Lee Heidhues 5.25.2022

Several weeks ago I blogged that the Recall of DA Chesa Boudin is a political lynching. I sent the Blog to San Francisco Mayor’s London Breed’s office and was asked to take it down. I did not. I will not. The Recall is a coup d’etat and political lynching.

This campaign has been aided by the craven and shameless endorsement by local collaborators with the Reactionary anti-Progressive forces:  Supervisor Catherine Stefani, 2019 DA candidate Nancy Tung, former Chair of the Democratic County Central Committee Mary Jung and Andrea Shorter, who is being paid $16,000 monthly to lead this political coup d’etat.

When Chesa was elected I told him, “They’re going to come after you”.  

I had no idea it would be so vicious.  Chesa has done everything he promised during the campaign to use the District Attorney’s office to bring a new look to the pursuit of Justice in San Francisco.

 I was an Usher at his inaugural in the Marines Memorial Building. It was a joyous occasion. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor endorsed his ascension to office in a video address.

His supporters told Chesa they would be holding him accountable for keeping to his campaign promises.  A pledge he has kept from Day One.

San Francisco is going to reap a Whirlwind on June 7 when a slothful and credulous citizenry vote to Recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin. The anti-Recall campaign is telling San Francisco “Don’t be Conned”.

To the detriment of San Francisco the citizenry is ignoring the message and drinking the kool-aid offered up by the treacherous deep pocketed Recall campaign.

City Hall insiders have never taken to Chesa Boudin.  Particularly when he defeated Mayor London Breed’s hand picked interim DA Suzy Loftus in the November 2019 election.  The political knives were unsheathed virtually the moment after his inaugural on January 8, 2020.

No mind. The incendiary and anti-Democratic Recall campaign which spent $1,500,000 on mercenary signature gatherers and the subsequent millions in MAGA right wing money have done their job well.

Excerpted from 48 Hills – Tim Redmond 5.25.2022

A strange thing is happening in the local and national news media as they address the attempted recall of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin:

The media outlets claim that Boudin is suffering from bad news media­—and don’t seem to recognize that they are playing a role.

The reality: This recall effort is entirely a media-created monster.

The local news media have been obsessed with three themes: Crime is a growing problem in San Francisco. Locking people up is the best solution. Because Boudin isn’t locking up enough people he’s responsible for the alleged crime wave.

A corollary: Drug deaths from Fentanyl are a crisis that is best addressed by arresting and prosecuting dealers. Boudin isn’t locking up enough small-tine street dealers, so he’s responsible for the overdose epidemic.

None of these things are true. The data makes clear than none of them are true. And yet that’s the message we keep hearing, over and over—and it’s exactly the message that the Recall Boudin campaign is trumpeting.

For the record: Boudin is doing exactly what he said he would do when he ran for office. There is no evidence that he is corrupt or incompetent (even the very conservative Chron, which has been a big part of this media myth, said he shouldn’t be recalled.)

Every prosecutor in the country has faced challenges during a global pandemic. Courtrooms have been closed; judges have limited access to the most serious cases. Crime patterns have shifted in San Francisco; while overall crime is down, property crimes that used to happen in tourist areas have moved to the neighborhoods.

The Boudin recall is entirely based on local media mythology. They should own it.

Art work at top from ‘Soul of a Nation’ Exhibit – deYoung Museum, San Francisco 11.8.2019

It takes a sports guy to say it all.

ESPN – 5.24.2022

DALLAS — Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr didn’t want to talk about basketball in his pregame news conference heading into Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night.

“When are we going to do something?” Kerr yelled, slamming his fists on the table. “I’m tired. I am so tired of getting up here and offering condolences to the devastated families that are out there. I am so tired of the, excuse, I am sorry, I am tired of the moments of silence. Enough!”

Kerr has long been outspoken against gun violence. His father was shot dead in a terrorist attack in Beirut in 1984, and he has spent much of his professional life calling for gun law reform.

Basketball, he said, didn’t matter.

“Since we left shootaround, 14 children were killed, 400 miles from here. And a teacher,” Kerr said, referring to the mass shooting that occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, earlier Tuesday.

The death toll has since risen to 19 children and two adults, according to a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. The 18-year-old suspect, a student at Uvalde High School who entered the elementary school with a handgun and possibly a rifle, is also dead, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said.

On numerous occasions, including Tuesday, Kerr has pointed to H.R.8, a bill that would tighten background check rules for firearm purchases. That bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in early 2021, but it never got to the Senate floor.

“There’s a reason why they won’t vote on it,” Kerr said. “To hold on to power.”

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/33979219/warriors-steve-kerr-delivers-impassioned-plea-gun-control-texas-school-shooting-get-numb-this

Lee Heidhues 5.23.2022

When I think of Vangelis I will always think of his score from the cult classic “Blade Runner”. I have viewed the Ridley Scott film several times in the theater and watched it countless times on DVD, and now streaming.

Vangelis soundtrack sets the tone for this dystopian futuristic tale which still resonates 40 years after its cinematic release in 1982. Absent Vangelis’ score I don’t know if “Blade Runner” would have its lasting impact.

Excerpted from Variety 5.19.2022

Vangelis, the electronic-music pioneer who won an Oscar for “Chariots of Fire” and composed such other landmark film scores as “Blade Runner,” died May 17 the Athens News Agency reported. He was 79. Greek media reports say he died in a French hospital while being treated for COVID-19.

The Oscar for “Chariots of Fire” made him immediately bankable as a film composer. Ridley Scott hired him for his science-fiction film “Blade Runner” and Costa-Gavras engaged him for the Jack Lemmon drama “Missing,” both in 1982 and both nominated for BAFTA awards. The Mel GIbson remake of “The Bounty” followed in 1984.

The self-taught musician enjoyed a long career in European pop music before the magical textures and colors of his 1970s solo albums brought him to the attention of film and TV producers. The use of a track from his 1975 album “Heaven and Hell” as the theme for Carl Sagan’s 1980 PBS series “Cosmos” brought his name and music into prominence in America.

But it was his music for the 1981 film “Chariots of Fire” that brought him worldwide fame. Producer David Puttnam made the unorthodox choice for his period sports drama after hearing Vangelis’s music for the French nature documentary “Opera Sauvage” and the studio album “China.”

He declined to attend the Academy Awards, where he won in March 1982. “They put a lot of pressure on me to go to America for the Oscar,” he told a British journalist at the time, “but I don’t like to be pushed, and especially for that. I hate the idea of competition.”

Subsequent scores, also for historical dramas, included Ridley Scott’s “1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992) and Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” (2004), both less celebrated but still musically compelling for their mix of electronics with conventional orchestra and choirs. He also scored Roman Polanski’s erotic thriller “Bitter Moon” (1992).

Vangelis was born Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou on March 29, 1943, and raised in Athens. A self-taught pianist, he formed a rock band, the Forminx, in 1963, playing pop music and Beatles covers, but began working on film scores and sessions a few years later. After relocating to Paris, in 1968 he formed the progressive-rock quartet Aphrodite’s Child with a group of Greek expatriates, including Demis Roussos. The group enjoyed chart success in several European countries, particularly the single “Rain and Tear.”

After that group dissolved, he declined an offer to replace Rick Wakeman in progressive-rock legends Yes and instead focused on solo work and film scores. However, after moving to London in 1975, he began collaborating with Yes singer Jon Anderson, with whom he released four albums as “Jon and Vangelis” between 1980 and 1991, one of which reached the British top 5.

Increasingly reclusive, he gave few interviews, preferring studio work to publicity and promotion. Yet in one 1980s interview, he said this: “People say that a synthesizer is a machine, not a natural sound. Everything is natural. The first instrument built – a flute or maybe a tom-tom – was a machine to create sound. Acoustical conventional instruments, like a guitar, are fantastic, but they are restricted and always give the same sort of sound. It allows us to go beyond what we have known. You can start from a beep, and develop a whole range of sounds with endless variations. It is incredible.”

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/vangelis-dead-chariots-of-fire-blade-runner-1235272061/

 

Liz and Lee Heidhues 5.19.2022

San Francisco Water Power Sewer

Jonathan “JP” Streeter – Communications Specialist-SFPUC

jstreeter@sfwater.org

525 Golden Gate Avenue – 12^th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94102

Subject:  Appellant Brief re Appeal – February 24, 2022, Decision to Approve Application to Remove One Street Tree (With in lieu Replacement) On Clement Street at 39^th Avenue

SFPUC Notice to Public 4.27.2022

Hearing Brief submitted by Liz and Lee Heidhues

The Decision to remove a healthy, well established New Zealand Christmas tree to install an irrigation system to benefit a privileged class, the golfing community, is an egregious, selfish unwarranted action against residents, our tree community, and our urban wildlife.

An “in lieu” replacement of a decades old historic tree is unacceptable. Its destruction is driven solely by a desire to accommodate a privileged few and by the City’s apathy towards natural urban spaces that meet the needs of all users and not just golfers.

My wife and I have lived near 39^th Avenue and Clement Street over 40 years. We are well familiar with the topography, the golf course, and the buildings adjacent to it.

The beautiful fully-grown New Zealand Christmas tree serves as a canopy and a roosting place for songbirds, mourning doves, and neighborhood wildlife. Looking at it, we see it in its essential role  supporting a threatened tree canopy growing alongside a residential street.

Equally important, The New Zealand Christmas tree serves as a shield to absorb toxic fumes from cars, buses, trucks, and motorcycles which use Clement Street as a daily thoroughfare going to and from the nearby Veterans Administration Hospital.

Since involving ourselves early this year opposing the proposed destruction of this beautiful tree, we have inspected and photographed the site of  the New Zealand Christmas tree on several occasions.  It has grown there for decades.

This beautiful integral part of the neighborhood landscape does not need to be destroyed or tampered with  to accommodate the needs of a privileged class of resident – Golfers.

It must be preserved and maintained for the benefit of all.

There is a way to preserve this asset while accommodating the privileged class of golfers.

A cement path runs just yards from the tree routing north from Clement Street to a fence adjacent to an auxiliary structure next to the Lincoln Park Golf Course.

SFPUC lacks ingenuity in the face of bureaucratic inertia.

It would be a basic engineering matter to construct a work-around and install the proposed piping so that it avoids the tree while meeting the City’s specious goal of watering the lawns of a  privileged class.

Hewing a healthy well-established tree to water a golf course is a misuse of public green space.

This purpose destroys habitats for urban wildlife.

The Lincoln Park Golf Course contains significant areas which erode natural habitat – eg. sand pits – and requires heavy pesticide use and fertilizer to maintain.

The removal of this beautiful New Zealand Christmas Tree further documents SFPUC’s dismal history in NOT:  beautifying public spaces, preserving our dwindling tree canopy, buffering residents from traffic noise and auto pollution, ensuring roosting/living places for our urban wildlife, and all of the multiple “lovelies” Joyce Kilmer talks about in her poem “Trees”. (see attached)

Attached is a spreadsheet showing clearly the SFPUC track-record in recent years for simply destroying trees without replacing them.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1amg-aW8P7H5le9vPOW33xQv2QGHgvoW8e3q-NZFEksM/edit?usp=sharing

The SFPUC needs to do the right thing.

It needs to make a clear and unambiguous statement to the people of San Francisco who care deeply about the environment in a time of environmental degradation and climate change – that the SFPUC respects and protects the health of the residents and the environment.

Included are  photos of the beautiful New Zealand Christmas Tree at 39^th Avenue and Clement Street.

Submitted,

Elizabeth and Lee Heidhues

 

Attachments:

Trees – Joyce Kilmer

JKlipp Brief In Support Of Appeal of Decision To Remove Tree @ 39th & Clement

SFPUC Hearing Notice 4.27.2022

 

 

 

Lee Heidhues 5.17.2022

Shameful are Recall endorsements by two local politicians. One a former Assistant District Attorney. The other currently an Assistant District Attorney.  

Both must realize it is unethical and blatant political expediency to join in this attempted political Coup d’etat against the sitting San Francisco DA.  Chesa Boudin.

Both are on Mayor London Breed’s short list should the Recall succeed.

•  San Francisco Board of Supervisor member Catherine Stefani, a one-time Assistant District Attorney in Contra Costa. She now represents the wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood. 
• Nancy Tung, currently an Assistant District Attorney in Alameda County. She finished third in a field of four running against DA Boudin in 2019. The ambitious Tung has made clear her plans to run, again in 2023. https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/chesa-boudin-recall-nancy-tung-looks-to-take-another-shot-at-running-for-da/
• https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/attorney/Licensee/Detail/203236 .

It is truly depressing and exasperating that San Francisco, whose reputation for Progressive politics is clearly overblown, may be living up to the reputation that real San Franciscans know exists.  Parochial, conservative, biased, racist and pro Cop.

San Francisco has now been seduced by the MAGA crowd with its millions of dollars which spent 1.4MM on mercenaries to qualify for the ballot.  Spending millions more on false and misleading ads, recruiting what can only be called collaborators in their MAGA campaign in San Francisco.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Examiner 5.17.2022

If voters recall DA Chesa Boudin, San Francisco would be placed well to the right of many American cities and counties on issues of criminal justice and, indeed, civil rights.

A signal that San Francisco’s drift rightward has accelerated.

So, as the June 7 recall approaches, the district attorney faces a recall attempt due to a crime wave that doesn’t really exist and that — if it did exist — would be due to factors such as The City not having enough police, the opioid epidemic and the rising cost of living in the Bay Area, all of which are beyond Boudin’s control. To state the obvious, the recall attempt is about politics, not crime.

Chesa Boudin is American progressive royalty. So it is no surprise conservative groups and individuals cannot abide him. But the days when the DA was tough on crime and always sided with police are over in America — and Boudin is a reflection of that.

Opinion: Is San Francisco about to be celebrated by Fox News?

Lee Heidhues 5.14.2022

The disturbing photo of American basketball Brittney Griner star hooded and handcuffed in a Moscow courtroom on May 13 is sad, barbaric and reprehensible.

Detained by Vladimir Putin’s Police State for allegedly possessing hash oil since February, the 31 year old is looking at 10 years in Putin’s gulag.  Brittney Griner has become a pawn in Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

Excerpted from The New York Times 5.14.2022

A court in Russia on Friday extended the pretrial detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner until June 18, her lawyer said.

While Ms. Griner was arrested one week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities did not reveal her detention until days after the war began, raising fears she could be used as a bargaining chip in the overall crisis.

Ms. Griner, one of the most decorated athletes in women’s basketball, has been in Russian custody since mid-February on drug charges that can carry up to 10 years in prison. The charge is based on allegations that she had vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage when she was stopped at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow in February.

Ms. Griner appeared in court in the town of Khimki near Moscow for a procedural hearing on Friday, according to her lawyer, Aleksandr Boikov.

“She is OK,” Mr. Boikov said in an interview, adding that the court denied his appeal to have Ms. Griner transferred to house arrest. He said he expects the trial to begin in about two months.

The U.S. State Department has said it had determined Ms. Griner was “wrongfully detained,” signaling its intention to get more actively involved in the situation.

Lee Heidhues 5.11.2022

The entire World is shocked and appalled by the wanton murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in territory occupied by Israel by a member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

Ms. Abu Akleh was clearly identified with a PRESS vest. The Israeli Defense Force assassin murdered the journalist from a distance shooting her through the back of the neck and head.

This totally cowardly and indefensible act calls for swift condemnation and action against the Israeli government, Israeli Defenses Forces and those responsible for this murder.

The American government cannot stand by and treat this as business as usual with the Israeli government. There must be an accounting and ramifications for this murderous act against a Palestinian-American journalist.

Excerpted from Al Jazeera 5.11.2022

• Calls for an independent investigation into the killing of veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh grow amid global outrage.
• Abu Akleh has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
• The 51-year-old was covering an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot in the face by a single bullet, despite wearing a press vest.
• Another Palestinian journalist, Ali al-Samoudi, was wounded in the back but is in a stable condition.
• Al Jazeera, in a statement, said Abu Akleh was “assassinated in cold blood” and called on the international community to hold Israeli forces responsible

Shireen Abu Akleh – January 3, 1971 – May 11, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shireen_Abu_Akleh

US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has called on the American government to investigate the killing of Abu Akleh, saying that Washington should not allow “the same people committing those war crimes to do the investigation,” referring to Israel.

“We need to investigate, ourselves, the killing of an American citizen. Somebody that was out there being a guardian of truth and doing her job was murdered by an apartheid government that we continue to fund with unconditional aid,” Tlaib told Al Jazeera in a TV interview.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/11/veteran-al-jazeera-journalist-killed-by-israeli-forces-live-news

 

Lee Heidhues  = May 7, 2022

It was a joyful Saturday on JFK Promenade in San Francisco’s historic Golden Gate Park, celebrating its 150th birthday.

A large crowd gathered on a breezy sunny windswept afternoon as Mayor London Breed signed into law legislation designating a 1.5 strip of land car free forever. There was music, roller skating, dragon dancers, people of all ages, City officials who soaked in this momentous victory.

It took decades of tireless advocacy. The People prevailed and put San Francisco on the map as a leader in listening to the desires of people who want an oasis free of cars.

Following is a photo montage which conveys the victory better than words.