Police

Herrera moves to close down Heaven

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Text by Sarah Phelan

Funny as the title of this blog post may sound, it’s actually directly taken from a press release that the City Attorney’s office issued today, noting that Dennis Herrera has moved to shutter a North Beach strip club named Heaven at 1045 Kearny Street.

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According to Herrera’s press release, the club has continued to operate in defiance of repeated notices of violation, cease and desist orders, and police citations for prostitution, dating back more than a year.

Heaven was allegedly also implicated in a April 9 shooting, in which a witness claims that an alleged Heaven employee was the gunman who shot two doormen, Ian Heibel and Rodger Mac, at the Broadway Showgirls Nightclub in apparent retaliation for a physical altercation the previous week.

“Naming a business ‘Heaven’ doesn’t place it beyond earthly laws and regulations, but that appears to be exactly what operators of this illicit enterprise think,” Herrera stated.

Police declarations included with court filings detail a March 12 sting in which an undercover officer entered the club and was solicited for oral copulation and sexual intercourse.

“As the arrest team entered Heaven Mini Theater, with our stars visible on our outermost clothing, I saw [a Heaven employee] running down the hallways yelling, ‘police, police!’ [The employee] was also knocking on the closed room doors to notify everyone of our presence,” Sgt. K. Delaney stated, recalling how he immediately went to the room where the undercover officer had gone and saw another Heaven employee standing there in a thong and attempting to cover her naked breasts with her bra.”

While Herrera may be right in wanting to declare Heaven “a public nuisance” for operating in violation of state and local laws, and to try and close down the enterprise, the episode makes me wonder why, in a city that has led the way in attempting to legalize gay marriage, we, as a city, have not been able to figure out a way to legalize prostitution, which everyone knows is happening every single day in every big city in the world.

Meanwhile, to read more about behind the scenes doings in the sex industry, check out our coverage of the Mitchell Brothers’ family saga, here, here and here.

Behind the Mitchells’ door

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sarah@sfbg.com

When James Raphael Mitchell, 27, son of the late porn film director and strip club owner Jim Mitchell, was charged with murder, domestic violence, kidnapping, and child abduction and endangerment last week, my first reaction was to wonder if he suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder.

I had run into met James in October 2007, at which time he sported a military-style buzz cut and told me he was in the Marines. And now I was reading reports that he had shown up at the home of his one-time fiancée, Danielle Keller, 29, the mother of their one-year-old daughter, Samantha Rae, killed Keller with a metal baseball bat, and fled with Samantha. He then led police on a five-hour manhunt that ended in Citrus Heights.

I later encountered James at the O’Farrell Theater, the club his father Jim and uncle Artie opened 40 years ago. At the club, the brothers produced porn films, battled with former Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s vice squad, and entertained members of the city’s political elite before Jim shot Artie in 1991.

Jim’s attorneys described the killing as an "intervention gone awry," while Artie’s kids believed it was a wrongful death. In the end, Jim served less than three years of a six-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter at San Quentin. After his release, he continued his involvement with Cinema 7, the corporation the Mitchell brothers formed to oversee their porn empire, until he died of a heart attack in July 2007.

Shortly after Jim’s death, his eldest daughter, Meta, became the O’Farrell Theater’s general manager. In fall 2007, Christina Brigida, a childhood friend of Meta, contacted me to see if I’d be interested in "a column about the reality of what the sex industry is like for females (both strippers and non-strippers)" and "female managers in adult entertainment." She proposed that she and Meta write the article. "The notion that the O’Farrell Theater is run by old white men pimping out women for money with no regard as to their treatment and/or well-being is just flat out not true," Brigida wrote.

In her piece, Meta recalled: "Growing up in my family there was a distinct line between the boys and the girls. The boys got to go on special outings with my dad and uncle, while the girls were left at home. As I grew older, so did my resentment. I continued to hate being left out. I felt like it all had to do with my dad’s business. The boys could go inside, and I couldn’t. I grew to hate the theater for taking my dad away from me."

Meta went to school and got a job as a mortgage consultant in San Ramon until 2004, when she began to recognize the club "as something that had taken care of us through the years."

And that’s how I came to be drinking coffee one morning in the club’s upstairs room, talking to Meta, a petite woman with a black bob, brown eyes, knee-length leather boots, a tiny dog, and a massive lime-green handbag. It was then that I met her younger brother, James, who his friends call Rafe.

I was seated in front of a photo of Pope John Paul II greeting Fidel Castro in Cuba, and a painting called Night Manager. The conversation somehow turned to war, at which point Rafe turned and told me he was in the Marines.

Meta resumed our conversation, which included my asking about a class action suit the O’Farrell dancers had brought against the club and Meta’s talking about her innovations, which included theme nights and costumes. At that point, Rafe interrupted, observing that "guys get drunk and just want to have fun and don’t care about costumes."

Clearly there was tension between Meta and James. And clearly Meta wanted to control the content of any story about the club. Although she promised me an interview that Halloween and mentioned that she "might be in costume," I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t hear back.

When I read the news about James, I called former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, who is representing James and is a long-time friend of the Mitchell family. Hallinan had just returned from Mitchell’s arraignment in Marin County, where he is being held without bail.

"James feels terrible about what happened," Hallinan said. When asked about the possibility of James having PTSD from his time in the Marines, Hallinan said, "I don’t know if he’s been overseas or not."

I then got a hold of a copy of the permanent restraining order Keller had secured on July 7, five days before she was killed. From it, I discovered that James had not been deployed overseas. In fact, according to the allegations in the court order, he had abused Keller for almost two years, beginning a month after the couple met — claiming the abuse was his way to avoid Iraq.

The court filing also revealed that James brought his gun everywhere and usually kept it in his jeans until his siblings, including Meta, filed their own five-year restraining order after he pulled it out during a family business meeting at the O’Farrell Theater in November 2007 and "waved it around in a threatening manner."

Keller’s statement also charged that James has mood swings, used cocaine, had a meth addiction, and was arrested for domestic violence in February 2008 when Keller was four months pregnant.

The couple’s penultimate fight took place March 4 when Keller told him she was going to live with her mom. After that incident, James was arrested for vioutf8g his probation, and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris recommended putting James behind bars for three months. But 11 days before Keller’s killing, Superior Court Judge Mary Morgan sentenced him to two days and stayed the sentence.

Warren Hinckle, a veteran Bay Area journalist and long-time Mitchell family friend, observes that people can’t imagine what it was like to have grown up in this "battle-prone family."

"Sure, I knew Rafe, and obviously something very bad and weird happened," Hinckle told the Guardian. "People forget that the Mitchells spent a lot of the money that they made on First Amendment battles, and that they were on mob territory."

Keller’s attorney, Charlotte Huggins, said she wants to make sure there’s money set aside for Samantha. But that may be tricky because James was living on trust fund money. Following a 2008 settlement of the dancers’ class action suit against Cinema 7 — in which the corporation agreed to pay $2 million in legal fees and $1.45 million toward the dancers’ claims — Cinema 7 president Jeffrey Armstrong claimed in court filings that the corporation "is not able to pay the entire amount up front."

Instead, Mitchell matriarch Georgia Mae and John P. Morgan, co-trustees of the Jim Mitchell 1990 Family Trust, which holds two-thirds of Cinema 7’s shares, pledged stock certificates as security interest.

Jim Mitchell’s four adult children receive $3,000 a month from the trust. They have the right to withdraw 50 percent when they turn 30, and the remainder when they turn 35.

Court files show that Meta, who turned 30 last year, along with Justin and Jennifer Mitchell, are trying to wrest control of the trust from their grandmother, Georgia Mae, 85. Instead, they would like to appoint their mother and Jim’s ex-wife Mary Jane Whitty-Grimm as the successor trustee. A hearing is set for September.

A stripper who used to dance at the O’Farrell Theater under the stage name Simone Corday wrote the book 9 1/2 Years Behind the Green Door (Mill City Press, Inc. 2007), in which she recalls Artie Mitchell as her lover. Corday told the Guardian that when the Mitchell brothers shared a house in Moraga, Artie worried about Jim’s child-rearing techniques.

In Corday’s book, Artie is quoted saying, "You know how Jim has Rafe dressed as Rambo so much? Now they’re calling Rafe ‘the enforcer.’ If any of the kids use a swear word — even mine when they’re over there — Rafe is supposed to attack!"

Corday said she was shocked by Keller’s killing. "It’s been disturbing. What with his name being the same as Jim’s, and both being held in the Marin County Jail. It’s eerie."

Editor’s Notes

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

All the great sci-fi and comic book movies have some sort of larger social metaphor. Robocop, one of my all-time favorites, was really about the privatization of public resources. Our hero gets mangled in a firefight because Detroit turned its police department over to Omni Consumer Products Corp., which cut staffing to boost the bottom line and there’s no backup available.

So when I was editing this week’s cover package on the battle over health insurance, I couldn’t help thinking about The Incredibles. See, Mr. Incredible is this great superhero, but liability lawsuits force him to retire and he winds up as a claims clerk in an insurance company, where he sits around all day stamping "denied" on health insurance claims. Then he gets in trouble for quietly telling customers how they can appeal.

I’ve always imagined that real health insurance offices look exactly like that. People sit around all day and get paid to make sure that other people don’t get health care. And if they deny enough claims, they get a nice bonus. If they approve too many claims or help the poor customers appeal, they get fired.

The thing is, the bonus part is true. Many insurance companies pay their staff based on how much they have done to keep costs down — that is, to make sure expensive medical treatments are denied. I’ve been through this. The medical insurance won’t pay for the anesthesia my son needs for complicated oral surgery because the procedure happens in a dental office. The dental insurance won’t pay because the drugs are administered by an anesthesiologist, who is a doctor, not a dentist. Someone is smiling in both the medical and dental insurance offices; they just saved $1,000. Bonus on the way.

Sound familiar? I bet you’ve been through it too.

This is why the only way health insurance is going to get better is if the profit is taken out of it. And why it’s absolutely nuts that the insurance industry is still considered part of the solution.

The city budget didn’t come out well. The cops, the mayor’s press office, the mayor’s 311 call center, the places where there is still a lot of bloat, saw no real cuts. Public health and human services, which have already been cut to the bone, got hacked even more. And there is no concrete plan to even try to raise new revenue this fall.

There are some lessons here, and let me start with an obvious one. The final deal went down with two people — Sups. John Avalos and David Chiu, both new to the board — in the room with the mayor’s staff. Same thing in Sacramento — five people cut the deal. There’s got to be a better way. *

How to help Iran without meddling

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OPINION Two of us, Penn and Erlich, traveled to Iran in 2005 and interviewed numerous ordinary Iranians. People were very friendly toward us as Americans but very hostile to U.S. policy against their country. We visited Friday prayers where 10,000 people chanted, "Death to America." Afterward those same people invited us home for lunch.

That contradiction continues today as Iran goes through its most significant upheaval since the 1979 revolution. Iranians are rising up against an authoritarian system, but they don’t want U.S. intervention.

Many Iranians believe that they have experienced a coup d’état, in which the military and intelligence services have hijacked the presidential election. Through vote-buying and manipulation of the count, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad guaranteed himself another four years in office.

In June more than a million Iranians marched in the streets of major cities across the country. The spontaneous demonstrations included well-to-do supporters of opposition candidates, but also large numbers of workers, farmers, small-business people, and the devoutly religious. They were fed up with 30 years of a system that used Islam as an excuse for breaking union labor strikes, stripping women of their rights, and repressing a nation.

The Iranian government responded to these peaceful protests with savagery, killing dozens of people. Some human rights groups put the number at more than 100. The government admits arresting 2,500 people nationwide and continues to hold at least 500. Most are being held without charges or have simply disappeared.

The repression hasn’t killed the movement. On July 17, more than 10,000 people came to Friday prayers in support of the opposition. Instead of chanting "Death to America," they chanted "Death to the Dictator," a reference to supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Police attacked them with clubs and tear gas.

Meanwhile in Washington, some politicians tried to use the crisis for their own ends. Sen. John McCain criticized President Obama for not taking a stronger position against the Iranian government. It’s ironic to hear McCain and other conservatives proclaim their support for the people of Iran when a few months ago they wanted to bomb them.

That doesn’t exactly build credibility among Iranians.

President Obama faces tough choices on Iran. If he speaks out loudly against Ahmadinejad, he is accused of meddling in Iran’s internal affairs. If he says too little, then right-wingers in the U.S. accuse him of being soft on Ahmadinejad.

In reality, the U.S. has very little ability to impact what has become a massive, spontaneous movement for change. And it shouldn’t. The CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953, bringing the dictatorial shah back to power. George W. Bush’s administration attempted to overthrow the Iranian government by funding and arming ethnic minority groups opposed to Tehran.

The U.S. government has no moral or political authority to tell Iranians what they should do. Iranians are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves.

That’s why citizen diplomacy is so important. Iranian demonstrators welcome the support of ordinary Americans. Joan Baez recorded a Farsi-language version of "We Shall Overcome" that has shot around the world on YouTube. She sang it July 12 at San Francisco’s Stern Grove.

Iranian activists are holding a hunger strike in front of the United Nations in New York from July 22 to 24, demanding that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon send a special commission to Iran.

With hundreds of thousands of Iranian-Americans in California, it would be unconscionable to ignore the nonnegotiable right of peaceful dissent by millions of people in Iran. Join us in the San Francisco Civic Center plaza on July 25, from noon to 4 p.m. Stand in solidarity with Iranians and against U.S. intervention in Iran (www.norcal4iran.org). *

Sean Penn is an actor, director, and writer who visited Iran in 2005. Ross Mirkarimi is a San Francisco supervisor, the first elected Iranian-American to hold that office. Reese Erlich is a freelance journalist and author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.

One pop and you can’t stop

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By Juliette Tang

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I’ve heard of people having sex on exercise balls, but I’ve never heard of an exercise ball fetish, in the true sense, before today. A 31-year old man from Duluth, MN, is on the run from cops after breaking into a gym and slashing a bunch of exercise balls “to satisfy a sexual urge”. According to the Associated Press:

Authorities are familiar with the man. A criminal complaint released Thursday said he was convicted in 2005 of breaking into a sports facility at the University of Minnesota in Duluth and slashing about 70 balls. Each ball cost between $30 and $60.
The complaint says when he pleaded guilty in that case, he admitted slashing more than 40 other balls at two clinics.

Court documents said the man told police he slashed the rubber balls to satisfy a sexual urge. Experts said he has an unusual attraction to inflatable exercise devices.

While this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a fetish related to exercise balls, it’s really not that weird in context.

The SF budget battle continues

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By Tim Redmond

The full Board of Supervisors votes on the San Francisco budget tomorrow (Tuesday), and there are still some serious issues on the table. Among other things, the budget doesn’t include adequate money for public financing of the upcoming supervisorial and mayoral elections, and that’s big deal: Public financing is a crown jewel in San Francisco’s political reform efforts. The Public Defender’s Office is way underfunded (which is silly since criminal defendants are guaranteed legal representation, and hiring outside counsel is more expensive than funding the PD). Key social services are still taking a huge hit. There are still plans for 1,500 layoffs of city employees this fall — and that means a lot of what people depend on San Francisco for won’t get done. (Among the most painful: The loss of recreation directors, who are mentors for hundreds of kids.)

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi wants to find another $4 million to $6 million to fund public financing and some other services — and he’s looking to take that from a few areas that haven’t exactly been sharing the pain. For example, thanks to a push from Budget Committee Chair John Avalos, the Fire Department actually took some cuts. But the Police Department didn’t. While the Service Employees International Union Local 1021 gave back $40 million and is facing 1,500 layoffs, the Police Officers Association gave back nothing.

The problem with that, of course — besides the fact that it isn’t fair — is that the next time the city faces a budget crisis, which is probably going to be next year, the firefighters won’t want to give up a penny. Hey, they took the hit last time, and there was no parity from other public-safety areas. And if you think Local 1021 is going to be coming to the table with more cuts, you’re crazy.

So Mirkarimi told me he thinks that between the police, the Hotel Tax funding for the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the big arts organizations (the opera and symphony, whose patrons by and large can afford to buy tickets without as much city subsidy) there’s enough to fill some critical gaps in the budget.

It’s going to be tricky — Avalos and Board President David Chiu negotiated the budget deal with the mayor, and it will be hard for them to push at this late date for more changes. But Avalos told me he’s “open to” Mirkarimi’s proposals and will give them all due consideration. So, by the way, did Sup. Bevan Dufty: “I’m open to it,” he told me. “I have some concerns about the budget and will listen to any ideas.”

So the budget battle still isn’t over — and tomorrow’s meeting will be fascinating.

Problems with the BART police plan

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By Tim Redmond

The final draft of a civilian oversight plan for the BART police is headed for the full BART Board — and while it’s a whole lot better than what we have now (and BART director Tom Radulovich praises it as “the second strongest police oversight system in the Bay Area”), there are some distinctly funky things about it that the board needs to revisit.

The proposal would create a police auditor, who would investigate complaints of BART Police misconduct and recommend discipline. The auditor would report to an 11-member civilian oversight board, with each of the nine BART directors appointing one member, the full BART board appointing an at-large member — and the BART police unions appointing the final member.

That’s unprecedented, in my knowledge. I don’t think any police union anywhere in California gets to name a representative to the police oversight panel. That part of the plan has got to go.

The other problem: The final decision on discipline will be up to the BART Police chief — and if the chief (as is highly likely) refuses ever to impose effective discipline, then the auditor will be stifled.

Yes, the auditor can appeal — the the general manager, who hires the chief. Not much luck there. Beyond that, it would require a two-thirds vote of the civilian oversight board, AND a two-thirds vote of the entire BART Board, to overrule the chief and impose discipline on a cop.

That sort of supermajority requirement hasn’t worked very well at the state-budget level, and there’s a good reason: It means that a small minority (four of the 11 oversight board members, four of the nine BART Board members) can block any action.

And let’s face it — the BART Board is not a bastion of progressive thought. Just getting a majority of those folks (or their appointees) ever to agree to crack down on police misconduct will be a tough job. Getting two-thirds of both bodies is going to be almost impossible.

And since state law pretty much mandates that all police disciplinary procedures are kept secret, there won’t be any public pressure in any individual cases.

Oddly enough, BART — which is fighting bitterly to stop Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s bill mandating tough police oversight and has got the measure bottled up — now needs state legislation to make its weaker plan work. BART isn’t currently authorized to hold disciplinary hearings or impose discipline on rank-and-file employees. So this whole issue is going to come up before the state Legislature anyway.

Which means Ammiano will have a chance to push for stronger reforms. Perhaps he could offer a few amendments to the enabling legislation that BART is proposing.

And right now, Ammiano’s office isn’t in the mood to accept the current BART plan. “It’s as if the whole Oscar Grant thing never happened,” Quintin Mecke, Ammiano’s press spokesperson, told me.

CitiApartments is once again accused of mistreating tenants

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By Steven T. Jones
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Logo from CitiStop, which organized to oppose the company’s tactics.

San Francisco’s largest apartment landlord – CitiApartments, an affiliate of Skyline Realty and various other corporate fronts — has been exposed by the Guardian for mistreating tenants, sued and investigated by the city for its abusive tactics, and now it has been hit with a class action lawsuit over withholding deposit refunds from tenants.

“Despite admitting that Class Members are entitled to a full refund of their security deposit, Defendants have a business practice of illegally withholding the uncontested security deposits for months after the Class Members move out of their apartments. When Class Members contact the Defendants to assert their legal rights to have the uncontested security deposit refunded within 21 days, Defendants harass and threaten them, tell them there is a long list of people to whom Defendants owe security deposits, and tell them if they want to get their security deposit back, they should file a lawsuit in Small Claims Court,” reads the complaint filed by attorneys Brian Devine and Kenneth Seeger of the firm Seeger Salvas LLP.

The lawsuit tells the stories of two defendants, Joy Anderson and Nicolas Harr, who in separate cases had CitiApartment employees confirm deposits were due but refused to provide them. “When she asked them to tell her when a refund would be made, Defendants became hostile. In front of her eight-year-old son, Defendants threatened to call the police if Ms. Anderson did not leave their office. Defendants told her she should talk to a lawyer about getting her security deposit refunded.”

The suit seeks to recover the deposits for all former CitiApartments tenants, statutory damages for twice the amount of those deposits, actual damages, and for the company to institute procedures for promptly returning deposits in accordance with California law.

They will not be silent

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

July 4 is Mime Troupe day in San Francisco, by tradition. Dolores Park, the place. There the venerable San Francisco company launches its annual free summer show — this year, the excellently timed and executed Too Big to Fail — surrounded by a varied throng of activists fanning out with ironing boards and literature among an audience of many hundreds basking in July rays, subversive laughter, and their own cheerful numbers.

Call it a day of independence from the usual bullshit, the jingo-jingle of national unity played for the masses from on high. This year Mime Troupe day got a city government imprimatur (making it actually "Mime Troupe Day" on official parchment somewhere) in a nod to the rabble-rousing satirical political theater troupe’s 50th year raising hell and inciting revolution. Generally speaking, when the government pats you on the back for that kind of thing, you want to check it didn’t leave behind a sticky with a bull’s eye. But the gesture seemed genuine enough. After all, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has in no small way contributed to the cultural clout the city enjoys as one-time font of the now revered (or at least hotly marketable) ’60s counterculture.

Founded in 1959 by RG Davis as a definitely not silent but highly physical instrument of radical aesthetic and political convictions, the Mime Troupe didn’t just mirror the counterculture; it was a driving force for it. And the free plays in the park — which began in 1962 and took the form of irreverent, politically charged reworkings of 16th-century commedia dell’arte scenarios and characters — were central to its aggressively popular, anti-bourgeois orientation.

From those early, gleefully spectacular free speech fights in Golden Gate Park — days when it was actually pitted in "obscenity" battles against the city government, in the form of the Parks Commission and the police — to clashes with cops and courts in Colorado and Canada over its still-provocative takes on American racism and civil rights in the guise of an old-fashioned minstrel show; to its midwifery of radical activist theaters like Teatro Campesino or anarchist rebels like the Diggers and their everything-free movement, it’s fair to say the Mime Troupe was more than a twinkling reflection of the zeitgeist.

Through the following four decades, the Mime Troupe, which became a collective in 1970, evolved and notably diversified with the times and their audiences, riding the vicissitudes of avid but also chaotic years, much of them spent touring extensively. Over what you might call three general and overlapping waves of collective leadership, it has endured. But has its mission?

"Absolutely," affirms Ed Holmes, a couple of days before the July 4 premiere. With the currently 10-member collective since 1986, Holmes is one of four members who came on in the mid- to late 1980s, and a powerful comedic performer revered for, among much else, his exquisite imitation of Dick Cheney. He fires off a definition: "To take a political analysis — radical, progressive, leftist, political analysis — make it entertaining, and take it out to the people in the parks, and give it away for free."

"The story’s the message," adds Pat Moran, a member since 2005 and the principal composer-lyricist of the Troupe since longtime member Bruce Barthol retired a few years ago. "But also the message is the going and setting up the show. The people working together, the people doing it, the fact that it’s produced every year on a slim budget with little time. That commitment is just as much a part of the show as the written piece."

Michael Gene Sullivan adds: "The audience should always leave any play, not just a Mime Troupe show, different people than they were when they entered. If they leave the same and are just entertained, the show is an abysmal failure." And how should they leave a Mime Troupe show exactly? "I want them to rush right out and overthrow capitalism," says Sullivan, the collective’s head writer since 2000, when he took the baton from longtime head writer Joan Holden. "That would be a good day."

At the same time, the challenges facing the company in 2009 are very real, most of them economic. Sullivan, with other members, points to the recent drastic yet financially necessary scaling-back of tours as a serious frustration. Bay Area living costs have also impinged on the day-to-day business of the organization, according to Ellen Callas. "People have had to take more and more outside work to fill in the gaps. It’s harder and harder to have a critical mass, even at meetings where important decisions are made," explains Callas, a member of the collective since 1986, "[But] none of us are willing to give up the dream of the Mime Troupe."

With their own building in the Mission District (purchased in the 1970s), unusual dedication, and commitments that include a teaching program for at-risk teens and workshop internships, the Mime Troupe does seem happily determined to press forward. Arthur Holden, veteran Trouper from the early 1960s until the 1990s, suggests it’s the collective structure of the Troupe itself that is key to its longevity — and no doubt part of its larger appeal too. "It’s what distinguishes the Mime Troupe from most other theaters: a sense of the collective members that they are really controlling their existence. That’s very important and it isn’t too easily found, in the theater or generally in the world."
TOO BIG TO FAIL

Various Bay Area venues through Sept. 24

(415) 285-1717, www.sfmt.org

In Mexico, the Dinosaurs return

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By John Ross

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MEXICO CITY (July 16th) — Nine years ago, on a sultry July morning, Mexicans woke up and discovered to their great amazement that the Dinosaur that had hunkered down at the foot of their beds for 71 years was gone. This July 6th, when Mexicans rose in the morning, the Dinosaur was back.

In the famous short poem by Augusto Monterroso, the Dinosaur is the PRI — the Institutional Revolutionary Party — once the longest-ruling political dynasty in the known universe that controlled the destiny of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for seven interminable decades until it was dislodged from power by the right-wing PAN party in the July 2000 presidential elections. In its unslakable thirst for power, the PRI committed unspeakable crimes against the Mexican peoples, stealing elections from the most humble city hall to the presidential palace, jailing and torturing and executing those who stood in its way, and emptying out public treasuries in an unmatched kleptocracy that was a legend throughout Latin America, “the perfect dictatorship” Latin American novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once dubbed it (for which the PRI had him tossed out of the country).

“Have we Mexicans lost our memories and our minds?” asks Sylvia Insulza from behind the counter of her newspaper dispensary in the old quarter of the capital. Tears of frustration crystallize in the corners of her eyes.

The depth and breadth of the PRI victory July 5th is nothing short of stunning. From a distant third-place finish in the 2006 presidential fiasco in which the rightist PAN stole the election from Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and his left-wing PRD party by .57% of the popular vote, the PRI (“proven experience and a new attitude” is its current campaign slogan) took 37% of the total ballots cast, nearly doubling its votes three years back, and taking control of congress for the first time since 1997. The once-upon-a-time ruling party’s alliance with the so-called Mexican Green Environmental Party (PVEM – see sidebar below “The Green PRI”) will give it 259 seats out of 500 in the lower house, an absolute majority. In nine out of 31 states, the PRI won every office up for grabs — federal congressional representatives, local congresses, and municipal officials, a “carro completo” or “full car” in the Institutionals’ curious lexicon.

The Dinosaurs also proved triumphant in five out of six governors’ races, winning two statehouses in which the PAN had resided for 12 years. Only in the northern border state of Sonora, where the PRI governor was seen as complicit in the tragic incineration of 48 babies in a Hermosillo day care center a month before the election, was the PAN able to squeeze out a victory in an election in which the PAN and PRI candidates were cousins.

Moreover, the PRI won cities like Naucalpan, an upper middle class Mexico City suburb the right-wingers have controlled since the 1980s, and the nation’s second city, Guadalajara, which the PAN has owned since 1995. In alliance with the Mexican Green Environmental Party, the PRI won its first elected office in Mexico City since 1994. Although the left PRD maintains control of the nation’s capital, the Party of the Aztec Sun does so by a greatly reduced margin. Whereas the PRD registered 51% of the vote in Mexico City in 2006, three years later it weighs in with just 29%.

But Sylvia’s tears of frustration may soon dry. Whether the Dinosaurs are really back or just staying overnight (in Jurassic time) is not yet clear. Mid-term elections are referendums on the sitting president and his administration’s management of the country and July 5th represented a crushing vote of no confidence in Felipe Calderon on whose watch the economy has tumbled into freefall — “growth” in 2009 will measure a negative 8%, the worst slide since the Great Depression of 1929-32. Calderon, who campaigned as the “President of Employment,” has presided over the loss of 2,000,000 jobs. The president’s ill-advised war on the drug cartels has soaked the country in blood — more than 12,000 lives have been lost — and fueled corruption and human rights abuses on the part of the military and the police. Calderon’s panic-driven handling of this spring’s Swine Flu “PAN-demic” kicked the bricks out from under the tourist industry, the nation’s third-largest source of dollars, and his arrogant imposition of candidates in the July 5th vote-taking angered and turned many in his own party against him.

Peskin takes on BART

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By Tim Redmond

BART’s a system close to meltdown, with a strike possibly looming, a police scandal still lingering and now the San Francisco Airport furious about a surcharge that’s forcing SFO employees to take a shuttle bus into work from Millbrae.

It’s also a political opportunity for somebody to run against James Fang, the last remaining Republican in San Francisco elected office, a BART Board member since 1990, an opponent of effective police oversight and reform — and a big supporter of the BART airport surcharge.

Aaron Peskin, chair of the Democratic County Central Committee, has introduced a resolution blasting BART for the surcharge and blaming it in part on Fang:

Whereas; BART Director James Fang, San Francisco’s only elected Republican, proposed and championed the surcharge as a revenue stream for BART. A BART Director, not subject to term limits, has represented San Francisco since 1990, and is the only San Francisco BART Director not to call for the resignation of General Manager, Dorothy Dugger in wake of the mishandling of the Oscar Grant BART Police shooting on January 1, 2009;

It calls for an end to the surcharge for airport employees — and take a bit of a swipe at a certain local elected board member:

San Francisco Democratic Central Committee supports the Airport in demanding BART reverse the inequitable and punitive surcharge at San Francisco International Airport. The SFDCCC asks San Francisco BART Directors, elected to serve, to lead the way in waiving the punitive fee hurting many minimum wage workers and their families and reexamining the financial relationship with SFO, as BART to the Airport continues to grow in ridership and popularity.

And it suggests that the campaign to elect someone other than Fang in 2010 is well underway. Can you say BART Director Aaron Peskin?

Port of Oakland seeks authority to regulate truckers

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By C. Nellie Nelson

Last weekend was the 75th anniversary of “Bloody Thursday,” when two men were killed by police gunfire while protesting in the West Coast Waterfront Strike, prompting the San Francisco General Strike. These days, it’s the port truckers who can barely keep food on the table, or hospital bills paid.

Last month, the Guardian reported that a lawsuit by the trucking company lobby group American Trucking Association against the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is inhibiting the efforts of the Port of Oakland to get a better clean truck program. By making truckers employees instead of independent contractors, West Oakland could also see a reduction in pollution with newer, cleaner company trucks replacing the aging diesel rigs that now dominate the port.

On Tuesday night, the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports expected the Oakland Port Commission to vote on a resolution that would support a Beacon Economics study showing that hiring truckers as employees would improve working conditions and reduce truck emissions. But the Commission declined to vote on the resolution, instead introducing a new one calling on Congress to update laws governing ports.

What’s wrong with San Francisco?

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EDITORIAL In the end, Mayor Gavin Newsom got his way. The San Francisco supervisors made some significant changes to the budget and saved some $40 million worth of programs that the mayor wanted to cut or privatize, but the Newsom for governor ads will still be able to proclaim that the mayor solved his city’s budget problem without raising taxes or cutting police and firefighters.

Instead, this fall some 1,500 city employees are slated to be laid off, 400 of them in the Department of Public Health. Many recreation directors will get pink slips. Human services will lose at least 100 people. Nonprofit service providers will see much of their city funding disappear. The money to pay for public financing of the upcoming supervisorial and mayoral races is gone. Newsom’s pet (and expensive) 311 service will still be open 24 hours a day (with a lot of the money coming from Muni).

Not one of the city’s hugely redundant fire stations will close, even for a few days at a time. The bloated police budget will see no significant cuts, and the cops and firefighters will still get raises. The mayor will continue to employ five people in his press office.

And the only new revenue in the budget comes from fee increases on Muni, public parks, after-school programs, street fairs, restaurants, and the like.

Sup. John Avalos, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, told us this was the best deal the supervisors could get, and it’s true that the board forced Newsom to add back a lot of money he wanted to cut. But the committee stopped far short of doing what it should have done — fundamentally changing the priorities of the Newsom budget.

Campos told us that he had "mixed feelings" about the deal and expressed concern about the board’s ability to shape midyear cuts and the lack of commitment from Newsom to support support placing revenue measures on the November ballot. Mirkarimi said he was happy with the dollar amounts of the add-backs but proposed holding in reserve some funding for the mayor’s pet projects — a tool for ensuring that Newsom consults with supervisors on the midyear cuts as promised — but Avalos opposed the idea.

Avalos said he’s relying on Newsom’s commitment to him: "The mayor has given me the assurance that he will not make unilateral decisions." But Newsom has a history of breaking such promises.

And the supervisors have not included any new tax revenue in the budget projections. Which puts San Francisco far behind Oakland.

The Oakland City Council has plenty of problems, and the mayor of Oakland, Ron Dellums, has been missing in action on a lot of the city’s problems lately. But when the mayor and the council had to address the budget problems, they came up with a solution that includes at least $6 million in new taxes. While that sounds like a small number, it’s almost 10 percent of Oakland’s budget shortfall. And the new taxes, which will need voter approval in a special July 21 election, are included as part of the budget plan for fiscal 2009-10.

Two of the new taxes — a levy on pot clubs (which the clubs themselves strongly support) and a loophole-closing measure that forces big businesses to pay their fair share of real estate transfer taxes — require only a simple majority vote to take effect. The reason: the council voted unanimously to declare a fiscal emergency and put the measures on the ballot. That allowed the city to avoid the state law that requires a two-thirds vote on most new taxes.

Measures C, D, F, and H make up a generally progressive package that has the support of Council Members Rebecca Kaplan and Jean Quan and Rep. Barbara Lee. We’re happy to endorse all four.

Measure C is a 3 percent increase in the city’s hotel tax, which would rise from 11 percent to 14 percent. Half the new money would go to the Oakland Convention and Visitors Bureau while the other half would be split between the Oakland Zoo, the Chabot Space and Science Center, and cultural arts programs and festivals in the city. We could argue with the distribution (arts festivals should probably get more money and the Visitors Bureau less) but overall, it raises the hotel tax to the level of most other cities in the area and would raise money for the sorts of programs hotel taxes typically fund.

Measure D is a technical amendment to the Oakland Kids First law that mandates spending on programs for children and youth. It changes the spending requirement from 1.5 percent of total city revenues to 3 percent of the general fund. That’s slightly less money than the program currently gets, but a lot more than it has had over the past decade. The coalition that put Kids First on the ballot in 1996 (and modified it in 2008) supports this modest change.

Measure F is a creative new tax. It would impose a 1.8 percent gross receipts tax ($18 per $1,000 in sales) on medical marijuana businesses. Most efforts to hike business taxes face bitter opposition from business owners, but in this case, the pot clubs are happy to pay. In fact, the four dispensaries in Oakland are among the measure’s strongest supporters. Paying taxes tends to legitimize the clubs — and while it’s going to be tricky to track sales in what is still largely a cash business where records have in the past been kept vague to avoid the threat of federal prosecution, this is a strong step in the right direction.

Measure H would prevent big corporations from cheating Oakland out of real estate transfer taxes. Under current law, a business that owns property in Oakland and is bought by another business (or becomes part of a merger) doesn’t have to pay transfer taxes on the property it owns. Closing that loophole could bring in as much as $4.4 million a year.

There’s a lesson here for the much larger city across the Bay.

San Francisco desperately needs new revenue. And while the mayor has talked, in vague terms, about maybe supporting some sort of tax measures in November, he hasn’t committed to anything. There are several proposals floating around the board, the latest of which is a Labor Council-supported tax on alcohol consumption, but no coherent package. The progressives on the board — both those who support the compromise Newsom budget and those who don’t — need to set aside those differences, now, and get to work on finding ways to bring in enough new money to deal with the impacts of further state cuts and stave off some of the layoffs slated for the fall.

The main obstacles are Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier. Everyone who cares about saving services in this city needs to pressure them to back away from their GOP-style no-new-taxes stands. If those two would at least agree to let the voters decide on new revenue measures, the city would likely get a unanimous board — and the ability to raise taxes with a simple majority vote.

Oakland’s pot club tax and real estate transfer tax are great ideas that can be directly imported to San Francisco. The city’s business tax could be made more progressive (and bring in new revenue) with a simple change in the tax rates (higher on the big outfits, lower on the small ones). We’re dubious about a sales tax increase — even a half-percent hike would bring the local tax rate to 10 percent. And, even though the alcohol tax isn’t exactly progressive, those ideas could be acceptable as part of a package.

The main thing is that the city will need, at minimum, another $100 million this fall, and probably ought to be looking at raising twice that much. Oakland — a city with far fewer resources, a much smaller business base, and radically less wealth — is managing to fight its deficit with progressive taxes. What’s wrong with San Francisco?

P.S.: Sup. Chris Daly was outspoken in his criticism of the budget deal, blasting Newsom and even taking on his former aide and longtime ally, Avalos. But for all his bluster about the mayor, Daly couldn’t bring himself to oppose Anson Moran, Newsom’s nominee for the Public Utilities Commission. Moran was a staunch ally of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. when he was the PUC’s general manager, and the full board should reject him. *

Editorial: What’s wrong with San Francisco?

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The only new revenue in the budget comes from fee increases on Muni, public parks, after-school programs and the like.Meanwhile, Oakland is fighting its budget deficit with progressive taxes.

EDITORIAL In the end, Mayor Gavin Newsom got his way. The San Francisco supervisors made some significant changes to the budget and saved some $40 million worth of programs that the mayor wanted to cut or privatize, but the Newsom for governor ads will still be able to proclaim that the mayor solved his city’s budget problem without raising taxes or cutting police and firefighters.

Instead, this fall some 1,500 city employees are slated to be laid off, 400 of them in the Department of Public Health. Many recreation directors will get pink slips. Human services will lose at least 100 people. Nonprofit service providers will see much of their city funding disappear. The money to pay for public financing of the upcoming supervisorial and mayoral races is gone. Newsom’s pet (and expensive) 311 service will still be open 24 hours a day (with a lot of the money coming from Muni).

Charges dismissed against most SF8 defendants

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Story and photos by C. Nellie Nelson
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The case against the San Francisco 8 – defendants who have spent the last two and a half years facing controversial old murder charges – was largely dropped today without any of them doing any real time.

Attorney General Jerry Brown’s office had resurrected an old case and charged eight men in the 1971 killing of San Francisco Police Sgt. John Young. The court dismissed the case in 1975 after finding that New Orleans police officers tortured two of the suspects to make them confess. But with federal funding from the Bush Administration, the prosecutors compiled hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, citing fingerprints on a cigarette lighter as a recent development in the case.

And today, the whole ordeal looks like a phenomenal waste of time and taxpayer money.

Your happy Pride gay-bashing roundup

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By Marke B.

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Joe Holladay, beaten June 29, in New York. Image via Towleroad

Well, I guess it wouldn’t be the 40th anniversary of Stonewall if a few “fagits” (sic) didn’t get their heads bashed for daring to be all gay about it, right? Some sad reports coming in on the tinsel-footed heels of this week’s celebrations (see below). My thoughts — beyond the usual initial rage and helplessness — are that, just like right-wing wingnuts with liberals, the idiot perpetrators are coming out of the woordwork because they feel threatened by our continued uptick in acceptance, visibility, and flair. Plus they’re probs hella gay.

So of course we have to keep the burners on high and continue the fight (but always keep your eyes open and your heels short). Another thought is that a lot of the commenters on some of the blogs breaking these stories are starting to advocate bashing-back violence — which dismays. By all means we should get riled up by all this and use our anger constructively. But let’s pass on the late-’80s testosterone-blind posturing, please. A, it’s dated, darling. B, yuck.

1. Fort Worth, WTF? Twenty-six-year-old Chad Gibson was put in intensive care with a blood clot in his brain after Fort Worth cops raided a gay bar (old school!) and roughed up the customers on June 30, for nebulous, yet pretty damning, reasons. (Basically no reasons at all.)

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A cell phone capture of Gibson grounded by police at Fort Worth’s Rainbow Room

FTW police chief Jeff Halstead actually claimed the gay panic defense. To whit:

“You’re touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that’s offensive,” he said. “I’m happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that.”

Appropriate hysteria ensued. Then, under heat, Halstead kind of freaked out and claimed there would be a full, in-depth investigation. Hopefully the touchy, advance-y kind.

Assessing the city budget deal

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By Steven T. Jones

Progressives aren’t feeling much joy over the city budget deal that was cut yesterday between Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sups. David Chiu and John Avalos (respectively the board president and chair of the Budget Committee), and that’s not just because it gave the gubernatorial candidate the chance to shamelessly crow, “The contrast is stark, isn’t it? In Sacramento, it’s a state of emergency. In San Francisco, a budget deal.”

It’s true that the deal to restore $43.7 million in Newsom-proposed cuts – more so-called “add-backs” than a Board of Supervisors has ever made to a mayor’s budget — was a real compromise, not coincidentally about half of what the board’s progressive majority was looking for, and it averted bloody budget standoff that neither side wanted.

But the cuts to progressive priorities are still deep and Newsom’s wasteful pet projects and taxpayer-funded political operation remain intact (Paul Hogarth has a good analysis of the numbers here). And the whole episode just feels a little like it was scripted by Team Newsom, starting on June 1 when the mayor unveiled his budget and said, “I count on you to add back a lot of the things I don’t want to see cut.”

Of course, that was followed by an aggressive butting of heads: the police and fire unions slammed the rookie supervisorial leaders hard, even running a sound truck through Avalos’ neighborhood calling for his recall, which progressive activists and union leaders responded to with increasingly confrontational tactics, even blocking Newsom’s Pride Parade vehicle with a “die-in.”

Ultimately, the clashes led to a compromise that Avalos described to us as: “It’s as good as we could possibly get.”

Grandma says, clean up your shipyard, now!

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Text and video by Sarah Phelan

83 year-old Minerva Dunn demands a total and unrestricted cleanup of Hunters Point Shipyard, not a cap, shortly before police use bull cutters to remove her from a giant stop-work order that she and other activists have chained themselves to, in an effort to blockade the former naval station”s main entrance in San Francisco.

Daughter of darkness

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Whether by dint of nature, nurture, or nepotism, Jennifer Lynch’s small resume to date hasn’t fallen far from the paternal tree. Tie-in novel The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer annotated Twin Peaks, doing a good job too, even if one still better left to your own vile imagination. That series’ Sherilyn Fenn wound up starring (after Madonna, and then Kim Basinger, famously dropped out) in 1993’s Boxing Helena, a "controversial" amour fou tale somehow much more intriguingly offensive in anticipation than actuality.

After a very long unexplained hiatus, Lynch is back with her second feature as writer-director. Surveillance again drafts talent from dad’s stable, notably Bill Pullman, star of 1997’s Lost Highway. And again, there’s a certain hollow jonesing after shock value, where David’s cinematic heart of darkness always seemed both frighteningly real and unpinnable. Yet modern desert noir reveling in nastiness, Surveillance does have its sardonic pulp satisfactions.

FBI agents Pullman and Julia Ormond arrive at a dusty rural police station to investigate two murky incidents producing a lot of fresh corpses. Sole survivors are one precocious little girl (Ryan Simpkins), one still-high skank (Pell James), and one very defensive patrolman (co-scenarist Kent Harper).

While their sometimes fibby testimonies are teased out — what really happened being revealed in flashback — three more bodies turn up in grotesque tableau at a nearby motel. Plus, authorities are on high alert for a natural-born thrill-killing couple on the loose, precise whereabouts unknown.

At its core, Surveillance is just cruel, without any true empathy or moral weight attached. But it’s also just clever enough to invite re-viewing, no matter how far off you spy the big twist coming. Lynch has honed her directing chops; things rumble and explode with precision, no matter that credibility wobbles ever wider like an ill-bolted wheel. Some unexpected names (Cheri Oteri, French Stewart) blend seamlessly into a sharp ensemble. With this Jennifer Lynch starts to be interesting on her own — even more since her already-wrapped next, Hisss, is an India-shot horror fantasy based on local mythology. Which, at last, is a project one can’t even imagine David Lynch doing.


SURVEILLANCE opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters.

The massage parlor mistake

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OPINION Taking advantage of the recent turmoil over the huge city budget cuts, Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. Carmen Chu, have pushed though malicious legislation imposing criminal charges and restrictions on massage parlors. Many are outraged that this costly legislation was prioritized — we want to know why it was, and how much it will cost to implement. Lawyers are questioning its legality.

Under the guise of concern for women’s safety, Chu and Newsom falsely claimed that the law would stop sex trafficking. We’ve heard these lies before. Politicians who want to increase the criminalization of sex workers confuse prostitution, which is consensual sex for money, with trafficking, which is forced and coerced labor, sexual or otherwise. The reality is that most parlor employees work consensually and often collectively, without force or coercion. In Rhode Island, where indoor prostitution is legal, similar legislative maneuvers are in the works, also using the pretext of trafficking to make criminals of women working indoors.

Chu and Newsom claim they are targeting parlor owners, but by pushing the industry further underground, their legislation makes workers, many of whom are immigrant women, more vulnerable to violence and exploitation. Workers will suffer most from the increased raids, arrests, and criminalization. Fearing arrest and/or deportation will mean fewer women will report rape or other violence and exploitation when they occur.

What is the real political agenda here? Chu and Newsom have said that the proposals "could make it easier to close the 50 or so city-licensed parlors suspected of selling sex." If and where sex is being sold, parlor closures would force women onto the streets — where it is 10 times more dangerous to work. Those who are arrested are likely to end up in prison — to the devastation of their children — or deported. What good reason is there to endanger women’s safety and break up families this way, especially during hard economic times?

San Franciscans question why, when most trafficking cases occur in the agricultural, construction, clothing, and domestic industries, anti-trafficking measures target immigrant sex workers working of their own free will. We suspect racist gentrification policies are behind this legislation. Developers will be allowed to seize land in the Tenderloin and downtown areas if massage parlors are forced to close. This deceitful, profiteering law imposes huge fines, criminal charges, and has a punitive clause making the parlors pay for unspecified enforcement charges against them.

Considering that not long ago, police were exposed for taking thousands of dollars from massage parlor workers, involving them in the licensing process creates fertile ground for increased corruption.

What is wrong with selling or buying sex if both parties consent? After all, 42 percent of San Franciscans voted last November for Proposition K, which would have decriminalized sex work, despite a campaign of fear mongering and misinformation by the mayor and district attorney. New Zealand successfully decriminalized prostitution six years ago to "promote occupational health and safety" and "protect from exploitation." There has been no increase in prostitution, pimps, or traffickers, and women are more able to report violence and insist on their rights. It’s time for San Francisco to do the right thing and stop criminalizing sex workers.

Rachel West works with the U.S. PROStitutes Collective.

Don Ray, the man who broke the Michael Jackson story speaks

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Don Ray, an independent investigative reporter in Los Angeles, broke the story in l993 that the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating Michael Jackson as a possible child molester. He discloses the story for the first time on his blog and discusses the impact of Jackson’s death. View the original here. B3

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Thoughts on the death of Michael Jackson

Let there be no doubt about it, I’m saddened to learn that singer Michael Jackson has died.

My sadness isn’t, however, because I will miss his music. Truth be told, I don’t believe I could name any song he recorded since he sang “Never Can Say Goodbye” or “Ben” — whichever one came first. I probably heard him sing, however, before most anyone I know. I was stationed outside of Detroit in 1969 and 1970 and I remember watching him and his brothers on local television there.

He was cute and amusing. And it was clear he had a lot of talent.

It was 1993, however, when he sort of stepped into my life and changed things forever. It was when a Los Angeles Police detective blessed me by tipping me to what was, up until today, the biggest single entertainment story in history. I was able to break the story that the police were investigating the famous singer as a possible child molester.

The cops and the carpetbaggers: Part II

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This week, we report on the political fireworks surrounding the city’s budget process, which got especially loud last week at the dueling rallies outside City Hall.

As the Chronicle noted, Police Officer’s Association President Gary Delagnes — who lives in Novato — made waves by calling the city’s progressive Supervisors “carpetbaggers” and “idiots” while speaking at a rally organized by the police and firefighters’ unions to protest the Board’s changes to the mayor’s proposed budget. (“What the fuck right does Delagnes, who doesn’t live in the city, doesn’t pay property taxes in the city, doesn’t even get to vote here, have to complain about [Sup. John] Avalos?” Guardian editor Tim Redmond wondered on our blog.)

Mayor Gavin Newsom was onstage shaming the Supes right alongside the police and fire union leaders, helpfully reminding everyone that seismologists have said it’s not if, but when the Big One will strike. (Speaking of earthquakes, do we really want our hospitals to be understaffed and cut to the bone if disaster hits?) To really get a sense of how over the top the whole spectacle was, check out this slideshow of photos from the rally, set to the audio of Delagnes’ speech.

Photos, audio and slideshow produced by Rebecca Bowe

No surrender, no retreat

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rebeccab@sfbg.com

The dueling budget rallies that preceded the June 16 Board of Supervisors hearing on the city’s spending priorities officially ended the conciliatory approach offered by Mayor Gavin Newsom — a rhetorical political gambit that the Mayor’s Office never really put into practice.

The emotionally charged police and fire workers’ rally — where Police Officers Association President Gary Delagnes riled up the crowd by ridiculing supervisors as "idiots" and "carpetbaggers" — featured Newsom as the guest of honor at an event overseen by Eric Jaye, the political consultant running both the firefighters’ union budget offensive and Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign.

On a stage lined with American flags and burly public safety workers, Newsom condemned the progressive supervisor’s proposal to amend his budget over a blaring sound system. "They’re asking us to retreat," Newsom said, in full battle cry mode, "and we’re not going to do that."

Across the street, city employees from the Department of Public Health held a competing rally, flying a banner that read "No Cuts to Vital Services!" It was painfully obvious that in a squabble between city employees, the mayor was positioning himself on the side of well-paid, powerful union members who got raises instead of layoffs, rather than the public health workers and advocates for the poor whom Newsom’s budget cut the deepest.

But before progressive supervisors challenged Newsom’s proposed budget — which ignored the supervisors’ stated priorities, despite Newsom’s December pledge to work closely with the board on it — the rhetoric was quite different. "We work through our differences and ultimately try to look at the budget as apolitically as possible," Newsom said during a June 1 event unveiling his budget. "It’ll only happen by working together."

Six months earlier, when the mayor made a rare appearance at a Board of Supervisors meeting to announce the unprecedented budget shortfall of more than $500 million, he adopted a similar tone. "We have the capacity, the ingenuity and the spirit to solve this," Newsom told the board in December. "It’s going to take all of us working together. It’s in that spirit that I am here."

The mayor’s proposed budget has spurred outrage from poor people and progressive supervisors, who charge that his decision to cut critical services while simultaneously bolstering funding to the police and fire departments is morally repugnant.

Sups. John Avalos, David Campos, and David Chiu responded by passing an amendment in committee to slash $82 million from the public-safety budget in order to restore some of the cuts to public health and social services. After that move, the spirit of "working together" quickly eroded, and seemed to be replaced by the bare knuckles politics of fear and division.

After the rallies, which even spilled indoors and devolved into shouting matches between the two camps, supervisors finally got to work on the budget. And they didn’t ask Newsom to retreat, they just asked him to listen and work with them.

The $82 million dent in the public-safety budget was described as a symbolic gesture to get the mayor to take progressive concerns seriously. "For many of us, it was the only way we felt we could have a seat at the table — a seat that was real, where the discussion was going to be meaningful," Campos said.

"I do not think that this budget is bilateral. It is a unilateral budget," Chiu noted at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting.

This year’s budget battle is especially intense because of the unprecedented size of the deficit, as well as the dire economic conditions facing many San Franciscans. California’s unemployment rate climbed to 11.5 percent in May, and stood at an only slightly less miserable 9.1 percent in San Francisco, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of San Franciscans in need of emergency food assistance, homeless services, and help with other basic necessities has spiked. Everyone seems to be feeling the pinch, but for the least fortunate, falling on hard times can mean relying on city-funded services for survival.

Against this dismal backdrop, big questions are emerging about the role of government. "The city’s budget," City Attorney Dennis Herrera noted at a recent hearing, "is correctly called the city’s most meaningful policy document. More than any other piece of legislation, it sets out the priorities that tangibly express the values of the City and County of San Francisco."

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi took this idea even farther at the budget hearing. "Aside from the politicking and any of the hyperbole, we [have to] do the best we possibly can for all the people of San Francisco," he said. "But in particular, the vulnerable classes, because what is also at stake is … the key question: Who’s this city for? And who gets to live here over the next 10 to 20 years, considering how cost-prohibitive it is to be in San Francisco?"

The budget battle is shaping up around some fundamental questions: is this budget going to protect the politically powerful while ignoring the thousands who are in danger of slipping through the cracks? Or will everyone be asked to make sacrifices to preserve the city’s safety net? And as these difficult decisions are hashed out, is the mayor going to sit down with the board to seek common ground?

A board hearing on the cuts to health services — which state law requires cities to hold when those cuts are deep — illustrated the divide with hours of testimony from the city’s most disadvantaged residents: those with mental health problems, seniors, SRO tenants, AIDS patients, and others.

"If we make the wrong decisions, it will mean that our homeless folks will be in ever-increasing numbers on the street. It means that folks with HIV will not receive the care they need. It will mean that kids will not have the after-school programs they need during their critical years. It will mean that our tenants will continue to live in substandard housing," Chiu summarized the testimony.

Avalos, the Budget Committee chair who has led the fight to alter Newsom’s budget priorities, has said repeatedly that cutting critical services does not work in San Francisco. And even as he proposed the amendment, he expressed a desire to reach a solution that everyone, not just progressives, would find palatable.

"We want to talk directly to the mayor, to have him meet us half-way, about how we can share the pain in this budget to ensure that we have a balance in equity on how we run the city government," Avalos noted as his committee began its detailed, tedious work on the budget. "We can do that across the hall here at City Hall, and we can do it across every district in San Francisco."

The Board approved the interim budget that more evenly shared the budget pain on a 7-3 vote, with Sups. Bevan Dufty, Carmen Chu, and Michela Alioto-Pier dissenting (Sup. Sean Elsbernd was absent because his wife was giving birth to their first child, but was also likely to dissent).

If Newsom chooses to veto the interim budget or the permanent one next month — which the board would need eight votes to override — San Francisco could be in for a protracted budget standoff, the least "apolitical" of all options. But for now, the political theater is yielding to the detailed, difficult work of the Budget and Finance Committee.

Progressive members of the committee have already signaled their intention to scrutinize city jobs with salaries of $100,000 or positions in each department that deal with public relations.

Among those highlighted in a budget analysts’ report is Newsom’s public relations team, a fleet of five helmed by a Director of Communications Nate Ballard, who pulls down $141,700 a year. Yet when the Guardian and others seek information from the office — for this story and many others — we are often stonewalled, ignored, or insulted.

During the budget hearings, the disproportionately high number of positions with six-figure salaries in the city’s police and fire departments also came under scrutiny. "What has worked in a lot of other agencies is you have employees who care deeply enough about the City and County of San Francisco that they are willing to give back in terms of salaries," Campos commented to Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White during a budget hearing, referring to firefighters’ refusal to forgo raises.

Another looming question is whether new revenue measures will be included as part of the solution. While progressive supervisors continue to call for tax measures as a way to stave off the worst cuts to critical services, Newsom proudly proclaimed his budget’s lack of new taxes.

A press release posted on Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign Web site suggests that since raising revenues doesn’t fit with his bid for governor, it’s not likely to be entertained as a possibility. "Mayor Newsom crafted a balanced budget on time," a press release notes, "without any new general tax increases, without reducing public safety services."

It’s a stand that’s certain to yield more political clashes down the line.

"I don’t see how we can get out of this budget without bringing additional revenue into the system," Campos noted at the committee hearing. "Once people learn about the situation we are facing, they will understand the need for the city and county as a whole to contribute."

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