francisco and Cleveland being the two most notable examples — the chain was losing money or its profits were much thinner.

•The folks in Phoenix were obsessed with going after the Guardian. The record is littered with e-mails between VVM headquarters and the SF office discussing ways to get ads out of the locally owned paper. The Weekly publishers had to send a regular "Guardian report" back to Phoenix to show how the two papers stacked up. Weekly publishers admitted that they might have offered special bonuses to sales reps who took ads away from the Guardian.

In fact, three witnesses testified that on the day he bought the Weekly in 1995, Mike Lacey, one of the chain’s two principals, threw a copy of the Guardian on the floor and vowed to put us out of business.

The jurors found that sort of behavior strong evidence of predatory intent. One panel member, Kerstin Sjoquist, a local business owner and graduate student, said in an interview that "it felt overly predatory on the part of the Weekly" and that "the predatory intent trickled down from the top."

You could see that same intent by the way the Weekly covered the trial. None of the local reporters at the paper were in the courtroom; instead, the chain brought in one of its top editorial executives, Andy Van De Voorde, from Denver to write about the case every day. And the blog posts he authored were about as personally vicious as anything I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Van De Voorde portrayed this entirely as an attempt by Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann to shake down the Weekly and VVM for money. (And he never reported on the fact that the evidence clearly showed Bruce and his wife, Jean Dibble, had never taken big profits out of the paper and had instead reinvested money to improve the Guardian.) From the start, Van De Voorde called the suit silly and stupid and tried to make the case that the Guardian had no evidence at all to prove predatory pricing.

As the case wore on, he started to change his tune: by the last few days, he was tacitly acknowledging that there was a chance the Weekly would lose, and he started attacking the law itself. In the end, he told me he "wasn’t surprised" by the verdict — although for weeks his blog posts had taken the position that the Guardian couldn’t possibly win.

•The Weekly‘s lawyers essentially argued that their own client was unable to handle pressure from the Internet and unable to adapt to a changing marketplace. Expert after expert on the VVM payroll testified that both the Guardian and the Weekly had seen revenues drop because of outside market forces in San Francisco that apparently were completely beyond the coping ability of a national chain that was making money hand over fist in the rest of the country. In his closing arguments, H. Sinclair Kerr, the Weekly‘s lead attorney, insisted that the market for alternative newsweekly advertising had shrunk and that both papers were, in essence, failing.

That contrasted dramatically with testimony from the only expert witness for either side who had actually run a weekly newspaper. Bill Johnson, publisher of the Palo Alto Weekly, testified that the Internet was not destroying alternative papers and that it was entirely possible to make money in the Bay Area, even during a tough economy. He pointed out that, unlike daily newspapers that rely increasingly on wire-service stories, alt-weeklies offer unique content that can’t be found anywhere else. And the people who are looking for those stories make up a lucrative market for advertisers.

His conclusion, after attending much of the trial and viewing much of the economic evidence: the reason the Guardian was losing revenue was that the Weekly had systematically depressed the price of display ads in the alternative weekly marketplace. And the chain paper was able to do that because of its deep pockets.

Numerous witnesses agreed that the Weekly could have raised its rates and made a profit. But that would have made it possible for the Guardian to compete for those clients — and VVM wanted the market to itself.

In the end, the jury got the message: the Guardian has been hurting badly all these years not because of any external factor but because a rich competitor was selling below cost.
That, Johnson testified, was exactly how predatory chains operate. "It happens," he said, "all the time."

The Guardian was (well) represented by Ralph Alldredge, Rich Hill and E. Craig Moody

Freedom of Information: Virtual meeting

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› news@sfbg.com

Forget smoke-filled rooms and paper shredders — today’s government officials can elude public scrutiny from the comfort of their own e-mail accounts, conducting virtual meetings to do the public’s business.

To curb such activity, provisions in both the Brown Act (the state law governing open meetings) and the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance have been interpreted as prohibiting the use of electronic communication between members of policy bodies. But not everyone has been heeding the rules, particularly in this hyperconnected age.

The TechConnect Task Force, a now disbanded advisory body charged by Mayor Gavin Newsom with creating a plan to bridge the city’s digital divide with free wireless Internet service, frequently used an e-mail listserv to conduct its business.

"Since these things were publicly posted right away, I should think there would be a transparency that advocates would like," said Emy Tseng, a member of the task force. "It was useful in the way e-mails and listservs are useful to anyone."

However, many contend the task force was engaging in activities prohibited under the city’s Sunshine Ordinance, even if the intent was to provide greater public access to the group’s work. Tseng, who claims to have never been informed by the City Attorney’s Office that the group might have been in violation of Sunshine laws, expressed the frustrations of many throughout the city who must comply with open-meeting policies.

"If you don’t use e-mail in this day and age, what can you do?" she asked. The answer, according to state and local laws, is to conduct public business in a public meeting, with the agenda posted in advance and where anyone can attend.

State and city public-disclosure laws apply to all "policy bodies," which can include nearly every government-sanctioned board, commission, or task force. Some members of these bodies have been suspected of vioutf8g open-meeting and public-disclosure laws through the use of online communication.

Seriatim meetings are presumably the most common illegal activity occurring under both open-information laws, although they are the hardest to detect. A seriatim meeting occurs when one member of a policy body privately contacts another, who then contacts another, in a chain of communication that eventually constitutes a quorum of the group.

An e-mail that is forwarded along to enough individuals, or a round of mass e-mails, would constitute a seriatim meeting, according to attorneys who spoke with the Guardian. While e-mail forwarding is a common practice for any office worker, some are just an unassuming click away from breaking the law.

"I would absolutely make it clear that anybody subject to the Brown Act or Sunshine [should] not communicate through e-mail," said Thomas Burke, a San Francisco-based attorney who specializes in media and Internet law and has represented the Guardian. "This could go on for years because people are not in the loop."

The Brown Act, passed in 1953 by the California Legislature, expressly bans a legislative body from using "technological devices" in order to communicate about topics relevant to the work of that body.

"The Brown Act itself forbids the majority of ‘technological devices’ — which is essentially anything you could imagine," said Terry Francke, director of Californians Aware, who also drafted amendments to the act in the early ’90s. Under the Brown Act, a committee member can be slapped with a misdemeanor for the intent to withhold information from the public or conduct prohibited meetings.

Many of the same issues are also addressed in the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance, filling in more restrictions and open information requirements. Ironically, the TechConnect Task Force was charged with creating universal access to online discussions like theirs, although few legal experts think even that would nullify the requirement for open, public meetings in a physical – rather than virtual – setting.

According to a report released by the San Francisco TechConnect Task Force, 32 percent of Americans do not have access to the Internet. In San Francisco, certain populations are even worse off compared to national averages — for instance, women and the elderly.

"You have to consider if people are going to have equal access to meetings," Burke told the Guardian. "There is still a digital divide. As a public entity they have to be sensitive to this."

Recently, members of the city’s Peak Oil Task Force inquired with the City Attorney’s office about using Yahoo! Groups or a blog to increase efficiency on the all volunteer committee. Attorneys advised the group to stay away from Internet communication, as it can easily lead to prohibited seriatim meetings. Jeanne Rosenmeier, who is the chairperson of the task force, now spends more committee time trying to determine alternative ways to engage the public.

"It is certainly something that should be rewritten, to deal with modern technology so it corresponds with today’s reality," Rosenmeier told the Guardian. "If we have a public e-mail listserv that anyone can sign on to, that seems transparent; or if we have a blog, that’s pretty transparent."

In other cities that do not have sunshine ordinances, teleconferencing may be used legally under the Brown Act to conduct meetings. In Los Angeles, for instance, some boards and commissions teleconference when members would need to drive a few hours just to meet. There is some speculation that the language of the Brown Act could be augmented under this provision to allow for online communication, but there are no major groups pursuing the amendment.

In 2001, former California Attorney General Bill Lockyer wrote an opinion declaring the use of e-mail between policy-body members as an infraction of the Brown Act, even if the e-mails were made publicly available. "Members of the public who do not have Internet access would be unable to monitor the deliberations as they occur," the opinion states. "All debate concerning an agenda item could well be over before members of the public could [participate]."

According to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, there have been no complaints filed concerning prohibited online meetings, however there have been public information disclosures of private e-mail messages over the years. Recently, a group of deputy city attorneys were required to turn over an e-mail correspondence when a member of the public filed a complaint.

While Peter Scheer, director of the California First Amendment Coalition, understands the frustration of government officials who must abide by the cumbersome laws, he thinks the tradeoff is well worth it.

"The whole rest of society uses the power of e-mail and the only business that can’t use it is government, because they’re subject to the Brown Act," Scheer told the Guardian. "But we made the tradeoff already in efficiency versus accountability, to force all meetings and information to be open to the press and public."

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Freedom of Information: The leaks go on

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news@sfbg.com

In what may be the last act of a quickly unfolding drama, Swiss banking giant Julius Baer has dropped its lawsuit against Wikileaks, an anonymous whistle-blower Web site, and Dynadot LLC, the site’s registrar. Baer’s attorneys had sought to shut down Wikileaks through a permanent injunction for hosting potentially damaging material about the bank’s activities in the Grand Cayman Islands.

The bank’s decision last week follows its legal defeat Feb. 29 in which San Francisco federal court judge Jeffrey S. White withdrew his ruling to halt the US version of the Web site Wikileaks.org — and to also stop information from the site from being transferred to another server.

White weighed arguments from both sides and said his withdrawal of the order against Wikileaks still raises serious issues about the extent of jurisdiction any US court has over the Internet. He essentially agreed that prior restraint of the site was unconstitutional, and that it could create a "chilling effect" on future free speech cases. He bowed to arguments from defense attorneys and said his prior order raises questions regarding "possible infringement of protections afforded to the public by the First Amendment."

The anonymous forces of Wikileaks seemed to have braced for the legal blow. Within hours of the Feb. 15 takedown order by White, those in the know could access the site by entering the IP address, which is run on a server in Sweden and on other servers around the world.

While no official Wikileaks defendant ever materialized because its operators remain a secret, the preliminary injunction order set off a firestorm of criticism from free speech advocates. One after another, lawyers from the ACLU’s San Francisco chapter, Public Citizen in Washington D.C., and nearly a dozen civil rights organizations rushed to intervene and defend the site.

Shutting down the site is akin to "locking the doors of The New York Times," said Julie Turner, an attorney who represented Wikileaks in prelitigation matters.

"I think this was a textbook example of what not to do," said media law attorney Thomas Burke of the bank’s efforts to seek a prior restraint. "This just completely backfired and garnered international attention."

The documents posted on Wikileaks have been used as the basis for major news stories on subjects such as the treatment of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, the US military’s rules of engagement in Iraq, and corruption by Kenya’s former president. And instead of concealing documents, the case has drawn a maelstrom of attention to the bank’s alleged dealings, and it raises big questions about freedom of speech on the Internet.

In their filing, Julius Baer attorneys said they still reserve the right to consider filing suit in the same court or elsewhere and are considering the company’s legal options. The bank’s spokesperson, Jenna Agins, declined a Guardian request for comments.

Founded in 2006 by Chinese dissidents, journalists, and tech gurus, Wikileaks hosts 1.2 million leaked documents that aim to expose government and corporate wrongdoing. Anonymous site creators say they’re developing an uncensorable system for "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis" and are ready to fight any legal attack.

Wikileaks may have evaded its censors this time, but the latest case portends the vulnerability of such sites and those involved in them. Julius Baer’s attorneys admitted to the judge they had a hard time tracking down a Wikileaks representative. So they went after Daniel Matthews, a Stanford grad student. According to the bank’s court filing, the bank’s attorneys found his name on a Facebook page listing him as an "officer" of Wikileaks and summoned him to court. Joshua Koltun, his pro bono attorney, rushed to file a brief to defend Matthews.

"It was an extremely aggressive move because they were basically grabbing at straws," said Koltun, who appeared without his client in court. "They said he would face liability for a very tenuous connection or be confronted with disobeying the court order."

The bank’s attorneys claimed that Wikileaks had disclosed confidential or forged information about its clients and said there was nothing newsworthy about it. In this way, they are attempting to pit freedom of speech against personal privacy rights.

"Wikileaks has actively solicited the theft of private information," said William Briggs, one of the lawyers for the bank. "They are no longer shielded by the First Amendment."

But freedom of speech laws trump privacy rights in this case, argues Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief opposing the judge’s injunction against Wikileaks. "The information was already out there and the bank wanted to force everyone who had a copy of it to pull it down."

Perhaps the more salient point going forward, Zimmerman says, is that consumers are more wary of what Internet provider or domain registrar they choose and to make sure those companies protect free speech rights.

In their suit, Julius Baer’s attorneys sued Wikileak’s domain registrar, Dynadot LLC in San Mateo, for hosting the site. The small start-up agreed in a Feb.14 court stipulation to all of the bank’s demands to disable the site and prevent its transfer to another server, in exchange for getting the case against them dismissed.

"This is part of the reason why Congress has passed laws to get the intermediary out of the way," Baer said. "Dynadot was never liable for the information its user posted. It’s unfortunate that they apparently didn’t know the law well enough and decided to fold."

Dynadot lawyer Garret Murai denied that his client had agreed to all of the bank’s terms. "The court’s order to remove the domain name settings is not something we wanted to do," he said. "We did not agree to that."

David Ardia, an Internet law expert at Harvard, says even in the US, which has long established First Amendment protections, the threat of lawsuits against Web sites such as Wikileaks still lingers.

The power of an individual judge to bring down a Web site still remains, he says, but not if sites can function on international servers outside US jurisdiction.

Most online bulletins or blog posts allow people to post comments and remain anonymous, but not to the point where governments can’t find out who they are. What makes Wikileaks formidable, some say, is its software’s ability to cover the tracks of its users.

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, says time will tell whether the Wikileaks site can prove its mission to covertly leak information and should never have been silenced in the first place.

"As we as a society become increasingly dependent on the Internet as a source of information, the vulnerability of the Web site to that kind of action is something to fear," he said. "So when it happens, it’s important to draw maximum attention to it, to go into court with all guns blazing."

From the stand, White conceded the problem with pursuing a case against an anonymous entity such as Wikileaks, which has no official representation and whose chief players remain invisible.

Then he questioned the effectiveness of trying to control leaked documents, even if those responsible had somehow violated personal privacy rights: "When this genie gets out of the bottle, it’s out in the world."

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Freedom of Information: More sunshine — easily and at no cost

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› news@sfbg.com

Imagine sitting at home — or in your office, or in your favorite café — and listening in on what are now secret, backroom policy discussions and decisions in the San Francisco mayor’s office. Imagine having access to an immediate transcript of the talks. Imagine being able to read internal e-mail discussions among city staffers about issues that affect you — without ever filing a public records request. In fact, imagine never having to file another written request for public documents; imagine just going to a city Web site, entering a search term, and finding all of the records yourself.

Imagine filing a complaint with a city agency and tracking the issue, minute by minute, as it works its way through the system.

Imagine listening on your cell phone to any policy body as it meets in city hall.

All of this is possible, today. Much of it is not only consistent with but actually required by local law. And it won’t cost the city more than a modest amount of money.

Transparency is a common buzzword during this presidential campaign; the Barack Obama campaign has even issued a white paper describing policy and technological ways to embrace it. He’s talking about live Internet feeds of meetings about significant issues involving executive branch appointees as well as for those of regulatory departments (a program that would go far beyond what you see on C-SPAN).

So there’s no reason San Francisco can’t take the lead in using technology — generally simple, off the shelf, existing technology — to dramatically increase sunshine at City Hall and public participation in local government.

Proposition G, the city’s 1999 sunshine law, mandates that San Francisco use "all technological and economical means to ensure efficient, convenient and low cost access to public information on the Internet." Here are five easy ways to do that:

1. Fully adopt the voyeur concept for city meetings. This is the idea that the public should be able to observe and engage in government decision making — all government decision making.

All policy meetings in City Hall should at the very least be broadcast as audio on the Web and available via phone teleconference. In other words, the meetings should be streamed online, and that stream should be accessible by calling a free conference line. This is already standard practice in the business world and is working well for many investors in public companies that disclose financial information in compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission rules. It can be done for little or no cost with services like blogtalkradio.com, skype.com, freeconferencecalls.com, and webex.com.

Today only a limited number of public meetings are broadcast, mostly because the only outlet is SFG-TV and resources are limited. But audio streaming is a no-brainer — there’s no need for a staffer to control cameras, the microphones are already set up, and these days just about every room has a speakerphone.

Currently, the SFG-TV video coverage isn’t posted on the city’s Web site, sfgov.org, until two or three days after a meeting. That’s too long; the audio should be made immediately available online. And the Internet URL and dial-in options should be listed on the meeting agenda so that news media and citizen bloggers can instantly refer back to the URL with timecodes to point out specifics, and include them in their stories and blog postings.

With streaming, you can follow along in real time when you are stuck at home taking care of a sick relative, or at the office listening with headphones, or you are disabled and can’t cross town to attend in person.

The city already has a great contract for real time captioning — the text you see at the bottom of the screen for video. It’s not 100 percent accurate, but it’s pretty decent. That could be expanded to cover streaming audio, and the text could be computer translated (or translated by bilingual typists) into other common languages. The advantage of media integrated with RTC is that specialized search engines like blikx.com and everyzing.com can be used to find relevant phrases and begin playback directly at that spot. And transcriptions can be posted online in real time (somewhat like live blogging!) so that if you are late for a meeting you can quickly scan what has already transpired, and by the end of the meeting you will effectively have a draft of minutes. That saves a lot of staff time and provides an immeasurably more useful historic record.

Today, video recordings of city meetings can’t be downloaded — the only way to review it or post a clip to YouTube is to order a $10 DVD, which arrives a week after you send a check (and no, they don’t take PayPal). And while many other city meetings make audio recordings, you have to pay $1 for an audio tape and pick it up during business hours or pay more for postage. They all should be available as free podcasts.

The SFG-TV video shows more than just the speakers and officials; there are other angles, and they ought to be available too. It’s important to know who attended the meeting but never said anything, who greeted whom, and even who ignored whom.

2. Let the public do the broadcasting. All City Hall meeting rooms should provide wi-fi (and electrical outlets), and the system ought to have enough speed to allow bloggers or activists to upload high-quality video broadcasts of meetings that SFG-TV can’t afford to cover. It can be done using existing services like Justin.tv, Upstream.tv, and live.yahoo.com. This would also allow live blogging — and let people preparing to testify on an issue have access to the Web to do research on the spot. If the room had a projector and a screen, people who were unable to attend the meeting could still comment, either through video or just by posting text messages that the decision makers could read.

The audio broadcasting of meetings should be expanded to include all meetings between the mayor (or supervisors) and city staff. The law already requires public access to so-called passive meetings — those between the mayor or department heads and outside parties that influence city policy.

3. Make public most city emails and other documents as soon as they are produced.

San Francisco city employees produce thousands of records a day — e-mails, memos, reports, etc. — and the vast majority of them are and should be public record. But many are deleted and others never see the light of day. When a member of the public asks for all the records on a topic, just finding those documents can be a sizable task.

But it’s technologically simply to solve that problem: every time a city employee produces a document, the computer system should automatically send a back-up copy to a public web server. That way nothing would get lost or erased, and anyone looking for public information could simply go to that site and search for it him or herself.

For e-mails sent by city staff, one way might be to CC (carbon copy) an online message board (for example Google or Yahoo groups, which would be available at no cost to the city). Other approaches for instant messages, text messages and voicemails could be adopted as well. The Palo Alto City Council is already doing something like this for a narrow collection of e-mails (although not in real time).

We all know there are some city communications that must remain private or be redacted — for example Attorney Client discussions or human-resource conversations regarding personnel. But there are simply ways to make sure those stay confidential: one approach might simply have the user tick a flag or answer a Yes/No Possible Redaction popup when the message is sent. Certain employees — like the people who handle sensitive employee health records and certain litigators in the city attorney’s office — could have software that defaults to a confidential server.

The added advantage, of course, is that the computers could also make a record of the title and date of every confidential document — and that information could be made public. If a dispute arose over whether the city was improperly withholding records, the public would at least know that certain documents existed.

All city files could be stored on network drives (not on local drives) with one location for default public files that would not allow overwriting or deletions and would be mirrored to a Web server and another drive for the few that may require redaction first.

4. Save all the old records. After a very embarrassing lawsuit that is threatening the Missouri governor’s job, that state in January adopted an email retention system that preserves all email for at least seven years (based on federal requirements for financial records). And e-mail/instant message/text/fax retention systems are standard practice now in the financial industry (Morgan Stanley lost a $1.45 billion judgment because the company failed to preserve e-mail).

In fact, we all know storage continues to get cheaper and smaller — so San Francisco should abolish any retention timeframes for electronic records and keep them all into the foreseeable future. The world-famous Internet Archive is right here in the Presidio: I suspect that group would love to archive all the city information, and keep it online, free and forever.

When paper documents are part of the public record, they should be scanned and converted to text and posted within two days. This would include discussions between staff and individual members of policy bodies and the creation of the draft agenda and supporting materials as they are obtained.

All these methods would significantly reduce the number of public records requests to the city staff and thus save the city money.

5. Make calendars public — and keep communications public. Mayor Gavin Newsom won’t provide detailed daily calendars — even after the fact, when there is no possible security reason for keeping his workday itinerary secret. All top officials should post their calendars on the web so the public can track what they are doing.

The city needs to adopt a global policy that city business should be performed on city devices (computers, email accounts, phones) whenever possible — and when city employees or officials use their own computers or hand-held communications tools, those should be forwarded immediately to the city system and made public.

San Francisco has one of the best local Sunshine laws in the country — and at a time when activists at every level are looking for ways to use technology to expand public access, the city should be in the forefront. All it takes is some political will.

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Here are some more ways that the city could use technology to improve public access:

1. Use a program like govtrack.us to follow legislative changes.

2. Explore ways to bring nonprofits that perform traditional government services under sunshine laws.

3. Significantly improve the city’s Crimestats system (more real-time allow alerts for crimes near you) – google mashup et al. See http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/

4. Embrace e-rulemaking technology – similar to federal rulemaking use technology to get ideas online and generate more participation for those who can’t show up in a meeting.

5. Require the Police Department to issue press credentials to bloggers.

6. Fund a few open-government lawsuits to expand the boundaries on access to public records (the law provides for attorney’s fees if the suit is successful).

7. Require city agencies to post the method for obtaining public records online. Require posting of all negative determinations on home pages.

8. At budget time, mandate that each agency provide statistics as determined by SOTF on sunshine responsiveness.

9. Require an assessment of sunshine compliance as a mandatory item for all Financial/Management audits.

10. Televise SOTF and Ethics Commission formal hearings.

11. Require active Ethics investigative files to be open.

12. Embrace fully the much-improved but incomplete example of posting online all interactions as part of large contract negotiations – as was partially done with TechConnect.

13. Host accounts payable/receivables online with the scanned images of invoices paid.

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Freedom of Information: A citizen’s guide to fighting secret government

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San Francisco has the best local sunshine law in the country — and there are still problems getting access to information. Even though the digital age in which we live affords government agencies with myriad ways to give citizens more access to public documents, there is too often little official will to create transparency. And often, bureaucrats are downright hostile to public scrutiny. But help is out there. This guide to local and national organizations offers a wide range of resources for journalists, citizen activists, and hell-raisers who want to track their tax money and hold their government accountable.

LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS


The California First Amendment Coalition is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to "promote and defend the people’s right to know" by improving compliance with state and federal access laws. CFAC’s Web site contains an archive of articles dealing with FOI issues, the texts of state FOI laws, and other useful resources. 534 Fourth St., Suite B, San Raphael, CA 94901. (415) 460-5060, cfac@cfac.org, www.cfac.org.

The California Newspaper Publishers Association is the umbrella organization to which most newspapers in the state belong, so it has an acute interest in open government. Its FOI Watch newsletter (also available online) includes a clearinghouse of sunshine news from around the state. 708 Tenth St., Sacramento, CA 95814. (916) 288-6015, tom@cnpa.com (general counsel Thomas Newton), www.cnpa.com.

Californians Aware, run by former CFAC general counsel Terry Francke, helps activists and organizations get access to public meetings and records and offers resources on the Web for citizens, public officials, journalists, and attorneys. 2218 Homewood Way, Carmichael, CA 95608. (916) 487-7000, info@calaware.org, www.calaware.org.

The Center for Investigative Reporting sponsors workshops on investigative techniques for journalists and university students. The center’s Web-based magazine provides FOI information, tips for journalists, and updates on past CIR investigations. 2927 Newbury St., Suite A, Berkeley, CA 94703. (510) 809-3160, center@cironline.org, www.muckraker.org.

The DataCenter provides on-call research, consultation, and referrals to justice organizations regarding FOI issues. It also offers research and action training. Services are free or on a sliding scale, depending on one’s ability to pay. 1904 Franklin St., Suite 900, Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 835-4692, ext. 376, www.datacenter.org.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online First Amendment organization, works to uphold digital free speech, empower the online public, and protect privacy on the Internet. It provides stories and alerts on its Web site, with daily updates. Effector, an e-mail newsletter, is available through the site. 454 Shotwell St., S.F., CA 94110. (415) 436-9333, information@eff.org, www.eff.org.

The First Amendment Project is a public interest law firm that provides legal representation, educational programs, and low-cost or free advice for journalists, public interest organizations, and individual citizens with public records and FOI-related issues. In a joint publication effort with the Society of Professional Journalists, the project offers three free pocket guides, on the Brown Act, California’s Open Meeting Law, and accessing court records. The Web page has information on using the California Public Records Act as well as on getting court records. 1736 Franklin St., 9th floor, Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 208-7744, fap@thefirstamendment.org, www.thefirstamendment.org.

Media Alliance is a nonprofit media center that offers classes on journalism skills, including how to find and use public records. 1904 Franklin St., Suite 500 Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 832-9000, information@media-alliance.org, www.media-alliance.org.

The Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, FOI Committee fights for open access to information and educates members of the public on FOI issues. The group provides a subscription e-mail list for journalists and others involved in FOI and First Amendment issues in California as well as putting on the James Madison FOI Awards. 222 Sutter St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108 (415) 321-1700, www.spj.org/norcal.

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS


The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information conducts research and educates the public in mass-media law and the First Amendment, including public access to government meetings and records and litigation information. University of Florida, College of Journalism and Communications, 3208 Weimer Hall, P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, FL 32611-8400. (352) 392-2273, www.jou.ufl.edu/brechner.

The Center for National Security Studies works with concerned citizens and groups to expose secret government policies and offers free assistance to those seeking records under the Freedom of Information Act. It also coordinates related litigation. 1120 19th St. NW, 8th floor, Washington, D.C. 20036. (202) 721-5650, cnss@cnss.org, www.cnss.org.

The FOIA Blog, created by an FOIA Washington attorney, has an updated list of documents currently being released by several government agencies infoprivacylaw@yahoo.com, www.thefoiablog.typepad.com.

The Freedom of Information Center of the University of Missouri School of Journalism has a collection of more than one million articles and documents about access to information at the local, state, and federal levels. The center works to ensure compliance with sunshine laws around the country. Its Web site contains links, updates, and tips on FOI inquiries. A free e-mail newsletter provides information on developments in FOI access and issues; you can sign up by contacting umcjourfoi@missouri.edu. University of Missouri, 133 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. (573) 882-5736, daviscn@missouri.edu, www.missouri.edu/~foiwww.

GovernmentDocs allows people to browse and search thousands of pages acquired through the FOIA and sunshine laws. Registered users can review and comment on documents. www.governmentdocs.org

GovTrack provides information on the U.S. Congress. It compiles information on federal legislation, voting records, and other congressional date and simplifies the language for ordinary citizens. It also indexes all bills, as well as changes to them, in Congress and all roll call votes www.govtrack.us.

Investigative Reporters and Editors provides educational services for investigative reporters and editors. The group’s Web site offers FOI-related resource guides, a database of FOI stories, tips for using the Freedom of Information Act, and a database of previous FOI requests. University of Missouri School of Journalism, 138 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. (573) 882-2042, www.ire.org

The National Freedom of Information Coalition is composed of First Amendment organizations dealing with FOI issues. It provides resources for the media, government officials, lawyers, and citizens who want access to public information. The coalition also offers seminars and workshops to media professionals, attorneys, academics, students, and the public on FOI issues and helps nurture start-up FOI groups and Internet sites. Its Web site offers links to relevant legislation and organizations state by state, as well as an Internet mailing list, FOI-L. 133 Neff Annex, Columbia, MO 65211. (573) 882-5736, cdavis@nfoic.org, www.nfoic.org.

OMB Watch is a member of the Public Access Working Group, a coalition of organizations promoting greater access to government information. OMB Watch offers an online newsletter, OMB Watcher, available on its Web site or by e-mail, which typically includes articles on FOI issues. To subscribe to the weekly e-mail version, e-mail join-ombwatcher@lyris.ombwatch.org. 1742 Connecticut NW, Washington, D.C. 20009. (202) 234-8494, www.ombwatch.org.

The Project on Government Secrecy is an advocacy and public education project of the Federation of American Scientists. The project has an extensive archive and provides regular news updates through its Web site and e-mail newsletter, Secrecy News. 1725 DeSales Street NW, 6th floor, Washington, D.C. 20036. (202) 454-4691, www.fas.org/sgp/index.htm.

Project Vote Smart provides information on local, state, and national candidates, including voting records, issue positions, campaign contributions, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. The database is accessible by calling the toll-free hotline at 1-888-VOTE-SMART. 1 Common Ground, Phillipsburg, MT 59858. (406) 859-8683 comments@vote-smart.org, www.vote-smart.org.

The Radio-Television News Directors Association is the world’s largest professional organization devoted to electronic journalism. It lobbies for cameras in courtrooms and strong FOI laws and provides coverage of FOI issues on its Web site. 1600 K St. NW, Suite 700, Washington, D.C. 20006. (202) 659-6510, www.rtnda.org.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press operates the 24-hour FOI Service Center at 1-800-336-4243 to answer emergency questions from journalists and others with open-records problems. 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1101, Arlington, VA 22209. (703) 807-2100, rcfp@rcfp.org, www.rcfp.org.

The Society of Professional Journalists advocates for open access to information and educates members of the public on FOI issues. The society’s Web site has an FOI section with extensive links to resources and information, including a list of FOI advocacy organizations. 3909 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46208. (317) 927-8000, questions@spj.org, www.spj.org.

State Sunshine and Open Records shares information, guidance and advice on developments and news about open records at the state and local level. They also have an extensive list of links to other sunshine blogs. www.openrecords.wordpress.com.

The Student Press Law Center works with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to cover FOI and other First Amendment issues reutf8g to high school and college journalists. It offers free advice, lawyer referrals, and analysis. 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209. (703) 807-1904, admin@splc.org, www.splc.org.

The Sunlight Foundation develops a database to ensure transparency in government and fiscal accountability. They digitize new info and provide access to existing information. 1818 N Street NW, Suite 410, Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 742-1520. www.sunlightfoundation.com.

WikiFOIA helps people understand the FOI Act on a state and federal level by providing a how-to-guide about open records requests, as well information on how to make that request. www.wikifoia.pbwiki.com.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND RESOURCES


The Guardian Web site has extensive information and links concerning international press-freedom issues. For details on journalists under fire, including frontline dispatches and reports from the battle to keep the world safe for journalists, go to www.sfbg.com/journalists/. For updates, dispatches, and links to national and international FOI groups, go to www.sfbg.com/FOI.

The UK FOI Blog provides a glimpse into how FOI issues are dealt with across the pond by listing news and developments on FOI in Great Britain. www.foia.blogspot.com.

Local government resources

The Government Information Center, on the fifth floor of the San Francisco Public Library’s Main Branch, stocks public documents published by the city. These include annual reports for committees and departments, minutes and agendas of official meetings, environmental impact reports, and city audits, ordinances, and resolutions. San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St., S.F., CA 94102. (415) 557-4500, www.sfpl.org.

The Oakland Public Ethics Commission responds to complaints and holds hearings on possible violations of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. Records, tapes of the commission’s meetings, agendas, and minutes can be picked up at the commission’s office. 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, 4th floor, Oakland, CA 94612. (510) 238-3593, ethicscommission@oaklandnet.com, www.oaklandnet.com/government/public_ethics/webpage.html.

The Office of Information and Privacy, U.S. Department of Justice, provides online versions of frequently requested records, opinions, policy statements, and guides to the Freedom of Information Act. The guides include detailed instructions for filing FOIA requests, average response times for different governmental offices, and a wealth of other useful information. The text of the FOIA is available on the office’s Web site. 1425 New York Ave., Suite 11050, Washington, D.C. 20530. (202) 514-3642, www.usdoj.gov/oip/oip.html.

Public Access to Court Electronic Records is an online database of court records and decisions. Web access is 8¢ a page, and requires registration through the Web at www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov. P.O. Box 780549, San Antonio, TX 78278. 1-800-676-6856, pacer@psc.uscourts.gov.

The San Francisco Ethics Commission monitors and enforces the Sunshine Ordinance and the city’s governmental-ethics, campaign-finance, and lobbyist-reporting laws. Individuals can file complaints regarding violations of the Sunshine Ordinance. The commission meets the second Monday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall, Room 408. 25 Van Ness, Suite 220, S.F., CA 94102. (415) 252-3100, ethics.commission@sfgov.org, www.sfgov.org/site/ethics_index.asp.

The San Francisco Law Library is open to the public, though only government officials, state bar members, and judges can check out items. Main reference library: Mon.-Fri., 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Veterans War Memorial Building, 401 Van Ness, Room 400, S.F. (415) 554-6821. Courthouse reference room: Mon.-Fri., 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 400 McAllister, Room 512, S.F. (415) 551-3647. Financial District branch: Mon.-Thurs., 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sun., noon-4 p.m., 685 Market St., Suite 420, S.F. (415) 882-9310, www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/sfll_index.asp.

The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force oversees compliance with San Francisco’s sunshine law by investigating complaints from individuals who believe city officials have withheld records or conducted meetings in violation of the law. The task force meets the fourth Tuesday of each month at 4 p.m. City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244 (meetings held in Room 408), S.F. For complaint forms and other information call (415) 554-7724 or go to http://www.sfgov.org/site/sunshine_index.asp

PUBLICATIONS


The California First Amendment Coalition publishes the California Journalist’s Legal Notebook, a handy guide to the legal issues surrounding telephone interviews, press passes, gags on sources, and other journalism-related topics ($36.25, $30.88 for CFAC members, shipping included). Also by CFAC is The New Brown Act: How the Open Meeting Law Has Been Revised ($12.75, $7.39 for CFAC members, shipping included). (415) 460-5060.

The Oakland Public Ethics Commission publishes a free brochure, How to Notice a Public Meeting under the Oakland Sunshine Ordinance and the Brown Act, useful for making sure a public meeting follows the requirements of the Brown Act. (510) 238-3593, (510) 238-6620, ethicscommission@Oaklandnet.com, www.oaklandnet.com/government/public_ethics/webpage.html.

Access to Courts and Court Records in California, Open Meeting Laws in California, and The California Public Records Act are free, convenient, quick-reference guides published by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, and the First Amendment Project. (510) 208-7744, www.thefirstamendment.org/freepress.html.

The ACLU Freedom of Information Project publishes Using the Freedom of Information Act: A Step-by-Step Guide (#4002, $3) and Your Right to Government Information (#1190, $5.95), which covers a broader range of topics, including how to get into public meetings. Both publications can be ordered online through the ACLU’s e-store or by phone. ACLU Publications, P.O. Box 4713, Trenton, NJ 08650-4713. 1-800-775-2258, www.aclu.org.

The Government Printing Office publishes The Freedom of Information Act Guide and Privacy Act Overview ($63), a 986-page guide to the FOIA produced by the Justice Department. It can be ordered by phone at 1-866-512-1800 or online at bookstore.gpo.gov. The Citizen’s Guide is available in its entirety online at www.fas.org/sgp/foia/citizen.html.

The Freedom of Information Clearinghouse Guidebook is a free brochure about making FOIA requests and appealing agency decisions. It’s available online through the Freedom of Information Clearinghouse. www.citizen.org/litigation/free_info/index.cfm.

Paper Trails: A Guide to Public Records in California ($12.89), written by Stephen Levine and Barbara Newcombe, is published by the Center for Investigative Reporting and supported by the California Newspaper Publishers Association. It can be ordered from the CIR. An abridged, online version is coming soon. 2927 Newbury St., Suite A, Berkeley,, CA 94703. (510) 809-3160, www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/

The fourth edition of the Investigative Reporters’ Handbook ($61, $51 for Investigative Reporters and Editors members), by Steve Weinberg, Brant Houston, and Len Bruzzese, is a comprehensive and accessible guide for novice and experienced journalists that shows how to locate and use more than 500 sources of public information. (573) 882-3364, www.ire.org/store/books.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press supplies a wealth of publications on public access and other First Amendment topics. How to Use the Federal FOI Act ($5) is a handbook on FOI rights, with instructions for appealing if your request is denied, and includes sample letters. The First Amendment Handbook ($7.50) is a journalist’s pocket guide to FOI issues. Two guides — Judicial Records: A Guide to Access ($3) and Access to Electronic Records ($5) — analyze state laws and decisions regarding access to legal records and government electronic data. Tapping Officials’ Secrets is a set of guides to state public records and open-meeting laws ($10 a state). The News Media and the Law is a quarterly magazine that includes updates on legislation pertinent to FOI ($30 a year for four issues). Some of these publications are available in their entirety online; all can be ordered online. 1-800-336-4243, www.rcfp.org.

The second edition of Law of the Student Press ($18) is a vital handbook for student newspapers. It’s extensively annotated but avoids legalese and tries to bring the law to life for students and educators. The Student Press Law Center also publishes Covering Campus Crime, Third Edition ($2) and the Student Press Law Center Report ($15 for three issues a year). (703) 807-1904, www.splc.org.

Citizen Muckraking: How to Investigate and Right Wrongs in Your Community ($9) offers advice on writing press releases, conducting interviews, and using the FOIA. The book, a collaborative effort by the Center for Public Integrity, is available through Common Courage Press. 1-800-497-3207, www.commoncouragepress.com

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