I keep hearing the same song from one side of San Francisco’s Democratic Party, and it goes like this:
We are all Democrats here, and we need to be united against Trump. We need to stop the infighting and remember that we are all part of the same team.
I hear a lot about Unity. I heard it from the mayor. I hear it from people who are on the moderate side of the Democratic Party. I get attacked on Facebook for being “divisive.”
I don’t hear it so much from progressives, and there’s a good reason for that: Progressives realize that when it comes to economic issues, and issues of corporate power, we are not always united. And saying we have to go along with some very bad policy ideas to appear united against Trump is not really a good way to resist.
I wish we were all on the same team.
But fighting Trump on the local level and the state level doesn’t just mean electing more Democrats. It means fighting Trump’s policies. And frankly, while there are very few Democrats in this city (and not that many in the state) who are anything but disgusted by his social-issue, immigration, and foreign-policy positions, there are plenty of Democrats who are not that far away from Trump on economic issues.
Trump is against the regulation of business. The approach that the Democrats in charge of San Francisco took on Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft was pretty much the same: Don’t regulate these “disruptive” industries. Let them “innovate.”
The result: The loss of thousands of housing units, the addition of 45,000 cars to the packed streets of SF, an all-out attack on the unionized taxi industry in cities like New York.
There are plenty of Democrats in elected office in this city and this state who don’t think we should regulate housing like a public utility – that is, stop treating housing as a commodity and treat it as a human right.
There are Democrats in elected office in this city who don’t want to increase taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations to fund services for everyone else.
We are all in solidarity on Sanctuary City – until it comes to putting up money to help immigrants in the criminal-justice system get representation, too.
California, I learned this weekend, has the highest poverty rate of any state in the US if you include the cost of housing in the equation. The state is run by Democrats. They are not, by and large, willing to do anything about this. Not if it offends landlords.
So no: We are not always on the same team. We can register 10,000 new Democrats in San Francisco and it won’t have any impact at all on Trump. This is a blue state, and a deep-blue city. What will work is electing Democrats who are willing to challenge the Trump economic agenda right here at home – and calling out the ones who won’t.
We can, we should, we must take to the streets to challenge every element of the Trump Agenda. We should all work together whenever we can. But we also have to make sure that when the shit comes down in our own home town and our state, our local leaders are willing to take the risks necessary to resist.
If saying that is “divisive,” then I plead guilty. Democrats have a lot in common, and a lot of core values we share. But in the end, it’s about policy, folks, about results, not about what box you check on your voter registration card.
In the middle of all the bad news, there is a bit of good news: Sup. Jane Kim has introduced legislation that will create the nation’s first Transgender historic district, which will be named after the Compton’s Cafeteria uprising that has as much history as the Stonewall riot in New York.
I give Kim full credit for putting this together. She worked out a deal with a big developer to put a significant amount of money into creating a space where there’s more than just a couple of plaques and monuments but possibly a trans-friendly business district created and run by trans people.
But this – like so much else that matters – didn’t start at City Hall. The reason it’s going to exist is that a lot of LGBT activists made a huge fuss when they learned that historic buildings were being torn down and that new development was a threat to the future of that district.
When the deal was cut for community benefits from the development, there were no trans people in the room. The two community representatives were the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corp.
When Trans and LGBT activists realized what was at stake, they appealed the environmental review decision. These kinds of appeals get criticized a lot by pro-growth people who say they slow down the process of building housing – but they are also, very often, the only way the groups who are shut out of the regular process can weigh in.
So in this case, the St. James Infirmary, the Q Foundation, and Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project fought back. The groups organized a campaign to slow down the project so that queer historians could at least study the spaces that were on the development block. Nate Allbee and Honey Mahogany joined as allies, and the whole issue was headed to the Board of Supes last week.
At the last minute, the day before a hearing that might not have gone well for the developer, Kim helped put together the deal. “It’s a huge success,” Allbee told me.
The city will get $300,000 (managed through the Mayor’s Office of Community Development, not City Planning) to help create the cultural historic district.
The city doesn’t have a single agency that oversees money for these districts, and that creates a bit of confusion. The activists don’t trust City Planning; this isn’t really the job of the Mayor’s Office. And the developers don’t want to give the money directly to community groups.
There must be a way to fix this.
It’s a surprisingly quiet week at City Hall. If you’ve got political energy, join the phone trees calling US senators to try to stop the remaining Trump cabinet appointments and his nominee to the Supreme Court.
Oh, and the landlord is trying to evict Iris Canada this week. We will keep you posted.
Who’s “we”, Russian paid troll???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades
A slightly different, broader perspective on unity. Before we unify, we need to decide what we’re unifying behind.
I see Democrats trotting out the likes of Cory Booker an Tim Kaine.
I see Chuckie Schumer crying crocodile tears over the poor refugees, when just a few months ago he was calling for similar measures.
I see the brunt of foreign policy criticism of Trump directed NOT at his escalating belligerence toward Iran, but at his efforts at improving relations with Russia.
I see voices like Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich marginalized and demonized for standing up for peace and international law.
I see war criminal Madeleine Albright saying she’ll register as a Muslim for an as-of-yet non-existent registry, even as she still casually defends her role in the Clinton administration that killed 500,000 Iraqi children.
I see carefully managed protests like the women’s march which studiously avoided any talk about systemic change and disallowed any radical anti-establishment voices. The closest they came to that was Michael Moore, who was quickly ushered off the stage as soon as he started saying “And when we take back the DNC…”
In short, it seems like they’re herding us toward “unity” in supporting the old, tired Democratic establishment. So we can do what? Sign more free trade deals and go to war against Russia?
Oh HELL NO! I won’t go there. Fuck Unity! The battle for the soul of the opposition is every bit as important -no, MORE important -than the battle against Trump. We can’t fight against something until we have something to fight FOR.
“believe what you want”.
Thank you Ragazzu; I think we all do – whether they’re buttressed by facts or not. But you were the one that attacked another poster personally.
As for that “city study”/Homeless_Count, the number of people from elsewhere in CA (as granular as those details get) was 10-20%. So my comment about “a good number” from Fresno stands.
According to a city study, 71% are from here. But believe what you want, sound off, grumble, troll, do nothing.
Fresno is gud-enuf for Don but not good enough for the Homeless? I’ll bet a good number of the Homeless are FROM Fresno, while Don isn’t.
That’s what happens with a partially shredded safety net; too many fall through. Shipping people around is no solution to homelessness. I’m sure Fresno has plenty of its own.
Nobody has the magic bullet for homelessness, but killing Social Security and Medicare at this time of extreme wealth inequality and precarious employment is a sure way to increase poverty a millionfold.
If this right applies to those who cannot take care of themselves then isn’t housing already a right? I would agree a studio in Fresno is better than sleeping under the freeway. Since Fresno, and other places in the Valley, is more affordable than SF, then maybe we should send the homeless there?
Yet another anti-big-guvmint outburst from Sebastopol. If you lost everything, should you be homeless in your old-age? Social Security has prevented millions of Americans from just that fate. A studio in Fresno is better than a sleeping bag under the freeway.
Again I ask, why can’t you think beyond your own damn self?
Housing as a human right is an interesting concept. But how would that work. Would that give me the right to demand that government provide me housing? If so, then couldn’t the government tell me how much space I can have and where I can live? I don’t think I would like to live in a small studio apartment in Fresno.
It is not quiet at Planning this week. It is anything but. Check the agenda. From Pier 70 to Calle 24 and a few other projects that may generate some steam. Agenda: http://sf-planning.org/meeting/planning-commission-february-9-2017-agenda-0