obama

Chemicals and quarantines

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

As the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) pushes ahead with plans to aerially spray the Bay Area with pheromones to eradicate the light brown apple moth (LBAM), the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has signed onto state senator Carole Migden’s efforts to ask CDFA to put a moratorium on the spraying.

"We haven’t seen this level of concern and debate since the medfly days of then governor Jerry Brown," Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told the Guardian. "At this point, spraying sounds premature and reckless, even though I understand this is a nasty invasive pest."

Meanwhile, four members of the California State Assembly, including San Francisco’s Mark Leno, are working collaboratively on a group of LBAM-related measures to address health, scientific, and efficacy issues that remain unresolved since the agency’s multimillion-dollar eradication campaign began last year.

Leno’s part in this collaboration with fellow assembly members John Laird, Loni Hancock, and Jared Huffman involves demanding that CDFA complete an environmental impact report (EIR) before being able to apply pesticide in an urban area for LBAM eradication, which can be a lengthy process.

"By making this an urgency measure, it would take immediate effect," Leno told the Guardian. "We recognize that urban areas are concerned about health and safety, that LBAM is a real threat to the agricultural industry, and that the other side must be considered."

Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and CDFA both gave LBAM emergency status after the tiny, leaf-rolling Australian native was found in a Berkeley backyard, the first time it was confirmed in the continental United States.

As the USDA’s Larry Hawkins told the Guardian, the federal declaration of emergency allowed his department to access the Commodity Credit Corporation, a federally owned and operated entity within the USDA that supports and protects farm income and prices.

So far, the USDA has allocated $90 million to cover the costs of what Hawkins called "an expensive regulatory program," along with those of developing suitable pesticides and a nationwide survey to see if the moth has spread beyond California.

Hawkins claims the state separately declared an LBAM emergency — a move that allowed CDFA to go ahead and abate the pest — and that impacted the state’s normal EIR process.

"Emergency status doesn’t relieve [CDFA] of EIR requirements, but it allows them to do it simultaneously," Hawkins explained.

Since then some citizen activists have challenged the moth’s emergency status, claiming that there is no evidence that LBAM has severely damaged or infested local crops. But Hawkins says this purported lack of evidence proves that the government’s eradication program is working.

"We know the insect exists, that it destroys crops in other countries, and now you find the same insect here," said Hawkins, whose department has predicted that LBAM could inhabit 80 percent of the United States and nibble on 2,000 plant species.

"So, we can logically conclude it will cause damage here. The reason you haven’t seen major damage here is because we’ve found it early enough to deal with it before it becomes substantial. And the reason you won’t find reports of major LBAM damage in New Zealand or Australia is because they are constantly using pesticides," Hawkins said.

Asked if the USDA will fully disclose the ingredients of any product the state plans to use aerially, Hawkins said, "We cannot force a private company to reveal all their ingredients. But we have told all those companies that hope to provide products that they should expect to reveal them all."

Critics of the state’s pheromone spraying program observe that Suterra LLC, which manufactured the spray used over Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, refused to release the full ingredients until it was sued — and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger demanded immediate full disclosure.

These same critics also note that Schwarzenegger, who continues to support CDFA’s LBAM-eradication program, received $144,600 in campaign contributions from Los Angeles–based Roll International owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick, who control Suterra, Fiji Water, Paramount Agribusiness, and the Franklin Mint.

Records show the Resnicks donate broadly, mostly to Democrats — including the gubernatorial campaigns of Steve Westly and Phil Angelides, and US Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama — with a lesser-size donation to Republican presidential front-runner John McCain, proving they play both sides of the fence.

With researchers testing a variety of LBAM-related products in New Zealand, Hawkins hopes to have a product formulated for California by June 1, which is when spraying is scheduled to resume in Santa Cruz and Monterey; spraying in the Bay Area is set for Aug. 1.

"We would like to give communities maximum notice, but we’re also working towards a beginning-of-June date, and as much as we’d like to insert artificial time frames, the insect couldn’t care less. It’s on a biological time table and is multiplying every day," Hawkins said.

David Dilworth of the Monterey nonprofit group Helping Our Peninsula’s Environment, which advocates the use of targeted pheromone-baited sticky traps, conceded that even if CDFA was forced to stop the aerial spraying, the USDA could spray anyway.

"But it would take them several months to organize, and we don’t believe they have the constitutional power," claimed Dilworth, whose organization is preparing a 60-day notice of intent to sue the USDA and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, organic farmers find themselves in an uncomfortable limbo that continues to shift. Take the Santa Cruz–based California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). Last fall, CCOF supported the aerial pheromone spray after the National Organics Program approved it, meaning sprayed farmers didn’t lose organic certification

But March 4, CCOF spokesperson Viella Shipley told the Guardian that the group is about to release a revised position on the spraying, and could not comment further "because CCOF’s government affairs committee has not yet approved this revised position."

"We lobbied for an organically approved product and supported it last fall when lots of our members were suffering because they were in quarantine and couldn’t sell beyond county lines," was all Shipley would say.

Meanwhile, organic farmers who spoke on condition of anonymity largely supported aerial spraying for economic and environmental reasons.

"If the moth isn’t dealt with now, it’ll become a bigger problem, from both an environmental and toxic perspective," one farmer told us, citing the already high costs of controlling such bugs as coddling moths and medflies.

"This is somebody else’s pest at the moment, a nonnative pest," he said. "If farmers have to start dealing with LBAM as well, they’ll be ruined."

He also cited his belief that there aren’t 40 million pheromone-soaked twist ties on the market, which is what the CDFA claims is needed to blanket infested counties from the ground up with female pheromones to confuse the males.

Nigel Walker, an organic farmer in Dixon, recalled the devastating costs of quarantine thanks to a medfly-infested mango that someone brought back from Hawaii.

"Their vacation cost me $60,000 because of lost sales," Walker said. "So, for God’s sake, don’t bring, mail, or FedEx fruit and vegetables into California, because border inspectors are looking for bombs and terrorists, not produce and moths.

"We live in a global economy, and we have trade agreements that say if one person gets a pest, you have to do something about it," Walker added. "Nobody wants to be sprayed. Even when I spray organic seaweed on my fruit trees, I wear a mask. So I understand the gut reaction. But by refusing to be sprayed, you’re punishing the wrong person — the farmer — who already has to deal with the vagaries of the weather, the marketplace, and pests like the medfly."

Chris Mittelstaedt, who lives in San Francisco with his family and runs Fruitguys, a small business that delivers organic fruit to offices, said he’s personally against the spraying. "But as a company, we are going to wait a few weeks before letting people know what we officially think or endorse as a plan of action," Mittelstaedt told us.

Other city dwellers are less ambivalent. Frank Eggers, a former Fairfax mayor who is organizing a group called Stop the Spray, said, "[World Trade Organization] stuff is driving this so-called moth emergency.

"We’re allowing other countries to quarantine our produce. And with the global economy, climate change, and travel, we’re going be facing this issue continuously. But we can’t keep putting poison on our land, or say we’ll put you in quarantine if you don’t accept our aerial bombardment," he said.

Paul Schramski, state director of Pesticide Watch, worries that the state and federal agencies are still not listening to the people of California.

"If this is not being driven by trade agreements, then I’m not sure what is the driver. We don’t have all the facts. But it’s not being driven by actual crop damage," Schramski said. "We agree that this invasive moth should be controlled, but it’s a false premise to believe that the choice is between aerial spraying or nothing. The state has known since August that the public was opposed to spraying, so why aren’t we producing more twist ties?"

CDFA, which used $500,000 in USDA funds to hire PR agency Porter Novelli last November at the height of public outcry, is currently researching pheromone products that last up to 90 days and is also planning to use pheromone-loaded twist ties, sticky traps, and stingerless parasitic wasps in its LBAM program.

"We believe this to be a biological emergency," CDFA public affairs supervisor Steve Lyle told us. "If we waited a year or two, so we could first do an EIR, we would lose the battle and become generally infested."

Ironically, California’s best hope for not being sprayed ad infinitum may lie in the discovery that the moth has spread to other states.

"It would make a significant impact if we were to find the insect established in other places," the USDA’s Hawkins told us. "It doesn’t mean we would throw up our hands and walk away, but it would remove some of the argument that the rest of America is at risk from California if other states already have it."

But until that time, Hawkins warned that if state legislators demand a moratorium, forced spraying won’t be the federal government’s only option: "Maybe California would have to be quarantined. And now we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars."

Questioning Matt

-
0

Matt Gonzalez consulted few of his colleagues in San Francisco’s progressive political community before announcing Feb. 28 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, that he’ll be Ralph Nader’s running mate on another quixotic run for president.

That’s fairly typical for Gonzalez, who has tended to keep mostly his own counsel for all of his big political decisions: switching from Democrat to Green in 2000; successfully running for president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 2002; jumping into the mayor’s race at the last minute the next year; abruptly deciding not to run for reelection to his supervisorial seat in 2004; and — last year — deciding against another run for mayor while being coy about his intentions until the very end.

But if he had polled those closest to him politically, Gonzalez would have learned what a difficult and divisive task he’s undertaken (something he probably knew already given what a polarizing figure Nader has become). Not one significant political official or media outlet in San Francisco has voiced support for his candidacy, and some have criticized its potential to pull support away from the Democratic Party nominee and give Republican John McCain a shot at the White House.

In fact, most of his ideological allies are enthusiastically backing the candidacy of Barack Obama, who Gonzalez targeted with an acerbic editorial titled “The Obama Craze: Count Me Out” on the local BeyondChron Web site on the eve of his announcement (while not telling BeyondChron staffers of his impending announcement, to their mild irritation).

It’s telling that all of the top Green Party leaders in San Francisco — including Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, school board president and supervisorial candidate Mark Sanchez, and Jane Kim, who got the most votes in the last school board election after Gonzalez encouraged her to run — have endorsed Barack Obama.

Mirkarimi, who ran Nader’s Northern California presidential effort in 2000 and ran Gonzalez’s 2003 mayoral campaign, has had nothing but polite words for Gonzalez in public, but he reaffirmed in a conversation with the Guardian that his support for Obama didn’t waver with news of the Nader-Gonzalez ticket.

Mirkarimi has a significant African American constituency in the Western Addition and has worked hard to build ties to those voters. He’s also got a good head for political reality — and it’s hard to blame him if he thinks that the Nader-Gonzalez effort is going nowhere and will simply cause further tensions between Greens and progressive Democrats.

Sup. Chris Daly is strongly supporting Obama and said the decision of his former colleague to run didn’t even present him with a dilemma: “It’s unfortunately not a hard one — or fortunately, depending on how you look at it.”

Daly doesn’t think the Nader-Gonzalez will have much impact on the presidential race or the issues it’s pushing. “The movement for Obama is so significant that it eclipses everything else,” Daly told us. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change how politics happens in this country.”

While few San Francisco progressives argue that Obama’s policy positions are perfect, Daly doesn’t agree with Gonzalez’s critique of Obama’s bad votes and statements. “I don’t understand the argument that you should only back a candidate that you agree with all the time,” Daly said. “If that was the case, I would only ever vote for myself.”

On the national level, Gonzalez told us that he was running to challenge the two-party hold on power and to help focus Nader’s campaign on issues like ballot access for independent candidates. “If I’m his running mate, then we’ll be talking about electoral reform,” he said.

On a local level, the Gonzalez move will have a complicated impact. It will, in some ways, damage his ability to play a significant role in San Francisco politics in the future. That’s in part because Gonzalez has taken himself out of the position of a leader in the local progressive movement.

San Francisco progressives don’t like lone actors: the thousands of activists in many different camps don’t always agree, but they like their representatives to be, well, representative. That means when housing activists — one of Daly’s key constituencies — need someone to carry a major piece of legislation for them, they expect Daly to be there.

Sup. Tom Ammiano hasn’t come up with his landmark bills on health care, public power, and other issues all by himself; he’s been part of a coalition that has worked at the grassroots level to support the work he’s doing in City Hall.

Daly sought to find a mayoral candidate last year through a progressive convention. That seemed a bit unorthodox to the big-time political consultants who like to see their candidates self-selected and anointed by powerful donors, but it was very much a San Francisco thing. This is a city of neighborhoods, coalitions, and interest groups that try to hold their elected officials accountable.

Obama’s politics are far from perfect, and Nader and Gonzalez have very legitimate criticisms of the Democratic candidates and important proposals for electoral reform. But right now the grassroots action in San Francisco and elsewhere in the country — the movement-building excitement — is with Barack Obama. The activists who made the Gonzalez mayoral effort possible are now working on the Obama campaign.

In fact, Daly has repeatedly voiced hope that an Obama victory could help empower the progressive movement in San Francisco and give it more leverage against moderates like Mayor Gavin Newsom who support Hillary Clinton (see “Who Wants Change?” 1/30/08).

Daly said the Gonzalez decision complicates that narrative a little. “I don’t think it’s undercut,” Daly said, “but I think it’s confused a bit.”

SF activists campaign for Obama in Texas

-
1

cat julain obama-small.jpg
Cat Rauschuber, Barack Obama and Julian Davis in Texas.
By Julian Davis and Catherine Rauschuber
(San Antonio, Texas) __ When we arrived here Friday afternoon, we had little idea what our experience of campaigning for Barack Obama would hold. We have several friends who are field organizers for the campaign and have been hopping from state to state, adding to Obama’s string of electoral victories. Now three of them are in Texas, Cat’s home state and the place that feels like ground zero in the presidential campaign right now. We decided to come to San Antonio, where campaign-diva Natasha Marsh was organizing a largely Latino district on the west side. Julian had never been to Texas before.

Since our arrival Friday, this experience has been nothing short of amazing. Friday evening we volunteered at a rally where Obama spoke that drew a crowd of 10,000 people. It was the perfect introduction to what the weekend would hold – the energy in the crowd, the diversity of attendees, the commanding and inspiring message of the candidate. Little did we know at the time that this would be the first of three events we would have the opportunity to see – and even interact with – the Senator.

Gonzalez joins Nader’s pursuit of infamy

-
1

matt-cover.jpg
Our Nov. 19, 2003 cover story
It’s bad enough that Ralph Nader is running for president yet again, but whatever. He’s already ruined his once stellar reputation and nobody was going to take another sequel that seriously. Yet I’m truly saddened by today’s news that Matt Gonzalez has agreed to be Nader’s running mate and angry about Matt’s deceptive, preemptive effort (in a guest editorial in yesterday’s Beyond Chron) to knock Barack Obama down a few notches.

That seems to signal this independent, ego-driven campaign’s desire to once again paint the Democrats and Republicans with the same broad brush, denying the obvious difference between Obama and John McCain, as well as the need to be strategic in running for this high-profile office during such a divisive era. In doing so, they undermine the legitimate and desperately needed feeling of hope that Obama is inspiring, sowing cynicism and giving McCain a chance to win the White House.

Nader has always bristled at the “spoiler” label, saying he has a right to run and force a debate on his issues. That’s true. But when Gonzalez characterizes Obama’s campaign as, “one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances,” it’s clear that they really aren’t aiming much higher than spoiler.

And if they help spoil an ascendant Obama campaign, they will do irreparable harm to the peace movement, the chance for fundamental change, efforts to bring together progressives and communities of color, people’s sense of hope, and to their own reputations.

Yippie! More from ‘Chicago 10’ director Brett Morgan

-
0

chicago10 sml.bmp

By Jamilah King

When I walked into the Berkeley Cinema screening of the Chicago 10, I didn’t know what to expect. I had only a vague idea of the infamous Chicago Seven trial and felt oddly out of place among the aging hippies: I fully was prepared for another boring lesson on why my generation sucks.

Instead I was met with an engaging movie that eschews traditional documentary filmmaking to capture the playful exuberance of the Yippie generation. Through animation and rare video footage, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin came to life with a message of resistance that transcended decades. I spoke to Brett Morgan, the film’s director, over the phone (for the first part of the interview go here):

SFBG: You mentioned that you were trying to really capture the energy of the Yippies. Do you see any of that energy in today’s anti-war movement?

Brett Morgan: The thing about the Yippies that I love is the sense of playfulness and the fun, and I think if you go to YouTube you can see viral videos from Obama Girl to a whole range of stuff that’s pretty illuminating and exciting. I think there are leaders who have the charisma that an Abbie Hoffman had that just aren’t getting the same media play.

Don’t phunk with my hope

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER You probably can’t tell, but I’m totally high. I gotta be because I can’t stop watching this Kennedy family endorsement and that Texas debate clip, this crushed-out cult of personality vid and that hip-hop remix ode. I’ve admitted I’m powerless over my addiction — that my life has become unmanageable. And I’ve come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. That power is will.i.am — I mean, Barack Obama. Look, I know I got a problem: I can’t stop watching Black-Eyed Pea will.i.am’s celeb-studded "Yes We Can" video in praise of the Illinois senator. Frankly, I lo.a.the the Peas — "Let’s Get Retarded," yo, I didn’t think up that title — and I can’t stop wanting to repunctuate will.i.am’s gooberish stage handle, and even "Yes We Can" is a bit embarrassing.

But the tune is queued up there along with the Oprah clips, the 60 Minutes sound bites, and the "john.he.is" parody. You know Obama’s got something going on when his speechifying inspires such spontaneous music-making — and oh yeah, I’m tripping on the fact that we went to the same Honolulu prep school, and I’m drunk on the possibility of electing the first African American president, and I’m getting dizzy looking back through the media’s looking-glass lens at him, myself, and a shared past through yearbook photos of a now strikingly diverse-looking Punahou school. Sure, he complained about the school in his memoir, much like me and my friends have — at the time it seemed like a lily-white beacon of privilege on a brown island. I feel like I’m tumbling down a historically revisionist rabbit hole, seeing it as both exotic — and for presidential candidates of a certain age, class, and region, it is — and familiar. Now it looks like the culturally diverse rainbow gathering of kids that civil rights activists were fighting for. Maybe I’ll have to write a song about it.

Get on the Bus, Part Two Hope is in the air, and I’m feeling it, listening to Evil Wikkid Warrior’s John Benson talk about his recent troubles with the Bus, the 40-foot AC Transit behemoth he converted into a vegetable oil–swilling clean machine and mobile-as-a-dinosaur, all-ages, all-fun free underground music venue. Noise and party starters from here and away like Warhammer, Fucking Ocean, and Rubber O Cement have been playing down-low shows in the vehicle while it was parked on quiet, oft-industrial San Francisco and East Bay streets, but that all seemed to screech to a dead halt when, on Dec. 22, 2007, after a West Oakland show put on by a Benson cohort, the Bus was vandalized.

Bored neighborhood youth, Benson theorized, smashed all its glass windows, busted its solar panels, and threw bricks on top of it. "It was probably just a bunch of bored kids in the middle of the night. They saw this big thing, and it was like, ‘Duh, throw rock at big thing,’<0x2009>" offered Benson, who at the time was on a trip to Detroit. When he returned a few days later, the former A Minor Forest and Hale Zukas member faced compounding problems: the winter rain had flooded the exposed interior, damaging the electricity, warping the wooden floorboards, and causing the oriental rugs to molder.

Benson had planned to take the bus to Mexico to shoot a film, but that was out of the question. "The police told me that I wasn’t allowed to keep any vehicle on the street with a broken windshield and windows and they’d have to tow it," he recalled. "But then I also wasn’t allowed to drive a vehicle with a broken windshield. It was a catch-22, and with no place to keep it, the cops visited me on a daily basis." He also couldn’t find glass that would fit in the windshield, since most of the AC Transit fleet from back in the Bus’s day had been sold to Mexico, according to Benson, and it appeared that the only glass available would have to come from there — at more than $1,000 a piece.

Fortunately Benson’s friends and the noise community-of-sorts came together to support him. Guardian contributor George Chen threw a benefit that raised about $300, and word got out on the message board Spockmorgue that Benson needed money to repair the bus and a PayPal account was started on his behalf. Benson told me, "I did spend a lot of money on new solar panels and new skylights," but what kept him going were the many people "e-mailing me privately, saying ‘Keep it up, John. Don’t give up. Don’t give up.’ I just got a huge amount of support from people I don’t even know." One Boston member of the message board donated $100 simply because he said he had heard about the Bus through his friends who had performed on it and wanted to help.

An artist friend welded new metal frames to fit the vintage 1962 windshield glass that Benson discovered were the closest fit for the Bus, and after a few months of work the Bus was finally completed at the beginning of February. "It was miserable," he remembered. "We were literally working in rain under tarps, broken glass everywhere, bleeding fingers, miserable. There was a 24-hour paint job with a lot of volunteers. Someone said it was like Fitzcarraldo — there were so many times we were burned and bloody and freezing cold in rain, trying to the get floor replaced and carpet. Definitely insane."

Fortunately, work was completed in time for Benson to drive the mammoth vehicle down to Miami for the International Noise Festival, picking up pals and playing shows along the way. Later this spring he’ll head back to Florida to do more work on the Bus — it’s resting in Orlando in a friend’s backyard — and then drive it north for an East Coast tour. "In terms of love the bus is doing better than ever," Bensons said happily, while eating chicken with his 12-year-old daughter, who’s also his Evil Wikkid Warrior bandmate. "Mechanically it’s just a little wrinkled." *

NEW WRINKLES

TAKEN BY TREES


Pretty! The Concretes’ Victoria Bergsman (who contributes vox on Peter Bjorn and John’s "Young Folks") takes to dreamy chamber indie, written around her love of arboreal life, with Open Field (Rough Trade, 2007). With White Hinterland. Sat/1, 9 p.m., $13–<\d>$15. Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell, SF. www.gamh.com

RICKY LEE ROBINSON


The Oakland rock ‘n’ roller cuddles up to classic ’60s and ’70s pop values at his CD-release show while playing drums and guitar simultaneously, somewhat like "that sad guy in the straw hat at Six Flags whose eye contact you and your punk friends made sure to avoid," according to Robinson. With the Dilettantes and the Pandas. Sun/2, 9 p.m., $10. Cafe du Nord, 2170 Market, SF. www.cafedunord.com

MAMMAL AND MANSLAUGHTER


Detroit’s Animal Disguise artisto embraces a darker breed of death-beat mesmerism, alongside Manslaughter, a "stupor group" including Sixes and Noel von Harmonson. With Chinese Stars and Pod Blotz. Sun/2, 8 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. www.hemlocktavern.com

LANGHORNE SLIM


The Philly native gives a few hard hugs to a freewheeling brand of full-band electric folk on his soon-to-be-acclaimed Langhorne Slim (Kemado). With Nicole Atkins and the Sea, and the Parlor Mob. Mon/3, 8 p.m., $12–<\d>$14. Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Ammiano critiques the debate

-
0

Today’s Ammianoliner:

During debates Hillary tries to land a knockout punch. “Senator Obama, you left the seat up!”

(From the home answering machine of Sup. Tom Ammiano on Friday, Feb. 22, 2008). B3

Your funny Valentines

-
0

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER "It’s 60 percent embarrassing and 40 percent hot. And the hotness is derived from how embarrassing it is. Or maybe that’s just me."

Talkin’ ’bout Valentine’s Day, the big VD, that bad case of lovin’ you, with a digest-to-impress din-din and a small but meaningful token of my esteem. Specifically, Club Neon organizer Jamie Guzzi, a.k.a. DJ Jamie Jams, is speaking of Club Neon’s fourth annual Valentine’s Underwear Party.

Yep, I know you know good times sans culottes have been happening for aeons — years, even — on a, ahem, more informal basis, way before Fuse TV’s Pants-Off Dance-Off. But guarens, it’ll be way sweeter and sexier at Club Neon: the first year at the Hush Hush, in 2003, "people were pretty tentative, and there were still lurkers," Guzzi says. "When you hear about these sorts of events, it’s more of a creepier crowd. When people first hear about it, they think it’s a Power Exchange or more Burning Man kind of thing — a lot of people you don’t want to see in underwear leering at each other. But this is a more indie crowd, and the kids are all cute and twee, and everyone shows up in American Apparel underwear." At least the clothing company’s soft tease is good for something more than selling terry cloth hot pants: vive le thunderwear as social equalizer!

"When you’ve got a couple hundred people in underwear, it’s pretty hard to front," Guzzi says, explaining that the idea emerged after he got frustrated with kids dressed to the nines vibing one another. The bonus: once stripped down at Club Neon’s key soiree, Guzzi claims, "you end up realizing that a lot of your friends are way cute. It shuffles the deck in terms of who’s attractive!"

And thank St. Valentine for dynamos like Guzzi. Sour grapes, bitter pills, badasses, bummed punks, gloomy goths, and hardcore realists have long realized all holidays have become co-opted as multimillion-dollar promotional vehicles to buy more, by playing off residual guilt, goodwill, or simply that overarching existential emptiness concerning life’s perpetual gerbil wheel. But what if you decide to suspend disbelief and descend into the commercialized maelstrom, mindfully participating in the recommended shopping, wining, and dining rituals? You’re accustomed to rocking outside the system, so what to do with your bad self when you need back in? Still no reservations? I’ve got a few ideas for every subculty cutie.

Indie Rock Ian Grub: fixed with a laid-back bike ride to Bernal Heights’ MaggieMudd for Mallow Out! vegan cones. Gift: an all-show pass to the Noise Pop or Mission Creek music fest or a steamy copy of the baby-making Juno soundtrack.

Hyphy Heather Grub: grind down on maple syrup–braised short ribs at the bupscale 1300 on Fillmore. Or for old times’ sake, snatch Sunday brunch at the latest Powell’s Place in Bayview (2246 Jerrold) now that gospel star Emmitt Powell has been forced to relocate. Gift: she voted for Barack Obama, but today she’ll swoon for Mac Dre’s Pill Clinton (Thizz Ent., 2007).

Metal Sven Grub: pick up a nice red wine and some stinky cheese for a Mountain View Cemetery picnic in Oakland — pretend you’re downing the fresh blood and putrid flesh of virgins. Gift: Santa Cruz combo Decrepit Birth’s Diminishing Between Worlds (Unique Leader) inspires … birth control.

Techno Cal Grub: nibble sour plum, shiso, and flaxseed sushi and other vegan Japanese delights at Medicine New-Shojin Eatstation. Gift: avert your eyes from the Versace boutique on your way outta the Crocker Galleria minimall, and here you go, the Field’s From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt, 2007)

Country Kat Grub: fried rabbit — oh hell, we’re in former cow country, go for the porterhouse at the deliciously ’40s-western retro-authentic Hayward Ranch. Tip the blue-haired waitress well — she’s gotta have the patience of St. Val to deal with you two after your fourth Bloody Mary. Gift: seal the deal with Queen of the Coast (Bear Family, 2007), a four-CD box set of tunes by Bonnie Owens, who stole both Buck Owens’s and Merle Haggard’s hearts.

Jam Band Jessie Grub: grab your nut cream at Café Gratitude and chase each other around the table with wheatgrass shots. New game: if you don’t make me utter the goofy menu item names, I will be grateful. Gift: crash into the Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City Music Hall Blu-ray DVD (Sony, 2007).

So hurry up and give your favorite pop tot some love — or you just might find yourself without on VD.

CLUB NEON’S VALENTINE’S UNDERWEAR PARTY

With DJs Jamie Jams, Emdee, Little Melanie, and Aiadan

Thurs/14, 9 p.m., $5

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

www.neonsf.com

LOVE VENUS, LOVE DENGUE FEVER

J’adore Dengue Fever’s new Venus on Earth (M80), and the band provides the perfect post-love-in aperitif with Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. The John Pirozzi documentary on the Los Angeles combo’s trip to Cambodia ended up involving more than anyone anticipated. "Every contact was, like, ‘Don’t worry about anything! Just show up! Everything will be great!’<0x2009>" tour mastermind and bassist Senon Williams explains. "We’d be, like, ‘Where are we playing?’ ‘I don’t know. Just show up!’ So we were all nervous going over there. We had all our instruments, but we needed amplifiers and PAs and a crowd to play to." Fortunately, Dengue Fever were quickly booked to appear on Cambodian Television Network, and a two-song turn mushroomed into 10 numbers and a two-hour appearance. "Instantly, we became famous across the country," Williams tells me, "because everyone watches TV there."

SLEEPWALKING THROUGH THE MEKONG

Fri/15, 9:30 p.m.; Sat/16, 12:30 p.m.; $10.50

Victoria Theatre

2961 16th St., SF

www.sfindie.com

Cocoa-a-go-go

-
0

HOT CHOCOLATES In honor of Valentine’s Day, the official holiday of chocolatiers (and florists, and jewelers, and marriage counselors) nationwide, I’m giving you a list of some of my favorite places to get your chocolate on — for Feb. 14 and beyond.

Democratic candidates: eat me So food has always been political — is it genetically-modified-organism free? Farmed fairly? Packaged responsibly? — but this is something else altogether. Designer Chocolate (www.designerchocolate.org) wraps its 100 percent natural chocolate in either Hillary Clinton– or Barack Obama–themed paper, complete with photos and quotes. I don’t feel qualified to say which candidate tastes better.

Fair trade truffles Love humankind as much as you love chocolate? You’re in luck. Global Exchange (4018 24th St., SF; 415-648-8068; 2840 College, Berk.; 510-548-0370; store.gxonlinestore.org) has a full selection of certified fair trade and organic chocolate, from special holiday versions (like the Fair Trade Valentine’s Day Action Kit for $15) to year-round delights (like the Chocoholics Gift Basket for $75), including offerings from Divine, the world’s first farmer-owned fair trade chocolate brand.

Design within reach (of your mouth) When it’s just as important for the chocolate you buy to be pretty as it is for it to be delicious, Richart Chocolate (393 Sutter, SF; 415-291-9600, www.richart-chocolates.com) is the only place worth looking. These tiny rectangular delights come marked with classic, understated designs like swirls, polka dots, flowers, and geometric shapes and in creative flavors like licorice ganache, thyme praline, and ginger. They’re almost too pretty to eat … almost.

A pint of pleasure It might possibly be the second most brilliant idea anyone ever had: pairing beer with chocolate. The most brilliant? A whole festival dedicated to the two. And the Beer and Chocolate festival (Feb. 15, 8 p.m., $90; Cathedral Hill Hotel, 1101 Van Ness, SF; www.beer-chef.com) is no PBR–and–Hershey’s kisses kind of affair. Oh no. We’re talking a four-course dinner with items like roasted quail with chocolate port sauce served with Koningshoeven Bock. Do I hear last-minute Valentine’s Day plans being made?

Super lessons

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

The Super Fat Tuesday presidential primary election in San Francisco was marked by some portentous trends and factors that could have a big impact on who becomes the Democratic Party nominee — and whether that person will be accepted as the people’s legitimate choice.

Consider the scene the night before the election. A small army of young people made its way up Market Street carrying signs and pamphlets supporting their candidate, Barack Obama, taking up positions outside Muni and BART stations and on high-profile corners to spread the message of change.

Meanwhile, inside the Ferry Building, Mayor Gavin Newsom and former president Bill Clinton convened one of several "town hall meetings" held simultaneously around the country to promote the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who checked in on a satellite feed.

Among the many luminaries on hand was State Sen. Carole Migden, a superdelegate (one of 71 from California) who has not yet pledged her support to either Clinton or Obama and who could ultimately play a huge role in determining the nominee. Migden made a show of exchanging pleasantries with the former president, warmly embracing him in front of a crowd of about 250 people and more than a dozen news cameras before taking a seat nearby.

But Election Day was for the regular citizens, and once their votes were counted and analyzed, a couple of things became clear. Clinton won California with the absentee ballots that she had been banking for weeks thanks to her deeply rooted campaign organization. Her margin of victory among early voters was about 20 percentage points.

Yet a late surge of support for Obama caused him to win at the polls on Election Day, leading to his outright victory in San Francisco by a margin of about 15,000 votes, or almost 8 percentage points. It was a symbolic victory for progressives on the Board of Supervisors, who backed Obama while Newsom campaigned heavily for Clinton (see "Who Wants Change?," 1/30/08).

Obama and Clinton were close enough in California and the rest of the Super Fat Tuesday states that they almost evenly split the pledged delegates (those apportioned based on the popular vote). But if present trends continue, even after Obama’s sweep of four states that voted the weekend after California, neither he nor Clinton will have captured the 2,025 delegates they need to secure the nomination before August, when the Democratic National Convention convenes in Denver.

That means the nomination could be decided by superdelegates such as Migden, a group comprising congresspeople and longtime Democratic Party activists, from party chair Art Torres down to those with key family connections, such as Christine Pelosi and Norma Torres.

And that could be a nightmare scenario for a party that hopes to unify behind a campaign to heal the country’s divisions.

Political analyst David Latterman, president of Fall Line Analytics in San Francisco, said this election was marked by a higher than expected turnout and more people than usual voting on Election Day rather than earlier. In San Francisco turnout was more than 60 percent, including an astounding 88.4 percent among Democrats.

"In the last couple weeks there was a strong get-out-the-vote push by Obama’s people," Latterman said during a postelection wrap-up at the downtown office of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), which he delivered along with campaign consultant Jim Stearns.

Latterman said that Obama surge, which drew out voters who were generally more progressive than average, may have been the margin that pushed Proposition A, the $185 million parks bond, to victory. It trailed among absentee voters but ended up less than five points above the 66.6 percent threshold it needed to pass.

"I don’t know if this would have passed or not if it had not been for the Obama push at the end," Latterman said.

Stearns agreed, saying, "In some ways, we should name every park in the city Obama Park."

At the measure’s election-night party at Boudin Bakery on Fisherman’s Wharf (where some of the bond money will renovate Pier 43), Yes on A campaign consultant Patrick Hannan told us he was worried as the initial results came in.

"That is a high threshold to hit," he said of the two-thirds approval requirement for bond measures.

But as the crowd nibbled on crab balls and sourdough bread, the results moved toward the more comfortable level of around 72 percent support, prompting great joyful whoops of victory.

Recreation and Park Department executive director Yomi Agunbiade acknowledged that the decision to place the measure on the February ballot rather than June’s was a leap of faith made in the hopes that the presidential election would cause a high turnout of Democrats.

"We’re excited," Agunbiade said at the party. "This was a hard-fought race that involved getting a lot of people out in the field and letting folks know what this was about — and we’re definitely riding the wave of high voter turnout."

The strong turnout helped Obama win half of the Bay Area counties, Sacramento, and much of the coast, including both the liberal north coast and the more conservative Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

But Clinton’s advantages of socking away early absentee votes and her popularity with certain identity groups — notably Latino, Asian, and LGBT — helped her win California.

Yet Obama’s appeal reaches beyond Democratic Party voters. He got some late support from prominent local Green Party leaders, even though their party’s candidates include former Georgia congressional representative Cynthia McKinney and maybe Ralph Nader (see "Life of the Party," 1/16/08).

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, a founder of the California Green Party who also worked on Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign, announced his endorsement of Obama at the candidate’s Super Fat Tuesday event at the Fairmont San Francisco. Mirkarimi also noted the support of Greens Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, and Jane Kim, the highest vote getter in the school board’s last race.

"I registered Green because I felt their values were closer to mine," Kim, who left the Democratic Party in 2004, later told the Guardian. "But I’ve always endorsed whoever I thought was the best candidate for any office…. I saw Obama as a candidate taking politics in a different direction that I hadn’t seen a national candidate take things before."

If Obama’s campaign can continue to develop as a growing movement running against the status quo, he could roll all the way into the White House. But it’s equally possible to imagine the Clintons using their deep connections with party elders to muscle the superdelegates into making Hillary the nominee.

Stearns said this scenario could hurt the party and the country: "I can’t imagine a worse outcome for the Democratic Party than to have Obama go into the convention ahead on delegates he’s won and have Hillary Clinton win on superdelegates."

Amanda Witherell and David Carini contributed to this report.

Bang! Comedian John Witherspoon comes to Oakland

-
0

witherspoon 1 sml.bmp

By Erik Morse

Few comedians can leave me in complete stitches the way John Witherspoon can. He is quite simply a legend of the giggle, the guffaw, and the frustrated wince.

Although he’s best known as the grouchy father Mr. Jones in Ice Cube’s Friday trilogy and as Pops on the WB comedy series, The Wayans Brothers, Witherspoon has had a long and eclectic career since his earliest days as a fashion model in Detroit.

vintage_john_fashion_01 sml.bmp

He’s also blessed with the dulcet tones of Johnny Mathis if you can ever convince him to hum a few bars. Now the bow-tied curmudgeon is coming to the Bay Area for a four-night showcase to spread a bit more of his charm. The Guardian caught him on the phone just as he was packing up for his trip to the East Bay.

SFBG: So did you follow the election at all on Tuesday?

John Witherspoon: Yeah, my wife is an avid Obama fan. I voted but I never tell her who I voted for or she’d go crazy. I tell her it’s the only thing I got that I don’t have to give anyone. It’s my vote.


Friday: Classic ‘Spoon.

Thao-ism 101: Songs ready to put a spring in your step

-
0

thao sml.bmp

By Todd Lavoie

Ah, what a perfect day! The sun is shining, I’m whirling in the afterglow of Obama’s Super Tuesday super-dupers – 13 wins – not bad at all! – and I’ve just been charmed, bedazzled, and blindsided by a new artist. What could be better? Methinks this dopey grin of mine might remain in place for a while yet. The rain’s staying away, our man’s got momentum, and I’m ready for another spin of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down‘s We Brave Bee Stings And All (Kill Rock Stars). Heard it yet? Give it 32 minutes of your time, and try telling me that you don’t feel a spring in your step afterwards.

The first thing you’re bound to notice is Thao Nguyen’s voice: what a voice! The DC-area singer-songwriter boasts a rich, throaty timbre that could probably easily bruise a few hearts if she wanted to, but instead of opting for the soul-baring intensity of, say, Nina Nastasia or Fiona Apple or Cat Power (with whom she shares a few vocal similarities), Nguyen shows off an impish playfulness which is quite refreshing.

Still, there’s the occasional touch of sadness – here a vulnerability-offering turn of a phrase, there a crestfallen sigh – as a reminder of the vocalist’s potential for breaking hearts. It’s a potent mix, this combination of tender ache and winking mischief, and she uses it to tremendous effect. If anything, she might have more in common with Feist’s unguarded whimsy than much of anything from the Cat Power catalog, and her jazzy country-folk leanings also call to mind Erin McKeown. Honestly, though – Nguyen sounds quite distinctive here. Once you’ve heard her, chances are you won’t be mistaking her for anyone else afterwards.

“Never surrender!” Romney surrenders

-
0

Welp, the boardroom Mormon is out, and now it’s up to Bridge Over River McCain and Huckabee Hound to feast on his Republican delegates’ innards. (I think. These caucus rules are so twisted I’m sometimes wishing we were back before the days of Hubert Humphrey McGee.)

I must say I rejoiced when Giulievil bit it, even though I wanted him in as a spoiler. There must be a lot of backroom arm twisting (waterboarding?) among the Reps right now to get Huck out of the race as well, before the rest of the religious unright leap right into his sweaty drag queen man hands.

A side note: has anyone else noticed how much Romney and McCain both look like waxen marionette creations from Thunderbirds?

thundereps.jpg
Eeeeery

Anyway, Romney said “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” according to the AP.

He also said he had to step aside “Because I love America in this time of war …”

I think that says it all for the Republicans in general, no?

On the ground

-
0

>>How Clinton and Obama split California

>>Photos from Obama’s party

>>Obama party coverage
***“Change is coming” (if you didn’t know)
***Lack of diversity in the City?
***The scene at the Fairmont Hotel ballroom

>>Obama wins San Francisco

>>Clinton party coverage
***The scene at Hillary’s SF headquarters
***Hillary supporters snub Obama camp

>>Prop A victory party

>>Watching the California returns roll in

>>A real convention for once?

>>Dining with Ron Paul supporters

>>Drinking to democracy at the Kilowatt

>>Partying with the Democrats

>>Who can beat McCain?

>>Bill and Gavin stump for Hillary

>>A vote for Edwards

Obama Girl didn’t vote

-
0

What?!? Amber Lee Ettinger, Ms. “I Got a Crush on Obama,” didn’t even turn in a ballot?

Up until now, I took her commitment to politics so seriously …

obamagirl531.jpg
Original title: “I Got a Crush on Free Publicity”

How Obama and Clinton split California

-
0

We know that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton basically split California, with the latter winning the popular vote by about 10 percentage points. But it’s interesting to look at how they split the Golden State using this map.

Clinton’s margin of victory seems to be counties with lots of Latino voters, which have been slow to warm to Obama. She posted her biggest numbers in the Central Valley counties of Stanislaus (60%), San Joaquin (58), Merced (59), Tulare (60), and Madera (56), and in the border county of Imperial (67).

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa delivered his county for Clinton (55 to 41.5), but Mayor Gavin Newsom failed to do so in San Francisco, where Obama won by 8 points. The candidates split the Bay Area, with Alameda, Marin, and Sonoma counties joining SF in backing Obama and San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Contra Costa counties going for Clinton. Obama got Sacramento and Yolo counties, while Clinton took sprawling San Bernardino County by a large margin

Interestingly, coastal counties were more supportive of Obama, both on the liberal North Coast and more conservative San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. If there is one lesson to be learned, it is that Obama is going to have to make inroads with Latino voters, both in the primary and the main event if he gets there, particularly given John McCain’s reasonable immigration stance (as opposed to the hysterical and racist approaches of the other GOP contenders).

Editor’s Notes by Tim Redmond

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

There are plenty of stark contrasts between the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns, starting with the fact that all of the Republicans sound like morons and both the Democrats have credible policy ideas that they appear to have thought about.

But the thing that struck me most in the week before the California primary was the tone of the GOP debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, where John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul spent an inordinate amount of time arguing over who was the most authentic conservative.

The c word came up about every five seconds. I’m a right-wing conservative! No, no, I’m even more conservative. Hey, I’m so conservative I think all the immigrants ought to be lassoed with a chain and dragged back to Mexico behind a Hummer. Romney even hit McCain for winning the New York Times endorsement, saying that means he isn’t a real conservative.

And I wondered: what would the world be like if the Democrats were arguing over who was the best liberal?

Imagine if Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton fought over who can be most trusted to reverse the 25-year trend of economic and social inequality in the United States, who would most effectively tax the rich and shift some of the wealth to the middle class and poor. Imagine if they fought over whose health care plan would move the nation toward a single-payer system with no private insurance participation? Clinton: "I’ll cut the defense budget so fast that the military-industrial complex will think it’s 1976 all over again." Obama: "Yeah? Well, I’ll eliminate 90 percent of the nuclear arsenal, quit selling high-tech weapons to trouble spots around the world, and institute an excess-profits tax on any corporation that milks the taxpayer in a defense contract." Take that.

I have a friend who’s in the political consulting business; he works on big national campaigns and does high-level strategy for the Democratic Party. He’ll laugh when he reads this; when I say this kind of stuff, he shakes his head and says, "This is a conservative country."

But I don’t believe it.

Another political consultant, a guy who’s run some of the most important liberal campaigns in the state over the past couple of decades, stopped by our office a few weeks ago, and after he talked about an energy plan he’s pushing, I took him aside and asked one of my favorite questions:

How much money would it take — what kind of a campaign would you have to run, and for how long — to counter a quarter century of brilliant, effective right-wing propaganda and reconvince the American people to have faith in the public sector? What would we have to do to make people think — as they did during the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s — that government is part of the solution, not part of the problem? If some rich person put up a billion dollars, could you do it?

"It wouldn’t take that much," the guy said. But from the look on his face, I suspect he thought it would be close.

I used to blame the media for all of this, but I’ve been in the media for a very long time now, and I don’t think it’s that easy. Somewhere along the line the bad guys figured out that if they repeated their message often enough and funded their think tanks and promoted their political leaders, eventually they’d sell a scam of cosmic proportions to the electorate. We could tell our story too, if we thought it was important enough.

Photos from Obama’s party at the Fairmont

-
0

The crowd here grumbled loudly when CNN announced that Hillary had a substantial lead in California. But the state is far from lost to Clinton. A massive portion of California’s voters submitted absentee ballots that have not been counted. And as we pointed out earlier, even if the rest of the state’s Democratic establishment goes for Hillary, San Francisco would rather share a tumbler of bourbon with Obama. Here are some images from his Super Tuesday party at the Fairmont Hotel in downtown SF:

DSCF0304.JPG

DSCF0306.JPG

“CHANGE IS COMING TO AMERICA” (if you hadn’t heard)

-
0

A large, dispersed crowd pressed towards the projector-sized screen at the front of the Grand Ballroom in the Fairmont Hotel when they saw that CNN was interrupting coverage of John McCain’s speech (yawn) to go to Barack Obama’s headquarters in Chicago.

The Democratic presidential candidate was making his way towards the stage, and the audiences here and on TV were equally ecstatic. Chants of “O-BA-MA!” rang out. CNN took the cue and dropped McCain entirely. A series of roars accompanied Obama’s speech, especially when he made the declaration that “Change is coming to America!”
That slogan was reiterated numerous times throughout the night. After Obama finished in Chicago, the attention in San Francisco turned to the front podium. Numerous elected officials took the stage to express their support of Obama.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee promised and re-promised, “California will never be the same because of what we’ve done in this movement. It will never be the same. Never.”

Mrs. Dewson’s perspective

-
2

Ruth Dewson, the owner of Mrs. Dewson’s Hats at Fillmore St. and California St., where former Mayor Willie Brown gets many of his signature head coverings, used the term “mind-boggling” to describe the lack of support black leaders in the this state have given her presidential candidate, Barack Obama. She specifically called out preachers.

“When a politician comes to your church, you don’t owe them anything,” Mrs. Dewson said. She added that so many local black ministers support Hillary Clinton simply because they backed Bill Clinton in the ’90s. She spoke with us from the Obama campaign party at the Fairmont Hotel Grand Ballroom.

Obama wins San Francisco

-
0

California may be Clinton country, but Barack Obama has won San Francisco, home of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and more than a half-dozen delegates. True, it’s a symbolic win, but symbols are what we’re looking at tonight. Mayor Gavin Newsom was a high profile Hillary backer, but the progressives on the Board of Supervisors and other bodies backed Barack. Numbers now in SF are Obama 52 % and Clinton 44% with 78 % counted.

Hillary campaign headquarters

-
0

By around 9:30 pm it seemed clear at Hillary’s campaign HQ that she had won the popular vote in California. A full room and diverse crowd gathered around the blaring TV, cheered and chanted her name. Rev. Amos Brown spoke to deafening cheers as he questioned the substance behind Obama’s rhetoric but praised the “two fine democratic competitors.” Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting spoke briefly.

Obama’s party at the Fairmont Hotel

-
0

Finally settled in at the Fairmont downtown after searching fruitlessly in the beginning for a wireless connection.

The most significant thing I’ve seen so far tonight is Oakland City Attorney John Russo throwing his weight behind Obama and MCing tonight’s event. Last night we saw San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera at a rally for Hillary attended by Bill Clinton, Gavin Newsom, Carole Migden and Oakland Vice Mayor Henry Chang.

So now at least we know who wants to return has-been bureaucrats to Washington and who might actually be interested in some original ideas at the federal level. We haven’t seen much talk from analysts about what an Obama cabinet might look like, but for some of us, that’s one of the most intriguing questions of all.

Clinton takes CA: Projection

-
0

CNN is projecting that Clinton will win California. If that’s the case, it will be thanks to her agressive absentee program; she banked a lot of votes over the past month, long before Obama began to pick up momentum.

That’s a big political bounce for Clinton, even if it won’t amount to a huge difference in delegates.

1...474849...51Page 48 of 51

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org