Poverty

Can the U.S. be great again?

Zelda Bronstein
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13
Can the U.S. be great again?

I know I’m getting a little obsessed with the NY Times and it’s sometimes amazing, sometimes utterly clueless analysis of what’s happening with tax policy and the American economy. But I had to comment on Matt Bai’s piece in the Sunday Times about the debt-reduction commission, also known as the cat-food commission. Bai’s thesis is that American’s don’t want to hear that they are going to have to sacrifice something because it runs against our national grain, our desire to be ever bigger and stronger and number one in the world:

What makes this case for sacrifice so much harder to embrace, perhaps, is that it goes to our national psyche, threatening our self-image as a land with limitless potential. While past generations have readily sacrificed for national greatness, debt reduction — at least in the gloomy way its advocates argue for it — feels like a call to sacrifice in the name of our national decline.

And, of course, like every writer who takes on this topic, he harkens back to the Good Old Days when America seemed to be on top of the world:

For much of the Industrial Age, and especially between World War II and the oil crises of the 1970s, this was, in fact, reality. Wages and profits rose, the social safety net and the nation’s military reach both expanded, and government lived largely within its means. College education, suburban lawns, good pensions and blissful security all became part of the pact with the middle class, as much a part of the constellation of entitlements as Medicare and Medicaid.

He says, of course, in the end, that by tighening its fiscal belt, America can pave the way for more greatness:

In fact, policy experts argue that steps along the lines of the commission’s recommendations could actually modernize outdated systems — making the country more competitive as a result — without profoundly affecting the American experience. A simpler, updated tax code for businesses might help spur entrepreneurship, while a hard line on inefficient spending (farm subsidies come to mind) might free up government to invest more in new technologies and infrastructure. A streamlined military of the kind championed by Robert Gates, the defense secretary, would probably be better prepared for the challenges ahead than a military burdened by the costs of obsolete weapons systems and bases left over from the cold war.

But he totally misses a key point: Between World War II and the 1970s (actually, until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980) the American economy was driven in part by a stable middle class, created in part by trade unions but also — to a great degree — by a tax system built on socioeconomic equality. Rich people paid taxes in the good old days — in fact, the highest income earners paid around 60 percent or more of their income in taxes. and that money allowed the nation to build highways and watger systems and offer public education to all and to create the entitlements that kept old people out of dire poverty.

And because the public sector — the government — was largely able to live within its means, and offered quality public services, people were willing to pay taxes and not blame public employees for everything and demand that Santa Claus bring them goodies for free.

Yes, this country can be great again. It’s richer than ever. But as long as that wealth is so tightly controlled by such a small elite, we’re going to continue to slide down until we become another banana republic. There’s really no way around it.

 

Let’s play the “local hire” numbers game

Mary Magee
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0

There’s been a lot of discussion at City Hall about the pressing need for mandatory local hire legislation, as opposed to San Francisco’s current “good faith” efforts. And it seems that everyone agrees upon is that something needs to be done, as the Board prepares to vote December 7 on Sup. John Avalos’ local hire proposal, which seeks to ensure that 50 percent of workers hired on city-funded construction projects will be local residents.
The move comes at a time of high unemployment in the recession-hit construction industry, but would kick in as San Francisco stands poised to spend $27 billion on public works projects over the next decade.
‘The city needs to leverage its funding position to ensure that our residents benefit from these investments,” Avalos said at a Dec. 1 committee hearing on his legislation, which would require 25 percent of hours on city-funded construction projects, to be worked by local residents in the first year. This rate would rise 5 percent each year to 50 percent.
It would also require 50 percent of apprentice hours to be worked by local residents in the first year (with out-of-state workers exempt from these requirements).

These requirements currently apply to each individual construction trade (carpenters, painters, laborers, operators, brick masons, plasterers) and not to overall project hours.

The city would pay incentive bonuses to contractors that exceed the requirements.
Contractors who failed to meet the requirements would have the option of paying liquidated damages to the city, or sponsoring apprentices during the project.

But a December 1 report from Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist, estimates the legislation would raise the city’s contracting costs by $9.3 million per year, while creating 350 jobs.
 
Egan breaks down the city’s estimated $9.3 million in contracting and administrative costs into three distinct piles: $2 million in higher bid costs from hiring the unemployed, $4.5 million in higher bid costs from hiring the already unemployed, and $2.8 million in higher costs associated with penalties.

‘This cost represents approximately 1 percent of the city’s $934 million estimated annual spending on covered projects,” Egan noted, adding that the cost to the city will be lower in early years, because unemployment is high now and labor is widely available.

“This is a conservative estimate,” Egan added, “as it assumes no contractor exceeds the target and receives incentive bonuses from the city, and also excludes any contractor productivity losses caused by breaking up core crews.”

Egan acknowledges that most city expenses are associated with inflated contractor bids.
“These will occur because the local supply of skilled trades workers is insufficient to meet the local hiring requirements of the legislation,” he observed. “Contractors will be forced to pay above-the-market wages to workers that already have jobs, and pay the city penalties because resident labor is unavailable in many trades. These costs will be passed on to the city. This excess cost to the city could largely be mitigated by choosing local hiring targets that better reflect local supply.”

“The legislation will increase local employment and associated spending at local businesses, at the cost of higher City contracting costs,” Egan warned. “The legislation creates a net spending and jobs benefit, as written; with recommended mitigations, the positive economic impact can increase, and the cost to the city can decline.”

Egan calculated that estimated costs to the city could be reduced to $2.4 million, if Avalos’ proposed legislation is amended in the following ways:

1.    Replace across-the-board 50 percent mandatory requirements with trade-specific mandates to reflect “supply and demand in each trade.”
Egan argues that across-the-board requirement would lead to higher contracting costs “for several trades where required demand exceeds current supply.”
These impacted occupations include operators, brick masons and plasterers, and represent 50 percent of projected demand for city projects, over the next ten years, Egan said.
“Other occupations, such as carpenters, painters, laborers, and drivers are less impacted and can sustain the scheduled mandate, provided goals are set on an industry-wide and not a project-by-project basis,” Egan stated.

2.    Require a study every two years “to modify requirements and assess progress to a 50 percent mandatory requirement.”
Egan’s report suggests that the city conduct a review for two years, and then set mandatory participation levels for two years for brick masons, block masons, stone masons, cement masons, carpet, floor and tile installers and finishers, concrete finishers and terrazzo workers, construction equipment operators (except paving, surfacing and tamping equipment operators), drywall installers, ceiling tile installers and tapers, electricians, pipe layers, plumbers, pipe fitters and steam fitters, plasterers, stucco masons, roofers and sheet metal workers.
Egan’s proposal is that the city assess the length of time required for each of these trades to develop a pool of qualified resident workers to support a 50 percent local hire mandate, and then, if necessary, propose amendments to the mandatory levels for these trades.

3.    Allow contractors to transfer credit hours
Egan suggests that contractors and sub-contractors could accumulate credit for hiring local residents on non-City funded projects, transfer those accumulated credit hours to other contractors, and apply those credit hours to contracts for covered projects to meet the applicable minimum mandatory hiring requirements, or work off assessed liquidated damages. “Transferred credit hours may only be applied against mandatory hiring requirements for the trade in which they were accumulated,” Egan’s report states.

4.    Eliminate incentive payments
Egan recommends eliminating incentive payments, “since the ability to transfer accumulated credit hours provides a similar, and more efficient, incentive for contractors to exceed targets.”

Egan notes that his analysis assumes that annual public works spending is equal to the 10-year average in the city’s capital plan, which is $3.1 billion.
“60 percent of that will be spent on projects not covered by the legislation, because they are state- or federal-funded,” Egan stated.

He predicts that unemployment in the trades will average 10 percent in the next decade.
“Current unemployment in construction is 20 percent in San Francisco,” Egan said.

Egan argued that allowing contractors that exceed local hire requirements to transfer the additional hours, within a trade, to other contractors “would allow the same local hiring targets to be met on an industry-wide basis, not a project-by-project basis.”

He also recommended eliminating proposed incentive payments.
‘Giving contractors the ability to sell their excess hours creates a private incentive to exceed hiring targets. Contractors which do not meet the local hire requirements will compensate those that do,’ Egan wrote.

But at a Dec. 1 hearing by the Board’s Budget and Finance committee, not everyone agreed with Egan’s findings.

Missing from his “economic costs” equation, some speakers observed, were estimated savings from reduced law enforcement costs and poverty rates, if residents got jobs.
Egan acknowledged that his report does not factor in socio-economic benefits of the plan.
‘It’s a very fair point, but it’s hard to quantify,” Egan told the Guardian.

And while Avalos’ legislation proposes to phase in the local hiring mandate over the course of six years, Egan’s report simply focuses on costs when the city hits 50 percent.

Egan said he could have broken down his report into a phased-in, year by year, basis.
“But it gives the impression of greater certainty,” Egan said, noting that it’s not clear how much the city is going to spend on construction next year. “So, given what we’re planning to spend over the next 10 years, here’s an average estimate,” he explained.

I asked Egan about his report’s claim that there is a 20 percent unemployment rate in the construction industry in San Francisco, given that other city officials, including Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sup. John Avalos, have cited a 40 percent rate.

“The 2009 census figures came out in November and it said that 20 percent of San Francisco residents who are in construction say they are unemployed,” Egan said.

He acknowledged that the 40 percent unemployment rate that Newsom and Avalos cited likely refers to unemployment among folks who work in San Francisco’s construction industry, but live outside the city, where housing prices are cheaper.

Asked if his office was recommending that the local hire percentage start at 20 percent, as some building trades requested during the Budget Committee hearing on Avalos’ proposal Egan indicated this was not the case.
“We don’t see a problem in year one,” Egan explained. “There are a lot of unemployed people in year one that are available, so that target is not hard to meet.

The main problem, to Egan’s mind, was not the mandatory 50 percent local hiring goal, per se, but the requirement that it be achieved by every individual trade.
“That’s why we recommend doing a process every two years to take a look at how good a job individual trades are doing, and then set targets based on the rates of producing a supply of qualified workers,” he said.

“Some won’t take seven years to achieve a 50 percent rate, but others could take much longer,” Egan explained. ‘Otherwise, contractors, will have to raise bids so they can afford to pull qualified workers off other contracts. That would lead to shuffling people around, and the city paying for it, without new people being trained.”

So, that’s where the conversation seems to be headed going into Tuesday’s Board meeting, with the building trades still pushing for amendments, and Avalos, the chief sponsor of the legislation, reportedly trying to win support from Sup. Bevan Dufty, so that he can pass veto-proof legislation before the end of the month. Stay tuned.

A Celtic violinist Jimi Hendrix?

Andrew Lam
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0
A Celtic violinist Jimi Hendrix?

“Can you tell me why they call you the Jimi Hendrix of the violin?” I’m chatting with Eileen Ivers, Bronx-born one-time house blue electric violinist for Riverdance. One must admit, it seems like a curious moniker. Over the phone, Ivers dissolves in laughter. 

“I wish I could,” she finally continues. “One wonderful gentleman from some paper put that. I’d love to think that in some way — he had such a love of blues and roots — I don’t know, I won’t even go there, but I feel so connected to the instrument.” Oh, plus she integrates into her concerts (one of which will be rocking Freight and Salvage Thu/4) liberal doses of jams, electric violin, wah-wah pedal, and, dare we say, soul? “I love to put that to an audience to open their minds — this instrument can rock out as well.” The pieces are beginning to come together…

Perhaps I’m fixating on the comparison because at first glance, there is very little to tie together the lives of Hendrix and Ivers, who was born to immigrant parents used to the hardship and poverty in their birthland of County Mayo, Ireland. “There’s no Gaelic word for immigration — just for exit,” Ivers tells me. “It shows culturally they never wanted to leave, but they had to in the mass exodus.” She talks like an Irish person, falling into discussions of my Gaelic name as those of her (our) ethnic persuasion are wont to do and converses with a hint of that sing-song lilt that is the mark of the Emerald Isle. 

Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul, sans Photoshop butchering. Photo by Luke Ratray

Ivers learned her craft through a man in the New York neighborhood she grew up who delighted in teaching the young people in the area how to play the tunes of their cultural legacy. Love of the instrument buoyed her through years at Iona College spent studying mathematics and into a career that’s seen her play with Celtic legends The Chieftains, the international touring company of Riverdance, over 40 symphonic orchestras, and on soundtracks for films like Gangs of New York (2002).

It was through the multitudinous nature of the city’s music scene that the influences audible in her new tracks like “Paddy in Zululand” came to the fore. That tune in particular features an Irish melody plucked out by Iver’s violin which emerges from a background of upbeat African percussion – testament to the connections that Ivers sees between the divergent cultures’ musical forms. 

Which isn’t a particularly unique thing in and of itself – the Bay Area’s Markus James performs similar transmutations with African string music and Americana blues (vocalist Tommy McDonnell of Ivers’ touring band, Immigrant Soul, was a member of the original Blues Brothers band with Dan Akroyd and John Goodman). What may be unique is the bubbling sense of happiness that is exuded from Ivers when she imparts her art upon a listening crowd – or jaded local journalist, who she gracefully includes in her comments regarding the musical resonance she finds in these cross-continent musical similarities. “It’s in our heart — you hear these grooves and it feels right,” she says.

Lost in the music, you might say. Just like Jimi, right?

Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul

Thu/4 8 p.m., $23.50-$22.50

Freight & Salvage

2020 Addison, SF

(510) 644-2020

www.thefreight.org

 

On the margins

Andrew Lam
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3
On the margins

Sarah@sfbg.com

Franklin is a 20-something computer programmer who shares an apartment with 10 other people around his age, an arrangement that helps him and his housemates come up with $3,500 each month for rent in the Mission, a rapidly gentrifying part of town.

“Everyone is pretty much working, but they are in and out at different times so the house isn’t ever really empty. But there’s usually only three or four of us at a time, ” Franklin told the Guardian, speaking on his cell phone as he rode his bike to work.

But how does an apartment that officially has only one bedroom sleep 10 people? Franklin said there are other rooms in the house — including a dining room and a double parlor that splits into two with sliding doors — and that each of these spaces has a couple sleeping in it. “And there is one person sleeping in a closet and another sleeping in a space atop the bathroom.”

While overcrowding has been a problem in immigrant communities in San Francisco, it’s reaching a new area: young people who have for generations flocked to the city to escape uncomfortable home lives, find a supportive community, and make a new start in life.

Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said at least 1,250 housing units annually were lost to condominium and tenancy-in-common conversions in the dot.com and housing bubble years, a loss rate that has slowed only slightly since then.

“Right now, it’s about 1,000 units a year,” he said.

It’s become more common for young people to struggle to pay rent in a town where well-paying jobs are scarce and educational programs have been cut — a triple whammy that means youth with additional challenges are at risk of becoming homeless and getting trapped in vicious cycle of abuse and incarceration.

COMPOUNDING THE PROBLEM

Sherilyn Adams, executive director of Larkin Street Youth Services, which provides housing, medical, social, and educational services to at-risk homeless and runaway youth, says all young people in San Francisco face the same basic challenges.

“And if, in addition, these youth are part of a group like LGBTQ youth, or are youth of color, or immigrant youth, documented or not, then the circumstances and barriers are much more exacerbated,” she said.

Adams said San Francisco has done a lot to add resources for transitional age youth, a group that traditionally has been defined as ages 12 to 24. “But there is still a significant gap in resources, especially for the more disenfranchised groups, because the longer you’ve been on the street, the more complex your issues in terms of substance abuse and mental health.”

Civic leaders, including California Assembly member Tom Ammiano, recently held a rally and candlelight march to raise awareness of the tragic rise in homelessness and suicides among LGBTQ youth. Shortly after, Adams told us, “Youth who came here escaping homophobia in their family or city then face the harsh reality of San Francisco.”

Adams understands that some people see Proposition L, legislation on the November ballot to criminalize sitting or lying on city sidewalks, as a way to address disruptive and aggressive behavior on the streets. “But it becomes part of the larger divide, because youth who come here and are on the street are mostly there because they have no other place. So penalizing them in the absence of services, housing, and education is ineffective at best and really harmful at worst,” Adams said.

Many young people on the brink of homelessness are “somewhat invisible,” and therefore at high risk, she said. “Youth will double, triple up. They will couch surf as a way to be off the streets. And we hear the stories where youth are faced with a Sophie’s choice: Do you sleep on the street, or do you barter with what you have available so as to get shelter? And LGBTQ youth are at particular risk because the more disenfranchised and disconnected you are, the more you have to make impossible choices to survive.”

Jodi Schwartz, executive director at Lyric, an SF nonprofit that focuses on building community and inspiring change in LGBTQ youth, said the group serves 500 youth and reaches out to 800 to 1,000 more each year. “We go into classrooms and talk about hate speech, putting it in the context of racism and other forms of oppression,” she said.

“There’s a misconception that because we live in San Francisco and have a lot more dialogue and interaction with the LGBTQ community, that young people’s experience here is so much better. It may be different, but I wouldn’t say it’s better,” Schwartz said, noting that harassment levels, especially for transgendered youth in local schools, are very high.

HELPING THOSE IN NEED

Young women are another at-risk group, especially if they are pregnant, have kids, or are in the foster or juvenile justice system.

As executive director of the Center for Young Women’s Development in San Francisco’s gritty SoMa district, Marlene Sanchez tries to stabilize at-risk young women, then engage them in policy work so they can advocate for other young people they know.

“We work with young women who are involved in the underground street economies, doing prostitution, drug sales, and selling stolen goods like clothes,” Sanchez said. “We try to reach them on the streets and inside Juvenile Hall, so we take an inside-outside approach.”

Leajay Harper, who coordinates CYWD’s Young Mothers United program, works with young pregnant women inside Juvenile Hall.

“We have all experienced poverty, parents on drugs, and having to take care of younger siblings,” Harper said. “When young moms get incarcerated, they are at risk of having their children taken away at much higher rates. So we started parenting classes that are age and culturally relevant.”

City records show that while only about 12 percent of Juvenile Hall detainees are female, they are twice as likely as their male counterparts to land back in custody for probation violations.

“There are lots of young women with felonies struggling to pay their bills and feed their kids who look out the window and see they can sell drugs. And that often seems like the only option,” Sanchez explained.

City statistics also show that of the overwhelmingly male population at Juvenile Hall, almost half is African American, and that many are inside for what appear to be gang-related offenses.

Easop Winston, a 35-year-old local musician, church pastor, and member of the Visitacion Valley Peacekeepers, regularly visits young men inside Juvenile Hall, where gangs are a topic of discussion every week.

“The same guys that they have been fighting with, they are now incarcerated with,” Winston observed. “So one of the approaches I try to take is rehabilitating how they think about their neighbor. You are killing/fighting with someone who lives one block over. It’s plain genocide”

He credits the juvenile justice system for doing its best, but worries that it fails to rehabilitate youthful offenders with jobs skills, education, and counseling before sending them back into society.

He blames the churches for not doing a better job of making youth feel welcome. “Churches are part of the fabric of our community,” he said. “They need to do more outreach and not have so many rules. They need to accept youth as they are, with their tattoos, piercings, and styles of clothing.”

Winston believes politicians need to do a better job of making sure community-based organizations deliver on their promises to help working class communities of color. At the same time, as he acknowledges, “We can’t cure the world in one day.”

“Over the last five to 10 years, the African American population in SF has shrunk,” he observed. “Everybody is moving to Antioch and Fairfield because people can’t afford to live here. People are losing their jobs. And San Francisco has almost become impossible to live in unless you have a college degree. A lot of what I hear from youth is about economics. They want jobs. They want to be trained.”

PUSHING THEM OUT

Political disputes over the city’s sanctuary city policies on undocumented immigrants — which have left in limbo the question of whether arrested immigrants will get their days in court before being turned over to the federal government for possible deportation — have also been a source of instability for immigrant teens, many of whom are homeless and/or LGBTQ.

Police Commissioner Angela Chan, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, decried Mayor Gavin Newsom for refusing to implement Sup. David Campos’ due process legislation, which the board approved in November 2009.

“It’s been a little bit upsetting for the many groups that took the democratic process seriously. But these groups are still very committed to these kids,” Chan said. “We are hoping to work with the new U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag to clarify this issue and explain that the top priority of the Obama administration is not to deport undocumented youth.”

Other so-called tough-on-crime initiatives also threaten local at-risk young people. In September, City Attorney Dennis Herrera secured an injunction against 41 alleged gang members in Visitacion Valley, a strategy that progressives fear will accelerate the ongoing displacement of the African American community.

Court documents show that 66 percent of the men named in the injunction are 18 to 25 years old and that many have children in public housing, where lease holders are predominantly women of color.

San Francisco City College Trustee Chris Jackson, 27, is running for the District 10 seat on the Board of Supervisors. Noting that the southeast SF district has some of the highest numbers of poor people and children citywide, Jackson said that youth issues are similar to challenges that other voters face.

“But the context is different,” said Jackson, who previously served on the San Francisco Youth Commission. “Young people care about safe streets because it’s us or our friends who are on them. We care about schools because we are in them and want to go to college. And we are concerned about the future of employment because how do you tell folks to go to school if there are no jobs?”

Jackson notes that in the Bayview-Hunters Point, home to the city’s largest remaining African American community, kids don’t come back if they leave for college. “We see a brain drain. It’s really difficult to retain young people, so it’s important to first make sure that youth’s housing needs are met. And they also need access to careers so that when they graduate, they know there is a job in the city. But right now, youth can’t even find a summer job because of the recession.”

He called for city policies that are based on the needs of current city residents rather than developers’ profits or the desires of well-off outsiders to move here.

“San Francisco is more of an opportunity for Silicon Valley residents than for youth who were born and raised here. And part of the problem is city policies, ineffective programs, and a failure to provide job opportunities for youth,” he said. “Everything for youth has been gutted.”

And those evaporating opportunities are compounded by punitive policies like Prop. L, Jackson said, further alienating young people. “It comes down to how much money you have,” Jackson observes. “If you are rich, you can enjoy the parks, the clubs, the transit. But if you are low-income, especially low-income youth of color, it’s very hard to take advantage of everything the city has to offer.”

Noting that both City College and the San Francisco Unified School District canceled their summer school program, Jackson said, “it doesn’t look like youth are prioritized.”

Jackson was recently at Double Rock (a.k.a. the Alice Griffith Public Housing Project) and he saw four kids under 10 who were at home while their parents were at work. “Why aren’t they in school or in child care? And don’t give me the line that these are hard to serve communities. We have to serve them.”

N’tanya Lee, executive director of Coleman Advocates, agrees that while all young people are struggling in the city, African American children and youth are having one of the worst times.

“We don’t need 5,000 different strategies and initiatives when 90 percent of these kids live in extreme poverty, mostly concentrated in public housing, and you could fit the city’s entire black high school student population into one auditorium,” Lee said.

She wants the city to create a database of these youth and develop specific strategies to help this population before it’s too late.

“No one in city government feels accountable for the outcomes for black children and youth,” she said. “Instead you have one group who are about young people and another who are about economic development — and they have nothing to do with each other. Meanwhile, we’ve lost half of all black families with children in this city in the past 20 years.”

Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Rebecca Bowe on ageing out of the foster care system, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation

On the edge

Andrew Lam
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0
On the edge

rebeccab@sfbg.com

It’s a strange and daunting time for anyone just starting out, but youth who age out of foster care are up against particularly harsh challenges.

In July, the national unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds reached a staggering 51 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent article in The New York Times Magazine described how, in the face of a bleak job market, 20-somethings today are far more likely than those in past generations to go back to school, travel, volunteer, or complete unpaid internships — extending a phase of impermanence and financial dependency for years beyond what used to be considered the norm. Studies show that nearly half of youth between ages 18 and 25 move back home with their parents at least once.

But young people aging out of the foster care system typically have to face this world of churning uncertainty without the benefit of a safety net. Many post-foster care youth don’t have the luxury of “failing to launch,” embarking on an early career path without pay, or landing back home if nothing else pans out. Foster youth lose their support base at 18, when the state ceases to be their legal guardian. For these young people, who are often the least equipped to achieve financial self-sufficiency, becoming emancipated as a legal adult is no cause for celebration; rather, it’s a source of anxiety.

Most foster youth lack the skills, connections, and resources they would need to transition to independence at age 18 — a prospect that would be difficult even for youth with greater access to resources and no major family history problems. Studies measuring the outcomes for this population paint a grim picture: many wind up homeless, incarcerated, or at risk of losing children of their own by the time they reach their early 20s.

There’s a growing awareness that many of the approximately 5,000 youth who age out of foster care in California every year are slipping through the cracks. Local and state programs have been initiated to improve their chances of achieving independence, but efforts on both fronts have run up against obstacles.

In Sacramento, Assembly Bill 12 — which extends key services for foster youth to age 21 — was signed into law several weeks ago, but the intentions behind it were undermined when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a line-item veto of $80 million in funding for child welfare programs. In San Francisco, a housing facility designed for youth at risk of homelessness seems to hold promise as an effective model, yet it has encountered resistance from local neighborhood organizations.

The plight of these young people is both a measure of our compassion and potentially a harbinger of larger societal problems to come.

HIGH STAKES

Kirsten Johnson-Bell is an emancipated youth who turned 18 in January. She has six siblings still in foster care in the East Bay, and she says she has been in more than 20 foster care placements since 2007.

Johnson-Bell told the Guardian that she has housing assistance that will last for 18 months — but she’s already beginning to wonder what will happen after that. “Where am I supposed to go?” Johnson-Bell wondered. If the experience of her peers who’ve exited the system is any indication, her concern is well founded.

Nationwide, nearly 40 percent of post-foster-care youth have been homeless at some point by the time they turn 24, according to survey results released by the University of Chicago and Partners for Our Children at the University of Washington. Just 6 percent had completed college degrees by that age, and only 48 percent were working — mostly in low-wage jobs. More than half of the young men had been convicted of crimes, and roughly three-quarters of the young women had received government benefits to meet basic needs. Teen pregnancy is statistically higher among young women exiting foster care.

Most youth in foster care aren’t housed continuously with a single caregiver, but bounce from place to place, making it tough to form long-lasting relationships. “It’s a fairly rare experience that youth stay in one home, and that means moving schools and moving friends,” notes Rachel Antrobus, executive director of Transitional Age Youth San Francisco (TAY SF), a city-funded nonprofit. Many foster kids take medication for behavioral problems, and it’s common for them to experience emotional upheaval.

“It’s practically inevitable that they’re going to have long-term emotional impacts,” Antrobus said, noting many bear the long-term scars of abuse, neglect, or forced separation from their families for some other reason. “It’s a much longer road, and they have to do it with deeper wounds. Even the kids that are the most together … will likely experience some really dark places in their 20s.”

In San Francisco, there are 1,400 young people in the foster care system, and all but about 500 are in placements outside the city. Lynette Davis, who turned 18 this year, moved from San Francisco to Oakland when she first entered foster care in the eighth grade. Davis acknowledges that she was one of the lucky ones. Rather than move in with a stranger, she went to live with her godmother and remained there until her 18th birthday.

Davis is now living with her boyfriend and his family in Oakland — and the household was in the process of moving when the Guardian spoke with her. Her godmother offered to continue housing her after she turned 18, Davis noted. “But she’s got her own kids. I felt like I should be able to go off and do my own thing.” The requirement in either housing situation is that she must work, go to school, or both, Davis said. She’s attending classes at Oakland’s Merritt College. In the meantime, she’s mired in the frustrating exercise of applying for job after job.

“It’s been pretty ridiculous,” Davis said of her fruitless job hunt. “Sometimes it makes me want to stop and give up. But as long as you’ve got people around you who care about you, it’s okay.”

Many foster kids who didn’t have the support network that Davis did are up against alarmingly high stakes as they age out. “Some people are mothers and they have to pay rent and are looking for more than two jobs,” she said. Asked what she thought were the greatest challenges facing foster youth in San Francisco, she mentioned poverty, gangs, and a lack of job opportunities.

“To be successful, you have to be financially stable,” she said. “With some youth, that’s hard. They don’t have jobs, or they can’t get jobs. They want to find an easy way out.” That’s when they become more susceptible to gangs or drugs, she said. Davis says she was a “rebellious youth” at a younger age, but now she’s focused on her goal of obtaining a degree in psychology so that one day she can go into counseling. When she became a member of California Youth Connections, which aids youth with transitional support, she met other foster youth and realized she could really have an impact.

HELP OR HARM?

The difference between ages 18 and 21 can be critical, so foster youth advocates throughout the state cheered Sept. 30 when AB12, California’s Fostering Connections to Success Act, was signed into law. It allows California to make use of federal matching funds to provide transitional support for qualifying foster youth until age 21. It also authorizes the state to take advantage of a federal subsidy for an existing guardianship program for relatives of foster youth who want to become caregivers. Many foster youth advocates have thrown support behind the kin caregiver model — it can be less traumatic for youth to move in with a grandparent than being suddenly dropped into a strange place.

A major sponsor of A 12 was the John Burton Foundation for Children Without Homes, and policy director Amy Lemley hailed its passage as “the biggest child-welfare improvement in 20 years.” Studies show that youth who receive support beyond 18 are 200 percent more likely to be working toward completion of a high school diploma, 65 percent less likely to have been arrested, and 54 percent less likely to have been incarcerated than those who exit with no support. The benefits could also generate savings by reducing the number of people in prison, on welfare, or in need of publicly funded health and human services. The law will be implemented in 2012.

The law also will provide new housing options. The federal government will chip in to cover more placements in the Transitional Housing Program Plus — nearly axed during the last budget cycle — which offers supervised transitional housing for emancipated youth. Youth may also receive a rent subsidy that could apply in a dorm, a shared-living situation, or another arrangement that fits the youth’s needs. This flexibility is a positive change, Lemley noted. “We’re not telling young people ‘it’s our way or the highway,'<0x2009>” she said.

“If a state like California can do this in the context of its current fiscal deficit, it sends a strong signal to other states,” Lemley said. However, an unexpected line-item veto put a damper on the landmark achievement. Schwarzenegger dealt a blow to the child-welfare system by cutting $80 million in funding for programs the California Legislature had restored, which actually amounts to more like $133 million due to the loss of federal matching funds.

“It’s really just a schizophrenic policy on the governor’s part,” Lemley said. “We were hoping he would have a legacy of the foster care governor, but now it doesn’t seem as if he will have that legacy at all.”

While the deep budget cut isn’t aimed at AB12 directly, Lemley said, it erodes funding for child-welfare workers and forces counties to make painful funding cuts. The overarching effect is that abuse and neglect may go undetected more often, and youth in the system will have fewer available resources once they’re placed.

ANOTHER CHANCE

Of all the challenges facing foster youth who age out of the system, housing is among the most critical, particularly in San Francisco. A partnership between the city, Larkin Street Youth Services, and nonprofit developer Community Housing Partnership (CHP) aims to address this by providing a space for transitional-age youth who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford housing in the city. Located at the King Edward II Inn near Cow Hollow and the Marina district, the facility would house 24 young people, ages 18 to 24, who are at risk of homelessness.

“By definition, that includes youth aging out of foster care,” explains David Schnur of CHP. The nonprofits are working in tandem with the city’s Human Services Agency and Mayor’s Office of Housing.

Youth housed at Edward II would have access to physical and mental health care, substance abuse and HIV-related services, education and job training, coaching in basic life skills such as budgeting and personal hygiene, and case management, Schnur said. They would be required to contribute a portion of their income, whatever the amount, toward rent.

However, an organized force of opposition has already surfaced from the surrounding community, which comprises one of San Francisco’s wealthiest neighborhoods. “I think people are just nervous about what it means to have a building of this type in the neighborhood,” Schnur noted. To assuage neighborhood concerns, the nonprofits have set up a project advisory committee in hopes of talking it out and bringing everyone on board.

Patricia Vaughey, with the Marina-Cow Hollow Neighbors, is actively opposed to the project but insists that it isn’t out of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) concerns. “We are not NIMBYs,” she told the Guardian. “We want to find a location that’s suitable. We want to make sure those kids are safe.” She said that criminal activity in the neighborhood made the inn a poor choice. Yet advocates insist that for the youth, the program could mean the difference between a lifetime of hardship and a chance to get their lives on track at a crucial age. “The safety net for these young people is so thin,” Lemley noted. “You might have one person, you might have another. But then the winds of change blow and suddenly the bloom falls off the rose.”

Our 44th Anniversary Issue also includes stories by Sarah Phelan on SF’s disadvantaged youth, Caitlin Donohue’s account of the Haight street kids, and Tim Redmond’s editorial on the issues facing our rising generation

Markus James’ West African happiness surplus

Andrew Lam
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0

In an age of endless crossover between most conceivable forms of music, it’s but small surprise that a Caucasian man from Virginia is making blues with West African witch doctors. What rarely gets discussed in these cross-ocean collaborations is the social aspect of the fusion. What did the artists eat for lunch the day they recorded that track? In what language was the “and-a-one” that started off the first take? 

We had the opportunity to chat over the phone with Bay Area artist Markus James, who has parlayed his time with Malian string musicians into elemental blues tracks. You can hear them on both his new album, Snakeskin Violin, and at his live show (at the Ashkenaz, Fri/22) with The Wassonrai, who are West African musicians that rep for jam band track longevity – strains of which James says is indigenous everywhere from Mali to Jackson, Mississippi — into their already formidable blend of blues past and present. James said (and we’re paraphrasing here) that the secret to fusion collaborations all lies in your location-resonation, but that’s just his perspective.

 

San Francisco Bay Guardian: When did you first hear African music? Did you know right at the start the depths you would dive into it?

Markus James: I don’t know if anyone really knows what is going to take them. The lights really went on for me when I heard Ali Farka Toure. He played traditional West African music on the electric guitar and it came out sounding like John Lee Hooker. That was where I really felt the powerful connection between all the music I grew up loving: rock, and soul music, and of course blues music, and the connection between that and its ancient roots in West Africa.

 

SFBG: What did African music pick up in the United States to become blues?

MJ: The roots of blues music go way back, specifically to pentatonic [five note as opposed to our eight note system] music traditions there. Pentatonic music really resonates with what we think of as blues music. There is a direct correlation between what I call country blues, or old school blues music, and some of these music traditions that I’m talking about in West Africa. Not just the notes and the musical scale, but the groove, the rhythm. For example, in West Africa women are often pounding the millet for that evening’s food. The have this six-foot tall piece of wood – it’s like a mortar and pestle. Another woman, or a girl, is scooping it back underneath so that the wood hits the grain. They get these rhythms going that are like goom-chack-goom-chack. Then people start playing on calabashes with this rhythm, and the rhythm is virtually identical to what we call the shuffle rhythm that you hear in a lot of old blues music, Chicago blues music, and rock music. If you go over to West Africa and you start playing what we call country blues, people will just start playing along with it and they’ll say oh, that’s our music.

 

SFBG: On “I Won’t Let It” you perform spoken word over the music. Is there a legacy in African music of that spoken word tradition?

MJ: Absolutely. There’s a whole caste of artists called griots. Their specialty is preserving history through story-songs, but also singing praise songs to whoever’s in power at the time. They will break into long passages of rhythmically chanted tone-poem language. That’s all there. 

 

SFBG: You do a lot of cross-culture collaboration. Does the dynamic get tricky when you come from one of the wealthiest nations in the world?

MJ: Not really. I’ll give you an example. I was introduced to a 75-year old man who is the spiritual leader of the Holehoire religion in Timbuktu, Mali. He is what we would call a healer, or in older parlance, a witch doctor. He is like a medium, and his whole role in the community is to communicate with the jinn, their spirits. His instrument is a gourd with the skin of a river snake stretched across it, the string is horse hair. He has a whole repertoire of melodies and rhythms that he plays, the purpose of which are to call certain spirits for certain purposes, to ask for rain, or to ask for good luck, a million things.

He came over to our adobe-walled house where I had my little set-up going and we started playing music together. I was playing guitar and he was shifting back and forth between his two instruments, and he would sing a little line and I would sing something. I told him, I’m making a recording in blues, which is an African-American tradition, if this thing turns out pretty good I might put it on a CD – and I’m paying him, which he’s happy about. And I said before I do anything I want to bring it back to you because I know this is really – I don’t know how I said it to him but I’d say it to you, this is really deep waters. This is considered the pre-voodoo religion. He said sure, fine, great, I hope somebody enjoys it.

The next year I came back and I played him what I had made out of it, it’s this song on Snakeskin Violin, it’s called “Sundown Pearl” I played it for him and he started beaming and smiling and saying this is very good, this is going to be very successful. When I see him I give him something which anticipates the day when I might get some royalties from it. My friends that I’ve made there, it’s hard for them to understand that I’m not really selling a lot of CDs here but they’re very happy that there’s a revenue stream.

 

SFBG: You’re a vegetarian. I’m curious — I’m a vegetarian too – how is it to travel in Africa without eating meat?

MJ: They assumed at first that I must be deranged. It was absolutely inconceivable that someone could live without eating meat. Even the West African artists I perform with here in the US, it’s taken them awhile to accept it, even though they know other people here. I’m trying to think what it would be like to tell someone here. It’d be like saying I went down to the Bay and I just skipped across it to Berkeley. 

 

SFBG: You can’t even do it with food — our society has such an individualized view of eating. 

MJ: You know, I’m eating rice down there without the meat sauce, but I’m still in this communal meal zone. My friends will explain, he’s a vegetarian, and that means he doesn’t believe in eating meat, and he appears to be healthy. Something that I could not have foreseen was that I’d become a emissary for vegetarianism in West Africa.

People say, you come from a rich country, and they come from a poor country, so what is politically correct? I think when some people go to West Africa they resonate with it, they connect with it. You come to realize that what we think of as wealth and poverty is very relative to our perspective. Here you might say that we’re wealthy because we have a car, or a house, or roads that allow you to go 60 miles per hour. What we have may not necessarily translate into what they would consider to be joy, happiness, abundance, peacefulness. They’re certainly not stuck in traffic jams and trying to make mortgage payments. We might be looking at a little of a joy deficit and over there they have a happiness surplus. I know that’s simplistic, but that’s my perception. 

 

Markus James and the Wassonrai

Fri/22 9:30pm, $10-12

Ashkenaz

1317 San Pablo, Berk.

(510) 525-5054

www.ashkenaz.com

 

From here, cinema

Andrew Lam
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0
From here, cinema

I saw my first movie when I was four or five: it was a revival of 101 Dalmations (1961), and I liked it enough to ask my mother if we could sit through it a second time (we did). I saw my second first movie when I was 19: it was a nine-minute short by Bruce Baillie titled Valentin de las Sierras (1967), and after seeing it I knew film history must be full of secrets. It was only after moving to Berkeley a few years later that I began to contextualize Baillie’s tactile daydream of a Mexican village — a singular vision, to be sure, but one emblematic of a regional avant-garde as difficult to survey as San Francisco itself.

Here’s to trying: “Radical Light”‘s ambitious ecology of alternative film and video in the Bay Area encompasses an invaluable anthology of firsthand accounts, secondhand appreciations, and historical overviews; a film series with many artists-in-attendance and restored prints (through the winter at the Pacific Film Archive and various SF Cinematheque affiliates); and a gallery show of ephemera at the Berkeley Art Museum.

To first address the question underlying the whole series: why here? Some of the book’s contributors offer fanciful conjectures: it must be the ghost of Muybridge, an island ecology, a city that won’t hold a straight line, the quality of light, or, more realistically, the influence of the Beats’ vow of poverty. While I’m attracted to environmental speculations like these, it seems important not to let them overshadow the essential evidence of hard work without promise of financial compensation or art world status. This is clearest in the Bay Area’s rich tradition of artist-run, self-reliant screenings: museum takeovers, backyard hoedowns, and basement salons.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Frank Stauffacher’s post-World War II “Art in Cinema” series at the San Francisco Museum of Art (before it became “modern”) in establishing this climate of creative investment. Handsome as hell and himself a fine filmmaker, Stauffacher audaciously placed cinema in an art context, colliding European avant-gardes, Hollywood outliers, and homegrown talent in a museum setting a few decades ahead of schedule. In essence, he prepared the audience for what became known as independent filmmaking (before that term was commoditized). Which is more remarkable: that Stauffacher showed Christopher Maclaine’s still incendiary The End (1953), precipitating a chair-clearing uproar, or that he fronted Maclaine (a bagpipe-playing speed freak known as North Beach’s Antonin Artaud when there was plenty of competition) the funds to make this unsellable thing? Most of “Art in Cinema”‘s audience wasn’t ready for The End, but one young spectator found it a revelation: his name was Stan Brakhage.

Less than 10 years later, after Stauffacher’s tragic death in 1955, Baillie and his Canyon Cinema collaborators (notably, Chick Strand and Ernest Callenbach) came down from the hills over Oakland and expanded their bohemian screenings to include public production equipment, a journal, and the distribution co-op that is today run by filmmaker Dominic Angerame. The early Canyon group’s ambitions were local, but nonetheless represented an alternative cinema practice as profoundly liberating as that of their Nouvelle Vague contemporaries — one taken up by the dozen or so major series (e.g. No Nothing Cinema, Total Mobile Home, Other Cinema) and college film departments (especially San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University) detailed in “Radical Light.”

Though wildly eclectic in form and content, the “Radical Light” films cohere around a widespread distrust of moral authority, whether political or aesthetic, as well as an abiding interest in the bending truths of portraiture, documentary, ethnography, and found footage. The anarchic and mystical are preferred modes, though not mutually exclusive ones. There is a long tradition of collaboration between filmmakers and, perhaps more strikingly, with poets, painters, and musicians. To cite but a few examples: Larry Jordan’s Visions of a City (1979, begun 1957) is drawn from material shot to accompany readings by Michael McClure and Philip Lamantia; Bruce Conner did lightshows at the old Avalon Ballroom before making music videos for Devo and documenting the Mabuhay Gardens punk scene; and Brakhage made In Between (1955) while living with Robert Duncan and Jess (and set the film to a John Cage composition). Early “Art in Cinema” habitués like Jordan Belson, Harry Smith, and James Broughton all approached film from different mediums, and later artists like Nathaniel Dorsky, Warren Sonbert, and Konrad Steiner explored the poetic or musical resonances of moving images. It runs the other way too — unsurprisingly, it takes someone like poet Bill Berkson to get Dorsky’s films in a (parenthetical) nutshell: “(Without being stupid about it, Dorsky really seems to put every conscious instant up against the growth chart of Eternity.)”

Indeed, all these films burn brightly as you watch. Witness all the different ways in which the makers seek to alter the cinematic experience, turning it into a Zen monastery (Dorsky), paranoid classroom (Craig Baldwin), troubled innerspace (Gunvor Nelson), innocent grindhouse (George and Mike Kuchar), confessional (Lynn Hershman Leeson), firing squad (Maclaine), astral plain (Belson), cross-examination (Trinh T. Minh-ha), beat street (Dion Vigne), all-night roadhouse (Conner), “unguided playground” (how Ernie Gehr described the images in his 1991 film, Side/Walk/Shuttle, two weeks ago), and on and on. If “Radical Light”‘s chronologically-based film programs serve an informative purpose similar to the well-labeled sectioning of a botanical garden, the thematic programs come off more as a noisy farmers market where the full variety of produce jams a narrow aisle. As always, the fruit tastes best when you know where it came from.

RADICAL LIGHT: ALTERNATIVE FILM AND VIDEO IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

Through April 30, 2011, $5.50–$10

(Book launch Fri/15, 7:30 p.m.)

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

bampfa.berkeley.edu/visit

Big Oil’s false choice

Andrew Lam
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0
Big Oil’s false choice

rebeccab@sfbg.com

Tapping into voters’ economic insecurities at a time of record high unemployment rates, out-of-state oil interests say addressing global warming will cost California more jobs. But a broad coalition that includes environmentalists and top business groups argue that just the opposite is true, saying the economy will suffer if we suddenly kill the incentives now driving the clean energy industry, one business sector that actually grew during the recession.

Proposition 23 would indefinitely suspend Assembly Bill 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act. Texas oil companies are bankrolling the initiative, spending millions of dollars to convince voters that they must choose between saving jobs and saving the environment. Since jobs are more important right now, they argue, the environment will have to wait.

But the other side — which includes groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, whose top priority is always job creation — is promoting the compelling idea that the path to economic recovery lies in rising to the challenge of climate change. They argue that addressing global warming now isn’t just about avoiding more out-of-control wildfires, diminishing crop yields, prolonged intense droughts, coastal flooding, and other calamities that climate scientists say global warming will bring to California. It’s also about creating jobs now and trying to lower California’s 12.4 percent unemployment rate, the third highest nationwide.

The push to defeat Prop. 23 has brought together prominent business people, public-health advocates like the American Lung Association, big green organizations such as the Sierra Club, and environmental-justice advocates who are pushing for green jobs as a way to fend off poverty and tackle air quality problems in disadvantaged neighborhoods. If the coalition of unlikely allies is successful, Big Oil’s comfortable lock on the energy market could be thrown off balance by California’s emerging green economy.

“Ultimately, we think it’s going to be a David vs. Goliath battle, because they have very deep pockets,” said No on 23 campaign spokesperson Steve Maviglio. “The proponents are playing to the fears of those most affected by the economy.”

When voters decide on this one, it will signify a choice to proceed down one of two paths at an important crossroads. A global climate summit in Copenhagen late last year failed to produce an effective response to climate change. A push for a federal cap-and-trade system to combat global warming yielded similarly disappointing results. AB32 presents a third chance to set a new standard, and a precedent, for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. But if Prop. 23 passes, environmentalists will have struck out.

A report issued in July by the National Academy of Sciences lays bare the far-reaching implications of policy decisions around climate change. “Emissions reductions choices made today matter in determining impacts experienced not just over the next few decades,” the report notes, “but in coming centuries and millennia.”

 

CLOSE RACE

In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB32, mandating a statewide reduction of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The law is slated to go into full effect in January 2012, when a cap-and-trade system will make it more costly and burdensome for major polluters to continue burning high quantities of fossil fuels, among other strategies.

The law helps alternative energy companies and creates incentives for large and small businesses to green their operations. Prop. 23, deceptively titled the “California Jobs Initiative,” would suspend AB32 until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. A decade could pass before such a market condition is in place — in the past 40 years, it’s occurred just three times.

Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara in September, Schwarzenegger blasted Texas-based oil companies Tesoro Corporation and Valero Energy Corporation, which have contributed a combined $5.6 million to the Prop. 23 campaign, for trying to deceive California voters. “They are creating a shell argument that this is about saving jobs,” Schwarzenegger said. “Does anybody really believe that these companies, out of the goodness of their black oil hearts, are spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? It’s not about jobs at all, ladies and gentlemen. It is about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits.”

Prop. 23 has been unpopular even among many traditional right-wing and business interests. Oil giants Chevron and BP have remained neutral on it. Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman also renounced it, but straddled the fence by vowing to suspend AB32 for a year anyway.

According to a breakdown of campaign spending issued by opponents, oil interests contributed 97 percent of the funding for Prop. 23, while out-of-state interests were responsible for 89 percent. Kansas-based Koch Industries, run by billionaire siblings David and Charles Koch, dropped $1 million into the effort. The Koch brothers have been singled out as the financial backbone of the Tea Party.

Yet despite bipartisan opposition in Sacramento, polls suggest Prop. 23 could be a close race. A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed a dead heat among California voters, with 40 percent in favor, 38 percent opposed, and about one-fifth of likely voters undecided. The television commercials advocating Yes on 23 drive home a simple yet misleading message: “Save jobs. Stop the energy tax.” A spokesperson from the Yes on 23 campaign did not return the Guardian’s calls seeking comment.

Ironically, jobs are also the cornerstone of the No on 23 campaign’s arguments. “We have very heavy hitters who see this as a job killer,” Maviglio said. The campaign is highlighting the fact that the only economic area that has experienced growth amid the recession is green tech.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown referenced green jobs as a bright hope for economic recovery in a televised debate against Whitman, and the prospect of green job creation as a way to alleviate poverty is clearly articulated in The Green Collar Economy, a widely influential book by Green for All founder Van Jones. Green for All has joined the Greenlining Institute and a host of 80 organizations statewide in a united front against Prop. 23, called Communities United Against Prop. 23, which is part of the larger opposition campaign dubbed Communities United Against the Dirty Energy Prop.

Low-income communities and communities of color will be disproportionately affected if Prop. 23 wins, said Orson Aguilar, executive director of the Greenlining Institute. “The communities we represent are feeling a double impact,” Aguilar noted. “They’re suffering from pollution,” since power plants and polluting industries tend to be sited in low-income communities, “and they’re suffering from unemployment and the economic crisis. There definitely is a double-whammy.”

 

LOCAL MOMENTUM

At a recent green business symposium hosted by Urban Solutions, a nonprofit that aids small businesses and seeks to create job opportunities in low-income communities, a Castro District merchant explained her decision to enter green-business certification process. “I’m dedicated to going green because, No. 1, it’s the right thing to do,” said Elaine Jennings, who runs Small Potatoes Catering & Events. “No. 2, it’s the right thing to do. And No. 3, it’s the right thing to do.”

But the moderator of the panel, a business reporter, wasn’t as interested in the moral rationale — instead, she followed up by asking whether going green was a wise financial move. Anthony Tsai, green business program manager at Urban Solutions, made the case that it is. Water bills have gone up 40 percent since 2000, Tsai said. Electricity costs have gone up 60 percent and waste disposal fees have increased 250 percent. By conserving energy and water and reducing waste, small businesses can save money during tough economic times.

Aguilar sees energy-efficiency building retrofits as an opportunity to create jobs for disadvantaged populations. In order to comply with the climate regulations under AB32, energy-efficiency retrofits would have to be completed to hit conservation targets. “We have thousands, if not millions, of buildings in California that need to be retrofitted,” he said. “A lot of people who are out of work are in the construction industry. Latinos and African Americans were hit hard when construction fell.” With energy retrofits and solar-panel installations on the agenda, AB32 could be good news for electricians, too, Aguilar said.

There are signs that AB32 is already giving green business a lift. A manufacturer of electric delivery trucks, for example, relocated from Mexico to California’s Central Valley late last year. A wind-energy company recently relocated to San Diego from Spain. The solar industry is growing faster in California, particularly in the Bay Area, than anywhere else nationwide. And in the past five years, roughly $9 billion in venture capital investment has gone into clean tech industries, with more going to California than any other state.

“Prop. 23 would essentially pull the rug out from under this explosive growth, which we’re experiencing during a recession,” Maviglio noted.

Jeanine Cotter, CEO of Luminalt, an independently owned San Francisco solar and installation company, is active in the campaign to defeat Prop. 23. “There is an entire ecosystem that feeds off of good policy,” Cotter said. If Prop. 23 passes, “we will lose the spark that we have and we will go backward.”

Despite the economic downturn, Luminalt experienced its best year in 2009 in the six-year history of the company, and if AB32 goes into effect in 2012 as planned, the demand for new solar installations will only grow. But with less than a month to go before the election, Cotter said she was alarmed by the lack of awareness about Prop. 23, even among environmentalists.

“We were at West Coast Green with No on 23 literature,” she said, referencing a widely attended green-business conference, “and I was shocked at how many people didn’t know what it is.”

 

RISKING IT

Small business owners and conscience-driven activists aren’t the only ones touting this theory of a new energy economy. The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, a fiscally conservative business association that is often at odds with environmentalists and progressives, is actively campaigning against Prop. 23 — and it’s not out of any sense of moral duty.

If Prop. 23 succeeds, explained Chamber spokesperson Rob Black, it will scare off the venture capitalists. “For them, water’s like money,” he explained. “It will flow to the easiest place to invest.” Regulation like AB32 guarantees a return on investment for climate-friendly technology, he added. But if that regulatory structure is thrown into question, investors may flee overseas because investing would be too risky. “If we walk away from clean tech, the next Microsoft will be a Chinese company,” Black said.

Donnie Fowler, a political consultant who has worked for Al Gore and other top Democrats, is a senior adviser to the Clean Economy Network and a leader in the effort to defeat Prop. 23. Oil companies “went to Washington and spent hundreds of millions” lobbying against climate change regulations, Fowler pointed out. “Now they’ve opened up a second front. If California goes backward, all of those senators and Congressional representatives will say, ‘No way … I’m surely not taking a political risk. If they went backward, there’s no reason we should go forward.'”

Fowler said that for environmentalists, voting No on 23 could be seen as an affirmation of statewide efforts to address climate change in a meaningful way. “This is a real opportunity,” he said, “for Californians to stand up and say we’ve had enough. We are going to take a stand — right now.”

www.stopdirtyenergyprop.com

www.communitiesagainstprop23.com

Civil Sidewalks, Lewis Lapham, and the struggle for the soul of cities

Sasha Cuttler
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114
Civil Sidewalks, Lewis Lapham, and the struggle for the soul of cities

Cities often get vilified as the cauldrons of all that’s wrong in the world – greed, vice, pollution, and all manner of social ills – but they are also the incubators of ideas that are humankind’s last best shot at solving the social and environmental problems that threaten our long-term stability and prosperity. So ruminating on the indispensable role of cities, as Lapham’s Quarterly does with its fall issue, is more than just an academic exercise or interesting read.

“The Census Bureau counts 232,581,397 Americans, 82.6 percent of the population, living in the nation’s cities, but if our moralists and intelligence services are to be believed, they do so at no small risk to the safety of their persons and the security of their souls,” editor Lewis Lapham, who ran the venerable Harper’s Magazine before stepping down to start LQ, writes in the opening essay of an issue entitled simply “The City.”

Lapham goes on to note the contradiction of how rural areas and suburbs get celebrated as somehow housing the more noble values of the common folk, raising the questions, “If the city is the sewer of vice and a slough of despond, why do so many people choose to live there? On what toxic landfill does the city stand as the embodiment of its ennobling cognate, civilization?”

In an interview with the Bay Guardian, Lapham puts the increasingly important role of cities even more succinctly: “The future is urban.” As the population grows and natural resources become more scarce – and as sea levels rise – the population of cities will swell and the imperative of solving our long neglected problems will grow. And where else but the cities will new ideas find their laboratories?

But in San Francisco and other big cities, many still struggle with what it means to be a city, with all the tolerance for messy urban realities that entails. Witness Prop. L on SF’s fall ballot, which actually seeks to outlaw the simple act of sitting on a sidewalk, or as its proponents call it (in an ironic testament to their desire for order above all things), the Civil Sidewalks Law.

Lapham told me this fear of the great unwashed masses (“The rich are afraid of the poor”), an emotion that has fueled the growth of the suburbs and the massive waste of resources that entailed, has hindered the ability and willingness of city leaders to advocate for common values and define the lead role that cities should be playing in this troubled country.

“We don’t have an idea of the city as a great, good place, and we have to start with that,” Lapham told us. “We have to decide what is a city, what work does it do, what is the value, and how do we promote that value.”

This issue of Lapham’s Quarterly is a good place to start that debate. As always, the journal includes the writings of great thinkers throughout time, from Thucydides writing about Athens in 430 BC to Frederick Kaufman writing about New York City in 2008. Celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs does a great job of capturing the allure of cities – that special something that seems to escape the fearful promoters of Civil Sidewalks – in an essay she wrote about NYC in 1961.

“Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops, and having passed a judgment, the gist of which is, ‘This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn’t be on the street!’ This judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home,” she writes. “The point of both the testimonial banquet and the social life of city sidewalks is precisely that they are public. They bring people together who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion – and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion. Nobody can keep an open house in a great city. Nobody wants to. And yet if interesting, useful, and significant contacts among people are confined to acquaintances suitable for private life, the city becomes stultified.”

Indeed, that was the observation that journalist H.L Mencken wrote about many East Coast as he penned an essay in 1920 celebrating San Francisco as “an American city that somehow managed to hold itself above pollution by the national philistinism and craze for standardization, the appalling progress of 100 percent Americanism, the sordid and pathetic dream of unimaginative, timorous, and inferior men.”

Mencken says he can’t quite put a finger on what makes San Francisco so special, touching on our international influences and the fortitude developed by braving fog, steep hills, and messy urban realities, which he says have given us a unique appreciation for life. “The San Franciscans have learned how to bear it. They are stupendously alive while they are in motion, but they knock off betimes. The town is rich in loafing places: restaurants, theaters, parks. No one seems to work very hard. The desperate, consuming industry of the East is quite unknown. One could not imagine a sweatshop in the town. Puffs of Oriental air come with the fog. There is nothing European about the way life is lived; the color is all Asiatic.”

A decidedly different portrait of San Francisco comes in the journal’s only other entry on this city, written in 1849 by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who helped establish an important military base in a city that had only recently changed its name from Yerba Buena and which was about the explode with the discovery of gold in the Sierras.

“All the town lay along Montgomery Street, from Sacramento to Jackson, and about the plaza. Gambling was the chief occupation of the people. While they were waiting for the cessation of the rainy season, and the beginning of spring, all sorts of house were being put up, but of the most flimsy kind, and all were stores, restaurants, or gambling saloons,” wrote the military man, who didn’t much care for the city.

Yet for those who appreciate the role of cities as generators of culture and incubators of ideas, there’s no question that our future is urban, although even Lapham has his doubts that the great solutions will come from the cities, preferring to see the Internet and its virtual communities as usurping from cities the role of intellectual hubs.

“The intellectual engine of the Bay Area is centered in the Silicon Valley world rather than on Montgomery Street in San Francisco,” he told us, noting how little the financial firms that dominate downtown San Francisco or Wall Street in his home city of New York have to do with addressing the real problems the world faces.

He’s right, of course, but that’s also why the struggles for the soul of cities are so important and consequential, and why the the Bay Guardian has spilled so much ink fighting downtown over our 44-year history. Because to give in to the bankers and Civil Sidewalks crowd is to give up on the city.

It’s not a new struggle, as Friedrich Engels wrote about London in 1844: “Everywhere one finds on the one hand the most barbarous indifference and selfish egotism and on the other the most distressing scenes of misery and poverty. Signs of social conflict are to be found everywhere. Everyone turns his house into a fortress to defend himself – under the protection of the law – form the depredations of his neighbors. Class warfare is so open and shameless that is has to be seen to be believed. The observer of such as appalling state of affairs must shudder at the consequences of such feverish activity and can only marvel that so crazy a social and economic structure should survive at all.”

Four years later, Engels wrote “The Communist Manifesto” with Karl Marx, diagnosing the problems of capitalism and laying out solutions that came awfully close to taking root around the world before they were defeated by Western military and economic powers. Yet the problems persist to this day, manifested most visibly in cities around the world.

Lapham does admit that cities will be the laboratories and incubators of the ideas that are developed. Given the political dysfunction on the state and federal levels, he also agrees with the contention of Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond that the age of he Nation-State as the preeminent political authority is passing, and that its likely replacement is the City-State.

“To make democracy work, it needs to be relatively small,” Lapham said, agreeing that localism is the model that is being widely discussed as the answer to many of our political, environmental, and economic problems. And that all comes back to the cities, provided we can seize the opportunity to define ourselves, or as Lapham said, “One of the things we’re missing is the idea of a glorious future of some kind.”

Endorsements 2010: National races

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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10
Endorsements 2010: National races

 U.S. SENATE

BARBARA BOXER

The San Francisco Chronicle made a stunning — and utterly irresponsible — statement when it refused to endorse either candidate in this race, saying that neither Boxer, the three-term incumbent, nor challenger Carly Fiornia, was qualified for the job. That’s insane — this one’s as clear and obvious a choice as you could ask for in American politics.

Boxer’s one of the leading voices for the progressives in the U.S. Senate. She was an early and stalwart foe of the war in Iraq; she’s been good on immigration (even when other Democrats have been ducking); and she’s a leading voice for accountability in financial companies. She’s finally come around on same-sex marriage and has a perfect record on reproductive rights and labor issues.

Fiornia’s chief claim to fame is that she ran one of the nation’s top companies, screwed up its history of excellent labor relations, outsourced 30,000 jobs, orchestrated a train wreck of a merger, and was fired. She left with enough of a golden parachute to help finance her campaign for Senate.

Fiorina’s anti-choice. She strongly supported Prop. 8 and opposes marriage equality. She’s so rabidly seeking the support of the gun nuts that she actually said that people on the federal “no-fly” list should be able to buy handguns. She supports the Arizona anti-immigration law. She’s for tax cuts for the rich and can’t even figure out if she’s supporting or opposing Prop. 23.

This one is a no-brainer. Vote for Boxer.

 

CONGRESS, 6TH DISTRICT

LYNN WOOLSEY

Woolsey was against the war when her colleague to the south, Nancy Pelosi, was still waffling. She’s a consistent voice against cuts in the safety net (and has the distinction of being the only member of Congress who was once on welfare). We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

 

CONGRESS, 7TH DISTRICT

GEORGE MILLER

Miller’s an East Bay institution, now seeking his 18th term. He’s been good and bad on issues — weak at first on the war, bad on education (he supported No Child Left Behind), but generally sound on environmental issues. And this spring, he was willing to publicly challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on a terrible water bill.

 

CONGRESS, 8TH DISTRICT

NANCY PELOSI

It’s odd that Pelosi’s become such a symbol of liberal Democrats and fodder for the right-wing attack machine. When you look at her record, she’s hardly a San Francisco liberal and certainly no progressive. She’s not even a strong supporter of same-sex marriage. She was bad on the war for too long and seems far more interested in raising money than representing her constituents. But she did salvage the health care bill, and she’s held up as Obama’s chief Capitol Hill ally under enormous pressure, and if the Democrats survive with control of the House, she’ll stay speaker. If not, she should think about retiring.

 

CONGRESS, 9TH DISTRICT

BARBARA LEE

Lee became a hero to the peace movement worldwide when she refused after 9/11 to vote to authorize then-President Bush to go to war. She was the only member of either house willing to stand up against what would become the costly and bloody invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But she’s also been a strong supporter of HIV funding, is one of the few members of Congress to show much leadership on poverty issues, and has been elected to chair the Progressive Caucus. We’re happy to endorse her for another term.

 

CONGRESS, 13TH DISTRICT

PETE STARK

Stark is the Sup. Chris Daly of Congress, a fearless progressive who’s not afraid to ruffle feathers — or even insult the president — when he thinks it’s necessary. At 78, he’s an outspoken atheist (the only one in Congress), a staunch foe of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a progressive on all the major issues. He’s not terribly popular among his colleagues, who allowed him to serve for only one day as chair of the Ways and Means Committee before dethroning him for his inflammatory statements. But on balance, we’re glad he’s around.

 

>>BACK TO ENDORSEMENTS 2010

Quick Lit: Oct. 6-Oct. 12

David Talbot
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Literary readings, book tours, and talks this week

Litquake 2010 goes out with a bang featuring novelists, scientists, poets, comedians, sexy storytellers, and more, culminating in this year’s not-to-be-missed Lit Crawl.


Wednesday, Oct. 6

“The Art of Narrative Nonfiction”
Much is said about how to write fiction, but what about non-fiction? This panel moderated by best-selling author David Ewing Duncan will discuss the techniques for turning a biography into a National Book Award Winner. Featuring Tamim Ansary, Frances Dinkelspiel, Richard Rhodes, and T.J. Stiles.
6 p.m., free
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
www.litquake.org

Bawdy Storytelling
Hear real people sharing their bona fide sexual exploits in ten minutes or less. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of authors, poets, comedians, actors, and regular people, including Tim Barsky, Stephen Elliot, Johnny Funcheap, Jow Klocek, Joe Kukura, and Morgan.
7 p.m., $10
Blue Macaw
2565 Mission, SF
www.litquake.org

“The Complex Societies of Ants and Honeybees”
Join Litquake and the California Academy of Sciences for a discussion led by two leading experts, Mark W. Moffett and Dr. Thomas D. Seeley, on our planet’s smallest and most complex social organizations. Co-sponsored by KQED, and moderated by KQED’s QUEST TV series producer Amy Miller.
7 p.m., $15
Morrison Planetarium
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse
Golden Gate Park, SF
www.litquake.org

“Dance, Intergenerational Trauma, and the Diaspora”
Learn about the Katherine Dunham Technique at this lecture featuring Eyla Moore, teacher at ODC, Dance Commons, Hip Line, and Dance Fitness Studio, and Aliyah Dunn Salahuddin, dancer and tutor in City College of San Francisco’s African American Scholastic Program.
3 p.m., free
City College of San Francisco
Ocean Campus
Rosenberg Library, Room 305
50 Phelan, SF
(415) 239-3854

Flight of Poets
Internationally renowned sommelier Christopher Sawyer pairs six talented local poets with six great wines carefully selected to illuminate their work. Featuring Camille T. Dungy, Robin Ekiss, Paul Hoover, Ada Limón, Zachary Mason, Christopher Sawyer, and Matthew Siegel.
7 p.m., $15 includes wine flight 
Hotel Rex
562 Sutter, SF
www.litquake.org

The Funny Side of Sex
Join Daily Show correspondent Kristen Schaal as she celebrates her first book, The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex, along with Scott Jacobson, co-author of the new book Sex: Our Bodies Our Junk, illustrator Michael Kupperman, and actor and writer Ted Travelstead. This evening of live and uncensored sex-humor unfolds at San Francisco’s legendary Cobb’s Comedy Club. Co-sponsored by Chronicle Books.
8 p.m., $15
Cobbs Comedy Club
915 Columbus, SF
www.litquake.org

Lit on the Lake
Celebrate East Bay writers at this litquake event featuring acclaimed novelists including Melanie Abrams, Elaine Beale Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Jacqueline Luckett, Lisa Braver Moss, and Kristin McCloy.
6 p.m., $5-$10 donation
Gondola Room
Lake Chalet
1520 Lakeside, Oakl.
www.litquake.org

100th Literary Death Match
Celebrate the kickoff of a worldwide Literary Death Match tour where judges, W. Kamau Bell, Mark Fiore, and Jane Smiley, will pass centurial judgment on a must-see lineup featuring readers Jason Bayani, David Corbett, Kari Kiernan, and Joel Selvin. Hosted by Todd Zuniga, Elissa Bassist, Alia Volz, and M.G. Martin.
7 p.m., $15
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
www.litquake.org

Radar Reading Series: Litquake Edition
This monthly literary series brings in first-time novelists, playwrights, shoplifting poets, and riot girl historians for readings, followed by a Q&A session hosted by Michelle Tea. Featuring Chinaka Hodge, Tao Lin, Sara Marcus, and Beth Pickens.
6 p.m., free
Latino Reading Room
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
www.litquake.org

Thursday, Oct. 7

Booksmith Bookswap
Bring a book you passionately love but can part with and learn about dozens of new, fantastic books. Ticket price includes two drinks, appetizers, and a 20% discount card to purchase books after the event.
6:30 p.m., $25
Booksmith
1644 Haight, SF
www.litquake.org

Feminine Wiles
Hear witty women read from their most recent books, featuring Elif Batuman, Marisa Crawford, Katie Crouch, Thaisa Frank, Joyce Maynard, Kaya Oakes, and Shawna Yang Ryan.
7 p.m., free
Noe Valley Recreational Center
295 Day, SF
www.litquake.org

The International Homosexual Conspiracy
Author Larry-bob Roberts offers humorous insights into the absurdities of modern life and queer culture, from contemporary topics like mistaken first impressions, to sustainable yet unaffordable pants, and critiques of bourgeois mindsets.
7 p.m., free
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia, SF
www.mtbs.com

Litquake Bites
Local food and books, two of San Francisco’s favorite pastimes, converge at this delicious and informative lunchtime event featuring presentations and tastings by four innovative food purveyors and authors including Sarah Billingsley, Gordon Edgar, Steve Sando, and Amy Treadwell.
Noon, free
Book Passage
1 Ferry Building, SF
www.litquake.org

Stories on the Stage
Hear short fiction stories about love lost, love never found, and love perpetually out of touch with authors Daniel Handler, Daniel Alarcón, and Yiyun Li. Directed by Sean San José, co-founder of Campo Santo, the award-winning resident theater company of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts.
7:30 p.m., $25
Roda Theater
Berkeley Repertory Theatre
2025 Addison, Berk.
www.litquake.org

Friday, Oct. 8

All-Memoir Women’s Night
From finding love in foreign lands to struggling with poverty, from being in the sandwich generation to making the perfect brownie, women are fearless when it comes to exploring life and its myriad joys and challenges. Hear authors Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, Katherine Ellison, Laura Fraser, Frances Lefkowitz, Meredith Maran, Kate Moses, Janice Cooke Newman turn inward to provide us with stories that delight, dismay, and entertain. Emceed by Litquake co-director Jane Ganahl.
6:30 p.m., $5-$10 donation
Paris Ballroom
501 Geary, SF
www.litquake.org

“How to Write and Sell Erotica”
Join a panel of editors, anthologists, and published authors as they offer practical tips and personal insights about how to write and sell all forms of erotica. Find out what magazines, websites, anthologies, and book publishers you can sell your work to, as well as  tips on how to write more marketable erotica.
7:30 p.m., $5-$15 donation
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.sexandculture.org

“It’s All Over But the Crying”
Enjoy a night of author talks on the world of sports, from the infinite variations of major-league baseball to the international phenomenon of the World Cup, with Alan Black, Howard Bryant, Dan Epstein, Dan Fost, David Henry Sterry, Jason Turbow, and Michael Zagaris. Special multimedia presentation by Bay Area sports photographer Michael “Z Man” Zagaris. Emceed by Litquake co-director Jack Boulware.
7 p.m., $10
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
www.litquake.org

Jonathan Lethem
Novelist, essayist, and short story writer Jonathan Lethem will discuss his latest novel, Chronic City. Co-presented by Litquake and San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center.
11 a.m., $20
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California, SF
www.litquake.org

Litquake at the Bikestore
In the late 19th century, an accountant named Frank Lenz quit his job to cycle around the world. Two years later he mysteriously disappeared during the final leg of the journey. Hear author David V. Herlihy discuss this mystery and his new book The Lost Cyclist. In conjunction with Green Apple Books.
7 p.m., free
Public Bikes
123 South Park, SF
www.litquake.org

Saturday, Oct. 9

Lit Crawl
Get your fill of literary entertainment at galleries and bars across the Mission, where each phase offers crawlers a choice of attending readings happening simultaneously at over a dozen venues. With best-selling authors, poets, professors, bawdy story-tellers, amateurs, and professionals, it’ll be tough to choose three.
Phase I 6pm-7pm, Phase II 7:15pm-8:15pm, Phase III 8:30pm-9:30pm; free
Various venues along the Valencia Street Corridor
Mission District, SF
www.litquake.org

Sunday, Oct. 10

Social Justice with Claudette Colvin
Attend this social justice event featuring a conversation between Enid Lee and Civil Rights legend Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus in 1955 and was the star witness in the federal case Browder v. Gayle, which desegregated the Montgomery buses. Also featuring a performance piece by Awele Makeba and a performance by poet, activist, and spoken word artist Bryonn Bain.
1:30 p.m., free
San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin, SF
www.litquake.org

Tuesday, Oct. 12

Bill Bryson
Hear the author of At Home in conversation with Roy Eisenhardt.
8 p.m., $20
Herbst Theater
401 Van Ness, SF
www.cityboxoffice.com

Left in the Dark
Authors R.A. McBride and Julie Lindow celebrate twentieth century movie theatres and movie going in this book titled, Left in the Dark: Portraits of San Francisco Movie Theatres, a collection of personal essays and fine art photographs that casts the theatres as characters within the city’s cultural landscape.
7 p.m., free
City Lights Bookstore
261 Columbus, SF
www.litquake.org

Joseph O’ Neill
The award-winning novelist of Netherland will be discussing his new family memoir, Blood-Dark Track.
7 p.m., $20
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California, SF
(415) 292-1200

The test of the Tenderloin

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The test of the Tenderloin

caitlin@sfbg.com

This is a story about love and money. Or a story about love, money, and location. — Rebecca Solnit, Hollow City (Verso 2000)

It’s a sunny day in the most maligned neighborhood in San Francisco. I’m walking down a busy sidewalk with an excited Randy Shaw, long-time housing advocate. He’s giving me a tour of his Tenderloin.

“There’s history everywhere you look here,” he notes as we rush about the dingy blocks of one of the city’s most densely populated, economically bereft communities. In a half-untucked navy button-down and square-frame glasses, Shaw reels off evidence of this legacy faster than I can write it down and still maintain our walking pace.

To our left, Hyde Street Studios, where the Grateful Dead recorded its 1970 album American Beauty. Across the street, a ramshackle building that once housed Guido Caccienti’s Black Hawk nightclub, where the sounds of jam-fests by the likes of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane would echo out onto the streets during its heyday in the 1950s. Throughout its history, the Tenderloin has been renowned for its nightlife: music, theater, sex work — and the social space that occurs between them.

Shaw came to the Tenderloin 30 years ago as a young law student and founded and built the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, a nonprofit agency that is now one of the largest property owners in the neighborhood and employs more than 250 full-time workers. Shaw has spent the last few decades fighting to improve conditions in the single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs, once notorious for malfunctioning heating systems and mail rooms that would dump the letters for their hundreds of low-income residents into a pile on the floor rather than fit them into personal lock boxes (which now line the walls of THC’s lobbies).

But that activism isn’t the reason for this tour. No, today Shaw is showing me why tourism can work in the Tenderloin. The heavy iron gate of an SRO is quickly buzzed open as the doorman recognizes him. Inside, working-class seniors mill about aided by walkers — this particular property is an old folks’ home — but over our heads, affixed to a majestically high ceiling, looms a triple-tiered glass and metal chandelier, evidence of the area’s architecturally important past.

“When I show people this,” Shaw smiles at my amazement at this bling in a nonprofit apartment building, “they’re amazed at the quality of the housing.” Further down the road, we peep in at a vividly Moorish geometric vaulted ceiling and a lobby that once housed a boxing gym where Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali liked to spar. Both are now home to the inner city’s poorest residents.

Of course, it’s not just tours that we’re talking when it comes to Shaw’s plans for the future. Shaw has acquired a 6,400-square-foot storefront in the Cadillac Hotel on the corner of Eddy and Leavenworth streets, where he plans to open the Uptown Tenderloin Museum in 2012. He says it will showcase the hood’s historical legacy as well as house a nighttime music venue in the basement. The increased foot traffic, he says, will do good things for public safety (a problem that has been identified as a high priority by the resident-run Tenderloin Neighborhood Association) and bring business to the neighborhood’s impressive collection of small ethnic restaurants.

An increased focus on the Tenderloin’s heritage and public image, Shaw says, will translate to more jobs and a better quality of life for the people who live here. “My goal is to have this be the first area in an American city where low income people have a high quality of life,” he says.

If Shaw is correct, it will indeed be a first. Many cities have attempted to transform low income areas with arts districts — and the end result has typically been the displacement of the poorer residents. Coalition on Homelessness director Jennifer Friedenbach described the process: “Gentrification follows a very specific path. First come police sweeps, then the arts, then the displacement. That’s the path that we’re seeing. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid the displacement part,” she says.

It’d be great if the Tenderloin took the road less traveled — but will it?

Shaw’s best-case scenario seems unlikely, according to Chester Hartman, a renowned urban planning scholar and author of the numerous studies of San Francisco history and the activist handbook Displacement: How to Fight It (National Housing Law Project 1982). Hartman doubts the Tenderloin will remain a housing option for the city’s poor, given its central location and market trends. “The question is, what proportion will move and what will stay?” he said in a phone interview.

Earlier this summer, the National Endowment of the Arts awarded the SF Arts Commission $250,000 toward an arts-based “revitalization of the mid-Market neighborhood.” The area, which is adjacent to the Tenderloin, is considered by many to be the more outwardly visible face of the TL. In truth, the two neighborhoods share many of the same issues and public characteristics, including high density living and prominent issues with drugs.

Amy Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of neighborhood business development, said the Newsom administration is using the money “to implement arts programming that would have an immediate impact on the street. These activities would then build momentum for the longer-term projects.” At this point, plans for that “immediate impact” have started with the installation of lights on Market Street between Sixth and Eighth streets. Two other projects are also in effect: a city-sponsored weekly arts market on United Nations Plaza and an al fresco public concert series.

It’s hard to distinguish these moves from a general trend toward rebranding the image of the Tenderloin. These streets have already seen Newsom announce a historic preservation initiative that put $15,000 worth of commemorative plaques on buildings; it was also announced they would be added to the National Register of Historic Places, a move that allows property owners deep tax cuts for building renovations.

Cohen said her office has spent time trying to attract a supermarket (something the neighborhood, although flush with corner stores, currently lacks), but efforts seem to be faltering. “Grocery store operators and other retailers perceive that the area is unsafe and have expressed concerns about the safety of their employees and customers,” Cohen said. “The arts strategy makes sense because it builds on the assets that are there. Cultivating the performing and visual arts uses that are already succeeding will ultimately enhance the neighborhood’s ability to attract restaurants, retail, and needed services like grocery stores.”

These days, many of the small businesses in the area have window signs hyping “Uptown Tenderloin: Walk, Dine, Enjoy” over graphics of jazzy, people-free high-rises. Looking skyward, one observes the recent deployment of tidy street banners funded by the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District that pay homage to the number of untouched historic buildings in the neighborhood. The banners read “409 historic buildings in 33 blocks. Yeah, we’re proud.”

Figuring out who benefits from these new bells and whistles can seem baffling at times. Even the museum plan, which Shaw says will draw inspiration in part from New York’s Tenement Museum, has drawn criticism. A July San Francisco Magazine blog post was subtitled “An indecent proposal that puzzled even the San Francisco Visitors Bureau” and likened Shaw’s attempts to the “reality tourism movement” that takes travelers through gang zones in L.A. and poverty-stricken townships in South Africa.

This seems to be a misconstruction of what he’s attempting. “You know what no one ever calls out? The Mission mural tours, the Chinatown tours,” Shaw says.

And Shaw scoffs when I bring up that PR bane of the urban renewer: gentrification. He takes me through a brief rundown of the strict zoning laws in the Tenderloin, adding that many people don’t believe that poor people have the right to live in a high-quality neighborhood: “I haven’t been down here for 30 years to create a neighborhood no one wants to live in.”

Indeed, thanks to the efforts of Shaw and others, it would be hard for even the most determined developers to get rid of the SRO housing in the Tenderloin.

In the 1980s, community activists struggled to change the zoning designation of the neighborhood, which lacked even a name on many city maps. The area was zoned for high-rise buildings and was being encroached on by the more expensive building projects of tourist-filled Union Square, Civic Center, and the wealthier Nob Hill neighborhood. Their success came in the form of 1990s Residential Hotel Anti-Conversion Ordinance, which placed strict limits on landlords flipping their SROs into more expensive housing.

Hartman remains unconvinced of the efficacy of the protective measures activists have won in years past; indeed, even SRO rental prices have soared. According to the Central City SRO Collaborative, in the decade after the Anti-Conversion Ordinance, rental prices increased by 150 percent, not only pricing residents out of the Tenderloin but out of the city. “Where do they move?” Hartman asked. “It’s probably the last bastion of low-income housing in the city. That changes the class composition of the city.”

“The neighborhood has been changing slowly but steadily,” says District Six Sup. Chris Daly when reached by e-mail for comment on the Tenderloin’s future. He writes that rents in the neighborhood have been consistently rising and that several condo development proposals have crossed his desk. Daly has been involved in negotiating “community benefits” and quotas for low income housing in past mid-Market housing projects, but has been disappointed by subsequent affordable housing levels in projects like Trinity Plaza on the corner of Sixth and Market streets. In terms of the Tenderloin, he said, “it is untrue to say that the neighborhood is immune from gentrifying forces. It is shielded, but not immune.”

But some see the influx of art-based attention to the area as a possible boon to residents. Debra Walker, a San Franciscan artist who is running for the District 6 supervisor post, said she believes arts can be used “organically to resolve some of the chronic problems in the Tenderloin, street safety being the primary one in my mind.”

Though most of her fellow candidates expressed similar views when contacted for this story, western SoMa neighborhood activist Jim Meko said he thinks artists in the area are being used to line the pockets of the real estate industry. “The idea of creating an arts district is an amenity that the real estate dealers want to see because it makes the neighborhood less scary for their upper class audience” he says.

The area clearly has a rich legacy of nightlife, arts, and theater. The Warfield is here, as is American Conservatory Theater, the Orpheum, and the Golden Gate. So is the unofficial center of SF’s “off-off Broadway district,” which includes Cutting Ball Theater and Exit Theater. The Exit has been located in the TL since its first performance in 1983, held in the lobby of the Cadillac Hotel, and sponsors the neighborhood’s yearly Fringe Festival. There are art galleries and soup kitchens, youth and age, and more shouted greetings on the streets than you’ll hear anywhere else in the city.

No one is more aware of this diversity of character than Machiko Saito, program director of Roaddawgz, a TL creative drop-in center and resource referral service for homeless youth. I met Saito in the Roaddawgz studio, which occupies a basement below Hospitality House, a homeless community center that also houses a drop-in self-help center, an employment program, men’s shelter and art studio for adults in transition.

Despite its being empty in the morning before the open hours that bring waves of youth to its stacks of paints and silk-screens, Roaddawgz is in a glorious state of bohemian dishevelment that implies a well-loved space. It could be a messy group studio if not for the load-bearing post in the center of the room covered with flyers for homelessness resource centers and a “missing” poster signed “your Mom loves you.”

We talk about how important it is that the kids Saito works with have a place like this, a spot where they can create “when all you want to do is your art and if you can’t you’ll die.” A career artist herself, she cuts a dramatic figure in black, safety pins, and deep red lipstick painted into a striking cupid’s bow. Her long fingernails tap the cluttered desk in front of her as she tells me stories from the high-risk lives that Roaddawgz youth come to escape: eviction, cop harassment, theft, rape.

The conversation moves to some of the recent developments in the area. Saito and I recently attended an arts advisory meeting convened by the Tenderloin Economic Development Corporation’s executive director, Elvin Padilla, who has received praise from many of the TL types I spoke with regarding his efforts to connect different factions of the community. Attendees ranged from a polished representative from ACT, which is considering building another theater, for students, in a space on Market and Mason streets, to heralded neighborhood newbies Grey Area Foundation, to Saito and longtime community art hub Luggage Store’s cofounder Darryl Smith. Talk centered on sweeping projects that could develop a more cohesive “identity” for the neighborhood.

I ask Saito how it felt for her to be involved with a group whose vision of the neighborhood might be focused on slightly different happenings than what she lives through Roaddawgz. She says she’s been to gatherings in the past where negative things about the Tenderloin were highlighted. Of Padilla’s arts advisory meeting, she says, “I think that one of the reasons I wanted to go was that it’s important [for attendees] to remember that there’s a community out there. Things can get really complicated. It’s hard to come up with decisions that affect everyone positively. If we’re going to say, ‘The homeless are bad; the drug addicts are bad; the business owners that don’t beautify their storefronts…” She trails off for a moment. “I don’t want to lose the heart of the Tenderloin.”

In yet another Tenderloin basement — this one housing the North of Market-Tenderloin CBD, an organization that is known for its work employing ex-addicts and adults in transition — Rick Darnell has created the Tenderloin Art Lending Library. The library accepts donated works from painters and makes them available for use by Tenderloin residents, many of whom have recently moved into their SRO housing and are in need of a homey touch.

Darnell is rightfully ecstatic at the inclusive nature of his library, but has been hurt over its reception at an arts advisory meeting he attended to publicize its creation. “Someone whispered under their breath ‘I would never lend anything to anyone in the Tenderloin,’ ” he tells me. The exclusion that Saito and Darnell sometimes feel highlights the reality that the definition of the Tenderloin might well vary, even among those who are set on making it “a better place.” The arts community appears to suffer from fractures that appear along the lines of where people live, their organizational affiliation, their housing status, and how they think art should play a role in community building.

Sammy Soun is one Tenderloin resident who would welcome an increased focus on art in the Tenderloin. Soun was born in a Thailand refugee camp to Cambodian parents fleeing the civil wars in their country. He grew up in the Tenderloin, where his family lived packed into small studios and apartments.

But he was part of a community, with plenty of support, and lives in the neighborhood to this day, as do one of his four siblings and his daughter. Soun paints, does graffiti, draws — he’s considering transferring from City College to the San Francisco Art Institute. He has worked at the Tenderloin Boys and Girls Club for nine years, giving back to the kids he says “are the future. They’re going to be the ones that promote this place or keep it going — if they want to.” His sister, cousins, and uncles still live in the neighborhood. You might say he has a vested interest in the area’s future.

He finds the incoming resources for the Tenderloin arts scene to be a mixed bag. Soun has never been to the Luggage Store, although it’s one of the longtime community art hubs in the area. He can’t relate to the kinds of art done at the neighborhood’s recent digital arts center, Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, though he says the space has contacted him and friends to visit. His disconnect from the arts scene implies that future arts projects need to work harder on their community outreach — or even better, planning — with artists who call the Tenderloin home.

But Soun loves the new Mona Caron mural the CBD sponsored on the corner of Jones Street and Golden Gate Avenue. Well-known for her panoramic bike path mural behind the Church Street Safeway, Caron painted “Windows into the Tenderloin” after dozens of interviews and tours of the neighborhood with community members. Its “before and after” panels are a dummies’ guide for anyone seeking input on ways to strengthen the Tenderloin community — though the “after” does show structural changes like roads converted into greenways and roof gardens sending tendrils down the sides of buildings, the focal point is the visibility of families. Where children were ushered through empty parking lots single-file in the “before” section, the second panel shows families strolling, children running, a space that belongs to them.

Our interview is probably the first time somebody has asked Soun where he thinks arts funding in the Tenderloin should go. “For projects by the kids in the community,” he said.

Truth be told, more art of any kind can only make the Tenderloin a better place — but if you’re trying to improve quality life, focus needs to be on plans that positively affect residents of all ages — art can be a vital part of that, but it should be one part of a plan that ensures rent control, safe conditions, and access to services. After all, if you’re going to rebrand the Tenderloin, you might want to look at the painting on the wall.

Prop. B will save healthcare

David Talbot
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59
Prop. B will save healthcare

By Jeff Adachi and Jim Illig

Editors note: Last week we ran an op-ed by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano opposing Proposition B. Public Defender Jeff Adachi asked for space to respond. His position follows.

OPINION San Francisco prides itself on the excellent health care services it provides to its residents. Per capita, San Francisco provides better quality healthcare to its poorest and most vulnerable residents than any other city in our state. Our city’s Healthy San Francisco program, which provides low- cost access to healthcare for all uninsured residents, has been heralded as a model program nationwide.

But the healthcare system that serves the city’s employees is teetering on the brink of insolvency. This year, the city will spend $456 million for healthcare costs for 26,000 city employees, and 28,000 retirees and their 47,000 dependents. According to the Controller’s Office, the city’s health system has an unfunded liability of $4 billion — meaning that it has made $4 billion in promised coverage to city employees and their dependents that it doesn’t have the money to pay for.

That’s a major reason why two city departments that serve the poorest residents, the Public Defender and Public Health, must cut millions of dollars of essential services each year, to save the city’s General Fund for growing employee healthcare and pension costs.

Currently most city employees contribute nothing for their own healthcare. Taxpayers subsidize the entire cost, which runs between $2,890 and $5,560 per year for each employee. Proposition B would change this by requiring that an employee insured under the basic health plan pay just $96 a year ($8 a month) for their healthcare. Under Prop. B, city employees would still pay 22 times less than private sector employees, who pay an average of $2,185 per year for their health insurance.

City employees with dependents currently pay $8 a month. Under Prop. B, they would pay $2,988 per year. Private sector employees with dependents pay an average of $7,026 a year. And this doesn’t include the 31 percent of San Franciscans who do not receive employer-paid health care costs and pay the entire cost themselves.

Opponents of Prop. B claim that city workers cannot afford to pay the health benefits if Prop B. passes. Their argument ignores the fact that the average San Francisco city employee earns $93,000 a year in salary alone, excluding benefits, while the average private sector salary is $46,000.

They also argue that “a single mother will be forced to pay up to $5,600 per year for her child’s health care — in addition to the $8,154 she already pays.”

First, this is not true. A city employee with two dependents only pays a total of $448 a month for full health coverage. Only if the city employee chooses the most expensive health plan, which costs $31,645, would the employee have to pay $19,561 a year under Prop. B instead of the $16,922, which he or she now pays.

Even with contributions required by Prop. B, city employees will receive a benefit package that is unparalleled in the private sector. Even more important, the city’s healthcare fund will be made more sustainable by ensuring that the funding for the city’s healthcare program doesn’t run dry when the city can no longer afford to pay these costs.

According to the Controller’s ballot statement, Prop. B would save the city $121 million annually. Some of these funds could be used to prevent the devastating cuts to the city’s mental health, substance abuse, and other community health programs for poverty-stricken adults and children who do not have healthcare coverage.

Voting yes on Prop. B is an antidote to continuing cuts to healthcare for the poorest San Franciscans. *

Jeff Adachi is a proponent of Proposition B and the city’s public defender. Jim Illig is the president of the San Francisco Health Commission.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot
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6
Editor’s Notes

› tredmond@sfbg.com

Jane Reilly, a candidate for supervisor in District Two, came in to talk to us last week, and before we got around to interrogating her about tax policy, she told us a bit about her background. And while she was describing all of her (considerable) qualifications for the job, she noted that she’s done a lot of good work in the community and is "passionate about volunteerism."

Reilly’s a nice person, and (like a lot of wealthy people) she means well, so I didn’t get all Marxist on her and say that volunteerism is a bourgeois concept. And I know, poor people volunteer too, and it’s a wonderful thing that so many people do so much for so many, thousands of points of light and all that. It’s great, I really mean it.

But I’m also getting fucking sick of volunteerism and charity.

Because it’s not only an incomplete solution to our worst social problems — it also diverts attention from the full solutions.

Warren Buffett, the multibillionaire, is getting a lot of press attention and lavish praise for his pledge to give half of his fortune to charity. He’s got Larry Ellison and David Rockefeller and Ted Turner and a bunch of others to join him. How grand.

Meanwhile, most of these people have been paying a fraction of the tax burden that falls on the middle class (what’s left of it) and getting more and more wealthy from Reagan-, Bush-, Clinton-, and Bush II–era tax breaks.

The richest 5,000 Americans now own more than the poorest 160 million, combined. Millions are out of work while the nation’s infrastructure crumbles. The connection between those problems is clear and direct: since 1980, the U.S. government has stopped trying to redistribute the wealth of the superrich in ways that create jobs and economic opportunities for everyone else.

No amount of charity will change that (especially since "charity" includes gifts to extrawealthy institutions like Harvard University and the Getty Museum). No amount of volunteerism will lift huge masses out of poverty. There’s only one institution that can do that — government — and one effective way to make it work: progressive and redistributive taxation.

My new hero is a woman named Jill Heavenrich, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The New York Times published a letter from her on Sept. 20, which reads:


I’m 81. I don’t have to worry about losing my home. I know I’ll never go hungry.

I can help my grandchildren go to college. I can give to causes I believe in.

Why am I not being taxed more? Why was I told to go out and shop after 9/11? Why wasn’t I asked to help pay for two wars in which brave young men and women are dying? The question remains for me: ‘It’s my country. I love it. Where is my responsibility to help the only way I can with my taxes?’


That’s not charity. That’s reality.

SFBG Radio: Poverty rising and the price of despair

Zelda Bronstein
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11
SFBG Radio: Poverty rising and the price of despair

Today we talk about the new data that shows one in seven Americans now live in poverty — and why the rich ought to be willing to pay more taxes. You can listen after the jump.

sfbgradio9.17.2010 by endorsements2010

Not according to plan

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Not according to plan

rebeccab@sfbg.com

The long-term viability of eight women’s health clinics operating under regional affiliate Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) was thrown into question Aug. 6 when Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) announced that the affiliate would lose its accreditation.

The clinics — which serve roughly 55,000 clients, predominantly women living at or below the federal poverty level — will still be allowed to operate but must stop using Planned Parenthood’s nationally trusted name beginning Sept. 3.

Some news articles immediately following PPFA’s announcement referenced confidential internal conflicts to explain the break, but financial documents and the accounts of several former employees gathered by the Guardian suggest that the organization had reached a precarious financial position that made it difficult to meet accreditation standards.

“To not have a Planned Parenthood in San Francisco is like heresy,” a former PPGG employee told the Guardian. Yet this person and other former coworkers attributed this outcome to dysfunction at the senior management level of PPGG and said the national organization had little choice but to take action.

The Bay Citizen reported that 30 members of PPGG’s medical services staff sent a letter to Harrison and PPFA executives in October 2008 to raise concerns about “the misappropriation and mismanagement of PPGG’s funds.” The letter charges that “executive staff’s personal expenditures are excessive and are not aligned with the mandatory fiscal restrictions. Flagrant use of PPGG funds to pay for personal belongings, personal services, and exorbitant technology products is seemingly unchallenged and not subject to the same financial scrutiny that clinic supplies and staff salaries are, for example.”

A former PPGG staffer noted that employees had tried in the past to sound the alarm, including going to the media. Another noted that they had been made to sign a confidentiality agreement on leaving the organization, a practice that was common within PPGG.

While the current CEO, Therese Wilson, did not return numerous phone calls seeking comment, she was quoted in a fairly sympathetic San Francisco Chronicle article referencing the economic downturn and inability for many of the clients to pay as reasons behind the agency’s financial woes. While the recession, cuts to state funding to nonprofits, and other external factors have clearly had an impact, documents suggest that things were going awry before the recession hit full force.

An internal PPGG document provided to the Guardian displays the agency’s on-hand cash reserves compared with other affiliates, suggesting that the reserve ratios were at or below the minimum required by Planned Parenthood national for all but one year from 1998 to 2007 — and well below that of other affiliates of similar size. That is a key requirement for meeting accreditation standards.

When we asked Elizabeth Toledo, a Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) spokesperson, about this apparent pattern, she said she could not comment because she had not seen the documents. She also said the accreditation reviews were confidential. “Understanding the true financial picture for health care providers takes a very in-depth evaluation,” Toledo said. “PPFA and PPGG were working together over the last few years to resolve fiscal challenges.”

The Packard Foundation, a major donor to Planned Parenthood, awarded PPGG a $30,000 “organizational effectiveness” grant last year to “select a talented, external provider to help them think through some of these challenges.” The grant expires in September, according to spokesperson Dan Cohen.

In an era marked by high unemployment, economic instability, and deep cuts in public funding for health services, Planned Parenthood clinics provide an increasingly important safety net for uninsured and low-income clients in need of birth control, screenings for sexually transmitted disease or cervical cancer, abortion services, or information on sexual health that isn’t manipulated by a pro-life agenda. As things stand, women in rural communities seeking abortions often must travel very long distances to clinics, and any gap in services resulting from a PPGG accreditation loss could further broaden those geographical boundaries.

Since financial problems are at the root of the San Francisco-based affiliate’s problems, the PPGG clinics — which are located in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino counties — are in an especially precarious position without national support, despite operating as a separate entity from PPFA. Planned Parenthood affiliates Mar Monte and Shasta Diablo plan to take over some of the existing clinics or cover gaps in service area by opening satellite centers, Toledo told us. “It’s unusual to have a disaffiliation,” she said. “But it’s not unusual for national committees to have a reallocation of service area. That part is well practiced.” She added that “every effort possible will be made” to ensure continuity of care.

The Mar Monte affiliate operates clinics in the Central Valley, Sacramento, the Sierra region, the San Joaquin Valley, and Silicon Valley. The Shasta Diablo affiliate covers areas in Butte, Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Shasta, and Solano counties, with locations in El Cerrito and Walnut Creek. Depending on clients’ starting points, travel times could lengthen considerably and waiting rooms could become more crowded if the current PPGG clinics can’t stay afloat.

It’s too early to say just how PPGG staff members and patients will be affected by the loss of accreditation. However, it became obvious from Guardian interviews and more than two dozen Web comments on the Guardian’s online coverage of PPGG management woes that there was a high level of employee discontent at PPGG. Former staffers even keep in touch through a sort of club titled “PPGG PTSD” — a humorous reference to being shaken by the experience of working there. Yet while many were angered by the affiliate’s administrative problems, they nonetheless remain dedicated to the mission of Planned Parenthood.

“I’m a senior citizen who hasn’t needed birth control in quite some time, yet I remember when I was a young woman without resources who depended on PPGG for basic health care,” noted “Ellen,” a commenter. “They provide more than just reproductive services. They found an early cervical cancer, and I’m alive today as a result of the early diagnosis that they provided.

“It’s a tragedy that the current and recent trustees and management ruined such a fine organization,” she continued. “A friend of mine is a talented and dedicated nurse with a background of serving low-income women. She resigned from PPGG a year ago because she couldn’t handle the mismanagement any longer. I hope one of the nearby chapters is able to take over the PPGG clinics. In any case, current PPGG management and trustees need to go.”

Former employees saw problems coming at Planned Parenthood Golden Gate

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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48

This week’s announcement that Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) was severing ties with Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) came as no surprise to some former employees, who have for months been trying to sound the alarm that the chapter was being mismanaged, had major financial problems, and was in a steep decline that could threaten important reproductive care services that low-income women rely on.

A former PPGG employee with knowledge of the organization’s internal affairs described a longstanding pattern of financial mismanagement when former president and CEO Dian Harrison was at the helm. There was widespread concern about spending on expensive marketing campaigns and lavish functions, the person said, and a high level of employee turnover and discontent.

Warning signs of financial difficulties surfaced at least a year ago. Dan Cohen, a spokesperson of the Packard Foundation — a major donor to PPGG — told the Guardian that Packard awarded PPGG a 12-month, $30,000 “organizational effectiveness” grant, which will expire in September. The grant “allows an organization to select a talented, external provider to help them think through some of these challenges,” Cohen explained. The Packard Foundation also awarded a 3-year grant for general operating support for $800,000, which will also expire next month.

Another former employee told the Guardian that she would love to discuss internal problems, but was made to sign a confidentiality agreement upon leaving the organization.

Therese Wilson, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate — who took over PPGG when Harrison left last year on medical leave — did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

An internal PPGG document provided to the Guardian displays the agency’s on-hand cash reserves as compared with other affiliates, suggesting that the reserve ratios were at or below the minimum required by the national Planned Parenthood federation for all but one year from 1998 to 2007 — and well below that of other affiliates of similar size. That is a key requirement for meeting accreditation standards.

When we asked Elizabeth Toledo, a PPFA representative, about this apparent pattern she said she could not comment because she had not seen the documents. She also said the accreditation reviews were confidential. “Understanding the true financial picture for health care providers takes a very in-depth evaluation,” Toledo said. “PPFA and PPGG were working together over the last few years to resolve fiscal challenges.”

Despite delays at the state level in awarding nonprofit funding and the loss of support from the national organization, Toledo and a union representative for PPGG employees both said they believe the clinics will continue serving patients under a different name.

“They plan to stay open, and employees are planning to stay,” said SEIU Local 1021 representative Sarah Sherpun-Zimmer, who has been a union rep for PPGG employees for the last two years. “Folks are really happy working there and they feel like it’s going in a good direction.”

PPGG operated eight clinics, which will lose their Planned Parenthood accreditation Sept. 3, effectively severing their ties to a trusted entity that thousands of low-income women rely upon for birth control, abortion procedures, and other forms of reproductive health care. PPGG operates clinics in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino counties, serving about 55,000 women per year.

Roughly 92 percent of the clients they serve live at or below the federal poverty line, according to PPGG’s 2008 annual report.

Planned Parenthood affiliates Mar Monte and Shasta Diablo are in the process of hatching plans for taking over some of the eight affected clinics or otherwise growing their own operations to cover any gaps in service area, according to Toledo. She said neighboring affiliates are in a position financially to be able to cover a wider territory and added that they have been in “expansion mode,” adding new clinics over the past couple years.

“It’s unusual to have a disaffiliation,” she said. “But it’s not unusual for national committees to have a reallocation of service area. That part is well-practiced.” Toledo added that “Every effort possible will be made” to ensure continuity of care.

Nima Maghame contributed to this report.

Call of the grisly

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Call of the grisly

arts@sfbg.com

LIT With volumes devoted to numerous U.S. cities and quite a few foreign capitals, it sometimes seems as if Akashic Books’ expanding line of noir story anthologies will wind up covering virtually every major metropolis on earth. Because less gritty burgs like Portland, Ore.; Seattle; and Phoenix all have entries in the crime fiction series, it’s only fair that Mexico City gets a nod.

Akashic must be commended for waiting several years until the great novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II agreed to take on editing duties for Mexico City Noir (Akashic Books, 250 pages, $15.95). Taibo, who was born in Spain but has lived in Mexico since 1958, is the author of wildly entertaining and internationally successful mysteries that push the genre’s boundaries in interesting directions. In addition to a dense biography of Che Guevara, he has written a doorstop-size book about Pancho Villa that should have been translated into English years ago.

In his introduction to Mexico City Noir, Taibo describes the capital city as having “the most corrupt police force on the planet.” (A recent guidebook cites research showing that 13 percent of the megacity’s incarcerated population are veterans of the police corps.) Taibo writes of the corruption and mayhem sewn by members and ex-members of “security” forces: “If you’re lucky, you can stay away from it, you can keep your distance … until, suddenly, without a clear explanation of how, you fall into the web and become trapped.” He concludes, “You wake up in the morning with the uneasy feeling that the law of probabilities is working against you.” If that’s not noir, what the hell is?

The stories Taibo assembles shine a harsh light on systematic injustice and dire poverty amid, as Taibo puts it, “an economic crisis that’s been going on for 25 years.” Among the book’s highlights are a street drunk who may have witnessed a police killing, a demented priest with some unsavory urges, and plenty of street-level contemplation of the violence of everyday life. There’s also enough grisly narco-related mayhem to satisfy fans of the Saw movie franchise (assuming they can read).

But while stateside crime fiction often achieves such levels of violence at the expense of a moral center, and rarely works on more than one fairly obvious (if lucrative) level, these short stories are rooted in rage at the injustice that permeates life in Mexico City. The sometimes experimental narratives lay out the harsh socioeconomic realities of post-NAFTA Mexico, where the less-than-magical realism of the market makes the rich richer and the poor poorer — and the U.S.-backed drug war provides plenty of bad men with more guns. The warped humor here, especially in Taibo’s contribution about the struggle for the soul of an embattled street corner, is part of the survival mechanism of people who have seen too much of life at its worst but must keep laughing anyway.

Akashic is complementing the release of Mexico City Noir by reissuing The Uncomfortable Dead (Akashic Books, 268 pages, $15.95), the novel Taibo wrote in collaboration with Zapatista spokesperson and strategist Subcommandante Marcos. In an interview included as part of the new edition’s supplementary materials, Taibo describes the frenetic pace at which he and Marcos wrote alternate chapters for serialization in Mexican paper La Jornada, for a total of 12 chapters over 12 weeks. That ongoing deadline pressure has produced a giddy read, and if it doesn’t deliver the kind of straightforward narrative and tight plotting that U.S. mystery readers look for, the literary pyrotechnics of these two impressive wordsmiths offer undeniable pleasures that eschew formulaic predictability.

Taibo’s chapters feature his Coca-Cola-and-tobacco-addled, one-eyed detective Hector Belascoarn Shayne on the trail of a murderer named Morales. Marcos in turn writes about a Zapatista investigator named Elias, who is also searching for a man named Morales. The two stories wind up intersecting in a sometimes surreal jumble in Mexico City, where, in Taibo’s words, there are “more movie theatres than Paris, more abortions than London, and more universities than New York.”

The 1968 Mexico City police massacre of student activists is a key reference point in both books. That bloody repression was clearly a watershed period for Taibo and Marcos, profoundly influencing both of them. In the early 1980s, Marcos went south to Chiapas and joined the guerrillas who evolved into Zapatistas. Taibo became a history professor at the Metropolitan University of Mexico City and president of the International Association of Political Writers; He also went on to write ‘68, a memoir of sorts available in English from Seven Stories Press, and the experimental novel Calling All Heroes: A Manual for Taking Power (which features a survivor of the 1968 police massacres who enlists the aid of his childhood heroes Sherlock Holmes, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and D’Artagnan to help him in a new reform movement) just reprinted by local publisher PM Press.

Both Taibo and Marcos retained their radical politics and commitment to class struggle. They also share a fondness for absurdist humor, and both display an endearing willingness to laugh at themselves. Self-effacing humor is not a trait one usually associates with committed leftists, alas. The writing of Taibo and Marcos is a fine corrective to the unfortunate association of strident humorlessness with radical activism.

A rainbow plays tug of war: East Oakland photo contest winners

Andrew Lam
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0

East Oakland: beautiful, isn’t it? Deep in the Flickrs of its residents, the truth is out. Streets plagued by media images of gang violence and poverty are fodder for shots of kid’s games and preternatural beauty — and artists out there that care enough to capture it. Rene Yung, an artist who is heading the Our Oakland project, took issue with the way the community was being portrayed on TV: all the stories she saw were either crime or “rise above” tales of success. “I think so much of people’s everyday lives deserve to be celebrated.” The website she created for Our Oakland, meant to be a pride pump for this much maligned area of the Bay, sponsored a photography contest to find the photos they knew were out there. They received 22 entries, but this has gotta be due to the vagaries of Internet awareness and less a reflection of the material they sought, cuz they came up with some real pretty pictures. Care for an intro to the civic aesthetes who took the prizes? Wish granted. Check out this week’s SFBG for more stellar shots by Bay shutterbugs.

Oacia Williams has lived in East Oakland off and on since 2002. But she hasn’t seen too many rainbows there — at least skyward. The diversity on her street is part of the reason why she loves where she lives. “All the different colors and nationalities, everyone coming together. It is gorgeous,” Williams told us during the round of phone interviews we conducted with the Our Oakland winners. She took People’s Choice photo “See!! There is a Pot of Gold” (the same shot we picked out as an early favorite in the contest — see, who says community media isn’t influential?) on a day at home playing with her and her boyfriend’s kids. “The kids were tripping off the rainbow – first it was one rainbow and then the double. We were able to see it real well, which I was surprised because it was so dark out,” Williams remembered. Out came her Samsung. “Im always snapping it because you never know what you can do with it or who needs it.” She found out that Our Oakland needed it. Done and done.

“Tug of War” by Pauline Russell-Silva

“It’s just an authentic picture – I didn’t plan it. It’s from the perspective I have as an elementary school teacher, and of the kids in the area where I work,” says Pauline Russell-Silva of her first place shot. Russell Silva, a K-5 teacher at Encompass Elementary, Russell-Silva works with children on their English language development and reading skills. Her dynamic shot was taken on field day at Encompass. “We believe in educating the whole child, developing healthy body, mind and spirit,” she says. The days outside always end in a tug of war match, and the teacher’s Nikon D40 captured the shifting demographics in the East Oakland community. Russell-Silva finds it an apt photo of her neighborhood. “Sometimes there’s conflict and strife, sometimes there’s people working together.” She heard of the contest through the public library adjoining her school.

“Fanea” by Fanea Easterling

“We were so pleased by range of ages of winners in the contest,” Yung says. Taking the organization’s second place prize (and a Ipod shuffle in the bargain) was young person Fanae Clark, a student at the East Oakland Boxing Association who snapped her winning photo when Our Oakland hosted a photography workshop at the athletic center where she spars. In her artist’s statement, she said of her shot. “I also think this image shows hard work, which can get you where you want to be in life.” Yung found her shot appealing for the distinct perspective it offers. “As a young person she was being thoughtful relating to her life.”

Reinventing San Francisco

David Talbot
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8
Reinventing San Francisco

By Christopher D. Cook, Karl Beitel, and Calvin Welch. 

OPINION It’s hard to trust hope these days — to imagine that our world, or even our city — could be different. But for the next 10 or 15 minutes, as you read this, we invite you to suspend the cynicism and disbelief that hang over contemporary life, and allow your mind to imagine that, yes, a different San Francisco is possible. Just for 15 minutes, although we hope this helps kick-start a much longer-term revival of hope and urban reimagining.

It’s time to create something new in San Francisco — a visionary movement for constructive change that’s bold and unapologetic. Imagine, for instance, if San Francisco became a national model for how cities can reinvest local profits (public and private) and assets to expand economic opportunity and social equity. Imagine if, instead of promoting a dispiriting and volatile blend of corporate development and Darwinian “free-market” anarchy, San Francisco transformed how American cities define success by creating concrete alternatives to the chaos of capitalism.

Now imagine that San Francisco had its own public bank — a fiscally solvent, interest-generating financial force (potentially a half-billion dollars strong) dedicated to public financing and economic stimulus, that functioned as a vigorous incubator for homegrown industries and sustainable, true-green job creation.

We are proposing no less than a reinvention of San Francisco — a dramatic shift in priorities, resources, politics, and culture that marries the very best in both creative innovation and urgently needed reforms to make our city socially equitable and sustainable, both ecologically and economically.

Toward this end, the Community Congress, Aug. 14-15 on the University of San Francisco campus, will stimulate ideas, discussion, and planning to reinvigorate civic engagement and inspiration and create a concrete, locally actionable agenda for reshaping the city. You’re invited. (Visit www.sfcommunitycongress.wordpress.com for more information.) The congress is a conversation starter and idea incubator — an opportunity to begin reimagining San Francisco as a socially equitable, racially inclusive, ecologically sustainable city that grows its own food, supplies its own energy, and is an affordable haven for working-class people, immigrants, artists, and creative folk of all stripes.

We humbly propose a city that embraces cosmopolitanism and international exchange while empowering its residents to achieve a decent and livable quality of urban life. We are not trying to turn back the clock; we are trying to create new forms of social and economic value that give people meaning and sustenance, and hope.

 

WHY A COMMUNITY CONGRESS—WHY NOW?

Couldn’t we save such sweeping aspirations for a rainy day? The sky isn’t falling yet, is it? Not quite, but the present constellation of crises San Francisco is ensnarled in — massive and rising structural deficits, a boom/bust economy that’s profoundly unstable and inequitable, deepening economic and social divides that destabilize communities, to name a few — is simply unsustainable.

San Francisco’s economic and fiscal crisis is not a passing moment. Rather, it signals long-term structural flaws in the city’s economic policies and planning. San Francisco has lost roughly 45,000 jobs since 2000, and each “recovery” is marked by steadily higher unemployment rates (currently resting at 9.2 percent). More critically, as jobs and wages have grown more precarious and housing prices have steadily risen (over the long term), thousands of San Franciscans have been displaced.

Any serious vision for change must incorporate race and class dynamics. Consider the economic evisceration of much of the city’s African American population, which has plummeted from 13.4 percent of the population in 1970 to just 6.5 percent today (more than 22,000 African Americans left the city between 1990 and 2008). The gutting of communities of color is intrinsically intertwined with issues of job and wage loss and soaring housing costs. This is particularly acute in the geographic and political dislocation of African Americans in San Francisco. Add to this picture intense overcrowding and poverty in Chinatown and in Latino and immigrant communities, and you get a set of inequities that are morally unacceptable and socially untenable.

Like other major American cities, San Francisco faces a crucial historical moment. Global warming and fast-dwindling oil supplies require a transformative shift in how we conceive (and implement) economic development far beyond the city’s current piecemeal approach to “green procurement.” The Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force, appointed by the Board of Supervisors in 2007, concluded that a full 86 percent of San Francisco’s energy use comes from fossil fuels, primarily petroleum and natural gas, and a small amount of coal. Given the world’s fading oil supplies and mounting climate chaos, this is simply unsustainable.

The specter of a looming energy and environmental crisis, combined with economic instability marked by persistently high unemployment, rising income inequality, systemically entrenched homelessness, consumer debt, and the deepening crisis of cutbacks to critically needed human services and affordable housing call for a radical shift in how society — and San Francisco’s economy — are run.

Transforming San Francisco into a truly sustainable city will mean dramatic shifts in what (and how) we produce and consume, and aggressive city policies that promote local renewable energy. Our economy — how our food, housing, transportation and other essential goods are made — will have to be rebuilt for a world without oil.

These and other limits mean we must redefine growth and profit—fast. Work and sustainability must become fully intertwined, and we must think creatively about how jobs can produce social and community value, instead of profits concentrated at the top.

Creating truly sustainable and equitable cities for the 21st century will also mean dramatic shifts in how we produce and consume. There is no better place to begin than here in San Francisco, long an incubator in progressive thinking and genuine grassroots action and innovation. In an earlier Community Congress in 1975, residents and groups from across San Francisco united in a movement of ideas and organizing that led to district supervisorial elections and successful campaigns to stem the tide of downtown corporate development, helping to democratize politics and economics in San Francisco.

The 2010 Community Congress is aimed at reinvigorating local movements for lasting change, both on the policy level and in the relationship between people and their government. We hope to inspire a spirited and creative shift in the city’s culture and politics — with concrete, politically actionable policies to democratize planning and development and a more sweeping transformation of our expectations — toward a far richer and deeper engagement of people and communities in their own governance.

 

A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT

What would this City of Hope look like, and how would it work? Consider what we could accomplish with a municipal bank. The City and County of San Francisco currently has almost $2.6 billion in highly liquid reserves, about $500 million of which could be used to fund a Municipal Bank of San Francisco. Once established (and federally insured), the Municipal Bank could take additional deposits and use this to issue more loans. The bank could promote economically viable worker-run cooperatives that produce goods and services addressing community needs — be it day care, urban gardening, or ecologically sustainable light industry that creates meaningful employment for local residents. The bank could provide competitive small-interest loans to help stimulate small-business development — the key economic engine of the city. Currently, access to credit is one of the primary impediments to small business growth in San Francisco.

The city could also start a Municipal Development Corporation to produce goods and services that meet essential needs, boost local employment, and generate surpluses that would be available for local reinvestment. San Francisco could launch itself on the path to local energy self-reliance with funds from the Municipal Bank, together with revenue bonds—raising large pools of capital to finance large-scale alternative energy investments such as solar panels to generate energy for sale to local businesses and households.

The proceeds could help subsidize community-based development such as urban farming projects that could grow food for our public schools. The Municipal Development Corporation could explore other initiatives like large-scale medical marijuana cultivation and development of a commercial fiberoptic network. Other ideas can be developed; we need to engage our collective imagination to envision what can exist if there’s enough people power and political will.

By expanding access to credit, municipalizing a chunk of the city’s assets, establishing an economically viable municipal development enterprise, and democratizing city planning and development, San Francisco can enable long-disenfranchised communities to create sustainable and diversified development — instead of fighting over “jobs versus the environment” and other false choices and getting nowhere for decades.

It’s time for proactive, community-led economic development that addresses urgent needs, from local hiring and training, to creating a diverse base of neighborhood-serving businesses, to ecologically sustainable and healthful development and planning that is driven by communities and residents.

San Francisco’s job creation policies can be transformed to prioritize community needs over corporate profits by linking major development contracts to strict local hiring and training, community benefits agreements that invest in social goods like childcare and in-home health services, and ensuring dramatic increases in the city’s stock of affordable housing.

We need to build new forms of public participation in local government in ways that address people’s everyday needs. For instance, the congress will propose a new partnership between residents and Muni to make Muni work better, involving current riders and drivers in a new, more powerful role in how Muni lines function.

We need to find better ways to sustain a diverse population of working-class, people of color, artists, writers, musicians, and others. We need to make sure development isn’t just code for finding new ways to gentrify neighborhoods and displace existing residents.

Specific proposals will address how the city and community-based nonprofits deliver critical health and human services to our neediest residents. We propose making this an integrated part of the budget process, not a last-minute afterthought. Toward this end, the Community Congress will present actionable proposals to create innovative “resident/government” partnerships to improve local government responsiveness and efficiency.

 

RAISING—AND SPENDING—THE BENJAMINS

One of the keys to unlocking the city’s stagnating economy is progressive revenue generation and more democratic participation in budgeting. We must enlarge the public pie while reapportioning it in a way that stimulates job creation and shifts the tax burden onto the large businesses that reap vast private benefits from public goods and services. The city’s budget process must be dramatically reshaped and democratized. Communities need a seat at the fiscal table when the budget is being crafted — instead of lobbying tooth and nail at the end of the process just to retain funding that barely keeps programs afloat.

How can we build a participatory budgeting movement that brings residents and communities into the process? For instance, community budget councils composed of elected and appointed residents from every supervisorial district could assess neighborhood needs and incorporate them into drafting the budget. Whatever form this takes, the goal is to put the needs of residents at the forefront of how the city spends its resources.

The Community Congress can also help redefine fiscal responsibility. Taxing and spending must be accountable and transparent and respect the fact that this is the public’s money. Let’s be honest: much of what passes for government excess is due to management and executive bloat at the top, not salaries of frontline workers like bus drivers, social service providers, and hospital workers. True fiscal responsibility also means investing in prevention: education, healthcare, and services that help people build their lives.

 

RECLAIMING HOPE

It’s time to reclaim the public sector as the sphere of our shared interest. Rather than thinking in terms of the old paradigm that counterpoises “government” and “the market,” let us envision a new citizen movement to create a more participatory, democratic, and accountable system of self-government.

The San Francisco Community Congress is about bringing people together — community activists, those working in the trenches of our increasingly strained social services, our environmental visionaries, our artists, the urban gardeners and permaculturists, poets, bicycle enthusiasts, inventors … in short, assembling our pool of collective knowledge and wisdom, and yes, our differences — in a forum to discuss, debate, share concerns and viewpoints, and ultimately produce a working template that is both visionary and can be implemented.

The Community Congress will create a space for all of us to participate in defining our own vision of San Francisco. It is a first step toward reasserting popular control over economic development. It is an invitation to be visionary, rethinking in fundamental ways what it means to live in the 21st century city, and a forum for creating real, practical platforms and proposals that can be implemented using the powers of local government.

We want to propose a new vision of urban governance. Not more bureaucracy, more commissions, more departments, but the creation of new institutions that are democratically accountable and place new kinds of economic and political resources in the hands of ordinary citizens.

We don’t have any illusions. There are limits to what local government can do. Ultimately, deep change will require actions by higher levels of government. More profoundly, it will require a deeper change in citizen awareness, a rejection of life dominated by the pursuit of narrow self-interest, in favor of a more ecologically sustainable, socially just, and more democratic way of life.

But we can begin at the local level, here and now, to envision and implement the kind of changes that will need to take place if we want to insure that our city, our country, and our planet will be the kind of place we want our children to live. Please come. Bring your hopes, passions, and ideas. This is our collective project, our shared wisdom, our joint vision of the kind of city and society in which we want to live.

Christopher D. Cook is an author, journalist, and former Bay Guardian city editor (www.christopherdcook.com). Karl Beitel is a writer, scholar, and activist. Calvin Welch is the director of the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse and a long-time affordable housing advocate. This story was funded in part by www.spot.us

 

Why is Pelosi killing ENDA?

David Talbot
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Why is Pelosi killing ENDA?

OPINION Why is the Congressmember from the gayest city in America blocking legislation that protects lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers from workplace discrimination? That’s the question LGBT workers across the country are asking, and why LGBT workers picketed her office in the Federal Building and delivered a letter demanding that she not kill the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

Most LGBT workers have no protections from workplace discrimination. ENDA would provide legal protection against discrimination nationally. In 29 states, it is still legal to fire someone solely because they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. And in 38 states it is legal to fire someone solely for being transgender. The current version of the bill would outlaw discrimination on both sexual orientation and gender identity.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi repeatedly promised that she would schedule a vote on the law, but repeatedly broke these promises.

A 2006 study by the Guardian and Transgender Law Center found that 60 percent of transgender people in San Francisco earn less than $15,300 per year, only 25 percent have a full-time job, and nearly 9 percent have no source of income.

Only 4 percent reported making more than $61,200, which is about the median income in the Bay Area. More than half of local transgender people live in poverty, and 96 percent earn less than the median income. Forty percent of those surveyed don’t even have a bank account.

What this study reveals is that even in a city that is considered a haven for the LGBT community, transgender workers face profound employment challenges and discrimination. If this is true in San Francisco, imagine the figures in less queer-friendly towns.

A 2007 meta-analysis from the Williams Institute of 50 studies of workplace discrimination against LGBT people found consistent evidence of bias in the workplace. The analysis found that up to 68 percent of LGBT people reported experiencing employment discrimination, and up to 17 percent said they had been fired or denied employment.

Public opinion polling shows that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of making sure LGBT Americans get the same employment opportunities as everyone else. In fact, the latest surveys show that nearly 90 percent of Americans support workplace fairness for LGBT workers.

In a few weeks, Congress will finish its legislative business for the year so members can return to their districts to run for reelection. Last month at a LGBT Pride event, Rep. Jackie Spier (D-San Mateo) announced to a stunned crowd that not only would we not get ENDA before the end of the legislative session but she doesn’t think we would get it for five years because we won’t have enough votes in Congress again to ensure passage.

That’s right, at this moment, members of Congress are planning on leaving town and going home to campaign for their own jobs — while leaving thousands of LGBT workers without protections for the next five years. When 90 percent of Americans support workplace fairness, it’s challenging to believe that Pelosi fears a backlash from the voters.

That said, it’s fair to say that Pelosi may get a backlash from LGBT voters if she continues to block ENDA from a vote. The time to pass ENDA is now. The American people support it; the politicians promised it. No more broken promises. We demand that the House speaker stop blocking ENDA and schedule a vote.

Gabriel Haaland is a member of Pride at Work.

 

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: “Protektor” and “A Small Act”

Sue Vaughan
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San Francisco Jewish Film Festival: “Protektor” and “A Small Act”

(For more on the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, check out the two articles in this week’s Guardian.)

Protektor (Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic, 2009) Marek Najbrt’s pomo period piece — spiced by switches from color to monochrome, soundtracked DJ mashups, and other bendy tropes — provides an elegant yet energetic reprise of some familiar themes. Rising Czech film actress Hana (Jana Plodkova) refuses to leave Prague despite the considerable danger posed by her (secret) Jewish identity. Husband Emil (Marek Daniel) is a popular radio host who struggles to protect her as he nonetheless rises in favor under the wartime Nazi “protectorate.” But Hana proves uncontrollable as wife and (eventually boycotted) thespian, unable to keep her libido or boredom safely wrapped. And Emil’s bosses soon enforce a cruel choice. Protektor is self-conscious, but also surprising — the highly stylized presentation lends what could have played as an ordinary, earnest victim scenario an edge more seductive than distracting. Mon/26, Castro, 4:30 p.m.; Sat/31, 9:45 p.m., Roda. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk_5Oi5PFzs

A Small Act (Jennifer Arnold, United States, 2009) Ain’t gonna lie — I settled in to watch A Small Act thinking I’d be bored by a well-intentioned but manipulatively “uplifting” story. Boy, was I wrong. This is a complex, layered tale that features all the elements a compelling documentary requires, starting with its fascinating subjects. Born into poverty, Kenyan youth Chris Mburu was able to pursue his education thanks to Hilde Back, a Swedish woman who donated a few dollars a month to sponsor his education. Though they’d never met, he could not forgot the stranger who’d enabled him to finish high school (he ended up going to college, then Harvard Law School, and now has a prestigious job at the United Nations). Years later, Mburu named a foundation after Beck to give scholarships — and hope for a future beyond teenage pregnancy and a life of back-breaking labor — to Kenyan kids from his home village. Now, the joyful moment where Mburu and Beck meet for the first time comes pretty early in the film, which is when I realized that filmmaker Jennifer Arnold was going to dig way deeper with her doc than I originally suspected. First, there’s a whole plot thread about three bright kids who are frantically studying to take Kenya’s national exam (high marks would qualify them for one of Mburu’s scholarships), plus one about Beck’s life in Sweden (and her past as a Holocaust survivor), plus yet another about post-election unrest in Kenya that threatens not just the children we’ve met in the movie, but Mburu’s own family. It all unfolds with the urgency of real life, and the message that emerges is summed up best by Mburu: “Education is a life and death issue.” Sat/24, Castro, 11 a.m.; Sat/31, CineArts, noon; Aug 5, Roda, 4:30 p.m.; Aug 8, Rafael, noon. (Cheryl Eddy)

The 30th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24-Aug 9 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; CineArts@Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real Bldg Six, Palo Alto; and Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 118 Fourth St, San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $11) are available by calling (415) 256-TIXX or visiting www.sfjff.org.

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