District 9 Debate Wrap-Up-Victoria Theater

Truth-in-ranting disclaimer. I’m supporting Eric Quezada, always have. Since all of the candidates went to so much trouble to talk about how much they respect each other, I’ll try to infuse this post with all feel good mutual respect our allegedly post-partisan era requires. I’ll try to say something nice about everyone. Although I believe that Mark Sanchez is an excellent second choice and that David Campos isn’t the stealth machine politician I once thought he was, certain things are worth arguing about. I have friends working on all three of the front-runner’s campaigns, but it ain’t about personal warm feelings I have for each.

Last night at the Victoria Theater, seven community members all vying to replace Supervisor Tom Ammiano as District 9 Supervisor squared off in what might have been the most civil and too the point debate in San Francisco history. Seven candidates might seem a crowded field, but is mild by San Francisco standards. In 1999, the District 6 candidates, all eighteen of them squared off in the Saint Anthony’s Dining room, entertaining such brilliant public policy initiatives as hiring homeless people to build homes in a subterranean tunnel underneath Golden Gate park. Don’t forget four years ago in District Five with fifteen candidates, and mysterious, anonymous leaflets cropping up around the Western Addition alleging that then-candidate Mirkarimi and his supporters were nothing but closeted homophobes.

Ah, San Francisco.

So back to last night’s debate. First of all, as a lefty, I gotta implore other lefties to cut out that hissing bullshit in public forums. Did someone order self-righteous and annoying from Central Casting? That constant ssssss sound makes lunatic outbursts seem preferable. Perfect the King Louie-The-Snake-From Jungle-Book imitation at home.

Eva Royale. I would expect that someone who has Delores Huerta’s endorsement would have some concrete positions, but she seemed more than content to offer jabs and stabs at other candidates with the occasional distortion her opponent’s record thrown in for good measure. Quezada fended off her half-baked Home Depot line of attack like a pro, pointing out that Home Depot had pulled out of San Francisco and that the project would have killed small businesses throughout the City. She’s perfected the “your-so-stupid” eyeroll, the “I-implore-the-gods-to-kill-you” evil eye, comparable to Sarah Palin’s insidious wink.

Eric Storey Move to the Marina motherfucker. His comments about low-income housing were basically just racist rehashes of myths of affordable housing creating crime. Bet this guy can’t wait to one day arrive at Reagan’s “shining white city on a hill” which thanks to folks like him, San Francisco is almost. The John McCain of District 9.

Tom Vatlin An honest, sincere liberal. He had the candor, but not the understanding of the issue, around the Sanctuary Ordinance. When he says he would support limits on Sanctuary, he’s voicing something that some of the other candidates believe, but dare not say. Choked up a bit when trying to say the words “People of Color”, but was spot-on when pointing out that the traditional environmental groups have been largely AWOL when it comes to the air poor communities have to breathe. There’s probably a City commission that would be well served by his presence on it.

David Campos Rhetorically, Campos was strong. Answered almost every question well. Tried to stick it to Sanchez about policing being absent from his crime prevention strategy, but attack fell flat. A Supervisor couldn’t keep the cops out of the mix if they wanted to. Just like Prostitution and politics, the police ain’t going anywhere. There’s lots to like here, especially his stand of immigration but: Why the hell did the SF Bay Guardian give their number one endorsement to a lawyer who worked so closely with former Superintendent Ackerman and her extortion and shakedown of the San Francisco Unified School District?

Mark Sanchez I have always liked Mark a lot as a person, but couldn’t believe how someone who says he is in support of holistic services for homeless people could support the Community Justice Center. The CJC, an alternative court just for quality of life crimes has plenty of good ideas like alternative sentencing that could simply be incorporated into existing alternative sentencing procedures. That way it wouldn’t drain much-needed money from existing effective programs, like Tenderloin Health, which I assume Sanchez supports. (The premiere HIV services program, TH is cutting its hours thanks to budget cuts). I’ll give Sanchez props though, he has a whole host of respectable positions that make his CJC stand all the more bizarre. He was also very willing, to talk with me directly about it afterwords.

Also, in the spirit of respect, I’ll hand it to Sanchez that his principled stand on Proposition V (anti-JROTC in schools) has front-loaded plenty of right-wing money against him in this race. Whether you agree with him or not, the choice wasn’t a clear cut political win for him. Also, it was interesting it watch Mark try to pin down Royale and Campos on their picks for the very-important slot of Board President. Neither one of them bit.

Eric Quezada I’m backing Eric because he has the knowledge around land-use and education that his district needs. he also truly understands that his candidacy is just a part of a larger movement for housing and human rights in the globalized cit. His best moments came when he took the gloves off called it like he saw it. Some moments were teeth-grinders, I was hoping that he would get those gloves off a little sooner. His record of building and preserving affordable housing speaks for itself.

About the only thing I can find wrong with Eric is that his victory will take a very talented and dedicated Community Organizer out of the mix. In a city where so many folks describe what they do as Community Organizing, it is always a pleasure to have someone out here who isn’t afraid of a old-fashioned door knocking and listening to the people. However, I suspect that if elected, Eric will reinvent and reorganize the office of the Supervisor itself.

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.

No and Yes

This week, debate about kicking the ROTC off of campuses has reached an interesting fever pitch. Here in San Francisco. As my friend, Marc Norton reports in Beyond Chron:

The San Francisco school board voted in November 2006 to end JROTC in San Francisco schools this June. Last December, the school board extended JROTC for another year, until June 2009. However, the JROTC Must Go! Coalition continues to press the board to end JROTC now. (See “JROTC Must Go Now” in the May 14 Bay Guardian

The JROTC Must Go! Coalition represents a shift in strategy for many in the anti-war left. Discouraged by large mobilizations, groups such as these have focused on the local arena: bringing creative tactics to challenge military recruiting at ROTC programs nationwide. These groups succeed in bringing essential information recruiters aren’t going to tell your kids before they sign up. Little details such as the real limits on accessing college funds, fiscal hardships, and of course risks. I have known many an ex-service person who wished they were gotten the other side of the story.

Any sports fan can tell you that any strategy only has a limited life-time. Unless it is remixed and revised, the play just dies. The other side runs interference, having studied its opponents strengths, and learning how to beat back its advances.

This well could be happening to the counter-recruitment movement in the near future. The problem is that every single ROTC program could be shut down, and kids would still turn to the military out of sheer economic necessity.

The ways in which race, class and now gender are intertwined are extremely clear in the case of military service. Approximately two-thirds of service people are working-class white people from rural areas. This is a reversal of the Vietnam-era statistics where working-class people of color from urban areas dominated. Movements such as the Chicano Moratorium and the massive GI Resistance efforts helped to reverse this, which held for many years. As the War on Terror became a disaster even by terms of US Imperial interests, the military has had to ramp up its efforts to recruit in cities, and in communities of color. Young women are being recruited into the military like never before.

So I’m wondering, if cities like San Francisco, Berkeley, and others are really interested in curbing military recruitment–why stop just saying no? What are economic strategies that would provide life-changing alternatives for young people considering military service? Should they create Urban Peace Corps where participants are paid as well, or better than soldiers? Should the anti-war movement be pushing for universal access to four-year education? Programs such as these probably would only put a dent in the conditions caused by the global economy, yet should be explored fully.

One popular left-wing slogan is “One No, Many Yesses,” yet sometimes the demands and complexity of organizing leaves us in the “no” gear for a long-time. This November, it is very possible the liberal president will be elected. This president will be able to sell incursions into Iran and other countries, even as s/he nominally ends a war in Iraq. With this at stake, it is time for us to start figuring out what we’re going to say yes to.

This May Day–The Strike!

I’m honored to be invited to read at City Lights’ grand May Day event, The Strike! It is a sequel of sorts to a reading which happened during the last Presidential election year, entitled Manifesto. Like last time, thirty poets are going to sound-off (three minutes at a time) on the subject of empire, only now we’re supposed to answer the question So what are we gonna do about it? Obviously, the “surge” of poetry isn’t likely to stop the war, but hopefully it might just put a spring in your activist step, and maybe, provide some inspiration to delete the empire once and for all!

A City Lights May Day event
@ First Unitarian Universalist Church 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, San Francisco, CA
Doors open 7 pm; performance begins 7:30 pm
Admission: $12.00 @ door

Join City Lights and friends for an evening of narratives that cut through the core of the neo-liberal agenda

30 local poets, performers, fiction writers, playwrights, and musicians deliver 3 minute pieces offering imaginative responses to the hunger of global capital and its effects upon community

STRIKE addresses strategies of resistance. We pose the question: what serves as meaningful resistance in an age of disaster capitalism? We shall explore the liberation of the commons- through poetry, performance, music, and magic.

Participants:
Charlie Anders
Maxine Chernoff
Justin Chin
Diane di Prima
Camille Dungy
Ananda Esteva
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
Lisa Gray-Garcia
Jack Hirschman
Paul Hoover
Kevin Killian
Joseph Lease
Jon Longhi
Michael McClure
Cameron McHenry
Annalee Newitz
Barbara Jane Reyes
Al Robles
Leslie Scalapino
Matthew Shenoda
Bucky Sinister
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Amber Tamblyn
James Tracy
Roberto Vargas
Youth Speaks
more to come..

All Silent on the Democratic Front

This past weekend at the National Labor College, in Silver Springs Maryland, Iraq Veterans Against the War, VFP (Veterans for Peace), VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War), MFSO (Military Families Speak Out), held this generation’s “Winter Soldier” hearings. The testimony was from service people whose tours of duty had taken them to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

I won’t go into detail about the testimony. You can see plenty of that at the IVAW website. Where you can’t see it is most of the mainstream media.  The SF Chronicle, Washington Post, New York Times all seem to have a media blackout on the proceedings. They are always quick to dismiss civilian anti-war activists as kooks, ideologues, and out of touch with the mainstream. When current and former service people speak-up–they are largely just ignored.

Of course, there is some very good coverage of the event in the mainstream media–but you’ll have to find that in websites originating the the Philipines, Italy, and the UK.

The Democrats were largely silent on this as well. John Kerry said not a peep. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as well. The message is: vote us in, let us take care of getting the nation out of Iraq. It ain’t gonna work that way. Remember, the Vietnam War ended under a Republican Administration. That was because of the resistance of soldiers and the Vietnamnese people, and the anti-war movement.

Nothing About Us, Without Us! - Interview with Leroy Moore

I originally published this in Left Turn Magazine, October 2007.

Leroy F. Moore, Jr. is a radical Black organizer in the disability and racial justice movements. He works with Disability Advocates of Minorities Organization, Poor Magazine, and Harambee Educational Council, an organization for parents, advocates and young adults focused African Americans with disabilities. Long a fixture in the anti-police brutality and homelessness efforts nationwide; he is now taking on the hip-hop industry with a groundbreaking compilation of disabled rappers: Krip-Hop. He is also a member of the Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troupe.

Leroy

LT: Tell me a little bit about your background, what led to your politicization?

LM: I was born with cerebral palsy into a family that was and still are activists. My father was a Black Panther and my mother was an independent thinker. I had no choice but to be an activist.

My experiences in both communities-Black and Disabled, and how they treated, or better yet, not treated both of my identities gave me a real eye-opener on how society treats Blacks and other people of color with disabilities.

Racism in the disability movement and services for people with disabilities became clear when I was mainstreamed from my all Black Special Education class to a majority White non-disabled mainstream class. From that point onward, I had the question of race and disability in my head.

LT: You talk about the “intersection of race and disability” How exactly are these entwined? Some present disability as color-blind, something that could happen to anybody.

LM: The reality of race and disability has been with us since day one. Disability is a part of our fabric of our being, just like race, all the way back to Moses. People of color have found themselves in situations where the onset of disability is delivered by the oppressive society we live in. From robbing the land from Native Americans to slavery to the Tuskagee Experiment, to today’s budget cuts in mental health, hospitals, and the violence we seemed to live in at home and abroad, this country’s action and policies have helped increase disability in POC communities.

Italian Street Art

(Milan)

Travelling through Italy, it was a kick to compare and contrast the Street Art (Spray Paint Grafitti, stencils, stickers) to the ancient murals and statues of the Roman Empire and Vatican Inc. Politically, the two art forms couldn’t be farther apart: one commissioned by power and the other committed on the fly. However, both are comments on empires past and present.

(Venice)

North American lefties can often romanticize Europe as an oasis of tolerance and enlightenment. However, xenophobia and bigotry against North African immigrants and Arabs runs pretty high there too. In Rome, I witnessed Italian police chasing African immigrants all around the Vatican City area for the crime of selling knock-off Prada bags on corners.

(Venice)

A variation on a stencil that I think originated in North America.

(Milan)

The issue of Blood Diamonds is very much in the public awareness in Italy.

(Bologna)

Portions of an incredible 400-foot mural in Milan dedicated to Carlo Giuliani.

Finally, some apolitical eye-candy…

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.

A Tale of Two Movements Part I

This beginning of this week marked the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The end of this week marked the 3,233^rd death of an American soldier and the deaths of at least 59,408 Iraqis. In San Francisco, the anti-war movement marked the occasion in much the same manner it did the invasion—a series of non-violent civil disobediences (“die-ins”) that shut down key intersections of the financial district.

I was one of about five dozen people who were arrested for refusing to move out of the intersection of fifth and Powell when told to do so by the police. At 850 Bryant (SF’s southern police station), protesters were placed into small corrals made out of police barricades and never even saw the inside of the station. All were promptly cited and released by officers who were by the most part, very restrained, professional, and polite.

Non-violent civil disobedience seemed to me the least we could do, at least to send a message that somebody in San Francisco wasn’t waiting for the Democrats to swing low a sweet chariot. The organizers of the event pulled off a disciplined, creative action that momentarily injected some political clarity into the evening news.

Yet I left the police station with a cloud of dissatisfaction over my bald head. I was emotionally prepared to commit a symbolic act of defiance, in hopes that the symbol could give rise to substance. It took me an entire day to fully comprehend what had bothered me so deeply.

That realization hit me on lunch hour the next day. I attended a press conference for the People’s Budget Campaign, at City Hall. The People’s Budget is an ambitious project in which dozens of community groups from all over San Francisco draft a “shadow city budget” based on human needs and unite for a budget that actually increases spending on healthcare, housing, and community safety. The groups represented here are the ones I have worked and struggled with for the past decade and a half. These are the people who fight the good right everyday because their very survival depends on it. (eg PODER, Coalition On Homelessness, SF Organizing Project, CLAER).

Suffice to say that the $410,825,804,723 spent on just the Iraq war could fund every item of the People’s Budget; in fact thousands of People’s Budgets in every city. Very clearly, the cost of US imperialism is exacted both here and abroad. Yet in a time when large populist movements must be built; the word “fractured” doesn’t even begin to describe what it going on.

More like segregated.

Yes, segregation. We have separate movements. One has to find ways just to survive, squeezing little drops of sanity from a municipal budget. The people at this rally represented the rainbow of the urban working-class. There were a quite a few allies, but it was obvious that the People’s Budget was deeply rooted in the neighborhoods. On the other side of the colorline, the classline and the generation line was the anti-war movement. If you think it is possible for one group to stop a war, or to transform a city, then I guess this is no big deal.

I bring this up not to guilt-trip or to point fingers.I would gladly be arrested again and again in the company of these brave people if it could end the war a minute earlier. However, how effective can a “movement” be with this many degrees of separation?

In the next post I’m going to explore tangible ways to bring the domestic fight against empire together with the international fight against empire. I’m interested in hearing your ideas.

 __________________________________________________________

On my reading list this week:

Left Turn Magazine #24

“The War at Home” by Francis Fox Piven

“The Cost of Privilege: Taking On the System of White Supremacy and Racism” by Chip Smith

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.