How can Ed Lee brag about his accomplishments when the soul of San Francisco is being torn apart?
By Tim Redmond
JANUARY 19, 2015 – What is it with mayors of San Francisco? I mean, Ed Lee was once a tenant lawyer who worked with poor people; he’s been a city employee with a decent, but not excessive, income most of his career; he hasn’t been rich or isolated.
And yet, now that he’s in Room 200, it’s as if he’s living in another world.
I went down to the fancy new produce market in the Bayview, and watched as he addressed an invite-only crowd, the type who gather for things like these, and listened as he said this:
Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to you, and thanks to the people of this great City … the State of our City is strong and getting stronger.
It is a unique moment in our history. The City is buzzing with energy and pride, and not just because the Warriors have the best record in the NBA, or our Giants are World Champions, again, and again, and again!
Ideas conceived in incubators and laboratories from Mission Bay to the Bayview, from South of Market to Central Market, have spurred unprecedented economic opportunity and prosperity for our City.
Our neighborhoods bustle again with young families and thriving small businesses.
Our skyline transforms with new residential and commercial towers. Five new hospitals are under construction today, soon to be joined by the new Central Subway, an expanded Moscone center, a new arena for the Golden State Warriors, a new Southeast waste water treatment plant, and new neighborhoods along the Central Waterfront for thousands of residents, and employing thousands of construction workers.
I know: The people who write speeches for politicians who are in power don’t talk about how bad things might be; it’s all Shining Cities on the Hill. But seriously: Do most working San Franciscans really feel as if the city is “strong and getting stronger?”
Because I don’t.
Pretty much everyone I know thinks San Francisco is in a state of crisis. It is, indeed, a unique moment in our history – a moment when the soul of the city is being torn apart, when the “unprecedented economic prosperity” has been a driver of the worst economic inequality in modern SF history.
The tech secretary is buzzing with energy and pride; the lower-income people, the local small businesses, the nonprofits, the tenants, everyone who isn’t rich, is buzzing with fear: Fear of eviction, fear of displacement, fear that the communities we have built over many years are being shattered in a brief moment of time.
This is what the mayor had to say about that abiding fear:
For too many young families and longtime residents alike, I understand these times of prosperity are also times of anxiety.
They’re worried about affording to stay here. They’re worried about their children’s ability to raise a family here. They’re worried about the character of San Francisco.
Friends, this is San Francisco, and as long as I’m Mayor, we won’t leave anyone behind.
Turning that anxiety into optimism, turning that despair into hope, that’s my job. It’s why I get up early every day and go to work as your Mayor.
And so I pledge to you that this year, I will keep working night and day to see that our rising prosperity benefits every San Francisco resident, to make sure that San Francisco remains a City where everyone belongs.
I just shook my head. Is the mayor clueless? Does he not realize that thousands of San Franciscans have already been left behind – forced out by the tech boom he promoted? That when small apartments cost $4,000 a month, and people who are in bad or even abusive relationships can’t afford to leave, when people can’t have kids without moving out of town, when luxury buses clog the streets as a two-class system becomes the order of the day … his administration is distinctly NOT making sure that San Francisco is a city where everyone belongs?
The speech celebrated the city’s job growth, the reduction of the unemployment rate. But how much of that is due to San Franciscans who were unemployed four years ago getting jobs – and how much is due to unemployed San Franciscans being forced out for people who arrived to take tech jobs?
And how many of the new jobs pay a wage – even the much-celebrated new minimum wage – that is far, far too low to afford to live here?
The mayor is all about consensus. But at a time of real class warfare (and my side didn’t start the war; it was declared on us) consensus isn’t enough. The interests of Ron Conway and his allies are diametrically opposed to the interests of poor and working-class San Franciscans. Sometimes, you have to take sides – and if you try to make everything a consensus compromise, you’ve already given away the city.
No, Mr. Mayor: The state of San Francisco is not strong. And I can’t imagine how you fail to see that.
