Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez

The miraculous and mysterious, disappearing, reappearing Clean Power SF data

Erica Hanna
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38
The miraculous and mysterious, disappearing, reappearing Clean Power SF data

The fight for clean power in San Francisco just got a whole lot dirtier.

In an update to the City’s Climate Action Strategy report, a prominent section discussing goals to use renewable energy featured CleanPowerSF — and then suddenly it didn’t.

For those not in the know, CleanPowerSF is a renewable energy initiative meant to give San Franciscans 100 percent renewable energy, while making us a hell of a lot less reliant on the local monopoly: PG&E. The initiative, pushed by Supervisors John Avalos, David Campos and other progressive allies, faced long-time blowback from Mayor Ed Lee.

As the Guardian has reported before, it’s a central city policy to reduce emissions by 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2017, and 80 percent below those levels by 2050.

To reach those goals many feel we need CleanPowerSF, but the mayor seems to have scrubbed it out of his environmental report without so much as a how-you-do.

The change was made apparent by a prominent blank white space on page 17 of the Climate Action Strategy report, and was discovered by Supervisor John Avalos’ office. When you highlight the blank space with your cursor, copy the section, then paste it into a document, you can see the goals of CleanPowerSF laid out plain as day.

CleanPowerSF by the Residential

and Commercial Sectors

Sector               2012   2017   2020   2025   2030

Commercial   0%       5%       10%     45%     80%

Residential     0%       16%     19%     60%     100%

The scrubbed information shows CleanPowerSF helping the city reach its renewable energy goals. The numbers are hidden in the Climate Action Strategy report, like a message in a bottle, or a painted egg hidden under a bush on Easter. 

It’s as if someone didn’t want to delete the CleanPowerSF entry entirely, and instead turned the text white in order to signal that the text used to be there. Perhaps the preparer of this report was foiled by the technological wonder known as cut-and-paste. Or more intriguingly, perhaps this was the first-ever case of activist report writing (in which case: Dear subversive report writer, please send us documents through BayLeaks).

Whether the information was left in accidentally or on purpose, it’s now clear that the mayor is dead set on scrubbing CleanPowerSF from city records, even at the expense of the city’s environmental goals. 

Above is the report. Check it out for yourself, page 17 (in the report’s numbering, not the digital numbering).

At the mayor’s Question Time today, where supervisors ask pre-planned and pre-announced questions of the mayor, Supervisor Avalos pinned Mayor Lee down on the document scrub-out.

“In your letter of introduction to the 2013 CAS you wrote the need for action has never been more evident,” Avalos said. “The Climate Action Strategy goes on to state that moving onto 100 percent renewable energy is the biggest single step the city can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And yet there was an attempt to scrub CleanPowerSF… from the Climate Action Strategy.”

The version of the Climate Action Strategy included a whited out table on CleanPower SF… that table was unceremoniously removed in a new version posted two days later,” he said.

The mayor’s answer was filled with some equivocations and some fabrications. 

“We should not move forward with a program that contracts with a fossil fuel company in Texas, it doesn’t produce enough local jobs or environmental benefits,” he said. “Supervisor, I’m glad you mentioned the Climate Action Strategy.” 

Retired San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Executive Director Ed Harrington told  Guardian Editor Steven T. Jones exactly why CleanPowerSF was needed, in a story of his back in 2012: “This program before you has the only chance of reaching those goals. There’s nothing else.” 

Asking Mayor Ed Lee to explain the disappearance of the information from the report.

After question time, this reporter and a few others questioned the mayor as he walked back to his office.

What was behind the scrubbing of the CleanPowerSF data? Why did it suddenly vanish from the report?

“I don’t think I have a real answer for that,” the mayor said.

Boss fight

Michael Redmond
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1
Boss fight

joe@sfbg.com

GAMER Imagine Mario telling Nintendo to piss off.

Fed up, he gathers his fellow video game characters for a venting session: Princess Peach, Master Chief, Lara Croft, Nathan Drake, Sonic the Hedgehog, and other characters, waxing philosophic about more inclusive video games. Games where the damsel isn’t stashed in a castle, but included in the hero’s journey. Afterward, inspired, they go back to the digital world and make those games a reality.

The Lost Levels un-conference — the brainchild of indie game developers Harry Lee, Fernando Ramallo, Ian Snyder, and Robert Yang — is just like that. Gamers, mainstream developers, and developers-in-training sit in the grass of Yerba Buena Gardens to brainstorm ways to make video games more inclusive for women and other oft-ignored groups in the gaming industry. March 20, it marks its second year, though its location this year may change.

The renegade gamer gathering is held in the shadow of the bigger, better-known Game Developers Conference, a mainstream video game industry meetup at the Moscone Center. Thousands of game developers flock to the annual event, ready to hear ideas from the biggest names in the industry. But an oft-leveled critique of those big-time game developers is that, in America at least, they are often male, straight-identified, and white.

The differences between the two conferences are defined by who’s talking, and who’s listening. “Lost Levels is a place for those who don’t have access to GDC but still need a voice,” said Mattie Brice, a newer addition to the Lost Levels organization. GDC’s passes start at $195, but seeing all the panels will set you back a cool $1,495. That’s a daunting chunk of cash for the classic garage-start-up gaming developer, bootstrapping his or her way into the gaming industry. Lost Levels, by contrast, is free.

Fringe indie developers often push boundaries, making games about queer culture or including main characters from different ethnic backgrounds. But Lost Levels talks aren’t just limited to ideas on diversifying games. Gamers are invited to jump in with any idea for a presentation. Having one’s say about the future of video games is as easy as penning an idea on a bulletin board with a sticky note.

Last year the ideas ranged from outlandish to just the right amount of wacky — say, if the Madden series is getting stale, why not create a fusion football-dating simulation game?

Sometimes the talks were just about getting to know each other. “Whenever we got pizza as a kid, my brother and I would rush to eat it so we had this whole cardboard land,” said one scruffy-haired game designer at last year’s Lost Levels, speaking in a video on the Lost Levels website. “We’d take a sharpie and fill it in to make our own legend of Zelda map. We’d make our own weapons. I started programming at 14 and made games similar to that.”

A peek at 2014’s presentations ensures one thing: Talking about the future of games doesn’t have to be all that serious. “Sound as a Commodity: I rant about music and how sound is employed/how to employ sound in popular music because MUSIC, GAMES, IT’S ALL THE SAME IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT!” video game composer and sound designer Liz Ryerson writes. And this, from presenter George Buckenham: “I dig eSports and I don’t care who knows. I’ll talk about how rad they are in some capacity.”

Some discussions branch out beyond games, but all are welcome. Few subjects are taboo, and that’s the point, Brice says. “The best way to get people speaking about what they really find important is to just let them do it.”

The growing interest in Lost Levels, and the issues it and other alternative conferences (like GaymerX, a San Francisco convention aimed at LGBT gamers) raise, may be having an influence on GDC. The event tends to center around technical improvements, but recently made tip-toe advancements into realms of inclusivity. This year, Brice, a noted LGBT gaming advocate, will speak at GDC in a workshop entitled “How to Subversively Queer Your Work.”

GDC is making strides in including women as well. Anita Sarkeesian — famous in the gaming world for calling for better representation of women — is slated to receive an award for her “Tropes v. Women” YouTube series. But though the award is nice, mistreatment of women is still a large part of video game stories today. In the mainstream, at least, the tide is far from turning.

To that end, one indie designer is sitting out GDC this year: Anna Anthropy, designer of Dys4ia, The Hunt for the Gay Planet, and others. This year she’s focusing her energy on Lost Levels. “I’ve been invited to give several talks at GDC and I’ve turned them all down,” she says. “It’s stressful and corporate and exclusive.”

At Lost Levels this year she’ll touch on shifting queer games’ focus away from coming-out narratives. Though she’s careful to say she doesn’t speak for everyone, those in the queer community “play games not to re-experience their victimization, but to escape it,” she says.

Last year she tried to encourage GDC audiences to think more about their role in equality, reading from her poem “John Romero’s Wives,” named for the creator of the classic shooting games Doom and Quake. It read, in part, “Had to be mistaken for a booth babe. Had to be told to stop talking about it. Had to be the indie game developer who told my friend she could give him a blowjob. Had to hate other women because you were taught to. To call us “females” like we’re another species. Had to be John Romero’s wives.”

When we asked about the audience’s reaction, Anthropy told us many women came up afterwards, telling her they were affected by her reading. The men? Not so much, she said. *

 

Lost Levels will be held March 20, tentatively at Yerba Buena Gardens. Check out LostLevels.net for location updates.

Wired measures tech bus trips in a day

Erica Hanna
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34
Wired measures tech bus trips in a day

The vaunted Google Bus pilot program is now in legal limbo as local activists appeal the deal to regulate the shiny behomoths, on environmental grounds. As we wait and see what the next step will be, one technology journalist decided to figure out for himself what the SFMTA says the pilot program aims to do: track the number of tech buses running around San Francisco.

Well, to be fair, Kevin Poulsen, investigations editor at Wired magazine, only tracked the buses flying by his home. But the process doesn’t seem too tough to replicate.

As he writes in his Wired post: 

“Last week, it occurred to me that I might start monitoring the local Wi-Fi environment to determine how often the Apple Bus really comes by. My wife guessed 10 times a day. I’d have said 20.”

So essentially, he used the Apple bus’ Wi-Fi, provided for their employees, to track movements of the bus. He didn’t make any bets on it, but if he had, it seems his wife would’ve lost. 

“After a week of reverse-wardriving, it appears the Apple Bus passes my house an average of 36 times a day, and is uncannily punctual, especially in the a.m., when the first bus reliably pops up on my Wi-Fi radar between 6:23:33 and 6:23:56 every morning.

The second bus passes four or five minutes later, the third 25-minutes after that, another at 6:58, give or take a minute. By 10 a.m. as many as 15 more Apple buses have passed. After that they become infrequent, and die out entirely a few minutes after 2:00 p.m., before they return in force at 5:00 p.m. — presumably taking Apple workers home. The last bus registers at about 10:15 at night.”

macadresses

The wifi trail shows how many times particular tech buses drove by this Wired journalist’s house.

Why care about tracking them in the first place? It’s about the impact of livability in the surrounding area, an idea that so far hasn’t been factored in to the $1 per stop, per day argument made by Mayor Ed Lee and the city.  Poulsen writes:

These buses are huge, intimidating, Greyhound-sized affairs, many of them double-deckers, that feel outsized on a relatively quiet street of single-family homes. I haven’t stockpiled much umbrage over them, but some of my neighbors who’ve lived here longer hate the buses. There’s something disconcerting about having your street turn into a major artery in the transportation infrastructure of a company 45 miles away, without so much as a mailer (“Hi! We’re Apple. We’ll be using your street for a while.”).

When the outrage over the $1 per stop, per day number spiked recently, a Google spokesperson said in a release, “San Francisco residents are rightly frustrated that we don’t pay more to use city bus stops. So we’ll continue to work with The City on these fees, and in the meantime will fund Muni passes for low-income students for the next two years.”

Until the SFMTA figures out ways to mitigate the impact of these buses, let’s hope more tech-inclined people track their impacts on the city. You can see the original Wired story here. 

Uber didn’t have the decency to offer personal condolences to Sofia Liu’s family

Erica Hanna
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40
Uber didn’t have the decency to offer personal condolences to Sofia Liu’s family

In the wake of a young girl’s death in a traffic collision New Year’s Eve, allegations of improper insurance coverage and safety practices swirled Uber into the center of controversy — but the company has yet to take a step back to offer personal condolences to the family of the girl who died that night. 

Christopher Dolan, the attorney for the family of Sofia Liu, told the Guardian at a City Hall hearing on rideshare companies that Uber has yet to offer condolences directly to the Liu family. 

The hearing on rideshares (known legally in California as Transportation Network Companies) at the Board of Supervisors Neighborhood Services and Safety Committee yesterday [Thu/6] centered on the insurance and business effects of Uber on taxi services. 

Sups. David Campos, Eric Mar, and Norman Yee grilled San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Taxi Director Christiane Hayashi and California Public Utilities Commission Director of Policy and Planning Marzia Zafar on questions sparked by Sofia Liu’s death.

Should Uber have provided insurance coverage for the driver, Syed Muzzafar, when he allegedly killed Sofia Liu and injured her family? Is it just an app, or is Uber a transportation provider like any other cab company? 

These are questions courts and regulatory bodies will decide over the course of the next year or so. But there’s one question that only Uber can answer: Why hasn’t it offered personal condolences to the family yet?

We sent Uber an email with a number of questions, and they answered every single one except for our question about offering condolences to the family. Dolan said that’s the same response they’ve given the Liu family — silence.

A video interview with Christopher Dolan, attorney for the Liu family.

“They said, ‘jeez our hearts go out to them but we’re not responsible,’” he told us. We asked him if Uber made a phone call to the Liu family, met with them in person, or offered condolences personally in any way. “Absolutely not. Basically their message is ‘it’s too bad,’ but its not their problem. They’ve done no outreach to the family.”

The family’s suffering was deep. In an interview with ABC7 news reporter Carolyn Tyler, Liu’s mother, Huan Kuang, said “I feel very sorry for her. I cannot save her life. The driver kill her.” 

Kuang and her son Anthony were injured in the collision as well..

Perhaps there are legal reasons preventing Uber from offering its condolences directly to the family, though this sounds unlikely as Uber did post a blog directly after the incident saying, “Our hearts go out to the family and victims of the tragic accident that occurred in downtown San Francisco on New Year’s Eve. We extend our deepest condolences.”

But were these condolences extended to the family, or just the Internet? After the death of your daughter, would a blog post really cut it? We’re not buying it. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick sat down for a video interview with the Wall Street Journal only six days after Sofia Liu’s death to talk about surge pricing. If he can take the time to sit down with the Wall Street Journal , he can take the time to personally offer his condolences to a family who lost its daughter in an accident that it alleges his company caused. It’s been two months since Liu died.

Legality of the whole business aside, it’s the human thing to do. 

ABC 7 videointerview with Sofia Liu’s mother.

Update: Four hours after Uber’s initial email reply to our inquiry for this story, and an hour after the story was posted, Uber spokesperson Andrew Noyes sent us this statement: “We have privately extended our personal condolences to the Liu family.” When asked how and when they were made, in order to verify his claim, he sent an email in reply declining to provide us that information. We again asked Noyes about how and when condolences were given, hoping to use the information to verify with the Liu family through their attorney. Uber again declined to provide information as to the time, date or method of offering their condolences. 

Hacker pranks San Francisco FBI using Google Maps exploit

Erica Hanna
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11
Hacker pranks San Francisco FBI using Google Maps exploit

An ex-Marine turned hacker used his powers for good last week, exploiting a flaw in Google Maps to tap into phone calls from the FBI’s San Francisco field office and the Secret Service. 

The news of hacker Bryan Seely’s exploit was broken by local Seattle broadcast news with a more detailed follow up by tech blog Valleywag, which obtained phone calls to the FBI recorded by Seely. The exploit allowed the former Microsoft employee to modify the phone numbers for businesses listed on Google Maps. He changed the listed phone numbers to fake ones, which would intercept and record the call before being rerouted to the FBI, allowing him to record everything said between the two parties.

 

Seely told Valleywag:

Who is gonna think twice about what Google publishes on their maps? Everyone trusts Google implicitly and it’s completely unwarranted and it’s completely unsafe. I could make a duplicate of the White House and take every inbound phone call from the White House. I could do it for every Senator, every Congressman, every mayor, every governor—every Democratic, every Republican candidate. Every office.

Seely tried time and again to warn Google, he told Valleywag, but when they didn’t listen he decided to show them just how vulnerable this system was. 

Seely’s recording of an FBI phone call posted on SoundCloud airs the automated message system the San Francisco FBI plays. Afterwards, we’re able to listen in to the caller’s every word.

“Yes ma’am, I need to ask a question about an email I received, it’s concerning that y’all, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, claim I won a lottery through my email through another country,” the caller says to the FBI. He’s asking about a common Internet scam, phishing, and the second call Seely recorded from the Secret Service was just as innocent. 

Listen to the FBI call Seely recorded in the player above.

But not every call to the Secret Service or FBI is so innocuous. After the Secret Service took Seely into custody for his actions, they apparently called him a “hero.” 

The San Francisco FBI bureau’s spokesperson, Peter Lee, told the Guardian that he wasn’t aware of the scam, and could neither confirm or deny it. Sounds like super secret spy stuff to us. We directed him to the link, but he couldn’t confirm or deny that we sent him the link, either.

The national FBI spokesperson wasn’t aware of the issue, or at least, said she wasn’t. But the response from Google seems to be more telling — it contacted Seely to find a way around the exploits. But he didn’t appreciate their “attitude,” he told Valleywag.

In the meantime, Google’s map vulnerabilities apparently are lures for “entrepreneurs” who redirect calls from one small businesses to another, garnering millions in profits for the digital scammers in what amount to extortion fees, a tech consultant told Valleywag. 

While Google works on a fix, if you have to call the San Francisco bureau of the FBI, try looking up the number using the Yellow Pages. 

Read more at Valleywag, here. 

Jason “Shake” Anderson is Oakland’s ‘Candidate X’

Erica Hanna
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116
Jason “Shake” Anderson is Oakland’s ‘Candidate X’

In our Jan. 1 issue, the Bay Guardian spun the tale of Candidate X, a fictional progressive mayoral candidate aiming to save San Francisco’s wonderfully weird soul using people power. The hope? To inspire a candidate to run in the City’s election in 2015 with strong progressive bona fides, and the values that inspired a nation during the rise of the populist Occupy movement.

Now a real life Candidate X has surfaced, but not in San Francisco — this X is challenging Jean Quan for her seat as Oakland’s mayor, using our Candidate X story to define, elevate, and amplify his candidacy. 

Meet Jason “Shake” Anderson, 38, a former Occupy Oakland spokesperson, veteran, and now Green party candidate for the Oakland mayor’s race. He hopes to take the lessons from Occupy to help reinvigorate the city he calls home. 

“It doesn’t get much news, but Occupy Oakland dropped crime in the city in that moment. It’s because people had places to sleep and places to eat. Those things drop crime,” he told the Guardian. “I’m not saying we camp again, but we need to find ways to do things like that. We have empty buildings, how about we give organizations who feed people on a daily basis a building that wasn’t being used to begin with?”

Anderson is an African American man, and although he feels black Oakland needs representation, he’s about bridging divides: “My attitude is we take care of our people first; not just black or brown people, but people.”

Thinking with people power is Anderson’s modus operandi. He noted that the Port of Oakland was severely disrupted by an Occupy takeover, showing the people have teeth. He doesn’t want to just fight people in power, but work hand in hand with them.

“I believe we can work with and not be separate from the power structure, and even the playing field,” he said. “A lot of people are mad at rich people, but I’m angry at disparate wealth. People are poorer and poorer, and they feel likes there’s no change in their course.”

Jason “Shake” Anderson talks music with “The Black Hour.”

That focus on building bridges and novel ideas to tackle everyday problems is what drew Anderson to our Candidate X feature back in January. He co-opted the imagery and message, distributing “Who is Candidate X?” flyers around San Francisco and Oakland. The front side features art from our Candidate X story, by the talented Sean Morgan, and the back features a brief description of Anderson’s candidacy as well as a QR code that links to a donation using Bitcoin. 

 

You see, Anderson is a bit of a tech head, with a belief that eventually Bitcoin will be one way to free people’s money from banks that don’t look out for the interest of people. And much like our fictional Candidate X, he thinks the tech movement and activist movements have much in common.

“Candidate X comes from the concept of the 99 percent, the leaderless movement of Occupy,” Anderson said. “This is not about me, I’m just a guy. But I’m supposed to represent you.”

candidatex4

A personal goodbye to Bush Man 2, RIP

Erica Hanna
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7
A personal goodbye to Bush Man 2, RIP

San Francisco has lost one of its own. Gregory Jacobs, KTVU confirmed today, passed away of heart failure last Sunday. 

He’s less known by his full name, but better known by his moniker, “The Bush Man.”

No, he’s not the original Bush Man. That would be David Johnson, who’d been there for 36 years, compared to Jacobs’ 30. 

Little matter. Jacobs was a San Franciscan through and through. Like many San Franciscans, he came here from somewhere else, in his case the “somewhere else” was Arkansas. But Jacobs was known and loved here in The City. 

The man was dedicated to his work: sitting along Jefferson street and spooking tourists by shouting “boo!” from behind two large and bushy tree branches. 

From the KTVU story:

Jacobs’ cousin says he was a father and brother and a man who always wanted to be in that spot down on the Wharf. And even in his final days he took every opportunity he could to come back.

“Yeah every time he got out of the hospital he would come straight out and sit down (at the Wharf) with his hospital ban (still on his wrist),” Jacob’s cousin Chris Tolbert told KTVU. “He got in his spot as if nothing was wrong with him.”

His family says they just hope people remember him and that what he loved to do was to make people laugh.

Many will share their favorite “I got spooked so bad!” memory, but I want to share a more personal story about Gregory Jacobs from my time working on the streets of the wharf. 

At age 17, I was living with a friend after irreconcilable differences with my mother led to too many shouting matches. The day I turned 18 I tried to go back home, but my father’s death years ago put too many strains on my relationship with my mother. At the time, we couldn’t coexist.

So I set out to live with my friend Morgan, who stayed in an in-law apartment in her family’s home in the Marina. Three kids, two parents, a grandmother living upstairs and a golden retriever named Indy welcomed me with open arms (and paws). The house was in the family for generations but the Blackburns were not Marina wealthy, and this wasn’t charity. I needed to pay rent, and I needed to do it fast. 

I went to the Wharf. 

Where better to earn rent money in a hurry, in summertime? On my own and a little confused about what life beyond high school should be about, I found the Wharf a somewhat daunting place. Beneath the facade of smiling tourists and the scent of tasty clam chowder lies a cutthroat network of businessmen, fleecers and street traders — all looking to make a buck. 

Bush Man was there of course, but also many more: Kenny the Clown, a mute magician with “mystery” rings, the Latino graffiti artists, caricature painters, a homeless man begging from inside a trash can (ala Oscar the Grouch), Mary the juggler, and even a fire-eating local comedian who walked barefoot on glass. They, the weird, the bastard stepchildren of Emperor Norton. 

Desperate for money, I joined their noble ranks. 

A friend set me up selling tickets for the nearby Blue and Gold fleet. Wear some slacks, he said. Clean yourself up, he said. I did both, and with a Gavin Newsom style hair slick and ferry tickets in my back pocket I stood on the sidewalk across Ripley’s Believe it or Not to ply my trade.

I couldn’t have screwed up more. There are rules to the sidewalks, invisible rules you learn only by pissing off the wrong people. I was a newbie, a fresh fish with no claims. 

The Wharf buskers let me know that right away. 

A jazz musician with an electric keyboard tore me a new one. “This is my spot, damnit!” is the effect of what he said over the course of five minutes, through the haze of a decade-ago memory. It was akin to a dressing down from Kenny G, and just as surreal. I moved 20 feet East to the front of Boudin’s, only to be slapped back by a homeless man in a cowboy hat named William. “Get your own damn spot!” he said. The look on his face went from genial-change-collector to “I’ll kick your ass, kid” in under a second, his fists cocked for a brawl. 

This, if you haven’t guessed, is where Jacobs the Bush Man comes in. Intimidated and confused, I wandered to his spot near the Anchorage Mall. He sat perched on a crate, jumping up and shaking his branches like a madman to scare the folks walking by. 

I always preferred his style of showmanship to the “original” Bush Man’s — Jacobs had attitude.

“Bet YOU never made her scream like that sir!” he’d say to the husband of a shrieking blonde. “Welcome to America!” he’d say to an Asian family he made jump (who could easily have been from Arkansas themselves). “If you’re havin’ fun, put a tip in the can!” he’d say to the crowd nearby, who applauded approvingly of his spook and scare routine.  

And his laugh, god his laugh. You could hear his cackle halfway down the block, and you knew his salt and pepper eyebrows were arched up as he laughed it up at his own jokes. 

Gregory Jacobs asked people to call him “G,” at least when I knew him. G showed me the ropes, told me when I could occupy certain spots, and how to get on the other buskers’ good sides. I even took cues from his showy style. 

“YOU sir, you look like you could use a bay cruise,” I’d say to a passing tourist with inflections reminiscent of my favorite Bush Man, and at a vocal volume that was similar too. “Don’t you think you ought to take your gorgeous girlfriend on a cruise around the bay?” 

Bush Man’s sales tips helped. I was rakin’ in the cash, at least, for an 18 year old. G made much more, pulling in hundreds of dollars a day during peak time in the summer. 

G wasn’t a saint for sure. More than once I saw him fist fight with the “original” Bush Man, David Johnson, who told me once that he taught Jacobs everything he knew. They used to split the proceeds, only Johnson claimed he was double crossed later on when Jacobs went off on his own as “Bush 2.” 

I don’t know much about all that. All I know is, G was kind, and I liked him. 

The Wharf liked him too (for the most part), and he was considered a local luminary. A year after I was selling cruise tickets, I started selling video games at a shop right by the In and Out Burger. One day walking out of my store I was startled, but not surprised, to see G judging a wet T-shirt contest starring the nearby Hooter’s girls.

He paced up and down, taking a good gander, pondering like a man with grave concerns on his mind. He took his job very, very seriously. Everyone watching smiled wide. 

Yeah he was ornery, cranky, and loud. But Jacobs had heart, and he looked out for his fellow Wharf folk. G once protected me from the wackier buskers out there on the sidewalk. 

One day as I strode down Jefferson street, Kenny the Clown (who ran for mayor at least once, and somehow obtained Steve Jobs’ stolen iPad) decided he thought I needed a hug (and more). If clowns aren’t frightening enough, Kenny is at least 6’5” — he’s a large man. Maybe he was harmless, but I didn’t want to find out. 

As Kenny chased me down the street, G took me by the shoulders and said “Run! I got this, I got this!” Swirling around on one foot he raised his palms up to Kenny’s sky high shoulders. “Kenny Kenny Kenny Kenny,” he said, “slow down man! Let’s talk.”

Sometime shortly after that, I sleepily walked to work to inventory the stock of Nintendo games. The sun was still rising. Keys in hand, my mind drifted to the stillness of the street, how early morning Fisherman’s Wharf belongs to the buskers, fishermen and shop owners getting ready for the day. Most of all, I loved how the scent of sea air is easier to detect when you’re not distracted by hundreds of loud tourists. 

I breathed in the air absentmindedly, enjoyably, as I reached out with my keys to unlock the gate to the store. 

“BOO!” shouted G from just behind my ear, and I jumped halfway off of my skeleton. 

“Holy crap G what’d you do that for?! I work here man, I’ve lived here my whole life, I thought you only did that shit to tourists,” I said, a little startled. 

I still remember what he said. “Hey man, everyone’s got their time.”

That they do G. I will miss you, and so will San Francisco.  

Big Soda’s sketchy grassroots support

Erica Hanna
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7
Big Soda’s sketchy grassroots support

The Guardian published a story today fact checking a list of local businesses who oppose the Sugary Beverage Tax, a list used by American Beverage Association funded publicists to slam the tax. The story is getting a lot of attention from health advocates and neighborhood businesses, but the Guardian has heard one question over and over: “Where can we see the list?”

Well, here it is, embedded as a PDF below. A few caveats: the list is from Jan. 29, and 12 businesses have been removed from the list since then, according to Affordable City, the ABA funded group that assembled the list. 

Still, our story found shops that were listed in error that were not on the list, and many store owners we spoke with said they weren’t aware funding from the tax would go to schools or fitness programs. Sugary Beverage Tax sponsor Sup. Scott Wiener told the Guardian that he expects to see millions of dollars from ABA’s main backers, Coca Cola Co. and Pepsico, spent to discredit the tax.

They have cause for concern, as San Franciscans may cut their sugary beverage spending by $31 million if the tax were to pass. 

If you’re a store owner, activist or health official and want to verify the list of businesses opposed to the tax for yourself, the list is above for your perusal. 

For more background on the Sugary Beverage Tax and its implications, check out our previous coverage here.

UC Berkeley drops hyperlocal news website Mission Local

Erica Hanna
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30
UC Berkeley drops hyperlocal news website Mission Local

A memo released today revealed a striking split that could affect media coverage in the Mission district: hyperlocal news site Mission Local is being dropped by its main fiscal sponsor, the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

“It’s now time for Mission Local to take the next step and re-launch itself as an independent, stand-alone media operation,” J-School Dean Edward Wasserman wrote in a department-wide memo. “That means ending its role in the J-School’s curriculum.”

The website is one of a trio of hyperlocal news websites run by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, including Oakland North and Richmond Confidential. It is still unclear if the other websites will be affected as well, though the memo says they will be the center of future discussion among faculty. 

Mission Local is a journalism lab for the UC Berkeley graduate students, covering everything in the Mission District from the Tamale Lady to the eye-rolling of Google public relations employees. They’re popular in the neighborhood, and even present the website in a Spanish-language format. 

The UC Berkeley graduate students serve as the site’s reporters and a little bit of everything else, from advertising and sales to audience-building. That was a problem, Wasserman wrote.

“That’s not really what we do,” he wrote. “Those are specialized areas, and the J-School doesn’t have the instructional capacity to teach them to a Berkeley standard of excellence.”

But the main issue seems to be cost. “It’s an expensive undertaking,” he wrote. The sites were initially funded with grants from the Ford Foundation, but UC Berkeley started picking up the tab when they ran out, among other fundraising avenues. Wasserman was also concerned that working for a hyperlocal newspaper away from campus pulls students away from campus activities. 

The PDF above is the memo sent to students and faculty of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism department concerning Mission Local.

Lydia Chavez, a professor at the J-School and the head of Mission Local told the Guardian she disagreed with Wasserman’s decision. 

“To be clear, I would have preferred to have Mission Local and the other hyper locals at the core of the school’s curriculum,” she said. 

But tales of Mission Local’s demise would be exaggerated.  

Chavez, a reporter who’s written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, op-ed pieces in the San Francisco Examiner and more, isn’t willing to walk away from Mission Local despite the challenges. 

The journalism bug, it seems, bit her hard.

“The Mission is now ground zero for so much that is happening in the city and the country that if I walked away from it now, it would be like walking away from a terrific story,” she wrote to the Guardian in an email.

“Mission Local will remain alive and innovative,” she wrote.

We’ll follow up with this story as it develops, and are planning a look into the state of hyperlocal journalism in San Francisco. Look for it in next week’s print edition of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

The memo in full: 

J-School Community:

The Mission Local hyperlocal site has been a vibrant and valuable part of the School of Journalism since it was created five years years ago. It has developed well beyond its initial scope as an incubator for J200 students, and under Prof. Lydia Chavez’s imaginative, impeccably professional and tireless leadership has become the premier place for the community it serves to learn about itself and talk about its future.

It’s now time for Mission Local to take the next step and re-launch itself as an independent, stand-alone media operation. That means ending its role in the J-School’s curriculum. While Prof Chavez would have liked to see the school keep the site, she is ready to assume responsibility for the site, and we expect that it will continue under her ownership. 

My reasons for spinning off ML are several.

First, it’s an expensive undertaking, which obliges us to operate a remote site on a year-round basis, even when the curricular value to our students is limited or even, at times, non-existent (as when we pay non-students to keep the site from going dark.)

Second, it draws students away far from North Gate at the very moment we’re bulking up and enriching the curricular and co-curricular offerings here—new required courses, more speakers, town hall meetings, reinvigorated career services, generally pumped-up intellectual life. From the perspective of Mission Local’s needs, renewed activity in North Gate is a distraction, and I think that unintentionally does our students a disservice.

Third, the natural evolution of the site itself is toward being an integrated media operation, and that requires sustained attention to marketing, audience-building, ad sales, miscellaneous revenue-generation, community outreach, special events, partnerships, and 1,001 other publishing activities that are essential to any site’s commercial success.

That’s not really what we do. Those are specialized areas, and the J-School doesn’t have the instructional capacity to teach them to a Berkeley standard of excellence. What’s more, our students wouldn’t have the curricular bandwidth to learn them—not unless we pared back other areas, and redefined our core mission as something other than journalism education.

(Let me add that as part of our larger curricular rethinking, I’m hopeful we will be introducing, and requiring, more business-side instruction than we currently offer, but ML’s needs are still of a different order of magnitude.) 

Whether other changes are in the works for J200 is up in the air at the moment. The curriculum committee is in the process of considering alternative approaches to J200, and the roles of Oakland North and Richmond Confidential as teaching labs are among the matters the faculty will discuss. 

Mission Local has produced dozens of loyal alums, many of them strong enthusiasts who recall their experience there with affection and gratitude. Let me assure them—and you—that as we weigh the future of J200 it’s with the intention of improving on what we’ve done in the past, and making sure the future offers opportunities here at least as rewarding and memorable as theirs have been. 

Let me conclude with a word of profound thanks to Prof. Chavez. While I respect and admire her loyalty to the Mission, I very much look forward to her getting more deeply involved in the exciting work that’s going on in North Gate. 

Regards,
Edward Wasserman, Dean 

Kick the can

Michael Redmond
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27
Kick the can

joe@sfbg.com

At least 720 San Francisco businesses oppose the controversial Sugary Beverage Tax proposed for the November ballot, according to the proposed ballot measure’s opponents. But a Guardian investigation shows that claim is overstated.

Some businesses were listed with the consent of employees who couldn’t speak for the business, not their owners, and some businesses listed aren’t even open anymore.

The measure is opposed by Unfair Beverage Taxes: Coalition for an Affordable City, which is funded by the American Beverage Association and fronted by public relations firm BMWL and Partners. They have been trying to enlist allies from local restaurants and liquor stores, trying to show the community is against the Sugary Beverage Tax.

The ABA is funded primarily by Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, and they certainly have cause to worry about a measure that aims to reduce consumption of sodas and other sugary drinks to help curb obesity, using a 2 cent per ounce tax on sugary beverages sold in San Francisco.

The resolution to place the measure on the fall ballot is sponsored by Sups. Scott Wiener, Eric Mar, Malia Cohen, John Avalos, and David Chiu.

The estimated $31 million in taxes collected would go to the SFUSD to fund physical education for kids and active and healthy living programs in the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the Department of Public Health.

We called over 70 of the businesses on the list of opposition to the tax in San Francisco. Not all of the businesses responded to our calls, nor were owners easily available, and some of the businesses listed did not have English-speaking staff available to talk.

Update 2/26: Want to see the list for yourself? Click here for the PDF of the opposition list to the Sugary Beverage Tax sent to us by Affordable City. 

But about 20 of the businesses did respond, and what they told us calls into question the veracity of the opposition list.

Mohammed Iqbal, owner of All Nite Pizza on Third Street, said he only learned about the Sugary Beverage Tax only after we called. Following up later, he said he found that one of his employees signed onto the list.

records“We’re not really sure about the tax, we’d rather stay out of it,” Iqbal told us.

Swanky coffee and wine bar Ma’Velous, a spot popular with City Hall politicos, was also on the list. The owner’s wife, Lean Chow, told us opposition canvassers presented the tax in a one-sided way, and she wasn’t told her signature would place the business onto an opposition list.

“We didn’t get the full details,” she told us in a phone interview. “We also didn’t know the taxes would go towards education.” Her husband owns the coffee bar, and she said they are both fully in support of the beverage tax.

Noe’s Bar and the formerly co-owned Basso’s restaurant are also on the opposition list, but both businesses are permanently closed, according to their Yelp listings and county business data, which we confirmed with phone calls.

Most of the store owners we talked to who did confirm they were on the opposition list said they were not told the funding would go to schools, activities in parks, or public health. Some said they were actively misinformed.

Aijez Ghani, the owner of the restaurant Alhamra, told us, “The one gentleman come, and he say in favor or against? I said in favor.”

When we asked him if he knew he was on the opposition list, Ghani said, “I think it was a mistake. But I am totally in favor of the tax, 100 percent. They’re going to spend money on the schools, the health of kids, and health is more important than business.”

Chuck Finnie, who runs the opposition group for BMWL, invited us up to his firm to inspect the signatures for the opposition list. Along the office walls were dozens of silver and gold award statues from the American Association of Political Consultants “Pollies” awards. One was a 2013 Overall Campaign win for No on N, when the firm trounced the Sugary Beverage Tax in Richmond.

Finnie suspected that the Guardian was sniffing around the list at the behest of Wiener, who Finnie said had raised concerns about the list’s credibility at various meetings in the business community.

“I was a journalist for 20 years, and this is bullshit,” the ex-San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporter and city editor told us. “The gloves are off.”

On the table was a large bin of records. Each business had a sheet with, supposedly, an owner’s name and contact information. We found one listing Mohammed Iqbal, of All Night Pizza, but Iqbal told us the signature was from an employee whose English was not good. Chow was also in there representing Ma’Velous, even though her husband, Philip Ma, is the only registered owner in county records.

As for the closed businesses, Noe’s Bar only closed three weeks ago, but Finnie and his associate Nick Panagopoulos (a former City Hall staffer) said they comb through the opposition list for mistakes every week, showing the Guardian a list of 12 businesses that were removed due to errors in the outreach process.

“I’m responsible for this coalition we’re building, and I’m serious about our political organizing,” Panagopoulos told us, saying he’s rigorous about the standards his organizers use, but that “they’re human beings, so there may be mistakes.”

But Wiener isn’t buying it.

“When I first saw this list, it looked fishy to me,” he wrote to the Guardian in an email, saying his office found irregularities similar to what we found, but from different businesses. “I’m concerned that, given this start to the campaign, the beverage industry is going to flood San Francisco with enormous amounts of money spreading misinformation. This kind of tactic isn’t acceptable.”

Francisco Alvarado, Bryan Augustus, and Brian McMahon contributed to this story.

Muni fare shakedown

Michael Redmond
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Muni fare shakedown

Update: Just a day after the release of this article, advocacy group POWER announced that Google pledged to pay for Free Muni For Youth for two years. “This validates both the success and necessity of the Free Muni for Youth program,”said Bob Allen, leader in the FreeMuni for Youth coalition, in a press release. “We need tech companies in San Francisco and throughout the region to work with the community to support more community-driven solutions to the displacement crisis.” 

The funding though is promised only for two years, and when that timeframe is up the question will still remain — will Muni’s operating budget pay for something Mayor Ed Lee could find funding for elsewhere? Additionally, Google hasn’t announced funding for free Muni for seniors or the disabled, another program up for consideration in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s new budget. That may change if and when it is approved by the SFMTA for the next budget year. 

“I think it’s a positive step in the right direction,” Superivsor David Campos, the sponsor of Free Muni For Youth, told us. “But there are still questions about what it means in terms of the long term future of the program. It’s only a two year gift.” 

“We have asked for a meeting with Google and the mayor’s office and the coalition to talk about long term plans, to find out more information about what this means.” 

There’s a tie that binds all Muni riders. From the well-heeled Marina dwellers who ride the 45 Union to Bayview denizens who board the T-Third Sunnydale line, we’ve all heard the same words broadcast during sleepy morning commutes.

“Please pay your fare share.”

The play on words (also seen on Muni enforcement signage) would be cute if it didn’t perfectly represent how Muni riders may now be stiffed. A slew of new budget ideas hit the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors last week (Feb. 18), and who will pay for it all is an open question.

The first blow to riders is a proposed single-ride fare hike from the current $2 to $2.25.

Other proposals include expanding the Free Muni for Youth program, rolling out a new program offering free Muni for seniors and the disabled, and a fare hike to $6 for the historic F streetcar.

The odorous price jumps (and costly but promising giveaways) are moving forward against a backdrop of a Muni surplus of $22 million, which the board has until April to decide how to use, and a controversial decision by Mayor Ed Lee to make a U-turn on charging for parking on Sundays.

The meter decision would deprive Muni of millions of dollars.

“We’re not proposing anything here, just presenting what we can do,” SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin told the SFMTA board at City Hall last week.

There’s still time to change the SFMTA board’s mind on the proposals between now and final approval of the budget in April. But who will end up paying for a better Muni?

 

FARE HIKES NOT FOUGHT

In 2010, the SFMTA instituted a policy to raise Muni fares along with inflation and a number of other economic factors, essentially putting them on autopilot. The SFMTA board still has to approve the fee hikes, which may rise across the board.

fares One-time fares may jump to $2.25. Muni’s monthly passes would see an increase by $2 next year and more the following year. The “M” monthly pass will be $70 and the “A” pass (which allows Muni riders to ride BART inside San Francisco) will be $81.

Muni needs the money, Reiskin said.

“To not have (fares) escalate as fuel and health care costs increase, you can’t just leave one chunk of your revenues flat,” he told the Guardian. Muni’s operating budget will expand from $864 million this year to $958 million in 2016. “Salary and benefit growth is the biggest driver of that,” Reiskin said.

Mario Tanev, spokesperson for the San Francisco Transit Riders Union, said the hike was expected.

“We’re not necessarily against the inflation increase,” he said. “But though the parking fines SFMTA levies are inflation adjusted, other rates (against drivers) are not. There are many things in our society that disincentivize transit and incentivize driving.”

Drivers enjoy heavy subsidies to their lifestyle on the federal, state, and local levels, from parking lot construction, the cost of gasoline, and now it seems, renewed free Sunday parking meters. The new fare increases are hitting transit riders just as the mayor is poised to yank funding from Muni to put in the pockets of drivers.

 

PLAYING POLITICS

When the paid Sunday meter pilot began in early 2013, it was a rare flip in a city that often treats Muni like a piggy bank: money was floated from drivers and dropped onto the laps of transit.

A report from SFMTA issued December 2013 hailed it as a success for drivers as well: Finding parking spaces in commercial areas on Sundays became 15 percent easier, the study found, and the time an average driver spent circling for a space decreased by minutes.

Even some in the business community call it a success, since a higher parking turnover translates to more customers shopping.

Jim Lazarus, senior vice president of public policy at the Chamber of Commerce, is a supporter of the paid Sunday meters. “You can drive into merchant areas now where you couldn’t before,” he told us.

Eliminating Sunday meter fees would punch a $9.6 million hole in Muni’s budget next year, by SFMTA’s account.

The timing couldn’t be worse. On the flip side the Free Muni for Youth program, which targets low-income youth in San Francisco, may expand next year at an estimated cost of about $3.6 million, and a program to offer free Muni for the elderly and disabled would cost between $4 and $6 million — close to the same the same amount that would be lost by the meter giveback.

 

BOOSTING SAN FRANCISCO FAMILIES

“As an 18-year-old in high school it was a struggle to get to school, it was a struggle to find 75 cents or two dollars to get home,” Tina Sataraka, 19, told the SFMTA board last week. As a Balboa High School student, Sataraka had a 30-minute commute from the Bayview. She’s not alone.

A study by the San Francisco Budget & Legislative Analyst’s office found that 31,000 youth who faced similar financial hurdles had signed up for the Free Muni for Youth pilot program, a resounding success in a city where the youth population is dwindling. Authored by Sup. David Campos, the program may redefine “youth” to include 18-year-olds, who are often still in high school.

But initial grant funding for the program has dried up, so now Muni will foot the bill.

Not one to say “I told you so,” Sup. Scott Wiener said there were reasons for objecting to the program a year ago.

“My biggest, fundamental objection to the program was less that they were giving free fares to kids, and more that they were taking it out of Muni’s operating budget,” Wiener told us. “They need to find a way to pay for it, perhaps from the General Fund, and not just taking the easy and lazy way out.”

The Budget & Legislative Analyst recommended several options for alternative funding: special taxes on private shuttle buses (Google buses), or an increased vehicle license fee specially earmarked for the youth bus program. So far, Mayor Ed Lee hasn’t shown an interest.

“There haven’t been discussions of having the Board of Supervisors fund free Muni for youth,” Reiskin told us. The same goes for the mayor. And though Reiskin was cautious and political about the possibility of Sunday meters becoming free again, he didn’t sound happy about it.

“As for what’s behind [the mayor’s] call for free Sunday parking, that didn’t come from us,” Reiskin told us. “That came from him.”

 

NOVEMBER RISKS

Mayor Lee’s office didn’t answer our emails, but politicos, including Wiener and Chronicle bromance Matier and Ross, indicated the mayor may be reversing on Sunday parking meters to appease the driving voter electorate.

There are two measures up on the November ballot, and one is aimed right at drivers’ wallets.

The two measures, a $1 billion vehicle license fee hike, and a $500 million transportation bond, are both aimed at shoring up the SFMTA’s capital budget. An October poll paid for by the mayor showed 44 percent of San Franciscans in favor of a vehicle fee hike, and 50 percent against, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reiskin said the loss of those two ballot measures would be crippling to Muni’s future.

“The improvements we’re trying to make to make Muni more reliable, more attractive, those won’t happen. This is our funding source for that,” he said.

The mayor is busy smoothing the potholes towards the bonds’ success in the November election, but it seems he’s willing to pile costs onto Muni and its riders to do it.

Correction 2/26: An editing error led to the erroneous calculation of Free Muni For Youth at near $9 million. Free Muni For Youth is only estimated to cost the SFMTA $3.6 million. It is the combination of Free Muni For Youth and free Muni for the disabled and elderly that equal about $9 million. 

 

Activists, union challenge Google bus pilot program

Erica Hanna
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73
Activists, union challenge Google bus pilot program

San Francisco activists and labor filed an appeal of the controversial commuter shuttle (aka, the Google buses) pilot program to the Board of Supervisors today, alleging it was pushed through without a proper environmental review. 

The appeal was filed by a coalition of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, SEIU 1021, The League of Pissed Off Voters, and Sara Shortt of the Housing Rights Committee. 

The shuttles, mostly to Silicon Valley tech firms, pick up passengers in Muni bus stops. The use of public bus stops would incur a $271 fine for private autos, and often do, but the shuttles have largely received a free pass from the city. Last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved of a pilot plan hatched behind closed doors that allows use of 200 bus stops by the private shuttles, charging only $1 per stop, per day.

The appeal alleges that the program needed review under the California Environmental Quality Act, which asks for projects to be analyzed for, among other things, land use, housing, and public health impacts. 

“CEQA actually identifies displacement as an environmental impact,” attorney Richard Drury, who filed the appeal on behalf of the coalition, told us. “Almost no one knows that. Honestly I didn’t know that, until I started researching all of this.”

If the Board of Supervisors doesn’t back the appeal, there may be a court battle on the environmental impact of the shuttle stops, which increase rents and home prices nearby. 

Paul Rose, spokeserpson for the SFMTA, responded to the complaint in an email to the Guardian.

“We developed this pilot proposal to help ensure the most efficient transportation network possible by reducing Muni delays and further reducing congestion on our roadways,” Rose wrote. “We are confident that the CEQA clearance is appropriate and will be upheld.”

In the meantime, Drury told us, the coalition is performing environmental research of its own. It has experts from the US Environmental Protection Agency and other organizations analyzing diesel outputs from the shuttles, as well as the impact of shuttles on displacement. 

“CEQA review needs to have a review before they start the pilot, not after,” Drury said. “They’re basically doing it backwards: let’s have 200 stops and 35,000 people in the service, and figure out what happens.”

Some studies conducted already show that affluence rises wherever the shuttle stops are placed. One by Chris Walker, a 29 year old in Mumbai, India, shows rising property values in and around the Google bus stops from 2011 to 2013.

heatmap

This heatmap shows a rise in property values appreciated near shuttle stops.

“We see the Google Bus as a part of a larger effort to privatize public spaces and services, displacing both current residents and the public transportation system we rely on,” said Alysabeth Alexander, Vice President of SEIU Local 1021, in a statement. “San Francisco has a long history and tradition as a union town. With the tech takeover, San Francisco is becoming inhospitable to working class families. Our wages are stagnant, as the cost of everything is skyrocketing. This is a shame.”

UPDATE: Rabblerousers drag Google down from astral plane

Erica Hanna
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UPDATE: Rabblerousers drag Google down from astral plane

At one point protesting tech buses was new and shiny, but now it barely registers a shrug from San Franciscans. The newest eviction protest took a different turn.

On Saturday, protesters jumped up on stage to interrupt Googlers meditating at the annual Wisdom 2.0 conference. The Google corporateers sat on the stage, ready to share their secret to mindfulness “the Google way.” No one said “meditate on all the money you’re making,” but maybe it was implied. 

Meng Tan, who was identified on the Wisdom 2.0 website as “Google employee #107” (oh, inner circle!), is a corporate trainer who wrote the bestselling book Search Inside Yourself. He looked totally serene on stage, legs crossed. Next to him sat Bill Duane, a senior manager in charge of well-being, among other things. Hundreds were in the audience, watching. Duane began by trying to introduce Tan.

“I’ll start by introducing… not this person,” Duane said as the protesters unexpectedly strolled across the stage, carrying the now familiar banner championing an Eviction Free San Francisco, and the audience applauded.

“Wisdom means stop displacement, wisdom means stop surveillance, what do we want? Stop the evictions!” chanted Erin McElroy through a bullhorn, one of the lead organizers of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. She was at the forefront of the Google bus protests, as well as the TechCrunch protest, the Crappies.

The protesters were ushered off the stage, and security engaged in a tug of war with the protesters for their banner. 

The protest group, Heart of the City, noted in their press release that video from the protest was not available on the conference’s website (though the protesters had their own camera on hand). 

Was it intentional on Wisdom 2.0’s part to censor the protest?

“The only reason it’s not up is our AV guys cut the feed as soon as the protesters walked on stage,” Rita O’Connell, communications coordinator for Wisdom 2.0 told us. She said that other feeds were captured, and that it would be posted “as soon as humanly possible.”

“We are going to put it out,” she said. “We’re not intentionally trying to keep it from anyone’s view.”

We reached out to Google spokepeople, but our emails weren’t returned before press time. 

Many reading this no doubt will wonder about the point of interrupting a Google presentation  on meditation and spiritual well being to talk about evictions in San Francisco. What, if anything, do they have to do with one another?

The spiritual advocacy group The Bhuddist Peace Fellowship put it eloquently in its post “Why Google Protesters Were Right to Disrupt Wisdom 2.0”:

“All the talk about kindness, happiness, and well being (with twin values of creativity, productivity, and profitability) focused on the users and innovators of technology. There was never any mention of the people who manufacture the gadgets that techies then outfit with meditation bell apps. What about the mindfulness, happiness, and well being of the people mining coltan in the DRC, or the people assembling iPhones at the infamous Foxconn sweatshops?

I mean, if we exclude them from the picture, then yes, we can calmly check in with our bodies. 

Things look very mindful and peaceful. Very reasonable, polite, and progressive.

But such deep exclusion invites deep delusion. Something important is missing. Entire groups of relevant people are cut out of the conversation altogether.

The fact is that waves of gentrification have pushed thousands of low-income, disproportionately (black and brown) residents out of San Francisco, and now the city is courting wealthy tech companies (like the ones at Wisdom 2.0) to move in.

Are we just going to ignore the people who are being displaced? Act like we don’t know about this history?

Are we going to pretend that there’s nothing we can do about it?

Hopefully, our friends with the banners won’t let us.”

After the protesters were ushered off the stage, the Google Senior Manager, Duane, then asked the audience to center themselves and consider their point of view. 

“Check in with your body and see what happens, and what it’s like to be around heartfelt people with ideas that may be different than what we’re thinking. Take a second and see what it’s like,” he instructed the audience. 

Meditating on other’s ills isn’t much, yet, but it’s a start. 

Update 2/19: The Wisdom 2.0 folks reached out to us to provide a correction, saying that the employee who engaged in a tug of war with the protesters for their banner was part of the Mariott A/V crew, and not security personnel. They also included this post on their blog:

We very much understand the concern about rent prices and evictions in San Francisco — we’re sure many Wisdom 2.0 conference attendees share the sentiment. There are many issues facing our culture that we try to address at Wisdom 2.0, and we freely admit that we do not always successfully cover every important topic that is worthy of public discussion. We do invite feedback about the topics we cover, and we also provide many opportunities for conference participants to engage in conversations with each other about topics that matter to them.  

In trying to communicate with the protesters after they left the stage, we were met with a great deal of aggression. The protesters chose to enter the conference using fabricated badges instead of reaching out to us to request that this conversation be included in conference programming. Rather than create more anger and division, we invite open dialogue in our community, and wish to support those who will engage with honesty and respect about the matters that are important to them.

That said: as part of Wisdom 2.0’s commitment to holding productive and inclusive conversations, we are currently designing a meetup that will focus on the creation and support of constructive dialogue around pressing social concerns like this one. If you are interested in participating, please email info@wisdom2conference.com to learn more.  

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