Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez Archives — Page 12 of 14 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Project Censored

Michael Redmond

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October 1, 2013

joe@sfbg.com

This year’s annual Project Censored list of the most underreported news stories includes the widening wealth gap, the trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaking classified documents, and President Obama’s war on whistleblowers — all stories that actually received considerable news coverage.

So how exactly were they “censored” and what does that say of this venerable media watchdog project?

Project Censored isn’t only about stories that were deliberately buried or ignored. It’s about stories the media has covered poorly through a sort of false objectivity that skews the truth. Journalists do cry out against injustice, on occasion, but they don’t always do it well.

That’s why Project Censored was started back in 1976: to highlight stories the mainstream media missed or gave scant attention to. Although the project initially started in our backyard at Sonoma State University, now academics and students from 18 universities and community colleges across the country pore through hundreds of submissions of overlooked and underreported stories annually. A panel of academics and journalists then picks the top 25 stories and curates them into themed clusters. This year’s book, Censored 2014: Fearless Speech in Fearful Times, hits bookstores this week.

What causes the media to stumble? There are as many reasons as there are failures.

Brooke Gladstone, host of the radio program On the Media and writer of the graphic novel cum news media critique, The Influencing Machine, said the story of Manning (who now goes by the first name Chelsea) was the perfect example of the media trying to cover a story right, but getting it mostly wrong.

“The Bradley Manning case is for far too long centered on his personality rather than the nature of his revelations,” Gladstone told us. Manning’s career was sacrificed for sending 700,000 classified documents about the Iraq war to WikiLeaks. But the media coverage focused largely on Manning’s trial and subsequent change in gender identity.

Gladstone said that this is part of the media’s inability to deal with vast quantities of information which, she said, “is not what most of our standard media does all that well.”

The media mangling of Manning is number one on the Project Censored list, but the shallow coverage this story received is not unique. The news media is in a crisis, particularly in the US, and it’s getting worse.

WATCHING THE WATCHDOGS

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, which conducts an annual analysis of trends in news, found that as revenue in journalism declined, newsrooms have shed 30 percent of their staff in the last decade. In 2012, the number of reporters in the US dipped to its lowest level since 1978, with fewer than 40,000 reporters nationally. This creates a sense of desperation in the newsroom, and in the end, it’s the public that loses.

“What won out is something much more palpable to the advertisers,” says Robert McChesney, an author, longtime media reform advocate, professor at University of Illinois, and host of Media Matters from 2000-2012. Blandness beat out fearless truth-telling.

Even worse than kowtowing to advertisers is the false objectivity the media tries to achieve, McChesney told us, neutering its news to stay “neutral” on a topic. This handcuffs journalists into not drawing conclusions, even when they are well-supported by the facts.

In order to report a story, they rely on the words of others to make claims, limiting what they can report.

“You allow people in power to set the range of legitimate debate, and you report on it,” McChesney said.

Project Censored stories reflect that dynamic — many of them require journalists to take a stand or present an illuminating perspective on a set of dry facts. For example, reporting on the increasing gulf between the rich and the poor is easy, but talking about why the rich are getting richer is where journalists begin to worry about their objectivity, Gladstone said.

“I think that there is a desire to stay away from stories that will inspire rhetoric of class warfare,” she said.

Unable to tell the story of a trend and unable to talk about rising inequality for fear of appearing partisan, reporters often fail to connect the dots for their readers.

One of Project Censored stories this year, “Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent,” is a good example of the need for a media watchdog. Researchers point to interest payments as the primary way wealth is transferred from Main Street to Wall Street.

It’s how the banks are picking the pockets of the 99 percent. But if no politician is calling out the banks on this practice, if no advocacy group is gaining enough traction, shouldn’t it be the media’s role to protect the public and sound the battle cry?

“So much of media criticism is really political commentary squeezed through a media squeezer,” Gladstone said, “and it comes out media shaped.”

SHAPING THE MEDIA

McChesney says journalism should be a proactive watchdog by independently stating that something needs to be done. He said there’s more watchdog journalism calling out inequity in democracies where there is a more robust and funded media.

And they often have one thing we in US don’t — government subsidies for journalism.

“All the other democracies in the world, there are huge subsidies for public media and journalism,” McChesney said. “They not only rank ahead of us in terms of being democratic, they also rank ahead of us in terms of having a free press. Our press is shrinking.”

No matter what the ultimate economic solution is, the crisis of reporting is largely a crisis of money. McChesney calls it a “whole knife in the heart of journalism.”

For American journalism to revive itself, it has to move beyond its corporate ties. It has to become a truly free press. It’s time to end the myth that corporate journalism is the only way for media to be objective, monolithic, and correct.

The failures of that prescription are clear in Project Censored’s top 10 stories of the year:

1. Manning and the Failure of Corporate Media

Untold stories of Iraqi civilian deaths by American soldiers, US diplomats pushing aircraft sales on foreign royalty, uninvestigated abuse by Iraqi allies, the perils of the rise in private war contractors — this is what Manning exposed. They were stories that challenge the US political elite, and they were only made possible by a sacrifice.

Manning got a 35-year prison sentence for the revelation of state secrets to WikiLeaks, a story told countless times in corporate media. But as Project Censored posits, the failure of our media was not in the lack of coverage of Manning, but in its focus.

Though The New York Times partnered with WikiLeaks to release stories based on the documents, many published in 2010 through 2011, news from the leaks have since slowed to a trickle — a waste of over 700,000 pieces of classified intelligence giving unparalleled ground level views of America’s costly wars.

The media quickly took a scathing indictment of US military policy and spun it into a story about Manning’s politics and patriotism. As Rolling Stone pointed out (“Did the Media Fail Bradley Manning?”), Manning initially took the trove of leaks to The Washington Post and The New York Times, only to be turned away.

Alexa O’Brien, a former Occupy activist, scooped most of the media by actually attending Manning’s trial. She produced tens of thousands of words in transcriptions of the court hearings, one of the only reporters on the beat.

2. Richest Global 1 Percent Hide Billions in Tax Havens

Global corporate fatcats hold $21-32 trillion in offshore havens, money hidden from government taxation that would benefit people around the world, according to findings by James S. Henry, the former chief economist of the global management firm McKinsey & Company.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists obtained a leak in April 2013, revealing how widespread the buy-in was to these tax havens. The findings were damning: government officials in Canada, Russia, and other countries have embraced offshore accounts, the world’s top banks (including Deutsche Bank) have worked to maintain them, and the tax havens are used in Ponzi schemes.

Moving money offshore has implications that ripped through the world economy. Part of Greece’s economic collapse was due to these tax havens, ICIJ reporter Gerard Ryle told Gladstone on her radio show. “It’s because people don’t want to pay taxes,” he said. “You avoid taxes by going offshore and playing by different rules.”

US Senator Carl Levin, D-Michigan, introduced legislation to combat the practice, SB1533, The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, but so far the bill has had little play in the media.

Researcher James Henry said the hidden wealth was a “huge black hole” in the world economy that has never been measured, which could generate income tax revenues between $190-280 billion a year.

3. Trans-Pacific Partnership

Take 600 corporate advisors, mix in officials from 11 international governments, let it bake for about two years, and out pops international partnerships that threaten to cripple progressive movements worldwide.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement, but leaked texts show it may allow foreign investors to use “investor-state” tribunals to extract extravagant extra damages for “expected future profits,” according to the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The trade watch group investigated the TPP and is the main advocate in opposition of its policies. The AFL-CIO, Sierra Club, and other organizations have also had growing concerns about the level of access granted to corporations in these agreements.

With extra powers granted to foreign firms, the possibility that companies would continue moving offshore could grow. But even with the risks of outsized corporate influence, the US has a strong interest in the TPP in order to maintain trade agreements with Asia.

The balancing act between corporate and public interests is at stake, but until the US releases more documents from negotiations, the American people will remain in the dark.

4. Obama’s War on Whistleblowers

President Obama has invoked the Espionage Act of 1917 more than every other president combined. Seven times, Obama has pursued leakers with the act, against Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Bradley Manning, Stephen Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and most recently, Edward Snowden. All had ties to the State Department, FBI, CIA, or NSA, and all of them leaked to journalists.

“Neither party is raising hell over this. This is the sort of story that sort of slips through the cracks,” McChesney said. And when the politicians don’t raise a fuss, neither does the media.

Pro Publica covered the issue, constructing timelines and mapping out the various arrests and indictments. But where Project Censored points out the lack of coverage is in Obama’s hypocrisy — only a year before, he signed The Whistleblower Protection Act.

Later on, he said he wouldn’t follow every letter of the law in the bill he had only just signed.

“Certain provisions in the Act threaten to interfere with my constitutional duty to supervise the executive branch,” Obama said. “As my Administration previously informed the Congress, I will interpret those sections consistent with my authority.”

5. Hate Groups and Antigovernment Groups on Rise across US

Hate groups in the US are on the rise, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are 1,007 known hate groups operating across the country, it wrote, including neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes, and others.

Since 2000, those groups have grown by over half, and there was a “powerful resurgence” of Patriot groups, the likes of which were involved in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Worst of all, the huge growth in armed militias seems to have conspicuous timing with Obama’s election.

“The number of Patriot groups, including armed militias, has grown 813 percent since Obama was elected — from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012,” the SPLC reported.

Though traditionally those groups were race motivated, the report noted that now they are gunning for government. There was a smattering of news coverage when the SPLC released its report, but not much since.

6. Billionaires’ Rising Wealth Intensifies Poverty and Inequality

The world’s billionaires added $241 billion to their collective net worth in 2012. That’s an economic recovery, right?

That gain, coupled with the world’s richest peoples’ new total worth of $1.9 trillion (more than the GDP of Canada), wasn’t reported by some kooky socialist group, but by Bloomberg News. But few journalists are asking the important question: Why?

Project Censored points to journalist George Monbiot, who highlights a reduction of taxes and tax enforcement, the privatization of public assets, and the weakening of labor unions.

His conclusions are backed up by the United Nations’ Trade and Development Report from 2012, which noted how the trend hurts everyone: “Recent empirical and analytical work reviewed here mostly shows a negative correlation between inequality and growth.”

7. Merchant of Death and Nuclear Weapons

The report highlighted by Project Censored on the threat of nuclear war is an example not of censorship, strictly, but a desire for media reform.

Project Censored highlighted a study from the The Physicians for Social Responsibility that said 1 billion people could starve in the decade after a nuclear detonation. Corn production in the US would decline by an average of 10 percent for an entire decade and food prices would make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest.

This is not journalism in the classic sense, Gladstone said. In traditional journalism, as it’s played out since the early 20th century, news requires an element of something new in order to garner reporting — not a looming threat or danger.

So in this case, what Project Censored identified was the need for a new kind of journalism, what it calls “solutions journalism.”

“Solutions journalism,” Sarah van Gelder wrote in the foreword to Censored 2014, “must investigate not only the individual innovations, but also the larger pattern of change — the emerging ethics, institutions, and ways of life that are coming into existence.”

8. Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent

Does 35 percent of everything bought in the United States go to interest? Professor Margrit Kennedy of the University of Hanover thinks so, and she says it’s a major funnel of money from the 99 percent to the rich.

In her 2012 book, Occupy Money, Kennedy wrote that tradespeople, suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers along the chain of production rely on credit. Her figures were initially drawn from the German economy, but Ellen Brown of the Web of Debt and Global Research said she found similar patterns in the US.

This “hidden interest” has sapped the growth of other industries, she said, lining the pockets of the financial sector.

So if interest is stagnating so many industries, why would journalists avoid the topic?

Few economists have echoed her views, and few experts emerged to back up her assertions. Notably, she’s a professor in an architectural school, with no formal credentials in economics.

From her own website, she said she became an “expert” in economics “through her continuous research and scrutiny.”

Without people in power pushing the topic, McChesney said that a mainstream journalist would be seen as going out on a limb.

“The reporters raise an issue the elites are not raising themselves, then you’re ideological, have an axe to grind, sort of a hack,” he said. “It makes journalism worthless on pretty important issues.”

9. Icelanders Vote to Include Commons in Their Constitution

In 2012, Icelandic citizens voted in referendum to change the country’s 1944 constitution. When asked, “In the new constitution, do you want natural resources that are not privately owned to be declared national property?” its citizens voted 81 percent in favor.

Project Censored says this is important for us to know, but in the end, US journalism is notably American-centric. Even the Nieman Watchdog, a foundation for journalism at Harvard University, issued a report in 2011 citing the lack of reporting on a war the US funneled over $4 trillion into over the past decade, not to mention the cost in human lives.

If we don’t pay attention to our own wars, why exactly does Project Censored think we’d pay attention to Iceland?

“The constitutional reforms are a direct response to the nation’s 2008 financial crash,” Project Censored wrote, “when Iceland’s unregulated banks borrowed more than the country’s gross domestic product from international wholesale money markets.”

Solutions-based journalism rears its head again, and the idea is that the US has much to learn from Iceland, but even Gladstone was dubious.

“Iceland is being undercovered, goddamnit! Where is our Iceland news?” she joked with us. “Certainly I agree with some of this list, Bradley Manning was covered badly, I was sad the tax haven story didn’t get more coverage. But when has anyone cared about Iceland?”

10. A “Culture of Cruelty” along Mexico–US Border

The plight of Mexican border crossings usually involves three types of stories in US press: deaths in the stretch of desert beyond the border, the horrors of drug cartels, and heroic journeys of border crossings by sympathetic workers. But a report released a year ago by the organization No More Deaths snags the 10th spot for overlooked stories in Project Censored.

The report asserts that people arrested by Border Patrol while crossing were denied water and told to let their sick die. No More Deaths conducted more than 12,000 interviews to form the basis of its study in three Mexican cities: Nacos, Nogales and Agua Prieta. The report cites grossly ineffective oversight from the Department of Homeland Security. This has received some coverage, from Salon showcasing video of Border Patrol agents destroying jugs of water meant for crossers to a recent New York Times piece citing a lack of oversight for Border Patrol’s excessive force.

The ACLU lobbied the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to call international attention to the plight of these border crossers at the hands of US law enforcement.

If ever an issue flew under the radar, this is it.

SFSU police get Tasers

Michael Redmond

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September 24, 2013

1

Just because the San Francisco Police Department can’t get Tasers doesn’t mean all the cops in San Francisco are missing out.

The San Francisco State University Police Department will soon arm its officers with conducted electrical weapons, known by the brand name Taser, following a statewide push from the California State University Chancellor’s Office to arm all of its campus police statewide with the weapons.

The university police started training with their new weapons Sept. 12, according to university spokesperson Ellen Griffin, but haven’t armed its 28 officers with them just yet. The department still has to set rules for their use and the cabinet of SF State President Leslie Wong will soon meet to advise him on Taser policy. Details on what shape that policy will take are still hazy, the university told us.

“What I can say is that Dr. Wong is deeply committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our campus community,” said Shawn Whalen, a member of the president’s cabinet.

For the past decade the SFPD has tried at various times to have their officers armed with Tasers but have met loud opposition and are without them to this day. One of the most vocal opponents of the weapons, Police Commissioner Angela Chan, is concerned that the Tasers can be fatal.

“Tasers can cause serious injury or death and have cost law enforcement that use them millions of dollars in lawsuits,” she told the Guardian. About 500 people having been killed by Tasers in the US since 2001 according to a report Amnesty International released last year.

Of those killed, Amnesty International said, 90 percent of the victims were unarmed. Despite the statistics, Tasers are in widespread use around the country and in the California State University system.

Mike Uhlenkamp, spokesperson for the CSU chancellor’s office, said that 17 campus police forces were armed with Tasers, and now all 23 will have them, including SF State.

The arguments Taser advocates make for having the weapons is that they can be used in lieu of a gun. Steve Tuttle, spokesperson for Taser, said that was the reason 17,000 law enforcement agencies use Tasers worldwide.

“I think it’s a loud minority that’s gotten their way in San Francisco,” Tuttle said. The idea that SFPD is the lone holdout had him saying that the “vocal minority” got their way.

But Chan said that’s a myth. Tasers are often used as a compliance weapon when an individual is passively resisting arrest or not responding to an officer’s commands, she said. “Unfortunately, this can lead to overuse and unnecessary use, especially on young people and people of color, as we’ve seen around the country, including on college campuses.”

She has reason to be concerned about the safety of the campus community. When activist squatters were arrested in May by the SF State’s university police, allegations of excessive force streamed in.

The activists printed a zine documenting their experience. Melissa Nahlen, 25, reportedly wound up with “cuts near her eyes, a bruised and swollen lip, a swollen left hand … and cannot bend her neck downward due to being stomped on by the police.”

A campus police officer also sustained injuries, according to news reports.

Tasers are used to avoid just that kind of situation, Training Lieutenant Randall Gregson of the BART Police Department told us. Though policies differ from department to department, Gregson ran the Guardian through BART’s tactics in using Tasers to provide a glimpse in the things SFSU will need to consider.

BART police carry their Tasers on the “support” side of the belt, meaning the non-dominant side, he said. They also have a choice of carrying it in their duty belt on a thigh holster. “It’s an officer’s individual preference,” he said.

That preference is important, and sometimes could mean the difference between life and death.

When BART officer Johannes Mehserle reached for his Taser but mistakenly drew his gun and shot and killed Oscar Grant back in 2009, issues about where to holster weapons came to the fore.

“How could a trained officer mistakenly pull and fire his gun if, as he claims, he intended to deploy his Taser?” Mehserle’s lawyer wrote in a rhetorical question in a court brief, arguing that BART’s Taser policy was a factor in the shooting.

That’s the exact kind of incident President Wong’s policy will address for his officers, and the lives of the students of San Francisco State University may depend on it

SF State campus police arming themselves with Tasers (yes, before the SFPD)

Erica Hanna

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September 20, 2013

30

SF State campus police arming themselves with Tasers (yes, before the SFPD)

Just because the SFPD can’t get Tasers doesn’t mean all the cops in San Francisco are missing out.

The San Francisco State University Police Department will soon arm themselves with conducted electrical weapons, known by the brand name Taser, following a statewide push from the California State University Chancellor’s Office to arm all of its campus police statewide with the weapons.

The university police started training with their new weapons Sept. 12, according to university spokesperson Ellen Griffin, but haven’t armed their 28 officers with them just yet. They still have to set rules for their use and the cabinet of SF State President Leslie Wong will soon meet to advise him in Taser policy. Details on what shape that policy will take are still hazy, the university told us.

“What I can say is that Dr. Wong is deeply committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our campus community,” said Shawn Whalen, a member of the president’s cabinet.

There is no statewide campus police policy for Taser use, according to California State University’s policy documents on weapons. A CSU spokesperson told us each campus makes its own rules for their local police force.

For the past decade the SFPD has tried at various times to have their officers armed with Tasers but have met loud opposition and are without them to this day, a topic we’ve covered before. One of the most vocal opponents of the weapons, Police Commissioner Angela Chan, is concerned that the Tasers can be fatal.

“Tasers can cause serious injury or death and have cost law enforcement that use them millions of dollars in lawsuits,” she told the Guardian. About 500 people have been killed by Tasers in the US since 2001 according to a report Amnesty International released last year.

In Cincinnati a student Tasered subsequently died. Taser advocates say deaths are prevented by Taser use, however.

Of those killed, Amnesty International said, 90 percent of the victims were unarmed.

Despite the statistics, Tasers are in widespread use around the country and in the California State University system.

Mike Uhlenkamp, spokesperson for the CSU chancellor’s office, said that 17 campus police forces were armed with Tasers, and now all 23 will have them, including SF State.

He was unable to say how much Taser use has cost the CSU system or provide statistics on their use. The most commonly bought Taser though, the X26, costs $1,000 a piece, according to Taser’s website.

He was also unable to cite a specific incident or incidents that prompted the need for Tasers on CSU campuses. SF State university police reported exactly eight crimes for the week of September 9-15, including petty theft, vandalism, and possession of marijuana.

Uhlenkamp did say however that “every officer gets rigorous training,” part of which is actually getting Tasered themselves.

“Every officer will have been on the other side of a Taser at some point,” he said.

The arguments Taser advocates make for having the weapons is that they can be used in lieu of a gun. Steve Tuttle, spokesperson for Taser, said that was the reason 17,000 law enforcement agencies use Tasers worldwide.

“I think its a loud minority that’s gotten their way in San Francisco,” Tuttle said. The idea that SFPD is the lone holdout had him saying that the “vocal minority” got their way.

But Chan said that’s a myth. Tasers are often used as a compliance weapon when an individual is passively resisting arrest or not responding to an officer’s commands, she said. “Unfortunately, this can lead to overuse and unnecessary use, especially on young people and people of color, as we’ve seen around the country, including on college campuses.”

She has reason to be concerned about the safety of the campus community. When activist squatters were arrested in May by SF State’s university police, allegations of excessive force streamed in.

The activists printed a zine documenting their experience. Melissa Nahlen, 25, reportedly wound up with “cuts near her eyes, a bruised and swollen lip, a swollen left hand … and cannot bend her neck downward due to being stomped on by the police.”

A campus police officer also sustained injuries, according to news reports.

Video of officers arresting activists in an SF State dorm. As SFSU police and SFPD were both present, it is unclear which officers are in the video.

Tasers are used to avoid just that kind of situation, Training Lieutenant Randall Gregson of the BART police department told us. Though policies differ from department to department, Gregson ran the Guardian through BART’s tactics in using Tasers to provide a glimpse in the things SFSU will need to consider.

BART police carry their Tasers on the “support” side of the belt, meaning the non-dominant side, he said. They also have a choice of carrying it in their duty belt on a thigh holster. “It’s an officer’s individual preference,” he said.

That preference is important, and sometimes could mean the difference between life and death.

When BART officer Johannes Mehserle reached for his Taser but mistakenly drew his gun and shot and killed Oscar Grant back in 2009, issues about where to holster officer weapons came to the fore.

Mehserle’s lawyer made a motion to admit BART’s holster policy as evidence in the case. From the text of the motion: “The changes in BART’s training and Taser policy – removing two dominant side belt configurations and requiring officers to draw the Taser with their weak hands – constitute highly relevant evidence of an acknowledgement by BART that the prior training and policy made an accident of the sort that occurred in this case more likely, and perhaps even highly likely.”

The evidence was admitted to ask, as the lawyer wrote, “How could a trained officer mistakenly pull and fire his gun if, as he claims, he intended to deploy his Taser?”

That’s the exact kind of incident SF State President Leslie Wong’s policy will address for his officers, and the lives of the students of San Francisco State University may depend on it.

Bill on Brown’s desk to make two-tiered system of college tuition: for the rich, and the poor

Erica Hanna

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September 18, 2013

66

Bill on Brown’s desk to make two-tiered system of college tuition: for the rich, and the poor

It seems that one California politician is adapting an old adage for a modern era: If at first students protest and get pepper sprayed, try, try that legislation again.

AB 955 is a bill that would create a pilot program to raise community college tuition, allowing six allegedly overcrowded community colleges to charge the full cost of their classes during summer and winter sessions. A three-unit class would jump in cost from $138 to roughly $600, depending on the college involved. Authored by Assemblyman Das Williams (D- Santa Barbara), the bill now sits on Governor Jerry Brown’s desk awaiting his signature.

The colleges in the pilot are College of the Canyons, Crafton Hills College, Long Beach City College, Oxnard College, Pasadena City College and Solano Community College.

Local community college advocates said the pilot program could crack open the door to a future where two-tiered access to community college is the norm: The rich will be able to get classes, and the poor will be crowded out.

Those fears are prompting local San Francisco activists to join in the fray.

“AB 955 creates a system of haves and have nots,” said Shanell Williams, the student trustee of City College of San Francisco (no relation to Assemblyperson Williams). “Students that cannot afford to pay more will essentially be denied access,” she said.

Williams is a staunch advocate for education equality at City College, and led many of the rallies decrying the school’s loss of accreditation. She now plans to lead a rally against the bill here in San Francisco. But she’s not the only one who thinks this is a bad idea.

Santa Monica College tried to make a similar two-tiered system for tuition last year, offering classes that were previously closed due to lack of state funding by sticking the whole price of the class on students. Santa Monica College students were far from pleased.

Protests erupted, students were pepper sprayed, the incident became national news, and the idea was criticized across the board as class warfare.

The students’ outrage doesn’t just stem from raised tuition, but from a broken promise.

The idea of “open access” to classes is mandated by California’s educational master plan, which states that all students over the age of 18 should have access to community colleges and that tuition would be free. Part of the Donahoe Education Act of 1960, it was signed into law that year by Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown.

The Master Plan has eroded slowly since the 90s, and the once tuition-free UC and CSU systems now charge their students fees in excess of $3,000 a semester for full time enrollment — inflated prices which so far the community college system has resisted. Classes cost $46 per-unit at each of the 112 community colleges in California.

Assemblyman Williams justified his bill in an op-ed for The Daily Californian, saying the idea of open access has failed as the California community college system has already shut over 500,000 students from its doors, according to data from the state community college chancellor’s office.

“Yes, $600 is more expensive than $138, but only in the short term,” Williams wrote. “What’s the cost to a student forced by the current lack of classes to have to face one to four more years of living expenses to complete his or her education? It’s a lot more than $600.”

But Jessica Jones, two-year student body president of Santa Rosa Junior College, fears that the pilot program may just be the beginning.

“Who’s to say it won’t go like wildfire across the state?” she said in comments to the Guardian. Unlike the UC and CSU students, she fears the community college students she sees everyday would have more to lose when the fees are hiked. More often, she said, those students are “working many jobs, many have families, you’ll see less and less students able to take courses.”

It isn’t just activists who fear this will go statewide. The state chancellor of all 112 California Community Colleges, Brice Harris, has also publicly denounced the bill.

“The next time the budget goes in the tank they’ll tell (us), we can’t give it to you, tell your colleges to raise fees,” he said at a recent state meeting. “All of us who believe this is bad public policy for California are going to have to speak out forcefully with the (Brown) administration to make them understand what a huge policy change this is for the state of California,” he said.

Jessica Jones works with the Student Senate of California Community Colleges, and though their opinion is not uniform, many student leaders statewide are organizing actions against the fee hike pilot program. Crafton Hills College, Modesto Junior College, Pasadena City College, Long Beach City College, Santa Rosa Junior College and De Anza College will all have demonstrations or engage in write-in campaigns by the end of next week.

Williams, the City College Student Trustee is organizing a demonstration in San Francisco as well. The protest will be at Powell Street BART station on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 6pm.

BART resists safety reforms in labor negotiations

Michael Redmond

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September 17, 2013

1

BART resists safety reforms in labor negotiations

BART maintenance workers training under safety instructor Saul Almanza are taught this most important lesson: the objective when you go to work is to come home afterward.

He remembers two BART engineers who were hit and killed by the trains they were charged with repairing: Robert Rhodes in 2001, and James Strickland in 2008. Almanza imagines the dark tunnels where the safe places to stand are small and the lighting is scarce. He says he thinks of Rhodes and Strickland every day.

As talks between BART labor unions and management resumed Sept. 9, negotiations over safety overhauls had stalled, according to representatives from SEIU Local 1021. On Sept. 11, union members on the negotiating team — which includes Almanza — released a chart of fines the transit agency received from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, stemming from those accidents.

The chart shows 20 citations from OSHA since 2001 that the unions said have been unaddressed. BART management, unsurprisingly, disputes this. The list shows incidents as minor as rain getting into a fare gate and as major as the two aforementioned deaths. All told, the safety fines add up to $192,375.

The complaints were also listed on CAL/OSHA’s website, with additional details revealing that some of the investigations into the complaints were closed, contrary to the union’s claim. But that doesn’t mean the underlying causes of the problems have been solved, and they remain a sticking point in the negotiations between BART management and SEIU.

BART spokesperson Rick Rice said the lighting issues that led to Rhodes’ death will soon be resolved. Strickland’s death was a separate issue, though, as dense vegetation blocked a driver’s line of sight, leading to the mechanic’s death. That was also addressed, Rice said.

“Starting next year there’s $4.5 million allocated by the board to improve all the lighting,” Rice told the Guardian, and that other changes have made the tunnels safer since the 2001 accident.

But Almanza said he won’t believe it until he sees it in writing. So far, that hasn’t happened.

“The only change that took place was they added signage to the location saying you can’t enter the area without ‘simple’ approval,” Almanza said. Simple approval is a process where the worker recites a waiver that absolves BART of fault should they be injured or die. “They make you proclaim that you won’t interfere with operations, and it means if you delay something or die, it’s your fault.” Robert Bright, a train mechanic at the Hayward BART shop, also told us he was worried about safety conditions for BART workers. In our previous coverage, “Tales from the Tracks,” he said he’s seen workers crushed under machinery and electrocuted due to lax safety conditions. CAL/OSHA’s required changes are simple enough, requiring trained electricians to shut off power to the third rails and remove power breakers before maintenance crews work on the tracks to prevent the power from accidentally being switched back on. Almanza said the procedure saves lives. But BART management has paid its lawyers to resist the changes recommended by CAL/OSHA, documentation shows. Recent minutes from BART Board of Directors show the board voted unanimously to retain legal services from law firm Glynn and Finley to “mount a vigorous defense” against the safety citations issued by OSHA, saying the recommended changes were unnecessary and would have little effect on safety. Meeting minutes show the directors don’t think it’s a necessary procedure, but Almanza contends that it’s a cost-saving measure, since electricians must be paid to remove the breakers. “If this prohibition is implemented, it would drastically change the way BART performs maintenance operations with no anticipated improvement in safety,” according to meeting minutes. It went on to state that the procedure introduces additional safety risks, which Almanza denies. The board then moved to approve a $188,000 increase for legal services to challenge the CAL/OSHA changes — almost as much as the agency paid in fines for safety violations in the first place.

Fighting foreclosures

Michael Redmond

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September 17, 2013

1

joe@sfbg.com

It will be a long war, but for now, Richmond is winning.

Two battles in the start of the city of Richmond’s war on foreclosures were fought and won in the past week. A US District Court of Appeals judge dismissed Wells Fargo’s lawsuit against Richmond’s controversial plan to use eminent domain to save residents with underwater mortgages (see “Not for sale,” Sept. 3). And Mayor Gayle McLaughlin successfully fought off legislation at the Richmond City Council to torpedo the plan before it started.

“I’m willing to go as high as the Supreme Court to settle this on behalf of our community,” McLaughlin told us. These are the first fledgling steps in that long fight, a fight McLaughlin calls a just cause.

Half of all mortgages in Richmond are underwater, and as homes get foreclosed upon, the problems stack up: blighted neighborhoods, declining property tax revenues, public employee layoffs, rising crime, and homeless families. To stem the tide of foreclosures, Richmond teamed with Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) to attempt to buy the loans of 624 underwater mortgages and allow the owners to keep their homes.

Richmond’s government sent out offers, and it is still waiting to hear back from the owners of the loans.

The controversy comes when the banks that hold the loans refuse to sell. In that case, Richmond would invoke the power of eminent domain to seize the mortgage loans.

Wells Fargo said in its lawsuit that this is a plan to line the pockets of MRP and the city of Richmond, a greedy and unconstitutional land grab. Eminent domain has never been used for this purpose, but as the judge noted in the lawsuit’s first hearing Sept. 12 in San Francisco, the plan has yet to be acted on.

“Okay, let’s end the suspense, I don’t believe (the case) is ripe for determination,” Judge Charles Breyer told the attorneys from Wells Fargo. “There are a series of steps that can or cannot take place…. If they do take place, that’s the time for the court to take a look at it.”

Breyer noted that if and when Richmond wanted to use eminent domain to seize mortgage loans, the council would need to file a resolution of necessity through state court. At that point, he could act.

On Sept. 16, the case was dismissed. Too little has happened, and it is entirely too early to make any decisions, Breyer said.

Stacey Leyton, a lawyer representing Richmond in the lawsuit, explained the judge’s decision plainly: “Courts are not supposed to review legislative actions before the (legislative body) has decided which action to take.”

The Guardian reached out to Wells Fargo but we were told that it had nothing to say beyond its court filings, and referred us to the investors in the loans, of which Wells Fargo is a trustee.

But why is Wells Fargo pushing so fast for the courts to intervene? The eminent domain plan could mean a possible loss of revenue for Wells Fargo and the investors it represents, sending chills down the spine of Wall Street, a representative of MRP said.

MRP founder John Vlahoplus told us the eminent domain tactic is powerful because for Wells Fargo, legally challenging every municipality in the United States is much tougher than paying off a few fat cats in Congress.

So the stakes are high: if Richmond wins the eminent domain battle, cities across the country could use the tactic to rescue underwater mortgages, and the families that would otherwise lose their homes, swinging the balance of power from Wall Street toward cities.

Score one for Richmond, and zip for Wells Fargo, so far.

LOCAL FRONT

But the real drama happened closer to home. Before Richmond could fight the enemies from without, it fought the enemies within.

On Sept. 10, Richmond’s controversial plan for preventing home foreclosures using eminent domain was almost torpedoed at the Richmond City Council meeting, where its members waged a nasty fight before more than 300 attendees.

Advocates for city intervention against the banks won when the council voted 5-2 against a resolution to rescind the city’s offer to purchase 624 underwater mortgages and halt any effort by the city to seize those mortgages through eminent domain.

A separate resolution by Mayor McLaughlin to establish a joint powers authority, uniting cities to battle litigation against the eminent domain plan, also passed.

Vice Mayor Courtland “Corky” Boozé and Councilmember Nathaniel Bates sponsored the resolution attacking the plan, and cast the only votes in its favor.

Boozé and Bates said the city risks bankruptcy if Well Fargo wins its lawsuit, putting Richmond’s financial solvency on the line, but their colleagues were dubious.

“My vote is not supposed to be if (Wall Street investors) are a bunch of jerks and I want to stick it to them,” Councilmember Jim Rogers said to the audience.

After the city laid off a third of the government’s workforce in lean economic years, Rogers has reason to worry. City Manager Bill Lindsay laid out the risks for those in the auditorium.

Because no city has ever tried this before, he said, no liability insurance exists for this kind of work, which MRP has acknowledged. “If you believe the potential loss (of a lawsuit) is catastrophic, it’s important to acknowledge that’s an issue,” he said.

He also said it was tough for the city go it alone as a single entity, explaining the need for a joint powers authority, which would build a coalition of cities against Wells Fargo and other litigants.

State law requires a supermajority of the council, five members, to back any eminent domain action and only at the time that it would take place, he said.

Hours of back and forth passed between the city manager and Boozé who, after some arguing, asked the audience in frustration, “Are 110,000 people worth fighting Wall Street for?”

The crowd roared its answer immediately: “YES!”

The ideological split of the audience was clear: Eminent domain supporters wore yellow shirts with a logo of the activist group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and those against wore red shirts branded “Stop Investor Greed.”

Those sporting the red shirts were mostly from the real estate industry, and in public comment they generally expressed that if someone were to lose their home, well, “so what?”

Lisa Johnson, clad in red, said, “My house is an investment, not a right.”

A representative from Richmond’s Council of Industries asked the mayor to reconsider the eminent domain plan, and to rescind the initiative.

Jerry Feagley, whose Feagley Realtors has sold homes since 1966, said the plan risks damaging all of Richmond’s ability to get credit. He was a seemingly mild-mannered man who is exactly who you’d picture if you think of a businessman from the ’50s, gray suit and all. “If this would go into effect, this would change loans in the entire country,” he said, passionately.

Well, that’s the idea, the supporters countered.

“I was at the March on Washington with Martin Luther King 50 years ago. Yes, I’m that old,” said one woman. She was bent over with age but spoke with volume. “That’s exactly what we have to do. We’re going to have to meet power with power and challenge the status quo.”

More than 50 supporters spoke at the podium. The meeting started at 7pm, and stretched on well past 1am. If there was one central theme to their sentiments, it was this: Richmond has hit rock bottom, and now is the time to fight back.

Councilmember Tom Butt put it in plain terms. “What we’re voting for is a giant game of chicken, and it’s clear two of my colleagues have blinked,” he said, referring to Boozé and Bates. “I’m not blinking.”

The council voted, and amid the turmoil and arguing and anger, the Boozé and Bates measure was rejected.

Having already lost once that night, Bates did not fare well when time came to vote on forming a joint powers authority. El Monte may be the first to join, McLaughlin said, which would help homeowners in need who are often people of color. Bates countered that McLaughlin should look out for “her people” and not try to use “his people” as a front for her legislation. “You don’t speak for my community,” he said, referring to African Americans. When another black council member, Jovanka Beckles, spoke up to thank her “white brothers and sisters” for joining in a fight for justice, Bates was uncompromising. “You are not African American,” he told her. Boozé also had words for the other dissenting African American Councilmember Jael Myrick. “One day you’ll have to stand up and be black,” he said. McLaughlin’s measure then passed 4-3, with council members Boozé, Bates and Rogers dissenting. The last remaining supporters waved their yellow flags and the dwindling crowd clad in yellow shirts left victorious, for now.

Wells Fargo lawsuit against city of Richmond dismissed

Erica Hanna

-

September 16, 2013

5

Wells Fargo lawsuit against city of Richmond dismissed

Richmond, 1, Wells Fargo, zip.

In the first round of what may become a long and protracted legal battle, US Distict Judge Charles Breyer dismissed Wells Fargo’s lawsuit against the city of Richmond today, and the reason for dismissal was clear: nothing has happened yet.

Wells Fargo’s suit attacked the constintutionality of Richmond’s plan to use eminent domain to seize about 600 mortgage loans, a controversial program meant to save residents from losing their homes. The judge pointed out that not only had Richmond not yet enacted the plan, but it hadn’t even been voted on by the Richmond City Council.

In legalese, the case is not “yet ripe for adjudication.” Translation? You can’t sue someone for something that hasn’t happened, or may not ever happen, Breyer wrote in his decision. He also explained why he dismissed the case, rather than putting it in abeyance (a kind of “pause button” for cases).

“The Court further concludes that it must dismiss the case rather than hold it in abeyance,” he wrote. “Ripeness of these claims does not rest on contingent future events certain to occur, but rather on future events that may never occur. Because there is no point at which it will be determined that Plaintiffs’ claims are not ripe and will never become ripe, the matter could linger in abeyance for an indefinite period of time. Under these circumstances, a stay is not appropriate.”

Wells Fargo declined to comment on the decision, and a spokesperson referred us to legal counsel representing investors in the mortgage market (of which Wells Fargo is a trustee). Mayor Gayle McLaughlin also was unavailable for comment as she is out of the country on a business trip.

protesters march outside of Wells Fargo

Speaking to the Guardian a few weeks ago about her eminent domain plan, McLaughlin said she would be willing to battle Wells Fargo “all the way to the Supreme Court,” to defend the community of Richmond. And she may have to, as Wells Fargo does have the opportunity to appeal to a higher court.

For clarification, Breyer did indicate in the hearing last week that he would seek abeyance or dismissal in the case, but did not issue his final decision until today.

For our coverage of Richmond’s city council meeting where the plan was almost voted down by city councilmember Nathaniel Bates, click here. Look out for our full coverage of the newest in Richmond’s battle for homeowners in our September 18 issue, this Wednesday.

Below is the full text of Breyer’s decision.

Twelve years after BART train kills mechanic, lighting and electrical safety not improved

Erica Hanna

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September 13, 2013

11

Twelve years after BART train kills mechanic, lighting and electrical safety not improved

When BART maintenance workers train under safety instructor Saul Almanza, the most important thing they learn is this: your objective when you go to work is to come home.

When he recites that mantra he remembers two BART engineers who were hit and killed by the trains whose tracks they were charged with repairing: Robert Rhodes in 2001, and James Strickland in 2008. Almanza imagines the dark tunnels, where the safe places to stand are small and the lighting is scarce. He thinks of Rhodes and Strickland every day.

As talks between BART labor unions and management resumed Sept. 9, negotiations over safety overhauls have stalled, representatives from SEIU Local 1021 said. On Sept. 11, union members on the negotiating team — which includes Almanza — released a chart of fines the transit agency had received from the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration, stemming from those accidents.

The chart shows 20 citations from OSHA since 2001 that the unions said have been unaddressed. BART management, unsurprisingly, disputes this. The list shows incidents as minor as rain getting into a fare gate and as major as the two aforementioned deaths. All told, the safety fines add up to $192,375.

The complaints were also listed on the federal OSHA website, with additional details revealing that some of the investigations into the complaints were closed, contrary to the union’s claim. That doesn’t mean the underlying causes of the problems have been solved, though. Many of the problems persist, Almanza told us, endangering workers’ lives.

Those safety issues remain a sticking point in the negotiations between BART management and SEIU.

BART spokesperson Rick Rice said the lighting issues that led to Rhodes’ death will soon be resolved. Strickland’s death was a separate issue, though, as dense vegetation blocked a driver’s line of sight led to the mechanic’s death. That was also addressed, Rice said.

“Starting next year there’s $4.5 million allocated by the board to improve all the lighting,” Rice told the Guardian, he said other changes have also made the tunnels safer since the 2001 accident.

But Almanza said that while he’s heard that all before, he won’t believe it until he sees it in writing. So far, that hasn’t happened.

“The only change that took place was they added signage to the location saying you can’t enter the area without ‘simple’ approval,” Almanza said. Simple approval is a process where the worker recites a waiver that absolves BART of fault should they be injured or die. “They make you proclaim that you won’t interfere with operations, and it means if you delay something or die it’s your fault.”

Rhodes’ death in 2001 was a result of inadequate markings and lighting, he said, but Strickland’s death in 2008 was due to his being hidden behind tree ovegrowth. The union is asking for a dedicated grounds crew to cut back vegetation to improve visibility, hopefully saving lives in the process. BART management said progress was made on that point.

“Since the accident they’re referencing, there’s been extensive changes to the safety procedures and vegetation management,” Rice said. But Almanza told us those changes embedded groundskeepers with mechanics, and they started doing jobs that had nothing to do with groundskeeping. They weren’t even handed chainsaws for a year, he said.

A train mechanic at the Hayward BART shop, Robert Bright, also told us he was worried about safety conditions for BART workers. In our previous coverage, “Tales from the Tracks,” he said he’s seen workers crushed under machinery and electrocuted due to lax safety conditions.

Almanza said BART’s resistance to making electric work safer is a prime example of their attitude toward safety. OSHA issued multiple citations requiring BART to change safety procedures for when mechanics work on or near the rails.

“The third rail is electrified with a rubber blanket over it for protection,” Almanza explained. BART also uses a method of cutting power to the rail while a worker places a plastic board down to protect them from it. But the power could easily be turned back on, meaning electrocution or death for the workers.

This is the cover BART workers use when working on the third rail.

OSHA’s changes are simple enough, requiring trained electricians to shut off power to the third rails and remove power breakers before maintenance crews work on the tracks to prevent the power from accidentally being switched back on. Almanza said the procedure saves lives.

But BART management has even paid its lawyers to resist the changes recommended by OSHA, documentation shows.

>

Recent minutes from BART’s board of directors shows the board voted unanimously to retain legal services from law firm Glynn and Finley to “mount a vigorous defense” against the safety citations issued by OSHA, saying the recommended changes were unnecessary and would have little effect on safety. Meeting minutes show the directors don’t think it’s a necessary procedure, but Almanza contends that it’s a cost-saving measure, since electricians must be paid to remove the breakers.

“If this prohibition is implemented, it would drastically change the way BART performs maintenance operations with no anticipated improvement in safety,” according to meeting minutes. It went on to state that the procedure introduces additional safety risks, which Almanza denies.

The board then moved to approve a $188,000 increase for legal services to challenge the OSHA changes — almost as much as the agency paid in fines for safety violations in the first place.

BART spokesperson Jim Allison said that by next week BART will look at the union’s proposals around safety and will respond to their concerns.

Threat to torpedo Richmond’s plan to help home owners through eminent domain dodged, for now

Erica Hanna

-

September 11, 2013

28

Last night, Richmond’s controversial plan for preventing home foreclosures using eminent domain was almost torpedoed. The stage was the regular Richmond City Council meeting, where its members fought a drag out, bare-knuckle fight with at least three hundred Richmond residents in both corners of the issue crowding the auditorium.

Last night, advocates for city intervention against the banks won.

The Richmond City Council voted 5-2 against a resolution to rescind the city’s offer to purchase 624 underwater mortgages and halt any effort by the city to seize those mortgages through eminent domain.

A separate resolution by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin to establish a joint powers authority, uniting cities to battle litigation against the eminent domain plan, also passed.

The resolution against the plan was called for by Vice Mayor Courtland “Corky” Boozé and Councilmember Nathaniel Bates, who were the only two votes supporting it. With 51 percent of Richmond’s houses saddled with underwater mortgages, the city is facing a cascade of issues: blight, increased crime, and a lower tax base that is crippling their government. This led McLaughlin to partner with an outside firm to potentially seize mortgages with eminent domain, allowing homeowners to pay off their mortgages to the city at lower rates and avoid foreclosure.

Boozé and Bates said that with Wells Fargo suing the city to halt the plan, the city risks bankruptcy. The effort to seize mortgages through eminent domain, they said, puts nothing less than Richmond’s financial solvency on the line.

Nobody disagreed with them.

“My vote is not supposed to be if (Wall Street investors) are a bunch of jerks and I want to stick it to them,” Councilmember Jim Rogers said to the audience. “What I am going to say is that a 1 percent chance of bankruptcy from this program is a deal breaker for me.”

After laying off a third of the government’s workforce in lean economic years, Rogers has reason to worry. And at the meeting the main concern was Mortgage Resolution Partners, the group that partnered with Richmond to hatch the eminent domain plan in the first place. Could MRP financially back the city if Richmond lost a lawsuit worth hundreds of millions?

The city’s manager, Bill Lindsay, laid out the risks for those in the auditorium.

First of all because no city has ever tried this before, he said, no liability insurance exists for this kind of work, which MRP has acknowledged. “If you believe the potential loss (of a lawsuit) is catastrophic, its important to acknowledge thats an issue,” he said.

He also said it was tough for the city go it alone as a single entity, explaining the need for a joint powers authority, which would build a coalition of cities against Wells Fargo and other litigants.

State law requires a supermajority of the council, five members, to back any eminent domain action and only at the time that it would take place, he said.

Hours of back and forth passed between the city manager and Boozé who, after some arguing, frustratedly asked the audience, “Are 110,000 people worth fighting Wall Street for?”

The crowd roared their answer immediately: “YES!”

The ideological split of the audience was clear as day: Eminent domain supporters wore yellow shirts with a logo of the activist group Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and those against wore red shirts branded “Stop Investor Greed.”

They divided the gym like bitter parties of a political bride and groom.

Those sporting the red shirts were mostly from the real estate industry, and in public comment they generally expressed that if someone were to lose their home, well, “so what?”

Lisa Johnson, clad in red, said, “My house is an investment, not a right.”

A representative from Richmond’s Council of Industries asked the mayor to reconsider the eminent domain plan, and to rescind the initiative.

Jerry Feagley, whose Feagley Realtors has sold homes since 1966, said the plan risks damaging all of Richmond’s ability to get credit. He was a seemingly mild-mannered man who is exactly who you’d picture if you think of a businessman from the ‘50s, grey suit and all. “If this would go into effect, this would change loans in the entire country,” he said, passionately.

Well, that’s kind of the idea, the supporters countered.

“I was at the March on Washington with Martin Luther King 50 years ago, yes, I’m that old” said one woman. She was bent over with age but spoke with volume. “That’s exactly what we have to do. We’re going to have to met power with power and challenge the status quo.”

Well over 50 supporters came to speak at the podium. The meeting started at 7pm, and stretched on well past one in the morning. If there was one central theme to their sentiments, it was this: Richmond has hit rock bottom, and now is the time to fight back.

Councilmember Butt put it in plain terms. “What we’re voting for is a giant game of chicken, and it’s clear two of my colleagues have blinked,” he said, referring to Boozé and Bates.

“I’m not blinking,” he said.

The council voted, and amid the turmoil and arguing and anger, the Boozé and Bates measure to scuttle the eminent domain plan was scrapped.

Check out panorama of Richmond, CA council’s meeting. It’s not full yet, but Daymn. #eminentdomain @MotherJones pic.twitter.com/RZT4WXzhXb

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) September 11, 2013

Having already lost once that night, Bates did not fare well when time came to vote on forming a coalition of cities to battle litigation, called a joint powers authority. El Monte may be the first to join, Mayor McLaughlin said, which would help homeowners in need who are often people of color.

Bates countered that McLaughlin should look out for “her people” and not try to use “his people” as a front for her legislation. “You don’t speak for my community,” he said, referring to African Americans.

When another black council member, Jovanka Beckles, spoke up to thank her “white brothers and sisters” for joining in a fight for justice, Bates was uncompromising.

“You are not African American,” he told her.

Boozé also had words for the other dissenting African American Councilmember Jael Myrick. “One day you’ll have to stand up and be black,” he said.

Mayor McLaughlin’s measure to form a joint power authority then passed 4-3, with council members Boozé, Bates and Rogers dissenting.

The last remaining supporters waved their yellow flags and the dwindling crowd clad in yellow shirts left victorious, for now.

The last holdouts in the pro #eminentdomain camp at #Richmond city council meeting. https://t.co/XLPmg7qQ0E

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) September 11, 2013

Bay’s Guardian: The Troll

Sasha Cuttler

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September 10, 2013

6

The Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 ravaged the Bay Area, killed 63 people and caused over $6 billion in property damage. The top deck of the Bay Bridge’s eastern span collapsed, spurring flurried repairs.

But when the crews were done, a new guardian for the Bay Bridge emerged: a small, steel troll, welded underneath the upper deck. He was a mystery to many, but not to all.

The good luck charm was crafted from the wreckage of the section collapsed by the earthquake by an iron worker who himself wishes to be in the shadows, much like his creation. The 18-inch-tall troll sports corkscrew horns and a long snaking tongue, his arms set permanently around a wrench, forever tightening (or loosening?) a Bay Bridge bolt. Shortly after he was birthed, iron workers rushed to affix him underneath the repaired eastern span before the top brass had a chance to nix the idea.

The troll stood snarling ever since. For more than 20 years, he’s been visible only to construction crews and passing boats, but he’s garnered a following (and even a Facebook group). To many, he’s the reason the eastern span managed to last the 20-year wait for a new bridge, wreck-free.

With the new span finally finished it came time for the bridge’s unofficial mascot to retire, and he’s vanished as mysteriously as he appeared.

Enter the outrage.

Bill Roan, an ironworker, sent a petition to Gov. Jerry Brown demanding to know the troll’s whereabouts.

“We the free and independent citizens of the Great State of California, request, no, demand, the immediate release of a fellow citizen, known simply as the Bay Bridge Troll who was unjustly evicted from its home and deprived of its livelihood,” the petition wrote. “Condemned not by a jury of its peers, but by a handful of bureaucratics [sic].”

We asked John Goodwin, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, if he knew the troll’s whereabouts. He was cryptic.

“Trolls appear magically,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t being shuttled safe house to safe house.”

Some of the iron workers, it turns out, are like mother hens to the troll. They all want a turn at guarding the creature that protected the bridge, and their lives, for so long. “It’s like the Stanley Cup or something,” Goodwin said.

Ultimately, the old troll will have a place of honor at a museum near the bridge that should be completed in about six months, Goodwin told us.

But with the old troll going out, who would protect the new Bay Bridge eastern span?

A group called the “Troll Bridge Program Oversight Committee,” with members from Caltrans, the Bay Area Toll Authority, and the California Transportation Commission, came up with an answer: make a new one.

In their report “For Whom the Troll Dwells,” they say why: “While no causal relationship can be established between the presence of the Bay Bridge troll and the absence of any earthquake-related interruptions to the Bay Bridge’s service during the past 24 years, the correlation cannot be denied,” the report states. “Following the Latin principle, Primum non nocere, (First, do no harm), the Project Management Team further recommends that another troll statue be created to guard the Bay Bridge.”

And now, with a new span, a new troll will take up the mantle of protecting the bridge. Constructed by a new anonymous artisan, the new troll has smaller horns, with a sledgehammer in one hand and a blowtorch in the other. He was even present for the grand opening of the bridge for a photo op.

But, many have wondered, aren’t trolls evil creatures?

For ironworker and troll folklorist John Robinson, that’s simply not so.

“Now trolls feature prominently in Scandinavian folklore and particularly in Norwegian folklore and can be friendly or harmful depending on how you treat them,” he told the Guardian. “Think of Shakespeare; you ever seen a Midsummer Night’s Dream? They go into the forest with creatures, and the character Puck is a trickster.”

To Robinson, trolls can be helpful or harmful, based on what you want from them or expect from them.

Let’s all then hope the new troll protects our bridge, and the lives of the workers who maintain it, for many decades to come.

Waiting for BRT

Sasha Cuttler

-

September 10, 2013

18

By Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

joe@sfbg.com

You’re on Muni’s underground line, the train stalled just shy of your stop, just stuck there, the light at the end of the tunnel right in front of you. It’s a frustrating feeling, right?

With more than six years worth of delays in three major transit overhauls — the Van Ness, Geary and Geneva Bus Rapid Transit Projects — it’s beginning to feel just like that.

The projects are designed to speed up the most trafficked transit routes in the city by making the buses run like trains. For the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit, the 47 and 49 would drive in dedicated bus-only lanes shuttling riders north and south, reducing travel time by a third, according to project estimates.

Van Ness BRT was initially announced in 2004 with a planned unveiling of 2012. Eight years later, the new debut is set for 2018. The Geary Project is even worse, with a completion date slated for 2020.

The Van Ness BRT is finally getting its wheels turning this month, with the Environmental Impact Report set to be approved by a number of governmental bodies: the Van Ness BRT Citizen’s Advisory Committee, the Transit Authority board, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority.

Why the hell has this bus project taken nearly a decade to start its engine? As is customary in politics, fingers are pointed at all sides.

At a citizen’s meeting for the Van Ness BRT on Sept. 4, two angry factions gathered in the Old First Church Fellowship Hall on Van Ness. The SFMTA’s spokesperson for the project, Lulu Feliciano, wrapped up her presentation to the crowd of about 100, and that’s when they pounced.

“Van Ness’ three lanes will be limited to two, but it’s a highway, isn’t it?” asked Carole Holt, owner of Russian Hill Upholstery. “Why do cars have no consideration?” She told the Guardian she worried her customers from Marin would have trouble getting to her store.

Another Polk Street activist, Kelly Gerber, walked right up to Feliciano’s face and gestured with his hand like an angry schoolteacher. “Why has no one ever heard of this?” he bellowed, telling us he opposes the loss of parking spaces.

Ironically, transit planners say car traffic would move faster, partially because of the elimination of all left turns along Van Ness except Broadway.

“They’re just angry and zooming in on every little detail,” Mario Tanez, spokesperson for the SF Transit Riders Union, said of BRT’s opponents.

The mostly younger crowd of transit activists showed up in equal force to counter the Polk Street merchants, hoping to stem the tide of NIMBYism.

“We’re the generation that will actually see these improvements,” Teo Wickland told us. He’s an urban planning student who hopes to see Muni running on time.

Feliciano said the project was complicated by having to coordinate multiple city agencies, all with their own goals.

Instead of digging up the same stretch of concrete a dozen times in a decade, San Francisco tries to include as many agencies as possible when cement is broken in any part of the city, she said. Since the Van Ness project is a two-mile stretch between Lombard and Mission streets, many are involved.

Graphic by Brooke Robertson

Peter Gabancho, the project manager for Van Ness BRT, said that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission will put in new water lines, institute a rainwater catch system, and do sewer work. The Department of Public Works plans to repave, and the SFMTA will replace overhead bus lines and light poles.

When asked how much the city would save by combining work, he couldn’t give an exact dollar amount but said it was in the tens of millions, at least.

He also said that the process requires community meetings at many steps in the process. City officials visited Mexico City to see how they planned and built its BRT in just three years, and Gabancho said it’s because that city didn’t really consult the community.

“We can’t do business like that in San Francisco and I don’t think we want to do that in San Francisco,” he said.

All of that governmental insanity had a member of the Geary BRT’s Citizen Advisory Council calling it quits in a fury — he even wrote about it in his blog.

“What I’ve seen in the past six years has been a severe disappointment during which I have lost trust in America’s regulatory framework to enact effective transit improvements,” Kieran Farr, the CEO and co-founder of VidCaster, wrote. He described the process as fraught with starts and restarts, slips and delays, mostly due to a lack of leadership. And that’s the rub: There is no point person on this project with strong political will, according the SFTRU. “The mayor is not saying this is high priority,” Tanez told us. “He’s at all the Central Subway events, but getting political clout behind this by writing to our supervisors is the only way to do this.” The Van Ness project runs through the districts of Sups. Mark Farrell and David Chiu, who were both unavailable at press time. The SFMTA is slated to approve the Van Ness BRT EIR on Tue/17 at 1pm in City Hall, Room 400.

The NSA made the most boring and controversial Tumblr in the United States; also, best news reads on spying

Erica Hanna

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September 9, 2013

11

The NSA made the most boring and controversial Tumblr in the United States; also, best news reads on spying

Tumblr is a hub for social media literate millenials, a magical place for Doctor Who animated GIFs, reblogged Instagram photos of your lunch and an endless sea of porn. But Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has a new use for it: boilerplate press releases meant to stem the tide of negative news against the National Security Agency’s spying practices.

Here’s an excerpt from their Tumblr blog addressing their bad press:

“While the specifics of how our intelligence agencies carry out this cryptanalytic mission have been kept secret, the fact that NSA’s mission includes deciphering enciphered communications is not a secret, and is not news. Indeed, NSA’s public website states that its mission includes leading ‘the U.S. Government in cryptology … in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation and our allies.'”

Well of course it’s not news that the NSA spies on folks, that’s their purpose. But when the federal government can read the emails and digital records of ordinary citizens without so much as a constitutional please-and-thank you, something is definitely wrong. And thanks to a bombshell dropped by The UK Guardian, the New York Times and Pro Publica partnering to release Edward Snowden’s newest leak, we now know that the NSA can decrypt just about anything on the internet.

And sometimes the NSA uses it to spy on their love interests.

Luckily, there are folks who are on this. The Electronic Frontier Foundation just achieved a major victory by suing the government under the Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIA, to get their hands on documents related to the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the law the NSA has used to justify searching through the digital lives of Americans.

The EFF is based in San Francisco, which of course means that there is a video of them at Comic-Con.

And the EFF even outlined ways citizens can help:

“Faced with so much bad news, it’s easy to give in to privacy nihilism and despair. After all, if the NSA has found ways to decrypt a significant portion of encrypted online communications, why should we bother using encryption at all? But this massive disruption of communications infrastructure need not be tolerated. Here are some of the steps you can take to fight back:

Sign the petition to stop NSA spying. Let Congress know that It’s time for a full accounting of America’s secret spying programs—and an end to unconstitutional surveillance. If you are not in the US, please take the time to sign our international petition.
In addition to signing our petition, take the time to call your elected representative using the dedicated call line: 1-STOP-323-NSA (1-786-732-3672) to voice your opposition.
Use secure communications tools (read some useful tips by security expert Bruce Schneier). Your communications are still significantly more protected if you are using encrypted communications tools such as messaging over OTR or browsing the web usingHTTPS Everywhere than if you are sending your communications in the clear.
Finally, the engineers responsible for building our infrastructure can fight back by building and deploying better and more usable cryptosystems.

The NSA is attacking our secure communications on many fronts and we must oppose them using every method we have at our disposal. Engineers, policy makers, and netizens all have key roles to play in standing up to the unchecked surveillance state. The more we learn about the extent of the NSA’s abuses, the more important it is for us to take steps to take back our privacy. Don’t let the NSA’s attack on secure communications be the end game. Let it be a call to arms.”

Get educated, and bone up on the most recent news on the NSA’s spying tactics and policies:

Pro Publica, New York Times, Guardian UK

Revealed: The NSA’s Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption

Electronic Frontier Foundation

NSA Spying on Americans, Full timeline of events

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying

Guardian.co.uk

The NSA Files — All UK Guardian stories on the NSA spying program

http://www.theguardian.com/world/the-nsa-files

And until everything gets better, I’m going to keep using Tumblr the way it was intended: reblogging GIFs of the best Doctor, David Tennant.

Campos urges SF to explore using Richmond’s eminent domain plan

Erica Hanna

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September 9, 2013

170

Campos urges SF to explore using Richmond’s eminent domain plan

Sup. David Campos is urging the board of supervisors to explore using eminent domain to save San Francisco resident’s underwater mortgages, a plan pioneered by the city of Richmond and its mayor Gayle McLaughlin.

The plan uses the power of eminent domain to seize underwater mortgage loans from banks and investors, saving homeowners from being booted out onto the street when they’re behind on their ballooning payments. The plan is controversial and under attack by Wells Fargo and other Wall Street interests, which we explored in last week’s cover story, “Not For Sale.” They say that the plan puts money into the pockets of Richmond and Mortgage Resolution Partners, the group that engineered the plan.

Campos plans to introduce his resolution at tomorrow’s board meeting, but importantly it only asks The City to explore whether or not the plan could work in San Francisco. The resolution would not enact a plan at this point in time.

At a press conference this morning, housing activists and Campos trumpeted the plan as a way to save the homes of San Franciscans. Often those targeted with predatory loans have been people of color, they noted.

“Our strategies have been, lets be honest, ‘Let’s see what the federal government or the banking industry will do to help these folks,’” Campos said at the steps of City Hall. “We’ve waited long enough.”

Campos rattled off surprising numbers, saying 58 homeowners in his district alone had underwater mortgages at risk of foreclosure, and that 16 percent of homeowners in neighborhoods like Visitacion Valley were underwater.

Bernal Heights homeowner and activist Ross Rhodes was there supporting the action.

“Dave (Campos) helped me save my home when I was getting nowhere with the banks but frustration,” Rhodes said.

He was making his payments which were up to $3,500 a month, but while on disability and going through a divorce, it was tough. Campos got Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office involved, and they talked to the banks on his behalf. In the end, he finally got a principal reduction and what he calls a “real good” modification. “I’m not asking for a handout, I’m asking for help,” he said.

Now his payments are $1,600 a month. “It just shows the banks can do what they want to do, they control it all, they can work with if you if they want to.”

SF supe David Campos announces support of Richmond ED plan https://t.co/iZdIQcT4lz

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) September 9, 2013

Campos’ resolution also proclaims San Francisco’s support for Richmond’s eminent domain effort.

The bank asked him why he went to Pelosi and Campos for help, instead of going through them. He was incredulous, as he’d been fighting for a principal reduction on his own for two years. “I’ve been trying to work with you for months,” he told them. “It took that political muscle to get you to move. I went through five different loan agents.”

The victory made him a convert, going to rallies and speaking to help others suffering with their loans.

The hounds are coming for Richmond though, and the political muscle needed to enact the controversial plan is at risk.

Wells Fargo already filed suit against Richmond over its use of eminent domain, saying the plan puts money in the pockets of the city and would put a chill on investments. A Richmond bond with an A- rating was already rejected by Wall Street, finding no financiers, putting Richmond in a possible bind when it comes to public works projects.

In response, Richmond councilmember Nathaniel Bates has a resolution for tomorrow’s Richmond city council meeting to stall the plan. If it’s voted in, Richmond will withdraw all the offers to buy underwater loans and withdraw the plan to use eminent domain to seize them.

If Bates’ resolution is approved, the whole plan would tank.

A petition from the Home Defenders League to sand with Richmond’s eminent domain effort has over 7,000 signatures.

To contact Wells Fargo’s CEO yourself, follow the link here.

The Guardian wrote to the Mayor Ed Lee’s office to see if he is in support of Campos’ plan, but didn’t hear back before press time, which was admittedly quick.

Update 2:20 pm: We asked supervisor Campos’ aide Hilary Ronen if San Francisco would be at risk for a lawsuit from Wells Fargo, similar to Richmond, if the city enacted an eminent domain plan. In response, she said “All that we’re doing is asking the city attorney’s office as well as the budget and legislative analyst, ‘if we did something similar, what does it look like? What are the financial risks for the city?’ This way we can make an educated assessment. After having that information he’ll have to balance what the risks are. We’re not there yet.”

Hormone replacement therapy and video games: Anna Anthropy talks Dy5phoria

Erica Hanna

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September 4, 2013

2

Hormone replacement therapy and video games: Anna Anthropy talks Dy5phoria

Video games go to alien worlds all the time, but rarely have they explored a transgender person’s identity until Dys4ia. The 2012 Adobe Flash game traced designer Anna Anthropy’s hormone replacement therapy journey, guiding the player through trying on women’s clothing for the first time, dealing with the agony of shaving, and correcting all the people who call you “sir” instead of “ma’am.”

Anthropy was kind enough to let the Guardian interview her in her Oakland home, dodge her energetic cats, and record an audio interview where she walks us through her new game, Dy5phoria, the new chapter and pseudo-sequel to Dys4ia. You can also read a selection from the audio interview below.

SF Bay Guardian How do you pronounce the new title?

Anna Anthropy I’ve been calling it Dys-five-ia out loud, but it’s spelled like Dys4ia with a 5 instead of an S.

SFBG You’re hitting steam now with added content, can you tell us what’s new?

AA Dys4ia is made up of four chapters which represent different times in my life when I was starting to go on hormone replacement therapy. Dy5phoria which will come with Dys4ia is a fifth chapter that follows what’s happened in my life since the place Dys4ia ended.

SFBG Not quite a sequel but downloadable content?

AA Like a fifth chapter, if you will.

Listen to the full 26 minute interview in the Sound Cloud file above.

SFBG Can you talk about what seperated it from mainstream games?

AA Oh god I’m so sick of talking about Dys4ia, but I will! It’s essentially a collection of short fast scenes, kind of like Wario Ware, that represents the different facets of what happened to me in this part of my life. The frustrations of dealing with gatekeepers and being misgendered. It’s also about the moments of beauty and hope that reassure me that things maybe are getting closer to how I want them to be in my life.

SFBG What were those moments of hope?

AA One of the things that happens to me in Dys4ia is my tits get bigger, and that was nice.

One of the things in Dy5phoria that has changed is the ways I’ve externalized my femininity more and felt prettier and better about being a girl. It was important that mixed in the bullshit I put in the reasons about why this is important to me.

SFBG Can you talk about how Dy5phoria is different than what came before it?

AA In Dys4ia the avatars in the scenes are really inconsistent. Depending on the context I might be a blobby stick figure, or a shield, a razor, a little munchy thing depending on the experience. My body was going through flux at the time, it made sense for the game to represent that by not having a consistent avatar. In Dy5phoria all the levels have a consistent avatar that look like me and who I’ve become comfortable being.

There’s a different motif in the game, there’s some consistency now, some sort of permanence.

SFBG There’s an 8-bit retro style right? It’s like an NES game.

AA Kind of. I don’t want it to be Nintendo retro because I think thats twee and bad, I think that’s overused.

SFBG Omni retro?

AA Sure.

SFBG Tell me where you are in development and what you’re doing today.

AA My process for this game is that every day I sit down and do a single scene. The one I’m working on today is about painting my nails, and the ways I’ve found to externalize my femininity more. The level is just that: a hand with a nail polish brush. Its just that.You paint my nails, and then its over.

Nails painted in screenshot of Dy5phoria

SFBG Well thats the power of videogames right? You carry out the narrative act, as opposed to simply watching it. You mentioned the TSA level earlier. What happened to you and what’s the problem making that read well?

AA There’s a level in Dy5phoria when I was groped by the TSA at the airport. The way that big horrible scanning thing works is there’s a button with a female and a male button. I’ve had it go either way. This particular time I got scanned as male. On the screen parts of me came up as suspicious areas, and there on the screen there were squares around my tits.

My tits came up as an anomaly, and this guy (security) was obliged to grope my breasts. I’m attempting to translate this to a scene in Dy5phoria. I don’t think it’s reading as well as it could because it’s a bit too complicated.

SFBG Do you think your game designer chops have improved since you did Dys4ia?

AA It’s more like my interests have changed. I’m a lot less interested in making digital games than I used to be. I’ve sort of been envisioning what a fifth chapter of Dys4ia would look like, but when the opportunity came I’m actually more interested in board games than sitting down and coding a game. This is the last game I want to code myself, but I kind of have to because Dys4ia is all mine, all my project. This is kind of a closing of the book for me, in a lot of ways.

SFBG So you’ll never do digital games again?

AA It’s not that I won’t do digital games again, I’m actually announcing a new game at Indiecade. I just don’t want to do the programming myself. I’ve always learned the coding I needed to do, a mish mash. That’s why I work on Twine games because I don’t have to do any coding. Dy5phoria will be the last project I’ll code myself but it won’t be my last digital game.

SFBG You mentioned you’re sick of talking about Dys4ia, but when I was at GaymerX I met this gal who recently transitioned her gender and was working at your workshop there. She has so completely totally inspired by you. You should have seen her face.

AA I did in fact see her face, she came up to my autograph session, and told me the game was meaningful. Those comments make me feel really good. I’m sick of answering questions about Dys4ia but I’m not sick of hearing it means something to people. That’s why I do anything, I want to make things that will actually connect with people. She told me and other people have told me Dys4ia gave her the confidence to make the decision to start going on hormones.

Hormones have been positioned as the central experience of being trans, which I don’t think is good, because there are trans people who don’t go on hormones. But for those people that are thinking of going on hormones is I hoped Dys4ia would give some sense about what that would be like an the challenges and really really nice things of being on hormones would be like. If it has done that for people I feel accomplished in that regard.

SFBG And it seems sometimes you’re at the center to this kind of very indie, very LGBT conscious, very different game movement that seems to be happening a lot here in the Bay Area and other places as well. Can you talk about what’s bringing the rise of that about?

AA I think what’s important to outsiders of the mainstream game industry that the industry is mostly pitching to straight cis males. I think what’s making it possible for people to participate are tools like Twine, a hypertext tool where only recently people started realizing they could use it to make games.

Because the tool is so simple if you’re capable of writing you’re capable of making a game with Twine. You can make almost journal style, personal games. There are a lot more autobiographical games coming out with this tool.

The industry is spending millions to make games, they don’t have the liberty to make something risky and personal and weird. If something takes a few hours to make or a few days or a week, you can make what you want.

These avenues of gaming that are barred to queer and marginalized people, people who are barred from making games in this sexist, cisnormative tech culture have found an avenue in making games in Twine and other free game tools. There are avenues for making games for people who the industry don’t think are its mainstream.

D5phoria is due out on Steam in the fall. You can play the first in the series, Dys4ia, here.

Fall, out

Michael Redmond

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September 3, 2013

1

arts@sfbg.com

GAMER Gamers who’ve grown weary of blasting aliens and other generic supervillains need not worry: the Bay Area’s indie video game designers share your pain. There’s an indie game revolution being birthed right here in our backyard, led by a cadre of designers who really couldn’t give two flying flamethrowers about making another first-person shooter. The best part? The games are all (mostly) free.

DY5PHORIA

By Anna Anthropy, music by Liz Ryerson

Available via Steam Fall/Winter 2013, price TBD

Video games go to alien worlds all the time, but rarely have they explored a transgender person’s identity until Dys4ia. The 2012 Adobe Flash game traced designer Anna Anthropy’s hormone replacement therapy journey, guiding the player through trying on women’s clothing for the first time, dealing with the agony of shaving, and correcting all the people who call you “sir” instead of “ma’am.”

It only takes a moment before you want to slap each pixilated person who blurts out “sir” — and that moment personifies gaming’s unique power to make a player experience someone else’s life. Anthropy (www.auntiepixelante.com) runs with that concept, yanking and pulling the player (willingly) along the transition into her new gender identity.

Anthropy’s new release, Dy5phoria (note the subtle title change), is not quite a sequel to the original, she says. It’s a rerelease of the original game with a brand new chapter, one where she tells the story of finally learning to be comfortable with her new self. The new scenes have more detailed animations than the first release, and though Dy5phoria shares the original’s nebulously retro pixel style, the character you control on screen is a fully formed person. This was a conscious choice, Anthropy explains.

“In (the original) the avatar you controlled changed depending on the context. You might be a blobby thing, a shield, or a little munchie mouth thing,” she says. “My body and identity were going through a lot of flux at the time, and it made sense for the game to represent that by not having a consistent avatar.”

Clearly, this is a new frontier for games; a girl who recently started her journey transitioning told the Bay Guardian that Dys4ia gave her the confidence to make the decision to begin hormone therapy and come out to her parents. Though Anthropy notes that hormones aren’t necessarily the central experience of being trans, she was touched Dys4ia could help people.

D5sphoria will be available via download service Steam “when it’s done,” Anthropy said, which will likely be at the end of fall or slightly later. The original Dys4ia flash game is available at www.newgrounds.com, a website stuffed full of indie games. It’s free to play, and simple enough for even casual gamers to get through in less time than an episode of the Big Bang Theory.

Read our Q&A with Anna Anthropy and hear our audio interview with her here.

CLIMBING 208 FEET UP THE RUIN WALL

By Porpentine

Available at aliendovecote.com; free to play in any web browser

“Leave the tomb behind, and with all your stolen riches, return to the land of the living.” Once you click “return,” you’ve started your climb. Where do you go next?

That’s a question most Twine games ask, as the text-based games mostly resemble the choose-your-own-adventure books of a 1980s childhood. Climbing is one of the better, briefer ones, and though the adventure ultimately is linear, the branching paths will make you chuckle and make you think.

Climb. Climb. Climb. And when you’re done, check out twinehub.weebly.com for even more text-based Twine games. You can also learn how to make your own.

HUGPUNX

By Merritt Kopas, music by SCRAPS/Laura Hill

Available at www.mkopas.net; free to play in Flash-enabled web browsers

Have you ever sat with someone playing Halo, and heard the TV calling out “triple kill, KILLING SPREE!” and other lovely hyper-masculine achievements? Well, now’s your chance to go on a hugging spree.

HUGPUNX is described as a “fluoro-pink queer urban hugging simulator” — and indeed, players basically run around doing just that. Hugging. People. Lots of them. The music is fun and light, and you’ll be shimmying in your seat while you play. The game is simple to control — use the arrow keys to move, and Z to hug. Plus, you can hug giant cats. The world needs more games where you can hug giant cats.

CRYPTWORLDS: YOUR DARKEST DESIRES COME TRUE By Cicada Marionette Available at www.cicadamarionette.com; free in PC, MAC, and LINUX versions Missed Burning Man? This game may be a nerdy substitute to the insanity of the desert. Played a bit like The Legend of Zelda, the game (created by a Texas-based developer) begins with the player talking to the folks in surrounding towns and crypts, performing fetch quests and collecting inventory items. Unlike Zelda, though, a crypt filled with human sacrifices (who all sort of look like Indiana Jones), a horse-god, and a “programming hell” await you. Hundreds of nerds in plaid pants stand by their desks around a flame, or a volcano, I can’t quite tell. But don’t worry — once you escape, there’s a pulsating monster that resembles somebody’s liver just above you. Bring your favorite Burning Man party favors and play this game in the dark for hours. * For a podcast interview with Dy5phoria‘s Anna Anthropy, visit www.sfbg.com.

Not for sale

Michael Redmond

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September 3, 2013

59

news@sfbg.com

From the Chevron refinery explosion to deepening pain of the housing crisis, the city of Richmond has endured a lot.

Walk through Richmond’s Iron Triangle neighborhood and the signs of economic turmoil are everywhere. Homes there have been foreclosed or abandoned for years. Some windows are boarded up, others shattered. In lieu of decorations, signs bearing “DO NOT ENTER” warnings are posted on every other door. Bedding peeks out from beneath one of the abandoned homes.

Despite the neighborhood’s struggle, life goes on.

Families still live here. Just around the corner from the worst of the crumbling houses children ran after an ice cream truck, whose music could be heard blocks away. The ice cream man, Ank Talwar, said that the crumbling neighborhood had seen progress.

“It’s better than before,” he told the Guardian. Speaking through a metal barricade in his window, he said five years ago the neighborhood was nearly uninhabitable due to crime.

It’s that tenuous progress that Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin points to when justifying Richmond’s controversial plan to use eminent domain to seize over 600 underwater mortgages, which would allow families to make payments to the city instead of the banks.

The most important aspect of this plan, she says, is that those families get to stay in their homes.

DESPERATE TIMES

When Richmond’s plan to use eminent domain to seize mortgages was first unveiled, it triggered a national debate. It’s a legal tactic typically used by governments to seize land needed for public use — parks, freeways, or other major infrastructure projects.

The seizure plan’s opponents say that this is a twisted use of eminent domain and a government overreach meant to siphon money rather than benefit the public good. But however one views the city’s solution, nobody can argue that the underwater mortgages haven’t caused trouble for Richmond.

In a legal declaration, City Manager William Lindsay detailed the lingering pain in the wake of the housing crisis.

“According to the city’s research, Richmond has one of the worst situations in the country, with approximately 51 percent of homeowners underwater on mortgage debt,” he wrote. In the past three years, Richmond has been slammed by more than 2,000 foreclosures.

Like a spreading infection, the disease of debt doesn’t just affect homeowners.

There are hundreds of vacant homes in Richmond, Lindsay wrote, attracting rats, criminals, and dumping from neighbors. One of the abandoned properties the Guardian visited had a sea of garbage that filled the entire yard: mattresses, broken televisions, baby seats, and other abandoned items.

Property values took a hit too, which Lindsay wrote had a “catastrophic impact” on Richmond’s tax base, declining from $48 million in 2007 to $41 million in 2012, a more than 14 percent decrease. Lowered tax revenue forced Richmond to cut its city staff by about 200 workers.

Families were losing their homes, neighbors were living in wrecked neighborhoods, and the city hemorrhaged money. To put it bluntly, Richmond was desperate.

That’s where Mortgage Resolution Partners came in.

MRP is the brainchild of John Vlahoplus and Robert Hockett, two Rhodes Scholars who sought a way to rescue the economy from a growing problem: Busted mortgages were reducing the nation’s spending. More than 11 million homes are underwater throughout the United States, according to data from mortgage metric site CoreLogic.

That these mortgage loan investments were locked up in cities and held by big banks that Washington had recently bailed out made national action on the problem less likely, which led Vlahoplus to a novel solution.

“I thought, how would you fix this? Buy them,” he said. “How would you buy them? Eminent domain. Find someone with the incentive to do the economically rational thing, and that’s what it was.” This way, no national rescue would be needed and the solutions would come from the cities themselves.

The mechanics of the plan are anything but simple. Richmond offers anywhere from $180 to $150,000 to buy a bank loan that’s worth about $300,000 (but sometimes more). The homes themselves are usually worth $200,000 or so, hence the term “underwater,” as the borrowers usually owe much more than the homes are worth.

Richmond then offers the homeowner a new loan with lower, livable monthly payments, and MRP makes $4,500 in the transaction.

The sticking point is when the banks refuse to sell the loan to Richmond. That’s when the city invokes eminent domain, seizing the loan whether the banks want it to or not. Hence the controversy.

This move has already been challenged in court. Wells Fargo, on behalf of investors like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed a lawsuit in August to stop Richmond’s plan.

The suit paints a picture of a false Robin Hood, arguing that the plan pulls money from the banks’ and investors’ pockets, and funnels it directly into Richmond’s coffers. Wells Fargo alleges that McLaughlin’s strategy is an “unconstitutional scheme,” a “profit-driven strategy,” and would cause “substantial economic harm in Richmond and beyond.”

But at this point, it may be the only card Richmond has left in its hand. And the stakes, McLaughlin said, are high.

“We’ve seen the situation get worse and worse,” she said. “Having boarded up homes is in itself a blight, and often things go along with that like crime. People utilize these homes for drug activity and such. It’s a burden on the city, a burden on the community. People are dealing with the devastation of their neighborhoods going downhill.”

Though all of Richmond is affected when homes lose their value, those hardest hit by the housing crisis are the borrowers themselves.

UNDERWATER

Juan Sandoval is 45 years old, a father and a husband. After entering the U.S. from Mexico when he was 18, he built a life here. His single story home in the Belling Woods neighborhood is modest but welcoming, adorned with photographs of his wife and children. There are hints of the family’s Catholic faith — the Virgin Mary peers down from a shelf behind a VHS copy of Disney’s Dumbo.

Sandoval bought the house for $290,000 on a non-fixed rate a few years before the housing crisis. His home was last valued at $185,000, and now he owes the banks more than $450,000 on the mortgage. Sandoval is a prime candidate for McLaughlin’s planned eminent domain seizure — without it, he’ll soon lose his home, he said.

Only now returning to work after recovering from a back injury in his construction job, he’s slowly built up debt, and couldn’t afford to fix his house’s furnace. His guilt grew as his family shivered through the cold at night.

The debt started to give him nightmares.

“I would wake up at night and be ‘no that’s not happening,’ but it was happening,” he said.

Above is a 20 minute audio interview with Sandoval, which you can download or stream.

Things got better four years ago when his daughter, Celeste, was born.

“She came during a very bad time for us. I think she came for a reason, she held the family together,” he said. “We were having so many problems.”

He pays $1,500 a month toward his mortgage now, but that will soon balloon to $3,000.

After his work injuries as a subcontractor, “money was not coming in,” he said. The cost of his surgeries made it hard to make his mortgage payments, and so he asked for help. “I requested help from my bank, Central Mortgage this year.” But by a stroke of luck, “they lost the paperwork.”

After months of haranguing, the bank offered him a short sale.

But this is a home he wanted to keep for his family to live in, he said. As he looked over at a small pile of his daughter’s toys, a pink stuffed rabbit and a toy car, he contemplated his family’s future.

“It was too late for me, when I found out and figured out I made a mistake. The mistake I made was to trust the realtor with my family,” he said. But now, he thinks his family may have a chance to stay. “If they do that program I will keep my house, my payment will be less, I will have the money to do all the repairs I need.”

THE BIGGER PICTURE

It’s not just about helping out the 624 homeowners Richmond seeks to assist with their underwater mortgages, Vlahoplus said.

“The critical thing is this is not just about the borrower,” he explained. “Did someone do something morally correct and get (tricked) by some scummy mortgage broker? Or did someone sign something illegally? This is irrelevant.”

Instead, it’s really about the surrounding homes, the neighbors and the local economy, he said. And there is data to back this up.

A study by researchers from Princeton University and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, titled Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump, identified a direct tie between lower property values and shrinking credit rates. The study showed that those with lower property value spend less on automobiles, which economists recognize as a significant part of the nation’s economic contraction.

Homeowners in cities with fewer than 15 percent of mortgages underwater cut back a bit, the study found, but in zip codes where more than 50 percent of homeowners were underwater, consumers cut back their spending by five times as much.

Meanwhile, Richmond is slowly becoming immersed in underwater mortgages and foreclosures. In Sandoval’s neighborhood, seven other houses within view of his doorstep had been foreclosed in the past year alone.

One homeowner we spoke with, Morris LeGrand, 56, thinks it’s unfair that his underwater mortgage is dragging down the values of his neighbor’s homes, and that’s why he supports the eminent domain plan.

“All along when you talk to everyone on the street, everyone is struggling. Who wouldn’t want to see an improvement in their neighborhood?” he said.

And with modern mortgage structures, which have investors in small slices from all over the country, it can be complex to negotiate for the loans without the eminent domain puzzle piece. Many of the loans are part of private label securities, sold by bond trustees like Wells Fargo to private investors.

It’s akin to a form of high stakes gambling, Vlahoplus said, and everyone wants a piece.

Wells Fargo’s lawsuit shows more than 230 investors have claims to the homes Richmond intends to help. The list spans eight pages of the complaint, showing the far-reaching list of financial partners with skin in the game — assets they’ll protect at any cost.

In addition to Wells Fargo filing suit against Richmond, a cluster of Wall Street lobbyists clad in gray suits, acting on behalf of the investors whom Wells Fargo represents, flew into the economically depressed city for a face-to-face with McLaughlin.

“We met with them here at City Hall,” McLaughlin recounted. “They utilized their bullying tactics and put out threats to get us to back off. When we questioned them on an alternative solution to the problem (of foreclosures), they had none.”

They threatened to redline the city, McLaughlin said, a practice that basically means no investments or loans would be made in the city of Richmond.

And now it seems they’ve followed through with their threat.

Last week Wall Street rebuffed the refinancing of Richmond’s municipal bonds despite their A- rating, an unusual move that led the city to pull the bonds from the market.

The bonds are used by cities to fund public works, and lack of bond financing could mean a tough road ahead on new schools and infrastructure projects.

Standard and Poor’s released a report on eminent domain in Richmond from last week saying the tactic “may present inconsistencies in solving the root cause of the housing problem in the US, create unintended consequences for both borrowers and investors, and inadvertently limit mortgage lending activity.”

McLaughlin said she would fight Wells Fargo and Wall Street tooth and nail.

Channeling her activist past, the Green Party mayor led a rally outside Wells Fargo’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco on Aug. 15, flanked by 50 Richmond protesters bearing picket signs. After asking to speak with someone from Wells Fargo, she was met with locked doors and a runaround from a company representative.

High drama in banking with big showdown @WellsFargo HQ and #Richmond mayor, who was locked out http://t.co/815nRK7HR4 pic.twitter.com/qkhgPQcEEm

— Mark Calvey (@SFBizMarkCalvey) August 15, 2013

Vlahoplus said the lawsuits and threats were merely a signal that the bankers were scared, and in his estimation, what they fear is diffuse control — because it’s difficult for national companies to combat policy changes at the local level.

“(Financial industries) can control things in the White House with contributions to the right committee chair,” he said. If Washington or even state level government tried to swoop in and buy up mortgages, it’d be easier to stop. But if every local municipality suddenly had the power to do this, it would be tough to combat each one.

“It’s like Whac-a-Mole,” he said.

But Wall Street may soon have help. Richmond Councilmember Nathaniel Bates said he will introduce a proposal to withdraw the offers on the underwater mortgages in a council meeting Sept. 10. When it was revealed that a small number of the mortgages to be seized were from million dollar homes, he called the effort an “embarrassment,” and told the Guardian he could understand why investors would reject the city’s bonds.

“I don’t see this as redlining, (Richmond) is a risky investment when you have eminent domain hanging over people’s heads,” he said. “I tell you a lot of people are unhappy, and it’s going to be a packed house at the council meeting on the tenth.”

But despite the risks, other municipalities are already thinking of joining in. Wells Fargo’s lawsuit names the California cities of El Monte, La Puente, San Joaquin and Orange Cove as well as Newark, Seattle, and North Las Vegas — because all are considering joining MRP and using eminent domain as a tool to aid homeowners.

Wells Fargo’s lawsuit characterizes the plan as a “wealth transfer” that would “advance local concerns at the expense of an entire sector of interstate commerce that is critical to the health of the national economy.”

But in the view of homeowners like Sandoval and progressive-minded mayors like McLaughlin, the national economy has already hit rock bottom, and blame is on the banks.

“They caused the problem. They’ve been bailed out and haven’t been regulated, and haven’t been forced to do the right thing by the people they’ve impacted,” McLaughlin said. “I’m willing to go as high as the Supreme Court to settle this on behalf of our community.”

The Lusty Lady’s last night, and a eulogy

Erica Hanna

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September 3, 2013

8

The Lusty Lady’s last night, and a eulogy

Here’s a toast to you, Lusty Lady. You were daring, you were seductive, you glittered. Your halls were dingy, but your women were badass, punky, and purple-haired. You were consummately San Francisco.

Since 1976 the Lusties, as the workers there are called, have stripped and danced, and along the way managed to do something historic: they ran a union led, co-operatively owned strip club for ten years (The Guardian has covered the Lusty’s closure before, here). Labor Day was the peep show palace’s eviction date, the latest San Franciscan victim of rising rents and changing tastes in a city becoming less weird by the minute.

But Sunday night’s Lusty Lady memorial march was a testament to the bawdy.

Or to the body, take your pick.

Lust Lady funeral procession #sanfrancisco @sfbg https://t.co/W2VXcLZ5cn

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) September 2, 2013

Marchers and revelers clad in bustiers and lingerie of every color clicked their heels from Broadway up Grant street, tracing the Barbary Coast of old. Some were in nothing but stilettos.

Perhaps drawn by the seductive strippers, or perhaps enticed by the sounds of the pink-clad brass band, people lining the sidewalks joined in for the decidedly not-somber memorial. There were at least 200 revelers at the peak of the fun, dancing, stripping, and with one unabashedly naked woman jumping onto a nearby car.

A Lusty's boobage on a car. The driver is not amused. At @lustyladysf memorial. Photo courtesy of @laurensmiley pic.twitter.com/S1ornEWrWm

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) September 3, 2013

And no, not just a parked car. The driver got out, furious, and ushered her off, wiping down his smudged hood. Her breasts bounced as she trotted off. It was that kind of party.

Some of the tourists sitting in the pre-packaged Italian neighborhood were non-plussed, others were goggle eyed and slack jawed. As little children walked arm in arm by women (and men) in nipple tassels and tattoos, most were smiling.

Carrying pink parasols they marched back down Columbus and obstructed traffic as they danced on like a New Orleans jazz funeral, eventually settling by Vesuvio’s in Jack Kerouac alley. As the brass band played, some spoke of what made the Lusty Lady so special.

Panorama view from up high of the Lusty Lady's funeral march. The band played loud, and the mourners cheered. @SFBG pic.twitter.com/GhPxNVHTQk

— Joe A. W. Fitzgerald (@FitzTheReporter) September 2, 2013

“Its very empowering,” said Megan Croley, a North Beach resident..

“It means naked ladies, but also sexual freedom,” said Mike West, a Bay Area native who has highschool friends that eventually joined the Lusties.

“It was a place where you could see bodies and representations more healthy for society,” said Maren Abromowitz, a worker-owner from Rainbow Grocery, a supporter of the Lusty Lady.

All of that was a part of what made The Lusty Lady unique, a Barbary Coast 2.0. if you will. The city’s red light district draws its roots from the Gold Rush, where “there arose a unique and criminal district that for almost seventy years was the scene of more viciousness and depravity, but which at the same time possessed more glamour, than any other area of vice and iniquity on the American continent,” Herbert Asbury wrote in his book, “The Barbary Coast.”

And the Lusty Lady certainly brought the glamour. But for Prince$$, dancer, spokesperson and union shop steward at the Lusty, it elevated the strip of Broadway that too often can be a degrading workplace for women, she said.

She didn’t outline the facts, but many others have: strippers in other establishments are often paid as independent contractors, which means no benefits. And critics in many outlets have said they’re pressured into sex acts to make profit beyond the stage, and on the whole are treated without dignity or respect.

But the Lusties co-owned their business, were paid hourly wages and overtime, and were a part of the Service Employees International Union.

Prince$$ likened the work at other strip clubs to indentured servitude.

“We fought for the right to be treated like human beings,” she said. “The thing about that is all the strippers are fierce, they’re all fabulous, they all deserve the same love and respect we get. The thing is when they don’t get it they don’t have the power to demand it.”

“We demanded it, and we got it,” she said.

Listen to an audio interview with Prince$$ above.

As the procession ended outside the Lusty Lady, the marchers carried in a pink coffin, bejeweled and sparkling. Men and women alike lined up to the booths inside for their last peep-shows as the Lusties gyrated and stripped on the platform for the last time.

There, under the dim red light, a woman with a large bosom and an even larger voice bellowed, “In the time you’re standing in line for the peepshow, you could have titties in your face, now! While you’re standing in the hallway I can find you the woman of your dreams!”

One man meekly raised his hand, and went behind the beads. In the fullest tradition of the Barbary Coast, of this I’m sure: the Lusties showed him a damned good time.

12 tweets McLovin’ and McHatin’ the East Bay’s #FastFoodStrike

Erica Hanna

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August 30, 2013

11

12 tweets McLovin’ and McHatin’ the East Bay’s #FastFoodStrike

Workers from about 30 fast food restaurants in the East Bay rallied for higher pay yesterday, demanding $15 an hour, nearly twice as much as California’s $8 an hour minimum wage. For reference, Burger King Chief Executive Officer Bernardo Hees makes $4,015,619 with salary and investments, Chief Executive Officer of Yum! Restaurants David C. Novak (KFC Corporation/Pizza Hut are a part of Yum!) makes $14,168,355, and Chief Executive Officer of McDonald’s Corp Donald Thompson makes $13,751,919 with his salaries and investments, according to figures from Forbes and BusinessWeek.

It would take 1,771,044 fast food workers paid at California’s minimum wage, $8 an hour, one year to equal what Novak takes home annually.

Here are some tweets and other “touts” from the strike, which was part of a national movement.

Tout video via Jane Tyska, @Tyska on Twitter.

Twitter Hate

Hey Fast Food workers, $15 p/hr base pay is more than a 5 year @USMC Sergeant’s base pay. You tell US who deserves more. #FastFoodStrike

— VHL (@VeteransHockey) August 30, 2013

#FastFoodStrike: #fastfood work and jobs is not supposed to be a career morons! #TCOT #TGDN

— MarineVet (@SteveHa_rris) August 30, 2013

Twitter Love

@ThebookofIblis I would pay it work is #stress 4 #jobs and #people should help people #FastFoodStrike #iamradioactive

— v (@vinnievidiv) August 30, 2013

It is about time these workers woke up. Soon, this strike will spread all across the nation. #FastFoodStrike

— Taylan_Gadfly (@taylan9i) August 30, 2013

If you work hard, you should not be living in poverty http://t.co/v4yM87oGfR #FastFoodStrike #1u

— Mary Kay Henry (@MaryKayHenry) August 29, 2013

Thank you #fastfoodstrike USA #829strike Your lives and families are important! Of course u deserve to live! With you all the way… <3 <3

— Teri Armitage (@teriarmitage) August 30, 2013

Gettin’ Sassy

So if we pay McDonald’s baristas $15/hour will they actually make my drink right?! #nosugarplease #stopruiningmycoffee #FastFoodStrike

— Amanda Seymour (@amandrianorange) August 30, 2013

Fast food chains could pay workers more & save money by replacing meat with really shitty meat… Oh wait. #FastFoodStrike

— Adam McKay (@GhostPanther) August 30, 2013

Striking in Oakland

Fast food rally #oakland #FastFoodStrike pic.twitter.com/ERq0rRUVAO

— Eric Alfaro (@cirelafaro) August 30, 2013

Fast food worker strike with Barbara lee in Oakland #FastFoodStrike #oakland pic.twitter.com/JxSLiyiuev

— Eric Alfaro (@cirelafaro) August 30, 2013

Tout video via Jane Tyska, @Tyska on Twitter.

Annnnnnd…..WTF?

Changing the narrative

Michael Redmond

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August 27, 2013

45

news@sfbg.com

Three distinct players with three distinct strategies for saving City College of San Francisco showed their hands last week, all centered around the Accrediting Commission of Community and Junior Colleges, which plans to revoke City College’s accreditation in less than a year.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a lawsuit against the ACCJC, state lawmakers are revving up to investigate it, and City College Super Trustee Bob Agrella is doing his best to quietly meet the accreditor’s standards.

Whether any of the approaches will save the school is anyone’s guess, but one thing’s for sure: In the process of saving City College, its accreditation agency has gone from an unknown bureaucracy to a polarizing political punching bag.

HERRERA FILES SUIT

Herrera threw a right hook at the ACCJC on Aug. 22, announcing his lawsuit to stop them from closing City College. It offers a scathing critique of the accreditation agency and those whose agenda it is pushing.

The ACCJC said City College failed to meet certain standards by its deadline last July, leading the agency to order its closure in exactly one year. Since then, enrollment at the college of 85,000 students plummeted and the school is fighting for its very existence. Now Herrera is saying that closure action was improper, unwarranted, and out of line with the agency’s prior actions.

Herrera’s suit alleges the ACCJC unlawfully allowed its advocacy and political bias to prejudice its evaluation of college accreditation standards. “It is a matter of public record that the ACCJC has been an advocate to reshape the mission of California community colleges,” Herrera said at a press conference.

The agenda he said it was advocating for is the completion agenda, which was the focus of our July 9 cover story, “Who Killed City College?” Essentially, it’s the move to force community colleges to focus on only two-year transfer students at the expense of so-called “non-credit” classes, which can be lifelong learning skills or English as Second Language classes.

“There’s a reason judges aren’t advocates and advocates aren’t judges,” Herrera said. “We should have a problem when an entity charged with evaluation engages in political advocacy.”

City College avoided those reform efforts from the state for years, and Herrera alleges that the ACCJC tried to sanction City College because of that resistance.

ACCJC President Barbara Beno was not available for comment. In a statement, the agency said it was surprised to learn Herrera filed a suit against the ACCJC, and that the suit appears to be “without merit” and an attempt to “politicize and interfere with the ongoing accreditation review process.”

Herrera may be playing cowboy, guns aimed right at the ACCJC, but he also said he doesn’t want the agency to close, just to clean up its act and be accountable. But on the other side of the OK Corral, an investigation by the California Legislature is under way — and it may be sizing up a coffin for the ACCJC.

JLAC VS. ACCJC

Just a day before Herrera announced his lawsuit, the California Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted to investigate the accrediting commission. The audit committee is a legislative fact-finding body usually staffed by former investigative journalists, and the senators who asked for the hearing were out for the ACCJC’s blood.

“The stakes are high and the commission’s power is absolute,” Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, told the audit committee. He then outlined the danger of losing community colleges that faced closure at the hand of the ACCJC.

Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber, was much more direct. “Sen. Beall and I met with (ACCJC) President Barbara Beno in my office,” he said. “In all my career, in my thousands of meetings with agency individuals, representatives, secretaries, etcetera, I have never met with such an arrogant, condescending individual in her response to Sen. Beall and I. That attitude reflected in such a senior person raised huge red flags for me.”

In public comment, Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-SF, noted that recently the U.S. Department of Education upheld the California Federation of Teachers’ complaints that the ACCJC process “is guilty of no transparency, little accountability, and conflict of interest.”

Then it was the ACCJC’s turn to defend itself. Beno was unable to attend, but ACCJC Vice President Krista Johns and Commissioner Frank Gornick were there instead.

Gornick defended the accrediting commission, saying it was “rigorously” evaluated every six years. Ultimately, the committee voted 10-1 to investigate a number of mysteries regarding the ACCJC: how it stacks up to the five other accrediting bodies nationwide, determining the ACCJC’s compliance with open meeting laws (it denied public access to a recent “public meeting,” also barring a San Francisco Chronicle reporter), and an evaluation of the fairness in how the agency issues sanctions.

MEET THE NEW BOSS

Amid the state and city level battles over City College, one key player prefers to work quietly. Super Trustee Bob Agrella, tasked by the state to take over the power of City College’s Board of Trustees and save the college, feels his hands are tied.

“My job is to play within the rules and regulations of the ACCJC,” Agrella told the Guardian. Sitting in his office at City College’s Ocean Campus, he pointed out that the accreditation agency actually has a rule that says colleges have to be on amicable terms with the ACCJC — or else.

“One of the eligibility requirements is the college maintains good relationship with the commission,” Agrella said. Notably, if City College fails to meet its requirements, it won’t be able to keep its accreditation in its evaluation next July.

So while Herrera and JLAC can blast the ACCJC, Agrella feels like he needs to remain neutral or he could blow City College’s chances at staying open.

If he were to try battling the commission on its rules, Agrella told us, he would do it within the framework of the ACCJC’s own policies. But it’s exactly those policies that Herrera said the ACCJC is violating.

The lawsuit from Herrera’s office alleges, among other things, that the evaluating team that ACCJC sent to review City College was stacked with the school’s political enemies from a body called the California Community College Student Success Task Force, which City College loudly and publicly opposed (full disclosure: as a former City College student, I spoke against the Task Force at a hearing in January 2012, and that public testimony is cited in Herrera’s lawsuit).

The ACCJC’s president, Beno, wrote multiple letters to state agencies in support of the Task Force’s recommendations, the suit alleges. This action contradicts the ACCJC’s conflict of interest policy, according to the suit, which defines a conflict as including “any personal or professional connections that would create either a conflict or the appearance of conflict of interest.”

So if the ACCJC won’t play by the rules, shouldn’t Agrella support the actions of Herrera and JLAC to resist the ACCJC’s decree?

“In fairness to the people taking these actions, they feel time is of the essence,” Agrella said. “I just happen to, respectfully, disagree with it, because my job is not to push the (ACCJC). My job is to try to retain accreditation.”

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the ACCJC may not be the only body that will decide the fate of City College.

“Refeeding” is prison authorities’ new word for force-feeding

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee

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August 26, 2013

3

“Refeeding” is prison authorities’ new word for force-feeding

The practice of force-feeding inmates has a branding problem.

The issue first came to light after a U.S. District Judge last week granted the California Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, or CDRC, the ability to feed inmates who are hunger striking even if they signed “Do Not Resuscitate” waivers, commonly known as DNR’s. The order called any DNR granted during the beginning of the hunger strike 50 days ago as invalid.

As the negotiations wind on, it’s looking more inevitable that the hunger strike holdouts will soon be near death. But when the prisons start force-feeding inmates, a whole new problem will arise: image.

The CDRC have given all the concessions they’re willing to give, they said, and if an inmate dies while fasting they’d become a martyr. At some point, the prisons may have to feed the inmates via liquid in an IV, or even via tubes.

The tubes are inserted through the nose and directly into their stomachs, and conjure images of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

In a video made by musician Mos Def, aka Yasiin Bey, Bey allowed himself to be force fed to bring attention to Guantanamo’s detainees. Bey is strapped to a chair, and a clear plastic tube is inserted through his nose as he screams, writhes, and begs for it to stop.

“The tube went in and the first part of it is not that bad, but then you get this burning,” he said in the video. “It starts to be like really unbearable, like something is reaching into the back of my brain…. I really couldn’t take it.”

For Mos Def, the feeding was brief. For inmates, the process can take two hours.

To address that issue the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has taken to calling force feeding “refeeding,” which is term that already has a definition: feeding someone who has recently ended a fast. It has medical significance because a whole host of ailments can occur when someone who is ending a fast is fed the wrong foods, or fed too quickly. They can even die.

But now the CDCR has used the word “refeeding” to mean feeding inmates who have already signed DNRs and are fed to prevent death. The word was in every major news report on the court’s recent decision, from Democracy Now to Al Jazeera.

“Refeeding” is the new force-feeding.

Joyce Hayhoe, legislative director of California Correctional Health Care Services, wanted to make it clear that no one has been force-fed yet, and that refeeding was not force feeding.

“What I would like to say is we’re not force-feeding anybody,” she told the Guardian. “When doctors do not have a valid DNR, in the absence of any other information, when we have an inmate we cannot communicate with, we’re going to save their lives.”

But the sticking point in her statement is the word “valid,” advocates say. What is a valid DNR? The health care providers allege that some inmates began the hunger strike because of intimidation by senior gang members in the jails. Hayhoe said one inmate hid food so his fellow hunger strikers would not know, and that “implied something” to her.

There were 12,000 inmates who started the hunger strike on July 8, according to counts by the prisons themselves. Of those, it’s entirely conceivable that a few were coerced, said Dr. Ronald Ahnen, a politics professor at Saint Mary’s College focusing on prison reform.

“Is it possible some prisoners were coerced,” due to the sheer number of inmates involved, he said in an interview. But, “if you read the call from the hunger strike forward, and you heard from the reps in Pelican Bay (Prison), they have always stated emphatically and clearly that the hunger strike is voluntary. They have said no one should continue with the hunger strike longer than they were willing or able to do.”

Now the number of inmates in the hunger strike is down to 92, according to the CDRC. Of those, 41 have been on a hunger strike continuously since it began on July 8.

Hayhoe said there are only a handful of strikers with DNRs left, but would not reveal specific numbers.

Ahnen, who is affiliated with the hunger strikers as a reform advocate but did not speak as their spokesperson, said that though those numbers have dwindled, they’re still significant.

“What amazes me is, 41 people who have been without food for 50 days. I think the major media is missing the importance of that,” he said. “When you think of the Irish hunger strike that we all think of from 1980, that’s 23 individuals who all died. We now have 42, risking their lives to have humane conditions in their confinement. Its very, very historic.”

Lost in the debate over food are the actual reasons for striking. The inmates have five core issues which you can see at their website here, but mostly they revolve around quality of life in Segregated Housing Units, commonly referred to as the SHU. The prisoners say it is solitary confinement, and they can be thrown in there easily by being told they have affiliations with gangs.

“I’ve had prisoners tell me their investigators say they can use any evidence and implicate anyone (as a gang member),” Ahnen said.

And the inmates have little recourse once they’ve been labeled a gang member and thrown in the SHU. Toshio Meronek covered this for Bay Guardian last month (“Hungry for Reform,” 7/3/13), saying it would take nearly 20 years to conduct reviews of the over 10,000 inmates presently held in solitary confinement in California.

In a statement circulated shortly after the CDCR’s on Thursday, State Senator Mark Leno wrote, “I have concerns that this review process is moving too slowly and I would like to see it accelerated.”

The hunger strike is one of the inmate’s last tools to reform that system. Now, in a cell that strips away most all human freedoms, “refeeding” may take away an inmate’s choice to die.

The federal judge’s decision to strip away that right reverberated across the world. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, issued a statement saying “it is not acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike.”

Hayhoe, from the prison’s health services, said there is some wiggle room in having your request to not be resuscitated honored.

“If a person has signed a DNR during the hunger strike, the best thing they can do is start having discussions with his primary care physician and expressing their need,” she said. The inmates have been sustained on Gatorade and vitamins, she said, and are not yet at the point of needing resuscitation.

Ahnen also clarified that the violent method of force-feeding may not be used. Another way to do it, he said, is to feed patients through an IV should they lapse into unconsciousness.

“This is a more likely scenario,” he said, but it is still force-feeding. Hayhoe said she would contact a doctor to see when each method would be used, but did not have the information immediately available.

These inmates are close to dehydration, close to organ failure, and close to death for their principles, Ahnen said, and now their political stand won’t be honored. They’ll be force-fed, no matter what terminology is used to describe it.

“Make no mistake about it, if a prisoner is being fed against their will, this is force feeding,” he said.

And with the flip of a word, the inmates have lost their right to die.

To learn see future actions on the hunger strike, visit http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/take-action-2/ .

The internet reacts to Sgt. Ernst’s bicyclist memorial tantrum

Erica Hanna

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August 23, 2013

140

The internet reacts to Sgt. Ernst’s bicyclist memorial tantrum

A memorial (and informational event) at the 6th and Folsom corner where bicyclist 24-year-old Amelie Le Moullac was fatally run over by a truck last week was interrupted by a tense confrontation with SFPD Sgt. Richard Ernst, when he showed up to block the bike lane with his cruiser to lecture the cyclists.

SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum told the Guardian in a story Wednesday that SFPD Sgt. Richard Ernst showed up to make his apparent disdain for “you people,” bicyclists.

From that story: “He then told me explicitly that he ‘would not leave until’ I ‘understood’ that ‘it was the bicyclist’s fault.’ This was shocking to hear, as I was told just a day ago by Commander [Mikail] Ali that the case was still under investigation and no cause had yet been determined,” Shahum wrote in a report to the Office of Citizen Complaints. Below are a few reactions from the Twitterverse to Sgt. Ernst’s actions.

Below are a few reactions from the Twitterverse to Sgt. Ernst’s actions.

Can somebody photoshop Sgt. Richard Ernst’s head on the pepper spray dude and make him spray a mangled bike, I’m kinda busy. @sfpd

— Anthony R (@printtemps) August 22, 2013

@LightExposures @SFPD what a douche that Sergeant Ernst is! I hope I see him in traffic. I’ll be sure to make full use of the lane then!

— Jesse Hattabaugh (@arkanciscan) August 22, 2013

SFPD Sargent Richard Ernst should be fired for putting citizens at risk while on duty.

— Ashley Martens (@ashngmoco) August 22, 2013

@mayoredlee please ask Sergeant Richard Ernst to resign if bicyclists are supposed to feel safe in sf. http://t.co/e3R3ozALax

— Katie Kelly (@okkatiekay) August 22, 2013

@StreetsblogSF @redeader @SFPD Sgt Ernst should attend sensitivity and anger mngmnt meetings – place him on 1 day bike patrol, reality check

— gary honda (@HS1099) August 22, 2013

Please sign this petition to get the anti-bike bigot Sgt. Richard Ernst suspended for his actions yesterday…. http://t.co/EEo2kjpxZV

— The Wigg Party (@WiggParty) August 22, 2013

Cyclist Patrick Traughber then rode a route spelling out the victim’s name, in tribute and memoriam. Special software tracked his route and displayed her name via the software.

Cyclist Patrick Traughber rides a route to spell out the accident victim's name

SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera sues to keep City College open

Erica Hanna

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August 22, 2013

49

City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a suit today to block City College of San Francisco’s accreditation agency from closing down the school.

The accreditation agency, the Association of California Community and Junior Colleges, moved to put City College on a sanction last July that would lead to its closure in exactly one year. Since then, enrollment at the college has plummeted and the school has been in the fight for its very existence. Now Herrera is saying that closure action was improper, unwarranted, and out of line with the agency’s prior actions.

Herrera’s suit alleges the ACCJC unlawfully allowed its advocacy and political bias to prejudice its evaluation of college accreditation standards, he said. “It is a matter of public record that the ACCJC has been an advocate to reshape the mission of California community colleges,” Herrera said, and that was the basis of his suit.

The ACCJC cannot be advocates for change in the higher education system, he said. “There’s a reason judges aren’t advocates and advocates aren’t judges,” he said. “Now we have no problem with the right of others to advocate an agenda against the open access mission… but we should have a problem with an entity charged with evaluation engages in political advocacy.”

Notably, the ACCJC wanted City College to shrink its mission, concentrating its money on students who could transfer easily to four year institutions from City College, which many advocates say would leave students learning trades, new English learners, and other disenfranchised students in the dust. You can see our coverage on that here.

Above: Text of Herrera’s suit and a press release with more information, courtesy of Sara Bloomberg, reporter for City College’s newspaper The Guardsman.

Herrera also filed an administrative action against the California Community College Board of Governors, saying they had abandoned their role as the check and balance on community colleges, and left it to a private institution that was unaccountable to the public (for full disclosure, I am named in Herrera’s suit on pages 16 and 18 for my role advocating against the Student Success Act of 2012 to the Board of Governors. I was a student at the time, not a professional reporter, and I have no personal stance on the future of the ACCJC). The Board of Governors oversees the 112 community colleges in California, the largest body of community colleges in the country.

Alisa Messer, the faculty union president of City College, agreed that the Board of Governors should not be abdicating its policy and oversight role.

“No outside, unaccountable agency should be making up its own rules or setting policy for our state’s colleges,” she said.

City College Trustee Rafael Mandelman applauded action against the ACCJC.

“At this point I think it absolutely critical the ACCJC is not in the driver’s seat making these decisions, they’re not fit to do that,” he told the Guardian.

This past Tuesday City College submitted review documents to the ACCJC attesting to why it should be allowed to stay open and accredited, and Therese M. Stewart, the chief deputy city attorney, said that while they sent an order to ACCJC not to destroy documents, they had not yet obtained any documents yet. “We haven’t actually sought documents yet from the ACCJC, we asked them to not destroy documents so that we may seek them later,” she said. “Eventually we will get them.”

City College’s judges get judged

Erica Hanna

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August 20, 2013

10

City College of San Francisco had its accreditation revoked by the Accrediting Commission of Junior and Community Colleges in July, and now the ACCJC is getting a taste of its own medicine — its own existence has been threatened over its treatment of City College.

In an Aug. 13 letter to ACCJC President Barbara Beno, the Department of Education found it out of compliance with the Education Secretary’s regulations governing accrediting agencies, as well as the ACCJC’s own internal rules.

“Therefore, we have determined that in order to avoid initiation of an action to limit, suspend or terminate ACCJC’s recognition, ACCJC must take immediate steps to correct the areas of non-compliance in this letter,” the letter reads.

The DOE found the ACCJC noncompliant in four areas: A conflict of interest because Beno’s husband served on the visiting team that evaluated City College, no clear policies on who should serve on those teams (with the letter noting the teams were stacked with administrators rather than educators), no defined distinction between “deficiencies” and “recommendations” or indication of their severity levels, and failure to give CCSF two years to correct those deficiencies, as ACCJC policies call for.

Ironically, the ACCJC has plenty of time to correct its own shortcomings. “The process in this case is that ACCJC will have an opportunity to provide information about the steps it has taken to come into compliance with the cited criteria in its response to the draft staff analysis of the agency’s petition for renewal of its recognition, which is currently under review,” DOE spokesperson Jane Glickman told the Guardian, noting that there will be a hearing in mid-December, with possible actions ranging from limiting the agency’s authority to giving it another year to come into compliance.

But she said the DOE can’t directly help City College: “The Department does not have the authority to require an agency to change any accreditation decision it has made. The agency (ACCJC) needs to amend its policies and procedures and provide documentation that it follows its amended policies and procedures to demonstrate that it is in compliance with the cited criteria.”

The California Federation of Teachers, which filed the appeal with the DOE, wants the ACCJC to reconsider its sanction of City College in light of these validated concerns over its process.

“We are gratified that the U.S. Dept. of Education agreed with us that the process was deeply flawed, and we call on the ACCJC to rescind its unprecedented decision to deny accreditation to CCSF,” CFT President Joshua Pechthalt, wrote in a press release.

But ACCJC Vice President of Policy and Research Krista Johns told us that DOE’s concerns were narrow and shouldn’t affect its actions against City College:”The overall result of the US Department [of Education]’s analysis and study of the documents presented by the CFT about the ACCJC really affirmed that we are in compliance to a very large degree with all of the many regulations that touch on accreditors.”

But it’s still an open question whether the DOE’s findings will affect the decision to revoke City College’s accreditation and turn control over the institution to a state-appointed special trustee.

“We’re still analyzing the letter. There’s a lot in there,” Paul Feist, spokesperson for the State Community College Chancellor’s Office, told us. “I don’t know if it could say there is any reprieve [for City College]. Regardless, there are a number of problems with City College that need fixing.”

But even a cursory analysis of the letter reveals something that raises suspicions about the integrity of the entire process: the DOE letter raises concerns about why the ACCJC chose to go beyond its own policies to sock it to City College.

The college’s appeal ultimately is in the hands of the new Super Trustee of City College, Bob Agrella, who acts with all of the powers of the college’s now defunct board. But Agrella has, in past interviews, agreed with the way the ACCJC is run.

“I think the way the commission operates is okay,” he told City College’s newspaper, The Guardsman. “I’ve dealt with their policies and operating procedures at other institutions where I worked that were dealing with addressing accreditation problems—not to the same degree as here at City College—and the process worked there.”

But Karen Saginor, the ex-City College academic senate president, said the DOE criticism of the process should be taken into account in the appeal of the accreditation revocation decision.

“It’s pretty exciting, that letter,” Saginor told the Guardian. “It’s recognition from an important authority that there are irregularities in the process that put us on show cause. We’ve been saying ‘it wasn’t fair.’ And we’ve been told ‘its a totally fair process, you’re just not happy because you don’t like the result.’ Now we have an important authority verifying what we’ve been saying.”

Canned again

Erica Hanna

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August 20, 2013

6

news@sfbg.com

In the newest of the city’s recycle-pocalypse saga, two Safeway recycling centers are shuttering their services, further narrowing the places in San Francisco where consumers can get their can and bottle deposits back from the government.

The Japantown Safeway on Geary Boulevard already evicted its team of recyclers, and the Safeway at Church and Market streets will soon follow suit.

Early media reports suggested the services would soon be replaced by reverse vending machines, but Safeway spokesperson Wendy Gutshall told the Guardian it’s still exploring all of its options.

“In San Francisco, it is easy to recycle with curbside recycling,” she told us. “The vending machines are a relatively new option and we have been testing them in other locations.”

Safeway has two options for those locations, in lieu of a recycling center: Pay a state-mandated fee to offset a lack of recycling, or to use the reverse vending machines.

The vending machines are a growing problem for San Francisco consumers, advocates say, because they process only one can or bottle at a time, making it nearly impossible for consumers who bring bags full of recyclables to process their buyback in a timely manner.

Ed Dunn, the executive director of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, which formerly oversaw the recycling center at Kezar Gardens in Golden Gate Park, thinks this is a trend that may not stop.

“This wave of closures will trigger (more closures) in in-store recycling across the northern half of the City,” he said. And the numbers back that up. There were 30 recycling centers in San Francisco as recently as 1990, and the state agency Cal Recycle shows there are now only 20 — an unspecified number of which are recycling vending machines.

Cal Recycle said only two of them are vending machines, but a visit to some of the sites revealed there are more than two, and that there may be a discrepancy in its data.

Safeway’s option of just paying the fee is a growing trend, Cal Recycle said. As recycling centers in San Francisco go the way of the dodo, consumers and small businesses feel the pinch. The lack of recycling centers triggers state laws requiring local businesses to pay fees of up to $100 a day if they don’t provide buyback when a nearby recycling center closes.

Supermarkets who make more than $2 million annually, like the two aforementioned Safeways, serve as “convenience zones,” mandated by California law. Those zones cover a half-mile radius around a supermarket that are convenient places for consumers to bring their recyclables to get back their five or ten cents per can or bottle.

But when large supermarkets like Safeway apply for exemptions with the state at a cost of $100 a day, or $36,000 a year, the burden of recycling falls onto each one of the businesses in a half mile radius around those supermarkets.

That liquor store on the corner? They have to pay people for their bags of recycling, or pay the same fees as the Safeway. Many businesses can’t afford either option, said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, the director of city’s Office of Small Business. That, and they don’t have the space available to put the reverse vending machines as an “out.”

“When you’re a transit-first city, it’s harder. This law was really written for suburbia,” she told the Guardian. “We’re getting denser.”

San Francisco’s density means Safeway’s decision can affect many local businesses. If a convenience zone in Santa Rosa closed, for instance, maybe five businesses would be affected — and they’d have plenty of space in a parking lot to deal with recycling.

But when the Haight Ashbury recycling center closed down, more than 50 businesses were affected.

The state bill was crafted in 1986, which makes it outdated in a number of ways, Dick-Endrizzi said. But the convenience zone requirements need to be amended on a state level, meaning a fix could be months or years away. “This is not going to be a quick solve,” she said.

In the meantime, stores must apply for exemptions, which are numbering too many in San Francisco at this point, said Mark Oldfield, communications director for Cal Recycle.

“The point of the convenience zones to have places for people to recycle,” he told us. “If they’re all exemptions, there’s no place for convenience.”

But even when supermarkets put in recycling machines, consumers and the city still lose out, critics say.

Kevin Drew, the zero waste coordinator at the city’s SF Environment, brought the problem to the Small Business Commission in December. “I’ve heard concerns from homeowners and consumers saying ‘There’s not a place to take my bottles and cans, I’ve got to drive there, and there’s a huge long line when I get there.'”

That’s the rub: When many San Franciscans think of people who collect bottles and cans, they think of the homeless, maybe vagrants, certainly poor, who take them from our curbside bins and trash cans. But even if you don’t identify with those folks, they’re not the only ones depending on these recycling centers.

“My experience in going to the centers and seeing what happens is that where there are certainly is a robust group of scavengers and poachers,” Drew told the Small Business Commission. “There’s a steady flow of people from a restaurant, people coming with kids… You’d be surprised.”

He said that of the $18 million a year in recycling San Francisco produces, two-thirds of that comes from recycling centers. So if you think “everyone” uses curbside recycling, think again. The Guardian’s research bears out the idea that there are still regular folks using recycling centers. As we covered the city’s closure of the Haight Ashbury Recycling Center (see “Canned,” 12/4/12), we met families, kids who brought in recycling for their allowance, bar and restaurant owners who wanted to make money back instead of paying for curbside recycling, and yes, vagrants. One of the customers we talked to was Kristy Zeng, a 30-year-old immigrant from China who worked with her 62-year-old mother to support the family with recycling revenues. “People look at her and say she’s too old [to get another job],” Zeng said. Finally, there’s the impact to the city to consider. Anyone who has ever been in Dolores Park on a sunny afternoon understands the role that recyclers play in keeping San Francisco clean and providing an elegant way for the poor to earn a living. With Safeway’s decision, both benefits are being diminished.