By Tom Temprano
It’s been more than a month since my last Tom’s Town, and needless to say we have quite a bit to catch up on.
Let’s start with last night’s DCCC endorsement meeting, which largely resembled what I would imagine a cage fight in a bikram yoga studio to be like.
For reasons unbeknownst to me, the auditorium in the basement of the State Building – where the DCCC meets — has neither air conditioning nor a sound system that would make it possible for folks in the audience to hear, well, anything. That didn’t stop hundreds of folks who supported and opposed any number of candidates and ballot initiatives from forming lines down the block to get in and make sure the 32-member local Democratic Party body heard what they had to say.
And hear we (I say we because I was sitting up there fanning myself as a proxy for Supervisor David Campos) did. The most merciful moment of the night was when both sides of the Anti-Speculation Measure, Prop G, agreed to consolidate their many, many speakers into two minute statements of support and opposition. This led to a powerful show of numbers on both sides and several moments of what felt like a homecoming football pep rally – cheerleaders chants and all.
Once public comment closed, the members of the DCCC took the (non) mic for rounds upon rounds of endorsement drama. 48 Hills has already covered quite a few endorsements highlights from the evening – including a surprising victory for tenants on Proposition G, one that I know personally was far from a sure thing even as the meeting was well underway.
My own personal notes have to do with candidates who received and did not receive the party’s endorsements. Despite having teachers, principals, and students line up to show their support, grassroots candidate for school board Stevon Cook was denied the party’s endorsement. He had received the endorsement of United Educators of San Francisco early in the day and has been running a months-long campaign of significant community outreach. Juxtapose this with the party’s endorsement of real-estate development advocate Rodrigo Santos for Community College Board – an endorsement of a candidate who, despite being appointed by Mayor Ed Lee to the City College Board two years ago, lost his reelection race by nearly 40,000 votes and decided to throw his hat in the ring so late in the game that even the Department of Elections hadn’t registered his candidacy.
On one side you have someone who was educated in San Francisco’s public schools, works in public schools today, and is exactly the sort of young leadership that the Democratic Party ought to be fostering denied and endorsement. On the other, you have someone who was so disconnected from City College that he lost in a landslide despite being an incumbent and spending a record amount on their campaign, whose day job as a structural engineer (and pro-development lobbyist) has nothing whatsoever to do with the challenges facing a troubled institution like CCSF, get a green light.
Oh, also, Santos was a registered Republican up until 2008, a fact that members of the Democratic Party ignored despite railing on potential party traitors who might deny a BART Board endorsement to democrat Nicholas Josefowitz (which the party ultimately did).
Now, on to far more pleasant things like last week’s Harvey Milk Club Annual Dinner and Gayla! For the past three years I have spent countless hours working on the club’s big awards dinner and fundraiser. I’m proud to say that while most folks choose to hold their big fêtes in ballrooms and banquet halls, the Harvey Milk Club uses our once a year opportunity to highlight important community issues and bring all the bigwigs who attend our events into a place we feel is important.
Two years ago, as we were leading a crusade to keep SoMa queer and keep LGBT nightlife in the neighborhood we held the event at Beatbox, a gay-owned bar on 11th Street. Last year, as our members fought to stop the gentrification of communities of color, we hosted the dinner at Latino-owned Roccapulco in the heart of the Mission. This year, nothing is more front of mind for our club than the struggle to keep City College of San Francisco accredited and open to the 90,000 students who depend on it, so last Thursday we invited the community to join us at City College’s gorgeous Mission Campus.
We tempted fate and held the dinner outdoors – no small risk in San Francisco in the middle of August, and managed to win our gamble as the fog mostly abated and the wind never really picked up. I don’t think a monsoon would have kept folks from being absolutely wrapped up in the incredible speeches by our awardees like CeCe McDonald and Tom Ammiano. Pictures are worth a thousand words (and my wordcount for this column is getting up there) so I defer you to the fantastic photos of the dinner shot by FBFE that are now available on the club’s Facebook page.
I am deeply saddened by the accounts of horrible violence that have filled my Facebook newsfeed this past week. The murder of Mike Brown, and the subsequent onslaught of police brutality that has occurred in Ferguson, MO is highlighting the incredible racism in our law enforcement responses and will hopefully draw enough attention and create enough reform that this young man’s death will not be completely in vain.
In San Francisco, the brutal murder of a member of our city’s radical faerie community, Feather, serves as a reminder that even in our city queers are not safe nor immune from violence. In both of these instances we must demand more than we have gotten before – true justice and an end to the acceptability of violence against our communities.
