Opinion

Public hospitals are too Lean

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OPINION

The San Francisco Department of Public Health is paying Rona Consulting Group, an out-of-state consulting firm, $1.3 million of taxpayer dollars to implement a program called “Lean,” allegedly to improve patient services. The “Lean” program is based on the Japanese Toyota automobile production model.

Hospital quality improvement schemes such as the Lean promise decreased waiting times, improved communication, more satisfied patients, and safer care. Quality care should also decrease the incidence of hospital-acquired conditions so that patients leave the hospital without getting new infections, falling, or getting pressure ulcers such as “bed sores.”

Hospital administrators are telling health care workers and patients that Lean will achieve these widely shared goals. Yet despite years of efforts, there is no evidence that it works, and growing concern that resources must be increased rather than prescribing the Lean diet to an already starving public health infrastructure.

Health care should be based on the best available science — not corporate sales. The Lean program encourages the hospital staff to consider its workplace as a factory shop floor, and to consider their patients and work as a product. The competition for well-insured patients and improved satisfaction for reimbursement has caused hospital administrators and Lean consultants to propose surgical clinics that resemble Nordstrom or the Hyatt Regency.

Lean’s management methodology, based on Toyota’s selected Japanese words, is used to mystify and dazzle. Instead of the pharmacy window, we are told that all staff must go to the “gemba,” which the consultants (not the dictionary) say is Japanese for “where the work happens.” Many highly paid hospital administrators and even clinical staff have been re-named as “kaizen promotion office” leaders. Those who have completed advanced training are awarded a “black belt.” The use of Japanese terms is clearly meant to add a sense of authority.

Evidence-based medicine and nursing have been examining high-quality studies of the effectiveness of improvement schemes such as Lean. According to “Guiding Inpatient Quality Improvement: A Systematic Review of Lean” (The Joint Commission, 2012), “the true impact of these approaches is difficult to judge, given that the lack of rigorous evaluation or clearly sustained improvements provides little evidence supporting broad adoption.” This leads to very expensive, wishful thinking. When consultants are paid from $4,700 to $25,000 a day from public funds intended to construct a seismically sound hospital (see “Toyota work methods applied at General Hospital” San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 7, 2014) it seems important to consider what randomized controlled trials tell us. The taxpayers have a right to know what to expect from this scheme, but there are no controlled scientific studies to tell us.

Despite more than 10 years of multiple published studies, very few consulting firms even report statistics. Those that do show weak evidence of effectiveness, and none show sustained improvement. If Lean were a medication, it would never receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration, as we don’t know if it helps or hurts the care of patients. As it is, hospitals are performing a single-group intervention study without ethical approval or consent from the workers and the patients.

Hospitals should be providing their patients with the best care, not the cheapest. Even if Lean didn’t come with a price tag to taxpayers ranging in millions of dollars for consultants to do the work that administrators should be doing, the underlying notion of speed is dangerous in health care. Public health patients are even more vulnerable with increased prevalence of poverty-related co-morbidities, from diabetes to tuberculosis. If there were a way to more quickly cure our population of its many ills, we would embrace Lean.

Nobody likes to wait around, but the human connection between caregiver and patient takes time. Efficiency should not be valued over safety. Furthermore, many patients would be unhappy to learn that they are being viewed as inanimate products on an assembly line. Nor does it please health workers to think of themselves as robots.

Hospital safety under Lean is being modeled after the same automobile corporation that was just forced to pay $1.2 billion for concealing safety defects (“Toyota Is Fined $1.2 Billion for Concealing Safety Defects” New York Times, March 19, 2014). The safety defects were implicated in unintended acceleration of some Toyota vehicles that led to injury and death. Speed was certainly not helpful in that situation. Perhaps DPH should critically examine Lean before prescribing a diet to our vulnerable safety-net patients. Maybe we need more, not faster, health care workers.

Ed Kinchley has worked for DPH for 30 years, after spending nine years in Japan.

Shots fired

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cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM “The First World War holds the distinction of being America’s most popular conflict while it lasted, and the most hated as soon as it was over,” writes Russell Merritt in the intro to his guest-curated Pacific Film Archive series “Over the Top and Into the Wire: WWI on Film.” Though World War I is a much less popular cinematic subject than WWII, or even the Vietnam War, its complexities mean that the films it did inspire continue to fascinate.

The PFA series kicks off Sat/2 with Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918), in which the Little Tramp heads “over there” and becomes a most unlikely hero. Included in that same program are Disney short Great Guns (1927), and Winsor McCay’s The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), a fiery argument in favor of America going to war, as well as one of the first animated documentaries.

“Over the Top” also includes two silent epics (D.W. Griffith’s 1918 Hearts of the World, and Alexander Dovzhenko’s 1929 Arsenal); three certified classics (Jean Renoir’s 1937 POW saga Grand Illusion; Lewis Milestone’s harrowing 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front; and Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 Paths of Glory, starring an impeccably furious Kirk Douglas); and a Washington-set oddity: Gregory La Cava’s 1933 Gabriel Over the White House.

I spoke with Merritt, an adjunct professor in UC Berkeley’s Film and Media Studies Department, just days before the 100-year anniversary of the war’s outbreak on July 28, 1914.

SF Bay Guardian How did you become interested in World War I films?

Russell Merritt For me, World War I is the event that shaped the 20th century, more than the Depression or World War II — and to see how films contributed is one of those endlessly interesting kinds of problems. They were mainly part of the war hysteria that gripped the country starting in 1917, and that in itself is of interest, because we were so opposed to the war just a few years before that, and we became even more opposed to the war after it was all over. The movies reflect that. Trying to account for these dramatic mood swings is part of the fascination.

SFBG How did you select the films in the series?

RM I tried to find both classics and some off-center ones. I suspect nobody who does a series on the First World War is going to forget All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, or Paths of Glory, but few would think of Dovzhenko’s Arsenal or Gabriel Over the White House — though those enable us to get to some hidden aspects, or lesser-known aspects, of the ways in which the war was considered.

Of the war films that were made during the war, the only two that anybody remembers are a cartoon [The Sinking of the Lusitania] and a comedy featurette [Shoulder Arms]. Meanwhile, the most popular war film made during the war, D.W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World, with Lillian Gish, is all but forgotten.

SFBG World War I coincided with the early days of cinema. What bearing do you think the two had on each other?

RM In the case of Hearts of the World, it has a direct bearing. This production was unique in that Griffith is the only filmmaker — the only American filmmaker, the only fiction filmmaker — to be allowed onto battlefields, and onto the training grounds in England, to use the armies more or less as extras. It represents this great effort at trying to use motion picture fiction films as what would have been called “informational films” back then — today, we would call them war propaganda films. It reflects this fascination with movies as the latest medium with which to try to influence public opinion.

One of the most fascinating things about this film is Griffith is an American, world-famous for [1915’s] Birth of a Nation. He is invited by the British to make a feature film that will encourage Americans to join the war, or at least to be sympathetic to the Allied side of the war.

But by the time he arrived in Europe, the war had already come to America. So the project changed, and he created an American story about the war. I’m shortening a story that goes on even longer, but this kind of crazy wandering from one project to another reflects the difficulty of trying to find an image for the war other than making the Germans hideous, lustful barbarians. How do you portray the battles, the French, the Americans? That’s all being changed as he’s making the film, and he starts falling back on the patterns that he used when trying to sell the Civil War [in Nation].

All of this relates to your question, because today we have a quite pronounced way of selling government, or more frequently anti-government documentaries. Back then were the very beginnings of this effort to use film for these types of social purposes.

SFBG Hearts used real soldiers, and some of the films, like Grand Illusion, don’t depict any battles, but some of the special effects in the other films are surprisingly impressive. Disembodied hands gripping the barbed wire in All Quiet on the Western Front…

RM That is an unforgettable image, even all these years later. There was also a silent version made of that, with that same shot in it. In some ways, Paths of Glory is the most shocking of the films in the series, because it’s so angry. But the sheer horror of the war, I think, has never been better illustrated [than in All Quiet].

This leads to a subtext in this series: In some ways, you could regard this as a kind of cross-section of the kinds of films that represent the war. But I have a particular argument to make, which is that the films help perpetuate the illusion that the war that Americans fought was interchangeable with the war that Europeans fought. All Quiet is a great example of that. To this day, we think the Americans fought in trenches, that our cause was as confused and as hopeless to understand as was the European cause, and so on.

But in fact, we fought quite a different war. Our reasons for going into the war were quite different, and the experiences we had in the war were quite different. You can ask a class, as I do, “How many of you had relatives that were killed in the First World War?”, and just a sprinkling of hands will go up. Ask the same question in Europe, and it doesn’t matter if it’s France, England, or Germany — all the hands will go up. That gets blurred over in these films, and I’d like [audiences] to reconsider that.

The other thing I want to do is show how the war was used as the teens gave way to the 1920s, and into the 1930s. It had different functions, especially during the Depression, [when it was] interpreted so that it was appropriate to this great economic disaster. That’s the reason I’m including Gabriel Over the White House. And it has a much different purpose when it’s being incorporated into Soviet history; that’s why I’m showing the Ukranian film, Arsenal.

SFBG Perhaps it’s due to those complexities, but World War I hasn’t become a part of pop culture, for lack of a better phrase, the way World War II has.

RM I can’t think of a modern film about America’s involvement in the First World War. I suspect with the American centennial coming up in 2017, that will change. But even documentary filmmakers haven’t touched it. There was a 10-part British documentary series that was made 10 years ago, but we have nothing like that; Ken Burns isn’t going to do something on World War I. The strange part is, it may be as influential as any war we ever fought, certainly more than World War II, in shaping what kind of country we became.

SFBG Why did you only choose one film that was made after World War II? Is it because there just aren’t very many?

RM That’s one reason. And they’re not as interesting, since they more or less recycle the party line on World War I: it was terrible, it was unfair. There’s no new news coming out about the First World War after Kubrick’s movie, as far as I can tell.

SFBG Do you have a favorite among the movies you’re showing?

RM No, I love all my children [laughs]. When you see Grand Illusion, how can you not respond to Renoir’s humane view? This is the most generous view of the war, of officers, and of POWs, that you’ll ever see. It’s not exactly a comedy, but it’s this remarkable way of reconciling enemies, and officers and enlisted men.

Paths of Glory never gets old. It’s based on a historic event that took place in 1914, and kept on taking place; soldiers were frequently being executed for mutiny or cowardice when a military operation became a disaster.

I haven’t seen All Quiet on the Western Front in a long time, and yet for me it’s unforgettable. The big battle scene comes toward the beginning of the film, rather than where it usually comes at the end, and that makes all the difference. *

OVER THE TOP AND INTO THE WIRE: WWI ON FILM

Aug 2-27, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk

bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Clean energy and better infrastructure: a great combination

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OPINION Achieving a more sustainable San Francisco means a city running on clean power. It also means maintaining our infrastructure to keep San Francisco functioning.

Right now, our city can do better on both fronts, and legislation we are sponsoring will help move us in the right direction by increasing our use of clean, hydroelectric power while generating more revenue for infrastructure investment in our streetlight and power systems.

San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy power system produces a massive amount of clean, hydroelectric power, yet our city uses very little of this energy despite our stated goal of moving toward 100 percent clean power by 2030. Moreover, the operator of this power system, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC), has massive unmet infrastructure needs. Our streetlights, most of which are owned by the PUC, are badly in need of upgrade, and PUC’s power delivery system has almost a billion dollars in deferred maintenance.

To address these challenges, we are authoring legislation to bring more revenue-generating, clean power to San Francisco.

For over 100 years, the PUC has provided 100 percent clean, hydroelectric power to municipal agencies, including Muni, the San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco General Hospital, police and fire stations, libraries, and our public schools. Using this clean public power saves taxpayers millions versus what we would pay if we were to purchase PG&E power. Hetch Hetchy generates 1.43 million megawatt hours of clean power a year and is 100 percent greenhouse-gas free. This is a tremendous asset, but it has been underutilized.

Any excess public power that the PUC generates and doesn’t use for governmental customers is now sold on the wholesale market at a significantly reduced rate. Retail rates are around four times higher than wholesale rates. This means that with every megawatt sold at wholesale rates, the PUC is losing out on significant revenue to address its aging infrastructure needs.

If the PUC obtains more customers paying retail rates, we can generate more revenue to upgrade and improve our failing streetlight system and address the power system’s massive deferred capital needs. The PUC estimates that for every 10 megawatts sold to new retail customers — rather than selling that power on the wholesale market — we will see a net revenue increase of $4 million per year.

That is why we are sponsoring legislation to bring the PUC more retail customers and hence more infrastructure investment. The legislation provides the PUC with the right of first refusal to be the power provider for new development projects in San Francisco, including large private projects. This will allow the PUC to determine if it feasibly can serve as the power provider for these new developments, and in doing so expand the agency’s retail customer base.

Allowing the PUC the flexibility to add retail customers will move us toward a more financially sustainable public power system, while providing 100 percent greenhouse-gas free power to our city and generating significant resources for infrastructure investment, including for our streetlight system.

Some have raised questions about what this legislation means for the future of CleanPowerSF, our previously approved clean energy program that has been stalled by the PUC Commission’s refusal to set rates. These two public power measures are not in any way mutually exclusive, and both can move forward. We are both supporters of CleanPowerSF, and we want it to succeed.

We know the PUC can provide reliable, greenhouse-gas-free power that works for its customers. Anyone who disagrees can just look at San Francisco International Airport. If the PUC can reliably provide power to serve one of the most significant airports in the world, powering new housing and commercial developments won’t be a problem.

A sustainable, clean energy future requires a broad range of solutions. This proposal is one that will deliver our city more clean power and make our power enterprise stronger by redirecting energy revenues back into the system. Let’s put our clean power to work for San Francisco.

Scott Wiener and London Breed are members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

San Franciscans could make death penalty ruling stick

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In the wake of yesterday’s [Wed/16] judicial ruling that California’s death penalty system is unconstitutional — with federal District Judge Cormac Carney calling it arbitrary and so subject to endless delay that it “serves no penological purpose” — San Franciscans could play a key role in converting the ruling into an abolition of capital punishment.

Right now, the ruling applies only to the execution of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for a rape and murder, and not all 748 inmates now on Death Row in California. But yesterday’s ruling would end the death penalty in California if appealed to and upheld by the SF-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision about whether to file that appeal and possibly a subsequent appeal to the US Supreme Court falls to Attorney General Kamala Harris, who has maintained her opposition to capital punishment since her days as San Francisco’s district attorney, where she bravely endured lots of political heat for refusing to file capital murder charges in the death of San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza.  

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi today issued a public statement praising yesterday’s ruling and calling for Harris not to appeal it: “Today’s ruling, which found California’s death penalty unconstitutional, is a monumental victory for justice. I commend U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney for his courage and wisdom. Not only is the death penalty arbitrarily imposed, as the judge noted, its history is fraught with racial bias and haunted by the hundreds of death row inmates who were later exonerated. I am hopeful that California Attorney General Kamala Harris will choose not to appeal this decision.” 

Harris spokesperson David Beltran told the Guardian that she hasn’t yet made a decision whether to appeal the case: “We are reviewing the ruling.”

Yet former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, who worked with SF-based Death Penalty Focus on the 2012 initiative campaign to repeal the death penalty (losing by less than 4 percentage points), told the Guardian that Harris has a tough choice to make.

“It’s an interesting decision. If the Attorney General doesn’t appeal it, then it applies just to this case, period,” Garcetti told us.

Although appeals in other cases could cite the logic of yesterday’s ruling, it has no precedent value unless affirmed by the Ninth Circuit. And Garcetti called Carney’s ruling “a pretty persuasive decision” that could be easily be affirmed, depending on which judges are assigned to the case. If so, that ruling would end the death penalty in California, just as 17 other states have already done.   

“The more interesting question is whether she would then appeal that ruling [to the US Supreme Court],” Garcetti said.

California voters have affirmed their support for the death penalty three times at the ballot, but those results and public opinion polling show that support for executions has been steadily eroding, in much the same way that generational change has led to overturning bans on same-sex marriage across the country.

Garcetti said he regularly speaks publicly about capital punishment, often to very conservative groups, and he said that the arguments against it have become so strong — including its high cost, racial and class bias, and lack of deterrent effect — that “over 95 percent of [death penalty supporters] change their opinions by the end of my talks.”

As for why the 2012 initiative fell about 250,000 votes short of success, Garcetti said, “We simply ran out of money to get the facts out. Once people hear the facts, it wins them over.”

Carney’s ruling reinforced many of the arguments that opponents have been made against the death penalty, noting that federal guarantees of due process create such long delays that a death sentence has become something “no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in prison, with the remote possibility of death.”

Aside from this ruling, California is also currently under a federal moratorium on executing prisoners until it can reform its lethal injection procedures, which a federal judge has said now amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

“Justice requires that we end this charade once and for all,” Death Penalty Focus Executive Director Matt Cherry said in a prepared statement. “It’s time to replace California’s broken death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of parole. That’s the best way to ensure that convicted killers remain behind bars until they die, without wasting tens of millions of tax dollars every year on needless appeals. That’s justice that works, for everyone.”

Why I drive a taxi

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By Beth Powder

OPINION I left a 17-year career in film to become a taxi driver. I just wanted to be here full time, drive a taxi, and write.

I’ve taken cabs in several cities and countries over the last 20-odd years. When I got here in 1998, it took two hours for a taxi to get to my house on 43rd Avenue. I still never would’ve gotten into anyone’s personal car and paid them for a ride, no matter how hard it was to get a cab sometimes. Not in San Francisco. Not in Jamaica. Not in Jamaica, Queens.

I’m from Toledo, Ohio originally. We always went on road trips. Maybe being in such close proximity to Detroit, some of that car mojo rubbed off on us. My mother is the kind of woman who, at 70 years old, will drive cross-country alone, stopping to call me at 3am from deserted truck stops outside Amarillo, Texas. You might see why I’d drive a taxi.

I have a feeling that a lot of the anti-taxi contingent now in this city haven’t taken too many cabs. Cabs could never put me off because I’d taken so many of them and I knew I was safer in one than standing in a crosswalk. I’ve been hit by cars on foot and on my bike but I’ve never been in an accident in a cab. Not in London. Not in Los Angeles. Not here.

I don’t drive for Lyft or Uber because San Francisco cab drivers receive workers compensation and TNC drivers don’t. Because Lyft mustaches look unprofessional to me. I went to taxi school, got fingerprinted, had a background check, and got licensed.

My taxi has 24/7 commercial livery insurance. My company pays the bills if there’s an accident. San Francisco taxi companies don’t have bylaws stating that passengers cannot hold them liable. San Francisco taxi companies don’t have bylaws stating that passengers take taxis at their own risk. San Francisco taxi companies don’t have bylaws that can be legally interpreted to allow discrimination against passengers of any persuasion. We have to accept pets. And we have to be green.

San Francisco taxis pick up bartenders, sweet old ladies at the hospital who don’t have smart phones, teachers, lawyers, wheelchair users, people of color, San Francisco Giants, former mayor Willie Brown, hookers, trannies, ballerinas, and limo drivers. Everybody. You don’t need a smartphone, but you can always hail a cab using an app called Flywheel.

I’m not a fan of the smugness emanating from Lyft, Uber, et all. Perpetuating spurious claims that cab drivers are all scary or awful is neither cute nor clever. And it certainly isn’t true.

It’s far more likely for a passenger to physically attack a cab driver than the opposite. About a month ago, several men took a cab from my fleet to San Mateo and severely beat up the driver. We have video cameras in every single San Francisco cab, but that still didn’t guarantee this driver’s safety. Nonetheless crime and accidents in taxis are down significantly.

We’re mothers, fathers, grandparents, students, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs. Cab drivers give companionship, counseling, and safe passage to their passengers.

I want to know how we can have faith in TNCs when drivers aren’t commercially licensed, fully insured, and packing security cameras. How should we feel about droves of these Uber and Lyft phones being shared by multiple drivers, when only one is on record? What happens when a TNC is wrapped around a pole and the driver is held responsibility for their own safety and well-being. These brand new cars won’t be paid off before we start to witness incidents such as this.

How’s a “young mother just trying to make some extra pocket money” going to feel when she has her wages garnished into perpetuity because she rear-ended someone? She’s personally liable with the TNC company. She’s your friend with a car who absorbs all legal responsibility whether she’s found at-fault or not.

As long as there’s a taxi industry, I’ll keep proudly driving my taxi in the city I love. I’ll pick up sweet and not so sweet old ladies, people in wheelchairs, people with dogs, and whomever else needs a ride wherever it is they need to go.

Beth Powder is a cab driver and writer.

 

San Francisco to provide right to counsel for tenants facing eviction

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OPINION San Francisco is the second most unequal city in the nation. Working and middle-income people and families are being forced to flee the city they love. Between 2010 and 2013, Ellis Act evictions alone increased by 170 percent.

In 2013, a total of 3,662 San Franciscans were served with eviction notices. Over 1,000 of these tenants went to court without lawyers. According to court statistics, 90 percent of landlords hire attorneys, while only 10 percent of tenants have a lawyer. This inequity has made it more difficult for tenants to adequately assert their rights.

To level the playing field, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee just designated $1 million to fund 10 nonprofit housing attorneys to perform full scope legal services for any tenant facing eviction in San Francisco. We teamed up with tenant rights organizers and attorneys to fight for this budget allocation in order to address San Francisco’s affordability crisis. This funding will ensure that all San Franciscans facing eviction will receive legal assistance if they need it.

Crucial to ensuring economic diversity in this city is protecting our rent-controlled housing stock. Every time a tenant is evicted from his or her apartment, we lose another unit of price-controlled housing that is safe from the current astronomical market rental and sale prices. The board has passed local legislation that helps tenants remain in the city after an eviction, including Sup. Campos’ legislation increasing relocation assistance amounts after an Ellis Act eviction.

However, only the state Legislature has the power to change the law in a manner that would make a large impact on the frequency of evictions. Sadly, last week, Sen. Mark Leno’s bill that would have curbed Ellis Act evictions died in the Assembly Housing Committee. Leno said he will not further pursue the bill this year. Therefore, we must continue to act locally to deal with our housing crisis.

Legal representation for tenants is a crucial part of the fight against displacement. Several academic studies have shown that tenants are five to 10 times more likely to stay in their homes after receiving an eviction notice if they are represented by an attorney throughout the eviction process. Furthermore, having an attorney protects the tenants against abusive practices by landlords.

Tenant advocates report that illegal harassment by landlords is on the rise in an effort to force out tenants without having to resort to the formal eviction process. It is common practice for landlords to attempt to “buy out” tenants by offering a monetary sum to vacate a unit outside of the legal process. Vulnerable tenants, including immigrants and tenants who live in Section 8 housing, are often forced out of their units because they do not understand or assert their rights. Even if the action results in the tenants leaving, an attorney can help tenants avoid having an eviction on their record, which makes it much more difficult for the tenants to rent again.

We are fortunate to have 14 excellent nonprofit organizations in San Francisco that provide no- or low-cost legal services to tenants. However, these organizations have been woefully underfunded and do not have sufficient staff to address this housing crisis. The budget allocation of $1 million to fund 10 additional tenant attorneys will have a profound impact on San Francisco’s housing crisis. It will also make San Francisco one of the first cities in the country to provide a right to legal assistance to tenants facing eviction. Just as the Constitution allows an attorney for a person accused of a crime, a person threatened with the loss of his or her home should have legal assistance. San Francisco can and should lead the way when it comes to providing legal assistance to those tenants who need it.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi and Supervisor David Campos are elected officials in San Francisco.

Garbage game

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San Francisco elected officials frequently celebrate the ambitious citywide goal of sending zero waste to the landfill by 2020, an environmental feat widely viewed as attainable since the current waste diversion rate stands at a stellar 80 percent.

Official city numbers — based on reporting by Recology, a company that has a monopoly on trash collection and curbside recycling in San Francisco — demonstrate that only 20 percent of all city dwellers’ trash ends up in a landfill, that unenlightened dead end for matter discarded from our lives, never to be reprocessed.

Yet a lawsuit against Recology exposed some inconsistencies in the company’s record keeping. It also shed light on how some material counted as “diverted” is routinely sent to a landfill anyway, a practice that muddies the concept of the city’s Zero Waste program but is nevertheless legal under state law.

On June 17, a San Francisco jury determined that Recology misrepresented the amount of waste diverted from the landfill in 2008, enabling it to collect an incentive payment of $1.36 million for meeting the goal. The verdict compels Recology to pay the money back to the city, since it was obtained after submitting a false claim.

The outcome of this lawsuit — brought by a former manager of the Tunnel Road recycling Buy Back facility, who also claims he was retaliated against for trying to expose fraud — highlights some larger questions. Was this inaccuracy unique to 2008, or are Recology’s numbers always a little fuzzy? Are there adequate safeguards in place to prevent the company from fudging the numbers, particularly when both company and city officials have an incentive to exaggerate the diversion rate? And if what’s on paper doesn’t quite square with reality, is San Francisco really keeping as much garbage out of the landfill as the city’s Department of the Environment says it is?

Attorney David Anton, who represented the former Recology employee, Brian McVeigh, said he found it odd that San Francisco officials didn’t show much interest in collaborating to recover the bonus money, even though millions of dollars was potentially at stake. Since damages are trebled under the False Claims Act, cited in the lawsuit, Recology could ultimately be made to fork over the incentive payment three times over.

“The city’s representative in the Department of the Environment actually testified that he hoped this lawsuit would be unsuccessful,” Anton recounted. He guessed that officials remained on the sidelines because in San Francisco’s political power centers, “relationships with Recology are so close and tight. It was a very strange thing,” he went on, “to be pursuing this lawsuit, trying to get money to the city, and the city’s representatives are saying, ‘we don’t want it.'”

Recology has filed post-trial motions in a bid to have the penalty reduced, “asking the court to decide whether there was any evidence at trial that there were public funds in the Diversion Incentive Account, and if so, how much,” explained Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner. “We expect a ruling this summer.”

Department of the Environment spokesperson Guillermo Rodriguez told the Guardian that Robert Haley, manager of the department’s Zero Waste team, was unavailable for comment before press time. With regard to the lawsuit, Rodriguez noted, “The city has been following the trial closely and is awaiting the judge’s ruling on post-trial motions before determining any reaction.”

 

FALSE CLAIMS

The False Claims Act is designed to recover damages to government when false statements are made to obtain money or avoid making payments. It has a provision allowing whistleblowers, such as McVeigh, to lead the charge on seeking civil enforcement action. The whistleblower may be eligible to receive a share of recovery.

Under the bonus incentive program, Recology sets aside extra cash — collected from garbage customers’ payments — in a segregated account. But it cannot withdraw funds from that account unless it hits the city’s established waste-reduction targets. Recology submitted paperwork to the city in 2008 showing that it met the diversion goals, so it was allowed to withdraw the money.

But the lawsuit demonstrated that Recology actually fell short of those goals — and apparently, nobody in city government ever followed up to check whether the reporting was accurate.

A key reason the jury ruled against Recology on this particular claim, according to Anton, was that it was found to have misclassified some construction and demolition waste as “diverted” material. Under state law, when ground-up construction debris is used to cover the top of a landfill — to prevent pests, fires, and odors, for example — it’s counted as “alternative daily cover.” Trash in this category winds up in a landfill, just like any other trash. But state law allows garbage companies to count it as “diverted,” just as if it were an aluminum can tossed into the blue bin.

The lawsuit claimed that Recology tried to count a great many tons of construction and demolition waste as “alternative daily cover” when in reality, it should have been counted as just plain trash.

Solano County records show that a landfill inspector had flagged an “area of concern” after discovering solid waste mixed in with construction debris Recology shipped to a landfill for use as that top layer. “It looks like they didn’t do a good enough job of cleaning out that material,” CalRecycle spokesperson Mark Oldfield noted as he pulled up the report from 2008 at the Guardian’s request.

Had the material gone to the landfill as just plain garbage, instead of “alternative daily cover,” Recology would have had to count it as waste sent to the landfill, instead of waste diverted from the landfill. That would have meant falling short of the waste diversion goal, hence losing out on the $1.36 million.

“Recology kept this completely secret from San Francisco,” according to Anton.

Potashner said it was actually a bit more complicated — the company challenged the inspector’s findings, he said. “The local enforcement agency in Solano County had questions about that material,” but Recology never received a cease-and-desist order, he added. “When we had talked to jurors after the fact, that was the issue that seemed to sway them. In 2008 we didn’t make that bonus by that much. They thought we shouldn’t have been able to count that as diversion because of this issue.”

Either way, the incident exposes a strange reality: When San Francisco city officials trumpet the citywide success of “diverting” 80 percent of all waste from the landfill, some portion of that 80 percent actually winds up in a landfill anyhow. Whether the construction debris counted as “alternative daily cover” has trash mixed into it or not, it’s still destined to wind up in a big, environmentally unfriendly trash heap.

 

CONCRETE NUMBERS

The lawsuit highlighted a few other red flags, too, raising more questions about the city’s true diversion numbers. For instance, the suit claimed that Recology was involved in a system of digging up concrete from its own parking lots, to be handed over to concrete recyclers as “diverted” waste.

“Recology facilities have large areas of concrete pads,” the complaint noted. “Management of Recology … directed Recology work crews in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 to cut out sections of concrete pads and deliver the removed concrete to concrete recyclers, to falsely inflate the diversion incentive reported to SF.”

The waste management company then “solicited cement companies to deliver and dispose of excess and rejected concrete loads to Recology, to fill in the removed concrete pad sections,” according to the complaint. Those shipments were brought in on trucks that weren’t weighed at entry, and then placed in the concrete pads. Management then had work crews remove the same concrete that had been delivered, shipped it to the concrete recyclers, and reported it “as diverted from being disposed in a landfill,” the complaint noted.

This account was corroborated by a Guardian source unrelated the lawsuit, but nonetheless familiar with the inner workings of the company. “They would take the concrete across the road — right across the street,” this person confirmed.

Asked to provide an explanation for this, Recology’s Potashner said, “it is clear, and wasn’t even challenged by the plaintiff at trial, that recycled concrete is diverted, whether it had been from Recology’s lots or anywhere else.”

McVeigh’s case stemmed from his realization, while working as a manager at Recology’s Tunnel Road recycling buyback facility, that employees there were routinely marking up the weights of recyclable materials brought in, in order to pay out certain customers more than they were actually owed. The suit suggests that these routinely inflated California redemption value (CRV) tags contributed to Recology missing its waste-diversion targets, but the jury ultimately sided against the plaintiff on this question since it amounted to a financial loss for Recology, not the city.

The complaint included tag numbers and logs of scale weights that didn’t match up, showing a pattern of fraudulent dealings at the buyback center. In November 2007, for example, “ticket reports showed that 23.4 tons of aluminum CRV cans were purchased at the Bayshore Buyback Center, yet only 16.56 tons existed and were shipped.”

Asked about these claims, Potashner acknowledged that there may have been some “knuckleheads” involved in messing with the scales at the buyback center, but asserted that such activity had since been addressed. He added, “If there were any staffing issues around theft, that was actually affecting Recology’s books,” not the public.

Oldfield, the CalRecycle spokesperson, noted that a long list of paperwork violations had been recorded in 2010, but he said the company appeared to have been in compliance since then — based on logs from inspectors’ visits once a year.

Another problem uncovered in the trial, Anton said, had to do with Recology misrepresenting tons of garbage from out of county, so that it would be counted outside the parameters of the waste diversion program. Potashner said that had been corrected, adding, “the out-of-county waste is really a small volume.”

But he confirmed that yet another practice brought to light in this lawsuit is ongoing, revealing a surprising end for some of the stuff that gets tossed into the green compost bins.

 

MANY SHADES OF GREEN

According to every colorful flier sent out by Recology, the stuff that goes into the green bin gets composted. The green bin is for compost. The blue bin is for recycling. The black bin is for trash that goes to the landfill. This is the fundamental basis of Recology’s waste collection operation and, taking the company and the Department of the Environment at face value, one would assume that 80 percent of all waste was being processed through the blue and green waste streams.

Instead, some of what gets tossed into green bins makes its way to a landfill.

The green-bin waste is shipped to a Recology facility where it’s turned into compost, a process that involves sifting through giant screens. But some of what gets processed, known as “overs” because it isn’t fine enough to drop through the screens, is routinely transferred to a nearby landfill, where it’s spread atop the trash pile. Once again, this six-inch topper of neutralizing material is known as “alternative daily cover.”

Although Recology could convert 100 percent of its green-bin waste into soil-nourishing compost, the practice of using partially processed green-bin waste for “alternative daily cover” is cheap — and it’s perfectly legal under California law. Roughly 10 percent of what gets tossed into the compost bins is used in this way, Recology confirmed.

“There are some people who will say using green waste isn’t really diversion,” acknowledged Jeff Danzinger, a spokesperson with CalRecycle, which oversees recycling programs in California counties. “There’s some people who say we should stop that practice because that just incentivizes a landfill solution for green waste. But if somebody’s saying green waste shouldn’t go into a landfill and get counted as diversion, it’s an opinion.”

Nor is it something the city objects to. The Department of the Environment is aware of this practice, Recology’s Potashner told the Bay Guardian. Yet the city agency has never raised formal concerns about it, despite a mandate under its composting program agreement that the company use green-bin waste for the highest and best possible use.

But there’s no incentive for anyone in city government to complain: Recology may legally count this discarded material as “diverted” in official reporting, thus edging it closer to an annual bonus payment. San Francisco, meanwhile, may count it as part of the 80 percent that was successfully diverted — thus edging it closer to the ambitious Zero Waste program goal.

“It’s great PR to say you’re the highest recycling,” noted the person who was familiar with the company, but wasn’t part of the lawsuit. “It’s almost a movement more than reality. But who’s really watching for the public on these numbers? There’s no watchdog. It’s all about bragging rights.”

 

Recology is “a political business”

Recology’s political connections in San Francisco run deep. Years ago, when former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown served as speaker of the California Assembly, he also worked as a lawyer for Recology, which was then known as Norcal Waste Systems.

Campaign finance archives show that when Brown ran for mayor in 1995, he received multiple campaign contributions from Norcal employees in what appeared to be a coordinated fashion.

Brown continues to be influential in the city’s political landscape due to his close relationship with Mayor Ed Lee, who himself came under scrutiny in his capacity as head of the Department of Public Works in 1999 when he was accused of granting Norcal a major rate increase as a reward for political donations to Brown.

In 2010, when Recology submitted a bid for a lucrative waste-disposal contract proposing to haul waste to its Yuba County landfill, Lee reviewed its proposal in his then-capacity as city administrator. As the Guardian reported (see “Trash talk,” 3/30/10), Lee recommended far higher scores for Recology than his counterparts on the contract review team, a key to the company winning the landfill contract over competitor Waste Management Inc. Before Lee declared his mayoral candidacy in 2011, news reports indicated that powerful Chinatown consultant Rose Pak had worked in tandem with Recology executives on a campaign effort, “Run Ed Run,” organized to urge Lee to launch a mayoral bid. Company employees had also been instructed to help gather signatures to petition Lee to run for mayor, news reports indicated, but Pak publicly denied her role coordinating this effort. David Anton, the attorney for Brian McVeigh, emphasized that Recology’s close ties to powerful city officials might have something to do with the city’s lack of interest in targeting the company for the improperly received incentive payments. Yet Recology spokesperson Eric Potashner called this assertion “completely untrue. Recology meets with the various city departments and regulators weekly. We are constantly improving our controls and practices for handling the city’s ever-changing waste stream; often at the behest of city regulators.” Recology and its predecessor companies have maintained the exclusive right to collect commercial and residential refuse in San Francisco since 1932, and rates are routinely raised for city garbage customers, based on the company’s own reporting that its costs are increasing. “I can tell you today, there will be another significant increase on July 21, 2016” — five years after the last rate increase — “because they have a monopoly,” said neighborhood activist and District 10 supervisorial candidate Tony Kelly, who previously worked on a ballot measure that sought to have the city’s refuse collection contract go out for a competitive bid. “When you have a closed system … then it’s entirely a black box. It’ll all be self-reported. It’s too powerful of an incentive.” An industry insider familiar with Recology echoed this point, adding that cozy relationships with local officials make it easier for the self-reporting to escape scrutiny. “It’s a political business,” this person said. “In San Francisco, they’re really a political organization.” Since the rate is guaranteed, this person added, the mentality is that there’s plenty of wiggle room for financial losses and expenditures such as generous political contributions. “If you’re losing any money, you just ask for it back when you do your next rate increase. The city doesn’t have any objection. The ratepayers just get stuck with it.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Solving the housing crisis takes all San Franciscans, even big tech

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By Joseph Tobener

 

OPINION This week, San Franciscans learned that they will not be able to rely on Sacramento to fix the housing crisis. State lawmakers voted down Senate Bill 1439, which would have stopped speculators from using the Ellis Act to evict and convert buildings to upscale offices and TICs. One Assembly Democrat said that San Franciscans were “exaggerating the problem.” That same day, my office received Ellis Act eviction notices for 21 tenants from an artist building at 16th and Mission streets. The building has a new buyer, and it will soon be a high-end commercial space.

I was a tenant rights attorney during the first dot-com boom, and without question, this new housing crisis is much worse. The gentrification is more widespread and permanent. This time around, the evicted teachers, musicians, and artists are not simply moving down the street to smaller units, they are being priced out of San Francisco altogether.

We need to decide now, as San Franciscans, what we want our city to feel like in a decade. Here are five things I believe we need to do now to address the crisis:

1. Collaborate with tech leaders, rather than vilify them. I have been as guilty as the next person in blaming and berating big tech, ignoring the fact that many of my neighbors, clients, and friends are long-time San Franciscans who work in the tech industry. Enough blaming. We need to somehow bring tech to the table to help create large-scale solutions to the housing crisis. It may not be easy to do.

Earlier this year, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, criticized tech companies for being “stingy” in giving to their communities, and I have heard nonprofit fundraisers echo this. If true, we need to find out why. On the other side, our healthy anti-corporate, ‘us and them’ mindset, which is deeply rooted in San Francisco’s political tradition, is not serving us in collaboratively addressing the housing crisis.

While there are a handful of high-profile examples of tech workers wrongfully displacing tenants, tech workers are not the real problem. It is true that tech money drives up prices, but the real villains are the predatory speculators who are profiting from our shared crisis. The bottom line is, like it or not, tech is here to stay, and tech leaders have the resources to fund the arts, help our schools, and yes, help us address the housing crisis.

2. Stop illegal mergers of multi-unit buildings into single-family mansions. It is not enough to have regulations in place to prevent mergers. Real estate speculators are merging units surreptitiously, without permits. The Department of Building Inspection needs to actively police projects. And all San Francisco residents need to share in the responsibility of ensuring that speculators are not doing major construction without permits in our neighborhoods.

3. Support legislation to stop landlords from renting their units as hotel rooms. It is estimated that more than a 1,000 units in San Francisco are being rented out full-time for short-term corporate or tourist use. We need a law to get these units back into the permanent housing stock.  

4. Donate to the Community Land Trust and the Community Arts Stabilization Trust. Community land trusts are buying property to permanently preserve residential housing and art space. We need to do more to support these organizations. Other cities do a much better job than San Francisco in partnering with corporations to preserve culture.  

5. Support an anti-speculation tax. Tenant activists have introduced an anti-speculation tax designed to stop real estate flipping. Our office sees the same LLCs flip properties time and time again.

Ultimately it is up to all San Franciscans to embrace this cause if we hope to preserve the diverse and complex character of our city. One thing is sure: We cannot wait to add our voices, or it will be too late.

Joseph Tobener is a tenant rights attorney.

Painting with more colors

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joe@sfbg.com

Not many plays feature an all-Latino cast, let alone all El Salvadoran. But Paul Flores’ Placas placed brown actors and a brown experience center stage. The 2012 production explored a father and ex-gang member’s struggle, leading his son out of a hard life of drugs, violence, and perhaps death.

The play garnered favorable but mixed reviews from critics, but among Salvadorans, it was a huge hit.

“You had older generations coming to see the play right alongside their grandkids,” Flores told the Guardian. The play’s premiere venue packed its 500-seat capacity, and sold out seven out of its eight nights in San Francisco. “We tapped a community thirsty to hear its stories told.”

Placas is the kind of creative work not being funded often enough by the city’s largest arts grant organization, critics are saying. At a contentious San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee hearing on June 20, artists told supervisors that programs serving diverse communities were severely underfunded, and alleged the city’s major arts funder, Grants for the Arts, awards money disproportionately to art forms favored by white audiences.

Spurred by public outcry and city studies, Sups. Eric Mar and London Breed recommended the transfer of $400,000 in unused funding from GFTA to another city arts funder, the Cultural Equity Grants (which funded Placas), to direct arts money to people of color.

The transfer won’t be approved until it goes before the full Board of Supervisors next month. But as San Francisco studio and housing rents soar, Mar said this was vital to keeping diverse artists in the city.

“I think the crisis for arts groups now is many of them are being displaced,” he told the Guardian. “How can the city subsidize groups with low rent or free rent, and how could we support small groups [to prevent them from] being displaced?”

"Arts inequity": San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst Report by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

Above is a PDF of the Budget Legislative Analyst’s report, as it breaks down lack of funding to diverse programs. The report has relevant sections highlighted.

The Guardian reached out to City Administrator Naomi Kelly for comment (her office ultimately directs arts grants funding). She was unavailable for an interview before we went to press, but her spokesperson Bill Barnes told us, “I don’t think we should be in a position of having governments regulate artistic content.”

But in a way, the government already does. The GFTA funding is made up of city dollars, and for decades its funding priorities have scarcely changed, favoring many of the largest mainstream organizations.

GFTA funds many arts organizations, but a recent report by the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office found it awarded about 70 percent of grants to organizations with mostly white artists who mostly cater to white audiences. The San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Ballet, San Francisco Opera, City Arts, the Exploratorium, the Museum of Modern Art, and the American Conservatory Theater received over one-third of GFTA funding over the past five years, the report found.

“The Bay [Area] will soon be 70 percent people of color,” Andrew Wood, director of the SF International Arts Festival, told the Guardian. “Why invest so heavily in organizations that are such a minority of the population?”

Taken on its face, the findings show a stark divide between funding for smaller, struggling minority arts groups and large, independently funded arts groups with predominantly white patrons. The report divided the diversity of GFTA arts funding into three categories: people of color (Asians, African Americans, and Latinos), ethnic minorities (Arab/Middle Eastern/Jewish), and LGBT organizations. The funding for these categories remained steady at about 20, 2, and 5 percent of arts funding, respectively, since 1989.

The lack of funding is one thing, but critics say the pattern indicates an outright dismissal of the broader community. In a mass email entitled “The State of the Arts in San Francisco” sent to the arts community from a group calling itself Arts Town Hall Organizing Committee said the outcry against critiques of GFTA’s diversity funding was “advanced by fringe members of the arts community.”

Realizing it called Black, Asian, and Latino artists a “fringe community,” the San Francisco Arts Alliance (a signatory to the email comprised of San Francisco’s symphony, opera, and other GFTA funded organizations) quickly backpedaled. It said the email was sent on their behalf by the public relations firm Barnes Mosher Whitehurst Lauter & Partners, a group that often runs astroturf campaigns for mainstream organizations.

One reason for GFTA’s inability to fund diverse arts groups may be a lack of trying: The BLA found the GFTA “does not have a definition or criteria for granting funds to people of color organizations.”

This color blindness is a problem, Wood told us. “[The money] the city invests in the War Memorial Opera House compared to the Bayview Opera House, also city owned, is completely out of whack,” he said. The Bayview Opera House was one among six “cultural institutions” to receive a portion of a $400,000 GFTA award, according to the organization’s 2013/14 annual report. Conversely, GFTA awarded the San Francisco Opera $653,000 the same year.

“They’re two different universes,” Wood said.

Allocating more funding for the Cultural Equity Grants was an oft-mentioned method for better supporting disadvantaged artists, the report found, even though GFTA and CEG share many of the same grantees.

Some say the report’s numbers don’t add up. San Francisco Arts Commission Director of Cultural Affairs Tom DeCaigny, a longtime local artist, disagreed with how the BLA defined which groups were white, ethnic, or otherwise.

“The methodology in the report assigns people an identity, and I know some of our grantees were referred to as white when they’re not,” DeCaigny told the Guardian. “We would want to see organizations self identify.”

Those faults undermine the value of the BLA’s findings, although he said, “I’m hesitant to comment on the value of that report.”

But some in the arts community felt DeCaigny’s opinion aligns suspiciously closely to the mayor’s priorities: funding the preferred arts organizations of his wealthy donors (like the symphony). We reached out to the San Francisco Symphony for comment but its representatives told us it would be unable to respond before our deadline.

DeCaigny defended the symphony, noting its annual Lunar New Year and Day of the Dead concerts serve diverse audiences. For the economically disadvantaged, he said, the symphony offers free concerts open to the public in Dolores Park, and that the symphony’s “artists are very diverse.”

DeCaigny pointed out the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s youth programs (shown above) are notably very diverse.

The donors are mostly white, he said, “but that’s true in other sectors as well. It has more to do with how wealth is distributed in our society.”

But Flores, Placas’ director, explained the need for ethnically diverse art was not just about who consumes it, but what message the art is sending to the audience. Nothing revealed this more, he said, then when he took Placas on tour across the United States. While in New York City, he conducted an informal poll.

“I asked ‘when I say San Francisco, what do you think of?’ They said the 49ers, the San Francisco Giants, the Golden Gate Bridge. They didn’t think gangs, pupusa, cumbia,” he said. That’s why Placas, which told the story of gang life among San Francisco Salvadorans, had such impact in the city and even beyond its borders.

“I love telling stories about San Francisco,” Flores told us. “The symphony doesn’t do that, the opera doesn’t do that. What does that? Locally generated art.”

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance committee is tentatively slated to hold a hearing on allegations made in the BLA report on July 16.  

Jasper Scherer contributed to this report.

‘Purple Rain’ at 30

1

Just over a year ago, Adam Tod Brown wrote a great article for Cracked called “4 Classic Albums That Get More Praise Than They Deserve.” Though it contained as much Yoko Ono-bashing as you’d expect from a website as frequently fratty as Cracked, it made a great argument for Ringo’s self-titled as the best solo ’70s Beatles album and contributed substantially to the recent critical revival of Neil Young’s On The Beach. The thing that interested me most, however, was Brown’s citation of Prince’s Purple Rain as a “flawless album” that gets as much press as it deserves, “no matter how many other great Prince albums there are.”

I instantly disagreed with the implication that his 1984 soundtrack to the film of the same name was Prince’s greatest album, but his article didn’t elicit a cynical “nahh” from me as much as a bolt of surprise. Sure, Purple Rain is the Prince album random people on the street will be most likely to name. But I’d been raised alongside 1999 and Sign O’ The Times as well — albums that both get well-deserved five-star ratings  but still don’t place quite as highly on critical lists as Purple Rain. I always presumed these albums were just as famous, and I wasn’t sure why this meek 9-track album was getting all the praise.

I still agree it’s not Prince’s best. But it’s his most solid — meaning the fewest indulgences, the highest masterpiece-to-crap ratio, the most content per its running time. Dirty Mind is two-thirds as long and lacks a single bad song, but its structure is a bit uneven; in my opinion, this adds to its carefree appeal, but it’s still an imperfection. Meanwhile, 1999 contains some of the most ambitious and daring pop music made during the 1980s, but a lot of its songs are about twice as long as they need to be — though not necessarily as they should be.

Purple Rain takes everything Prince does best and puts it together into a cohesive whole that’s easy to listen to front to back. All of the contradictions in Prince’s personality show up here side by side.  We see the conflicted Christian Prince (“Let’s Go Crazy”) alongside the hypersexual Prince (“Darling Nikki”), then the pop-visionary Prince (“When Doves Cry”) alongside the pop-conservative Prince (“Take Me With U”). There’s Prince the introverted studio whiz (“I Would Die 4 U,” “Computer Blue”) and Prince as the all-devouring, mic stand-humping frontman (“Baby I’m A Star”).

prince

And then there’s “The Beautiful Ones,” the ultimate workout for what might be the best vocal sound in all of music — Prince’s scream, a throat-shredding release of ecstasy that its owner wields with the same control of any of the many instruments he’s mastered. It’s as simultaneously sexy and disturbing as…well, Prince’s whole persona. It’s the thing that cemented my obsession with Prince, and only on Purple Rain does it have its own song.

Elsewhere on the album we see Prince fleshing out some of his later obsessions. “I Would Die 4 U” and “Purple Rain” both find Prince using his trademark Linn LM-1 drum machine to create that very ’80s sense of retro-futuristic isolation exemplified by Blade Runner; Sign O’ The Times would expand on this mood for the duration of a 78-minute opus. Because of how much of Prince’s personality we get on this album, it’s tempting to single Purple Rain out as the best introduction to Prince.

But it’s also the one least likely to blow a newcomer’s mind. As bold and stylistically diverse an album as it is, it’s one of the least interesting of Prince’s major albums, and the least representative of his aesthetic. It’s his least eccentric major album, its most meticulously produced, and the most in line with the “rock” ideal — perhaps a reason why the guitar-obsessed Rolling Stone staffers praised it and continue to praise it so much more highly than anything else in the man’s oeuvre.

If you took out the vocals and the awesomely detuned synth, there wouldn’t be much in “Let’s Go Crazy” to signify it as a Prince song. The production is too meticulous, too arena-rock to really be representative of the eccentricity that makes Prince so endlessly fascinating. “Purple Rain” suffers from the opposite problem. There are a million slow-burning ballads like it, and that plaintive Linn drum is the only thing really tying it to his aesthetic.

This is Prince working in a pop setting. It is worth remembering Purple Rain is first and foremost the soundtrack to a film, and much like the Beatles’ film albums, it’s an artist being as creative as possible within the medium of a stocking-stuffer item designed chiefly to promote another work of art and make some extra cash from it. Prince is one of those artists who usually scores hits on his own terms, who makes no compromises but just happens to make audacious music that people really like. Here, it’s the other way around — the desire to make something people will like is the box in which Prince’s creativity freely bounces around.

It is perhaps for this reason that “Take Me With U” is the most effective song here. Prince’s co-star Apollonia guests on this song; her vocals fit so well into the song that her presence merges with that of Prince until it’s unclear whose song it really is. Prince takes into account all the hallmarks of a great lovebird duet — playfulness, chemistry, and above all else, romance. This song isn’t explicitly sexual, but it’s incredibly sensual. Both vocal performances are bursting with excitement beneath the functional cool required of pop vocals, and by the time they reach the ecstatic bridge (“I don’t care if we spend the night in your mansion”), they’re barely able to control themselves.  It’s brilliant.

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain, and in mentioning this, most news outlets have inevitably mentioned the massive amount of praise this album has received. As such, people who have not previously heard Prince will be drawn to that album. But as undeniably fantastic as it is, I’d maintain that Purple Rain is not the album most likely to convince a newcomer of Prince’s genius — Sign O’ The Times is more eclectic, 1999 more diverse, Dirty Mind more did-he-just-say-that sexual, The Black Album more bizarre. If you know Prince first and foremost as that skinny pop star with the high voice and need convincing of his genius, any of those albums would work better.

Which is not to say you should overlook Purple Rain by any means. Though I would argue it’s not his most essential work, it’s the album that does the best job of proving he’s capable of just about anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ShT9k4lzM

[Ed. note: Prince makes it notoriously difficult to find his music online, so here’s a recent interview instead. But really, if you don’t own a Prince album by now, there are worse things you could spend money on.]

Trying to have hope

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OPINION I get it, as Harvey Milk famously said: “You gotta give them hope.” But how do you do that when the LGBT community you love so much is being priced and evicted out of the city?

When immigrants, people of color, artists, the poor and working-class, people with AIDS, seniors, persons with disabilities, and so many others are being pushed out — like you, Harvey, were forced out of your camera store and apartment on Castro Street when your rent was tripled. Just before an assassin’s bullet took you from us, you were preparing an anti-speculation tax to deal with the rising rents and displacement caused by speculators and real estate investors.

We tried to curb their dirty work via a state bill limiting use of the Ellis Act, but Democrats buckled in to pressure from the real estate industry that owns them. Shame on Democratic House Speaker Toni Atkins from San Diego, an out lesbian, whose inaction on the bill helped kill it.

Our only hope is the anti-speculation tax on the November ballot. Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance is calling it the Harvey Milk Anti-Speculation Tax.

The stakes are high right now. Our housing crisis is destroying our community. According to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, which tracks displacement throughout the city, District 8 (which includes the Castro) has the highest rate of Ellis Act and Owner Move-In evictions, almost 2,000 units emptied since 1997. That doesn’t include buyouts and threats of evictions, de facto evictions that have pushed out many more, most of them tenants with AIDS. Far too many people with AIDS are homeless in a city that used to be called the “model of caring.”

The motive for these evictions is obvious. A two-bedroom across the street from my Castro apartment rents for $4,200. An apartment above the new Whole Foods at Sanchez and Market can cost you as much as $8,000. A month! I don’t want to upset you, Harvey, so I won’t tell you how high commercial rents are, and how poorly neighborhood businesses are faring these days.

The economic disparity has never been greater. Two Williams Institute studies show that our community is as poor as, and in some instances poorer than, other communities. In our city’s latest homeless count, 29 percent of respondents identified as LGBT and an additional 3 percent as transgender. Other reports say that 40 percent of the city’s homeless youth are queer.

Forget Altoona, that homeless queer kid in the Haight or Castro needs a sense of hope. We have a sit/lie law similar to the one you opposed that prevents these kids from getting subsidized housing if they have an unpaid citation. They sleep in the park because they’re not safe in the shelters. Sadly, Human Rights Campaign and Equality California have never made them — or the poor — a priority.

Cranes and rainbow flags may be all the rage in Upper Market these days, but what’s being built will not be affordable to homeless, poor, or working class (even some middle-class) people. The Castro has only one affordable housing project in the pipeline: 110 units for LGBT seniors at 55 Laguna. Our D8 supervisor and City Hall have let us down big time.

Harvey, I want to think that 10 years from now, our community will still have the Castro as a refuge. I want to believe that poverty, homelessness, and hunger will be greatly reduced. That we can stop the evictions. That we can give young people a piece of the dream. That we can provide seniors a secure place to spend their final days. That we can have elected officials who truly represent us, as you did.

I really want to have hope.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a longtime queer and housing rights activist (and an organizer of the first Philadelphia Pride march in 1972), is a grand marshal of this year’s Pride Parade.

Tenants can fight evictions and win

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By Tyler Macmillan


OPINION Every year, around 3,500 formal eviction lawsuits are filed against residential tenants in San Francisco Superior Court. Contrary to popular belief, the eviction lawsuit — known as an “unlawful detainer” — is one of the fastest moving cases in the entire civil system. While we’ve all heard anecdotes about how it can take years to remove San Francisco tenants from their homes, tenants sued for eviction experience civil litigation at warp speed.

More than a third of those sued for eviction miss the five-day window the law provides to file a response with the court. In 2013, 1,294 of the tenant households that were sued for eviction in the city missed that deadline to respond. The strong tenant protections found in San Francisco’s Rent Ordinance and California law don’t mean much to those who miss their five-day deadline: Sheriff’s deputies clear the property just a few weeks after the case is filed if you don’t respond. So much for due process.

Securing tenants due process rights in San Francisco has been our job at the Eviction Defense Collaborative (EDC) since 1996. At our drop-in legal clinic, our team of attorneys and volunteers assist over 94 percent of all tenants who respond to their eviction lawsuit in San Francisco each year. Although our office is open Monday through Friday to help tenants respond to the lawsuit on time, nine out of 10 tenants sued for eviction represent themselves for the duration of their case. Over 90 percent of landlords can afford to hire expert, aggressive attorneys to evict their tenants — very few tenants can afford to hire a private attorney to defend their homes.

Unsurprisingly, tenants agree to move out in most eviction lawsuits — around four out of five tenants sued for eviction will settle the case with an agreement to leave their homes. And who could blame them? The choice of conducting a jury trial against a licensed attorney is not an appealing — or realistic — choice for a self-represented tenant. Without an attorney to stand up and fight for your rights at trial, those rights remain the empty, meaningless promises of the pay-to-play American legal system.

Of course, tenants who get represented by attorneys can win eviction cases — exactly the reason we started our Trial Project at EDC last year. Since the Trial Project launched, EDC staff attorneys have represented a small percentage of tenants facing the prospect of a jury trial on their own. Through the hard work of EDC staff attorneys (who on average earn less than $50,000 a year), the Trial Project enjoyed another jury trial victory in May. While very few eviction cases reach a verdict, this was EDC’s third trial victory in the past year.

This particular jury verdict saved the home of a Spanish-speaking couple who has lived in the Mission District for the past 19 years. They have young children who attend the local public schools and attend church in the neighborhood. This family has limited income and would certainly have had to leave of San Francisco if it was evicted, uprooting the children and leaving behind its community.

The landlord had accused the family of not paying the rent — even though the family had repeatedly tried to pay. The jury agreed with the tenant, finding that the conditions on the property were so bad that the landlord wasn’t entitled to the rent being demanded. The jury actually followed the law, and reduced the tenants’ rent.

The heroes in this case are the tenants — their courage in standing up for their home and their civil rights is inspiring, and should be a lesson to tenants across the city. We need tenants in San Francisco to push back against this current wave of displacement and we’re here to help.

Tyler Macmillan is a tenants’ rights attorney and the executive director of the Eviction Defense Collaborative, a nonprofit legal services clinic in the Tenderloin. Any tenant sued for eviction can drop into EDC at 995 Market St., #1200 (at Sixth Street) Mon-Fri, 9:30-11:30am and 1-3pm.

Drought legislation would undermine endangered species protection

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By Mike Lynes

OPINION California’s ongoing drought has brought hardship to nearly every corner of the state, but the Central Valley has been ground zero. Communities are struggling just to fill their taps, farmers are letting fields go unplanted, and dry conditions are decimating habitat for birds and other wildlife.

Clearly, our elected leaders need to pull together, put aside political agendas, and take steps to minimize harm from the drought by improving how we manage our water in California. Sadly, some have chosen to exploit the crisis for political points rather than find reasonable solutions.

As you read this, negotiations are just getting started between backers of drought relief bills from both the House of Representatives and the Senate. These will be difficult negotiations, as each piece of legislation contains an entirely different vision of a future California. We can only hope that common sense prevails.

Earlier this year, several members of the House of Representatives descended on the Central Valley for a series of press conferences at which they blamed the water shortages on environmental protections that placed fish before farmers and habitat before crops. They then returned to Washington and passed a drought relief bill, authored by Rep. David Valadao [R-CA21], which would override the Endangered Species Act, suspend the San Joaquin River Restoration efforts, and divert critically important water from the 19 Central Valley wildlife refuges.

Efforts like endangered species protection, water for the wildlife refuges, and the San Joaquin River Restoration settlement became necessary only after decades of habitat destruction due to water diversions that resulted in the loss of more than 90 percent of the Central Valley’s wetlands and riparian habitats. The changes in California’s water system to benefit cities and farms has resulted in population declines in more than 80 percent of California’s native fish species while migratory shorebirds and waterfowl populations have also endured significant declines.

Drought legislation should not make it even harder to hold on to our last remnants of habitat.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed legislation for drought relief without gutting environmental protections. While the version of Feinstein’s bill that recently passed the Senate no longer has provisions to actively help birds and habitat that it initially had, it nonetheless preserves several essential environmental protections.

Some in the House are vowing to ensure that any drought legislation will include Valadao’s provisions to gut the Endangered Species Act and disregard management of wildlife and habitat. This effort is really just the same they have made for years under the guise of “drought relief.” It’s cynical opportunism to serve a particular special interest. If successful, this policy shift will have long-term negative impacts without providing any real relief to farmers.

We are already seeing the biological impacts of the drought. Just last week, a report from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife showed a 20 percent decline in the number of breeding mallards over last year. While the survey showed that the total number of breeding ducks was only slightly slower — 448,750, compared to 451,300 last year — this year’s number is nonetheless 23 percent below the long-term average. Department officials cited the degradation of Central Valley habitat due to the ongoing drought as the cause. We’ve seen similar declines in breeding efforts in other birds as well, including pelicans, hawks, and owls.

Hardship due to the drought hasn’t been caused by the Endangered Species Act or the small amounts of water that go to Central Valley wildlife refuges. It’s been caused by an inadequate water infrastructure, decades of poor management worsened by California’s byzantine water laws and policies, and, of course, Mother Nature herself.

The smarter way forward is for the House to adopt Feinstein’s bill without playing political games with the Endangered Species Act, Central Valley wildlife refuges, or the San Joaquin River restoration.

The House’s version of drought legislation will only divide the various interests in the Central Valley, pitting one beneficial use against another, at a time when we need unity and sound, sustainable policy.

We hope that Feinstein will hold firm against that House resolution’s supporters.

Mike Lynes is the Public Policy Director for Audubon California

 

Standing Up for Children Exposed to Trauma

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By Suzy Loftus

OPINION Sasha’s only 9 years old, but she has already experienced significant trauma and adversity. Whenever her father drank too much, he would hit and verbally abuse Sasha and her mother. After her father went to jail, Sasha’s mother lost her job, the family became homeless and eventually moved into subsidized housing. Sasha had also witnessed high levels of community violence. Exposure to trauma has taken its toll on Sasha; she has a hard time focusing on assignments in class and struggles with reading and math. She gets frustrated and acts out at home and in class. Her teacher thinks Sasha has learning problems, and has recommended her for special education.

We have often looked at childhood trauma such as Sasha’s as a social problem or a mental health problem — but emerging data provides a more complete picture. At the Center for Youth Wellness, in Bayview Hunters Point, we are part of a growing national movement that is looking at childhood exposure to chronic adversity through a different lens: as a public health threat.

Children, like Sasha, are screened for exposure to chronic adversity and toxic stress during their pediatric visits, through a partnership between the Bayview Child Health Center and the Center for Youth Wellness.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris discusses ACEs and toxic stress as the next massive public health threat.

In the Bayview and across California, chronic adversity and toxic stress stand in the way of the health and success of many children. Now more than ever, we are beginning to understand the impact of early adversity — known as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) — on the developing brains and bodies of children like Sasha.

ACEs are traumatic experiences over which a child has no control. Examples include abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, exposure to community violence, homelessness, discrimination, involvement in foster care, and others.

A study conducted by Dr. Burke Harris, founder of the Center for Youth Wellness, found that a majority of the 700 participants, all patients from Bayview with a median age of 8 — 67 percent —were exposed to one or more ACEs.

Beyond the Bayview, exposure to childhood trauma is surprisingly common among Californians. In fact, a San Diego study found that two-thirds of 17,000 participants reported at least one adverse childhood experience, and 20 percent of participants reported three or more ACEs.

ACEs can result in toxic stress, which can affect the fundamental biological functioning of the body and, in many children, the healthy development of their brain architecture. Without support and protection from adults, children who experience toxic stress are at higher risk for health problems, like asthma, diabetes, and obesity. Toxic stress also may make it difficult to sit still in school or to control emotions in challenging situations. If left untreated, toxic stress can lead to increased risk of adult diseases including heart disease and cancer as well as behavior problems such as depression, substance use, and suicide.

That’s why exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences has been called the greatest unaddressed public health threat of our time. This is a public health crisis with clear implications beyond health — from education to public safety to our economy.

Our approach: screen every child for toxic stress and pilot and evaluate interventions that heal the impact of ACEs. Our goal is to share best practices in ACEs treatment with others around the country. We believe that the pediatric home offers an important entry point into addressing ACEs and toxic stress with families.

Even before a child goes to school or interacts with other systems, he or she usually visits a pediatrician for a routine well-child check. With the ability to touch countless numbers of children exposed to ACEs, pediatricians can be on the frontlines of preventing, screening, and healing toxic stress. Other healthcare professionals who work with children, such as school nurses, also are in a unique position to screen for toxic stress and help families access the services they need.

The science is clear — we must do more to prevent, screen, and heal the impacts of ACEs and toxic stress. A crucial first step in addressing this crisis is raising awareness among parents, pediatricians, educators, and policymakers that ACEs are a public health threat that we cannot afford to ignore. We must do more to identify toxic stress in our kids before it leads to a lifetime of challenges for children, families and our communities.

Suzy Loftus is chief operating officer of the Center for Youth Wellness and a member of the San Francisco Police Commission.

The anti-sunshine gang intensifies its attacks on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force in City Hall

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By Bruce B. Brugmann   (with special sunshine vendetta chronology by Richard Knee) 

The Guardian story in the current issue demonstrates in 96 point tempo bold how important the glare of sunshine and publicity is in City Hall in keeping the public’s business public. Yet, the anti-sunshine gang in City Hall is intensifying  its savage attack on the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force.

The Sunshine Ordinance established the Sunshine Task Force to serve as the people’s court for hearing citizen complaints on public access, thus giving  citizens a way to get secret records, open secret meetings, and hold government officials accountable. It empowers citizens to be watchdogs on issues they care about.  It is the first and best ordinance of its kind in the country, if not in the world, and its effectiveness is shown by the fact that the anti-sunshine gang regularly tries  to bounce strong members and gut the task force.

Terry Francke, then the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition and author of the ordinance, and I as a founder anticipated this problem in trhe early 1990s and put a mandate  into the original ordinance for the task force to have representatives from the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (a journalist and media attorney) and the San Francisco League of Women Voters, two organizations with experience and tradition with open government issues. Later, the mandate included a representative from New America Media, to insure a member of color for the task force.

 I served for 10 years on the task force and then Mayor Willie Brown made the point about City Hall interference by targeting me for extinction.  He tried several times  to kick me off the task force.  I refused to budge, on the principle that neither the mayor nor any other city official should be able to arbitrarily kick off a member of the task force for doing his/her job. When Willie left office, I left the task force when my term was up  and the principle was intact.

Today, as Richard Knee writes in his timeline and chronology below, the principle is once again under city hall attack. Knee replaced me as the journalist representative  of SPJ and has served under fire  for a record 12 years. He writes that the latest attack is retaliation for a unanimous finding by the task force in September 2011 when Board President David Chiu and Supervisors Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar violated  local and state open meeting laws by ramming through the monstrous Park Merced redevelopment contract with 14 pages of amendments that Chiu slipped in “literally minutes” before the committee vote.

This was a historic task force vote in the public interest, and a historic vote for open government and for all the good causes. But instead it prompted a smear- dilute-and- ouster campaign by the Board of Supervisors, with timely assists from the city attorney’s office.  The ugly play by play follows. The good news is  that the sunshine forces inside and outside city hall are fighting back, hard and fast, and with a keen eye on all upcoming elections.   Stay tuned. On guard. :

 Special  chronology and timeline detailing the anti-sunshine gang attack on  the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. By Richard Knee)

1. In April 2011, the Task Force voted to change its bylaws to declare that approval of substantive motions required “yes” votes from a simple majority of members present rather than a simple majority of all members, as long as a quorum was present. The quorum threshold remained at six. The bylaws change went against the advice of the city attorney’s office, which pointed to city Charter Sec. 4.104. Suzanne Cauthen and I cast dissenting votes on the bylaw change. David Snyder was absent from that meeting but made it clear that, reluctantly, he could find no reason to disagree with the city attorney’s opinion.

2. In September 2011, the Task Force voted, 8-0, to find that Board of Supervisors President David Chiu and Supervisors Eric Mar, Scott Wiener and Malia Cohen had violated the Sunshine Ordinance and the state’s open-meeting law (Brown Act). Mar, Wiener and Cohen served on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee, which voted to recommend approval of a Parkmerced redevelopment contract. Literally minutes before the committee voted, Chiu introduced 14 pages of amendments to the contract. The deputy city attorney at the meeting opined that the amendments did not substantially alter the contract and therefore the description of the item on the meeting agenda was still apt and the committee could act on it. The full board approved the contract the same day.

Wiener tried to intimidate the Task Force from hearing the case. His legislative aide Gillian Gillette (now the mayor’s director of transportation policy) told us we had no business telling the board how to vote and that in taking up the matter, we would be overstepping our authority. Her tone of voice, facial expression and body language were clearly confrontational. We pushed back. Bruce Wolfe told her it was inappropriate to prejudge the Task Force’s vote before the hearing had begun. I told her that we were not interested in the LUED Committee’s or the board’s substantive vote on the contract, but we were concerned about the procedural aspect. A complaint alleging sunshine violations had been brought before us and we were duty-bound to hear it. I pointedly suggested she review the ordinance, especially Sec. 67.30, which defines the Task Force’s, duties, powers and composition. She skulked back to her seat, seething.

Chiu’s legislative aide Judson True told us that Chiu’s office had made a mad scramble to get the amendments printed and properly distributed to allow enough time for review by the supervisors and members of the public before the committee’s vote. He and Gillette, citing the city attorney’s opinion, reiterated that the committee and the board had followed proper procedure.

We were incredulous toward their claims that (a) 14 pages of amendments did not substantially alter the contract and (b) there was sufficient time to review the amendments before the committee’s vote. We consensed that there was no reason the committee could not have delayed its vote in order to allow adequate review time.

3. Wiener surreptitiously asked the Budget and Legislative Analyst in late 2011 to survey every city department on how much sunshine compliance was costing it. When we learned about it, Task Force Chair Hope Johnson sent a strongly worded letter objecting to the attempt at secrecy and to the form that the survey took; we felt many of the questions were vague or vacuous.

4. In May 2012, the Rules Committee (Jane Kim, Mark Farrell, David Campos) interviewed Task Force applicants. Committee members pointedly asked incumbents Suzanne Manneh (New America Media’s nominee), Allyson Washburn (League of Women Voters’ nominee), Hanley Chan, Jay Costa and Bruce Wolfe if it wouldn’t have been wise to follow the city attorney’s advice in order to avoid violating the Charter. They responded that while they deeply appreciated having a deputy city attorney at Task Force meetings and certainly gave due weight to the DCA’s counsel, such advice did not have the force of law, they had a right to disagree with it and they believed the bylaw change they had enacted in April 2011 did not violate the Charter.

The Rules Committee voted unanimously to recommend the appointments of newcomers Kitt Grant, David Sims, Chris Hyland and Louise Fischer, and returnee David Pilpel. Campos and Kim voted to recommend Wolfe’s reappointment; Farrell dissented.

Then, citing concerns about lack of “diversity,” Farrell and Kim said the Society of Professional Journalists, NAM and the LWV should have submitted multiple nominations for each of their designated seats. They pointed to language in ordinance Sec. 67.30(a) stipulating that the respective members “shall be appointed from … names” – and they emphasized the plural, “names” – “submitted by” the organizations. And the committee voted unanimously to continue those four appointments to the call of the chair.

It is important to note that this was the first time ever that the committee had made a multiple-nominations demand. Previously, the committee and the board had invariably accepted the single nominations from the three organizations.

The “diversity” argument was a smokescreen. They had already voted to bounce Chan, who is Chinese-American, and Manneh is a Palestinian-American fluent in Arabic and Spanish.

The truth was, they didn’t like the nominees. SPJ had nominated attorney Ben Rosenfeld and Westside Observer editor Doug Comstock. Both as a Task Force member and as a political consultant, Comstock had been a thorn in lots of local politicians’ and bureaucrats’ sides. And Manneh and Washburn had participated in the Task Force’s unanimous finding of violation against Chiu, Wiener, Mar and Cohen.

Upshot: By continuing those appointments, the committee and the board ensured that Manneh, Washburn and I would remain as “holdovers” and the SPJ-nominated attorney’s seat would stay vacant (Snyder had formally resigned). Manneh, citing an increased professional and academic workload, stepped aside a few months later, meaning two of the 11 seats were vacant, and it now took only four absences instead of five to kill a quorum.

5. At the subsequent meeting of the full board, after Campos moved to reappoint Wolfe, Wiener moved to replace his name with that of Todd David. In making his motion, Wiener delivered a scorching, mendacious attack on what was then the current Task Force. Details of the tirade are available on request. The board voted, 6-5, in favor of Wiener’s motion (ayes: Wiener, Chiu, Farrell, Cohen, Carmen Chu and Sean Elsbernd; noes: Campos, Kim, Mar, John Avalos and Christina Olague). The board then voted unanimously to appoint Grant, Sims, Hyland, Fischer, Pilpel and David.

6. Ordinance Sec. 67.30(a) stipulates that the Task Force shall at all times have at least one member with a physical disability. Wolfe was the only applicant in 2012 to meet that criterion. So when the board ousted him, the Task Force no longer had a physically disabled member. The city attorney advised the new Task Force that to take any actions before a new physically disabled member was appointed could land land the Task Force and its individual members in serious legal trouble. So the Task Force was sidelined for five months, finally resuming business in November 2012 following the appointment of Bruce Oka — who, by the way, is solidly pro-sunshine.

            7. After interviewing 12 of the 13 task force applicants on May 15, 2014, Rules Committee members Norman Yee and Katy Tang complained about a lack of racial/ethnic diversity among the candidates, but that didn’t stop them from voting to recommend the reappointments of members David, Fischer and Pilpel, all Anglos (Campos was absent). Nor were they deterred by the fact that David has missed six task force meetings since March 2013, including those of last January, February and April. They continued consideration of additional appointments to a future meeting, possibly June 5.

At the board meeting on May 20, Wiener repeated his slander of the 2012-14 task force and heaped praise on David, Fischer and Pilpel without offering a shred of corroborating evidence. The board voted to confirm their reappointments, again ignoring David’s porous attendance record.

8. To be seen: whether Rules and/or the board will continue insisting on multiple nominations, and whether it will move forward on other possible appointments. Including Grant’s resignation and the possibility of holdovers, there is a risk that as few as eight of the 11 seats will be filled, meaning three absences would kill a quorum. Sims is moving to Los Angeles but remaining as a holdover for the moment. If he resigns, that could pull the number of fill seats down to seven, meaning two absences would kill a quorum.

The foregoing commentary is strictly personal and not intended to reflect the views of any other individual or organization.

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Knee

Member (since July 2002) and past chairman of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, Freedom of Information Committee

San Francisco-based freelance journalist

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the former editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012). In San Francisco, the citizens are generally safe, except when the mayor is in his office and the board of supervisors is in session. You can quote me.  B3

Artists say vote for Campos

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By Sara Jean Yaste



OPINION David Campos stands up for the underdogs. And in this current state of capitalism U$A, we the people need to give power only to leaders who won’t abuse it for personal profit. Foucault once said "society must be defended." Campos defends that society, and was granted a valid power from the people of San Francisco, based on actually helping us and being trusted, not just being a political yes person, like so many other modern politicians seem to be. Most politicians are all too eager to grant favors in exchange for shiny objects.

As some of you may or may now know, Campos is running for the 17th State Assembly District seat, which would enable him to create legislation at the state level. Campos shows that he is a man of the people by creating legislation that increases payouts for folks unjustly displaced by Ellis Act evictions, as well as giving displaced residents priority for affordable housing units as they become available. He champions the underdogs of the art scene by supporting legislation that enables emerging promoters to continue operating, without having to purchase $1 million insurance policies that are currently required of larger concert promoters. Basically, Campos is on the side of ensuring good times may still be had in SF, and that we don’t fall into the culturally disadvantaged realms of whitebread blandness that strangled vitality in suburbia for decades.

Campos is running against Divide Chiu for this seat. Seemingly, both candidates uphold progressive ideals, but in today’s tepid political waters, trying to stay informed often feels more like watching a bloated puppet show with talking heads, rather than participating in a genuine process of civic engagement. The solution? In my humble opinion, in order to really separate the fakers from the real, one must follow the money. Case in point, Campos proves his integrity and commitment to everyday people from all walks of life, in his refusal to accept cash from the financial industry (read: banks). He also has accepted only $82,000 from locally based real estate developers, who have committed to building affordable housing as well as market-rate housing (ex: the old Mission Theater project). Chiu, on the other hand, shows his true colors (they always say "money talks" right??) by accepting $34,000 from the finance industry, and $143,000 from out-of-state real estate developers.

Chiu promotes himself as being someone who can "get things done" in office. But that’s a pandering tired cliché at this point and it’s offensive that someone would insult our intelligence by using such tired rhetoric as a means to gain our trust and confidence. Yet Campos’ background alone (he was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala’s civil war, who arrived speaking no English as a child, then later went on to graduate from Stanford University and later Harvard Law), shows that he is a true underdog who overcame adversity and has the capacity, resolve, and integrity to continue fighting on our behalf (yes, this writer identifies as a non-commodified emerging artist, aka underdog).

Campos represents those who actually pulling themselves up by their boot straps, as the saying goes, in reality. He demonstrates strength of character and values in not accepting funds from shady interests (unlike Chiu) and continues to help the people who truly need it, those who are unjustly displaced and in desperate need of housing in the community that is their long-term home. He supports emerging artists by being in touch with our needs, and crafting legislation that enables us to stay in our homes, and helps the current law become more just (because let’s face it, justice is always ahead of the law; for example, see: slavery being sanctioned in colonial U$A and marriage discrimination in California by Proposition 8).

From one concerned and civilly engaged resident of San Francisco to the next, I urge you to vote for David Campos in the upcoming primary on June 3.

Sara Jean Yaste is a writer, musician, and creative social interventionist living and breathing in San Francisco. Her band, Future Twin, performs May 31 from 3-6pm at a Happy Hour for David Campos at DNA Lounge.

Dear United States: #Jessicastux discrimination shows SF inequality

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Dear United States,

Yes,  you’ve found San Francisco out. You’ve got us. Our city is not the bastion of equality we claim it to be. 

It’s something most San Franciscans know, but now you, the country, are getting a peek at how discriminatory our local institutions can actually be.

Just last week, the news of Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep’s discrimination against young Jessica Urbina went viral. Urbina just wanted to wear a tuxedo in her yearbook photo, and the Catholic school, Sacred Heart, said it would not print her photo in a yearbook because she wasn’t in a dress.

The resulting social media firestorm blew up in national media, propelled by the hashtag #jessicastux. Today Sacred Heart issued an apology, offering to work on its policies moving forward.

“On Friday, May 16, the school communicated that it will change its policy regarding senior portraits. We agree with our students who showed solidarity with their classmate that the current policy regarding senior portraits is not adequate to meet the needs of our families or our mission. We will involve our students, families, and Board in crafting the updated policy.

Many people suggest that the past few days have been deeply revealing about our school community. We agree. We are an imperfect community that can and does fail. We are a community that is open to self-reflection, and to the constructive criticism and leadership of its students, as well as to the criticism from members of our broader community. We are a community that strives to grow, improve and do what is right. We are a community that sees, in all situations, an opportunity to learn.”

But before we let Sacred Heart be crucified in the court of public opinion, let’s remember an old religious maxim: let ye who is without sin cast the first stone. And when it comes to inequality, San Francisco has many sinners.

Yes, dear country, you spent the last week utterly aghast that San Francisco, the champion of marriage equality, could discriminate against an LGBT teen.

You really don’t know the half of it. 

Take our public schools. Even as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education, an investigative report by the San Francisco Public Press revealed massive inequality in San Francisco public elementary schools. Though the SFUSD suffered funding cuts totalling $113 million in the 2009-10 school year (after numerous annual state cuts), some public schools managed to stave off layoffs and provide excellent facilities for their children. The catch? Only the elementary schools attended by rich families survived, bouyed by nearly $3 million in PTSA fundraising in 11 elementary schools.

But 35 of SFUSD’s elementary schools raised no money at all. These schools are not surprisingly attended mostly by the city’s poorest families, and their schools were met with brutal cuts.

The SFUSD is only now allowing students to wear hats (including some religious headgear), and is only now considering raising its minimum wage to San Francisco’s minimum of $10.24 an hour (as a state entity, it only has to pay $8 an hour).

And lest we pick on the schools too much, the explosive tech industry has had its impacts on San Francisco equality too. As taxi drivers flock to rideshare companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar, there are fewer drivers to drive wheelchair-accessible taxis. Those rideshare companies don’t yet have a plan to offer service to our city’s many persons with disabilities. Even our beloved regional transit system, BART, has new proposed “trains of the future” offering less space for electric wheelchairs to move around as well.  

San Francisco has also seen massive numbers of folks displaced by the tech boom, symbolized (and even exacerberated) by our city’s most hated/loved/over-discussed behemoths, the Google buses.  

We’ve even got the second highest inequality in the United States, fast headed for number one. Go us.

And though Bill O’Reilly at Fox News loves to make funny videos about San Francisco’s homeless while he talks up our love of hippies, he’s got it all wrong (unfortunately). The city issues numerous citations against homeless youth for the act of sitting down in the Haight Ashbury district (the birthplace of the Summer of Love), and has struggled with policies to help the homeless for over 10 years running. 

Also, did we mention one in four San Franciscans are food insecure? That means about 200,000 San Franciscans don’t have enough money to eat healthily, and many are near starvation. 

Yes, dear country, San Francisco espouses many loving principles, and we do have an innate sense of justice to help immigrants, the poor, and the marginalized.

But we still have a long, long way to go. 

Best,

A San Franciscan. 

 

 

Naming of a park facility sparks political fight

We at the Bay Guardian were alerted today that San Francisco Recreation & Parks commissioners are poised to name a Golden Gate Park building after a conservationist who blogs openly about “illegal aliens,” and has widely disseminated his view that environmentalists have been “silenced” on the subject of immigration “by intimidation and political correctness.”

But prominent members of the environmental community say Jake Sigg, who worked as a gardener for the Recreation and Parks Department for 31 years, ought to be recognized for his years of contribution to San Francisco parklands. 

A single agenda item for the May 1 meeting of the Operations Committee of the Rec & Parks Commission proposes renaming a Golden Gate Park facility located at 811 Stanyan Street as the Jake Sigg Stewardship Center. The building, which recently underwent a $2.3 million renovation, houses the headquarters for the department’s volunteer and Natural Areas programs.

Sigg, who is in his late 80s, sends out a regular email newsletter to his personal list; it reportedly reaches thousands locally. He also posts content on his personal blog, naturenewssf.blogspot.com. While his emails contain an assortment of poetry and ruminations on the natural world, he’s also been known to express his point of view on immigration – and it has not been well received. It’s prompted rebukes from readers; some have characterized it as racist.

In an exchange from last May that is posted to his blog, a reader named Linda Hunter told Sigg she was offended by an installment in which he used the phrase “illegal aliens.”

In response, Sigg wrote: “I’m not clear on what offends you, other than language. Undocumented workers are illegal aliens, so I don’t understand your point. Trotting out racism is lazy and a refusal to think about a serious problem. I will repeat what I’ve said several times in the past:  My concern on immigration derives solely from population pressures. If you are concerned about human numbers and what that is doing to the planet and to us, you cannot ignore immigration, especially when it is uncontrolled, as now.”

In a private email sent by environmentalist Becky Evans last year and later published by Sigg, Evans said she was “dismayed by the anti-immigrant diatribe in your newsletter,” saying, “all of us are descendants of immigrants except the few who are Native Americans.”

In response, Sigg wrote:

“I am surprised at you, Becky, especially when you use stale, no longer relevant, arguments–such as being descendants of immigrants, &c.  That is a dull old saw.  This country seemed limitless in space and resources and we welcomed immigrants with open arms. Can you say that today?”

When we caught up with Sigg by phone he said he did not believe his views on immigration should be at all connected to the proposal to name the building after him, which stemmed from his decades-long track record as a leader of volunteers.

When we got into a discussion on immigration policy, he said, “I think that our immigration policies are too lax. The borders are too loose, and we need to stabilize our population. If someone wants to accuse me of racism, it just doesn’t hold water. Racism is an implication that somehow and some way certain races are inferior to others and I find that idea absurd.”

Regardless of what anyone thinks, Sigg has a First Amendment right to say whatever he wants.

But things get complicated when one considers that Rec & Park is about to name a public building – owned collectively by San Franciscans, in a city of immigrants designated as a safe zone for the undocumented – after Sigg, who isn’t shy about broadcasting his opinion that undocumented people should be prevented from migrating by land from south of the Mexican border.

This idea of naming the building after Sigg has won the support of prominent environmentalists including Tom Radulovich of Livable City, San Francisco Environment Commissioner Ruth Gravanis, Nature in the City, San Francisco Laborers Union Local 261 and others in a formal letter submitted to the Operations Committee. Unclear is whether supporters know of his views on immigration, or even care or believe it should have any bearing on naming the building.

There’s also a murky political backstory. Brent Plater, executive director of Wild Equity, told us that the whole thing stems from an ongoing controversy over Sharp Park.

The idea of naming the building after Sigg originated with Phil Ginsburg, who directs the city’s Rec & Park Department. Sigg is aligned with Ginsburg in the belief that Rec & Park should move forward with a Significant Natural Resource Areas management plan, which would generally do positive things for natural lands yet contains provisions that many environmentalists oppose, given the negative ramifications they would have for Sharp Park.

“The vast majority of the environmental community opposes this plan – except Jake Sigg,” Plater explained. “To reward Jake for this, Phil wants to put Jake’s name on a building.”  

In response to that idea, Sigg said it had no merit, saying, “People just imagine these things … They just want to poke Rec & Park in the eye.”

Meanwhile, Wild Equity and other environmentalists are suing Rec & Park over its planned construction at Sharp Park, the subject of a long battle over how the area’s golf course impacts two endangered species: the San Francisco garter snake and the California red-legged frog.

Sigg said he thought the lawsuit had no merit and would hold up the management plan, which he hopes to see advance.

It will be interesting to see what the commissioners do with this one. Will Sigg’s views on immigration be deemed irrelevant to the decision over whether or not to name a public San Francisco building after him, as he believes is appropriate?

We left messages for Rec & Park but we did not receive a call back by press time.

Left out

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steve@sfbg.com

It’s never been easy for progressives to mount a serious campaign for the California governor’s office. The high water mark was in 1934 when famous author/activist Upton Sinclair ran on his End Poverty In California platform and got nearly 38 percent of the vote despite being shut out by the major newspapers at the time.

That campaign was cited by both of this year’s leading leftist challengers to Gov. Jerry Brown — Green Party candidate Luis Rodriguez and Peace and Freedom Party candidate Cindy Sheehan — who say the goal of ending poverty is more important than ever, but who are also having a hard time getting media coverage for that message.

The latest Field Poll from April 9 shows Brown with a 40-point lead on his closest challenger, conservative Republican Tim Donnelly (57 to 17 percent, with 20 percent undecided). Republicans Andrew Blount and Neel Kashkari were at 3 and 2 percent, respectively, while Rodriguez and Sheehan are among the 11 also-rans who shared the support of 1 percent of the California electorate.

Perhaps that’s to be expected given that Brown is a Democrat who pulled the state back from the edge of the fiscal abyss largely by backing the Prop. 30 tax package in 2012, with most of the new revenue coming from increased income taxes on the rich. But to hear Rodriguez and Sheehan tell it, Brown is just another agent of the status quo at a time when the growing gap between rich and poor is the state’s most pressing problem.

“We have to put all our resources into ending poverty,” Rodriguez told us.

The campaigns that Rodriguez and Sheehan are running seem indicative of the state of progressive politics in California these days, with good work being done on individual issues by an array of groups, but little coordination among them or serious work on the kind of organizing and coalition-building needed to win statewide office.

There is still hope, particularly given California’s open primary system, where all Rodriguez or Sheehan need to do is beat the top Republican challenger in June in order to face Brown in a two-person race in November — an outcome that would definitely elevate their progressive message.

“One of our sayings is ‘second place wins the race,'” Sheehan told the Guardian.

But at this point, that seems unlikely, a longshot that points to the need for progressive-minded Californians to rebuild the movement and win over new generations of voters, particularly the young people disconnected from electoral politics and largely behind by the economic system.

 

REACHING VOTERS

When we asked Sheehan how her campaign was going, she replied, “It’s going.” When we pushed for a bit more, she told us, “It’s very, very grassroots and we’ve been trying to get the word out.”

And by “very, very grassroots,” Sheehan seems to mean that it’s not going very well, in terms of fundraising, volunteer support, media exposure, or any of the things a campaign needs to be successful. It’s been a disappointment for a woman who started her public political life as a media darling.

The year after Sheehan’s son Casey died fighting the Iraq War in 2004, she set up an encampment outside then-President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, instantly becoming a high-profile anti-war activist just as public opinion was turning strongly against the war.

Sheehan parlayed that fame into international activism for peace and other progressive causes, writing a pair of autobiographical/political books, and mounting a primary challenge against then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in 2008, finishing in second place with about 16 percent of the vote. Sheehan was also the running mate of presidential candidate Roseanne Barr in 2012, although their Peace and Freedom Party ticket didn’t appear on the ballot in most states.

But these days, Sheehan has found it tougher to recapture the media spotlight she once enjoyed, causing her to sometimes bristle with frustration and a sense of entitlement, as she did with us at the Guardian for failing to help her amplify her message before now.

“Who came in 2nd against Pelosi? Who received well into ‘double digits?’ The campaign can’t get steam if ‘lefties’ put the same criteria as the [San Francisco] Chronicle for example for coverage. If I were truly in this for my ‘ego’ I would have quit a long time ago. You write, I campaign all over the world for the things I care about,” Sheehan wrote in a testy April 3 email exchange with me after a supporter seeking our coverage sent her a message in which I questioned the prospects of her campaign.

But getting progressive support in a race against Pelosi in San Francisco clearly isn’t the same thing as having a progressive campaign gain traction with a statewide audience, particularly because Sheehan doesn’t have many prominent endorsers or organizational allies.

By contrast, Rodriguez seems to be outhustling Sheehan, racing up and the down the state to promote his candidacy and work on rebuilding the progressive movement, with an emphasis on reaching communities of color who feel estranged from politics.

“People like me and others on the left need to step up if we’re not going to just accept the control of the two-party system. We have to fight for that democratic reality, we have to make it real,” Rodriguez told us. “You can’t just say vote, vote, vote. You have to give them something to vote for.”

 

ON THE ISSUES

Rodriguez is the author of 15 books, including poetry, journalism, novels, and a controversial memoir on gang life, Always Running, winning major writing awards for his work. He lives in the Los Angeles area, where he’s been active in community-building in both the arts and political realms.

Rodriguez is running on a platform that brings together environmental, social justice, and anti-poverty issues, areas addressed separately by progressive groups who have made only halting progress on each, “which is why we need to make them inseparable.”

While he said Brown has improved the “terrible situation he inherited from Schwarzenegger,” Rodriguez said that the fortunes of the average Californian haven’t turned around.

“People are hurting in the state of California. I think Brown has to answer for that,” Rodriguez said, noting that people are frustrated with the economic system and looking for solutions. “I don’t think Gov. Brown has a plan for it. In fact, I think he’s making it worse.”

Sheehan is critical of Brown for his opposition to full marijuana legalization, his resistance to prison reform, for allowing fracking, and for doing little to challenge the consolidation of wealth.

“My main issue is always, of course, peace and justice. But a corollary of that is for the resources of this state to be more fairly distributed to help people’s lives,” Sheehan said, calling that economic justice stand an outgrowth of her anti-war activism. “Since my son was killed, I’ve been starting to connect the dots about the empire we live under.”

When she studied California history at UCLA, Sheehan said, “I was inspired by Upton Sinclair and his End Poverty In California campaign in the ’30s.” She reminisces about the California of her childhood, when college education was free and the social safety net was intact, keeping people from economic desperation.

“It’s been done before and we can do it again,” Sheehan said. “I love this state, I love its potential, and I miss the way it was when I was growing up.”

 

OBSTACLES TO OVERCOME

Money is a challenge for statewide candidates given the size of California, which has at least a half-dozen major media markets that all need to be tapped repeatedly to reach voters throughout the state.

“I won’t take any corporate dollars and only people with money get heard,” Rodriguez told us.

But he says California has a large and growing number of voters who don’t identify with either major party, as well as a huge number of Latino voters who have yet to really make their voices heard at election time.

“I’m really banking on the people that nobody is counting,” Rodriguez said. “This is the time when people need to come together. We have to unite on these central things.”

That’s always a tough task for third-party candidates. Sheehan has a paltry list of endorsers, owing partly to the left-leaning organizations like labor unions staying with Brown, even though Sheehan claims many of their members support her.

“The rank and file is supportive of our message, but the leadership is still tied in with the Democratic Party,” Sheehan told us. “This state is deeply controlled by the Democratic Party, even more than it was a few years ago.”

But Sheehan considers herself a strong and seasoned candidate. “I’ve run for Congress, I’ve run for vice president, and I think that politics should be local,” Sheehan told us, saying her main strength would be, “I would work with people to create a better state, not against people.”

It was a theme she returned to a few times in our conversation, her main selling point. “It’s about inspiring a movement,” Sheehan said. “My biggest gift is getting out there and talking to people.” But if her strengths are indeed inspiring a movement, working with allies, and building coalitions, then why isn’t her campaign doing those things? Sheehan admits that it’s been difficult, telling us, “I found it easier in San Francisco to get the word out.”

Q&A: Queer Rebels on accessibility, representation, and the challenges queer people of color still face

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It’s not that Modern Family and your Gender Studies reading list aren’t doing anything for queer and trans representation — but there are still stories to be told, and ears to be reached.

Since 2008, it has been the mission of Queer Rebels founders Celeste Chan and KB Boyce to bring the art, history, and stories of queer and trans people of color to stages and screens, where it can be shared and celebrated. This weekend, Queer Rebels return with Liberating Legacies, a free, all-ages, multi-ethnic, multi-genre show at the San Francisco Public Library [Sun/20]. As the show date approaches, we caught up with Queer Rebels via email to get an idea of what to expect from Liberating Legacies, and the importance of accessibility to the arts.

San Francisco Bay Guardian What was the planning process for Liberating Legacies? What is different or new about this show compared to other Queer Rebels performances?

Queer Rebels Liberating Legacies celebrates the vibrant visions of queer/trans artists of color today. It is multi-ethnic, offering a sampling of all our different programs — from experimental film to SPIRIT: Queer Asian, Arab, and Pacific Islander Artivism, to our popular Queer Harlem Renaissance show. We’re so thrilled that Liberating Legacies is free, all ages, and multi-ethnic. We’ve wanted to do this for a while.

SFBG What is the importance of making a show like Liberating Legacies free and all ages?

QR We’re so excited to partner with the SF Public Library to provide access through this great venue. Our mission is to showcase queer and trans artists of color, connect generations, and honor our histories with art for the future. In keeping with our mission, we really want to reach youth and elders, and anyone barred access to art due to economic stress. Art has long been a tool for resistance in communities of color. It is the passing on of histories, and cultural reclamation. We do this to energize our community through the arts, to create our own culture, and to inspire hope. Art can create the world anew.

SFBG What are the current issues of accessibility in terms of art and representation of QTPOC communities? It’s a popular opinion that media and popular entertainment have become more progressive and inclusive, but what’s still missing?

QR It is true, we’re in a different place than we were 10, 20, or 30 years ago, when queer/trans of color representation was a real rarity. Now we have role models like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, but we still have RuPaul’s DragRace using slurs like “she-male,” and disrespecting trans women. Queer/trans youth of color face racial violence and homophobia. Approximately 40 percent of homeless youth are LGBT, LGBT people of color face multiple barriers or forms of oppression, and LGBT elders of color face isolation. So we still have a lot of work to do. We want art that speaks to these realities, created by our communities. There needs to be space for all of us. Beyond positive representation, we need to see queer and trans people of color in all of our complexities and diverse histories!

SFBG What can we look forward to seeing at Liberating Legacies? What would you tell someone who has never been to a QR show to expect from your performances?

QR We’re bringing diverse arty interpretations to Liberating Legacies. From “tropical Sci-Fi” to transgressive torch singers; Afrocentric literary duets to pop music manifestos; experimental film, world class Blues — and beyond! We’ve got something for everyone, and it is free, vibrant, and alive — very much of this moment! We pay homage to our ancestors and march boldly into the future. Artist MA Brooks once told us, “you two embody your mission statement.” It really resonates now. We are a multi-generational, Queer Black and Asian artist and activist couple. Queer Rebels is our lovechild: beautiful and rebellious, aesthetic and experimental, born from our experiences as people of color in punk and DIY scenes, and created with riotously gay love and joy.
 
Liberating Legacies
Sun/20, 2pm, free
San Francisco Public Library, Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin, SF
 (415) 581-3500
www.queerrebels.com