Tim Redmond

Pelosi’s SPUR earmark

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By Tim Redmond

Nancy Pelosi has stuck a $231,000 earmark in the federal budget to help the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association build a new Urban Center in San Francisco. The move stirred up some controversy on the floor of the House today, when Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who likes to criticize earmarks, asked whether federal money ought to be going to a private nonprofit think tank.

It’s a relatively tiny amount of money — the who-really-gives-a-shit level — and some good progressive people love the idea of a SPUR Urban Center — a downtown building that could be a community center of sorts for city planning issues. I’m not sure I hate it myself.

“We want to become much more public and democratic,” Jim Chappell, SPUR’s president, told me when I called him just now about the earmark. Pelosi’s money, he said, “is a statement of confidence in our cities and our program by a federal government that has declared war on cities.”

But SPUR has over the years been way on the wrong side of a lot of important planning issues, and is still dominated by developers and their architects, and … I don’t know. It struck me a worth noting.

This is ugly

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By Tim Redmond

Another sign that Bush has shifted the Supreme Court successfully in his direction: The Court just ruled that schools can’t use race in school assignments. Everyone at SFUSD was waiting for this ruling, most of us hoping that the court would allow some consideration of race in placing students. Since the district stopped using race, the level of segretation in the schools has climbed.

So now the new superintendent has another big challenge.

The Chronicle’s looney

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By Tim Redmond

The San Francisco Chronicle apparently thinks a retired Wall Street Journal reporter who now lives in Berkeley and who wrote a remarkably homophobic piece on San Francisco politics way back in 1995 is the perfect persion to comment on the current Board of Supervisors. His piece, on SFGate, has the headline “Clown Show: The Board of Supervisors SF deserves? His point, it appears, is that the large queer community in San Francisco and the looney liberals here have elected a bunch of crazies to the board.

I would ignore this shit, except that it comes in the wake of all the Chris Daly bashing (much of which is factually inaccurate — Daly never accused the mayor of doing cocaine) and will, no doubt, fuel a new attack on district elections.

So let’s be real here: This district-elected board is hardly a crew of wackos. The board has done exceptional work over the past few years, passing landmark legislation that has put San Francisco in the forefront of American cities on progressive policy.

Hamsterdam in the Tenderloin?

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By Tim Redmond

Now here’s a fascinating harm-reduction (and crime-reduction) idea. Drug sales are happening anyway; why not regulate them in one designated area?

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

My father died June 15, in Philadelphia. He was 82. He hated doctors (who kept telling him to quit smoking and drinking) and hospitals (which he alternately described as prisons and torture chambers, depending on how charitable he felt that day). When he realized that the emphysema had gotten the best of him and his days were numbered, he made it clear that all he wanted was to stay at home, so I and my siblings took time off, and for several weeks we helped my mother take care of him, keeping him as comfortable as we could until his lungs finally gave out and he stopped breathing. I gave the eulogy at his memorial service.

So I’m about tapped out on the emotional stuff, and I’ve said all I have to say about what a wonderful guy he was. But along the way I learned a couple of things that are worth thinking about.

Home hospice care has come a long way. When my friend Paulo died of AIDS in 1995, you had to be in a hospital to get easy access to drugs like morphine and Haldol, and if you were at home and woke up in horrible pain in the middle of the night, your friends had to take you to the emergency room and wait until a doctor could find time to give you a shot. The hospice program we had was awesome; the nurses gave us big jars of medicine, taught us how to administer the doses to relieve my dad’s pain, and told us that we shouldn’t worry if he asked for a cigarette (it was a bit late for lifestyle changes).

The insurance providing us with all of that top-rate care, and the remarkable social services that went along with it, came through a government program called Medicare. It has an overhead rate of about 3 percent, which makes it about five times as efficient as most private insurers. It’s not perfect — all health insurance in the United States is a bureaucratic nightmare, and even this coverage required intervention on the part of my family to keep things on the right track. But it’s available to seniors who don’t have much money, and it works.

While my dad was dying, I read some of the early reviews of Michael Moore’s Sicko in the East Coast media. I think my favorite was in the New York Post, which accused Moore of demanding that everyone in the United States get their health care from Fidel Castro. The critical reviews played up the fact that Moore fairly gushes about medical care in countries like Canada and France (along with Cuba) while people who live in such places with government-run health care systems complain about long waits for nonemergency treatment.

Perhaps so. I can’t argue the facts one way or another. I could argue that a system covering everyone at the cost of a bit of waiting for all is better than one that dumps all of the waiting, getting sicker, and dying on the poor and uninsured. But I will also argue that Moore is right (see Cheryl Eddy’s piece on page 64). This is the richest country in world history. We can have a public health system that works. We just need to get the private insurers the hell out of it.*

Court smacks SF Planning Dept.

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By Tim Redmond

The Chron buried the news deep in the local section, but a June 22 state Court of Appeal decision on the validity of the Housing Element of the city’s General Plan was a huge slap in the face to the mayor and the planning director.

In essence, the court ruled that the city can’t adopt the new Housing Element without doing an environmental impact report. You can read the decision here.

I’ll admit: The folks who sued, a group of West side homeowners who don’t want more density in their neighborhoods, are not my favorite activists. I’ve never thought it was fair that all the density had to go on the East side of town, and that nobody West of 19th Ave. even had to think about it.

That’s the essence of the suit: The Housing Element might encourage more housing on the West side of town, and might allow housing without a lot of parking, and that might lead to congestion and traffic issues. As my old friend Ron Curran used to say, Boo Fucking Hoo: The rest of us in town have lived with those issues for years, and anyone with any sense knows that new housing in this overdeveloped town will need to be transit-oriented and not car-oriented.

Still, the plaintiffs made an excellent point: The Planning Department should have done an EIR on the Housing Element. IN fact, the Planning Department should do a lot better in the environmental review department generally. You just go forawrd with these big projects and zoning changes and refuse to acknowledge the impacts, and you’re eventually going to get smacked.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s too bad that acting superintendent Gwen Chan didn’t want to stick around a bit longer at the helm of the San Francisco public schools. She brought a lot of stability to the district after the insanely acrimonious final years under Arlene Ackerman (who won’t go away and is still suing the district for back pay, which is disgusting considering all the money she took out of the district).

But I ran into school board president Mark Sanchez at the Progressive Convention June 2, and he was all smiles about the guy the board seems ready to hire for the job. The almost-new superintendent is Carlos Garcia, who was the principal of Horace Mann Middle School from 1988 to 1991 and most recently was the head of the Las Vegas school district.

I have a son going into third grade and a daughter going into kindergarten, and I’m an unabashed fan of and advocate for public education in San Francisco. So I hope he’s everything the board members say he is.

But since he’s not taking press calls right now, I’m going to give him a little free, and public, advice.

There are real, lingering problems in the local schools, the biggest of which is the achievement gap. White kids and Asian kids and kids from wealthier families do far better than black kids and Latino kids and kids whose families don’t have much money. That’s unacceptable, and the new superintendent needs to make resolving that problem a priority.

He also needs to understand some facts of San Francisco life.

For starters, this city doesn’t like or tolerate arrogance or secrecy. The schools chief needs to be accessible, approachable, willing to listen, and willing to admit mistakes. Not everything you try will work, Mr. Superintendent; when you screw up, you can’t get your pants in a wad and refuse to say you’re sorry.

You’ve got some tough decisions to make, and they won’t all be popular. People are going to shout and protest and complain. Some of those people will be your own school board members. We like to air our disputes in public around here; it’s a political town, and we expect the people who run community institutions to work with their critics and their friends alike. It’s hot in the kitchen; get used to it before you arrive or this isn’t going to work.

And do not — do not — continue the previous superintendent’s policy of building a wall between the press and the district. Ackerman had a gag order in place and wouldn’t allow staffers to talk to reporters without her prior consent. Scrap that — publicly — your first day. Make it clear you have nothing to hide: records are open, your door is open, and your public relations staff exists to promote the schools, not your personal career.

Remember when you walk in the door: There’s a lot wrong with the district, but there’s also a lot right. There are some brilliant principals and a lot of wonderful, devoted teachers. Don’t make their lives any harder than they already are.

And please: for the sake of all of us, don’t make the San Francisco schoolkids lab rats for your pet educational theories. This isn’t a social-science experiment or a doctoral thesis you’re taking on. These are people’s lives. Have a little respect for that, and we’ll get along fine. *

The convention was no bust

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Run, Ross, Run

By Tim Redmond

No, we didn’t walk away with a candidate for mayor, and yes, that was disappointing to a lot of us. I actually thought for a brief moment that the chants of “Run Ross Run” as Sup. Mirkarimi took the stage late in the day would make a difference, that he would realize he has a constituency and that running for mayor would be a good move for him politically, but that didn’t happen. After a strong speech proclaiming that “somebody” has to take on Gavin Newsom, Mirkarimi made clear that it wasn’t going to be him.

And Chris Daly, who had at one point said that he would run if noboby else did, bowed to the reality of the fact that he has a young child and another on the way, and took a pass.

But overall, the convention was uplifting, inspiring and productive. Whatever the daily papers may say, Daly made the right point at the end: The state of the progressive moment in San Francisco is strong. Progressives control the Board of Supervisors, the School Board, and a number of other top positions; half of the elected officials in San Francisco now put themselves under the progressive banner, Daly noted.

And the green and blue baloons and beads represented what could be a very hopeful future trand — the left wing of the Democratic party and the Green party, working together on what is for most a shared aganda.

We ought to do this sort of thing more often.

A few great moments:

The good side of Daly for Mayor

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By Tim Redmond

Late this afternoon, I’m hearing rumblings that Ross Mirkarimi is, indeed, reconsidering his options and might possibly be considering a mayor run, after all. Maybe he’ll show up at the convention tomorrow and announce. I’m only talking rumors here; I can’t reach Mirkarimi himself, and he has come pretty close to ruling himself out in the past few weeks. It would be a big change of mind.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that Ross would be one of my top choices for mayor. But if he doesn’t run, and Chris Daly does, well … my previous blog item notwithstanding (as the lawyers say), I want to go out on a limb here and point out some of the positive things that could come out of that campaign.

Just off the top of my head:

1. It sure would be lively. Daly’s a fighter; he has a temper and sometimes says things (and does things) that are a bit impolitic, but he wouldn’t back down and wouldn’t give Newsom even a little break.

2. He’s good on all the issues. Daly’s a real left-progressive, and (unlike Newsom) he actually cares about, and talks about, and works on, issues of poverty, inequality and injustice.

3. He’s a Democrat, which means Democratic party loyalists like Carole Migden wouldn’t be able to duck the race or side with Newsom on the basis of party affiliation. Migden might even endorse him.

4. In fact, a lot of people who try to walk a middle line and still be called progresisves would have to make a bright-line choice here. Daly v. Newsom; it don’t get much more basic than that.

5. Daly complains all the time that he hates being a politician, but the truth is, he has a future in this town. He’s young and bright and will be a serious candidate for higher office in the future. A good run in the mayor’s race this year could set him up for future campaigns.

6. Just imagine if he won.

No mayor candidate tomorrow? That’s okay …

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By Tim Redmond

I had high hopes that Chris Daly’s progressive convention would force one of the reluctant candidates (Matt Gonzalez, Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin) to come forward an announce a campaign for mayor, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. And now, according to BeyondChron, Daly is saying the convention may close with nobody formally seeking or getting the nod.

Which is fine — and right now, is probably the best outcome. Yeah, Daly more or less promised a candidate, and yeah, he could still deliver by announcing that’s he’s going to run himself, but I’m not sure that’s the best strategy for anyone involved at this point.

There’s still a chance that Gonzalez will run (although he’s not ready to announce yet). We may have to wait longer than we wanted for a contender. But right now, I’d rather wait than than try to make a statement for the purpose of making a statement.

The convention will be a great opportunity to talk about the race. It’s still a good idea. If it doesn’t turn out the way Daly or anyone else planned, such is life on the San Francisco left, where nothing ever turns out the way you expect.

The Express, the Planet and Village Voice Media

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By Tim Redmond

The new owners of the East Bay Express are settling into their offices — and already, the current and former ownership has become something of an issue. The Berkelely Daily Planet last week quoted Express editor Steve Buel — who ran the paper when it was owned by Village Voice Media (formerly New Times) and is now part of the independent ownership group — saying some rather unkind things about his former bosses:

While Buel wouldn’t confirm reports which had the Express alone losing $500,000 every year, but he did say that the previous owner, New Times—which owned the paper outright between 2001 and late 2005 before merging with VVM—“doesn’t do well in places with competition.”

He added, “If you look at the paper in the past year or so, you will see that it has gotten a lot thinner.” The chain does well in places like Denver, Phoenix and Miami, he said, “which are basically suburban markets, which are not competitive. But they didn’t do well here.”

Now, “out from under the ax of New Times, we will be able to make a much better paper,” Buel said.

I was a bit startled to read those comments, since Buel has never said anything harsh about the big VVM/NT chain, and in fact defended chain management at some length when the two of us debated the issue at a forum a few months back.

But of course, Buel is absolutely right:

Eric Mar running for supe in D1

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By Tim Redmond

This was hardly secret, but now it’s official: School Board member Eric Mar, long a progressive leader, will announce soon that he’s running for supervisor in District One. And in the meantime, he’s working against the McGoldrick recall.

A secret hold on an FOIA bill

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By Tim Redmond

An important bill to reform the federal Freedom of Information Act has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, but can’t go to the floor for a vote because one senator has placed an anonymous hold on it.

The Society of Professional Journalists has a good running total of which senators said they didn’t place the hold and which are not responding; you can find it here

Word in Washington is that the guilty party — the senator who wants to secretly block more public access to government — is John Kyl of Arizona.But the only way to prove that is to rule the others out, and that’s been done before. From SPJ’s action notice:

In August 2006, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) put a hold on a bill to create a searchable public database of all federal grants and contracts. Stevens’ role was revealed only after online public advocates and journalists forced senators to go on the record about whether they placed the hold.

Both of California’s senators deny placing the block. If you live in one of the states where the senator hasn’t responded, call or email right away.

A secret hold on FOIA bill

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By Tim Redmond

An important bill to reform the federal Freedom of Information Act has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, but can’t go to the floor for a vote because one senator has placed an anonymous hold on it.

The Society of Professional Journalists has a good running total of which senators said they didn’t place the hold and which are not responding; you can find it here

Word in Washington is that the guilty party — the senator who wants to secretly block motre public access to government — is John Kyl of Arizona.But the only way to prove that is to rule the others out, and that’s been done before. From SPJ’s action notice:

In August 2006, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) put a hold on a bill to create a searchable public database of all federal grants and contracts. Stevens’ role was revealed only after online public advocates and journalists forced senators to go on the record about whether they placed the hold.

Both of California’s senators deny placing the block. If you live in one of the states where the senator hasn’t responded, call or email right away.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

I love the whales, really I do. I even worked for Greenpeace once. I am in awe of these majestic creatures of the deep and see them as indicators of the health of the entire marine environment. Human beings should take care of their cetaceous fellow citizens of the watery planet. Folks, I am so down with the whales.

Yet as the two errant humpbacks led the news again for about the fifth night in a row and the Coast Guard cutters and the helicopters and the array of state wildlife officials and veterinarians swarmed around the Sacramento River basin, I had to stop and wonder, for about the 50th time:

Why don’t they treat wayward people like this?

Every day the streets of San Francisco are full of injured human beings, members of the species Homo sapiens who have been hit by the psychic or physical equivalent of boat propellers. There are women with children who stagger homeless from one place to another, unable to find their way to a functional family.

These living, breathing mammals do not get a special multiagency task force set up, with a designated full-time Coast Guard petty officer as a media liaison and a staff of dozens of officials from the military, the state Department of Fish and Game, the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They don’t receive what amounts to an unlimited budget to get their wounds treated and their lives turned around.

And the media doesn’t pay any attention to them. Even when they die, as a couple hundred do every year. Nobody who owns a helicopter gives a shit about homeless people in San Francisco.

I’m not going to argue against the whale-rescue effort. I don’t think the Coast Guard ignored any looming terrorist threats in the nearby Pacific or let any sailors die in capsized crafts while it was helping the whales. It was probably a good training exercise for all involved, and hell, if it cost a million bucks, that’s less than the Pentagon wastes every five minutes or so in Iraq. Go team.

I’m just saying, that’s all. I’m just saying.

———————————————

Way back in 1974, a guy named Sam Lovejoy went on trial for destroying a weather tower in Montague, Mass., that a local utility had built in preparation for the construction of a nuclear power plant. One of Lovejoy’s expert witnesses was John Gofman, a nuclear chemist and the author of the book Poison Power, who made the definitive argument against nuclear energy. The material created by a reactor, he said, must be guarded "99.9999 percent perfectly, in peace and war, with human error and human malice, guerrilla activities, psychotics, malfunction of equipment…. Do you believe there’s anything you’d like to guarantee will be done 99.9999 percent perfectly for 100,000 years?"

You can’t, was the point. Lovejoy walked.

And now, as Amanda Witherell reports in "Nuclear Greenwashing," page 15, the nuclear industry wants a new life. We all ought to know better. *

Candidates and non-candidates

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By Tim Redmond

So much going on right now in the local political world — and some of it so ephemeral.

Chris Daly’s progressive convention is June 2, coming right up, and we still don’t have a candidate for mayor. Matt Gonzalez gives an interview to BeyondChron and says he’s not ruling out a run, but won’t be making any announcement in time for the June 2 event. Will anyone? Or is this going to be a convention without a candidate?

The 08 supes races, on the other hand, are heating up and full of candidates. Cecilia Chung just announced she’s running in district 11, creating the possibility for a fascinating bit of history: As Chung just told me, It will be 30 years next fall since the assissination of Harvey Milk, and his killer, Dan White, represented what is now D-11. Electing a transgender woman from that district would make big national news.

Chung won’t be the only candidate: I’m told John Avalos, aide to Sup. Chris Daly, is also planning to run, as is Community College Board member Julio Ramos.

And in District Nine, Police Commission member David Campos is clearly running to replace Tom Ammiano, as is housing activist Eric Quezada, who will have a kick-off event at Galleria de la Raza June 1.

About those whales …

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By Tim Redmond

Yeah, I’m all for saving the whales and I even worked for Greenpeace once. But I have to say: Coast Guard boats and helicopters. Camera crews from all over. Front-page headlines. Tens of thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars, spent on two wayward whales that at this point will probably die anyway.

That’s a lot more attention than anyone pays to the homeless people who wander the streets of San Francisco and die just about every week of every year. Kids sicker than that whale calf could use just a tiny bit of that money we’re spending in the Sacramento River.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the whales. But let’s have some perspective here.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Ken Garcia, who just loves to bash the left, announced in his Examiner column May 15 that the progressives in San Francisco are in disarray because we don’t have a candidate for mayor. That’s one way to look at it.

The other way — and, like many things in politics, it’s not entirely true but certainly not false — is that the process for choosing a candidate in this wonderful yet still pretty young progressive movement isn’t like anything Garcia would understand.

These days most candidates for public office tend to select themselves. You want to run, you go get the money and the initial support, and you announce. But it’s a little more complicated than that for San Francisco progressives. A lot of people — some elected officials, some community leaders, some hotheaded (and hardheaded) activists — want to be consulted and want a say in the decision. It’s not perfect democracy by any means, and it’s true that the lack of an obvious front-runner speaks to a certain degree of disorganization. But I’m also somewhat pleased that we don’t have a 600-pound gorilla demanding that the field be cleared. And Sup. Chris Daly’s proposed progressive convention may not work perfectly, but at least it’s a nod in the direction of the grass roots helping decide who will carry the torch.

Let’s remember: it’s been only seven years since the progressives finally ended three decades of stifling machine politics and cracked open the local system. Let’s remember: for much of the 1980s and ’90s, we had only self-selected candidates and unaccountable candidates for mayor. And now that the people who broke Willie Brown’s iron grip on San Francisco politics in 2000 are ready to run for higher office, it’s not surprising that they’re a bit cautious about jumping the gun.

We all know what’s going on: Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, and Matt Gonzalez have been approached and courted by all sorts of organizations and people. Peskin and Mirkarimi have said pretty flatly that they aren’t going to run. Daly will if he has to. And in the Chronicle on May 16, Matier and Ross proclaimed that Gonzalez is out of the picture.

I’m not so sure that’s true. I think Gonzalez — who starts off with the highest name recognition, poll numbers, and fundraising potential — is still taking a serious look at the race. I know he’s holding some preliminary house meetings this week and talking to people who aren’t among the traditional progressive voters. He’s also talking to his friends and allies. And I think it’s entirely possible that he could wind up deciding to go for it.

One very good thing that Daly has done is force that issue; if nobody else comes forward, Daly will announce at the convention, and then it will look lame and divisive for anyone else to join the race.

There are, of course, egos and personal agendas playing here; these are, after all, politicians, and (unfortunately) all of our major contenders are guys, which probably makes it worse. But again, let us remember: Daly, Peskin, Mirkarimi, and Gonzalez would all be good candidates. I’d be happy with any of them in room 200. They should all be happy with the idea that one of them could be the next mayor. And if we can all work together to pick a winner, then perhaps we can show the Ken Garcias of the world that this is a movement with legs. *

Rescuing the sinking Shipyard

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Artist’s rendering of Jim Mason’s Mechabolic project
By Steven T. Jones
For the last two weeks, Berkeley bureaucrats have been clashing with The Shipyard‘s countercultural artists and engineers, ordering facility owner Jim Mason to shut the place down or jump through some difficult hoops to bring it up to code.
Mason had threatened to follow in the Crucible‘s footsteps and leave Berkeley for what he saw as more hospitable environs next door in Oakland. But first, he had a meeting yesterday with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates that by all accounts went well. The upshot: Bates told city fire, building, and planning officials to find a way to let the Shipyard stay.

Prisons and schools

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No bookcase.

By Tim Redmond

Here’s one of the saddest statistics I’ve seen in a long time: California will soon spend more money on prisons than on its university system.

Everyone in Sacramento seems to agree this is wrong. Nobody does a damn thing about it.

In fact, the state Legislature just agreed to spend another $8 billion on more prison beds.

More on this tomorrow.

Ed Jew and the FBI

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By Tim Redmond

I’m not going to jump to any conclusions here; I’m an innocent-until-proven-guilty kind of guy. But I will say that there’s some very funky looking stuff in the daily papers right now about Sup. Jew. The Chron had the basics in its first-day story, but raised more questions than it answered, especially around the fact that Jew doesn’t seem to be living in the house that he owns in the Sunset. The Sunday Chron story follows that up a bit, exploring the fact that Jew’s wife and daughter apparently live in Burlingame.

But the Examiner had the most juicy bit of the scoop, something that somehow got left out the the Chron story (and now is not, apparently, on the Ex website, or at least I couldn’t find it.)

Here’s the Ex:

“Jew said the storeowners [who needed help with permits] paid $40,000 for [consulting] services, half of which ended up in his safe and which, he said, he planned to spend on community needs in his district, including playgrounds. Jew said FBI agents Friday confiscated the $20,000. He did not elaborate on how the money came to be in his safe.”

Whoa. $20,000 in cash in his safe, and he “did not elaborate” on it. That’s a question I would have pushed a bit more if I were the Ex reporter on that story, but it’s too late now: Jew has a lawyer, and won’t be making any more comments.

But we do know the FBI search warrent mentioned that the agents were looking for cash, and had a long list of currency serial numbers.

So let’s see if I’ve got this right: Jew sends some constituents to a consultant, the constitutents pay him — not the consultant — $40,000 cash, and $20,000 ends up in his safe. If that’s true — and again, I’m basing this on one Examiner story that seems to have vanished from the web (the paper is now using a brief AP report on its site) — it sure looks bad.

And to answer the question Brian poses at Calitics — if Jew was forced to resign over this, who would replace him? — that’s easy. The mayor gets the appointment, and it will be Newsom’s buddy, Doug Chan.

The East Bay Express: Independent again

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By Tim Redmond

The good news — and it’s very good news — is that the East Bay Express is no longer a member of the Village Voice Media chain that owns the SF Weekly. I’m a day late with this news; it’s taken me a bit to process, because our ad director (and my good friend) Jody Colley has left the Guardian to go work with the new ownership. But most of the reports have been upbeat, emphasizing that Express editor Steve Buell and his partners, Hal Brody, Kelly Vance and Bradley Zeve have done a very unsual thing. They’ve taken a chain paper and made it an independent.

And although none of the principals are talking about the price, I think they got it pretty cheap. In essence, the big, bad VVM couldn’t make it in the East Bay, and was forced to bail.

Of course, it’s going to take a while to disentangle the VVM connections. The Express was very much a cog in the borg machine: The website was designed and run by VVM. The movie reviews came from VVM. The accounting and systems were all handled through VVM. And — perhaps most important — the ad sales were closely linked to the SF Weekly.

In fact, the Weekly’s ad materials these days all cite the circulation not of the SF paper but of the combined Weekly and Express, and for a lot of accounts, buying an ad in the Weekly meant a free one (or heavily discounted one) in the Express. So the two were almost like an old-fashioned joint operating agreement. They even ran the same cover story a few months ago.

I suspect on the sales side, that won’t change immediately. There are contracts and deal and money is involved, so I expect the nonsense will continue for a bit. But in the end, I hope and believe the Express will once again be a community-based and community-serving paper. And I wish them all the luck in the world.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Sup. Chris Daly has kind of a cool idea: he wants to hold a progressive convention to pick a candidate and a platform for mayor. The date is June 2, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The place is the Tenderloin Community School. The idea is for hundreds of grassroots activists to gather, nominate someone to take on Gavin Newsom, and kick off a citywide campaign that will, at the very least, force the carefully protected mayor to come out from behind his handlers and answer some tough questions.

Not everyone thinks this is a good concept — and I’m the first to agree it’s a bit of a risk. It assumes, for example, that there’s a serious candidate for mayor whom we can all agree on and who actually wants to run for the job. And it assumes that we all really want to put the effort into a full-scale campaign against an incumbent who looks pretty close to unbeatable right now.

Neither of these is a trivial issue.

In theory, a nomination convention is a chance for constituents to choose among candidates who are competing for the right to seek office. Four years ago, when we had Tom Ammiano, Angela Alioto, and Matt Gonzalez in the race, a convention would have been fun, if not terribly useful; none of those people would have dropped out in favor of another based on one convention vote. But right now there’s not a lot of competition: nobody who has the profile to launch a credible race has stepped forward and volunteered for the mission. And it would look pretty lame to have the People speak and call for a candidate who then took the stage and declined.

If this is going to work, the situation has to change in the next few weeks. The folks who really don’t want to see Newsom get a bye are talking, and one of them is going to accept the responsibility. Me, I’d be happy with Daly, Matt Gonzalez, Aaron Peskin, or Ross Mirkarimi, but Gonzalez isn’t ready to announce anything at this point, Peskin has told me he’s not going to run, Mirkarimi is being awfully coy, and Daly seems pretty reluctant (although he hasn’t ruled it out, he says he’ll do it only if nobody else will).

Not everyone thinks it’s even worth the fight. Paul Hogarth, writing in BeyondChron.org, argued May 14 that it’s better to save our energy and let Newsom be a weak lame duck for another five years. After all, he hasn’t been able to do much harm — and now and then, he does something decent.

The problem is that the city has serious problems, and it’s not OK for a mayor to be missing in action this long. Think about the murder rate. Think about Muni. Think about the future of blue-collar jobs, affordable housing, and the eastern neighborhoods. Think about the fact that in the next four years, the last big piece of land where San Francisco can preserve blue-collar jobs and build affordable housing will be up for grabs. Think about the city’s soul. Because it really is on the line here — and I’m not ready to hand it over to Newsom again without a fight. *

Jerry Falwell is dead

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By Tim Redmond

Back in the early 1980s, after Sister Boom Boom ran for supervisor on the “nun of the above” ticket, Jerry Falwell sent out a mass mailing to raise money for the Moral Majority featuring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The letter included a Gay Pride photo and a description of my favorite nuns as a deep threat to the moral fiber of America.

I did a story about it, and Sister Sadie Sadie the Rabbi Lady called me to get a copy of the letter and the photo, which the sisters took to Melvin Belli, the famous tort lawyer, who then sued Falwell for misappropriation of their images. I don’t know where the suit went in the end, but the whole thing made for a lot of fun stories — because back then, frankly, Falwell was the Devil Incarnate.

You don’t hear as much about him anymore, but now that he’s dead, it’s worth remembering that this guy was a key player in the birth of the religious right, the election of Ronald Reagan, and the beginnings of a movement of intolerance and hatred that still plagues us today.

I saw him debate Larry Flynt on Nightline once, shortly after Falwell sued Flynt for a parody ad in Hustler suggesting that the televangelist had sex with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell was sputtering about how horrible it was to even suggest such a thing; Flynt laughed and said:

“You forgot to tell em, Jerry, that you had to kick the goat out of the outhouse first.”

Falwell’s suit went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and wound up in a stunning victory for the First Amendment; the court ruled that obvious parodies of public figures can’t be grounds for libel or defamation suits. That decision was key to the Guardian’s victory in a libel suit brought by a local landlord, Adam Sparks, who we had accused in a parody issue of using electroshock treatment on his tenants.

So we’ve had some history with the prick. And with all due respect to the dear departed, I can’t say I’m sorry he’s finally out of the way.

NOTE: There will be quite a rally at 5 pm on 18th and Castro to speak out against Falwell’s legacy.

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