San Francisco Budget Wars 2009

(This is the first installment of a series of posts on the San Francisco City Budget and campaigns to challenge cuts to vital human services and layoffs of workers. I’m writing this aware that many of my good friends closely involved with these issues have sharply different opinions. Hopefully, this series with spur serious strategic debate. I’m always open to being proven wrong.)

Late into the evening of July 1st, the Budget Committee of the San Francisco Board Of Supervisors approved a budget that restored about $44 million dollars of cuts proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. The deal prevented the outsourcing of City jobs to private contractors and preserved hundreds of vital life-saving services. Immediately, some started to question whether or not the victory was worth the paper it was printed upon. Supervisor Chris Daly, in a near twenty-minute monologue, pointed out that without mechanism to hold the Mayor accountable, many of the funds could simply be held back.

Were Wednesday’s results an organizing victory, or simply a feel-good moment for progressive Supes unwilling to use their majority on the board to secure a deal with teeth? The truth of the matter is firmly located in a grey-area of real politics, and does not fit neatly into any neat explanation of “victory” nor “sell-out.”

The budget, if implemented by the Mayor, is indeed historic in these economic times. Applying Naomi Klein’s concept of the “Shock Doctrine” to local concerns, the economic collapse is a perfect opportunity for those in ideologically attached to a small role for local government to eviscerate city jobs (such as security jobs at museums) and replace them with lower-paying and non-unionized positions. Likewise, low-income working-class people depend on a variety of services saved through the deal. The restoration of eviction defense services, HIV and gang-intervention work, and mental health programs aren’t simply part of a “safety net” or an “entitlement” but rather a part of a “social wage”— based in needs held by most low-income workers yet unreachable by most through high costs. The critique of the deal has much traction.

The Mayor is allowed to simply not spend budget allocations, and given the horrendous situation the State is in, another fight over mid-year reductions is only weeks away. But before condemning Budget and Finance Committee Chair  John Avalos as foolish, one needs to keep a piece of reality in mind: his allies on the Board have six votes, not a veto proof eight. In a sense, what we saw on June 1st 2009 was largely determined by the outcome of the November 2008 election. Had one less progressive Supervisor been elected, Newsom’s budget would have stood largely untouched. Yet in absence of two extra votes, compromise would be inevitable. A compromise it was—leaving many of Newsom’s questionable priorities (such as increased PR staff and a homeless court) unscathed.

Mainstream and most progressive news sources ignored was that the Mayor and the Board Of Supervisors were only two forces in the overall budget debate. Labor and Community organizations, such as the Coalition to Save Public Health and the Budget Justice Coalition had waged a spirited fight back against the cuts since December of 2009. In the final weeks before the deal, Direct Action to Stop the Cuts had led several daring actions against the Mayor, highlighting the impact of the cuts to the public health system and people living with HIV.

Next Fragile Coalitions: Labor and Community Come Together for a Just Budget.

Saving the City

On May 21st, 2008 over 500 people marched through the streets of San Francisco’s Central City to protest Proposition 98, a measure that would destroy Rent Control. The march and rally was one of the most spirited and alive political events I have witnessed for at least five years; and an honor to co-organize. I always hesitate before I use the term “diverse” as the right-wing has learned how to mis-use that word. It was obvious however that the key organizations: Community Housing Partnership, Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, and Chinatown Community Development Center had reached deep inside their base communities, activating the passions of everyday people. At times, the march resembled more of a street party. A resident from the Senator Hotel brought his drum and the crowd collectively remixed the chants, which eventually morphed into Spanish and Chinese.

Chant #1: Save, our city, save our state: vote no on 98!

The next generation of freedom-fighters.

Norman Fong (CCDC) and Lashawndra Price (CHP) MC’d the event. This was Lashawndra’s first time as an MC for a demonstration and she rocked the house. Supervisor Peskin is in the background.

Book Review:Challenging Authority

Book Review: Challenging Authority
by James Tracy‚ Apr. 18‚ 2007

Originally published in Beyond Chron (www.beyondchron.org)

“How Ordinary People Change America” by Frances Fox Piven

Too often, discussion about the viability of change sprouting from the electoral system is shrunk to fit bumperstickers. Even harder to find is nuanced analysis when the politics of protest—direct action, and mob action become the issue of the day. Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America by Francis Fox Piven offers readers a history lesson of the ways in which progressive change has in the past, actually happened—a complex dance between disruptive populist forces and the formal electoral system.

Piven is one of the Left’s preeminent Political Scientists. Others in academia have done their best to delete the role of protest in social change; she has made a career of writing the common person back into the history. Best known for the groundbreaking Poor People’s Movements: How they Succeed and Why the Fail she asserted over twenty years ago that reform moves best when the action remains direct. Challenging Authority expands on this theme.

The book asserts that disruptive politics have always forced electoral/representative; as well as regional coalitions splinter and realign, making reform possible. This is in stark contrast to the dominant model of party building—unite a large enough mass around a platform common enough to hold—a culprit commonly referred to as the Lowest Common Denominator. For Piven, it is dissensus, not the consensus that is the engine of progressive reform.

The mass direct action of the Civil Rights movement plied pro-segregation Dixiecrats to split from the Democratic Party making it possible for a portion of movement demands to be satisfied. Spot-on is the understanding that one day’s movement victory might become tommorow’s liability. Piven explains:

Moreover, the movement wins what it wins because it threatens to create and widen divisions in electoral coalitions, because it makes enemies and activates allies. The threat of dissensus has inevitable limits, however. On the one side, the mere fact of concessions, even limited concessions, tends to rob the movement of its erstwhile allies. After all, grievances have been answered, so what more do these people want?…The party may succeed in regrouping as a dominant party no longer vulnerable to the threat of dissensus, as the Republican Party did after the Civil War, and as the Democratic Party did after the 1930s. Or it may survive, albeit in a weakened state, as the Democratic Party did after the civil rights movement cost it the support of the South.

While dissensus has its limits, the consensus carries its’ own costs. It is hard to imagine a New Deal without the disruptive actions of the Unemployed Workers Movements willing to physically confront evictors and relief bureaucrats. Roosevelt, wouldn’t have likely come up with the idea on his own. Eminently pragmatic, he responded to a strong mass movement in cold, calculating terms and ended up backing the creation of a social safety net.

Piven applies this logic to the Abolitionist movement as well, noting that even simple oral agitation polarized the pro-slavery coalitions that stretched beyond North-South borders. Piven also credits the insurrections and escapes of slaves as a major catalyst in the end of slavery; a simple truth deleted from many historical accounts. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt were far from natural allies of reform. Lincoln attempted to accommodate slavery and avoided emancipation. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, beginning the internment of Japanese Americans.

One of the most challenging concepts in the book is the concept of interdependent power as a key to movement gains. Piven believes that even within domination, the underdog’s power lies in the fact that the elite really needs her or him. The Boss needs workers to profit, the landlord needs the rent of the tenant, and disruption tends to be bad for business if sustained. True enough, however it doesn’t leave much to work with if one’s movement’s vision lies in transforming this dynamic altogether.

While the world is a much different place that the thirties, the sixties or the 1860s Challenging Authority’s basic premise is directly relevant to today’s activists. Presidential elections on the horizon, progressive forces would do well not to abandon independent disruptive dissent; just as ignoring electoral formations altogether is equally counter-productive. When it comes to the basics of economics and empire, Democrats and Republicans often stand on common ground, differing only on how to manage similar agendas.

Piven’s gift to the reader lies beyond her sharp analysis, eloquent prose, and nuanced understanding of history—she reminds us that the days inbetween the elections, and not just the one’s in preparation for them, count for something. That understanding may be the only thing that can ever elevate American politics from the gutter of soundbites, scapegoating and false promises.

Their Land Grabs, and Ours

These are the notes I prepared for a talk at Counterpulse on 2/14/07. The talk was part of a series on urban life and resistance co-sponsored by City Lights Foundation and Shaping San Francisco. Thanks to Chris Carlsson for inviting me to speak and Erick Lyle for rounding out the evening with an inspiring talk about housing takeovers in the Mid-Market redevelopment area.

Patterns of displacement as resistance remain pretty constant throughout the centuries. They are revised, re-ramped and remixed; given a different face. The political economy in which each story occurs in is often very different from the last. But the blueprint of domination, the strategies of the elites, the response of everyday people tends to remain quite constant.

Take for instance, settlers on this continent clearing the prairie of Native Americans. For the most part they were those of limited resources who bought the lie that the land was theirs to take, and that no-one of any consequence was there before, just savages a notch or two above animals. Then the settlers too were largely displaced, often urbanized as robber barons cleared their claims to make way for railroads.

Jump to today where the presence of young artists and bohemians is manipulated in order to soften up a neighborhood, make it appealing for the truly rich to walk in and finish the process of destroying a working-class neighborhood. The process is of course, economic but is far more complex than political economy of a ‘hood.

In order for their land-grabs to be successful, the Real Estate Industry breaks bonds of solidarity neighbors might develop with one another by amplifying anxieties of community safety, immigration, and sexuality to warp the discussion about how a city can develop. This masks a discussion that is about class hatred and white supremacy in the codes of revitalization.

Then debates around housing to boil down to “supply and demand” without ever asking “what kind of supply, and what kind of demand?” The discussion hardly ever arrives at what it takes to make an open, egalitarian city that honors its workers, preserves communities of color, and develops a strong artistic life that cannot be manipulated to help destroy all desirable areas of life.

A Decade of Displacement-SF in the Nineties

This essay was written for City Lights Publishing’s anthology “The Political Edge,” a good collection of work about our fair city.

“The housing crisis doesn’t exist because the system isn’t working. It exists because that’s the way the system works.”- Marcuse

Whether fleeing from a death squad in Latin America or a homophobic family in the Midwest, many have sought refuge in San Francisco. Those who consider San Francisco an “island,” offer ample evidence: the sizable protest culture, gay marriages, and the municipal minimum wage. Certainly we live in a beautiful city, worth fighting for. However, cold, hard reality demands that we acknowledge the ways that San Francisco is nearly identical to every other city in the nation.
Segregation? Here? Maybe not apartheid or “separate but equal” but let’s just say that here two people can walk down the same street and experience it in completely different ways. One person can look at Valencia Street and wonder where the best crêpes are, the other can wonder if the can make it to the bus stop without being stopped by the police.

A World of Possibilities at 45 Westpoint

Originally published in Processed World, Winter 2004. Thanks Chris!

Thanksgiving Morning 2003. At the intersection of 30th and Mission an odd assortment of humanity gathered—even by San Franciscan standards. Homeless families, most with strollers in tow, cautiously mingled with trade union activists. College students tried out their Spanish on Latino day laborers. Street punks, checked out the non-profit workers with a sneer that acknowledged “I’ll probably be you one day.” The crowd of about 140 had diversity written all over it—elderly and young, and enough ethnicity to make even the most jaded observer speak about Rainbow Coalitions as if the idea was just invented five minutes ago.

Protest signs handed out casually read “Let Us In!” below a cartoon of a global village angry mob. The mood remained mellow, maybe strangely so for a group of people who, in an hour’s time would be participating in an illegal takeover of vacant housing; one unit among thousands owned by the San Francisco Housing Authority —the often troubled agency that is charged with providing homes for the city’s most impoverished.

Photo by Joseph Smooke

Announcements are made: the bus chartered to bring the protesters to the secret takeover site is late, but will arrive shortly. The driver of the bus had been reached by cell phone and reported a hangover from which he’d just woken up. He would be stopping for a strong cup of coffee. Even on Thanksgiving Day, there was more than one protest going on in San Francisco. A couple of hundred feet away, United Food and Commercial Workers members picketed Safeway in the ongoing battle over the company’s attempts to do away with healthcare benefits. A delegation went over to wish the unionists well as one nervous housing protester tried to conceal the Safeway logo on her fresh cup of coffee.