Opinion

Tempest in an urban teapot

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OPINION Our local road-culture war has erupted again, this time thanks to some unsavory gossip columnists at the monopoly paper in town. Wildly distorted accounts of two confrontations at Critical Mass in March have been presented as evidence that bicyclists are antisocial, out of control, and generally immature scofflaws. Such accounts serve to frame a narrative that is in sharp contrast with the actual experience of tens of thousands of bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists on the last Friday of every month, not just in San Francisco but in hundreds of cities worldwide where Critical Mass rides take place regularly.

Suddenly, normal life is suspended as thousands of bicyclists — talking, singing, playing instruments and boom boxes, smiling and laughing — take to the streets. Bells tinkle, people wave, traffic stops, encouragement is shouted, and uncounted conversations of unknowable depth and breadth happen by serendipity and choice. This is much more characteristic of the Critical Mass experience than the relatively rare confrontation between an overheated, impatient motorist and a self-righteous, antagonistic cyclist.

Cheap journalism of the type practiced by the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Matier and Ross just obscures the truth that our transportation system is designed to promote mayhem, anger, and alienation. Every day motorists crash and die, confront one another angrily, and are left cowering in isolation. The fact that such events can also happen during Critical Mass should come as no surprise.

The sheer exuberant pleasure of a rolling mass occupation of city streets month after month is hard to understand unless you’ve been a part of it. For the dozens of online flamers who have ferociously denounced Critical Mass, it’s inconceivable that an event that doesn’t behave according to the staid norms of a placid democratic society can have any justification: "Critical Mass doesn’t make demands! No one is in charge! The participants don’t all behave like obedient schoolchildren! They are destroying the cause of bicycling for the law-abiding cyclists!" And so on.

In February and March, Critical Mass bicyclists rode for two to three hours through San Francisco streets, enjoying the city in ways unplanned by traffic engineers, police, and city bureaucrats. It’s a remarkable reinvention of urban life in an organized coincidence that is mostly spontaneous in spite of its predictability — surprising every time and inspiring most of the time.

Critical Massers are engaged in that most rare of activities: an act of collective imagination and invention that is considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

For those motorists or bicyclists who think Critical Mass is about a fight between cars and bikes, think again! We are all in this together, and a monthly demonstration of how much better life could be is an invitation to everyone to try something different. There is a well-defined etiquette among Critical Mass riders that encourages riders to thank stuck drivers for their patience, promotes an atmosphere of friendly camaraderie on all sides, and invites the curious to join us next month at the foot of Market Street (April 27, 6 p.m.) on a bicycle for an experience that just might change your life. *

The Committee for Full Enjoyment

The Committee for Full Enjoyment (www.fullenjoyment.com) is an ad hoc group of San Franciscans dedicated to a richer life.

Stand up for immigrants, Mr. Newsom

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OPINION President George W. Bush’s war on immigration is wreaking havoc on San Francisco’s immigrant community. Across the Bay Area and in San Francisco, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have been carrying out raids at homes and workplaces, near schools, and, in broad daylight, on the streets. Hundreds of immigrants have been deported, devastating families, separating parents from United States–born children, and leaving entire neighborhoods in a state of fear.

There are few other neighborhoods that feel the ICE war more than the Mission District, the Latino heart and soul of San Francisco. So it was especially painful to sit through a two-hour town hall meeting orchestrated by Mayor Gavin Newsom on March 26 at César Chávez Elementary School in the Mission. Never once did he acknowledge vocal community members’ concerns over ICE sweeps and civil rights abuses. Instead, as predicted, he kept to the script, selecting two dozen questions out of 70 that were submitted by more than 250 attendees. Despite the loud chants, luchadores dressed in capes and masks, and bold visuals that called for a stop to the ICE raids, the mayor continued to talk and talk and talk some more about the health care access initiative.

Health care access is an important issue — residents and workers throughout the city appreciate the mayor’s efforts and welcome any relief for the thousands of uninsured, low-income, and undocumented residents of San Francisco. But right now the streets of the city are hot, and immigrant families are scared to leave their homes, send their kids to school, go to work, or even seek medical care at General Hospital for fear of being swept up, displaced, and deported.

Fortunately, there are some protections in the city. In 1989 the immigrant-rights movement, with the support of elected officials, established the sanctuary ordinance, which bars city officials, the Police Department, and other city agencies from cooperating with federal immigration officials. But in light of the most recent aggression, the time has come for our mayor and our elected officials to do more.

In 2004, in a rightful act of civil disobedience, a defiant Newsom stood up for justice by marrying same-sex couples, a landmark event in US civil rights history. It’s time for the mayor to once again stand up for justice by supporting the immigrants who make great contributions to this city and the nation.

Mayor Newsom, show us that your stance on civil rights has no limits and is inclusive of immigrant workers and families. Show us that you were not just currying favor or seeking votes but are truly committed to all civil rights issues.

Join with us:

• March with the immigrant community to protest the ICE raids.

• Convene a meeting with ICE officials, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and community members.

• Increase city resources for legal and educational services that help immigrants get on the pathway to legalization.

• Support the current day-laborer center and use day laborers’ input in the future expansion and creation of worker centers.

• Support the immigrant-led planning process in the Mission District, which calls for more affordable housing and jobs. *

Oscar M. Grande

Oscar M. Grande is a community organizer with PODER, People Organized to Demand Employment Rights.

Don’t fight the new media

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OPINION When I first found myself incarcerated, there were six other journalists in the United States under the threat of imprisonment for practicing their profession. They have since all been spared the unfortunate fate of incarceration, but at the time it seemed that the press was under a full-scale attack, and it was necessary to develop a united front to defend against the growing tide of corporate and government repression.

As a result, Free the Media was born. In its function as an online and meet-space organization, Free the Media is intended to help organize and agitate whenever and wherever the free-press guarantees under the Constitution are threatened. The forum is also focused on exploring the complex issues and controversies that continue to develop within this changing media landscape. Finally, it is my hope that Free the Media can serve as an open platform to bring people together in order to work on the development of new media solutions that will help ensure a healthy and resilient independent press for years to come.

The face of the media is in flux right now, and it’s still unclear where this current is headed. While some professionals in the field are resistant, I’m inclined to welcome the expanding landscape. Though there has never been a shortage of reporters, market influences have resulted in countless stories being neglected in favor of more popular fodder. With the recent surge of self-published and independent online journalism, the stories that are not economically viable finally have the opportunity to see the light of day.

These new, developing voices are more diverse than perhaps ever before, and the stories they tell are often more intimate and compelling than anything a professional outsider can deliver. At last those voices that are often silent, the disenfranchised, can be heard without the aid of a brave, insightful editor of a major newspaper.

Twenty years ago Peter Sussman of the San Francisco Chronicle began publishing accounts from inside the Lompoc federal penitentiary by Dannie Martin. These firsthand reports allowed the newspaper’s readership an opportunity to vicariously experience life in prison. Today through prisonblogs.net, 10,000 Dannie Martins could conceivably contribute to the discussion with their own unique perspective on incarceration.

The media is changing. This we know for sure. But what remains to be seen is the role professional journalists will take in developing this new landscape. Will the battle lines be drawn with two classes of warring voices, or will we work together in solidarity to develop a massive chorus as diverse and eclectic as our society itself? As journalists, is our commitment to an economic system, or is it to the pursuit of the free flow of information? The power is in your hands. Choose wisely. *

Josh Wolf

Josh Wolf, a freelance videographer, has been in federal prison for more than 200 days, making him the longest-imprisoned journalist in US history. Last week the Freedom of Information Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists honored him with a special citation; Wolf, for obvious reasons, was unable to accept the award in person, but he sent along this piece.

Escautf8g the antiwar movement

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› news@sfbg.com

It was four years ago this March 19 that the United States invaded Iraq, triggering massive street protests in San Francisco and a widely criticized military occupation that has become one of the longest in US history.

The war has proved to be as bloody and shortsighted as its opponents always claimed it would be. More than 3,100 American soldiers have been killed, as have as many as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, with little hope of the violence abating anytime soon, despite President George W. Bush’s recent deployment of 21,500 more troops. The war has cost the United States about $400 billion so far, a price tag increasing by about $250 million every day of the occupation. And it has spurred anti-Americanism around the world.

Opinion polls show a strong majority in the United States favors immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and a growing number of Democrats in Congress now appear to be moving in that direction. But antiwar activists are planning an escalation of their own, arguing that only through a ramped-up and more widely disseminated peace movement will this war come to an end.

To mark this inauspicious anniversary, United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest antiwar coalition, has issued a call for "a massive outpouring of opposition to the war in locally based, decentralized actions throughout the U.S." from March 17 to 19. It’s a clear departure from the peace movement’s norm of massive, centralized marches located in Washington, DC, New York, and San Francisco.

Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of San Francisco on March 20, 2003, with more than 1,500 people arrested in civil disobedience actions that effectively shut down the city. Antiwar groups are still hoping for a big turnout in the city next week, even as they shift their strategy to include more of Middle America.

Instead of relying on charismatic visionaries, influential organizations, and hierarchical organizing in the big cities, the new strategy calls on citizens to take the initiative and organize — from Mobile, Ala., to Jonesboro, Ark., to Fayetteville, N.C. — and demonstrate a broad base of active opposition to the war.

"The resistance isn’t only in San Francisco," Jim Haber, a member of the steering committee for United for Peace and Justice Bay Area, told the Guardian. "Large demonstrations here get attributed to San Francisco being out of step with the rest of the country — although less so these days."

While it is important to have big showings, Haber said it’s also important to demonstrate that the opposition is widespread. "Rather than making people who want to protest come to us, we’re going to them — and they’re all over."

Several of the affinity groups that were instrumental in the shutdown of San Francisco four years ago are regrouping for a rally and nonviolent direct action at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon.

"Four years ago we not only shut down San Francisco’s Financial District, we also shut down Chevron," Antonia Juhasz, one of the organizers and a Tarbell fellow with Oil Change International, told us. "Neither our message nor our tactics have changed."

The Iraqi parliament is set to pass a law that would transform Iraq’s nationalized oil system to a commercialized model, completely open to corporate pillaging, following the trail first blazed by the US-installed Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer. "The law is the brainchild of the Bush administration," Juhasz said. "Now is a particularly critical time to expose the oil agenda behind the war."

David Solnit, a longtime organizer and member of the Bay Rising affinity group, told us, "This is a similarly strategic moment for the antiwar movement to escalate. Hopes of getting the Democrats to do anything are fading. It’s up to us, and folks are hungry for taking direct action."

Just about everyone organizing for March 17 to 19 agrees that relying on the congressional Democrats to bring the troops home is an abysmal plan.

"We’re telling people to stop looking up and start looking around," Ben Rosen, youth organizer and media coordinator with World Can’t Wait, told us. "There is no Democratic savior here."

World Can’t Wait has allied with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition to organize a massive march up Market Street to the Civic Center on March 18. ANSWER still favors centralized protests, including a massive march on the Pentagon.

"The real direction for this war is coming from the Pentagon," Richard Becker, ANSWER’s West Coast regional coordinator, told us. "A powerful march on the Pentagon would be the most significant thing that could happen right now."

Rosen agrees that centralized coordination is required to build a cohesive and powerful movement.

"They argue that marching in San Francisco is preaching to the choir," Rosen said. "But actually we’re setting an example for people in the middle of the country who look to San Francisco, New York, and DC as models."

Massive centralized marches have been the linchpin of this country’s peace movement, but many observers are questioning whether they are the most effective strategy.

"People say ‘the movement’s failed,’ " Becker said. "That’s an incorrect conclusion. Building a movement powerful enough to stop war when all the resources of the state are mobilized for it is very difficult."

Max Diorio, co–national coordinator of Not in Our Name, which has joined the ANSWER coalition organizing for March 18, agrees. "If San Francisco has a paltry march, what does that say about the rest of the country? It took 10 years from the first big mobilization against Vietnam to end that war. People are used to instant gratification in this country, but it takes a while. That’s why they call it a struggle."

On March 19 there will be a die-in on Market Street, also initiated by former members of Direct Action to Stop the War.

"The die-in will help to make personal the real cost of war in human lives," Suzanne Sam Joi, a coordinator for Codepink Bay Area, told us. "Too often we can forget that someone who was loved and treasured — a mother, a sister — their life has been destroyed."

In another national antiwar effort, UFPJ member group the Voices for Creative Nonviolence initiated the Occupation Project. Demonstrators have sat in at their legislators’ offices across the country, and 159 people have been arrested so far.

The shift in the UFPJ’s strategy — calling for decentralized, localized actions all over the country — is significant. Until Middle Americans stop looking east and west for models and start organizing themselves, their representatives can safely ignore calls to bring the troops home. *

Marisa Handler’s first book, Loyal to the Sky: Notes from an Activist, chronicles her experiences in the global justice movement from Miami to Lima to Kathmandu.

Why people get mad at the media (part l2) The New York Times answers questions about its slow coverage of the Walter Reed scandal but stonewalls on its censorship of Project Censored

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

Byron Calame, the public editor of the New York Times, spent an entire column in the Sunday New York Times (March ll) answering an important question:

“Why,” Calame asked in his lead, “were readers of the New York Times left without a word of news coverage of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal for six days after it had been exposed by the Washington Post?
That was the question posed to me in the wake of the Post’s Feb. l8 scoop by readers thirsty for readers thirsty for news of the poor care given those wounded in Iraq.”

As attentive readers of the Bruce blog will recall, I raised an even more important question as to why the Times and its sister paper in Santa Rosa (the Press Democrat) have for 30 years refused to run the Project Censored story from the local Sonoma State University. I have also asked Calame, and Times and PD editors, why they won’t run the Project Censored story, even though its stories before and during the Iraq War laid out much of the key neocon policy behind the war and the anti-war strategies in opposing it. Neither Calame nor any Times nor editor would answer me nor provide an explanation to Carl Jensen, the project’s current founder, nor Peter Phillips, the current director, for their censorship of the Censored Project through the years.

This is highly significant in light of Calame’s Sunday column. “Readers have every right to be angry about the Times’s slowness in telling them about the compelling news in The Post’s two-part series,” he wrote.
((I won’t raise the question here as to why neither the Post nor the Times, nor any of the beltway journalists, didn’t get the stories months earlier at nearby Walter Reed and why they didn’t respond earlier to the accelerating drumbeat of criticism of lousy treatment of returning soldiers from veterans, their families, and veteran’s organizations.)

Calame did find the culprit: “Excessive pride, I believe, is the fundamental problem. The desire to be first with the news still permeates the newsroom at the Times and other newspapers in a way that makes editors and reporters feel defeated when they have to conclude that the information in another publication’s exclusive article is so newsworthy that it has to be pursued.” Good point: but what about newsworthy stories broken by other publications, picked up by Project Censored, stamped “Censored,” and put out as a major package that the Times and other mainstream media then refused to print? Was “excessive pride” at work here for 30 years? Is that much of an excuse on stories as big as Iraq and Bush?

I pointed out in my earlier blog that the Censored stories were particularly timely during the war years.
For example, on Sept. l0, 2003, while the Times and the PD and affiliated papers on its news service, were running the stories of the disgraced Judith Miller that helped Bush make the case for the Iraq War and then seeking to justify it, the Guardian ran the Censored package with a headline that read, “The neocon plan for global domination–and nine other big stories the mainstream press refused to cover in 2002.” I noted that our introduction to the timely censored package made the critical point: “If there’s one influence that has shaped world-wide politics over the past year, it’s the extent to which the Bush administration hs exploited the events of Sept. ll, 200l, too solidify its military and economic control of the world at the expense of democracy, true justice, and the environment. But President George Bush W. Bush hasn’t simply been responding to world events. The agenda the administration has followed fits perfectly with a clearly defined plan that’s been in place for a decade.”

I noted that the neocon story, and the many other such stories that Project Censored put out during the war years and again this year, laying out the drumbeat to war and the dark side of the Bush administration, got no play in the Times nor the PD and very little play in the rest of the mainstream press and its “embedded” and “mission accomplished” journalism that marched us into war and is now keeping us there. Who was right, the Guardian and Project Censored stories or Judith Miller and the Times?

Calame wrote that “readers would benefit if the
Times could swallow a bit of its pride and make use of two readily available approaches to dealing with important news in the scoops of competing competitors.” He said the Times could put the stories of competitors up on its web and they could be encouraged to use “solidly reported wire stories” of significant exclusives in other publications. What about the Censored stories?

Calame concluded, “The reality is that when significant news breaks–even in the form of an exclusive in a competing publication–the Times must be committed to getting on the story. Anything less seriously damages the paper’s value to the readers.”

Another good point: so repeating for emphasis: Why won’t the Times and the PD run the Project Censored stories
that were so often on target when the Times wasn’t? And why won’t the Times and its public editor answer or even acknowledge the question and underlying issues of biased reporting, flawed news judgment, and too much lapdog access to the Bush administration? I’m sending this blog to them and asking once again.

I am waiting for the public editor and Times/PD editors to reply. Is this like waiting for Godot? Stay tuned. B3

Project censored blog:

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/bruce/2007/02/new_blog_project_censored.html

Byron Calame’s The public editor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/11/opinion/11pubed.html?ex=1331269200&en=7f7f89dff165cf09&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Abolish PG&E Corp.

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OPINION Pacific Gas and Electric Corp. is a holding company whose only property is Pacific Gas and Electric Co., a regulated utility. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) exercises little regulatory oversight over PG&E Corp. Oversight by federal authorities has been curbed by recent legislation, which abolished most of the consumer protections of the New Deal’s Public Utilities Holding Company Act. To protect ratepayers and stockholders, PG&E Corp. should be abolished and its corporate charter revoked.

All of PG&E Corp.’s income comes, in effect, from tax minimization strategies, which allow PG&E Corp. to keep revenue that would otherwise be paid as income taxes. What are the consequences?

• The creation of the holding company constitutes a legal money-laundering strategy that has greatly benefited the holding company. A 2002 brief by California’s attorney general says that PG&E Corp. collected $663 million in net revenues from 1997 to 1999 by avoiding payment of income taxes.

• From 2000 to 2004, Mark Bumgardner of the CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) wrote in a 2006 report, "PG&E Corporation has been able to save $683 million in Utility taxes…. Since the benefits of being able to write off unprofitable affiliates for tax purposes is [sic] solely for the Holding Company’s benefit, DRA allocated 100% of the tax department’s costs to PG&E Corporation."

• Top officers at PG&E Corp. made out like bandits: President Robert D. Glynn’s total pay skyrocketed from $2 million in 1998 to $34 million in 2003, despite the fact that he led the company into bankruptcy.

• Almost all of PG&E Corp.’s revenues from 2001 to 2004 came from its regulated utility. PG&E Corp. got to keep an extra $1.346 billion from 1997 through 2004 by taking advantage of the tax benefits available to utility holding companies, if the attorney general and the DRA’s Bumgardner are correct.

The CPUC and the legislature created the holding company in a series of decisions and laws in the mid-1990s. However, the idea that deregulation California-style would bring competition and lower electric rates has proved to be false. Abolish the holding company, and this lucrative PG&E Corp. tax dodge ceases to exist.

To deal with PG&E’s high rates and unresponsive electric service, San Francisco public power activists and public officials tried to take over PG&E’s San Francisco grid in 2001 and 2002. In Yolo County, just west of Sacramento, activists and elected officials worked for years to drive out PG&E and replace it with electrical service from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. The SMUD charges 30 percent less than PG&E and far exceeds PG&E in the use of solar and wind power per customer. PG&E spent a record $50 per customer — at least $15 million, on 300,000 voters in Sacramento and Yolo counties — in November 2006 to turn back the public power challenge.

For others in Northern California, a return to traditional regulation as it functioned before the deregulation disaster may be the best that can be expected. Abolishing the holding company — a step the CPUC has the power to take — would be a good place to start.

Dan Berman

Dan Berman is the author of Who Owns the Sun? and is a longtime public power activist in Northern California. He lives in Davis and can be reached at danmberman@gmail.com.

Law enforcement’s real battles

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OPINION In order to be smart on crime, law enforcement needs to make important choices about where to focus our resources. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has been making poor choices, and those choices are hitting home in San Francisco.

Recently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted raids in San Francisco and around the Bay Area, rounding up immigrants at their jobs and schools, in some instances with ICE agents announcing themselves as police. These actions sow fear in the immigrant community among undocumented and documented residents alike.

The raids conducted in San Francisco present many of us in local law enforcement with a great concern. One of law enforcement’s biggest challenges to protecting crime victims in immigrant communities is encouraging them to come forward. Because immigrants are often afraid to report crimes, they can be regarded as easy targets for violent criminals and con artists.

We all suffer when crime victims are isolated from law enforcement. If victims and witnesses do not report crimes or cooperate with law enforcement, criminals remain on the streets, and all of us are put at risk. That is why my office is holding immigrant resource fairs in the Mission District and Chinatown to support immigrant rights and to make clear to community members that they are protected by San Francisco’s Sanctuary Ordinance and that my office will not report them to ICE when they come forward as witnesses or victims of crime. Rather than driving immigrants deeper into the shadows, we need to encourage those who have been victimized by crime to work with us to hold criminals accountable.

At the same time, the US Justice Department is walking down an ominous path by threatening journalists with prison time when they protect their confidential sources. In San Francisco the US attorney has held journalist Josh Wolf in prison since September 2006. Wolf should be released. For very good reasons, 31 states, including California, have shield laws upholding the rights of journalists to protect the secrecy of their sources and unpublished information. We need a federal shield law as well.

Of course, I believe crimes against police officers should be aggressively prosecuted. But I also believe that federal authorities have an obligation to respect the First Amendment. Free speech rights are critical to the work of journalists, university researchers, organized labor, and all of us in a democracy. The Justice Department should recognize the importance of protecting free speech, not only as constitutional and civil liberties issues but as smart public safety policy. Journalists play a key role in connecting us to individuals with information about crimes, and threatening the confidentiality of their sources has a chilling effect. If sources fear their confidentiality will not be protected, they will be less likely to come forward to journalists with information that could expose corruption or assist us in solving violent crimes.

Cities across the country are grappling with serious gang violence. Precious resources should be focused on addressing violence, gun crime, and major white-collar crime, not wasted on prosecuting journalists and conducting immigration raids that sweep up innocent residents, actions that hinder our efforts to build trusting relationships with vulnerable, victimized communities and keep the public safe. *

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris is the San Francisco district attorney.

How Weird is on — probably — for one last year

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By Steven T. Jones
The How Weird Street Faire, which had its permits denied by city officials a couple weeks ago, won a bittersweet victory this morning at an appeals hearing before Department of Parking and Transportation administrator Bond Yee. “It’s clear to me this event is popular, and that’s a good thing, but that’s also a bad thing,” Yee said after hearing from supporters of the event and neighbors who complained that it’s just too big and loud. So he cut the baby in two by agreeing that it was too late to find a new venue for the May 6 event and awarding its permits for this year, but attaching several restrictive conditions (most notably, cutting the music off at 6 pm rather than 8) and ruling that this is the last year the event can be held in the Howard Street neighborhood. “It’s my opinion that the event is too big for this venue,” Yee said. Yet even if event promoters can meet Yee’s conditions, they must still meet pending requirements from the San Francisco Police Department, whose commander for the region, Capt. Dennis O’Leary, spoke against the event at the hearing. “I support the community in this matter and I hear their voices. They don’t want it to happen,” he said. Yet event organizers submitted a petition signed by 100 people from the neighborhood that support the event, whereas those complaining about the event number less than 10, although many are quite upset about having up to 10,000 descend on their neighborhood for the day. Last year’s event almost got canceled after police tried to double their security fees from the previous year, although higher-ups intervened and they were brought back down to reasonable levels. Asked by the Guardian about his apparent bias against this event, O’Leary said he wouldn’t be unduly harsh with How Weird promoters: “That’s not my reputation. I’m very fair.” Yet he also said, “I haven’t made up my mind as to staffing levels.”
Stay tuned.

How Weird is on — probably — for one last year

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By Steven T. Jones
The How Weird Street Faire, which had its permits denied by city officials a couple weeks ago, won a bittersweet victory this morning at an appeals hearing before Department of Parking and Transportation administrator Bond Yee. “It’s clear to me this event is popular, and that’s a good thing, but that’s also a bad thing,” Yee said after hearing from supporters of the event and neighbors who complained that it’s just too big and loud. So he cut the baby in two by agreeing that it was too late to find a new venue for the May 6 event and awarding its permits for this year, but attaching several restrictive conditions (most notably, cutting the music off at 6 pm rather than 8) and ruling that this is the last year the event can be held in the neighborhood. “It’s my opinion that the event is too big for this venue,” Yee said. Yet even if event promoters can meet Yee’s conditions, they must still meet pending requirements from the San Francisco Police Department, whose commander for the region, Capt. Dennis O’Leary, spoke against the event at the hearing. “I support the community in this matter and I hear their voices. They don’t want it to happen,” he said. Yet event organizers submitted a petition signed by 100 people from the Howard Street neighborhood that support the event, whereas those complaining about the event number less than 10, although many are quite upset about having up to 10,000 descend on their neighborhood for the day. Last year’s event almost got canceled after police tried to double their security fees from the previous year, although higher-ups intervened and they were brought back down to reasonable levels. Asked by the Guardian about his apparent bias against this event, O’Leary said he wouldn’t be unduly harsh with How Weird promoters: “That’s not my reputation. I’m very fair.” Yet he also said, “I haven’t made up my mind as to staffing levels.”
Stay tuned.

As the port turns

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› news@sfbg.com

Another setback to the Port of San Francisco’s plan to allow development of Piers 27–31 has brought about a new round of soul-searching at the beleaguered agency, as well as calls to change what may be allowed along the waterfront.

Last month the port’s latest private development partner, Shorenstein Properties, withdrew its plan for a mixed-use facility that relied on large amounts of office space to recoup the cost of renovating the dilapidated piers. The State Lands Commission, which watchdogs new waterfront construction for adequate maritime and public recreation uses, signaled in November 2006 that it would not support the office-heavy design. The port’s previous development partner, Mills Corp., pulled out last March after half a decade of public Sturm und Drang over its plan for a shoreside mall.

For years the Port Commission has looked to Piers 27–31 as a magic bullet for its financial woes. The port receives relatively little money from actual port operations, and as an enterprise fund department, it receives no subsidies from the city’s General Fund. Moreover, when the state transferred jurisdiction to the agency by way of the 1968 Burton Act, it handed down a good deal of debt and deferred maintenance.

Estimates now put the cost of fixing the port’s crumbling piers and properties at around $1.4 billion, with the vast majority of those costs not yet funded. With construction costs rising between 8 and 10 percent every year, port and city officials are starting to realize that even if Shorenstein’s plan eventually makes it through the gauntlet of government agencies and public oversight, the one-time infusion of cash it would provide would not be enough.

"It is a pretty dire situation," the port’s executive director, Monique Moyer, said at a Feb. 13 commission meeting. "And we do need all hands on deck" to try to solve the problem.

Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin, whose district includes Piers 27–31, has answered Moyer’s call. In the last several weeks, he has floated two new ideas that could have a wide-ranging impact on the 7 1/2 miles of shoreline under port control. As reported in the San Francisco Business Times, Peskin told a Hotel Council luncheon on Jan. 17 that he and Moyer have been discussing hotel development on the city’s piers, something Proposition H, passed by voters in 1990, currently prohibits.

Peskin told the Guardian his hotel concept is in the very early stages and stems from the fact that the State Lands Commission considers hotels to be allowable uses of waterfront property. He stressed that the proposal, which would require a new ballot initiative, is "not by any means a wholesale abandonment of Prop. H." It would instead seek to designate certain piers for hotels after consulting with neighborhood groups and other stakeholders.

"The question is are we willing to have a couple [or] three of them in the right places? That’s it," Peskin said, voicing his opinion that the "right places" would probably fit somewhere between South Beach and Pier 27. "Fisherman’s Wharf does not need any new hotels."

Peskin’s second idea involves replacing much of Shorenstein’s proposed office space at Pier 27 with a year-round cruise ship terminal. For years the port had a public-private partnership similar to the one with Shorenstein to build a new terminal at Piers 30 and 32. But its development partner, the Australian firm Lend Lease Corp., backed out of the deal last year. Shorenstein officials did not answer numerous requests for comment, but Peskin told us the company has expressed some interest to him in going forward with a cruise terminal design.

Not surprisingly, hotel industry representatives enthusiastically backed Peskin’s plan to revisit Prop. H. Hotel consultant Rick Swig highlighted the benefits of letting hotel developers rehab the waterfront. Any new hotels would be "built with somebody else’s money," he reasoned, "and generate tax fund money which goes to the General Fund of the city of San Francisco."

Others weren’t so excited. John Rizzo of the Bay Area chapter of the Sierra Club lamented the port’s reliance on private development as a means of solving its problems.

"There’s this massive infrastructure [problem], and the city [is telling] the port that you have to go out and find money with the resources you have, and what can they do? The resource they have is the waterfront, and the only thing they can do is develop it," he told us.

Rizzo called for the port to "be freed from [the] financial restrictions" of its enterprise agency status in order to preserve valuable open space from development. "We’re forcing [the port] to take this waterfront and put big buildings on it, and that’s not really what we want."

Jon Golinger of Citizens to Save the Waterfront, one of the groups that actively opposed the Mills Corp. mall, also cited problems with the port’s reliance on development. The infrastructure crisis, he told us, is "a bigger problem, and we can’t develop our way out of it alone. Certainly one project at a time is not working for the port or the community."

Neither Rizzo nor Golinger will comment on Peskin’s ideas until their groups have studied them. But Golinger did say, "Any big ideas like hotels need to be part of a much bigger solution." For example, he cited the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, which receives funding from a dedicated half-cent city sales tax. He added that other port agencies are partially subsidized by public money, such as the Port of Portland in Oregon.

Port officials seem to be coming to grips with the magnitude of their predicament and the failure of their reliance on private development. The conclusion to the latest update on the port’s 10-Year Capital Plan puts it bluntly: "The Port’s private/public partnership development model is broken."

At the Feb. 13 commission meeting, port staff proposed several new methods for finding cash, including tapping into future city Recreation and Park Department general obligation bonds. Moyer told the commissioners that such an arrangement would be a "paradigm shift" in the way the port funds projects, not only because it would use the city’s bond money, but also because the agency does not want to reimburse the General Fund, as it has been obligated to do since its inception.

One thing all parties agree on is something must be done. As Peskin told us, "The fact of the matter is, if we do nothing, we’re going to lose a lot of these resources." *

2007: a disco odyssey

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› johnny@sfbg.com

What is space disco? Well, it’s a term some people have thrown around when the music of Hans-Peter Lindstrøm is written about or discussed. What does the man from Oslo, Norway, think of the two-word catchphrase? "I guess the good thing is that some people are telling me, ‘Hey, man, you invented a genre,’ " he says, speaking from Oslo and capping the remark with a characteristic quiet, slightly jittery laugh. "If people think about it that way, it’s fine for me, because I get mentioned. But I think it’s limiting in terms of my music. In my opinion, disco with space elements, lots of laser beams — " he laughs again " — is not a wide genre."

Space disco might not be a wide genre, but Lindstrøm, who’s released 12-inch singles under his last name since 2003 for his own Feedelity label, has provided many of its highlights, recently collected on the compilation It’s a Feedelity Affair. One example is "I Feel Space," a sonic floating shuttle with a title that seemingly plays off the epically orgasmic Giorgio Moroder–produced Donna Summer classic from 1977, "I Feel Love." Another is "Gentle as a Giant," a rhythmic percolator that goes so far as to incorporate the same signature opening trinitarian chords of Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra that Stanley Kubrick utilized in the score of his 1968 cinematic astro classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As to whether the latter is a joking response to the space disco tag, Lindstrøm pleads innocence. "I just really like [Strauss’s] theme," he says.

Space disco might not even be a genre. But assuming it exists, Lindstrøm has also stepped far outside it, as on a 2005 collaboration with a fellow Oslo musician, Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas (Eskimo Recordings). That album’s expansive leanings are pastoral rather than interstellar. Beginning with a seemingly endless hit from a bong, "Don O Van Budd" sends autumnal wordless harmonies across acoustic plains with an easygoing charm Yo La Tengo might envy.

Asked about music that has emerged from Norway in recent years, Lindstrøm divides it according to city, saying he’s met the Bergen-based Annie and her roommate Skatebard and regularly communicates with fellow Oslo residents such as Thomas and the much sought-after remixer Todd Terje. "He’s one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to contemporary music," Lindstrøm says of the latter. But it’s a mistake to view Lindstrøm’s music in strictly contemporary terms. He was raised on country and western. He shares a multi-instrumental, unconventional approach to disco with the late Arthur Russell, whose Dinosaur recordings he especially enjoys. Many tracks on It’s a Feedelity Affair lock into rock-ready and steady live drum beats and bass lines that wouldn’t be out of place on a record by Neu! or Can.

On Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas‘s "Turkish Delight," Lindstrøm unwinds a Holger Czukay–like lengthy guitar solo — one ingredient, safe to say, that qualifies as a rarity on club tracks. Around the time of the Thomas collaboration’s release, Lindstrøm wasn’t averse to name-checking folks such as Yngwie Malmsteen in an interview and was full of praise for the fuzzed-out solo in the Carpenters’ "Goodbye to Love." But he’s since entered a minimal phase. "I’ve been touring and traveling, playing my music for other people at clubs, and for many people some of the early stuff is too inaccessible," he says. "I’ve been trying to make my music more simple, hopefully without losing what’s important."

It’s around this time that I hear a child crying in the background on Lindstrøm’s end of the line. As he continues to describe his musical approach — "I really like the combination of organic sounds, such as guitar, with digital programming" — the cries grow louder and contort into shrieks.

"Just a minute — can I call you back?" he asks.

Half an hour and one call later, peace has been restored. "My son really wanted to talk to me," Lindstrøm explains, a bit of embarrassment and pride mixed up in the words. Our conversation soon wanders to the subject of his studio. "It’s not like a professional studio. I’ve just installed all my equipment — and I don’t have that much — in a room," he says. "As you know, since we had to interrupt our conversation because of my kid, sometimes I have to go somewhere else."

Like a personal space? Certainly, space is important — Lindstrøm knows this more than most musicians working today. Space disco may not be a wide genre, and it may not exist, but Lindstrøm’s best recordings engage with notions of space in a way that multiplies the word’s meanings. As he jokes, the term can conjure literal images of melodies played on laser beams, and indeed, some of his songs do exactly that. But if that’s what space disco is or can be, the form was probably invented by Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes in the Mos Eisley Cantina. Charting realms far from Star Wars kitsch, Lindstrøm uses a much more contemporary disco sound to manipulate notions of space. With — and even without — dub techniques, he expands the dimensions of a song’s sound so the melodies seem to travel into a neon and pitch-black eternity.

This approach is cinematic, really, as that 2001: A Space Odyssey link within "Gentle as a Giant" might suggest. "Hey, wait a minute," I think to myself as I hang up the phone. "Don’t the liner notes of A Feedelity Affair imagine Lindstrøm giving a track-by-track movie pitch to 2046 director Wong Kar Wai?"

It’s a link worth exploring. I’d call Lindstrøm back and ask him about it, but I don’t want to come between him and his son. *

LINDSTRØM

With Carl Craig, Gamall, and ML Tronik and TK Disco

Fri/9, 10 p.m.–4 a.m., $12 advance

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

www.mezzaninesf.com

>

Missed connections

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› le_chicken_farmer@yahoo.com

CHEAP EATS My new favorite songwriter is my old friend NFC, which BTW stands for "new friend Catherine," not National Football Conference. Of course, I sometimes call her Ms. Conference or National or Nat just to confuse matters. And to confuse matters further, I’m rooting for her in the Super Bowl.

So while these people are going, "Go, Colts!" and those ones are going, "Yay, Bears!" I’ll be sandwiched between them on the sofa, with my fingers crossed and my knees all a-rattle, going, Catherine, Catherine, Catherine, come on, Catherine!

Probably under my breath — in case anyone still wants to invite me to their Super Bowl party.

Confession: I’ve been neglecting my old friends in order to meet new people. And the more new people I meet, the more I love my old friends. I can’t decide whether this makes me a people person or a misanthrope, so let’s just stick with chicken farmer for now.

NFC, my new favorite songwriter, only has three songs. For as long as I’ve known her, she has had the same three songs, and we sit in her heater room with coffee and guitars and a cat named Juicy Toots, rewriting and rewriting them. She rewrites. I close my eyes and concentrate on having an opinion. This one used to be a folk song. Now it’s the blues. That one has a slightly different melody. The other has a new, improved bridge, retrofitted to withstand earthquakes and open mic jitters.

By the time she dies, NFC will have either the three most exquisitely perfect musical compositions ever written or a very bad headache. My money, as usual, is on both. But that’s not what I wanted to tease her about.

I wanted to tease her about a certain evening we spent together recently. It was the coldest Thursday on record. Ever. Anywhere. Many of my dearest, warmest, longstandingest loved ones were gathering out at Gaspare’s to break pizza in honor of our prodigal pal One-Cents. I chose instead to accompany NFC to a house concert in Oakland. Where I wouldn’t know anyone.

Which is how I like it, my top priority in life these days being my unreasonable, hopeless, quixotic quest for romance, the kind with nudity in it. And that just ain’t going to happen between me and my friends, I’m afeard. (And they’re relieved.)

So: new people, I’m thinking. Girls! Boys! Boths! Couples with a sense of adventure! Single people with a sense of humor! Sensitive artists with a sense of worthlessness! House concert! Yay!!!

Come to find over preshow dinner at Manzanita that our hostess, NFC’s friend, is 80 and that everyone else at the party will be senior citizens, except us.

"Oh," I said. I love old people. "What about the bands?" I asked.

"Only one. My friend’s son," NFC said. "He’s visiting from Nashville."

Mind you, this news is broken to me at Manzanita, which is an organic vegan macrobiotic joint, two big cities and a cold, cold bay away from Gaspare’s, where all my other friends in the world are just then deciding what all to put on all their extralarge pizzas. Sausage, I’m thinking.

Cheese.

"Yum. Aren’t these whole grains and unseasoned greens delicious?" my new favorite songwriter asks, sprinkling a shaker of almost tasteless toasted brown things all over her plate, in lieu of salt and pepper.

I’m thinking: olives, pepperoni. Salad with salad dressing on it. "Yes! Delicious!" I say. And I really do clean my plate and enjoy it. And feel pretty good, kind of.

I love my friend NFC, and I love old folks and country music. But it turns out Ms. Conference had the wrong night. The house concert wasn’t until Saturday. I probably could have gotten across town, over the bridge, and across town again to the Richmond in time for a glass of wine and some crust, except that NFC’s friend invited us in anyway, bless her heart, and her son, bless his, played a whole set of his new country originals, by way of rehearsal.

We sat on the couch with cookies and water and watched and listened with big, big smiles on our faces, and I wouldn’t trade this cracked, cold Thursday for any Thursday in the world. *

MANZANITA

Lunch: daily, 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Dinner: daily, 5:30–9 p.m.

4001 Linden, Oakl.

(510) 985-8386.

Takeout and catering available

No alcohol

AE/MC/V

Quiet

Wheelchair accessible

>

Where’s the beef on LGBT issues?

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OPINION Common wisdom says that Mayor Gavin Newsom has forever endeared himself to the LGBT community by issuing marriage licenses to queer couples shortly after coming into office in 2004. Even though a state court later declared those licenses invalid (the city is appealing), Newsom’s popularity among queers doesn’t appear to have diminished. This is despite the fact that the Newsom administration has actually done little in terms of some of the major issues facing the community.

Let’s take a look at a few of those issues:

• Housing for people with AIDS. A couple months after the "winter of love" at City Hall, Newsom appointed Jeff Sheehy as AIDS czar. An AIDS activist and former hate-crime-victim advocate in the District Attorney’s Office, Sheehy was supposed to help the mayor formulate AIDS policies. But it was a volunteer position, and the major concern of people with AIDS — affordable housing — was never addressed. Two years later Sheehy resigned the post. Meanwhile, the city’s affordable housing crisis still leaves many low-income people with AIDS desperately scrambling for a place to live after they are evicted by real estate speculators looking for a quick buck in the tenancy-in-common market. The situation is so bad that the AIDS Housing Alliance dubbed the Castro "the AIDS eviction capital of the world."

• Liaison to the LGBT community. Apparently, former mayor Joe Alioto initiated this position in 1973. Newsom’s appointment was not a community activist but someone who worked in advertising. Founder of Gays for Gavin in the 2003 mayoral election campaign, James "Jimmer" Cassiol served for almost two years before he too resigned. His major duty seemed to be representing the mayor at LGBT functions.

• Homelessness among queer youth. While Newsom is quick to tout his Care Not Cash and Operation Homeless Connect programs as solutions to one of the city’s most enduring and heartbreaking problems, he failed to mention youth in general and queer youth in particular in his recent state of homelessness address. To date, only a handful of queer youth have received city-sponsored housing — in a hotel on Market Street, which Castro supervisor Bevan Dufty secured. More hotel rooms are supposedly on the way.

• Affordable housing for seniors. A proposed Market-Octavia Openhouse project for queer seniors won’t actually provide housing for those who need it the most: people with incomes below 50 percent of the area median income. The Newsom administration has done little to alleviate the lack of affordable housing for seniors, especially queer ones.

As the old woman in the ’70s commercials used to ask, where’s the beef? When it comes to queer issues, there is none. There’s certainly a lot of talk, many public appearances by the mayor and his representatives at queer functions, and the general promotion by Newsom and his staff of the idea that in San Francisco the LGBT community matters.

But if you’re poor, a senior, or homeless, it’s a different story altogether. *

Tommi Avicolli Mecca

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical, southern Italian, working-class queer performer, writer, and activist whose work can be seen at www.avicollimecca.com.

Advancing public power

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EDITORIAL A few months ago Pacific Gas and Electric Co. spent more than $10 million trying to keep the public Sacramento Municipal Utility District from annexing a part of Yolo County, which would have cost PG&E 77,000 customers. It was a stunning amount of campaign cash — and as is often the case, it worked: PG&E narrowly won the day, public power suffered a setback, and the people who wanted to get out from the private utility’s high rates and save big money by buying electricity from a public power agency had their hope shot down.

We’re used to this in San Francisco, where PG&E money and power have carried the day for more than 80 years and prevented the city from complying with the Raker Act, the federal law that requires public power. But the outcome of the Yolo County battle is a reminder of how high the stakes are for the beleaguered private utility — and how creative public power advocates are going to have to be in PG&E’s hometown.

It’s likely that there will be another ballot measure in the next year or two to authorize the city to sell bonds and take over PG&E’s local distribution system. The evidence is clear: public power is cheaper, public power is more environmentally sound (remember — for all its green hype, PG&E still runs a nuclear power plant), and public power is San Francisco’s legal mandate. Just about everyone in City Hall claims to be a public power supporter these days.

But in the meantime, the supervisors need to start looking at immediate alternatives that don’t involve an expensive ballot battle. There may well be ways to bring public power to San Francisco without having to confront a $10 million (or $20 million or $30 million) PG&E political blitzkrieg.

The most obvious approach is to continue the small steps the city is currently taking and leverage them into a much bigger program. There is, of course, community choice aggregation, which should continue to move forward. Beyond that, San Francisco just won the right to provide electricity at the Hunters Point Shipyard Redevelopment Project; the city is trying to do the same for Treasure Island. Why not start with the shipyard and build a public power system outward, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood?

PG&E has no legal right to be the exclusive provider of retail power in the city. There’s no legal reason why San Francisco can’t start running wires out of the shipyard — underground, safely, with modern equipment — buy up a bunch of meters, and start offering the residents of Bayview–Hunters Point cheap electricity. The revenue from the first, say, 50-square-block project could fund the next one. The seed money could come as a loan from the General Fund.

The first thing the city’s Public Utilities Commission needs to do is conduct a study of the cost of implementing public power on a small scale in one part of town — and the likely revenue it would bring in. A larger study should look at how the city could build its own distribution system (with state-of-the-art equipment) one step at a time over, say, five or 10 years.

At the same time, of course, while the city is running electric wires, it can run fiber-optic and (if necessary) coaxial lines, with the goal of creating a city-run broadband and cable TV service.

The ideal place to start discussing this is the Local Agency Formation Commission, which should hold hearings as soon as possible, prod the SFPUC to move — and fund the study if nobody else will.

In the meantime, the City Attorney’s Office should look into another (admittedly slightly unconventional) idea: could the Redevelopment Agency, which already has the authority to issue bonds, simply seize all of PG&E’s wires, poles, and meters for a public power system?

We don’t trust the Redevelopment Agency, and it’s risky to even raise this idea. But there’s a larger issue here: in many cities and counties the council or board of supervisors runs the Redevelopment Agency. We’ve long thought that the district-elected board would be more accountable and better suited to handle the immense (and dangerous) power of this agency than a commission appointed by the mayor.

Think about it: The supervisors take over redevelopment. Redevelopment buys out PG&E’s system. A new city agency, under the supervisors, starts selling retail power at cheap rates citywide and builds new solar, wind, and tidal facilities to make San Francisco a true national model of environmentally sound energy policy.

If it’s legal — and the city attorney needs to issue an opinion on that — all it would take is political will. *

Make housing, not war!

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OPINION As President George W. Bush requests more money to fight the war overseas, a stealth war is being fought here on domestic soil: the war on housing for the poor. Since the Bush administration took power, the public housing program has suffered $1 billion in cutbacks.

As a result, conditions have rapidly deteriorated in public housing developments throughout the country. Maintenance, security, and services have been slashed annually as budgets are drained with each appropriations bill. A climate of violence, fear, and despair has taken hold in the projects, where years of deferred maintenance, toxic and unsanitary conditions, and government neglect are simmering to a boiling point.

As we fought terror abroad, the Republican-led Congress created a breeding ground for terror here at home. Just ask the desperate, homeless families who refuse offers to move to the city’s public housing developments for fear of their lives. Or ask the mothers of children who have been shot at in their front yards while attempting to escape the leaking sewage and toxic mold in their homes.

Yet rather than fight this terror in our own backyards, lawmakers have attacked the very programs that can provide a solution. Job training, education programs, and social services have all been casualties of the war on public housing. Agencies have been forced to make cuts in security and maintenance staff every year. In the past five years alone, the San Francisco Housing Authority has lost 250 employees, a 50 percent cut.

While military spending has continued to rise, the offensive against housing has also escalated. A full $600 million was cut from the 2006 public housing budget, funding housing authorities at only 85 percent of overall need. Layoffs and cutbacks occurred throughout the country as cities began planning for desperate measures such as disposing of properties, raising tenant fees, and increasing response time for repairs. In San Francisco, 26 housing authority staff lost their union jobs last year. As a result, vulnerable senior and disabled residents in high-crime neighborhoods saw their security services eliminated.

Last year was devastating for public housing residents, and the battle is far from over. The generals of the war on housing are out for blood, and it appears that they will not stop until the last vestiges of federally funded, low-income housing are destroyed. This was made abundantly clear recently when the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that in 2007 housing authorities will be funded at only 76 percent of the actual need. By proposing a budget that is $1 billion short, President Bush has raised the stakes in the fight to preserve our precious remaining federal housing for the poor.

Congress has a chance to increase funding when it passes a spending bill next month. Without an increase, San Francisco will face a $3.5 million shortfall. Our powerful new leadership must take a stand against these unconscionable cuts, which could starve local housing agencies to death.

The only way to avoid increased homelessness; displacement of poor families; loss of union jobs; heightened violence; and turn-of-the-century, tenementlike living conditions for San Francisco’s poorest residents is for our representatives to insist on an increase in funding. Tell Congress to fight the war at home and not the one overseas by sending a letter at www.local-impact.org. *

Sara Shortt

Sara Shortt is the director of subsidized housing programs for the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.

Why insurers love the new health plan

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OPINION If you’re one of the 6.5 million Californians without health coverage, get ready to find a lot of hands in your pocket.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s much-trumpeted health plan is the most ambitious overhaul of the state’s health care system since … well, since SB 840, the far simpler, more universal, more comprehensive, single-payer health plan sponsored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, which the governor vetoed last September.

Unlike a single-payer system, with one entity that pays for everything using existing private hospitals and doctors and offers one standard of quality care for all, the Schwarzenegger plan is a mishmash likely to saddle more Californians with unaffordable, inferior coverage while opening a new gilded age for insurers and banks.

Once the legislature prunes away the proposed new tax on employers, hospitals, and doctors (which is likely) and eliminates the laudable pledge to assure coverage for the undocumented, the governor’s plan is apt to end up stripped down to its worst elements — a mandate that all individuals have to buy health insurance and the dubious promotion of a Bush administration scheme, health savings accounts.

Individual mandates turn the whole purpose of health care on its head — they criminalize people, rather than helping them. If you don’t sign up for a plan, you could become ineligible to get a job and enroll your child in school or face tax penalties.

With no controls on skyrocketing premiums, comprehensive plans will be out of reach for millions of Californians. Most could end up with junk insurance, with up to $10,000 in out-of-pocket payments for any medical care, meaning the average person will likely pay for all his or her medical expenses on top of the premiums. And many may forgo any medical care, risking worse health problems and greater health costs down the road.

Even lower-income people who qualify for the state subsidy could end up paying out 6 percent of their income. Presumably, they’ll just cut back on food or rent — at the same time that the governor has announced plans for welfare cuts.

Then there’s the $2 billion now used for indigent care at mostly public hospitals that will be siphoned off into the pool for buying insurance, ravaging our public health social safety net.

But the insurance companies will suddenly get millions of new customers, who will be buying insurance at gunpoint. No wonder Blue Shield CEO Bruce Bodaken says of the plan, "There’s a lot to like."

If nothing else, the Schwarzenegger plan — and the lite versions proposed by the Democratic leaders of the Senate and Assembly — should be a call to action for the rest of us to press harder than ever for the enactment of the soon-to-be-reintroduced single-payer Kuehl bill. *

Zenei Cortez

Zenei Cortez, RN, is the vice president of the California Nurses Association.

Nurturing the drive

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› culture@sfbg.com

Sheri Wetherby was working at a casino in Tahoe when she decided to become a computer programmer. So she left Tahoe and came to the Bay Area to study. A few years later, she had a job at Microsoft.

Wetherby had hardly a lick of programming background before she got her MA in computer science at Mills College. Her undergraduate degree was in German and French. She’d taken some graduate courses at the University of New Hampshire, including a computer science course that inspired her to envision a second career in the field. But how, she wondered, could she find a program that would allow her to master computers, coming from a liberal arts background?

A friend told her about New Horizons, a reentry program at Mills that teaches computer programming to students with nontechnical backgrounds. "I found the small classes and individual attention helped me get a grounding" in computer science, she says, "before moving on to more advanced topics."

The New Horizons program is specially designed for grad students who don’t have an undergraduate degree in computer science. It consists of two undergraduate-level computer science classes per semester for students who also hold down jobs and family responsibilities. Students can choose to finish the New Horizons program with a certificate but most go on to pursue a master’s degree from the Interdisciplinary Computer Science program at Mills. The ICS program aims to build bridges between computer science and computer users and offers graduate coursework as well as a master’s thesis track.

Some New Horizons students find computer science too difficult or different than they expected, "but the majority are successful and happy," Mills computer science associate professor Ellen Spertus says. She recommends students with no CS experience try taking some community college courses in the subject first — to see if their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, in programming terms.

At a community college, students can take the prerequisite math and CS classes at a fraction of the cost before going to Mills, says Constance Conner, an instructor in the Computer Science Department at City College of San Francisco who studied in the ICS program at Mills. Community college "is also a good place to start if a student is not 100 percent sure" about a CS degree, she says. Then, if students’ appetites are still whet, the Mills program will guide them along a new career path.

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE


Computer science is seen by many hopefuls as a lucrative but daunting field. In the public’s mind successful programmers are young, mostly male wizards who almost cosmically penetrate thickets of computer languages and database engineering to manifest unfathomable products. Spertus finds that many students going into her program suffer from low self-esteem — especially female students. She says they’ll be earning A’s in the program’s classes but will be convinced they’re not doing well and somehow "don’t belong." Her teaching style, simultaneously rigorous and nurturing, helps change their opinion, she hopes.

Introductory CS classes at most universities "act like weeder courses," scaring away all but the most confident students, Spertus says. Typically, up to half the students fail or drop out of introductory CS classes at other institutions. Spertus says this phenomenon hits women hardest because they may have less computer experience as well as less confidence.

Also, some students apologize for not having undergrad degrees in CS. Spertus always tells them computer scientists with a narrow focus are "a dime a dozen." But people like them, who know CS along with another field, are unique.

RIGHTING THE BALANCE


Erica Rios has been an activist since she was a teenager but became frustrated that activists were still using the same methods of organizing Martin Luther King Jr. employed back in the ’60s. She had a political science degree and a minor in Chicano studies from UC Davis. As a labor activist for small community nonprofits, she had to teach herself to use computers because nobody else knew how. She saw how technology was changing her native San Jose. She wanted to learn "how tech could be used to engage people in the issues that impact them but they don’t necessarily have a direct voice on."

Though Mills is a women’s undergrad college, it accepts male graduate students. Men typically make up roughly a third of the participants in the ICS program, but the majority-female environment creates a unique classroom culture. The different gender balance was helpful to Rios because she had a nine-month-old child when she started the program. She felt more comfortable bringing her daughter to her Java class than she would have in a male-dominated classroom — and less apt to fall behind on coursework.

The few men enrolled during Rios’s time brought a balance to the learning environment, she believes, while showing her that she need not feel uncomfortable as a woman in the computer science field. "There were two other men in class with me and about seven going through the whole program," says Barton Friedland, one of the men who just completed the ICS program. For him, it felt very different to study "with a preponderance of women, but that’s something you can learn from."

Friedland took some classes at Stanford before going to Mills. "There seemed to be this attitude where if you asked questions in class, people looked at you funny." If students admitted they didn’t know something, they would lose status, and they were supposed to figure out things on your own. Despite Stanford’s reputation as one of the top schools in the country, Friedland found Mills’s curriculum more thorough.

The smaller class sizes at Mills were also helpful, Rios says. At UC Davis the average class size is 300 in lower-level courses and 75 to 100 in upper-level classes; a class size of 12 to 15 students is more conducive to learning, she found.

It "felt like everyone belonged there and [was] equally capable of learning. I didn’t always feel that in larger classes."

The Mills professors "don’t throw too much jargon at you, making you feel like you’re not smart enough," Rios adds. Instead, the professors step back to observe how students approach problems, then help them learn to problem solve from a more hard-science perspective. Rios now works as an Internet project manager at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, using her activism background to "explore ways in which we can use technology to advance women."

"I felt comfortable speaking in class and asking questions, where in a typical classroom I would not," says former ICS student Lisa Cowan, who has a BA in anthropology and is now pursuing a computer science PhD at UC San Diego. "The professors taught class in a highly interactive way, asking questions and encouraging discussion, helping us solve problems together, making sure all students thoroughly understood the material being covered."

PAVING THE WAY


The ICS program at Mills isn’t the first reentry program of its kind in the Bay Area. UC Berkeley opened a program in 1983 as a pathway to graduate study in computer science for women and minority students who were underrepresented in Berkeley’s crowded and competitive program. Two female Berkeley graduates, Paula Hawthorn and Barbara Simons, noticed in 1982 that the number of female graduate students entering the CS program was actually decreasing over time as the requirements became more geared toward people who had pursued a standard math or engineering track.

The Computer Science Reentry Program at Berkeley gave 159 students a concentrated education in upper-level computer science classes. Ten of those students have gone on to get PhDs. But the program had to fold in 1998 when California passed Proposition 209, which prohibited any state-funded programs that discriminate based on gender and ethnicity.

MULTIPLE PATHS


The interdisciplinary part of the Mills College ICS program’s name means students combine computer science with another area of study to produce their master’s theses. "It gives you a really broad brush," says Wetherby, the former casino worker. When a student comes to Spertus with a thesis idea, she always asks how it uses what the student has learned about computer science. But she also asks why the thesis is something that she, a narrowly trained computer scientist, couldn’t do. She finds the interdisciplinary approach helps students make more of a contribution and also realize they can do things that Spertus, who has a PhD from MIT, can’t.

While still at Mills, Wetherby had internships at IBM and Apple Research. When she was job hunting after the program, someone from Microsoft called her because her studies had combined computer science and education. Microsoft needed someone who could write educational programs to teach programmers about Microsoft tools.

Another Mills student, Liz Quigg, had already been an applications programmer at science labs before joining the ICS program. She’d crunched high-energy physics and moon-walk data. But the program’s interdisciplinary focus also helped her get into writing educational software. Afterward, she was able to help create educational programs for the science center at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

"It was very useful because my job now is very interdisciplinary," Quigg says. "I work with scientists, teachers, and students. I cross different worlds." *

The deadline to apply for the New Horizons–ICS program this term is Feb. 1. You can find information and application forms online at www.mills.edu/admission/graduate.

Careers and Ed: Nurturing the drive

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› culture@sfbg.com

Sheri Wetherby was working at a casino in Tahoe when she decided to become a computer programmer. So she left Tahoe and came to the Bay Area to study. A few years later, she had a job at Microsoft.

Wetherby had hardly a lick of programming background before she got her MA in computer science at Mills College. Her undergraduate degree was in German and French. She’d taken some graduate courses at the University of New Hampshire, including a computer science course that inspired her to envision a second career in the field. But how, she wondered, could she find a program that would allow her to master computers, coming from a liberal arts background?

A friend told her about New Horizons, a reentry program at Mills that teaches computer programming to students with nontechnical backgrounds. "I found the small classes and individual attention helped me get a grounding" in computer science, she says, "before moving on to more advanced topics."

The New Horizons program is specially designed for grad students who don’t have an undergraduate degree in computer science. It consists of two undergraduate-level computer science classes per semester for students who also hold down jobs and family responsibilities. Students can choose to finish the New Horizons program with a certificate but most go on to pursue a master’s degree from the Interdisciplinary Computer Science program at Mills. The ICS program aims to build bridges between computer science and computer users and offers graduate coursework as well as a master’s thesis track.

Some New Horizons students find computer science too difficult or different than they expected, "but the majority are successful and happy," Mills computer science associate professor Ellen Spertus says. She recommends students with no CS experience try taking some community college courses in the subject first — to see if their eyes are bigger than their stomachs, in programming terms.

At a community college, students can take the prerequisite math and CS classes at a fraction of the cost before going to Mills, says Constance Conner, an instructor in the Computer Science Department at City College of San Francisco who studied in the ICS program at Mills. Community college "is also a good place to start if a student is not 100 percent sure" about a CS degree, she says. Then, if students’ appetites are still whet, the Mills program will guide them along a new career path.

CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE


Computer science is seen by many hopefuls as a lucrative but daunting field. In the public’s mind successful programmers are young, mostly male wizards who almost cosmically penetrate thickets of computer languages and database engineering to manifest unfathomable products. Spertus finds that many students going into her program suffer from low self-esteem — especially female students. She says they’ll be earning A’s in the program’s classes but will be convinced they’re not doing well and somehow "don’t belong." Her teaching style, simultaneously rigorous and nurturing, helps change their opinion, she hopes.

Introductory CS classes at most universities "act like weeder courses," scaring away all but the most confident students, Spertus says. Typically, up to half the students fail or drop out of introductory CS classes at other institutions. Spertus says this phenomenon hits women hardest because they may have less computer experience as well as less confidence.

Also, some students apologize for not having undergrad degrees in CS. Spertus always tells them computer scientists with a narrow focus are "a dime a dozen." But people like them, who know CS along with another field, are unique.

RIGHTING THE BALANCE


Erica Rios has been an activist since she was a teenager but became frustrated that activists were still using the same methods of organizing Martin Luther King Jr. employed back in the ’60s. She had a political science degree and a minor in Chicano studies from UC Davis. As a labor activist for small community nonprofits, she had to teach herself to use computers because nobody else knew how. She saw how technology was changing her native San Jose. She wanted to learn "how tech could be used to engage people in the issues that impact them but they don’t necessarily have a direct voice on."

Though Mills is a women’s undergrad college, it accepts male graduate students. Men typically make up roughly a third of the participants in the ICS program, but the majority-female environment creates a unique classroom culture. The different gender balance was helpful to Rios because she had a nine-month-old child when she started the program. She felt more comfortable bringing her daughter to her Java class than she would have in a male-dominated classroom — and less apt to fall behind on coursework.

The few men enrolled during Rios’s time brought a balance to the learning environment, she believes, while showing her that she need not feel uncomfortable as a woman in the computer science field. "There were two other men in class with me and about seven going through the whole program," says Barton Friedland, one of the men who just completed the ICS program. For him, it felt very different to study "with a preponderance of women, but that’s something you can learn from."

Friedland took some classes at Stanford before going to Mills. "There seemed to be this attitude where if you asked questions in class, people looked at you funny." If students admitted they didn’t know something, they would lose status, and they were supposed to figure out things on your own. Despite Stanford’s reputation as one of the top schools in the country, Friedland found Mills’s curriculum more thorough.

The smaller class sizes at Mills were also helpful, Rios says. At UC Davis the average class size is 300 in lower-level courses and 75 to 100 in upper-level classes; a class size of 12 to 15 students is more conducive to learning, she found.

It "felt like everyone belonged there and [was] equally capable of learning. I didn’t always feel that in larger classes."

The Mills professors "don’t throw too much jargon at you, making you feel like you’re not smart enough," Rios adds. Instead, the professors step back to observe how students approach problems, then help them learn to problem solve from a more hard-science perspective. Rios now works as an Internet project manager at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, using her activism background to "explore ways in which we can use technology to advance women."

"I felt comfortable speaking in class and asking questions, where in a typical classroom I would not," says former ICS student Lisa Cowan, who has a BA in anthropology and is now pursuing a computer science PhD at UC San Diego. "The professors taught class in a highly interactive way, asking questions and encouraging discussion, helping us solve problems together, making sure all students thoroughly understood the material being covered."

PAVING THE WAY


The ICS program at Mills isn’t the first reentry program of its kind in the Bay Area. UC Berkeley opened a program in 1983 as a pathway to graduate study in computer science for women and minority students who were underrepresented in Berkeley’s crowded and competitive program. Two female Berkeley graduates, Paula Hawthorn and Barbara Simons, noticed in 1982 that the number of female graduate students entering the CS program was actually decreasing over time as the requirements became more geared toward people who had pursued a standard math or engineering track.

The Computer Science Reentry Program at Berkeley gave 159 students a concentrated education in upper-level computer science classes. Ten of those students have gone on to get PhDs. But the program had to fold in 1998 when California passed Proposition 209, which prohibited any state-funded programs that discriminate based on gender and ethnicity.

MULTIPLE PATHS


The interdisciplinary part of the Mills College ICS program’s name means students combine computer science with another area of study to produce their master’s theses. "It gives you a really broad brush," says Wetherby, the former casino worker. When a student comes to Spertus with a thesis idea, she always asks how it uses what the student has learned about computer science. But she also asks why the thesis is something that she, a narrowly trained computer scientist, couldn’t do. She finds the interdisciplinary approach helps students make more of a contribution and also realize they can do things that Spertus, who has a PhD from MIT, can’t.

While still at Mills, Wetherby had internships at IBM and Apple Research. When she was job hunting after the program, someone from Microsoft called her because her studies had combined computer science and education. Microsoft needed someone who could write educational programs to teach programmers about Microsoft tools.

Another Mills student, Liz Quigg, had already been an applications programmer at science labs before joining the ICS program. She’d crunched high-energy physics and moon-walk data. But the program’s interdisciplinary focus also helped her get into writing educational software. Afterward, she was able to help create educational programs for the science center at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

"It was very useful because my job now is very interdisciplinary," Quigg says. "I work with scientists, teachers, and students. I cross different worlds." *

The deadline to apply for the New Horizons–ICS program this term is Feb. 1. You can find information and application forms online at www.mills.edu/admission/graduate.

Some questions for the mayor

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EDITORIAL Gavin Newsom doesn’t want to take direct questions from the supervisors. He rarely gets asked tough questions from the press and almost never from the public. Instead, as Steven T. Jones and Sarah Phelan report ("Mayor Chicken," page 13), all of his appearances are scripted, and he does a mighty job of ducking the hard questions.

But if he is indeed going to be holding a series of town hall meetings over the next few months, there’s a chance for the voters to pin him down. Here are a few things you might want to ask the mayor:

• Your own staff admits that the universal health care plan works only if employers are required to provide health benefits. Yet the Golden Gate Restaurant Association — your political ally — has sued to block this. Do you support the employer mandate? Will you call on the GGRA to drop the suit? Will you decline political contributions from the members of a group that is suing the city with the aim of destroying one of your key initiatives? Where will money come from if the suit succeeds?

• When you ignored the will of the voters and decided to hold these town hall meetings instead of appearing before the supervisors, you said the supes were invited to attend. But you knew it would be illegal for them to participate under the Brown Act without some expensive preparations. Why did you do that?

• Why isn’t your full appointments calendar posted on the Web? The only information the public gets is a listing of your public events. Where is the rest of the calendar?

• You say you support public power, but the city’s efforts are so far limited to Treasure Island and Hunters Point. If there were a ballot measure this fall calling for the city to buy out Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s system and set up a full-scale public power effort — similar to Sup. Tom Ammiano’s measure in 2000 — would you pledge to endorse it?

• The city’s general plan states that 64 percent of all new housing should be available for below-market rates. Sup. Sophie Maxwell has a proposal to make that city law. Do you support her legislation? If not, how will the city meet its affordable housing needs?

• The Planning Department acknowledges that the level of new market-rate housing being discussed for the eastern neighborhoods would inevitably destroy thousands of blue-collar jobs. Is that an acceptable trade-off?

• Broadband Internet service is arguably the most important public infrastructure American cities will build in the next 50 years. Why are you prepared to turn ours over to private industry? Would it not be worth $10 million — the estimated cost put out by Google and EarthLink — to build our own system?

• You asked for the City Attorney’s Office opinion that invalidated the successful referendum drive on the Bayview–Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan. Why aren’t you willing to submit this far-reaching plan to a vote? And if you believe in the plan’s community oversight provisions and deference to the Redevelopment Agency, why did you unilaterally offer the 49ers a new stadium at the old shipyard, which is within the plan’s area?

• Why haven’t you followed up on the promise you made a year ago, after expressing outrage over the racist and homophobic videos made by police officers, to form a commission charged with "changing the culture" of the Police Department? And after your office blocked a citizen-based community policing plan, why didn’t you offer some alternative? Are you content with the way the department is being run?

• Eight months ago, after vetoing a six-month trial period for closing JFK Drive to cars on Saturdays, you promised to study Sunday closures for six months and offer a compromise plan for Saturday closures. When can we expect that proposal, and will you now support Saturday closures?

Honestly: what’s so scary about answering questions from the supervisors?

We await his honor’s response. *

Tears and Happyness

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OPINION I’m not sure why the new movie The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith and his son, Jaden Smith, based on the life of previously homeless Chris Gardner’s rise to millionaire, is so hard to write about. I am rarely at a loss for words, especially about poverty, homelessness, and racism. Perhaps it’s because this movie made me so sad that even as I try for the 40th time to write this, my eyes well up with broken tears. Not tears for the amazing Horatio Alger, old-school, pre–New Deal, up-by-the-bootstraps, 1930s-esque, blind-to-flagrant-racism-and-classism story.

No, instead my tears are deep and blood-filled for myself and my mama, homeless in a broken-down car for years upon years on the bitter cold streets of Oakland; for fellow poverty scholars and formerly homeless welfare queens and Poor Magazine staff members; for Jewnbug and her mama, Vivien and Jasmine Hain, Laurie McElroy and her son, and all the other unseen children, adults, and elders who subsist homeless in America, barely holding on through countless overnight stays in the sidewalk hotel. Tears for the fact that homelessness can happen with the regularity that it does, that every year Sister Bernie Galvin from Witness for Homeless People mourns the loss of hundreds more people who have died on the streets of San Francisco, one of the richest cities in the world.

Or perhaps they are only tears for Gardner, a poor man of African descent who was so driven to "make it" in this capitalist reality that he didn’t see the tragic paradox of his own situation — his continual denial of the rampant racism in his Dean Witter internship. Tears for a man who came so close to not making it in that palace of oppression, as he and his son slept on the floor of a bus station bathroom.

Or maybe they’re just tears for the myth of the bootstraps and how there is no place for that lie in the 21st century as more and more people locally and globally hover on the dangerous precipice of homelessness, wrongly believing it’s just about working hard enough and anyone can achieve what they want.

Or maybe they’re tears of admiration — for an amazing and dedicated father who no matter what was there for his son, like so many of us poor mamas and papas.

Or maybe the tears are because Gardner, when asked on a radio show if he believed that there was an essential problem with him and his son being homeless in one of the richest cities in the world, replied with a resounding no: it was just about working harder, and anyone can achieve anything they set out to do.

Or maybe they are in fact tears for my son, who watched his mama cry from depression and the reality that no matter how hard you pull up your threadbare bootstraps and pound the pavement and pinch pennies and beg your landlord and stand in food lines and look for jobs and affordable child care, you still won’t make it. *

Tiny

Tiny, also known as Lisa Gray-Garcia, is the author of the new book Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, published by City Lights Foundation, and the founder of Poor Magazine.

F stands for family …

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

It is not — finally — a good moment to be a social conservative, as the Republicans have finally failed enough on so many fronts that their failure is being acknowledged. Evidence increasingly suggests large segments of the population don’t really care that much about the terrifying threat of gay marriage, don’t want to turn the clock way back on abortion rights, and prefer keeping church and state as they’re supposed to be: separate. Whatever happened to "family values"?

Maybe folks outside such crazy-liberal enclaves as our own have at last realized that the old mom–dad–2.5 children under one roof equation is an outdated ideal simply because so few people are living it anymore. (Statistics recently confirmed that two-parent households are now indeed in the minority nationally.)

If the movies generally reflect how the public wants to see itself, then 2006 suggested to a large extent that few viewers see the point of happy traditional-family portraiture, even as fantasy material. It used to be that conflict often arose when external circumstances yanked characters from their snug, supposedly normal domestic setup. Now things are usually unstable from the get-go: parents (if both are present) at each other’s throats, kids in alienated crisis, any contented people likely to be delusional (and probably well medicated).

Thus it shouldn’t have been such a surprise, maybe, that the year’s big sleeper was Little Miss Sunshine — a family road trip movie in which everybody who’s old enough to have an opinion loathes everyone else, mostly for good reason. Saddling each relationship with maximum dysfunction, winking at attempted suicide and the appearance of pederasty, the smugly clever script allowed audiences to feel superior to the hapless Hoover clan even as they bought into caring about them. (I didn’t dislike the movie, but it seemed more cynically manipulative than was acknowledged.) Maybe medium-black comedy is the new warm-and-fuzzy comedy for jaded urbanites. If so, it was a surprise that the film adaptation of Augusten Burroughs’s memoir Running with Scissors didn’t do better, since it offered more spectacular bad parenting, growing pains appallingly handled, mockery of basic room and board issues, terrible sexual initiations — and was based on a purportedly true story.

Less-farcical treatment of multihousehold toxicity drives the excellent Little Children, which not only sports the year’s strongest treatment of a pederast (apart from the documentary Deliver Us from Evil) but sees nearly every parent-child and spousal relationship in it unravel in a humid miasma of discontent. Ditto the little-seen but admirable 12 and Holding, whose juvenile protagonists act out in all the wrong ways after one of their friends is accidentally killed. Still, they’re in better mental health than the adults supposedly minding them. Then there are those House of Windsor inbreds who stick together through The Queen. Not that they have any alternatives: in contrast to normal folk, they seem as odd, unnerving, and extinction-bound as a herd of dodoes.

Just about the only nuclear family units onscreen in 2006 were in full-on peril: a mutant clan laying siege to the suburban one (whose members only stop arguing once they start getting killed) in The Hills Have Eyes; Gael García Bernal as a malicious usurper avenging himself on deadbeat dad William Hurt’s new, improved family in The King; Judi Dench acting as a flying wedge to drive apart school colleague Cate Blanchett’s home in Notes on a Scandal; Babel seeing danger everywhere for reckless children and the grown-ups who fail to protect them. Even without kids to worry about, the couples in antiromantic comedy The Break-Up, current upscale drama The Painted Veil, and French marital fry-up Gabrielle can hardly get away from each other fast enough.

What little sentimentality there was to be found in these areas came in suspect packages. Aaron Eckhart’s divorced tobacco industry public relations whiz in Thank You for Smoking may be a slimebag and a tool (and know it), but hey, he still wants his kid to look up to him. It’s the one plot point this movie doesn’t treat with total sarcasm — which only makes the ersatz heartwarmingness queasier. Fairly straight-up family values could be found in movies as diverse as World Trade Center, Apocalypto, The Fountain, and Rocky Balboa — but the one thing uniting those titles is that in important ways they’re all psychologically bogus.

Things look a lot better in the realm of alternative family setups, which this year encompassed such genuinely adventuresome movies as Quinceañera and Shortbus. In less politically correct realms, substitute dads were where you found them — in the mob boss (The Departed), crackhead teacher (Half Nelson), or suicidal gay uncle (Little Miss Sunshine) — but despite their flaws, they were still better than the real, biological item. On the other hand, sometimes the replacement parent is bad enough to make a child’s mind disappear into CGI fantasyland (see Pan’s Labyrinth). As far as the ’60s and ’70s went, institutionalized alternative families don’t look so hot in retrospect: check out the documentaries Commune and Finding Sean. Not to mention the one about a little place called Jonestown.

Children are the future, natch, and no movie made that future look scarier than Jesus Camp — whose little Christian soldiers are being homeschooled into a rigidity of science denial, social intolerance, and street-hassling recruitment. It was also the film, fictive or documentary, that saw narrow-gauge family values in their most aggressive practice. When and if these kids start questioning their parents’ judgment, we may see nuclear family meltdowns of hitherto unknown toxicity. Or worse, if they don’t: god help the rest of us when these know-nothings with a programmed agenda reach voting age. *

DENNIS HARVEY’S TOP 10 THEATRICAL RELEASES

(1) Quinceañera (Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, US)

(2) Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, US)

(3) Little Children (Todd Field, US)

(4) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, US)

(5) The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK/France/Italy)

(6) Ondskan (Evil) (Mikael Hafström, Sweden)

(7) El Cielo Dividido (Broken Sky) (Julián Hernández, Mexico)

(8) United 93 (Paul Greengrass, US/UK/France)

(9) The Puffy Chair (Jay Duplass, US)

(10) Evil Aliens (Jake West, UK)

City College’s latest abomination

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OPINION Battles to preserve the unique character of San Francisco’s neighborhoods are nothing new. Indeed, most of the current crop of supervisors were elected in large part as a reaction to east-side development battles that raged during the first dot-com boom a half dozen years ago.
In the northeast corner of San Francisco, I have long been part of the struggle to preserve the character of some of the city’s oldest, most historic neighborhoods against the onslaught of incompatible development.
Decades ago, as downtown was expanding northward, gobbling up thriving, diverse communities and destroying dozens of historic buildings, community activists won a monumental zoning battle by drawing a bright line down Washington Street. On one side is the massive Downtown Business District, where the Transamerica Pyramid sits. On the other side are the human-scale neighborhoods of Chinatown, North Beach, and Jackson Square, San Francisco’s first historic district.
We have fought hard to maintain this barrier against the Manhattanization of our neighborhoods. In the late 1990s I joined with neighbors to successfully prevent the destruction of the landmark Colombo Building at the gateway from downtown into these historic neighborhoods. So when more than 200 neighbors showed up at a recent public meeting to protest the threat of yet another high-rise encroachment, I certainly took notice. Who was it this time? Not a private developer but our very own City College is now proposing a 17-story, 238-foot glass monstrosity at the corner of Kearny and Washington streets. And the college is arguing that, as a state agency, it can ignore San Francisco planning and zoning codes.
As the city’s Chinatown Area Plan states, the proposed site, which is located diagonally opposite Portsmouth Square, one of the city’s most heavily used parks, is not an appropriate setting for tall buildings. Seventy-five percent of the structures in Chinatown are three stories or less in height. The permitted height of buildings at this site is 65 feet. In addition, the proposed building would overshadow Portsmouth Square and likely condemn it to significant shading.
While I support a new campus for the Chinatown–<\d>North Beach area, City College administrators have failed to reach out to the community — and now they appear to be jamming through their latest proposal, ignoring objections from their neighbors and simultaneously committing millions of dollars of taxpayer funds to the project well before the completion of an Environmental Impact Report (EIR).
Plans for the site were hurriedly submitted for environmental review in September without prior community input or consideration of alternatives such as a combination of smaller buildings or a location of adjunct campuses in underserved areas of the city — the Richmond, the Sunset, or Visitacion Valley. Moreover, the college’s construction bureaucracy apparently tried to stifle public comment by providing little notice and scheduling the only environmental scoping hearing immediately after Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, just a week after that meeting the college’s Board of Trustees approved a $122 million budget for the project, which can only be interpreted as a clear sign that they have already made their decision regardless of what impacts are identified in the EIR. And perhaps, most ominously, administrators may be pushing to make the project a fait accompli before newly elected Sierra Club leader John Rizzo is inaugurated.
It’s time for City College to listen to its neighbors and go back to the drawing board.

Aaron Peskin is president of the Board of Supervisors.

Is the USA the Center of the World?

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Some things don’t seem to change. Five years after I wrote this column in the form of a news dispatch, it seems more relevant than ever:

WASHINGTON — There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the center of the world.

The White House had no immediate comment on the reports, which set off a firestorm of controversy in the nation’s capital.

Speaking on background, a high-ranking official at the State Department discounted the possibility that the reports would turn out to be true. “If that were the case,” he said, “don’t you think we would have known about it a long time ago?”

On Capitol Hill, leaders of both parties were quick to rebut the assertion. “That certain news organizations would run with such a poorly sourced and obviously slanted story tells us that the liberal media are still up to their old tricks, despite the current crisis,” a GOP lawmaker fumed. A prominent Democrat, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that classified briefings to congressional intelligence panels had disproved such claims long ago.

Scholars at leading think tanks were more restrained, and some said there was a certain amount of literal truth to the essence of the reports. But they pointed out that while it included factual accuracy in a narrow sense, the assertion was out of context and had the potential to damage national unity at a time when the United States could ill afford such a disruption.

The claim evidently originated with a piece by a Lebanese journalist that appeared several days ago in a Beirut magazine. It was then picked up by a pair of left-leaning daily newspapers in London. From there, the story quickly made its way across the Atlantic via the Internet.

“It just goes to show how much we need seasoned, professional gatekeepers to separate the journalistic wheat from the chaff before it gains wide attention,” remarked the managing editor of one news program at a major U.S. television network. “This is the kind of stuff you see on ideologically driven websites, but that hardly means it belongs on the evening news.” A newsmagazine editor agreed, calling the reports “the worst kind of geographical correctness.”

None of the major cable networks devoted much air time to reporting the story. At one outlet, a news executive’s memo told staffers that any reference to the controversy should include mention of the fact that the United States continues to lead the globe in scientific discoveries. At a more conservative network, anchors and correspondents reminded viewers that English is widely acknowledged to be the international language — and more people speak English in the U.S. than in any other nation.

While government officials voiced acute skepticism about the notion that the United States is not the center of the world, they declined to speak for attribution. “If lightning strikes and it turns out this report has real substance to it,” explained one policymaker at the State Department, “we could look very bad, at least in the short run. Until it can be clearly refuted, no one wants to take the chance of leading with their chin and ending up with a hefty serving of Egg McMuffin on their face.”

An informal survey of intellectuals with ties to influential magazines of political opinion, running the gamut from The Weekly Standard to The New Republic, indicated that the report was likely to gain little currency in Washington’s elite media forums.

“The problem with this kind of shoddy impersonation of reporting is that it’s hard to knock down because there are grains of truth,” one editor commented. “Sure, who doesn’t know that our country includes only small percentages of the planet’s land mass and population? But to draw an inference from those isolated facts that somehow the United States of America is not central to the world and its future — well, that carries postmodernism to a nonsensical extreme.”

Another well-known American journalist speculated that the controversy will soon pass: “Moral relativism remains a pernicious force in our society, but overall it holds less appeal than ever, even on American campuses. It’s not just that we’re the only superpower — we happen to also be the light onto the nations and the key to the world’s fate. People who can’t accept that reality are not going to have much credibility.”

_____________________________

Norman Solomon’s book “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is out in paperback. For information, go to www.WarMadeEasy.com

Impeachment is now the only option

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EDITORIAL We can all stop hoping and pretending now: the facts are in. No matter what anyone right, left, or center says, no matter what the truth is on the ground, no matter how clear and powerful public opinion has become, President George W. Bush isn’t going to change anything about the war in Iraq.
That’s what we saw from the president’s press conference with British prime minister Tony Blair on Dec. 7 and from his statements since. He’s not going to start withdrawing troops, and he’s not going to negotiate with other regional powers.
The Iraq Study Group report has its flaws. It talks about diplomatic discussions with Iran and Syria, but it stops short of describing the real reason the United States is bogged down in the Middle East (the lack of a coherent energy policy that doesn’t rely on foreign oil). It suggests that the United States should leave the job of rebuilding Iraq to Iraqis but fails to state that the country responsible for all the problems should play a role in paying for its solutions. And it would leave thousands of US soldiers in Iraq as advisers for the long term, putting them in serious jeopardy.
Still, it’s at least a dose of badly needed reality. The report acknowledges that the Bush administration’s current policies have made an awful mess of Iraq, that the situation is deteriorating, and that continuing the current path isn’t an acceptable option. And it recommends that all combat forces leave Iraq by 2008.
That such a broad-based, bipartisan panel would reach that conclusion unanimously isn’t really that much of a surprise. Everyone with any sense in Washington and around the world these days agrees that the United States needs to set a timetable for withdrawal. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist who initially supported the war and has long argued that some good could still come out of it, wrote Dec. 8 that the group’s recommendations “will only have a chance of being effective if we go one notch further and set a fixed date — now — for Americans to leave Iraq.” Even conservative syndicated columnist George Will noted the same day that “the deterioration is beyond much remediation.”
As long as the United States retains combat troops in Iraq, they will be the target of sectarian violence and the focus of that war. When they leave, the Iraqis will have no obvious villain, and there might be an actual hope for a long-term resolution.
The notion of an all-out Kurd versus Shiite versus Sunni civil war isn’t going to make anyone in Damascus or Tehran happy, since those two governments will be caught in the middle. And a clear statement from the United States that American troops will be leaving on a specific date not too far in the future is, the majority of experts agree, the only way to bring all the parties to the table for a serious and meaningful discussion.
And yet Bush and Dick Cheney remain alone, aloof, refusing to acknowledge that military victory in Iraq is utterly impossible and that the old mission of establishing a US client state in the Middle East will never be accomplished.
The death toll for US troops is approaching 3,000. The cost is running at $250 million a day. This simply can’t be allowed to continue. If Bush and Cheney refuse to begin a withdrawal program, then Congress needs to act decisively on two fronts.
The first is to inform the president that under the Constitution, Congress has the sole power to declare war and this Congress will no longer pay for Bush’s military adventure in Iraq.
But there’s a larger problem here. Bush and Cheney have lied to the American people, taken us into war on the basis of fraudulent information, and violated their oaths of office. Back in January we called on Congress to begin debating articles of impeachment; the GOP-controlled House wasn’t about to do that. But things are different now. The voters have made it very clear that they don’t like the president’s war, and the Democrats have a clear mandate for change.
Impeachment is serious business, but Bush has left us no alternative. We can’t simply allow the war to continue as it has been, year after bloody year, until Bush’s term expires.
The only thing holding up impeachment hearings is the word of the incoming speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who said during the campaign that option was “not on the table.” Well, it ought to be on the table now. Pelosi should publicly inform Democratic leaders in the House who support impeachment that she won’t block an impeachment effort. And her constituents in San Francisco need to keep the pressure on her to allow Congress to move forward on its most important responsibility in decades.
This isn’t going to be easy. Even the San Francisco Chronicle now acknowledges that Pelosi is governing like a moderate. It will take a reenergized peace movement and a huge new national mobilization to put pressure on her and every member of Congress. But the stakes are too high to wait. It’s time to start, today. SFBG

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