Jackie Fielder Stood up to Big Oil & Wall Street-- Now She's Taking On Real Estate's Top Politician In California

Jackie Fielder is a Native American (Two Kettle Lakota and Hidatsa), Mexicana, and queer educator and organizer running for state Senate against the most real estate-backed politician in California, Scott Wiener. Jackie's growing movement includes California Teachers, grassroots organizers, elected leaders across the country and, as of today, Blue America! Please consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the 2020 Blue America state legislative thermometer below.

After earning both a BA in Public Policy and a MA in Sociology from Stanford, Jackie joined the Indigenous-led No Dakota Access Pipeline movement in her ancestral territories. Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, she became an organizer for public banking to divest San Francisco’s $11 billion city budget from pipeline construction, private prisons, and weapons manufacturing. As co-founder and lead organizer of the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition, she took on Wall Street lobbyists to pass statewide legislation and introduce a local ordinance to create the first municipal bank in the country.

Jackie’s opponent, Wiener, is bankrolled by the real estate interests profiting from the housing crisis, fossil fuel giants like Chevron, anti-police reform organizations, and corporations like WalMart. In 2018 he sided with the Republican Party in support of a dangerous police use-of-force policy. Later that year, he opposed a small tax on the largest corporations to fund vital housing and services for the homeless. How could that not be a quid pro quo?

California is the fifth largest economy in the world yet ranks in the bottom nationally for per pupil spending. Jackie supports protecting and expanding the public education budget, while her opponent repeatedly supported diverting funding away from public education.

Global pandemic has both sharpened focus on the inequalities of our society and demanded bold action and transformative solutions. Jackie knows we can’t afford to go back to the status quo, and that taking on the next global crisis requires learning our lessons now.

I hope you'll help Blue America elect a state Senator with the courage to take on the crises facing the state, the country, and the planet. And a progressive who will be on the Democratic bench in the country's biggest state.

I'll Be The First Indigenous Woman Elected To The California State Senate
-by Jackie Fielder

Let me introduce myself. I was born in California and raised by a single mother in an underserved neighborhood dotted with fossil fuel refineries. When I was still a student at Stanford, I watched videos of my relatives staring down the barrels of guns, being bitten by dogs, and pummeled with water cannons in subzero temperatures as they stood up to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

I founded the San Francisco Public Bank Coalition in 2017 after identifying the common denominator between oil pipelines, private prisons, and weapons manufacturing: Wall Street banks. We needed an alternative financial institution that would reinvest our tax dollars for the public good. Within two years, we passed AB 857 to allow municipalities to establish public banks, and won majority support for legislation to create one in San Francisco.

After campaigning successfully for police accountability as well as organizing Mijente’s No Tech For ICE campaign, I was tapped by Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza to take over teaching her Race, Women, and Class course at San Francisco State University. Even as a university lecturer, I found myself personally crushed by the housing affordability crisis and-- like so many other educators-- struggled to find an affordable room to rent.

I’m running for State Senate because we have a mandate to be bolder. Transformative policies like statewide single-payer healthcare, a Green New Deal for California, redressing epidemic income inequality, and investing in affordable housing and education for all have never been more urgent.

We don’t have any time left for excuses or despair, and the global health and economic crisis has proven that major challenges demand bold action. Every dollar you contribute helps us tell a voter, “You don’t have to live in fear for your future or the future of your loved ones-- you deserve a legislator who will fight for you.”

ANOMIE, Part II-- The Masked Men Are The Good Guys... And The Unmasked Are The Enemies Of Society

Face To Face by Nancy Ohanian

Please think of this post as a continuation the 5AM piece on anomie. I had a few questions about what anomie is. And after I realized that not everyone was a sociology major-- I was-- I grabbed the Wikipedia description: "the condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals". Anomie may evolve from conflict of belief systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community (both economic and primary socialization). In a person this can progress into a dysfunction in ability to integrate within normative situations of their social world - e.g., an unruly personal scenario that results in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of values... commonly understood to mean normlessness... [arising] more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations."

This relates to the COVID Civil War raging in America now between those who claim social distancing rules infringes on their liberty and freedom and those who claim that without the social cohesion required to encourage everyone to adopt those rules, the entire society is at risk from the pandemic. Tuesday, the L.A. Times published a report by Brady McCollough about the fight over masks. First a tiny bit of background: societies that were quick to adopt masks have largely contained the outbreak. Societies that scoffed at it, are suffering from big outbreaks now. Let me give you a couple of examples. Czechia, South Korea, Argentina, Taiwan and Japan were quick to adopt universal mask wearing. Their caseloads are low:

• Taiwan- 18 cases per million people
• Argentina- 111 cases per million people
• Japan- 121 cases per million people
• South Korea- 211 cases per million people
• Czechia- 738 cases per million people

On the other hand, the U.S., Britain, France, Sweden and Belgium have been grudging and slow to adopt mask wearing. The caseloads are horrific:

• Belgium- 4,382 per million
• U.S.- 3,746 per million
• U.K.- 2,872 per million
• France- 2,613 per million
• Sweden- 2,368 per million

Closer to home, let's look at California. 6 Bay area counties got together and ignored Governor Gavin Newsom's timid and inadequate response. The 6 counties shut down despite Newsom's unwillingness to do so statewide. Los Angeles County has, roughly, 10 million people and 27,815 cases. The six Bay Area counties have a combined population of about half that but just 8,319 cases, a rate of half the infections Los Angeles County has.

Back to McCollough's report in the L.A. Times. He wrote that "As more states reopen their economies, officials say fighting the coronavirus outbreak means wearing a face covering. But some are balking at restrictions." Although the city of Los Angeles (population is not 10 million but just 4 million), got a slow start, Mayor Garcetti ordered masks in all indoor establishments long before Newsom did it statewide. It has helped.

In the bustling college town of Stillwater, Oklahoma, residents are allowed to visit restaurants and retailers-- freedoms that most of the country does not currently enjoy in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet when the city issued an emergency proclamation Friday that required citizens to wear face coverings, store employees were “threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse,” according to a statement released by the city. In response, Stillwater quickly amended its wording to only “encourage” use of masks.

“This has occurred in three short hours and in the face of clear medical evidence that face coverings help contain the spread of COVID-19,” Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. “Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view.”

About a dozen states have reopened more of their economies since Friday’s calendar turned to May, with several, including Florida, loosening more restrictions Monday. No matter where a state falls on the reopening spectrum, though, all Americans who choose to go outside are being met with a choice that isn’t going away anytime soon: to cover up or not?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says "everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public" to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. The federal agency notes that masks are to protect others and that they are not a substitute for social distancing.

In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine backtracked last week on an order to require masks be worn in stores as too many Ohioans found it “offensive.”

“It became clear to me that was just a bridge too far. People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do,” DeWine said Sunday on ABC’s This Week.





On Monday, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, as part of a tour acknowledging the reopening of most of the state, visited a thrift store in Joplin that is operated by the Disabled American Veterans. The veteran workers wore masks, but Parson did not.

"I chose not to," Parson said, when asked at his news briefing why he did not cover his face.

"I think it's up to the individuals. I don't think that's government's role to mandate who wears a mask and who don't. I go back to what I've said all along: It's your personal responsibility."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis allowed the reopening of most restaurants, retailers, museums and libraries at 25% capacity Monday. DeSantis-- who controversially referred to his state, with its large population of older residents, as "God's waiting room" last week-- is recommending that employees and customers wear masks, but he is not requiring it.

DeSantis' phased opening plan kept populous South Florida counties Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach closed for most business.

Miami reopened parks to the public last week, but only with the mandatory use of masks. By the end of the weekend, park rangers had handed out more than 7,000 warnings to people not wearing face covers, most of them in the popular South Pointe Park, police said. On Monday, the city closed up the park at the end of South Beach yet again.

New Jersey opened its parks Saturday, and although Gov. Phil Murphy was pleased overall with the social distancing compliance shown by the population, he shared one major complaint Monday.

“Not enough masks,” he said. Eighty percent to 90% "of the folks we're not wearing masks."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a mandatory mask order April 15 and said Monday that he believes local governments should have the right to enforce it.

“Because you could literally kill someone,” Cuomo said. “How cruel and irresponsible would that be? … It's not that big of a deal. You don’t wear a mask to protect yourself. You wear a mask to protect me. And I wear a mask to protect you.

“No one said wear a mask all the time. If you go for a walk in the woods, you don’t have to wear a mask. You can have the mask down when walking in the woods, but if you see someone coming the other way, you put the mask on. It’s the least we can do.”

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 surpassed 68,600 on Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University. More than a third of American losses from the disease were in the state of New York, which has become the epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 24,900 deaths as of Monday afternoon. The global death total has surpassed 250,000. [The U.S. death toll surpassed 73,000 as I sat down to write this post with large case spikes in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Iowa, Utah, Mississippi, Colorado, Nebraska and both Dakotas, all states with limited compliance with social distancing rules.]

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio began his Monday morning news briefing by talking about how nice the weather had been in the city over the weekend-- and how that could lead to a false sense of normality. New York City on Monday reported 13,536 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 and 5,373 deaths in which the cause was listed as the disease but the victim was not tested.

De Blasio said he did not have a problem with citizens returning to outside spaces and enjoying the weather as long as they wore a mask and kept social distancing requirements. He announced Monday that the city would be distributing 5 million three-ply nonmedical masks and 2.5 million cloth face coverings for free in the coming weeks.

“Wherever you turn, you’re going to be offered a face covering,” De Blasio said.

De Blasio and New York Police Commissioner Dermot Shea were peppered with questions stemming from a video of an officer pointing a Taser at bystanders in lower Manhattan during an arrest of people accused of not social distancing properly. The video shows the officer punching and slapping a man as he brings him to the ground.

“This one incident is troubling, but there’s been tens of thousands of interactions between police officer and civilians that went very well,” De Blasio said. The officer has been placed on modified duty and the incident is being investigated, De Blasio said Sunday.

On Monday he said more face covers could help prevent future violent scenarios from playing out with enforcement, but in this case, the plainclothes officer was also not wearing a mask.

In Oklahoma, Stillwater City Manager McNickle said in a statement that one of the incidents involving the mask requirement included a threat with a firearm.

In Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has ordered that masks be worn through May, state police investigators are looking into reports that a Flint dollar store security guard was fatally shot Friday after an argument with a customer who had refused to wear a mask in the store, according to the Detroit News.

The man who died leaves behind a wife and eight kids.

"My condolences go out to the family of the security guard," Whitmer said Monday. "It is incredible that people continue to show up to work to protect everyone else. We are mindful of how important it is that people keep a level head, that we do the right things. I ask that all Michiganders keep their wits about them and take actions to protect themselves and others in this incredibly stressful time."

I want to mention a little San Francisco history before we move on. Today San Franciscans are wearing their masks and flattening the city's curve nicely. A century ago, when the second wave of the Spanish flu hit and the people in the city were ordered to wear masks, "a band of San Franciscans, led by several prominent business leaders and physicians, staged a rebellion. The Anti-Mask League held a public meeting on Jan. 25, 1919, that was attended by several thousand jeering residents demanding a permanent end to the city mask ordinance." The city health department was headed by William Hassler, who the Anti-Mask League wanted fired. "The centerpiece of Hassler’s plan," wrote Sydney Trent, "was a requirement that every resident wear a face mask, underscored by [Mayor James] Rolph, who declared, 'Whomever leaves his mask behind, dies.' The San Francisco Chronicle chimed in: 'The man who wears no mask will likely become isolated, suspected, and regarded as a slacker.'... The city was not without scofflaws, however, and soon the $5 fines mounted, and the jails grew crowded. Many who broke the new law merely couldn’t be bothered, but some were more militant. One downtown lawyer argued that the mask ordinance was 'absolutely unconstitutional,' and that police officers could be liable for enforcing it." 100 years later I have witnessed two aggressive non-mask-wearers on grocery store lines get beaten up for breaking social distancing rules.

Despite Trump's Psychosis, The Early Numbers Comparing San Francisco With New York Shows That Sheltering In Place Works

San Franciosco Chronicle writer Erin Allday asked why New York has ten times more COVID-19 cases than California, noting that "New York’s coronavirus outbreak has violently erupted over the past few days, and the state is now driving the national epidemic-- while on the West Coast, public health experts are wondering if an early and aggressive response saved California from a similar fate. California reported some of the earliest coronavirus cases in the United States in late January. And in the first week of March, California and New York were neck and neck on cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. But over the past week, New York case counts have doubled every few days, and the state now has 10 times the cases California does: 25,000 to 2,500."

Swell.Life has a fascinating analysis of The Chronicle's question by founder and CEO/CTO Sudha K Varadarajan: Bay Area is Flattening the Curve-- Early data indicates effectiveness of Shelter in Place. Shelter in Place was instituted in the Bay Area before any other jurisdictions and without any federal support or mandate. "So far," writes Varadarajan, "the numbers seem to indicate that this was not only a wise decision but will help us come out of this far quicker than anyone else (provided we can limit people traveling into or outside of the Bay Area and continue to maintain social distancing). And quicker recovery will mean that the economic impact is likely to be much lower than what it would have been had we done this sometime later, after more cases were allowed to spread. Now, I must caveat this with it being early days. But the numbers appear to indicate that aggressive distancing and lock-down policies are highly effective when applied early."

The Bay Area put its Shelter in Place effective Mar 17. I have compared data from Mar 15 to about 6 pm PT on Mar, 22, which was the time of this writing. And, I will continue to update this article over the coming days with more data.

This article examines data from two major states in the US, namely CA and NY. It also looks at some regions within CA, including the Bay Area and Los Angeles County. And finally, it looks at CA vs the rest of the US as an aggregate. For the purpose of this article, Bay Area numbers use the aggregate numbers from the following counties: San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma and Napa.

Number of coronavirus tests conducted

There is no good data source I could find on this-- if you have any, please do send them my way. The best figures I could find indicate that California has conducted about 23,200 tests, New York has conducted 32,427 tests. These figures are about  a day or two old. The reason it is important to know how many have been tested is because I want to put aside the argument that NY has tested more and hence has reported more cases. The numbers indicate that both states have conducted similar numbers of tests on their population. 

Bay Area vs New York

First, let us compare the Bay Area to New York. On Mar 16, before shelter in place, we had 310 cases in the Bay Area with 5 deaths, and 950 in New York with 6 deaths. Here is how much the virus has spread in the past 6 days in these regions. The Bay Area is now at 786 cases and 13 deaths, while New York has 15168 cases and 114 deaths.

Bay Area vs California

On Mar 16, 310 of the 392 cases in California, or 79% of the cases, were in the Bay Area. Today, six days later, 786 of the 1555 cases in California, which is 50% of the cases, are from the Bay Area. The deaths have fallen from 83% (5 of 6 cases) to 44% (13 of 29 cases).

Santa Clara County vs Los Angeles County

In the Bay Area, on Mar 16, Santa Clara county accounted for 138 of the 310 (44%) cases and 4 of the 5 (80%) deaths. Shelter in Place was instituted in the Bay Area and so we compared it to Los Angeles County, which had 94 cases and 1 death on Mar 16 and now has 409 cases with 5 deaths.

California vs the US

We then look at California vs the rest of the US. California’s leadership acted early to institute social distancing effectively amongst its huge population. It is the most populous state in the country, with double the number of people in New York. The graph clearly indicates that California has been much more effective in flattening its curve compared to the rest of the country.

In summary, these are early days. But the early Shelter-in-Place by the Bay Area leadership and adherence by the community, appears to have made a huge difference in the spread of the virus in this community.

And speaking of San Francisco... Lawrence Ferlinghetti just turned 100-- and it sure looks like he's still going strong. He has a few words about the Trump Regime and its hangers-on (my interpretation).

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
   And whose shepherds mislead them
 Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
            Whose sages are silenced
  And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
 Pity the nation that raises not its voice
          Except to praise conquerers
       And acclaim the bully as hero
          And aims to rule the world
              With force and by torture
          Pity the nation that knows
        No other language but its own
      And no other culture but its own
 Pity the nation whose breath is money
 And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
      Pity the nation oh pity the people
        who allow their rights to  erode
   and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee

                   Sweet land of liberty

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Just when I thought the San Francisco I used to love was totally gone, ruined by tech money and self-absorbed hedge fund types, someone there provides a bit of glorious street theater! In this case, the photo of Swastika Boy Trump projected upon House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's District Office. As you can see, it reveals what's under that freakish Trump hair. Face it, we all knew he has swastikas on the brain. If you put his blood under a microscope you would see that the red cells flowing through his veins are even shaped like little swastikas. That's all part of his "manly" essence. But, there it is, a swastika actually tattooed on his flow-through cranium!

I don't expect that Speaker Pelosi will be moved in any way by the picture being projected on her outside wall. Longtime readers know that I gave up on her years ago. I expect nothing from her, especially since I'm not a lobbyist. I do however commend the patriotism of those who made and projected the photo. I expect that Republicans everywhere are already clamoring for signed and numbered prints of their mind leprosy poster boy that they can proudly hang in their offices and homes. I hear that Lindsey Graham will do anything for #1 or #2.

Who Likes Seeing Multimillionaires Hoist On Their Own Petards-- A Whole Gated Community Of Them?

CA-12 is made up of the city of San Francisco and the congressmember is Nancy Pelosi. With a D+34 PVI, it's one of the bluest districts in the country. Hillary beat Trump 86.2% to 8.7%.The district is about 44% white, 31% Asian, 15% Latino and 6% African-American. It has the 37th highest median income of the 435 congressional districts-- $77,577. I used to live there. I can't recall having met any Republicans while I was there, although there were conservative Democrats who played the traditional Republican role. Dianne Feinstein was one of them. And she lived on the richest street in town, a little cul-de-sac with 36 mansions called Presidio Terrace, just off Arguello Blvd. It was a planned community for rich white people that was laid out in 1905. The original marketing brochure said "There is only one spot in San Francisco where only Caucasians are permitted to buy or lease real estate or where they may reside. That place is Presidio Terrace." The U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the covenant in 1948. Still if you want to find a Republican-- either a real one or the Democratic Party type Republicans, Presidio Terrace might be a good place to start your search-- if you could get by the guarded gate.

The homeowners association forgot to pay the county property taxes and the actual street, the sidewalks and all other "common ground," including garden islands and palm trees, were bought by a South Bay couple, Tina Lam and Michael Cheng, at auction. They consider the $90,000 they paid an investment and plan to make a profit at the expense of the very well-healed residents in their 35 megamillion-dollar mansions.

[T]hey’re looking to cash in-- maybe by charging the residents of those mansions to park on their own private street.

Those residents value their privacy-- and their exclusivity. Past homeowners have included Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her financier husband, Richard Blum; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi; and the late Mayor Joseph Alioto. A guard is stationed round the clock at the stone-gate entrance to the street to keep the curious away.

So imagine the residents’ surprise when San Jose residents Cheng and Lam wound up with the street, its sidewalks and every other bit of “common ground” in the private development that has been managed by the homeowners since at least 1905. That includes a string of well-coiffed garden islands, palm trees and other greenery that enhance the gated and guarded community at the end of Washington Street, just off Arguello Boulevard and down the hill from the Presidio.

“We just got lucky,”said Cheng, a real estate investor.

The homeowners, however, are crying foul and want the Board of Supervisors to negate the sale.

The couple’s purchase appears to be the culmination of a comedy of errors involving a $14-a-year property tax bill that the homeowners association failed to pay for three decades. It’s something that the owners of all 181 private streets in San Francisco are obliged to do.

In a letter to the city last month, Scott Emblidge, the attorney for the Presidio Homeowners Association, said the group had failed to pay up because its tax bill was being mailed to the Kearny Street address used by an accountant who hadn’t worked for the homeowners since the 1980s.

Two years ago, the city’s tax office put the property up for sale in an online auction, seeking to recover $994 in unpaid back taxes, penalties and interest. Cheng and Lam, trawling for real estate opportunities in the city, pounced on the offer-- snatching up the parcel with a $90,100 bid, sight unseen.

Since the purchase in April 2015, the couple have been quietly sitting on the property, talking to a number of land-use attorneys to explore their options.

“We were looking to get title insurance so it could be marketable,” Cheng said.

He and his wife see plenty of financial opportunity-- especially from the 120 parking spaces on the street that they now control.

“We could charge a reasonable rent on it,” Cheng said.

And if the Presidio Terrace residents aren’t interested in paying for parking privileges, perhaps some of their neighbors outside the gates-- in a city where parking is at a premium-- would be.

Unsurprisingly, the residents were more than a little upset when they belatedly found out what had happened.

They didn’t learn that their street and sidewalks had been sold until they were contacted May 30 by a title search company working on behalf of Cheng and Lam, said Emblidge. The title search outfit wanted to know if the residents had any interest in buying back the property from the couple, the lawyer said.

“I was shocked to learn this could happen, and am deeply troubled that anyone would choose to take advantage of the situation and buy our street and sidewalks,” said one homeowner, who asked not to be named because of pending litigation.

Last month, the homeowners petitioned the Board of Supervisors for a hearing to rescind the tax sale. The board has scheduled a hearing for October.

In addition, the homeowners association has sued the couple and the city, seeking to block Cheng and Lam from selling the street to anyone while the city appeal is pending-- a move residents fear could complicate their efforts to reclaim the land.

The residents say the city had an obligation to post a notice in Presidio Terrace notifying neighbors of the pending auction back in 2015-- something that “would have been simple and inexpensive for the city to accomplish.”

Treasurer-Tax Collector Jose Cisneros’ office says the city did what the law requires.

“Ninety-nine percent of property owners in San Francisco know what they need to do, and they pay their taxes on time-- and they keep their mailing address up to date,” said spokeswoman Amanda Fried.

“There is nothing that our office can do” about the sale now, she added.

Fried said that as far as she knows, the Board of Supervisors “has never done a hearing of rescission”-- and that because it’s been more than two years since Cheng and Lam bought the property, it could be tough to overturn the sale now.

As for the threat to charge them for parking, the residents suspect it’s part of a pressure campaign by the couple to force the homeowners association to shell out big bucks to buy back the street.

The couple, however, say they’re in no hurry to sell.

“I’m a first-generation immigrant, and the first time I came to San Francisco I fell in love with the city,” said Lam, an engineer in Silicon Valley who was born in Hong Kong and came to the U.S. for college.

“I really just wanted to own something in San Francisco because of my affinity for the city,” Lam said.

There’s a bit of irony in the couple’s purchase. Until a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning the enforcement of racial covenants, homes in Presidio Terrace could be purchased only by whites.

“The more we dug into this,” said the Taiwan-born Cheng, “the more interesting it got.”

Forget Gentrification-- Our Great Cities Are Being Afflicted With Full-On Plutocratization

The new issue of the Harvard Business Review carried an adaptation by urbanologist Richard Florida from his new book, The New Urban Crisis, warning about "a sterile sameness" that's been hard to miss taking over cities we all used to love and feel inspired by. I don't think Florida is as worried about it as I am... but he's worried too.

Every time I have visited London over the past several years, I invariably hear the same story from my taxi driver. As we drive past Hyde Park on the way to or from the airport, he will say, “You see that building?” nodding towards a modern glass tower next to the Mandarin Oriental hotel. “Some of the apartments cost £50 million or more. And no one lives there—it’s always dark.”

London, New York, and Paris are being overtaken over by an invasion of the global super-rich, which one writer described as a shift from mere gentrification to full-on “plutocratization.” According to some, this influx is driving artists from cities, turning them into what musician David Byrne called “pleasure domes for the rich.” For a growing number of musicians and artists, the transformation of our cities is personal and palpable. Yes, there’s a certain irony in the spectacle of highly successful rock stars pining after the good old days of cheap rent, cheap drinks, and creative nirvana, even if we can empathize with their frustration at CBGB’s being turned into an upscale clothing store. But artists’ complaints reflect the increasingly intense competition for urban space. Artists, musicians, and other creatives who helped transform old, neglected urban spaces into studios and workspaces in the 1970s and 1980s are being elbowed out of those same places by investment bankers, business professionals, techies, and even the global super-rich.



There’s little doubt that creative urban ecosystems exist in a precarious balance. Take away the ferment that comes from urban mixing, and the result is a sterile sameness. In SoHo today, luxury shops seem to outnumber performance spaces and studios. But even if rising housing prices are making it harder for a new generation of artists and creatives to get a toehold in SoHo and neighborhoods like it, that doesn’t mean that entire cities have become creative dead zones.

So does this change really threaten the creativity of our most vibrant cities? Despite the influx of wealthy people into the urban core and the transformation of some leading creative neighborhoods, there is little evidence of any substantial diminution of these cities’ overall creative capacities. Cities are big places, after all; creativity can and does move from neighborhood to neighborhood. In time, the ongoing transformation of these cities may truly jeopardize their creative impetus, but that hasn’t happened yet.

The global super-rich who are snapping up real estate in superstar cities aren’t really buying “homes,” in the conventional sense of that term, to live in and use. They aren’t looking for places to raise their families or to do productive work. Instead, they’re looking for safe places to park their money. If luxury real estate was once the most obvious way to measure and display wealth as “conspicuous consumption,” it has become something more mundane today-- a new class of economic asset used to store and grow wealth.

New York and London do in fact have considerable shares of the world’s wealthiest people. New York tops the list with more than 100 billionaires and London is sixth with 50. London leads in “ultra-high net worth” individuals with $30 million or more in assets, with New York in fourth place.

But, do the super-rich really damage great cities? While rarely occupied trophy apartments and lights-out buildings certainly make neighborhoods less vibrant, there are simply not enough super-rich people to deaden an entire city or even significant parts of it. New York City, after all, has more than eight million inhabitants and some three million housing units; its 100-plus billionaires and 3,000 or so ultra-high net worth multi-millionaires wouldn’t fill half the seats in Radio City Music Hall.

Ultimately, it’s not so much a plutocratic incursion of billionaires that is transforming many of the world’s great cities, but the much greater numbers of relatively well-off people who are flocking back to them, including the growing ranks of startup entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and well-paid techies who are trading in their houses in the suburbs for condos, apartments, and townhouses in the city.

The movement of urban high-tech startup companies and talent into urban centers is a real sea change. The leading high tech companies of the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s and even the early 2000s-- like Intel, Apple, and Google-- were all housed in corporate campuses in Silicon Valley. Microsoft’s headquarters was in suburban Redmond, Washington. Other high-tech companies clustered along the Route 128 suburbs outside Boston, in the suburbs of Austin, or the office parks of North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

That geography has changed dramatically as venture capital investment and startup companies have become much more urban.  Today, dense, urban San Francisco tops suburban Silicon Valley’s as the world’s number one location for venture capital-backed startups. New York City-- and in particular a small area of Lower Manhattan-- is second. Across the U.S., more than half of venture capital investment and nearly six in ten of U.S. startups are in urban zip codes.

Startups and cities are a natural match. Urban areas provide the diversity, creative energy, cultural richness, vibrant street-life, and openness to new ideas that the talent who launch and work for startups is looking for. Their industrial and warehouse buildings provide flexible and reconfigurable work spaces. While many large, well-established tech companies which require large headquarter sites-- like Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook to name a few-- remain in the suburbs, the startups that power innovation and growth draw their strength and inspiration from cities.

Cities also help new companies attract talent. Today’s hottest startups concentrate on digital and social media, games, and creative applications, which draw on the deep pools of designers, composers, scenarists, musicians, marketers, and copywriters that can be found in cities.

Still, as technology companies and techies who work for them head back to cities, they are increasingly being blamed for their deepening problems of housing affordability and urban inequality. In spring 2014, protests broke out in Oakland against the private buses that shuttle tech workers from their homes in the city’s gentrifying urban core to their jobs in the corporate campuses of Silicon Valley. In San Francisco’s Mission District, protestors dressed as clowns formed human pyramids, bounced giant exercise balls, and performed the can-can in front of a Google bus.

To what extent are urban startups and the techies who are increasingly settling in cities responsible for rising urban housing prices, inequality, and gentrification? On this, the evidence is actually mixed. There’s no question that the urban tech incursion has put pressure on housing costs, especially in cities like San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Seattle. The connections between economic inequality and urban tech are less clear-cut, however. For instance, the presence of startups and venture capital correlate with some measures of inequality but not others. Moreover, tech companies are huge drivers of innovation, economic growth, jobs, and much-needed tax revenues that cities can use to address and mitigate the problems that come with them.

There can be no doubt that the recent influx of the very rich, of tech startups and their employees, and of financial and other professionals into cities is generating real challenges and prompting highly charged conflicts. But has it blunted those cities’ cultural creativity, as some have charged? In a word, no: The creative strengths of superstar cities have actually increased.

The concentration of creative industries and creative jobs in superstar cities like New York and LA remains strong. LA’s concentration of artistic and creative fields across the board is nearly three times the national average, while New York’s is more than double. LA’s concentration of fine artists, painters and sculptors is nearly four times as high as the national average; New York’s is one-and-a-half times as high. New York has nearly three times and LA more than twice the national average for musicians and singers. Both metros have more than three times the national average for writers and authors. And New York’s concentration of fashion designers is ten times higher than the national average, while LA’s is nearly eight times higher.

But, for all of the dire warnings coming from established musicians and artists, these cities are at least as artistically creative as they ever were, and even more technologically innovative. On the whole, their creative economies are considerably stronger than they were back in the 1970s and 1980s. Would anyone really want to trade New York’s or LA’s economies today for their economic situation back in the 1970s or 80s? The answer is obvious. The addition of high tech to these cities’ traditional strengths in artistic creativity, has made their economies stronger.

Put bluntly, some of the noisiest controversies regarding our changing cities spring from the competing factions of a new urban elite. The much bigger problem is the widening gap between this relatively advantaged class and everyone else. It’s the poor and the working classes who are truly being displaced and shunted aside in our thriving cities, and the way to help them is not to turn off the spigot of wealth creation, but to make their flourishing economies more encompassing and inclusive.

We spoke with San Francisco author and anti-gentrification activist Denise Sullivan about Florida's assertions. "All these great new conveniences and services that the newly rich and super-rich insist upon," she reminded us, "don't actually enhance the quality of life; rather, they detract from the joys of city living, the reasons people traditionally creative people gravitated to city centers." She explained:

Take the ride share apps: You never have to interact with a person on the street or a person on the bus or a parking lot attendant. How is this different from mom or dad picking you up from soccer practice?

Artists, service workers, the middle class, can no longer function in a town that strives to serve and cater to the whims of the newly rich, the super-rich, and worst of all, the wannabe rich: I mean, who gets driven around except people who want to perceive themselves as being the driven? Frankly, I'd rather be the driver. Or maybe I should say, I relate more to the drivers. Of course most of them live in Fremont (a once undesirable suburb about 40 miles South of Oakland which now you're lucky if you can find a place to rent or own there).

The homogenous culture of San Francisco is heartbreaking:The disappearance of African American and Latino families, the middle or creative (and I don't mean tech creative) class, the small businesses that can no longer survive… but the real human tragedy is the housing crisis and its become a matter of human rights. The homelessness, the police violence/racial profiling, and even the mental health issues wrought by gentrification and all that goes with it are very real here. Talk to anyone who lives in a tent city, which according to some studies will tell you the occupants are over 70% San Franciscan. This is the real, live, in-progress, demonstration of how the super rich have destroyed us and how poor in spirit we've become as a city, as a society. We need to feed, cloth, and house our poor. We aren't doing it. I see that as a complete failure and collapse of civil society.

The other person we asked about this is progressive Democratic candidate Katie Hill, who's running for a swing district seat the encompasses Simi Valley, Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley just north of L.A. She runs a non-profit that's dedicated to helping homeless veterans find housing and get their lives back on track. After reading Florida's piece, she pointed out that "The housing crisis in L.A. and other thriving cities is a manifestation of income inequality and the ever-shrinking middle class. It could not be clearer than the high-end lofts we see now right next to Skid Row-- where the masses of homeless encampments make it look like we're stepping into a third world country." She elucidated:

The reality is that we have a lot of well-paying jobs-- in fact, many employers, including PATH, have a hard time finding and retaining qualified people for their most needed positions. But people coming from disadvantaged economic positions have so many factors working against them from birth that getting to the point of a master's degree or whatever other qualification is required for those high paying jobs is nearly impossible. They get stuck, lacking education and opportunity, in a cycle of low wage jobs (or worse, addiction, crime, and incarceration).

In L.A. county, studies show that someone needs to make more than $18 an hour to afford a studio apartment. Sadly, most of the jobs people without a degree qualify for come nowhere near that.

  It's no wonder we have have so much homelessness. Until we deal with the underlying issues-- income inequality, housing affordability, the class division that has happened and everything that goes with that-- we always will.

Beyond Homelessness, There is "Homefulness"

House keys not handcuffs: Melodie, 57, has been living on the street since 2007. She keeps her belongings attached to her at all times. Photo by Ekevara Kitpowsong, whose solo exhibit, City People, is on view now through July 31 at Modern Times Bookstore Collective in San Francisco. Profits from the sale of the images will be donated to The Gubbio Project.

- by Denise Sullivan

There are at present count over 6,000 people (and likely closer to 10,000) living outdoors, on the streets of San Francisco. They live in tent cities, in Golden Gate Park, in doorways on Market Street, in alleys in the Mission, on cardboard beds in the Haight, on patches of grass at Civic Center, in vehicles, and on benches at the beach. But the unhoused are under siege here as unaffordable housing, lack of services, and police violence continue to surge. The war against the homeless shows little sign of abating given the housing and eviction crisis: The murder of Luis Gongora by SFPD in April continues to shock and horrify with the recent revelations following his autopsy. And yet the city's technocrats and elites cleave to the idea that it's their freedoms which are being impinged upon; the sight of people living on the street is quite simply intolerable to them, though there may be a tiny crack of light in the darkness this week as Bay Area media launches an unprecedented barrage of coverage on all matters of homelessness.



The Beyond Homelessness Project began on Sunday and culminates today with over 70 Bay Area print, online, and radio outlets pledging to coordinate and intensify coverage of our beautiful and prosperous city's longstanding and growing unaffordability and its consequences. It's a baby step toward redirecting the narrative which so far, the organizer of the blitz, The San Francisco Chronicle, has either ignored or gotten terribly wrong. Failing to humanize our neighbors on the street, neglecting to report on a regular basis that around 70 percent of the people living homeless in San Francisco are displaced San Franciscans, and adhering to an editorial policy that reflects the opinions of, well, no one I know, the paper's editor-in-chief, Audrey Cooper, deigned it was time to begin more meaningful coverage on the subject of people living outdoors. Why? Because one day on her way to work she caught sight of a homeless couple having sex in their tent and it was simply too much for her to bear.

Though there has been a reporter charged with reporting on the homeless population, too often his pieces with intent to foster compassion end up doing the opposite, reinforcing ideas that longtime and new San Franciscans already hold. So when the reporter asks what may be a rhetorical question, like just when did San Francisco's streets become an "'open-air mental ward,'" I would argue the answer should be as sharp as the question. More than the result of budget cutting and law and order policies enacted in the Reagan era, the closing of mental health institutions and turning out people with no visible means of support much less the wherewithal to navigate the outside world, was the result of stone cold ticking off points on the far right's agenda. It needs to be said. And said again. So every potential voter gets the memorandum.

Here's a song Peter Case wrote 30 years about that period of time here and one San Franciscan impacted by poor federal, state, and local policy:



Over three and a half decades, San Francisco's mayors have struggled with a situation that veers from intractable to incomprehensible to potentially ripe for reform. Mayor Ed Lee's tepid assertions sound ridiculous on paper, though public outcry and pressure from the Board of Supervisors has resulted in the opening of homeless "navigation centers" and the promise of more. Meanwhile, he continues to order violent sweeps of encampments and tent cities, and police issue citations that the cited simply cannot pay, thereby criminalizing them. These so-called solutions rest uneasily side by side on the Bowery by the Bay.

Faith-based organizations carry a huge burden in caring for the downtrodden and dispossessed and yet they are increasingly marginalized and suspect themselves in secular society. Here in San Francisco the voices of religious leaders have been all but drown out and even their properties are being taken away from them. Nevertheless, the faithful continue to offer needed services like hot meals and shelter beds when the city falls short. This week the Rev. Cecil Williams, founder of Glide, one of the city's biggest providers of services wrote an editorial in which he declared homelessness a man-made disaster, a fault in the social contract. Glide is located in the Tenderloin where there is a longstanding tradition of non-violent street crime and social services, much like LA's Skid Row. The tech sector, though new to the neighborhood, believe its low-income neighbors have got to go, but there are those still working on the compassionate, innovative, and analog side of life, forging solutions that work there.

The Gubbio Project holds space for "sacred sleep" at St. Boniface church during daytime hours, allowing for the kind of rest that can prevent the psychosis-like symptoms caused by just one night of sleep deprivation. The Street Sheet published by the Coalition on Homelessness since 1989 and still publishing, provides news, information, and income to the people who sell it. Lave Mae is a mobile shower and toilet service with regular weekday stops. Based on the food truck model of doing business on wheels, the program is working.

And just to prove technology is not entirely at the root of all evil, there is at least one female-led company using its resources-- venture capital money and technological know how-- to actually do good for those we used to call street people. HandUp is an app that enables non-profits to raise money through online donations which support people in need directly. I learned about the service through one of their clients, a woman I pass with some regularity on the street. We speak from time to time, and eventually I asked if I could quote her for the purpose of this story. She asked me how she could tell if I was going to exploit her and I told her I guess she would just have to trust me on that. We both had a good laugh at my claim as I was making it, then talked further about our mutual missing teeth and left it at that (when I went back to follow-up with her, she had moved on). HandUp is working for her and until somebody tells me reason to believe otherwise, it sounds like it's a good stop gap while programs and services to fully care for the unhoused continue to develop and the digital divide closes. Personally, I liked finding out that the start-up's co-founder had a background that included working with Food Not Bombs, a meal program fairly active and supported by my friends and organizers during the punk rock-era and still holding strong (not coincidentally, the present storm of local media coverage has concerned a number of former punk musicians now in their 50s and 60s who are struggling on the street or who have perished, like Miss Kay from Polkacide did).

And just so you don't think I'm completely hardened to the ways of humankind, there are evermore good people working to make change in whatever ways they can: Earlier this year a public works employee refused to take part in a violent tear down of a make-shift abode. I don't know what happened to the worker, but I hope she retained her job. Sure it was one person, or in the case of HandUp, a few helping other people. But as far as I can tell, this is how functioning society is supposed to work, in lieu of its leaders or institutions doing anything about anything.

I work for a community-minded bookstore located in a neighborhood at the crossroads of gentrification and hard-hit. There is a men's shelter at the end of the block and sometimes the weary take a load off in our establishment. While it's true that the presence of mentally unstable, intoxicated, and unwashed San Franciscans may detract from the store's business, we choose to consciously engage (and disengage when necessary) with our neighbors. It takes time, effort, and admittedly we've had some difficulties but as you might imagine, people treated humanely respond in kind. The store has historically hired and served the activists and artists at the center of the movement for housing, economic and racial justice, many of them authors themselves: We are constantly learning from them how to better work for justice in an unjust town.

Among the city's most tireless advocates for decriminalizing poverty is the writer and spoken word performer Lisa Gray-Garcia, better known as Tiny. The activist, educator, and author combines street protest, poetry, and ancient ritual into a vision that suggests we transform the way we see, hear, and speak of our fellows. Divestment from the language of the oppressor is a tool that's been used by marginalized communities throughout history, and Tiny knows well how to work with words. Her terms like gentrifuckation put a fine point on exactly what's happening here. Her vision employs a complete overhaul of business as usual, the kind of change that moves from the bottom up and the inside out, the kind of work that begins at home. Gray-Garcia, her co-workers, and collaborators have either experienced living unhoused or know someone who has. They've confronted the grind of street survival and police brutality firsthand, and lived to tell the tales, and to help others along the way. Instead of homeless, they see people as "unhoused" but working toward "homefulness."

Though it's nice the Chronicle is finally getting up to speed on the idea that all of us who call San Francisco home are San Franciscans, it won't be until the unhoused become homeful and we can see and hear what those who have been there really have to say that the rest of us can truly say we that we too have moved beyond homelessness.




Denise Sullivan is the author of Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop. She writes from San Francisco on gentrification and the arts.

Pressure Remains On SFPD and Mayor To Clean Up Their Acts Post-Suhr-- Medical Professionals Join Fight For Reforms

UCSF Do No Harm Coalition at City Hall in San Francisco

-by Denise Sullivan

Following last Thursday's SFPD shooting of Jessica Williams in San Francisco's Bayview District, the campaign to Fire Chief Suhr succeeded when Mayor Ed Lee called for his resignation by day's end, while the push to reclaim the City by the Frisco 5 and their growing community of supporters, including medical professionals, remains in full force.

"The guy is no longer the chief and it's our victory, your victory," said the Frisco 5's Maria Cristina Gutierrez. "It took the sacrifice," she said of SFPD's latest victim, "But if we had not done what we did, it would've been business as usual." Gutierrez and three of the four hunger strikers, in partnership with Dr. Rupa Marya, assembled on Monday night at UCSF Hospital in San Francisco where the doctor presented her research on police violence. Dr. Marya who served as the Frisco Five's physician during its hunger strike and is part of the Division of Hospitalist Medicine at the school, has also been researching the toll gentrification and over-policing over a 30 year period has taken on Black and Brown lives in the Bay Area. Addressing a crowd of healthcare workers and community members, she deems police violence to be a public health crisis.

"Racism is influencing the killings and so is police impunity," said Dr. Marya, who has formed the UCSF Do No Harm Coalition of healthcare workers committed to ending police violence. "Police killings need to be counted and reported."

Dr. Marya sees no contradiction in the "political" issue of police brutality and the "science" of medicine. As a doctor, saving lives is her business. She believes in the idea of doctor and patient advocacy and demonstrates an extraordinary compassion and integrity in her work. Noticing the gap in the way communities of color are served by the healthcare systems, she became more motivated to get involved in the movement for medical justice while studying the case of Alex Nieto, shot 59 times by police in his neighborhood. Described as "a foreigner" by the 911 caller who perceived him as a threat, "He was a San Franciscan," said Dr. Marya, who is California-born and was raised by her parents in India and South of France.

Beyond mortality issues, Dr. Marya asserts police violence has an impact on the well being of the community, especially loved ones left behind; the violence and impunity may also lead to civil unrest and the immediate and longterm traumatic effects that go with it (she pointed to Baltimore, where a CVS pharmacy was destroyed and the people who needed medication went without, while others who didn't need it became vulnerable to a free flow of opioids on their streets). The takeaway? Police violence does harm to the body politic, and in case there is any further doubt about it, Dr. Marya noted the shooting in Bayview last week occurred as she was preparing slides for her talk. Here in San Francisco, though African Americans account for anywhere from just three to six percent of the overall population, they are five times more likely to be shot by police than whites.

"A movement is going to require everyone sit at the table," said SFPD Sergeant Yulanda Williams who was also a panelist in attendance at UCSF. An African American and longtime member of Officers for Justice, Williams admits her department suffers from "endemic" racism ("They don't like to say systemic," she says) though one thing she's certain of is issuing the force tasers is not a likely solution for reducing harm. "I have no more room on my gun belt and am not looking for any more toys," she said.

Williams vouched for now acting chief Toney Chaplain who she's known since the police academy and believes he will hold officers accountable---"I'll make sure that happens," she said---but she also admits reform is easier said than done. "You have a department that supports nepotism, cronyism and legacy police officers," she said, and "a union that constantly disrespects people."

The Frisco 5 also believes accountability to be the top priority. It also wishes to have a say in the search for a new chief, among other demands. "We need to see the officers who did the shooting charged," said Frisco 5's Edwin Lindo. "Ed Lee is next."

Preparations to recall the Mayor have been underway for some time (various straw polls indicate there's the will and even a candidate), and while no such action can take place until November, the coalitions for police and ultimately city government reform continue to gather funds, signatures, and steam for the long road ahead. If this show of support from the medical community is sign of what's in store, perhaps more institutional bodies will get ready to sign on in the fight to save San Francisco from itself. Asked if there are other hospitals and healthcare workers initiating these kinds of radical shifts in the way police violence is perceived, Dr. Marya answered. "So…This is a revolution and it's starting now."

Oh yes, and while we're here: Dr. Marya is also a professional musician who fronts Rupa and the April Fishes (look for the cameo by musician/activist Boots Riley in this clip).




Denise Sullivan writes about music and gentrification issues from San Francisco for DWT. Her most recent book is Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop.