“In honor of gay pride, Supervisor Daly and Mayor Newsom will have makeup sex.” B3
Newsom
Remove Jew now
EDITORIAL Sup. Ed Jew should have resigned from the Board of Supervisors immediately after admitting to reporters that a May 18 FBI raid of his homes and offices recovered $40,000 in cash that he demanded from a constituent with regulatory issues.
Even if one believes his implausible story about intending to give the money to a playground project, Jew’s actions are still unethical, unseemly, and illegal. Politicians must never, under any circumstances, accept cash payments in exchange for services, and those who do belong in prison.
But he didn’t resign, choosing instead to put his personal ambition and stubborn refusal to take responsibility for his actions ahead of what’s best for the city and his constituents. Then, when public records and testimony from neighbors made it clear that Jew didn’t really live in District 4, as the law requires and as he declared in sworn statements under penalty of perjury, Jew should have been honest with the public instead of spinning still more elaborate and unbelievable lies. Again, he should have done the honorable thing and resigned.
But if the surreal rally his supporters staged June 15 at City Hall is any indication, Jew intends to keep fighting this until someone drags him from the building.
That’s what needs to happen now. It’s no longer about Jew but about whether a system designed to prevent these kinds of abuses works. People need to have their confidence in city government restored, and that requires immediate action by Mayor Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Jerry Brown, and the courts.
District Attorney Kamala Harris did her job when she investigated the residency issue and filed nine felony charges against Jew on June 12. City Attorney Dennis Herrera did his job when he set reasonable deadlines for Jew to prove his residency, then announced June 18 that he was pursuing action to remove Jew from office.
Now it’s Newsom’s turn. The time has come for him to do his job, and that means doing everything in his power to ensure that Jew is ejected from City Hall as soon as possible.
Same thing for Brown, who should immediately certify Herrera’s request to file a quo warranto lawsuit that would deem Jew unqualified for the office he holds and remove him. Whatever Superior Court judge gets the case should put this on the fast track and help give District 4 residents a qualified, reputable representative.
They don’t have that now. And until they do, there is a dark cloud hanging over City Hall that affects everyone inside. It’s time for Jew or the system to remove that cloud. *
More cops are not enough
EDITORIAL There was a telling trio of events June 13 that illustrated what’s wrong with the current debate over public safety issues in San Francisco and why real police reform is needed before we spend $33 million to bolster the ranks of the San Francisco Police Department, as Mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing.
Newsom and his supporters gathered on the steps of City Hall to blast a proposal by Sup. Chris Daly to remove from the budget an extra class of police cadets (which the SFPD will have a hard time even filling, given its recruiting problems) and make other changes, denouncing the supervisor for supposedly endangering city residents.
It was shrewd yet shortsighted politics for Newsom to grandstand on public safety. But it was also demagoguery. Newsom is playing to people’s fears, pandering to the Police Officers Association, and hoping that people won’t notice how little he’s done to actually make San Franciscans safer, something that simply dumping more cops into a dysfunctional system won’t help.
The murder rate has soared under Newsom, who never followed through on his promise to "change the culture at the SFPD," content to let this deeply troubled agency manage itself. Newsom opposed the requirement of police foot patrols, helped kill violence-prevention programs, watered down an early-intervention system for abusive officers, and sabotaged an innovative community policing plan. Instead, he simply throws money at the department, tells us how deeply he cares, and calls that a commitment to public safety.
On the evening of June 13, San Francisco once again experienced the price of this lack of leadership when four young men were shot in the Friendship Village public housing complex in the Western Addition, which the SFPD had promised to regularly patrol. To bring the tragic point home, there was another shooting at the same spot the next morning.
"Today I’m all over the mayor and all over the police chief and all over city agencies to give me a detailed plan," Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told Bay City News. As well he should be. For all its resources, the SFPD has yet to work with the community on a comprehensive plan for keeping it safe.
The SFPD’s wasteful overkill by cadres of do-nothing officers gets displayed for all time and again: at peace marches, street fairs (particularly last year’s Halloween in the Castro, where hordes of cops standing around doing nothing failed to catch the guy who shot nine people), and now Critical Mass, where the 40 cops who accompany it seem to have no plan for managing the event and refuse to even take reports when cars hit bikes.
How are more cops going to help this problem? What we need is real reform, but unfortunately, Newsom and his allies keep trying to give this department more authority and resources without asking for anything in exchange.
Case in point: a charter amendment by Sup. Sean Elsbernd that was heard June 13 at the Police Commission meeting. In the name of reducing the commission’s disciplinary backlog and improving officer morale, Elsbernd proposed gutting civilian police oversight by handing the police chief much of the power now held by the commission and the Office of Citizen Complaints. The proposal was blasted by the OCC and the American Civil Liberties Union as a giant step backward.
Elsbernd tells us he’s working with those groups to maintain civilian oversight while accomplishing his goal of allowing the commission to focus on big policy issues rather than individual disciplinary actions. We’re not sure that’s possible without the establishment of a new body or substantially more resources going to the underfunded OCC.
But we do share his goal of creating an open, public dialogue about the SFPD within an agency that has the authority to implement reforms. Newsom has been unwilling to facilitate a frank public discussion of the SFPD’s practices, where they can be improved, and how much money the department really needs to do the job we want it to do.
Maybe the Police Commission, under progressive new chair Theresa Sparks, is just the place to talk about real police reform. *
Jew-Ting-Sandoval triple play?
By Steven T. Jones
I’ve been sitting on this tip/rumor for a week and I’m increasingly led to believe it’s true — plus, I mentioned it last night on the City Desk NewsHour television show — so I’m just going to throw it out there: we hear that the Mayor’s Office is considering a plan to replace Sup. Ed Jew with Assessor Phil Ting, then move Sup. Gerardo Sandoval into the Assessor’s post and appoint an ally into Sandoval’s Dist. 11 seat. The move — reminiscent of his triple play that put Sean Elsbernd on the board — would break away a semi-regular progressive vote and give the mayor an additional vote on the board.
I’ve contacted all the principals and only heard back so far from a representative for Ting, who told me, “He has not been talking to the mayor about this.” But his name continues to be dropped in the Chronicle and elsewhere as a possible Jew replacement. Sandoval hasn’t returned my calls or e-mails, which seems fishy, and he ran for the job last time so it’s clear that he wants it.
I’ll add comments to this post as I hear back from the mayor’s office or otherwise get more information. And if you have any additional info or speculation who Newsom would appoint to the D11 seat, please post as well.
How to remove Jew
Photo by Charles Russo
By Steven T. Jones
Why can’t all of Ed Jew’s persecutors just get along? And who is going to finally force the hopelessly tarnished supervisor from office: City Attorney Dennis Herrera, District Attorney Kamala Harris, Attorney General Jerry Brown, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office, Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Ethics Commission, or the Board of Supervisors? Those are just a couple of the many questions that I’ve been seeking answers to over the last few days as I interviewed people close to the case and read the relevant documents, including the voluminous criminal complaint.
What I’ve discovered is that while Harris may have leapfrogged past Herrera (whose deadline for Jew to comply with his requests for information and an interview is tomorrow) and the feds into the lead role, it’s an open question whether her criminal case will convince a jury to convict on most counts, and if there is a conviction, whether Jew will still be a sitting supervisor by then.
Reform the recall
EDITORIAL The Board of Supervisors — and the very notion of representative democracy — is under attack in San Francisco.
As city editor Steven T. Jones reported in last week’s paper ("Hazy Recall") and on our Politics blog ("Connect the Recall Dots"), a recall campaign has targeted Sup. Jake McGoldrick, citing his advocacy of car-free spaces in Golden Gate Park and a bus rapid-transit initiative that recall advocates believe district residents oppose.
Behind its claims of being a grassroots effort with legitimate concerns about McGoldrick’s leadership are some troubling indicators that there’s a lot more to this than potential petition signers might realize. The campaign’s biggest financial contributions come from the Residential Builders Association (which has long battled McGoldrick over conditions and restrictions he’s tried to place on developers) and the conservative property rights group Small Property Owners of San Francisco.
The lion’s share of the $24,000 raised so far has gone to Johnny K. Wang’s JKW Political Consulting. Among JKW’s other clients are the reelection campaign of Mayor Gavin Newsom (who would get to appoint McGoldrick’s successor, and whom the supervisor publicly criticized over Newsom’s sex scandal), Google and Earthlink (which Newsom wants to build a wireless Internet system for the city, a deal McGoldrick has taken the lead in scrutinizing), and malevolent downtown player Citizens for Reform Leadership (an attack group created by Newsom treasurer Jim Sutton).
It’s no surprise that Newsom and his downtown allies would want to knock off McGoldrick or any of the progressive supervisors who have been effectively setting the city’s agenda for at least the past two years. In fact, critics of the board have now launched another recall campaign, against board president Aaron Peskin, as well as a lower-level effort against Sup. Chris Daly. And this follows an unsuccessful 2004 effort to recall Sup. Sophie Maxwell, which had some behind-the-scenes support from downtown attack dog Wade Randlett.
None of these four supervisors have committed the acts of corruption, incompetence, or gross malfeasance for which the tool of the recall was created. Instead, people are trying to recall McGoldrick, Peskin, and Daly simply for being effective legislators with whom some of their more conservative constituents disagree.
This is an outrageous and dishonest abuse of the recall. Newsom should immediately and publicly express his opposition to the recall campaigns, and citizens of the district should refuse to sign the petitions. But that’s not enough. It’s time for the Board of Supervisors to consider placing a charter amendment on the ballot that would reform the way recalls are handled in the city, which is far more lenient than under state law.
The San Francisco signature threshold of 10 percent of registered voters is ridiculously low, particularly for district-elected supervisors, for whom only about 3,500 signatures are needed. Statewide, the standard is 20 percent of registered voters, and that should be our standard as well.
Raising the signature threshold is particularly important given the advantage that downtown interests have in recalling supervisors. The City Charter treats recall campaigns like ballot measures, allowing for huge political contributions rather than the $500 limits applied to candidates. This is grossly unfair to truly grassroots groups and should also be changed to cap contributions at $500.
Finally, we should remove the temptation for allies of the mayor to use the recall as a way of undoing popular elections and giving more power to the mayor. Most recall elections in California entail the replacement of a successfully recalled official by a vote of the people (as we saw when Gov. Gray Davis was recalled), but in San Francisco, the mayor chooses the successor. That needs to change.
Too often these days, the recall is a weapon wielded recklessly by wealthy special interests to subvert the true will of the people. By setting reasonable financial contribution limits, creating a high but still attainable signature threshold, and making the recall more democratic, San Francisco can once again make the recall an honorable — and seldom used — tool of the people. *
Newsom goes to war
By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom — or at least his reelection campaign — appears to have finally woken up from two years of relative disengagement with city business to come out swinging at his favorite target, Sup. Chris Daly, who chairs the Budget Committee. The awakening began last week when Newsom responded to Daly’s proposal to tinker with his budget by tartly labeling the move the “worst kind of election-year politics and terrible public policy.” That opening salvo was ramped up today by calls to arms by the Newsom campaign and his favorite press minion. At issue is a legitimate, significant difference in policy priorities: should the city be putting more resources into the Police Department and street cleaning and repair, as Newsom proposed, or programs to create more affordable housing and stave off health care cuts, as Daly wants.
Budget hearings are designed to sort through these very choices, but the atmosphere has now been poisoned by election year politics and the nasty deceptions that can bring out.
Revealed: Sup. Ammiano’s joke of the day
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Tom Ammiano is a supervisor who happens to be a standup comedian on occasion. Or, depending on your point of view, he is a standup comedian who happens to be a supervisor. As people know who call his private home phone, he puts up a political joke almost every day on his answering machine.
Monday: “Mayor Newsom says he is a progressive. I guess rehab really works.”
Friday: “Ed Jew under house arrest? What house?”
Alas, for understandable reasons, Ammiano doesn’t give out his home phone number, so people just can’t call in and get their daily dose of Ammianoism. But I will make the call for you on occasion and try to put the best of Ammiano on my blog. Hear any good political jokes lately? Pass them along. B3
Connect the recall dots
Consultant Johnny K. Wang
By Steven T. Jones
The political consultant handling the recall campaign against Sup. Jake McGoldrick, Johnny K. Wang’s JKW Consulting, has a client list that is raising questions about the real motives behind bumping off McGoldrick. For starters, there’s the reelection campaign of Mayor Gavin Newsom, who would get to appoint the replacement. Then there’s Google and Earthlink, which Newsom wants to contract with to provide free wireless Internet service to city residents, a deal that McGoldrick has taken the lead in scrutinizing. Finally, there’s a pair of malevolent downtown players, Citizens for Reform Leadership (an attack group created by Newsom moneyman Jim Sutton) and the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group (which represented the big downtown hotels that locked out their workers instead of bargaining with them in good faith). And this is the campaign about which co-chair Keith Wilson said, “This is not being funded by downtown money, this is a grassroots indigenous effort.” Sure, an effort that just happens to dovetail perfectly with downtown interests.
Cab it forward
› news@sfbg.com
GREEN CITY Eight San Francisco cabbies fed up with their money-devouring gas guzzlers have founded a taxi company that is friendly to the environment and to workers.
Green Cab hit the streets April 25, flaunting its ideology with bright paint jobs. The driver-owned cooperative has about 14 drivers and three hybrid vehicles, and it plans to purchase two more cars next month.
"We’re the only cab company in San Francisco where every driver is going to have an opportunity to participate in the decision-making process," cofounder Mark Gruberg, a taxi driver of 20 years, said. "We’re driver owned and driver operated."
The business is blazing a trail that others may soon follow if Mayor Gavin Newsom realizes the goal he announced last October of having all SF taxis be clean and green by 2011. On June 12 the San Francisco Taxicab Commission will discuss ways of meeting this goal of, in a sense, transitioning the city’s cabs from yellow to green — or at least greenish. Of the 1,351 taxis in 34 fleets that operate in the city, there are 140 Crown Victorias that run on compressed natural gas (CNG), which is made mostly from the greenhouse gas methane, and 40 hybrids, most of which are Ford SUVs. By October of this year, another 25 alternative-fuel or hybrid taxis are expected to be on the streets.
Heidi Machen, executive director of the Taxicab Commission, told us that taxis are required to be replaced after they’ve clocked 350,000 miles. On April 24 the commission decided to hold off on a policy that, she said, "would have restricted any replacement vehicles to be hybrid or alternative-fuel vehicles."
A key reason the policy was not approved, Machen said, was concern that the replacement alternative-fuel vehicles would be mostly those that run on CNG, which burns more cleanly than gasoline but still produces greenhouse gases and gives vehicles worse fuel efficiency than hybrids have. "[CNG] is an improvement, but only an improvement over something terrible to start with," Gruberg said.
Hybrids, unlike purely gas-powered vehicles, have engines that switch to electric power when the cars are stationary due to, for instance, traffic jams or stoplights. According to Gruberg, hybrids get about 40 miles to the gallon for city driving — a drastic improvement over the 12 mpg of standard Crown Victorias. Hybrids emit 13 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every 30 miles they drive, compared with the 40 pounds that Crown Victorias produce.
So, besides hybrids, what’s the next efficient upgrade to the Green Cab fleet: Hydrogen? Electric? Biodiesel? "We’re open to anything that’s going to have beneficial effects to the environment," Gruberg said, adding that the company’s always looking for more ideas — and envirofriendly car donations.
Joe Mirabile, another Green Cab cofounder, emphasized the urgency of the company’s role in fighting or at least lessening the adverse effects of global warming.
"We have to move fast," Mirabile said. "Hybrids aren’t going to do everything, but they’re one small piece of the puzzle."
At its next meeting the Taxicab Commission will discuss possible monetary incentives, such as a higher gate fee, to make it easier for cab companies to purchase green vehicles. Newsom press secretary Nathan Ballard also told us that grant money is the key to putting more Priuses on the street.
"The Mayor has made a commitment to seek additional grant funding at the federal, state and regional levels to help taxi companies finance the more expensive vehicles," Ballard wrote in response to Guardian questions.
But even if Newsom can’t get those grants or otherwise fails to meet his goal, at least San Franciscans have Green Cab, which Gruberg said has been getting 50 to 60 customers per day and lots of goodwill from passersby. "People will wave and honk in the street," Gruberg said. "They’ll come up to the window and say, ‘How can I support you?’ A lot of drivers are asking if they can work for the company. Why wouldn’t they? Instead of paying $40 to $50 a day for gas, they can be paying $10 to $15." Machen likewise expressed her enthusiasm for the growing fleet.
"[Green Cab] is a business model," she said. "They show the direction the industry is going and the direction San Francisco is going." *
Comments, ideas, and submissions for Green City, the Guardian‘s weekly environmental column, can be sent to news@sfbg.com.
The fate of District 4
EDITORIAL Sup. Ed Jew may be able to explain the $40,000 cash in his safe to federal prosecutors. He may be able to convince the authorities that he did nothing illegal when he personally took payment for work that a permit expediter did and kept half the money for so-far-undefined community improvements. Those are criminal issues and a matter for the feds, Jew’s lawyer, and possibly a judge and jury. And while we agree with Sup. Chris Daly — it sure looks terrible — Jew is innocent until proven guilty.
His residence is something else.
The daily papers have produced enough evidence over the past few weeks to raise real doubts about whether Jew actually lives at the address he listed on his voter registration and candidacy forms. By law, he had to be a resident of the district 30 days before he filed for supervisor, but the water service at his 28th Avenue house had been turned off for four months before he announced his candidacy. Current water records show very little use. Neighbors have said the house has been vacant for some time.
So either Jew comes and goes at very odd hours, never sees his neighbors, and doesn’t shower or wash dishes at home, or he’s got a real problem. City Attorney Dennis Herrera has asked Jew to submit proof by June 8 that he is a resident of District 4, but there’s no reason the supervisor should wait for that deadline. He needs to immediately make public his home address and provide evidence to the voters of his district that he’s actually a resident. And if he can’t do that, then he ought to save the city and the district a long legal battle and simply step down.
Under the City Charter, the mayor has the authority to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors, although the person appointed has to face the voters at the next regularly scheduled election. If Jew leaves office soon, it’s likely that both Gavin Newsom and his appointee will be on the November ballot.
And right now, the odds are that Newsom will appoint the man he endorsed and campaigned for last November — Doug Chan. That would be a mistake. As we reported in "PG&E’s Candidates" (10/25/06), Chan is an attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. His firm, Chan, Doi, and Leal, received more than $200,000 in legal fees from PG&E in 2005 and 2006, and as a partner, Chan received at least $10,000 of that (according to his own disclosure forms). If Newsom appointed him, Chan would be the first supervisor in modern history who directly received income from PG&E. At a time when the city is moving toward a public power system and is already involved in millions of dollars’ worth of litigation with PG&E, that would be an unacceptable conflict.
Besides, the voters have already had something to say on the question. Chan finished fourth in the balloting last fall, behind Jew, Ron Dudum, and Jaynry Mak. Dudum, who is far too conservative for our taste, was the first runner-up — but there were four Asian candidates in the race, and together they far outpolled him. So there’s a good case for appointing an Asian to this seat.
We endorsed Mak in the race, and we still think she would be the best of the candidates who ran in 2006 — and if the mayor wants to go beyond that field and find someone new, he’ll have to make a strong case for defying the will of the voters. 2
Beyond the Progressive Convention
EDITORIAL The Progressive Convention didn’t produce a candidate for mayor, which wasn’t really a surprise: by the time the show opened, it was pretty clear that none of the leading contenders was ready to enter the race that day. And that, of course, will give the mainstream news media plenty of opportunity to say that the San Francisco left is disorganized, discouraged, and unable to mount a challenge to Mayor Gavin Newsom.
But Sup. Chris Daly actually did a very positive thing in pulling this event together. It wasn’t a nominating convention and never should have been, but it did serve as a reminder of the large and growing number of ideas, activists, and elected officials that make up that amorphous bloc known as the San Francisco progressives.
Daly, in a closing speech, noted that he’s heard over and over again how weak the movement is, but reminded the 400 or so attendees that "the state of the progressive movement is strong." Progressives control the Board of Supervisors and the school board. More than half the elected officials in the city generally fit under the progressive banner. And of the successful policy initiatives that have come out of this city in the past two years, almost none were from the Mayor’s Office.
Ten years ago, this event couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened. The city was stuck under the tight rule of a political machine, and only a handful of elected officials dared defy the kingpin, Willie Brown. Although the progressives have come a long, long way, winning a citywide race for mayor when the incumbent has soaring approval ratings and an essentially endless supply of money still isn’t an easy task. So it’s no surprise that there aren’t many takers.
In fact, there are some on the left who argue that it’s best to just give Newsom a pass and focus on the next round of supervisorial elections, in 2008. But that would be a mistake.
For starters, we’re still not convinced of Newsom’s invulnerability. The mayor may have great PR, but he has a lousy record. The city’s facing a long list of serious problems, from the murder rate to the Muni meltdown, and Newsom has done almost nothing to address them. The right candidate could mount a real challenge.
And even if it’s a long shot, San Francisco needs a mayor’s race. Newsom has gone into hiding of late; he won’t face the press, won’t appear before the supervisors to answer questions, and holds only farcical community meetings where all the questions are planted or screened ahead of time. A challenge would force him into the open and give the voters a chance to hold him accountable.
If it’s done right, a campaign could energize the legions of disenfranchised and create the sort of momentum the progressives need to retain control of the Board of Supervisors next year. And it would ensure that the left turn out for the election in November — which will be crucial if some downtown-backed initiatives and an attempt to recall Sup. Jake McGoldrick are on the ballot.
It’s late, and it’s getting very late for a candidate to enter the race, but there’s still a short window of time. Former supervisor Matt Gonzalez is still thinking about a run, and if he’s going to do it, he should be talking now to some of the progressives whose support he’ll need. Frankly, he has some fence-mending to do from his last race and from his decision to leave the board, and he should start that now.
We still think Ross Mirkarimi ought to run, and despite his official reluctance, he still can. A win would shake up city hall like nothing in years; a loss might still position the supervisor well to try again when Newsom is termed out. Daly at this point has taken himself out for family reasons, which is understandable — but he could also mount a strong campaign.
In his convention speech, Mirkarimi kept saying that "somebody" needs to take on the mayor. Ross, Matt, Chris … we’re waiting. *
Budget battle brews
By Steven T. Jones
Mayor Gavin Newsom may be content with a “back to basics budget” that focuses on clearing the streets of trash, potholes, and poor people, but progressives are preparing to push for a more forward-thinking plan that addresses low-income housing and other long-term needs. Supervisors Chris Daly and Tom Ammiano (both of whom sit on the Budget Committee) today introduced a measure to restore some of Newsom’s proposed cuts to health services and the $33 million in board-approved affordable housing spending that Newsom blocked last month. Daly put out a statement today saying, “When Gavin Newsom claimed he couldn’t build affordable housing, because the City didn’t have the money, he was lying to the people of San Francisco. The money is available. It is only a matter of priorities.”
Image from www.onerinconhill.com
San Francisco has built lots of million-dollar condos on Newsom’s watch, but almost no affordable housing, a situation that threatens the city’s socioeconomic makeup.
The convention was no bust
Run, Ross, Run
By Tim Redmond
No, we didn’t walk away with a candidate for mayor, and yes, that was disappointing to a lot of us. I actually thought for a brief moment that the chants of “Run Ross Run” as Sup. Mirkarimi took the stage late in the day would make a difference, that he would realize he has a constituency and that running for mayor would be a good move for him politically, but that didn’t happen. After a strong speech proclaiming that “somebody” has to take on Gavin Newsom, Mirkarimi made clear that it wasn’t going to be him.
And Chris Daly, who had at one point said that he would run if noboby else did, bowed to the reality of the fact that he has a young child and another on the way, and took a pass.
But overall, the convention was uplifting, inspiring and productive. Whatever the daily papers may say, Daly made the right point at the end: The state of the progressive moment in San Francisco is strong. Progressives control the Board of Supervisors, the School Board, and a number of other top positions; half of the elected officials in San Francisco now put themselves under the progressive banner, Daly noted.
And the green and blue baloons and beads represented what could be a very hopeful future trand — the left wing of the Democratic party and the Green party, working together on what is for most a shared aganda.
We ought to do this sort of thing more often.
A few great moments:
The good side of Daly for Mayor
By Tim Redmond
Late this afternoon, I’m hearing rumblings that Ross Mirkarimi is, indeed, reconsidering his options and might possibly be considering a mayor run, after all. Maybe he’ll show up at the convention tomorrow and announce. I’m only talking rumors here; I can’t reach Mirkarimi himself, and he has come pretty close to ruling himself out in the past few weeks. It would be a big change of mind.
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that Ross would be one of my top choices for mayor. But if he doesn’t run, and Chris Daly does, well … my previous blog item notwithstanding (as the lawyers say), I want to go out on a limb here and point out some of the positive things that could come out of that campaign.
Just off the top of my head:
1. It sure would be lively. Daly’s a fighter; he has a temper and sometimes says things (and does things) that are a bit impolitic, but he wouldn’t back down and wouldn’t give Newsom even a little break.
2. He’s good on all the issues. Daly’s a real left-progressive, and (unlike Newsom) he actually cares about, and talks about, and works on, issues of poverty, inequality and injustice.
3. He’s a Democrat, which means Democratic party loyalists like Carole Migden wouldn’t be able to duck the race or side with Newsom on the basis of party affiliation. Migden might even endorse him.
4. In fact, a lot of people who try to walk a middle line and still be called progresisves would have to make a bright-line choice here. Daly v. Newsom; it don’t get much more basic than that.
5. Daly complains all the time that he hates being a politician, but the truth is, he has a future in this town. He’s young and bright and will be a serious candidate for higher office in the future. A good run in the mayor’s race this year could set him up for future campaigns.
6. Just imagine if he won.
Criminals of poverty
OPINION The morning I got out of jail, I walked through the icelike streets of Oakland touching ivy and running my fingers along the sides of buildings and cars and the trunks of trees. It wasn’t that I had forgotten how they felt. It was just that knowing that these things were still there, even when I wasn’t, helped to ease the shudder, the ache, and the tension that were now permanently lodged in my head.
Due to some extremely innovative legal work by a local civil rights attorney, I was given a chance to write as a way of working off my several thousand dollars of fines and months of jail time for crimes of poverty. In my and my poor mixed-race mama’s case, this was for the sole act of being homeless in the United States — a citable offense.
The most recent invention in the march toward increasing the criminalization of poverty in San Francisco is Mayor Gavin Newsom’s proposed Community Courts — or what the Coalition on Homelessness so aptly renamed poverty courts.
These courts would focus on status crimes — crimes like the ones I was charged with not so many years ago, crimes that are unavoidable for people who are poor and living on the streets.
These courts represent a further step toward the permanent criminalization of poor and homeless people, disguised as a more compassionate approach to so-called quality-of-life issues.
But the reason this is inane and a serious waste of resources is that no amount of punishment will ever succeed in lifting people out of poverty.
As a youth raised in a houseless family who was cited and arrested countless times for the act of sleeping in our broken-down vehicle, I was given referrals to community service agencies for several thousand hours of community service (free work), none of which I could ever complete, which then led to jail sentences and a criminal record — yet I was never offered housing. Instead I was continually criminalized for the fact that we didn’t have housing or the money to acquire it.
The proposed price tag for the poverty courts is $1.3 million. That’s money that could be funding permanent housing, mental health services, and drug treatment that would actually improve the quality of life for poor people.
The information gathered by the Coalition on Homelessness and Poor magazine indicates that the city plans to redline a portion of the poorest neighborhood in San Francisco (the Tenderloin), and any sleeping, sitting, vending, camping, graffiti, and prostitution tickets received in this area will be sent to a special court.
This is consistent with the massive increase in sweeps, arrests, and citations of homeless folks since Newsom came to office.
My writing–media production assignment was eventually completed, albeit slowly, while I lived through the devastating experience of being a youth in a homeless family. Had I not received this innovative work-around, I would not have made it out of the criminal injustice system and in the end would not have made it out alive. *
Tiny
Tiny, a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, is the cofounder of Poor magazine and PoorNewsNetwork and the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing up Homeless in America.
A chance to end police secrecy
EDITORIAL There’s still a chance to restore sunshine to police disciplinary records, but it’s going to take strong and visible support from public officials around the Bay Area.
A bill authored by Sen. Gloria Romero (D–Los Angeles), SB 1019, would allow the public limited access to hearings and reports on police misconduct. That’s nothing new; the San Francisco Police Commission has held disciplinary hearings in public for years. But a 2006 state Supreme Court decision, Copley v. Superior Court, barred that practice, giving peace officers a stunning and unprecedented level of protection from public oversight.
All the Romero bill would do is restore the law to where it was pre-Copley. It makes perfect sense: cops have immense authority and power, and when they abuse it, the public loses faith in the law enforcement process. As San Francisco sheriff Mike Hennessey points out in a letter supporting SB 1019, shedding some light on the system and ensuring that officers who are suspended or terminated for misconduct can’t avoid public scrutiny "will help law enforcement by allowing it to inform the public that internal discipline within public safety agencies is a serious matter and that steps are being taken to maintain that discipline."
Assemblymember Mark Leno (D–San Francisco) tried earlier this year to overturn the Copley decision, but his bill was bottled up in the Assembly Committee on Public Safety. Even his San Francisco colleague, Fiona Ma, wouldn’t vote in favor of the bill. Romero, the Senate majority leader, has done a bit better: SB 1019 squeaked through the Public Safety Committee on a 3–2 vote and is now headed for the Senate floor.
The vote there will be close too: the police secrecy lobby has pulled out all the stops to fight this, and even Democrats in Sacramento are afraid of offending police organizations. That’s why it’s important that community leaders around the Bay stand up and make clear that this is a bill with broad-based support.
The San Francisco Police Commission has endorsed it, as have the San Francisco supervisors. The city councils of Oakland and Berkeley are on record as supporting it. But we haven’t heard from Mayor Gavin Newsom or Oakland mayor Ron Dellums; both need to speak out in favor of the bill and let Romero know that she has their support.
Sen. Leland Yee told us he fully supports the bill; so does Sen. Carole Migden. So far, though, Don Perata, the State Senate president pro tem who represents Berkeley and Oakland — cities that have long-established police oversight agencies — hasn’t take a position. He needs to not only endorse the bill but use the considerable power of his office to push for its passage. Every vote will count on this one, and Perata’s constituents should let him know that they’re watching. *
It’s the environment, stupid
› paulr@sfbg.com
You must be a pretty good orator if you can bewitch a roomful of people who can’t understand a word you’re saying — except for, perhaps, your incantatory "stupido!"s while discussing America’s many foolish agricultural policies — and by this standard Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, is a pretty good orator. He held a media crowd rapt at a lunch recently at Greens, the point of which gathering was to proclaim the advent of Slow Food Nation a year hence at Fort Mason. Dutifully I cheer and huzzah the news, though I continue to think the word "slow" is all wrong for this country. In America, "slow" means "stupid" — or, as Petrini and his fellow Italians would say, "stupido."
"Stupido" — operatic accent on the first syllable — is great fun to say, much more fun than "biodiesel," which seemed to be Mayor Gavin Newsom’s mantra as he addressed the same crowd in its native English. Why, you ask, would the mayor be discussing biodiesel at a food-related gathering? Was he planning to haul away some of the restaurant’s used cooking oil for use in Muni buses? Or was he reminding us of the deeper political tectonics at work beneath Slow Food? Food is politics, and a rising theme in politics these days is the fate of the earth itself.
Newsom, despite the travails of the past few months, looked like one of the youngest people in the room — the man with the most tomorrows in the bank. The likelihood is that most of his political career is still ahead of him, and what does a politician of his age see when scanning the prospect? Crisis, of course, since that is the nature of politics and indeed of human beings, but crisis of a new sort, one in which the livability of this globe and the survival of its inhabitants can no longer be assumed. The younger you are, the more acutely you sense that the consequences of our poor planetary stewardship will make your stay here less pleasant — and maybe to suppose that biomass fuels and sustainable agriculture are important pieces of the same big puzzle.
I love slow food by any name, and I am older than the mayor by more years than please me, but on the matter of ecopolitics: faster is better.