obama

Progressives, labor, grassroots win in May 18 primaries

Zelda Bronstein
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Progressives, labor, grassroots win in May 18 primaries

Forget all the talk of anti-incumbent (and by implication, anti-Democrat and anti-Obama) sentiment in the electorate. The primaries May 18, which I talk about here, actually sent a much more interesting message.


Yes, there was the election of Rand Paul, who is about as looney as they come , but Republicans have nominated looneys before. What’s interesting is that in most contested Democratic races, the more progressive candidate won. Randy Shaw points out that CNN had it all wrong, and refuses to acknowledge what actually happened. The Chron actually notes (in one of the few intelligent MSM post-election pieces) that labor, particularly the AFL-CIO, won big in Pennsylvania and Arkansas. In the only open house seat, the Democrats won.


In the Democratic primary in Kentucky, the more progressive candidate won. In Pennsylvania, the more progressive Democrat won. In Arkansas, a Democrat in name only is facing a runoff she might lose.


So the progressives and the grassroots organizers can get people to the polls — if there’s a candidate to vote for. What Nancy Pelosi needs right now is a good national issue to run on. Electoral reform, for example.

Immigration 101: Out of the mouth of babes

Mary Magee
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The Internet is abuzz with the news that a second-grader asked Michelle Obama about immigration during a visit to a Washington-area school–and in the process revealed that her mother is here without paperwork.

“My mom said, I think that she says that, Barack Obama is going to take away everybody that doesn’t have papers,” Margarita Zavala said.

“Yeah well that’s something that we have to work on, right?” the first lady replied. “To make sure that people can be here with the right kind of papers, right? That’s exactly right.”

“But, my mom doesn’t have any,” Zavala replied.

So, what will happen now that everybody in the world knows that Margarita’s mom is here without legal paperwork?

A) The feds descend on the Zavala household and slap an electronic monitoring bracelet on Margarita’s mother’s ankle, until they determine if she is deportable?

B) The Arizona-inspired alien-bashers cite Margarita’s mother as one more example of what is wrong with Obama’s administration, if the feds don’t haul her off pronto?

C) Margarita puts a human face on the people (and their kids) who are being terrorized by Arizona-style policies and helps the Obama administration move ahead with overdue immigration reform?

I don’t know what will happen. But I do know that it’s easy to rant about “illegal aliens” when they’re not your mother, the woman who tucks you into bed each night and helps you get to school on time, so you can open your mouth and speak truth to power.

Sheriff: ICE referrals will leap from 2,000 to 40,000

Mary Magee
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There was a strong showing of supervisors, activists and community members at today’s rally to urge San Francisco to opt out of the Secure Communities Initiative, an automated fingerprint screening system that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to switch on, in San Francisco on June 1—just two weeks ago.

The program links local law enforcement agencies to the Department of Homeland Security’s biometric system through interoperability agreements with each state. Scott Lorigan in the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information reportedly signed such an agreement with John P. Torres, acting assistant Secretary of ICE, over a year ago, on April 10, 2009. And according to ICE, As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states:

In California, the system has already been activated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura.But as speakers pointed out at today’s rally, the supervisors and the communities they represent would not have even known that this system was about to go live in San Francisco, had it not been for San Francisco Sheriff Mike Hennessey, who spoke out after ICE informed local law enforcement agencies about the program three weeks ago.

Eric Quezada of Mission-based Dolores Street Community Services kicked off the rally with a rousing speech in which he warned that this “draconian Policy” was happening in the “shadow of Arizona.

Sup. Eric Mar warned that ICE’s proposed program will not make communities more safe.
”It was developed in the dead of night,” Mar said. “The police-ICE entanglement will hurt our communities and tear families apart.”

The Bush administration introduced the Secure Communities Initiative in March 2008. But as Mar observed, it is now being expanded under President Obama.“Many people accused of minor crimes will see families torn apart,” Mar said, citing statistics to show that  “90 percent of those IDed have been arrested for minor, less severe crimes.

“The shadow of Arizona is starting to cover other cities,” Mar continued. “We can’t let Arizona come to SF.”

Sheriff Hennessey told the crowd that he had written to California Attorney General Jerry Brown asking for his assistance in opting San Francisco out of the ICE program.“The Sheriff already has the authority to report foreign born folks charged with serious  felonies,” Hennessey explained.

In a May 18 letter to AG Jerry Brown, Hennessey wrote that he believed that Brown’s agency “has the technological capability to isolate by agency the information linked to ICE.”

““I ask that you isolate transactions from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department because Secure Communities conflicts with local laws,” the Sheriff continued. “My department already has a system in place that reports individuals to ICE and I do not wish it to be replaced by Secure Communities.”

Hennessey also expressed concern about the unintended consequences of ICE technology interfacing with that of the Department of Justice’s fingerprint database, which also holds fingerprints collected for non-criminal justice purposes such as employment applications. And he warned that the number of ICE referrals could explode under the new system.
Under this system, we’ll be fingerprinting 35,000-40,000 persons annually, “ Hennessey said. “I think that’s excessive.”

Currently the Sheriff’s Dept. reports foreign-born individuals arrested on a felony crime or found during the booking process to have a felony of a previous ICE contact in their criminal histories.

‘Since 2007, the department has delivered more than 3,100 individuals to ICE, and has reported at least twice that number,” Hennessey wrote. “I would like to keep system that way.”

At the rally, Hennessey warned that the new system will widen excessively to include folks who were charged with misdemeanors, infractions and traffic violations, but failed to show up in court.

“ICE has a record of secrecy. They won’t tell me what happened to folks they picked up, they won’t say if they are still in custody, been released or deported,” Hennessey said.

Sup. John Avalos said the Secure Communities Initiative is yet another example of why the nation needs comprehensive immigration reform.
“I don’t know if we have the ability to opt out, there are a lot of obstacles in our oath, right now.”

But he warned that the nation is passing laws that “stand at odds” with the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights “And we have rogue departments in the Obama administration, “ Avalos added. “ I consider ICE a rogue department. “
 
Rev. Phillip Lawson, a retired Methodist minister said he wanted to stand in solidarity with “resident aliens”.
“As black people, we know what it’s like to be aliens in our own land. And this enlarges the net of ICE. We will soon not be able to tell any difference between the police and ICE. And no one will trust the police.”

“I give thanks to the courage of folks here for instituting this attempt to say, no we will not cooperate…And we can also resist the law.”

Sup. David Campos, who provided much leadership in the last two years around the city’s sanctuary legislation, thanked Hennessey for blowing the whistle.

“None of us would have known this was happening,” Campos said. “This is the time for all San Francisco’s elected officials to stand up in support of the principles that led us to establish a sanctuary city. It’s not just the Board, but also the mayor who needs to step up and say that what just happened is not acceptable. This program eviscerates sanctuary city.”

Campos warned that the community has already lost trust in the local police, over the last two years, thanks to the city’s policy of referring juveniles to ICE when they are booked.

“If we cooperate [with SCI] that lack of trust will intensify,” he warned. “I applaud the sheriff, but we also need the police department to come forward.”

Campos laid the blame at Obama’s door.
“This is a Democratic president, who was elected with the support of the Latino and the immigrant community, but is engaging in practices worse than any other president.”

Tim Paulson, executive director of the Labor Council spoke on behalf of 150 unions in town. “Our work is dependent on the immigrant community,” He said. “Secure Communities is absolutely divisive and unconstructive. It pits worker against worker, families against families.”

Heidi Li of Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach warned that victims of domestic violence, trafficking and elder abuse would be at risk from ICE’s program.

“It will result in a situation where folks who need trust and assurance the most, will not feel safe and will no longer report to the police when they are the victims of abuse,” Li said.

At rally’s end, Hennessey told the Guardian, “The basis of Sanctuary city is to protect immigrants who are not doing anything wrong or serious. When ICE grabs someone who failed to pay a traffic ticket, and that person is supporting a family, I don’t think those crimes should rise to the level of deportation.”

Warning folks that folks did not know that SCI had been activated in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, Hennessey said all he can do is “raise the issue” of opting out. 

Sup. Mar told the Guardian that the request to opt out is a “unique and creative tactic.”

“We have the strong legal backing from organizations around the country, but SFPD Chief George Gascon doesn’t seem convinced,” Mar observed

Christine Gasparac, Attorney General Jerry Brown’s press secretary told the Guardian that they received Hennessey’s May 18 letter requesting to opt out and are reviewing it.

“To clarify, the California Department of Justice manages the statewide database of fingerprints that are essential to solving crimes, but we have no direct role in enforcing federal immigration laws,” Gasparac said. “We were informed by ICE yesterday that they will work with counties to opt out of their program. Because that is a process directly between the county and ICE, we are advising local authorities who want to opt out to contact ICE directly.

Virginia Kice, ICE’s Western Regional Communications Director said, “under Secure Communities jurisdictions can choose not to receive the immigration-related information on individuals who are fingerprinted, but that information will still be provided to ICE.

As April 2010, biometric identification has been activated in 169 jurisdictions in 20 states. Since it’s unclear, which communities know about the program, the Guardian is posting the list here:

In Arizona:  Cochise, Maricopa, Pima, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yavapai and Yuma

In California Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Imperial, Los Angeles, Monterey, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernadino, San Diego, San Joaquin, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, and Ventura

In Delaware: Kent, New Castle and Sussex

In Florida: Brevard, Browar, Charlotte, Clay, Collier, Duval, Escambia, Highlands, Hillsborough, Lake, Leon, Manatee, Marion,Miami Dade, Monroe, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Polk
Sarasota, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Volusia

In Georgia: Clayton, DeKalb and Gwinnett

In Hawaii: Oahu

In Illinois: DuPage, Kane, Lake, Madison, McHenry, St. Clair, Will and Winnebago

In Lousiana: Jefferson Parrish

In Maryland: Frederick, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s and St. Mary’s.

In Massachusetts: Suffolk

In Michigan: Wayne

In North Carolina: Brunswic, Buncombe, Cabarrus, Catawba, Columbus , Cumberland, Dare , Duplin, Durham, Gaston, Halifax, Harnett, Henderson, Jackson, Lee, Mecklenburg, New Hanover,
Orange, Transylvania, Union and Wake.

In New Mexico: Bernalillo, Dona Ana, Grant, Hidalgo, LunaOhio, Cuyahoga and Franklin

In Oklahoma: Oklahoma, TulsaOregon and Clackamas

In Pennsylvania: Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia

In Utah: Box Elder, Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber

In Virginia: Alexandria City, Arlington, Fairfax, Fauquier, Henrico, Loudoun, Norfolk City, Prince William, Rappahannock. Richmond City and Virginia Beach City

In Texas: Bexar, Brazoria, Brewster, Brooks, Collin, Culberson, Dallas Dallas County Jail, Dallas Farmers Branch PD, Dallas Irving PD, Dallas and Collin Richardson PD, Dallas and Kaufman Mesquite PD, Dallas, Collin, Denton Carrollton PD, Denton, Dimmit, El Paso, Fort Bend, Galveston
Grayson, Harris, Hidalgo, Hudspeth, Hunt, Jeff Davis, Jefferson, Jim Wells, Johnson, Kaufman, Kenedy, Kinney, Kleberg, Maverick, McLennan, Montgomery, Nueces, Pecos, Presidio, Real, Starr, Tarrant, TDCJ, Terrell, Travis, Uvalde, Val Verde, Webb, Willacy, Williamson, Zapata and Zavala.

Renaissance Man

David Talbot
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Renaissance Man

MUSIC/STAGE/LIT When I meet Ise Lyfe in downtown Oakland, the 28-year-old MC is sporting a button-down shirt, slacks, cardigan, and a purple and pink tie. Put a Wall Street Journal under his arm and he might blend in with the lunchtime business crowd. He’s fresh from a meeting with one of the distributors of his company, Lyfe Productives, hence rocking business casual.

Seeing Ise “in character” is appropriate, given his latest endeavor: a theatrical show, Pistols & Prayers, and the book of the same title (available on iUniverse) on which it’s based. After a successful one-off performance at Berkeley Rep — and a tour involving the show, book signings, and rap gigs — Pistols returns for a three-night run at Oakland’s Fox Black Box Theater benefiting nonprofit Youth Movement Records. According to Ise, his pitches of the book to African American studies departments have resulted in 21 course adoptions.

“You have good books in universities, like Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, but not contemporary texts from a hip-hop artist,” he says . “My book’s a collection of prayers, poems, journal entries, essays, anecdotes. But it’s also palatable for hip-hop heads. You can sit down and blaze through it.”

As Ise suggests, Pistols is an eclectic affair. Its unity comes from the author’s political sensibility. The poems recall the late-1960s explosion of African American poetry documented in anthologies like 1972’s New Black Voices, even as Ise updates the frame of reference. Most compelling are the nonfiction prose meditations, recounting, for example, his visit to Ghana, the murder of Oscar Grant, and his ambivalence about Barack Obama.

Such material might easily prove resistant to dramatic presentation, but Ise is no stranger to the stage; he has performed spoken word since age 17 and rocked HBO’s Def Poetry Jam in 2006. While loosely following the book, the stage version of Pistols is a genuine theatrical experience. Using a minimalist set, spotlights, and a video screen, Ise brings Pistols to life with support from DC of KMEL, folksinger Melanie Demore (who punctuates the proceedings with African pounding sticks) and celloist Michael Fecskes.

“It’s a collage,” Ise says. “We bring together hip-hop, folklore, spirituals, and [Fecskes] playing the cello brings in this Americanized background. You’re able to see the clash of it onstage.”

At many rap-related theatre shows, the cast members are actors who fail miserably at hip-hop. But Ise is a real rapper. When comparing the state of contemporary hip-hop with its golden age, he can rip a verse from KRS-One’s “Ah Yeah” with all the furious swagger of the original before dropping into a comically tepid rendition of Drake’s “Best I Ever Had.” He also has acting chops. Seeing Ise transform into one of his characters, a dope fiend named Uncle Randy based on addicts he knew as a kid in Oakland’s Brookfield neighborhood, is impressive: his eyes go glassy, his face and body contort with tics and twitches as Randy delivers his satirical, cracked-out observations on America.

Artistic ambitions aside, Ise has turned to theatre and books as a way of getting more exposure in the overcrowded, blinged-out rap landscape. Make no mistake: Ise Lyfe gets around. He tours nationally, is a commissioner of arts and cultural Affairs in Oakland, and counts among his fanbase luminaries like Alice Walker and Dave Chappelle. He has two nationally-distributed albums under his belt, spreadtheWord (Hard Knock, 2006) and The Prince Cometh (7even89ine, 2008), which has moved more than 30,000 units. Still, he admits, “We have a hard time getting the same coverage as my counterparts.”

“Normally I’d be recording my next record,” he says when asked about the two years since Prince Cometh. “But I want to put that money and energy into expanding our audience then dropping a record that changes everything.”

“There’s no one here who sells more records, fills more shows, or does anything more provocative than us,” he says. “I keep hearing, ‘Nobody’s trying to hear that shit you’re talking about.’ But the numbers say somebody is. It’s interesting that Ise Lyfe is an afterthought when I run this shit. And I mean that humbly.” 

PISTOLS & PRAYERS

Fri/21–Sat/22, 7:30 p.m.; Sun/23, 4 p.m.; $10–$20

530 19th St., Oakl.

(510) 832-4212 www.iselyfe.com

Loving LaHood

David Talbot
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Loving LaHood

By Jobert Poblete


news@sbg.com

GREEN CITY U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wowed urban cycling advocates at the National Bike Summit in Washington, D.C., in March when he climbed atop a table to praise them for their work promoting livable, bike-friendly communities. LaHood followed up that connection with a blog post in which he announced a "sea change" in federal policy, declaring: "This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of nonmotorized."

The groundbreaking post was accompanied by a DOT policy statement urging local governments and transportation agencies to treat walking and bicycling as equal to other modes of transportation. The statement concluded that "increased commitment to and investment in bicycle facilities and walking networks can help meet goals for cleaner, healthier air; less congested roadways; and more livable, safe, cost-efficient communities."

Since then, LaHood has come under fire for his pro-bike statements. The National Association of Manufacturers’ blog said that the policy would result in "economic catastrophe." At a House hearing, a representative implied that the secretary was on drugs.

But bike advocates, who were initially wary of having this key post occupied by one of the few Republicans in the Obama administration, have rallied to LaHood’s defense. In San Francisco, bike and livability advocates are optimistic that LaHood’s statements will be backed up with meaningful action.

"LaHood is not just talking the talk," San Francisco Bicycle Coalition program director Andy Thornley told the Guardian. "He seems to be actively moving federal transportation policy toward a broader, more sustainable program."

As DOT secretary, LaHood has enormous influence on how federal money is spent and on the Obama administration’s transportation policies. Thornley is hopeful the new policy direction will free more money for bikeways and other alternatives to the automobile. The federal government doles out billions of dollars for transportation, and beyond some direct funding of bike and transit projects, removing conditions that have forced recipients of federal transportation dollars to spend it on roads and highways could have a big impact on bike and pedestrian-friendly regions like the Bay Area.

"We’re already doing a good job regionally of prioritizing how we spend our money," Thornley said. "But on the federal end, the money comes out already conditioned and has to be spent on highways."

Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, echoed Thornley’s enthusiasm for the DOT’s new policy direction. "If livable, walkable communities become a priority of the federal government, that could be really revolutionary," he said.

But Radulovich acknowledged that much of this depends on the outcome of a new surface transportation bill being drafted in Congress. The bill would allocate hundreds of billions in federal transportation dollars, and bike and transit advocates are already mobilizing to make sure it’s written in a way that promotes livability and sustainability. Transportation for America, a national coalition that includes a number of Bay Area groups, is lobbying Congress and the Obama administration to create a "21st century transportation system" that supports walking, biking, and sustainable development.

To succeed, advocates will have to overcome a number of other challenges. Thornley pointed out that outside of urban centers like the Bay Area and Seattle, bikes aren’t taken seriously as a form of transportation. He also warned that the industries that benefit from automobiles will be pushing back and telling the public that more bikes and transit will cost their industries jobs.

But Thornley is hopeful that other industries are getting the message that sustainable development is good for business. He said people are returning to cities and developers are taking note. "Developers are casting positive votes by investing in the city, building up residential options, and recognizing that the market wants these choices."

If new bike-friendly and pro-livability policies are to gain traction, Thornley said, "it will be about showing folks that spending money on transit, biking, and walking is just as productive for jobs and building communities. In the long run, it’s a much better investment."

Pelosi needs to support the Fair Elections Act

Zelda Bronstein
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Pelosi needs to support the Fair Elections Act

In the wake of the horrible Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, Rep. John Larson of Connecticut has introduced a bill that would reform substantially the way members of Congress are elected. It’s not perfect, but it’s a big step. The Fair Elections Now Act, H.R. 1826, would create partial public funding for Congressional races, with a 4-1 match for contributions of $100 or less. The money would come from a small fee on goverment contractors.


There are now more than 130 co-sponsors in the House, and they’re pusing for a floor vote. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t decided whether to allow the bill to come to the floor.


The politics of that are crazy. If the Democrats want to keep control of the House, they need to have something to campaign on this fall. During the presidential campaign, the party promise reform — but so far, other than a mild health care bill, there’s no real reform on the table.


“If Democrats don’t have a real reform agenda that includes election reform — and that shows the party wants to change how business is done in Washington — we could be in big trouble in the fall,” Steve Hildebrand, a former Obama strategist who is helping the Fair Elections Now Act folks, told me.


So what’s up. Nancy?  Why not at least give the bill a chance.


 

John Ross: To stop is to die

Zelda Bronstein
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John Ross: To stop is to die

Editors note: John Ross is finishing up a book tour across the United States, and sending us his impressions of Obamalandia. You can read some of his previous posts here, here and here.

  

I. Baltimore/Washington

 

The Amtrak rumbles into the back end of Baltimore past block after block of abandoned, boarded-up row houses ripe for burning. This city of such magnificent renegades as Edgar Allen Poe, John Wilkes Booth, and Billie Holliday is mapped by grimy pocket ghettoes that made Baltimore a perfect stage-set for “The Wire.” When contrasted against the gleaming, refurbished downtown, these crime-scene neighborhoods incubate urban uprising.  Red Emma’s is one of a skein of anarcho bookstores with names like Sedition, Monkeywrench, and Bluestockings that have welcomed me on this grueling odyssey across the underbelly of Obamalandia. I’m enlivened by the energies these oases exude. Contemporary anarchists seem to have little time for the crippling ideological jousting that drained the lifeblood of my generation. Those bad old days of Marxist Leninist Maoist Trotskyist Stalinesque backbiting seem an absurd nightmare on the barricades of change these days.  

Tiffany, a tenor saxophonist who day gigs at OSHA over in D.C. and puts in after hours at the bookstore-cafe, and I pitch in to unload a busload of Bread & Puppet props for a zany, Zen show at a cavernous performance space Red Emma’s maintains in a vacated church. I get to trundle in the head of Ben Franklin, the villain in B&P’s latest mini-extravaganza in which $100 bills are the most pertinent puppets. A half century after its founding even before Vietnam caught fire, the puppeteers are still serving bread and aoeli to grateful audiences.

In D.C., I speak at the Institute for Policy Studies, a perennial leftist sounding board four blocks north of the White House and a billion light years from power, about how Washington has hooked Mexico on drug war. It is my first visit to the nation’s capitol with a black president in residence in the house that slaves once built. The Capo de Tutti Capos of the most grotesque criminal conspiracy on earth is too overwhelmed by swelling catastrophe offshore in the Gulf that will make Katrina look like a summer squall, impending car bombs in Times Square, and an economy that continues in freefall, to take time out for a chitchat.

On the day I speak in Washington, Teabaggers and their ilk are massing across the Potomac in an open-carry anti-Obama rally — newspaper photos depict white American males with what look like rocket launchers slung over their shoulders. The threats of this nativist scum are not idle ones. The economic collapse has stoked the bumfires that burn fiercely in the dormant craters of the American volcano.

 

 

II. New York
My roots on the North American landmass snake under the lower east side of Manhattan. The Ross (nee Grossinsky) DNA is imprinted everywhere on these mean streets. My grandma Mamie Zief (Ellis Islandese for “Jew”) relocated from Poland to a Rivington Street tenement at the turn of the 20th Century. Although I grew up in the West Village, I went east at an early age; after fleeing the family nest I squatted in the Shastone Monument building on Essex and Houston before escaping to Mexico in the late 1950s. Two of my kids grew up on Second Street and Avenue A, and my son the hiphop mogul still lives 500 yards away from the old homestead (Dante and I are working on a book that bounces off our mutual addictions to black music.)  

My presentations in the Big Apple fit neatly into this geographical schema. I lecture at NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center, once the site of concrete basketball courts where I expanded oodles of adolescent energies. I talk to the Friends of Brad Will at the Sixth Street Community Center where the slain Indymedia journalist, a lower east side rabble-rouser during the darkest days of the Giuliani dictatorship, regularly practiced yoga. Justice for Brad Will remains undone.
And I am lured into Amy Goodman’s state-of-the-art lair for 20 minutes of fame. Democracy Now even sends a car to fetch me up to Chelsea and I induce the stern goddess of left radio to smile — but perhaps it was merely a grimace.  

New York is chockablock with “I Love/Hate New York” minutes. One morning I descend from Dante’s sixth story inferno for a double espresso and the Lowisaida is infested with cops. I approach one of New York’s Finest, an amiable Caucasian, and inquire about the blue plague: “it’s the Will Smith show,” he smiles mischievously. Just then a motorcade of 50 bullet-proofed black vehicles swings off Houston with their lights flashing and sirens screaming and heads down the Bowery to Cooper Union where our commander-in-chief is to make a major speech addressing financial “reform” (in Mexico, we call this “plugging up the hole after the baby has drowned.”)

Goldman Sachs vultures in dark suits and furrowed brows listen intently but go mum to the press when they deadhead downtown back to Wall Street to continue fleecing the public’s pocket.

I step around the corner onto Houston, where a large enigmatic Shepard Fairey montage that references climate change has just been tagged (Dante who is well-versed in such iconography, speculates that the culprit is a tagger named “Nah” who is dedicated to dissing the public art of the stars of this genre.) Gallery slaves have been bussed in to erase the offending stains.  I am wearing my Mexican Electricity Workers tee-shirt, whose black and red colors and clenched fist logo match Fairey’s throw-up, and I am suddenly surrounded by a bevy of documenterians, at least one of whom is just off the boat from Andalusia. They pose me against Fairey’s wall for a thousand-click fashion shoot. New York New York!

Ironically (a word that doesn’t have much scratch here in Gotham), the Banksy flick “Exit Through The Gift Shop” is playing at a grind house across Houston, a cheese ball mockumentary that destroys this world-famous outlaw’s once-pristine reputation for thumbing his nose at power. Indeed, the best thing about the movie is that it is playing right next door to the Yonah Schimmil knishery. I order a kasha knish and sign the guest book with Subcomandante Marcos’s rubric.  

Also a mandatory dining stop in the old neighborhood: the immortal Katz’s (“Send a salami to your boy in the Army”) where pushy New Yorkers of the Hebraic persuasion scuffle to be next in line at the counter of this now 100% Puerto Rican-run deli. The brisket is still to die for.

New York City and environs is now home to a half million Mexicans, mostly from Puebla state, whose slow country drawls are a foil for the tropical machine-gun accents of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. The Poblanos work in the kitchens of yupped-up food palaces (16 Oaxaquenos were burnt to a crisp walloping pots up in “Windows On The World” on the 108th floor of the Twin Towers on 9/11 day) or slave in 24-hour grocery stores run by Arabs and Hindus and Koreans.  

Mexican elites who have fled here from their imploding fatherland do not much rub elbows with their impoverished compatriots, except when they employ them as maids and babysitters One of the few upsides of the new Arizona Breathing While Brown law is that former pundit and Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda might be jailed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his storm troopers and forced to don pink underwear if he were to be stopped without papers in Maricopa County.

III. BOSTON

The new Boston Tea Party that catapulted Scott Brown into the suddenly Kennedy-less Senate is not an anomaly in a city where the name of Charles Stuart (Google him up) still rings a bell.  

I speak at the Harvard Coop to a handful of bedraggled Harvard Square denizens who have found sanctuary from a driving rainstorm in this hallowed readery. I am invited to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies to rant at the future leaders of Latin America — but none show up. I spend an engaging evening with Jack Womack, whose “Zapata & The Mexican Revolution” is still the definitive text on the struggle of the incorruptible revolutionary. Jack, now emeritus in Harvard Yard, recently rebuked the Mexican government by turning down a literary prize because of President Felipe Calderon’s role in the firing of 43,000 workers in an undisguised ploy to privatize electricity generation in Mexico, and is currently chipping away at his life work, a history of working class struggle in the state of Veracruz. Jack and I converse in an argot stippled with so many arcane references to social upheaval south of the border that FBI eavesdroppers could surmise we are planning a new Mexican revolution — which, 100 years to the date of the last one, is not such a bad idea.    

I warm up for May 1st rallies by urging attendees at community meetings at the UNITE building in Chinatown and a U-U church in Jamaica Plains to join the protests. There are two marches and rallies set for International Workers Day in Beantown, the bitter fruit of a split in the movement the seeds of which I could not divine.  

On the Boston Commons, I spiel about the first May 1st back in 1886 when 80,000 immigrant workers stomped through Chicago to demand the eight-hour day, a day of solidarity and struggle around the world everywhere except in the country where it was birthed. The Haymarket Martyrs join us for a stroll through the streets of downtown Boston, held aloft by the ubiquitous Bread & Puppet comrades.  

All across Amerikkka, immigrant workers, incensed by the enactment of a law that makes inhaling the air of Arizona a jailable crime if you are a person the color of the earth, were on the march, perhaps a half million (high end estimates) strong — as many as 200,000 in Los Angeles and another 100,000 in Chicago; 25,000 more in Dallas and significant turnouts in New York and Washington but only 6,000 or so in Boston to which Mexicans have migrated in smaller numbers.  

This year’s surge, which was dwarfed by the gargantuan outpourings of 2006, featured a marked absence of Mexican flags as undocumented workers chose to cloak themselves in the Stars and Stripes in response to the feeding frenzy of the Fox News lynch mob.  

Although the condemnation of Arizona Goddamn was vibrant, it must be noted that there have been as many ICE raids under the Obaminators as under Bush and the crackdown on employers is targeting union-organized janitors. David Bacon, whose reportage remains a light in this darkness, recently noted that 175 SEIU janitors are about to be fired in San Francisco, once a sanctuary city for labor.

The People the Color of the Earth rolled through the streets of east Boston with gusto. “No One Is Illegal!” Sandra, my displaced Chilanga guardian angel, and I yodeled in unison with the compas.  “Do I Look Illegal?” read the homemade banner draped around the shoulders of a skinny pre-teener. Many high schoolers wore caps and gowns to highlight the prohibitions on financial aid that doom their college educations to MacDonald’s Hamburger U.

Speaker after speaker in a park down by the harbor  — where, indeed a few hundred years back down the pike the original Boston Tea Party was staged — raged against a system that still consigns immigrant workers to the lowest step on the American food chain. “Justicia! Justicia!” they clamored and their cries were no less relevant than those uttered by the “Martires de Chicago,” as the Haymarket martyrs are known throughout Latin America. By the time I took the mic, all the words had already been spoken but I finished up with the chant of the pensioners’ movement in Mexico City in whose ranks I am enrolled: “Parar Es Morir!” — To Stop Is To Die!

Me and the Monstruo have come to the end of our three month 66 performance journey through Obamalandia but there’s one thing you can count on: “Parar Es Morir.”  I’m not planning on stopping (or dying) any time soon.
  
John Ross will be returning to Mexico in mid- May to begin work on a new book, “From Bebop To HipHop – Fathers & Sons.”  You can consult him on particulars at johnross@igc.org  
        

Is it okay to be quietly gay?

Zelda Bronstein
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16
Is it okay to be quietly gay?

The White House barely had time to announce President Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, before the spin controllers were scrambling to deal with rumors that — gasp! the horror! — she might be gay.

The Chron blamed “the lesbian rumor” on “conservatives.” The Washington Post (and the White House) blamed CBS for letting a right-wing blogger report as a fact that Kagan likes girls, leading to this great moment in American politics:

“An administration official, who asked not to be identified discussing personal matters, said Kagan is not a lesbian.”  

And of course, no Washington rumor should ever be believed until an official source who won’t be named officially denies it.

The real question here is: Who cares? It’s actually worth discussing.

Andrew Sullivan kind of mangles logic in a post called “So is she gay?” . He starts off saying “it should mean nothing either way,” but then argues that it does:

“To put it another way: Is Obama actually going to use a Supreme Court nominee to advance the cause of the closet (as well as kill any court imposition of marriage equality)? And can we have a clear, factual statement as to the truth? In a free society in the 21st Century, it is not illegitimate to ask. And it is cowardly not to tell.”

Harvey Milk, of course, always said that everyone should be out, and that the cause of queer rights depended on tearing open the closet door. But that was then, and this is now, and I wonder: Has the United States, and the queer community, reached a point where it’s okay for someone to say that his or her sexuality is none of anyone’s business?

Judge Vaughn Walker, who’s handling the Prop. 8 case, is gay — but has never made a big deal of it one way or the other. I guess he’s sorta in the closet, but not really — he just keeps his personal life to himself.

What if Kagan’s the same way? What if she’s got a lesbian partner but isn’t going to talk about it? What about if she’s straight and isn’t going to talk about it? How can the White House prove she’s not gay, anyway — is her confirmation hearing going to feature a ten-minute televised session of her making out with a man? (And how would we know she wasn’t just acting, anyway?

Obviously, if she is gay, and she came out, having a lesbian on the Supreme Court would be a huge deal to the queer community, a major breakthrough in one of the highest offices in the land. And you can certainly argue that she shouldn’t be hiding anything, that the whole denial and ducking is an admission that homosexuality is something to be hidden in the first place. And that’s really sad.

In a perfect world, none of this would matter at all, and she could freely talk about her sexuality without any impact on her political career. But in a perfect world, could she also just say: Ain’t none of your business?

And are we anywhere close to that today?

Will Arizona trigger even worse federal immigration laws?

Mary Magee
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5
Will Arizona trigger even worse federal immigration laws?

During interviews with civil and immigrant rights advocates about the complicated dynamics around immigration, several expressed concern that Arizona won’t be the ultimate game changer. Instead, they worried that it could result in the creation of an even worse federal immigration system.  And President Barack Obama, who has been accused of not doing enough to push ahead with federal immigration reform since he came into office, came under renewed fire last week, when he told reporters that “may not be an appetite” in Congress to deal with immigration, after a tough legislative year.

At the time, Obama had already denounced the Arizona bill as “misguided” and outlined a series of steps that he believes needs to happen to bring millions of undocumented residents out of the shadows.

“We are a nation of immigrants,” Obama said. “But we are also a nation of laws. The truth is that 11 or 12 million folks, we’re gonna have to make them take responsibility for what they did. And the way to do that is to make them register, make them pay a fine, make them learn English, make them take responsibility for the fact that they broke the law.”

But when the president praised as “an important first step” an April 29 framework for reform that Sen. Charles Schumer and a handful of other Democratic senators put together within a week of SB 1070’s passage, civil rights advocates voiced concerns.

The Democratic senators proposal includes efforts to enhance border security and create fraud-resistant social security cards. But some immigrant advocates fear such steps will lead to a less democratic society, without addressing the underpinning causes of undocumented immigration such as international trade agreements and the appetite of U.S. employers for cheap, but legally unprotected and easily disposable, migrant workers.

Latino advocate Robert Lovato, who co-founded presente.org and led the successful “Basta Dobbs!” campaign, isn’t convinced that SB 1070 will be the ultimate game changer.

“SB 1070 gives a national platform to the kind of sinister policies that extremist hate groups like FAIR and the Minute Men have been pushing for some time in Arizona,” he warned. “Those policies that have been in effect at the border are now going statewide and perhaps nationally.”

“The Obama administration has expressed brief and tepid concerns but has not done anything to demolish the legal foundation on which these racist policies are built,” Lovato continued.

Lovato points to the Bush administration’s flawed Section 287(g) program, which authorizes local and state law enforcement officials to be enforcers of federal immigration law, and has led to serious civil rights abuses and public safety concerns.

‘Now Obama and the Democrats are going to try and pin the tail of failure for federal immigration reform on the Republicans, ” Lovato claimed, criticizing, amongst other things, the Democrats’ national I.D. card program proposal.

Lovato believes the immigrant rights community and Latinos will rise to the occasion and face “unprecedented sinister hate.”
But he is less confident in spineless Democratic officials.
‘Immigration is a thorny issue, especially for spineless Democrats,” Lovato said. “That Mayor Gavin Newsom would waffle and water down boycott attempts is no surprise.”

Lovato recalled how national Latino organizations begged and pleaded with Newsom not to require local probation officers to refer youth to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) before they had their day in court, a policy Newsom ordered in July 2008, when he was running for governor.
Lovato said Newsom’s subsequent failure to respond to the community and their concerns “reflects an utter lack of leadership.”

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union is urging senators to press Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to terminate the 287(g) programs, and to make sure that lawmakers don’t acquiesce on civil liberties and privacy concerns in their rush to respond to demands for comprehensive immigration reform.

ACLU legislative counsel Joanne Lin told the Guardian that while Northern California does not have any official 287(g) agreements in place, Newsom’s flawed juvenile immigrant policy is part of a bigger and equally worrisome trend.

“The city’s sanctuary ordinance collapses criminal justice and the law enforcement system into one process,” Lin said. “And if we look at the federal Secure Communities Initiative that is now in over 100 jails, primarily those in southwest border districts, everyone is fingerprinted and run through a DHS and FBI database. It’s basically a way for DHS to i.d. everyone who is booked, whether they are here lawfully or their charges as are subsequently dropped or dismissed, and to fast track deportation.”

Space is the place

David Talbot
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0
Space is the place

LIT/FILM “I’m a lifelong space fan old enough to remember the Apollo era and grow up on Star Trek — when I was little, the Apollo missions and Star Trek merged in my mind,” says Megan Prelinger. “I lived my life, but kept one eye on space, watching and waiting to see what would happen. As I got older I realized that the general public is disenfranchised from having an opinion about or experience of space. I thought I could make an intervention — an intervention into space.”

Prelinger’s intervention has taken the form of Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957-1962 (Blast Books, 240 pages, $29.95) a flat-out awesome full-color collection of illustrations of American aerospace coupled with a historical critique of a time when the sky wasn’t definied by fear and terror and the outer reaches were aligned with ideas about potential. Prelinger’s book is a work of Bay Area dedication and intellectual independence, akin to everything from Jacques Boyreau’s and Jenni Olson’s published collections of movie poster art to Trevor Paglen’s books on the hidden machinations of U.S. forces. It couldn’t arrive at a better time, with Carl Sagan warning us that aliens won’t be friendly, and President Obama demonstrating a marked lack of faith in the space program.

“The Obama administration wants things both ways,” says Prelinger, when the President’s most recent statements on the subject are broached. “They want to be committed in the long run but cancel everything in the short run to reformulate. The plans he’s laid out are too general. They’re almost hard to interpret. In the short run, he wants to stop spending money, and I can understand that, but the long term plans are underfunded and underarticulated. The jury is out.”

The jury may be out, but for the time being, the curious are invited to see a space-related film program that includes vintage short films selected by Prelinger. This weekend, “Atomic Age Artifactuality” brings Prelinger’s-choice archival treats such as Birth of the Orbis Electronic Computer and All About Polymophics to the screen, along with Laura Harrison and Beth Federici’s new documentary Space, Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm. The ideas in the program should ricochet interestingly off of the recent Cold War treatise Double Take, by another Other Cinema regular Johan Grimonprez. “There’s a really complex interaction between tech and society in the Cold War, where it’s used to express utopian and dystopian possibilities,” Prelinger observes. “Those two dissonant possibilities exist side by side through decades.”

As for today, Prelinger’s vision is clear. “Our space program belongs to all of us,” she says. “We should think about what we want from it, and ask for it.”

(Johnny Ray Huston)

ANT FARM AND MEGAN PRELINGER: “ATOMIC AGE ARTIFACTUALITY”

Sat/8, 8:30 p.m., $6

Other Cinema

992 Valencia, SF

(415) 824-3890 www.othercinema.com

Interview: Author Paul Loeb and Soul of a Citizen

Zelda Bronstein
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0
Interview: Author Paul Loeb and Soul of a Citizen

Paul Loeb, author, speaker, thinker and the man behind the surprising best-seller Soul of a Citizen stopped by the Guardian April 30 to chat about the new edition of his book — and about the state of community activism, the Obama administration, and the way people become engaged in politics. You can listen to the interview after the jump.


Paul Loeb by SFBG

Celebrating Queen’s Day with some bitchin’ SF Royalty

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Celebrating Queen’s Day with some bitchin’ SF Royalty

Today is Queen’s Day in the Netherlands, meaning millions of people all across that cute little country are partying in the streets, wearing orange, and getting trashed in the name of Royalty. America at large has yet to pick up on the awesomeness of this Dutch holiday, but thank the gay gods San Francisco cherishes her Queens year-round. So while Amsterdam is going wild for Queen Beatrix, now is a good time to honor some of our city’s own brand of prime royalty. It’s time to bow to the Queen…

Pollo Del Mar

Pollo Del Mar,  a.k.a. “The Notorious P.D.M.” or Glamazon, doesn’t just rock the ‘hot drag queen’ title alone; she’s a performer, personality, emcee, magazine cover girl, journalist and even reigned as the 2007 Miss Trannyshack. 

SFBG: What are you the Queen of?
PDM: A little over a year ago, the San Francisco Bay Guardian declared me “The Queen of San Francisco Media.” It’s a title I hold proudly. I know that bitch Perez Hilton calls herself the “queen of all media,” but maybe my next goal should be to become the “DRAG Queen of All Media”?! LOL!!

SFBG: If you ruled as Queen, what would be your first order?
PDM: I’d like to order a two piece and a biscuit, please, as long as it’s Tuesday. That’s the 99-cent special at both Popeye’s AND KFC. Seriously, in this economy, that’s just smart meal planning, honey. Oh, yeah, and be good to yourself and others. If you don’t respect yourself, why should anybody else?

SFBG: Who is your ideal King?
PDM: To be honest, Barrack Obama isn’t too far from my ideal King. He’s sexy, powerful, socially conscientious and has a bangin’ body under those business suits. That Michelle is one lucky woman!

queen pollo

SFBG: What song would be your court’s anthem?
PDM: For the past several year’s, I’ve been closely associated with Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” for obvious reasons. It just seems appropriate to keep that tradition alive. :::giggles:::

SFBG: Of what Queen would your reign most resemble? Elizabeth? The Queen of Hearts? Would you rule naughty or nice?
PDM: Honey, I’m definitely no ‘Virgin Queen,’ so that’s out! I say be beautiful, respectful and conscientious in public and be as nasty as you want to be once those bedroom doors are closed. And anyone who kisses and tells…Off with their heads!

SFBG: Our majesty, what are your most prized possessions?
PDM: To be possibly too serious for a moment, I kicked a daily drug habit six years ago, and the peace of mind, serenity and faith that comes with sobriety is the thing in my life I cherish most — well, that and my little Jack Russell Terrier, Piggy Del Mar! He’s the love of my life and, unlike any other man I’ve met in my life, annoyingly loyal!

SFBG: And your most adored, cherished wardrobe pieces?
PDM: Several years ago, I was given an amazing necklace and earring set as a gift from a friend. It’s something I could never have afforded on my own, and it’s so gorgeous that I feel elegant every time I wear it. For sentimental reasons, I also have a pair of faux fur boot covers I wore the night I won the Miss Trannyshack Pageant in 2007. They get raves every time I put them on — and remind me of a kick-ass night, too.

 

Her Royal Highness, Queen Cookie Dough.

Cookie Dough is a scorpio and one wild woman who isn’t afraid to wow audiences with her vivacious character. She’s an attention whore with a passion for film, leading her to star in films, documentaries, cabaret shows and all kinds of ridiculously wild acts that push boundries way beyond with her own CookieVision.

SFBG: What are you the Queen of?
Cookie: The Monster Show – The Longest Running Drag Show In The Castro

SFBG: If you ruled as Queen, what would be your first order?
Cookie: Rock And Roll All Night, and Party Everyday

SFBG: Who is your ideal King?
Cookie: My husband, DJ MC2

cookie!

SFBG: What song would be your court’s anthem?
Cookie: Let Me Entertain You – by Queen

SFBG: Of what Queen would your reign most resemble? Elizabeth? The Queen of Hearts? Would you rule naughty or nice?
Cookie: The Red Queen – Off with their heads

SFBG: Our majesty, what are your most prized possessions?
Cookie: My Husband, & Kitties – Lulu Fishpaw & Wolfgang

SFBG: And your most adored, cherished wardrobe pieces?
Cookie: My Shoes – 8 inch heels with a 4 inch platform

 

If you’re in the mood to celebrate, hit up one of these San Francisco equivilants– just make sure to wear orange and treat your date like the Queen she/he is…

 

Queen’s Day at SupperClub

Fri/30, 6:30pm Happy Hour, 7:30pm First Course, 9:30pm Party, $55-$65

SupperClub

657 Harrison, SF

www.SupperClub.com

 

DJ Marcus’ Queen’s Day w/ Eurocircle, NLBorrels and The Dutch Consulate General

Fri/30, 8 p.m., $10/$20.

Apartment 24, 440 Broadway, SF.

www.mjdjevents.com

 

The dubious high-speed rail report

Zelda Bronstein
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1
The dubious high-speed rail report

The Chron’s blast at the state’s high-speed rail system is a big headline, but the report it’s based on is pretty dubious.


As the always-insightful Robert Cruikshank at Calitics points out, the state auditor is trying to blame the High Speed Rail Authority for the fact that federal funding for the project isn’t yet in place. But there’s no reason to believe that situation will remain forever; both Congress and the Obama administration have been friendly toward high-speed rail, and California is in line to get a significant amount of it.

 


And in the worst-case scenario, if there’s no federal funding at all, the money California voters have already approved won’t go to waste — it will go, for example, to improve the existing Caltrain lines.

 

Cruikshank:

 

For some HSR critics and skeptics, the uncertainty around federal funding is a reason to either not build the project, or to not build it in their backyard. The proper response, however, is not to be a passive actor, but to instead actively work to secure federal funding for HSR. You can go to the FourBillion.com site and told their Congressional representatives they want $4 billion in the FY 2011 budget, as a first step toward advocacy for the $50 billion in the transportation bill reauthorization.

 


Welcome to Elm Street: Part Five

Sue Vaughan
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0
Welcome to Elm Street: Part Five

In honor(?) of the new A Nightmare on Elm Street, we’re recapping all of the Elms so far. Find more on the Pixel Vision blog.

Here’s some friendly advice — don’t be friends with Alice. She’s a nice girl and all, but she’s kind of a getting-stabbed-to-death magnet. It’s like Greta says in Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989): “The bottom line, Alice, if anyone’s trying to hurt you, supernatural or not, they’re going to have to go through us first.” Yeah, that’s not really a problem for Freddy Krueger, who’s all too happy about dispatching Alice’s friends and lovers. Souls make him strong! Hey, remember when he was just trying to get revenge? In the words of President Barack Obama, “This shit’s getting way too complicated for me.”

Part five of the Nightmare on Elm Street series isn’t all that well-regarded, but I actually like it far more than part four. Lisa Wilcox’s Alice breaks Carol Clover’s “Final Girl” model: she has sex, she gets naked, and she survives — twice! In The Dream Child, she’s transformed from the meek and mousy victim in Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) to a kick-ass mama bear. That’s right, she’s with child. The plot is really silly, though it doesn’t matter. As Cheryl pointed out, by this point in the series we’re mostly watching for the nightmares. And the ones here are great.

Let me break it down, nightmare-by-nightmare.

“Hey, Danny, better not dream and drive!” Even though he’s all charged up and knows better, Dan (Danny Hassel), a holdover from part four, falls asleep on his way to meet Alice. He hears his mom call him an “ungrateful, unmanageable dickweed” on the radio. Don’t worry, she also calls Alice a “bimbo-slut-whore.” The car turns into Freddy, Dan loses all control, and he flies through the windshield. But wait, there’s more! Dan only thinks he’s survived — a stolen motorcycle also takes on some frightening Freddy features. Dan gets a hot fuel injection (less sexy than it sounds) and finally crashes in a fiery heap outside of the diner where Alice works. Tragic.

“Bon appétit, bitch.” Greta (Erika Anderson) may not get a death sequence as extended as Dan’s, but holy crap is it gross. In the real world, her mom is forcing her to attend a dinner party where lecherous older men ogle Greta’s model figure. You know, a day after her friend dies in a terrible accident. When Greta dozes off, she encounters Chef Freddy, who traps her in her chair and shovels unfathomable amounts of food into her mouth. Soon she’s got the chipmunk cheeks from hell — the most disturbing visual since Freddy’s sleepwalking puppet in Dream Warriors. And then Alice sees Greta in her fridge, which is bound to kill her appetite for at least a few days. Long story short: Greta chokes to death and no one even tries to intervene.

“You’re not crazy.” Well, duh, Yvonne (Kelly Jo Minter). Is everyone in these movies willfully dense? Yes, they’re slasher flicks. I’m just saying it would be nice if for once, the Final Girl’s friends believed her right away. But I digress. Diving boards are scary enough as it is, but Yvonne almost gets destroyed by one when she falls asleep in the pool. Of course, she doesn’t actually die. Instead, Yvonne gets pulled into Alice’s dream, which turns out to be a stroke of good luck. Wading in a nasty tank for a while is a whole lot better than what the rest of Alice’s friends face. Though I’m guessing Yvonne feels pretty awkward about the whole “not trusting her bestie” thing.

“Faster than a bastard maniac, more powerful than a loco-madman, it’s Super Freddy!” Not gonna lie, I totally have a crush on dweeby comic artist Mark (Joe Seely). He also has The Dream Child’s best nightmare, because it’s by far the most absurd — and because I’m pretty sure it was inspired by A-Ha’s “Take On Me” video. Mark is pulled into his comic, and at first, he’s sort of OK with it. In the comic, Mark can become the Phantom Prowler, a dark and deadly vigilante who says things like, “Time to die, you scar-faced, limp-dick!” But movie monsters are just as resilient as superheroes. Even after getting shot repeatedly, Freddy is still able to overtake Mark, slashing the crap out of him. Well, a two-dimensional paper version of Mark. And not a single papercut joke. Color me impressed.

There’s other great stuff here. I love all the unnerving flashbacks to Freddy’s conception: something about the combination of an innocent nun and 100 horny maniacs freaks me out more than Krueger himself. We also get Alice’s creepy offspring Jacob (Whitby Hertford) — no offense to the actor, but he’s just … weird-looking. Oh, and Alice travels inside her own womb, where Freddy is hanging out on her uterine wall. As one does. Part five may not be as good as parts one through three, but it’s way more tolerable than Freddy’s Dead (1991), which Cheryl will be slogging through next.

ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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15
ENDORSEMENTS: National and state races

Editor’s note: the file below contains a correction, updated May 5 2010. 


National races


U.S. SENATE, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA BOXER


The Republican Party is targeting this race as one of its top national priorities, and if the GOP can dislodge a three-term senator from California, it will be a major blow for the party (and agenda) of President Obama. The pundits are happily talking about how much danger Barbara Boxer faces, how the country’s mood is swinging against big-government liberals.


But it’s always a mistake to count out Boxer. In 1982, as a Marin County supervisor with little name recognition in San Francisco, she trounced then-SF Sup. Louise Renne for an open Congressional seat. Ten years later, she beat the odds and won a hotly contested primary and tough general election to move into the Senate. She’s a fierce campaigner, and with no primary opposition, will have a united party behind her.


Boxer is one of the most progressive members of the not-terribly progressive U.S. Senate. She’s been one of the strongest, most consistent supporters of reproductive rights in Washington and a friend of labor (with 100 percent ratings from the AFL-CIO and National Education Association). We’ve had our disagreements: Boxer supported No Child Left Behind, wrote the law allowing airline pilots to carry guns in the cockpit, and was weak on same-sex marriage when San Francisco sought to legalize it (although she’s come around). But she was an early and stalwart foe of the war in Iraq, split with her own party to oppose a crackdown on illegal immigration, and is leading the way on accountability for Wall Street. She richly deserves reelection, and we’re happy to endorse her.


 


CONGRESS, 6TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


LYNN WOOLSEY


It’s odd that the representative from Marin and Sonoma counties is more progressive by far than her colleague to the south, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi. But over the years, Lynn Woolsey has been one of the strongest opponents of the war, a voice against bailouts for the big Wall Street banks, and a foe of cuts in the social safety net. We’re proud to endorse her for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 7TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


GEORGE MILLER


George Miller has been representing this East Bay district since 1974, and is now the chair of the Education and Labor Committee and a powerhouse in Congress. He’s too prone to compromise (with George W. Bush on education policy) but is taking the right line on California water (while Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the wrong side). We’ll endorse him for another term.


 


CONGRESS, 8TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


NANCY PELOSI


We’ve never been terribly pleased with San Francisco’s most prominent Congressional representative. Nancy Pelosi was the author of the bill that created the first privatized national park at the Presidio, setting a horrible standard that parks ought to be about making money. She was weak on opposing the war, ducked same-sex marriage, and has used her clout locally for all the wrong candidates and issues. But we have to give her credit for resurrecting and pushing through the health care bill (bad as it was — and it’s pretty bad — it’s better than doing nothing). And, at a time when the Republicans are trying to derail the Obama presidency, she’s become a pretty effective partner for the president.


Her fate as speaker (and her future in this seat) probably depends on how the Democrats fare in the midterm Congressional elections this fall. But if she and the party survive in decent shape, she needs to take the opportunity to undo the damage she did at the Presidio.


 


CONGRESS, 9TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


BARBARA LEE


Barbara Lee, who represents Berkeley and Oakland, is co-chair of the Progressive Caucus in the House, one of the most consistent liberal votes in Congress, and a hero to the antiwar movement. In 2001, she was the only member of either house to oppose the Bush administration’s Use of Force resolution following the 9/11 attacks, and she’s never let up on her opposition to foolish military entanglements. We’re glad she’s doing what Nancy Pelosi won’t — represent the progressive politics of her district in Washington.


 


CONGRESS, 13TH DISTRICT, DEMOCRAT


PETE STARK


Most politicians mellow and get more moderate as they age; Stark is the opposite. He announced a couple of years ago that he’s an atheist (the only one in Congress), opposed the Iraq war early, called one of his colleagues a whore for the insurance industry, and insulted President Bush and refused to apologize, saying: “I may have dishonored the commander-in-chief, but I think he’s done pretty well to dishonor himself without any help from me.” He served as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee for exactly one day — March 3 — before the Democratic membership overruled Speaker Pelosi and chucked him out on the grounds that he was too inflammatory. The 78-year-old may not be in office much longer, but he’s good on all the major issues. He’s also fearless. If he wants another term, he deserves one.


 


State races


GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


EDMUND G. BROWN


Jerry Brown? Which Jerry Brown? The small-is-beautiful environmentalist from the 1970s who opposed Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Diablo Canyon nuke and created the California Conservation Corps, the Office of Appropriate Technology, and the Farm Labor Relations Board (all while running a huge budget surplus in Sacramento)? The angry populist who lashed out at corporate power on a KPFA radio talk show and ran against Bill Clinton for president? The pro-development mayor of Oakland who sided with the cops on crime issues and opened a military academy? Or the tough-on-crime attorney general who refuses to even talk about tax increases to solve the state’s gargantuan budget problems?


We don’t know. That’s the problem with Brown — you never know what he’ll do or say next. For now, he’s been a terribly disappointing candidate, running to the right, rambling on about preserving Proposition 13, making awful statements about immigration and sanctuary laws, and even sounding soft on environmental issues. He’s started to hit his stride lately, though, attacking likely GOP contender Meg Whitman over her ties to Wall Street and we’re seeing a few flashes of the populist Brown. But he’s got to step it up if he wants to win — and he’s got to get serious about taxes and show some budget leadership, if he wants to make a difference as governor.


 


LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, DEMOCRAT


JANICE HAHN


Not an easy choice, by any means.


Mayor Gavin Newsom jumped into this race only after it became clear that he wouldn’t get elected governor. He sees it as a temporary perch, someplace to park his political ambitions until a better office opens up. He’s got the money, the statewide name recognition, and the endorsement of some of the state’s major power players, including both U.S. Senators and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s also been a terrible mayor of San Francisco — and some progressives (like Sup. Chris Daly) argue, persuasively, that the best way to get a better person in Room 200 is to ship Newsom off to an office in Sacramento where he can’t do much harm and let the supervisors pick the next mayor.


But it’s hard to endorse Newsom for any higher office. He’s ducked on public power, allowing PG&E to come very close to blocking the city’s community choice aggregation program (See editorial, page 5). His policies have promoted deporting kids and breaking up families. He’s taken an approach to the city budget — no new revenue, just cuts — that’s similar to what the Republican governor has done. He didn’t even bother to come down and talk to us about this race. There’s really no good argument for supporting the advancement of his political career.


Then there’s Janice Hahn. She’s a Los Angeles City Council member, the daughter of a former county supervisor, and the sister of a former mayor. She got in this race way before Newsom, and her nightmare campaign consultant, Garry South, acts as if she has some divine right to be the only Democrat running.


Hahn in not overly impressive as a candidate. When we met her, she seemed confused about some issues and scrambled to duck others. She told us she’s not sure she’s in favor of legalizing pot, but she isn’t sure why she’s not sure since she has no arguments against it. She won’t take a position on a new peripheral canal, although she can’t defend building one and says that protecting San Francisco Bay has to be a priority. She won’t rule out offshore oil drilling, although she said she has yet to see a proposal she can support. Her main economic development proposal was to bring more film industry work to California, even if that means cutting taxes for the studios or locating the shoots on Indian land where there are fewer regulations.


On the other hand, she told us she wants to get rid of the two-thirds threshold in the state Legislature for passing a budget or raising taxes. She supports reinstating the car tax at pre-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger levels. She supports a split-roll measure to reform Prop. 13. She wants to see an oil-severance tax to fund education. She’s one of the few statewide candidates who openly advocates higher taxes on the wealthy as part of the solution to the budget crisis.


We are under no illusions that Hahn will be able to use the weak office of lieutenant governor to move on any of these issues, and we’re not at all sure she’s ready to take over the top spot. But on the issues, she’s clearly better than Newsom, so she gets our endorsements.


 


SECRETARY OF STATE, DEMOCRAT


DEBRA BOWEN


Debra Bowen is the only Democrat running, a sign that pretty much everyone in the party thinks she’s doing a fine job as Secretary of State. She’s run a clean office and we see no reason to replace her.


 


CONTROLLER, DEMOCRAT


JOHN CHIANG


Like Bowen, John Chiang has no opposition in the primary, and he’s been a perfectly adequate controller. In fact, when Gov. Schwarzenegger tried two years ago to cut the pay of thousands of state employees to the minimum wage level, Chiang defied him and refused to change the paychecks — a move that forced the governor to back down. We just wish he’d play a more visible role in talking about the need for more tax revenue to balance the state’s books.


 


TREASURER, DEMOCRAT


BILL LOCKYER


Bill Lockyer keeps bouncing around Sacramento, waiting, perhaps, for his chance to be governor. He was attorney general. Now he’s treasurer seeking a second term, which he will almost certainly win. He’s done some good things, including trying to use state bonds to promote alternative energy, and has spoken out forcefully about the governor’s efforts to defer deficit problems through dubious borrowing. He hasn’t, however, come out in favor of higher taxes for the rich or a change in Prop. 13.


 


ATTORNEY GENERAL, DEMOCRAT


KAMALA HARRIS


There are really only two serious candidates in this race, Kamala Harris, the San Francisco district attorney, and Rocky Delgadillo, the former Los Angeles city attorney. Harris has a comfortable lead, with Delgadillo in second and the others far behind.


Delgadillo is on his second try for this office. He ran against Jerry Brown four years ago and got nowhere. And in the meantime, he’s come under fire for, among other things, using city employees to run personal errands for him (picking up his dry-cleaning, babysitting his kids) and driving his car without insurance. On a more significant level, he made his reputation with gang injunctions that smacked of ethnic profiling and infuriated Latino and civil liberties groups. It’s amazing he’s still a factor in this race; he can’t possibly win the general election with all his baggage.


Harris has a lot going for her. She was among the first California elected officials to endorse Barack Obama for president, and remains close to the administration. She’s a smart, articulate prosecutor and could be one of the few women atop the Democratic ticket this year. We were never comfortable with her ties to Willie Brown, but he’s no longer a factor in state or local politics. These days, she’s more closely allied with the likes of State Sen. Mark Leno.


That said, we have some serious problems with Harris. She’s been up in Sacramento pushing Republican-style tough-on-crime bills (like a measure that would bar registered sex offenders from ever using social networking sites on the Internet) and forcing sane Democrats like Assembly Member and Public Safety Committee Chair Tom Ammiano to try to tone down or kill them (and then take the political heat). If she didn’t know about the problems in the SFPD crime lab, she should have, and should have made a bigger fuss, earlier.


But Harris has kept her principled position against the death penalty, even when it meant taking immense flak from the cops for refusing to seek capital punishment for the killer of a San Francisco police officer. She’s clearly the best choice for the Democrats.


 


INSURANCE COMMISSIONER, DEMOCRAT


DAVE JONES


Two credible progressives are vying to run for this powerful and important position regulating the massive — and massively corrupt — California insurance industry. Dave Jones and Hector De La Torre are both in the state Assembly, with Jones representing Sacramento and De La Torre hailing from Los Angeles. Both have a record opposing insurance industry initiatives; both are outspoken foes of Prop. 17; and either would do a fine job as insurance commissioner. But Jones has more experience on consumer issues and health care reform, and we prefer his background as a Legal Aid lawyer to De La Torre’s history as a Southern California Edison executive. So we’ll give Jones the nod.


 


BOARD OF EQUALIZATION, DISTRICT 1, DEMOCRAT


BETTY T. YEE


Betty Yee has taken over a job that’s been a stronghold of progressive tax policy since the days of the late Bill Bennett. She’s done well in the position, supporting progressive financial measures and even coming down, as a top tax official, in favor of legalizing (and taxing) marijuana. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION


TOM TORLAKSON


Two prominent Democratic legislators are running for this nonpartisan post, state Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles and Assembly Member Tom Torlakson of Martinez. It’s a pretty clear choice: Romero is a big supporter of charter schools who thinks parents should be able to move their kids out of one school district and into another (allowing wealthier white parents, for example, to abandon Los Angeles or San Francisco for the suburban districts). She’s been supported in the past by Don and Doris Fisher, who put a chunk of their GAP Inc. fortune into school privatization efforts. Torlakson wants more accountability for charters, opposes the Romero district-option bill, and has the support of every major teachers union in the state. Vote for Torlakson.


 


STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 8, DEMOCRAT


LELAND YEE


Sen. Leland Yee can be infuriating. Two years ago, he was hell-bent on selling the Cow Palace as surplus state property and allowing private developers to take it over. In the recent budget crisis, he pissed off his Democratic colleagues by refusing to vote for cuts that everyone else knew were inevitable (while never making a strong stand in favor of, say, repealing Prop. 13 or raising other taxes). But he’s always been good on open-government issues and has made headlines lately for busting California State University, Stanislaus over a secret contract to bring Sarah Palin in for a fundraiser — and has raised the larger point that public universities shouldn’t hide their finances behind private foundations.


Yee will have no serious opposition for reelection, and his campaign for a second term in Sacramento is really the start of the Leland Yee for Mayor effort. With reservations over the Cow Palace deal and a few other issues, we’ll endorse him for reelection.


 Correction update: Yee’s office informs us that the senator suports an oil-severance tax and a tax on high-income earners and “believes that Prop. 13 should be reformed,” although he hasn’t taken a position on Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s reform bill. 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 12, DEMOCRAT


FIONA MA


Fiona Ma’s a mixed bag (at best). She doesn’t like Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and supports public power, but comes up with strange bills that make no sense, like a 2009 measure to limit rent control in trailer parks. Why does Ma, who has no trailer parks in her district, care? Maybe because the landlords who control the mobile home facilities gave her some campaign cash. She faces no opposition, and we’re not thrilled with her record, but we’ll reluctantly back her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 13, DEMOCRAT


TOM AMMIANO


When the history of progressive politics in modern San Francisco is written, Tom Ammiano will be a central figure. His long-shot 1999 mayoral campaign against Willie Brown brought the left to life in town, and his leadership helped bring back district elections and put a progressive Board of Supervisors in place in 2000. As a supervisor, he authored the city’s landmark health care bill (which Newsom constantly tries to take credit for) and the rainy day fund (which saved the public schools from debilitating cuts). He uses his local influence to promote the right causes, issues, and candidates.


And he’s turned out to be an excellent member of the state Assembly. He forced BART to take seriously civilian oversight of the transit police force. He put the battle to reform Prop. 13 with a split-role measure back on the state agenda. And his efforts to legalize and tax marijuana are close to making California the first state to toss the insane pot laws. As chair of the Public Safety Committee, he routinely defies the police lobbies and the right-wing Republicans and defuses truly awful legislation. We’re glad Ammiano’s still fighting in the good fight, and we’re pleased to endorse him for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 14, DEMOCRAT


NANCY SKINNER


Nancy Skinner has taken on one of the toughest, and for small businesses, most important, battles in Sacramento. She wants to make out-of-state companies that sell products to Californians collect and remit sales tax. If you buy a book at your local bookstore, you have to pay sales tax; if you buy it from Amazon, it’s tax-free. That not only hurts the state, which loses hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, it’s a competitive disadvantage to local shops. Skinner’s a good progressive vote and an ally for Ammiano on the Public Safety Committee. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.


 


STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 16, DEMOCRAT


SANDRE SWANSON


Sandre Swanson represents the district where BART police killed Oscar Grant, but he wasn’t the one out front pushing for more civilian accountability; that was left to SF’s Ammiano. And while Swanson was generally supportive of Ammiano’s bill, he was hardly a leader in the campaign to pass it. This is too bad, because Swanson’s almost always a progressive vote and has been good on issues like whistleblower protection (a Swanson bill that passed this year protects local government workers who want to report problems confidentially). We’ll endorse him for another term, but he needs to get tougher on the BART police.

Housing relief – for tenants

David Talbot
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Housing relief – for tenants

OPINION Since the burst of the housing bubble, we’ve seen a lot of attention paid to the plight of homeowners hit hard by the recession and facing foreclosure. Indeed, President Obama recently enacted a protection for homeowners that requires banks to let unemployed homeowners delay their mortgage payments. But until now there has been little talk and even less action on how we can help tenants who are also in danger of losing their homes.

Tenants need economic relief too. Renters have been particularly hard hit by the housing bubble and the ensuing recession. During the bubble, real estate speculation caused San Francisco rents to increase by an average of 50 percent. When the bubble burst, tenants saw their jobs disappear and incomes drop — but rents remained at record high levels. Evictions for nonpayment of rent shot up as renter after renter found it impossible to keep up with San Francisco’s housing costs.

The June 8 election will give voters a chance to change that. Proposition F will give tenants the right to postpone rent increases when they’ve lost their jobs or seen their wages or hours cut.

Many tenants struggle to pay San Francisco’s sky-high rents in the best of times and, when hit with a layoff or reduction in pay, it becomes even more difficult. Any further rent increases would be devastating and put their housing at risk. Prop. F will provide needed relief to those tenants trying to pay high rents with vastly reduced incomes. Unemployed tenants or those who have seen their wages cut by 20 percent or more will be able to get any rent increase delayed simply by filing a petition with the San Francisco Rent Board and documenting that they are unemployed or have had wages cut.

With the difficulties renters face in one of the country’s most expensive housing markets, Prop. F is a mild and measured response to a very real crisis. Prop. F essentially does what any decent landlord would do anyway: give a break to tenants who’ve just lost their jobs and hold off on rent increases until back on their feet.

San Francisco voters should also give a break to tenants on the verge of losing their homes. Vote Yes on Prop. F.

Ted Gullicksen runs the San Francisco Tenants Union.

Herrera to San Francisco: boycott Arizona

Mary Magee
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Herrera to San Francisco: boycott Arizona

I almost visited Arizona once.
I was in Nevada, visiting the Hoover Dam which crosses the border between Nevada and Arizona and took a photo next to the Arizona state sign.

But I didn’t cross the line. I already suspected that Arizona was groundzero for wingnuts, thanks to the decision of Arizona U.S. senator, Republican John McCain, to choose then Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.


At least, Democrat Janet Napolitano was still governor of Arizona at the time, and so was able to veto similar attempts to pass racist immigration laws in the state of


But now Republican Jan Brewer, a former Maricopa County supervisor, is governor of Arizona and has signed Arizona’s SB  1070, I think I’ll follow San Francisco city Attorney Dennis Herrera’s advice and implement a sweeping boycott of all things Arizona.


Citing San Francisco’s “moral leadership against such past injustices as South African apartheid, the exploitation of migrant farm workers, the economic oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and discrimination against the LGBT community,” Herrera offered the services of his office’s contracts, government litigation and investigations teams to work closely with city departments and commissions to identify applicable contracts and to aggressively pursue termination wherever legally tenable.


“Arizona’s controversial new law makes it a state-level crime for someone to be in the country illegally, and even criminalizes the failure to carry immigration documents at all times by lawful foreign residents,” Herrera’s April 26 press release observed. “It additionally imposes a requirement for police officers to question those they suspect may be in the United States illegally. Civil libertarians have sharply criticized the law for being an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against all Latinos, regardless of their citizenship. It has also been rebuked by the nation’s law enforcement community, with the president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, San Jose Police Chief Robert Davis, reiterating his organization’s 2006 policy statement that requiring local police to enforce immigration laws “would likely negatively effect and undermine the level of trust and cooperation between local police and immigrant communities.”


“Arizona has charted an ominous legal course that puts extremist politics before public safety, and betrays our most deeply-held American values,” said Herrera, who is the son of an immigrant from Latin America. “Just as it did two decades ago when it refused to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Arizona has again chosen to isolate itself from the rest of the nation. Our most appropriate response is to assure that their isolation is tangible rather than merely symbolic. San Francisco should lead the way in adopting and aggressively pursuing a sweeping boycott of Arizona and Arizona-based businesses until this unjust law is repealed or invalidated. My office is fully committed to work with San Francisco city departments and commissions to identify all applicable contracts, and to pursue termination wherever possible.  And my office stands ready to assist in any legal challenges in whatever way it can.”


Meanwhile, Napolitano, who is serving as Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary, joined Obama in calling Arizona’s new immigration law “misguided.”


Appearing on ABC News, Napolitano said of the bill: “That one is a misguided law. It’s not a good law enforcement law. It’s not a good law in any number of reasons.”
She also warned that Arizona’s law could get other states trying to pass similar legislation, which could create a patchwork of immigration rules, instead of an an overall federal immigration system.


“This affects everybody, and I actually view it now as a security issue,” Napolitano said. “We need to know who’s in the country. And we need to know, for those who are in the country illegally, there needs to be a period under which they are given the opportunity to register so we get their biometrics, we get their criminal history and we know who they are. They pay a fine. They learn English. They get right with the law.”


Here on the streets of San Francisco, immigrant advocates are asking folks to march on May Day in solidarity with the immigrant communities of Arizona.


“In 2006, the immigrant community took to the streets in huge numbers,” a press release from the May 1st coalition stated. “Millions of undocumented working people and their families sought a pathway to legalization and to a life without fear of work-place raids or middle-of-the night deportations that tear families apart. In 2010, conditions have only worsened as hate crimes have increased exponentially; intolerance has been legitimized by the rhetoric of the Tea Party; and governments (like Arizona) have instituted harsh policing and employment practices that terrorize our communities. The federal government has failed to solve the crisis of undocumented workers in this country. In San Francisco, thousands of workers face losing their jobs because of a flawed employment verification process. Our children are deported without due process and now we must fear the codification of racial bigotry in Arizona.  State and federal governments have ineffectively solved the budget crisis on the backs of the lowest paid workers.  We march in solidarity with Arizona’s immigrants; immigrants everywhere; and the hard-working people of San Francisco who’ve unfairly endured the burden of this economic crisis.


The May 1st Coalition invites the community to join them for an April 28 poster-making party at 10 a.m, City College Mission Campus at 1125 Valencia Street in preparation for a May Day march at which Olga Miranda, President of SEIU Local 87, Jane Kim, SFUSD school board president, and Pablo Rodriguez, city college faculty, will speak.


My favorite comment on this unfunny situation comes from Daily Kos contributing editor and Las Vegas resident Jed Lewison.


“What do you call a bunch of people who not only don’t see anything wrong with Arizona’s new hate law, but blame federal inaction on immigration reform for “forcing” Arizona to enact the law while simultaneously trying to block federal immigration reform legislation?” Lewison asks. “You call them conservatives.”


 

A fitting memorial to labor’s dead and injured

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Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century.

We’re coming up on another Workers Memorial Day April 28 – a day when organized labor and its allies honor the millions of men and women who’ve needlessly suffered and died because of workplace hazards and to demand that the government act to lessen the hazards.

It’s certain that unless federal authorities do act to expand and adequately enforce the neglected job safety laws, the number of victims will remain at a terrible and unnecessarily high level.

Every year, more than 6,000 Americans are killed on the job. More than 6 million are injured, at least half of them seriously. Another 60,000 die from their injuries or from cancer, lung and heart ailments and other occupational diseases caused by exposure to toxic substances.

 Think of that: An average of at least 16 workers killed and nearly 5,500 badly hurt on each and every day, plus 135 or more dying daily from job-related illness. The financial toll also is high: More than $3 billion in health care expenses and other costs to employers and workers, such as lost wages and production.

Trying to reduce workplace dangers, always a difficult task, became even more difficult when the Bush administration took office in 2000 and began eight years of what the United Auto Workers accurately cited as  “a harsh, vindictive attack on health and safety standards.”

Under President Bush, important new health and safety regulations proposed by experts were brushed aside by the Labor Department. Job-site inspections were all but abandoned and employers were asked merely to certify that they had voluntarily complied with the existing regulations.  Fines for violations were rare, in any case, as were criminal charges against employers whose willful violations led to injury, illness or death.

There was, in short, very little enforcement of the job safety laws, and absolutely no progress in reducing workplace dangers or the ever-mounting number of work-related injuries and fatalities.

But under President Obama, there’s genuine hope for change. As Obama’s Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, made clear at her swearing-in: “There’s a new sheriff in town.”

Solis has shifted from reliance on voluntary compliance to stricter enforcement, hiring hundreds of new investigators and enforcers for the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health and Mine Safety Administrations. Most of them are longtime advocates for working people, some of them from organized labor. They’re holding jobs held during the Bush years by employer advocates whose main concern was shielding employers from the costs of making work safer.

Solis’ team has moved to enforce new rules to better protect some of the most endangered workers, including mine workers and crane operators. She’s also stressing the need to help the millions who suffer chronic pain in the neck, back, shoulders, arms or wrists and other suffering resulting from the endlessly repetitive movements and often heavy lifting required in many jobs today.

Those so-called ergonomic injuries are the most common  – and most neglected – of the  serious injuries suffered by U.S. workers.

Solis has put a task force to work designing a much tougher enforcement program for serious or repeat offenders, who will face mandatory job-site inspections. What’s more, she and Obama have named one of the country’s most distinguished safety experts, David Michaels of Georgetown University, to head the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Michaels’ main goal is to get employers and workers and their unions to jointly develop programs that would include safety training for workers as part of an effort to meet what Michaels and other safety experts see as a great need to change  OSHA’s  direction and philosophy.

Michaels and Solis have gotten important help from congressional Democrats who introduced legislation to strengthen the safety laws, in part by increasing  penalties imposed on violators. Penalties now are so minimal that many employers simply ignore the law and consider the fines, if any, a routine cost of doing business.

The measures also call for more strongly protecting workers who report safety violations by their employers, extending the laws’ coverage to farmworkers, local and state government employees and other groups not currently covered, and otherwise strengthening workers’ job safety rights.

It’s certain, at any rate, that labor, Obama, Solis and their supporters will indeed wage the major battle for true job safety that they’ve promised and have, in fact,  already started. There could be no more fitting a memorial to the millions who’ve been needlessly maimed or killed while working to sustain themselves and their families.

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his  recent columns.

Nevius makes the case for a progressive DCCC

Sasha Cuttler
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Nevius makes the case for a progressive DCCC

Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius made an excellent argument for supporting the Guardian’s slate of progressive candidates for the Democratic County Central Committee in Saturday’s paper, even though he was trying to do just the opposite. But I suppose that perspective is everything.

Our perspective at the Guardian is one of great pride in San Francisco and its left-of-center values. Nevius looks at San Francisco from his home in Walnut Creek and sees a scary place where people question authority figures and don’t simply trust developers, big corporations, and the Chamber of Commerce to act in the public interest.

“The next two months will see a battle for the political soul of the city. It will pit the progressives against the moderates in a face-off that will have huge implications in the November elections and, perhaps, the election of the next mayor. The key is control of an obscure but incredibly influential organization called the Democratic County Central Committee,” Nevius writes, and he’s right about that.

But he’s wrong when he assumes most San Franciscans agree with him and others who want to make the city more like the sterile suburbs that they prefer. Nevius values “safe streets,” which is his code for giving police more power through the proposed sit-lie ordinance and other unpopular crackdowns, despite the fact that he sat in the back row and watched the DCCC voted overwhelmingly against sit-lie after nobody presented a credible case for it.

Nevius is so utterly blind to the fact that most San Franciscans want adequate mitigation and community benefits from development projects that he recently ranted and raved about the defeat of the 555 Washington project, even though it was unanimously rejected by the Board of Supervisors for inadequately addressing these requirements.

The “moderate values” that Nevius champions are actually quite extreme: give downtown and developers everything they want, never question the behavior of cops or the Fire Department’s budget, keep cutting taxes until city government becomes incapable of providing services or regulating the private sector, ignore the cultural value of nightclubs and artists, and deport all the undocumented immigrants.

This is the Democratic Party that Nevius and his allies like Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier and supervisorial candidate Scott Wiener (a conservative attorney who would be the best friend that the suburban cowboy cops could ever have on the board) want to promote, and it looks more like the Republican Party than a political party with San Francisco values.

But they aren’t honest about that intention, instead trying to fool people into believing that progressives are the extremists. “But when Mrs. Jones receives her Democratic voter guide in the mail…she’s thinking of the party of Barack Obama, not the party of Aaron Peskin and (Supervisor) Chris Daly,” Wiener said.

But in the Democratic presidential primary election, it was Daly and Peskin who were the strongest early supporters of Barack Obama, while Wiener backed John Edwards and Alioto-Pier, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the rest of the “moderate” party stalwarts supported Hillary Clinton. That’s not a huge deal, but it’s a sign of how the so-called moderates are willing to distort political reality.

So Nevius is right. This is an important election and it is about the soul of the city. Do you support scared suburban twits who disingenuously try to hide behind the “moderate” label in order to seem more reasonable, or do you support progressive candidates who have integrity and won’t moderate their values in order to appease the cops or the capitalists?

If it’s the latter, support the Guardian’s slate (which is substantially similar to the slates approved by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the San Francisco Tenants Union, the Sierra Club’s SF Bay Chapter, and other progressive groups).

And if you want that slate to have some money to mail out a Guardian slate card, come to a fundraiser this Thursday evening at CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, featuring the candidates and some great exemplars of the culture they support, including amazing singer/songwriter Valerie Orth, the zany dance troupe Fou Fou Ha, and DJs Smoove and Kramer, who regularly rock the best clubs and community-based parties in town.

And by “town,” I mean San Francisco, not Walnut Creek.    

PBS’s Frontline edits out single payer

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Documentary misrepresented advocates as supporters of a public option
4/23/10

Silencing supporters of single-payer, or Medicare for All, is a media staple, but PBS’s Frontline found a new way to do that on the April 13 special Obama’s Deal–by selectively editing an interview with a single-payer advocate and footage of single-payer protesters to make them appear to be activists for a public option instead.

The public option proposal would have offered a government-run health insurance program to some individuals as an alternative to mandatory private health insurance. Not only is this not the same thing as Medicare for All, it’s an idea many single-payer advocates actually opposed, arguing that it would leave the insurance industry intact as dominant players in the healthcare business (PNHP.org, 7/20/09).

In the report, Frontline explained that insurance industry lobbyists pushed a bill in the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D.-Montana) “that would include the mandate to buy insurance and kill the public option.” That “didn’t sit well with the president’s liberal supporters,” the Frontline narrator told viewers. After a clip from public-option supporter Howard Dean, a full minute and a half focused on protests: “The left counterattacked in May…. Liberal outrage arrived in Baucus’ own hearing room as healthcare activists, one after another, shouted him down.” Several of these protesters are seen in action, with a clip of an interview with Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) saying that these were members of her group shut out of the hearings.

Now, Flowers and PNHP are leading single-payer advocates–but you’d never learn that from watching the Frontline program, which never mentions the single-payer concept. Instead, viewers were left to assume that Flowers and the protesters were public-option proponents, since that was the only progressive proposal that had been discussed. As Flowers explained (Consortium News, 4/15/10):

When the host, Mr. [Michael] Kirk, interviewed me for Obama’s Deal, we spoke extensively of the single-payer movement and my arrest with other single-payer advocates in the Senate Finance Committee last May. However, our action in Senate Finance was then misidentified as “those on the left” who led a “counterattack” because of “liberal outrage” at being excluded.

Viewers saw more footage of protesters being handcuffed and led away, with an unidentified voiceover from Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! describing the arrests, and finally a voice was heard saying: “This option cannot be part of the discussion at a Senate hearing? Now, I think that’s wrong.”

The audience could only conclude that “this option” referred to the public option, but this conclusion would be incorrect; this voice was actually MSNBC host Ed Schultz, a single-payer supporter, and a fuller version of his quote (5/7/09) would have made it clear that he was complaining about single-payer being excluded from the hearing:

Now, let me explain single-payer for just a minute. The money comes from one source, the government. Now, you and I pay taxes, OK. The government pays the bill. It’s that simple. Patients are not caught in the middle between doctors and insurance companies, no game-playing here. There’s no middleman. You know? There’s no decision-makers between you and your doctor. It’s a clean deal.

So what Chairman Baucus has decided, this option cannot be part of the discussion at a Senate hearing? Now, I think that’s wrong. I don’t think it’s fair.

Frontline’s editors responded to Flowers’ complaints, saying that they “understand the frustration of Dr. Flowers and others in what she calls the ‘single-payer movement,'” but that “it’s the work of journalism to report widely on a topic, then find the sharpest focus for the reporting, unfortunately leaving out much strong material along the way to shaping the clearest communication possible in the time or space allowed.”

The statement also argued that

the section that included Dr. Flowers was focused on the power of the insurance lobby and showed how activists like Dr. Flowers were excluded from the debate over the bill. The protesters themselves said they were protesting the fact that they had been excluded from the debate, so we believe we presented the protests in the proper context.

But in Frontline’s presentation, “activists like Dr. Flowers”–that is, single-payer advocates–didn’t even exist. Having itself excluded their perspective from the debate–and even misrepresented them as supporters of a position that many of them actually oppose–there’s some irony in Frontline claiming to have put this exclusion in the “proper context.”

This is not the first time that Frontline has decided that a conversation about healthcare reform should exclude single-payer (FAIR Action Alert, 4/7/09). The March 31, 2009, Frontline special Sick Around America avoided discussions of national healthcare plans. This omission led Frontline correspondent T.R. Reid–who had hosted a previous Frontline special (4/15/08) that examined various public healthcare models–to withdraw from the project.
When Frontline pushed single-payer out of the debate last year, PBS ombud Michael Getler (4/10/09) weighed in on the side of critics, calling it a “missed opportunity.” Getler today (4/23/10) published a column about the latest Frontline omissions, once again finding that ignoring a popular policy like single-payer is problematic:

It seems to me that to ignore something that was out there and popular with millions of people and thousands of healthcare professionals, but not really on the table, was a mistake. Although obviously tight on time, the producers should have found 30 seconds to take this into account, because many Americans support it, yet the deal makers never mention it, nor is the politics of discarding it addressed.

We’re thankful that Getler has once again taken this view and encouraged a more inclusive discussion of healthcare on PBS. However, his criticism misses the critical journalistic fact that single-payer advocates were not only marginalized by Frontline–they were misrepresented.

ACTION:
Tell Frontline that their recent program Obama’s Deal should have accurately explained the views of single-payer advocates.

CONTACT:
Frontline
frontline@pbs.org

You may also want to write to PBS ombud Michael Getler (ombudsman@pbs.org).

    
TAKE ACTION!

ACTION:

Tell Frontline that their recent program Obama’s Deal should have accurately explained the views of single-payer advocates.

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Frontline
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Yann Martel brushes off the haters

Andrew Lam
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Last night, Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, and the new spectacularly panned follow up effort Beatrice and Virgil, took the stage at Kabuki Sundance Theater to speak with fellow writer Laura Fraser.

One can almost hear the semi colons when Martell speaks. “What makes life go well is not just external success; it’s how you feel about it.” It’s well and good that he seems relatively undisturbed by reviews of his work, because otherwise he might be a little ruffled these days; despite the phenomenal triumph of Life of Pi, the New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani heads up a long list of unimpressed critics, calling the new book “disappointing and often perverse.”

Seen onstage, Martel seems to be too engaged with philosophical conquesting to bog down in such matters.

An exotic biography (born in Spain!  Foreign service parents raised him in Costa Rica, France, and Mexico! Employed as a security guard and tree planter before coming to writing full time!) has left Martel with a desire to express the totality of human existence through the simplest narrative possible. All the better to communicate with the rest of the world, something which the author finds his “duty,” albeit a grand one. “It’s no easy fate,” to be endowed with such literary responsibility, he sighs.

Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the slings and arrows of outrageous book critics. What Martel took nine years to come up with in Beatrice and Virgil is what last night’s host Laura Fraser dubbed “meta fiction,” a Rubik’s cube of narrative not unlike Life of Pi’s structure. The book follows a writer who has become disenchanted by criticism from his editors; a character that Martel makes no bones about being a semi-autobiographical representation. The character finds inspiration renewed upon meeting a taxidermist, who needs help writing his own Beckett-like play starring personified characters based on his stuffed donkey and monkey friends that live in his shop. Oh, and the whole thing’s about the Holocaust.

It’s actually a less complicated version of what Martel had planned for the book at one point; a flipbook, “a book with two doors, but no exit,” which read one way would contain an essay about Holocaust lit, and the other, a fictional novel on the genocide.

Martel thinks it’s time to move past the strict rule that the Holocaust must be approached from a historical realist perspective because of the scope of the horror that occurred. By representing tragedy in a “non-literal, compact way,” he argues, the artist is able to create “art as suitcase: light, portable, [and] essential,” and speak to the emotional side of a tragedy where the voices of billions have been blurred into silence. Hence the donkey and monkey. He compares the need for these fictional characters to Orwell’s Animal Farm, Camus’ The Plague, and Picasso’s Guernica. One things for sure, Martel is a well read guy.

See we were totally there! Blurriness is the new artistic thing. Geez. Photo by Paula Connelly

It’s decadent really, the certain, bountifully nerdy joys involved with spending a Wednesday night watching onstage conversation with a book author. Respectful hushes. The discovery of exciting new vocabulary words. Audience opportunities to extrapolate theories of the meaning of titles and character names. Central among these pleasures, the chance to hear a person who has built their life on the solitude of reading and writing speak in front of a crowd. How do they do it, these authors? Masters of the written word, shouldn’t they be slobbering, anti-social messes at public speaking, at human relations in general?

But, scholarly as he may be, he’s well spoken, this Martel. He goes so far in his gregariousness, even, to engage with Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, having sent the head of state a book every two weeks for the past three years to instill in him a deeper appreciation for the arts and their import in the character and integrity of a guy that can run a country. He holds our Prez highly, noting that, in contrast to Stephen’s complete lack of response to the literary missives, Obama sent him a thank you note upon reading Life of Pi.

The whole thing’s mind boggling. A celebrity in the public eye, easeful and unworried in the face of professional turmoil enough to spend his moments onstage discussing why the leader of his country should read a Harlequin romance novel (a. the company is based out of Canada, b. they’ve sold 5.63 billion titles to date)? The man doesn’t appear to be worried. A solid endorsement of any current project, if ere I’ve seen one.

John Ross: Time travelling down the Mississippi

Zelda Bronstein
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John Ross: Time travelling down the Mississippi

 Editors note: John Ross is wandering the country on a book tour, sharing his observations of Obamalandia, 2010. You can read his previous dispatches here and here  

I. Role models

 

When I finally made Chicago, they were all waiting for me down there two blocks south of the end of the Blue Line, through the wrought-iron gates of Forest Home Cemetery, past the ostentatious mausoleums of fabulous gypsies and clustered around the heroic monument to the Haymarket Martyrs: Red Emma, looking a little dingy these days; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the Rebel Girl; William Z. Foster, the CPUSA’s most rigid ideologue and the leaders of its black sector Henry Winston and William Patterson; the anarchist femme fatal Voltairine de Cleyres; hobo-ologist Ben Reitman; and, of course my personal role model, Lucy Parsons, who outlived her Albert (hung by the State for the Haymarket frame-up) by 50 years, traveling this poisoned landscape from sea to stinking sea speechifying to the masses and hawking her incendiary pamphlets to make ends meet. A single wilted rose adorned the soft granite pillow that bears her name and dates.


Scattered amidst the tombstones of the 70-plus anarchists and communists, radicals and rabble-rousers that Irving Abrams and the Pioneer Aid Society planted here are the DNAs of Joe Hill and Big Bill Haywood and Eddie Balchowsky, the one-winged barrelhouse piano player who gave up his arm to Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Irving himself has a box seat at the foot of the Haymarket marker, now a National Historical Landmark managed by the government that these brave souls in residence once sought to overthrow.

Emma Goldman and her condescending epitaph (“a people must rise up to liberty”) was unquestionably Irving’s greatest steal, having won the bidding war for her cadaver after she croaked up in Toronto, to bring her home to the country from which she had been deported decades before for counseling young men not to sign up for the First Imperialist War. But despite the old-time luminaries in repose, I had journeyed down to Forest Home to visit with a recent implant, Franklin Rosemont, the anarchist writer and majordomo of Charles Kerr, the oldest radical publishing house in the U.S., now being sustained by his widow Penelope.  

“Surrealism Forever!” reads Franklin’s slab, in keeping with the celebratory tone of this section of the old boneyard. Franklin, who passed abruptly last year, is buried within the arc of the Haymarket monument.  The Cottons, Clara and Warren (not known to be subversives), keep him company.    

I doubt that our current president, whose adopted city Chicago is, has ever communed with these noble spirits, but it would be an educational experience if ever he should make his way down to Forest Home. Enveloped by deal-making devotees of Chicago’s backroom Democratic Party politics like Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan (now neck-deep in a hometown scandal for A-listing the scions of the influential in Chicago’s elite public schools), the examples set by Lucy Parsons and Emma Goldman might have stiffened Obama’s shaky backbone and taught him to stand up for the principles he has abandoned as the CEO of the planet’s longest-running criminal conspiracy.

Michael James rules the venerable Heartland Café in Rogers Park in the extreme northwest of this windy metropolis, a schmooze and booze venue for the left side of the local Democratic Party machine for the past three decades.  Both Obama and Bill Ayers have crossed its threshold occasionally at the same time, and Michael, the facilitator of “Rising Up Angry,” a militant Uptown youth group at the tail end of the turbulent ’60s, is now the chairperson of the local Demo ward committee. Although he will never concede that Baracko has squandered the faith that millions invested in him, I sense growing disappointment with Hope Man’s wishy-washy performance 15 months into his tainted term in office.  

As always, I bunked with the James Gang — Paige, the kids, and the estimable Che, a Labrador with a most dignified demeanor — and plunged into Chicago’s stimulating cultural mix. Also in residence: the foot-stomping Irish fiddler Paddy Jones, just in from Tralee — three years ago, Mike dragged Paddy and I off to the Korean baths where the local political class conspires. We sat buck naked in the sauna and Paddy insisted I regale him with the cautionary tale of El Che (the revolutionary martyr not the mutt).  

This time around, Michael escorted me to the late Nelson Algren’s birthday party in a church close by this quintessential Chicago scribbler’s beloved Division Street neighborhood, during which mash notes from his lover Simone de Beuvoir were read, lending credence to Frankie Lyman’s pointed inquiry “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?”

Yet another highpoint of my weeklong pilgrimage to the Hog Butcher of the World were a pair of meetings in Pilsen, an industrial enclave where the U.S. Communist Party first convened hard by Blue Island Avenue back in 1919 and now the most pertinent barrio in Mexico’s second U.S. city. More than a hundred Latino activists showed up to hear me rant and rave about the prospects for a new Mexican revolution and plot this year’s May 1st march in a city where immigrant workers first took to the streets 124 years ago to demand redress for crimes inflicted upon the working class by the bosses of industry and commerce. Four years ago, a half million immigrant workers marched here to demand recognition of their rights and despite the broken promises encapsulated in the Schumer-Graham proposed Immigration “Reform” bill, Chicago’s Mexican community is warming up for another red-hot May Day.  

II.  Resurrection

I followed the contours of the mighty Mississippi from Chicago to St. Louis through rich bottomland that is now the domain of Archer Daniels Midland. St. Louis is an urban hub that features wide, well-kept lawns and bushels of dirty money — Monsanto, Boeing, Peabody Energy, and Talx, which counsels greedy congloms on unemployment compensation, are all headquartered here.  

Yet, despite the capitalist connivance, the city has its own sui generis radical history. The 1877 railroad strike spread from the east to St. Louis and set the style for labor strife in the west, and the anarchist Flores Magon brothers published “Regeneracion,” the bible of the 100 year-old Mexican revolution, here before they were run out of town in the teens of the past century.

My days in St. Louis were well spent. I preached an Easter Sunday sermon at the Mid Rivers Ethical Society, sharing my vision of resurrection and insurrection in the aforementioned Forest Home boneyard, and offered up my palaver at a Black Green Party forum in a soul food parlor off Delmar, spreading the news of the Mexican government’s execrable persecution of  electrical workers pushed out of their workplaces last October at bayonet point by the military and police in a scheme to privatize electricity generation south of the border.  

I walked the St Louis Walk of Fame, stepping over the stars of the likes of William Burroughs, Chuck Berry, Walker Evans, and Fontella Bass, all of whom had to leave town to achieve a modicum of notoriety. I even encountered my very first St. Louie Cardinal, a crimson-hued bird perched in a sapling, spring zephyrs ruffling its crest, from which the Anheuser Busch dynasty drew the logo for the local nine in this beisbol-intoxicated town (they were previously dubbed the “Perfectos” after a popular cigar.)

III. Black & Brown

Further down river, the scrublands of Mississippi spread into the horizon beneath the cramped commuter flight in from Memphis. I had not touched down in the state since Freedom Summer 1964, when I arrived on the very day that the bodies of three civil rights workers (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney) were unearthed beneath a dam in Philadelphia, Miss.  

Although Black and White speak more cordially to each other these days and there are few black bodies swinging from the poplar trees, Mississippi God Damn (dixit Nina Simone) is still moldering down below. I could feel the heat at my hotel just off the Millsaps College campus in Jackson, where a statewide PTA meeting was in progress. In the conference rooms, black parents squared off against white school administrators over curriculums and the unequal quality of education. This is a commemoration year for black activism, the 40th anniversary of the killings at Jackson (and Kent) State and the 50th for SNCC — and old grievances burn long and deep.

The old civil rights movement achieved only token parity in this the poorest state in the union. Now a new civil rights movement is focusing on the flood of Mexican and Latino workers who poured into Mississippi in the wake of Katrina, and brown people are today’s niggers down at the bottom of the food chain.

Only 34,000 “Hispanics” were officially counted in the 2000 state census but Bill Chandler, a veteran of the Texas farm workers union and spokes for the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA), thinks that three times as many undocumented workers, lured to the state by casino construction, were overlooked back then. In 2010, Chandler calculates that the immigrant numbers have swelled to 200,000, nearly 10% of the state population, and taken together with close to a 40% Afro-American share, Mississippi now verges on becoming a majority People of Color entity. A similar equation is at work throughout the Deep South with Alabama and South Carolina and Georgia also hanging in the balance. Such changing demographics help to explain the vitriol the Teabaggers and White Citizen Council types shower upon the newcomers.

Back in August 2008, Immigration Control and Enforcement broke its own despicable workplace raid record by imprisoning (in Jena La., the site of other racist outrages) and deporting 595 Mexican and Latino workers who had been employed by Howard Industries down in Laurel. Chandler thinks the pogram was accomplished with the complicity of the company which was intent on cheating workers out of their wages. MIRA eventually won checks for most of those detained and deported.

An even more outrageous incidence of lingering Mississippi bigotry was the treatment of Cirila Balthazar Cruz, a mono-lingual Chatino indigena from Oaxaca who was picked up by police as she stumbled along the highway shoulder trying to get to a local hospital to give birth. Her baby daughter Ruby was subsequently stolen from her by child welfare authorities who deemed her an unfit mother because she couldn’t speak English and given to a well-appointed childless white couple. As might be anticipated, such blatant racism struck a tender nerve south of the border and a year later, Ruby was returned to her birth mother.  

Justice in Mississippi, as in much of Obamalandia, remains elusive but every once in a while the push of the people from down below captures such small prizes.

On their East Coast swing, John Ross & “El Monstruo” will visit Washington/Baltimore (Red Emma’s April 19th/ University of Maryland – Baltimore on the 20th/ Institute for Policy Studies the 21st); New York (NYU the 22nd/ Sixth Street Community Center the 23rd/Bluestockings the 25th); and Boston (Harvard Coop the 27th/David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies the 28th/Mass Global Action the 29th/IPS-Jamaica Plains the 30th/ topped of by a May 1st rally on the Boston Commons between Noon & Two.) All events are all free.

 

Pioneers! O Urban Pioneers!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Pioneers! O Urban Pioneers!

By Robyn Johnson

culture@sfbg.com

People are returning to land like it’s the 1970s all over again, but they’re not packing up for Vermont, letting their hair go au naturel, and unplugging from the grid to do it. Urban agriculture is sprouting up like, well, sprouts. And while we all feel strongly about sustainability and pay a lot of lip service to higher ideals, the majority of us probably aren’t willing to adopt the radical homemaker lifestyle and sacrifice cell phone coverage, The Colbert Report, or regular social interactions. The following cursory guide highlights a few urban farms in SF and immediate environs where you can volunteer or access food, as well as resources for cultivating your space in the concrete tangle (even if you live in a third-story apartment) and options for the time-honored tradition of gleaning.

 

MANY FARMHANDS MAKE LIGHT WORK

Community farms offer support not always available for the individual plots of community gardens (which typically have astronomically long wait-lists anyway), or even your own cramped Bay Area backyard. And for 60-hour-work-weekers, it might be taxing to grow more than a bit of basil or mold on that cheese in the back of the fridge. If you don’t have the time, energy, space, or inclination to follow famed urban farmer Novella Carpenter’s fantastic example (ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com), consider volunteering at the following places to satisfy your green thumb’s bidding.

As Chris Burley, the director of Hayes Valley Farm (www.hayesvalleyfarm.com) told me, “People are looking for a tangible way to get their hands dirty and address the impacts of our ecologically destructive, industrialized food system while doing something meaningful and connecting with their community.” And that’s exactly the goal that the farm, located off Laguna and Fell steets, has been aiming to fulfill since its inception as a way to revitalize an unused lot, once a freeway onramp, into a shared space.

Although the farm is still taking root, so to speak, the plan is to eventually grow enough fresh and organic food to feed the neediest nearby members plus the volunteers working to cultivate the space. Education also plays a major part in the function of the project, with Thursday and Sunday “work parties” where people can get that hand-dirtying experience, as well as regular classes on urban gardening and permaculture.

Altho Quesada Gardens Initiative (www.quesadagardens.org) primarily operates as a community-directed organization that seeks to strengthen the social systems of Bayview-Hunters Point, local food production has become one of the top concerns of the neighborhood. The resident-led nonprofit connects and maintain backyard farms and free food-producing community gardens throughout the area. In one of the neater facets of its food justice work, the group also helps maintain the kitchen garden of roving supper club Old Skool Café (www.oldskoolcafe.org), which employs at-risk or previously incarcerated youth. With such kick-ass people, it’s no wonder that urban farm hero Will Allen adopted one of the satellite gardens on his visit to the Bayview. Community volunteer meetings and gardening days tend to be informal, so e-mail for specific opportunities.

Sometimes the best things in life really are free. Located at Gough and Eddy on land kindly lent by the Lutheran Church, The Free Farm (www.thefreefarm.org) intends to give away 100 percent of its produce. Still in its initial development stages, the fledgling project welcomes volunteers every Saturday and Wednesday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. to help with the launch. Working in tandem with its sister organization, The Free Farm Stand in the Mission also offers fresh fruits and vegetables donated by other local urban farmers. Although places like Little City Gardens (www.littlecitygardens.com) and folks who glean from public land contribute, the bulk of the produce comes from the 18th Street and Rhode Island (www.18thandrhodeisland.org) farm maintained by the SF Permaculture Guild, which offers volunteer opportunities as well. With a goal to sextuple the farm’s output within the next five years, it could probably use a little bit more help. Work days are on Friday.

For West Oakland residents, two nonprofits have been power-housing to combat the food desert that plagues the area. City Slickers Farms (www.cityslickerfarms.org) operates several all volunteer-run farms throughout the neighborhood that could always use a few extra work hands. Collectively these six lots cultivate ducks and chickens, bee hives, veggies, fruit trees, and medicinal herbs, the produce of which are distributed through the Saturday Farm Stand on a sliding scale or work-trade basis — no one’s turned away. And if you still have a mighty urge for some composting, weeding, planting, and mulching, People’s Grocery (www.peoplesgrocery.org) runs three farms that constantly need tending. The 55st Street location tends fruit trees, culinary herbs, and vegetables; 59th Street is a slightly less cultivated space in collaboration with Berkeley’s Spiral Gardens Community Food Security Project (www.spiralgardens.org), which runs its own food garden off Oregon and Sacramento streets for you West Berkeleyites. People’s Grocery’s newest land acquisition, the plot behind the California Hotel off of 35th and Chestnut streets, hosts a greenhouse and a biointensive microfarm that replaced its 3.5 acre Sunol site last January.

 

HOME SWEET URBAN HOMESTEAD

If you have access to private land to cultivate, or even if you don’t, the following resources will set you on the path to food freedom. These classes, demonstration sites, and professional landscaping services will help you turn backyards, rooftops, and even windows into humming generators of small-scale urban agriculture.

Before you even think to take a shovel to your virgin backyard or start a worm bin, visit Garden for the Environment (www.gardenfortheenvironment.org). A one-acre demonstration garden in the heart of Golden Gate Heights that also teaches organic food production and sustainable landscaping with weekly workshops, you can see how it’s done before trial-and-erroring on that graywater irrigation system or chicken coop. The resource directory on its Web site also serves as an invaluable aid for at-home troubleshooting. Hotlines for gardening and composting issues, where to find recycled lumber, how to test your soil, manure suppliers, wasp removal companies — it’s all there.

DIY food production classes abound everywhere in the Bay Area but the one-stop shopper won’t find a better resource than the Institute of Urban Homesteading (www.iuhoakland.com) in Oakland. It offers a comprehensive curriculum ranging from beekeeping, butchery, goat farming, brewcraft, herbal medicine, bread making, fermentation, berry patches, and other topics of the same ilk. It’s a real crash course in manifesting your inner Laura Ingalls Wilder. With no central location, classes are taught in the teachers’ homes, which presents a neat opportunity to see real-time urban homesteading and the different ways people create sustainable places in an urban setting. Also consider Urban Kitchen SF (www.urbankitchensf.com) and BioFuel Oasis (www.biofueloasis.com) in Berkeley for supplementary courses.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and green behind the ears, several services will landscape your yard into a cornucopia of organic delectables and even continue the maintenance if you just can’t do anything with that black thumb of death. Star Apple Edible Gardens (www.starappleediblegardens.com) provides a range of services throughout the Bay Area, the simplest being consultations and composting tutorials. You also can order ready-made kitchen gardens or go whole kit and caboodle and have customized “garden design and installation, pathway and hardscape installation, irrigation design and installation, planting, plant feeding and cultivation, regular harvesting of your garden crops, and design, installation, and maintenance of composting systems.” Other similar businesses include All Edibles (www.alledibles.com), which specifically works with East Bay dwellers, and Chris Sein of Wildheart Gardens (www.wildheartgardens.com), who also consults on backyard chickens and mushrooms.

For a lot of us in the Bay Area, the dream of having a backyard is about as likely as Glenn Beck admitting that Obama is not a herald of an impending Orwellian dictatorship. So what can the more dispossessed among us do to return to the soil? Popular in Europe and becoming more so here, rooftop gardens are a great solution to space issues. Graze the Roof (www.grazetheroof.blogspot.com), the community vegetable patch on top of Glide Memorial Church, hosts rooftop gardening workshops. You can also gain experience by volunteering on work days every Thursday or first Saturdays. For those feeling less than philanthropic or sociable, pop over to your local bookstore to pick up the Use Your Roof Guidebook by Bay Area Localize (www.baylocalize.org). Seven bucks and four easy chapters gets you on your way to a more edible roof.

For balcony-less apartment dwellers, and maybe those with vaulted ceilings, window farms have become the new rooftop gardens. An open-source project that’s evolved over the past year, Windowfarms (www.windowfarms.org) gives how-tos for its innovatively cheap and space-conscious hydroponics system — jerry-rigged from repurposed plastic water bottles, tubing, and fish tank pumps that hangs in vertical columns in the window — as free PDFs on its Web site. It also hosts community boards where members share improvements to the system, which is constantly being updated. Alas, window farms can only really successfully raise leafy greens, but having a homegrown salad in a studio apartment is still pretty darn amazing.

If you already have your urban farm bustling along — or even just a prolific citrus tree — then yard-sharing is a great way to spread the fruit of your labor throughout the community. Neighborhood Fruit (www.neighborhoodfruit.com), SF Glean (www.sfglean.org), and Produce to the People (www.producetothepeople.org) will gladly help you to unload the excess bounty and distribute it to the hungry.

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