The Guardian far away in London has this report about the Black homeless population in San Francisco famous for its cable cars, Fisherman’s Wharf and Boudin French bread.

There is also a hungry underbelly which escapes the notice of most San Franciscans.

The Guardian 2.21.2020

The Tenderloin is where many of the city’s homeless services

are centered, making it a hub for the unhoused as they seek help. In a city where the black population teeters between 5% and 6%, 37% of its growing homeless population is black. “They sleep outside of my building,” Mixon, 49, said.

“They’re people I’ve known for years. They went from having places to live to being out out there on the streets. With me living in the Tenderloin, I see a lot of these people all the time and it hurts for me to see so many black people out there.”

In a state where a housing crisis has given way to a surge in homelessness, a disproportionate number of those experiencing housing instability are black. In Los Angeles, 37.5% of the homeless population is black, while in Oakland, where 70% of the homeless population is black, whole homeless encampments are dedicated to black and Latinx people.

The disparity is reflected nationwide. Although black people made up 13.4% of the overall population, according to the latest US census data, 39.8% of all homeless people were black.

Mixon joined a group with the Coalition on Homelessness on Thursday, going from office to office in San Francisco City Hall to bring attention to this racial disparity during Black History Month. Just nine months ago, Mixon was homeless too, along with her nine-year-old daughter. For almost a year, she said, she and her daughter lived in shelters, hotel rooms and on the couches of family and friends.

“It was tough,” said Mixon, who is now a peer organizer for the Coalition on Homelessness. “I made sure she was in school every day. I made sure I was at work every day. Just because we were homeless, I didn’t want our routine to be stopped.”

More and more throughout California, the homeless find themselves in similar circumstances as Mixon and her daughter: holding down jobs, making a decent living, going to school – just not able to find an affordable place to live.

In the office of the San Francisco lawmaker Rafael Mandelman, Miquesha Willis broke down in tears talking about her current situation.

Willis, 32, makes $30 an hour at her construction job. But she and her two-year-old son are homeless, staying with her mother on good days and scrambling to find shelter on bad days.

“It’s a cycle, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” she said in an interview. “My wages are OK, but it’s not enough for San Francisco. It’s not enough for market-rate rent. It’s too much for below market-rate rent. I’m still trying to increase my wages to beat homelessness here. It’s crazy.”

In cities like San Francisco, black communities are getting pushed out as rent prices get jacked up. Between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the black population fell by 19% in San Francisco and almost 23% in Oakland. Black residents are forced to move farther inland to places where housing is cheaper, such as Antioch and Stockton – even though for many, their jobs remain in the city.

Willis tried moving to Antioch but couldn’t make the commute work. Her job required her to clock in before public transportation began running on some days, and her car broke down, making it impossible for her to get to work.

Like so many people her age, Willis is questioning what she wants to do for a living – if it would be worth it to finish college, to try starting her own business, to switch careers. San Francisco made its name this century as the hub for the latest tech boom, where anyone with a startup idea could come and achieve their dreams. But Willis has found that San Francisco is only a welcoming place only for some, for those who can afford the privilege to fail.

“There are people who are trying to make things happen for themselves and trying to grow in their career and make something happen for their families,” she said. “This is one of the highest-paying cities. Why are so many people struggling here?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/21/san-francisco-bay-area-homelessness-african-americans

Americans are fixated on the sentencing of Trump’s Fool Roger Stone and the Bloviator in Chief’s dismantling of America’s legal framework.

And well they should be.  

What is happening in America is occuring in Germany, too in a very nihilistic and violent level. When the Nazis are in the ascendancy violence and mayhem are the order of the day.

Watch out America. Your turn to Fascism is rapidly approaching.

Deutsche Welle 2.20.2020

German Officials have said a deadly shooting was the result of deep-seated racism, which the suspected perpetrator had posted about online. The attack came hours after the German government approved an online hate speech bill.

The strongarm tactics by Federal authorities arresting people in a State courthouse invasion is an assault on the rights of States to protect the undocumented.

Chesa Boudin ran on a platform of changing the criminal justice system.  He is keeping his campaign vows. He condemned the Federal authorities strongarm tactics.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 2.19.2020

Federal immigration officials said they arrested two people Tuesday at Sonoma County Superior Court, a move that infuriated immigrant rights activists and local officials who said the action will have a chilling effect on undocumented communities coming forward when crimes are committed.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin  issued a statement slamming the arrests. “ICE actions at courthouses undermine our ability to hold defendants accountable by deterring undocumented victims and witnesses from cooperating with the justice system,” he said. “These actions make all of us less safe.”

“We want to remind all of our residents that the city and county of San Francisco is a sanctuary city,” Mayor London Breed said in a video statement, which also featured Police Chief Bill Scott. “We will continue to do everything we can to support our immigrant communities.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, informed the county Sheriff’s Office around 7:45 a.m. Tuesday that federal agents would be present at the courthouse. By the time the court’s morning sessions were under way after 9 a.m., ICE had made its arrests, according to the office of county District Attorney Jill Ravitch.

The district attorney’s office said ICE arrested “at least three” individuals in and around the courthouse. But ICE on Wednesday said it arrested two people: Antonio Hernandez Lopez and Pedro Romero Aguirre, both undocumented immigrants from Mexico.

The arrests mark the latest episode in the standoff between federal immigration officials and local authorities that adhere to city, county and state sanctuary policies. Elected officials in Sonoma County and the Bay Area at large condemned Tuesday’s arrests, which they say put communities at risk by creating an environment where people fear going to court or cooperating with law enforcement.

“Public safety partners have worked with the immigrant community to foster trust. This action will impact that effort,” Ravitch’s office said in a statement Wednesday. “It is essential that victims and witnesses feel safe to report their experiences so that we can hold the guilty accountable.”

In a joint statement several officials released, Sonoma County Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi said, “ICE operations have no place in the court building.”

ICE defended the arrests Wednesday, arguing it has the legal authority to detain the men, who have criminal convictions and several previous encounters with immigration authorities, the agency said.

The agency condemned California’s sanctuary policies and vowed to continue arresting immigrants who are in the country illegally.

“Our officers will not have their hands tied by sanctuary rules when enforcing immigration laws to remove criminal aliens from our communities,” said David Jennings, head of ICE’s San Francisco office, in a statement Wednesday.

The agency also said local jusridictions that choose not to cooperate with ICE “are likely to see an increase in ICE enforcement activity” because immigration officials will conduct a larger number of enforcement operations.

Santa Rosa Police arrested Lopez on Dec. 24 on suspicion of inflicting corporal injury to a spouse, driving under the influence and preventing a witness from reporting a crime, ICE said. The charges are pending. He has a 2005 DUI conviction and was arrested by ICE officers four times between 2004 and 2007, according to ICE. At some point, Lopez voluntarily left for Mexico and returned.

Aguirre has five criminal convictions spanning more than a decade, ICE said, including misdemeanor trespassing, driving without a license, driving under the influence, illegal entry and misdemeanor battery. The agency arrested him six times in 2010 — he returned voluntarily to Mexico three of those times and was ordered removed the remaing three times, ICE said.

Both men are in deportation proceedings.

Defense attorney Martin Woods said a client of his was scheduled to enter a plea for a misdemeanor DUI and domestic violence case Tuesday morning but never made it inside the building. Instead, his client was arrested in the parking lot around 8:30 a.m. Woods did not disclose the name of his client.

“He was on his way to court,” Woods said. “I really don’t know exactly what happened.”

Woods said he told the judge, who continued the case to March and asked for verification of the arrest. Woods said he had not spoken to his client.

Court officials in San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Napa and Contra Costa counties said they had not heard of similar arrests in their jurisdictions. Alameda and Marin counties court officials did not immediately respond to inquiries.

But concerns still mounted about the potential impact the arrests could introduce.

A spokesman for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office said the agency did not work with immigration officials on the arrests and it heard of the activity only when ICE called a dispatcher.

The arrests could affect all aspects of the judicial proceedings, Woods said, potentially resulting in defendants unwilling to go to courthouses and prosecutors who won’t be able to conclude cases because people won’t show up for their court appearances or to testify.

“It’s chaos,” Woods said. “Everybody at the courthouse is quite taken aback.”

Bernie Sanders terrifies corporate America, much of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media. Should he become President on January 20, 2021 the days of business as usual will be over.

It could be that Bernie Sanders will become the Democrats nominee. People who fear he can’t win the election are really afraid of what he would accomplish as President.  A massive shift in government priorities.

The American political campaign will be a brutal, nasty affair. Bernie will lay to waste the Trump administration, corporate America and the priviliged class. The Wall Street Journal is the best barometer in voicing the fears of the ruling class.

The Guardian 2.18.2020

Bernie Sanders railed against his fellow Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg during his first 2020 campaign visit to Washington state, as the billionaire continues to rise in the polls despite mounting criticism over his past remarks about women and minorities.

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published on Tuesday showed Sanders leading in the Democratic primary contest at 31% support nationally, with Bloomberg surging into second place with 19% support.

But the two put forward starkly different visions for the future of the Democratic party, and a post-Trump America.

Sanders called the programme “racist” and said it “caused communities of colour, African Americans and Latinos, to live in fear and humiliation in New York City”.

Speaking about inequality in America, he also called out Bloomberg’s wealth (he is estimated to be one of the 10 richest people in the world), which has repeatedly been a point of contention for many of his Democratic opponents.

“We have a corrupt political system which enables billionaires to buy elections,” he said. “So today we say to those billionaires who are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support candidates who represent the rich and the powerful; today we say to Mayor Bloomberg: we are a democracy, not an oligarchy.”

Bloomberg has said he will not take political donations and is expected to work for only $1 a year if elected to the presidency.

The media mogul has also received recent criticism for comments he made four years ago in which he seemingly questioned the intelligence of American factory and farm workers, as well as comments he made in 2013, in which he compared local members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and New York’s teachers union to the gun lobbying group the National Rifle Association (NRA).

According to Politico, a Bloomberg campaign spokesman, Stu Loeser, responded to the comments by saying, “reference to the [teachers union] was something Mike said in the heat of the moment that he now regrets.”

Sanders said: “As a United States senator, I truly appreciate the power of the corporate elites and the 1%; they have endless and I mean endless amounts of money. They own, to a large degree, the media; they have tremendous control over our economy; they are very, very powerful. But at the end of the day, we are the 99%.”

Sanders’ extremely positive showings in Iowa and New Hampshire boosted his chances of winning the Democratic nomination and ultimately beating Donald Trump. In an unorthodox strategy, Bloomberg skipped the early states, and will instead enter the race on Super Tuesday on 3 March.

In 2016, Sanders won Washington’s Democratic caucuses. The state has since switched to the primary system and moved up its vote to 10 March.

Sanders has raised over $2m in Washington state, the most of any Democratic presidential candidate, according to the Seattle Times, which cited data through the end of 2019 from the Federal Election Commission. The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, were right behind, with about $1.6m and $1.5m raised respectively. Trump has brought in over $2.7m from the state.

Despite Sanders’ criticisms of Bloomberg, several of his supporters said they would still vote for the billionaire if he wins the nomination.

“I would be sorry to turn my back on a president who has manipulated and bought in order to get the position to go to somebody who would be a passable middle-of-the-road Republican, who also buys and barters for the position instead of turning to the people,” said Dusty Collings, 68, a Sanders supporter from Poulsbo, a small city north-west of Seattle.

But when asked during the rally whether she would support Bloomberg if he won the Democratic nomination, she didn’t hesitate. “I would vote for the Congress of tropical birds to get rid of Trump,” said Collings, an artist who was a Sanders caucus delegate for Washington state’s Kitsap county in 2016. “If that’s who we nominate, that’s who I will vote for.”

Ryan Hull, 20, said he supports Sanders primarily because of his stance on the environment. But the sophomore at Clark College, in Vancouver, Washington, who drove about two hours for the rally with his mom and sister, said if Bloomberg wins the nomination, he would ultimately vote for him.

“He shares enough of the same ideals for me that it’s not too big of a movement,” said Hull. But he said he would also just like to see Trump leave the White House, so “whoever’s going to win for the Democrats, that’s who I want,” he said.

However, not everyone at the rally shared that same sentiment. Leanne Young, 28, a Seattle resident, called Bloomberg “basically the Democratic version of Trump”, and said she would probably not vote for him if he’s the nominee because she doesn’t “see him being much better than Trump”.

Bloomberg, who launched his presidential campaign in November, will appear in Wednesday’s televised presidential debate in Las Vegas alongside Biden, Sanders, Warren Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Bloomberg’s campaign said it was seeing a groundswell of support across the country and that qualifying for Wednesday’s debate is the latest sign that Bloomberg’s plan is resonating with more Americans.

The primetime event will be a stark departure from Bloomberg’s highly choreographed campaign. He has poured more than $300m into television advertising, a way to define himself for voters without facing criticism.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/bernie-sanders-mike-bloomberg-washington-state

San Francisco Outer Richmond District 2.16.2020

Kuan Yin, the beautiful statue of the goddess of compassion, rises tonight like the ancient Greek “Phoenix.” The new headless Kuan Yin obtains life from the ashes of her predecessor, the old complete Kuan Yin. The neighborhood has spoken. Vandals and degradation shall not remove the Peace of our neighborhood.

Several weeks ago mindless vandals destroyed the beautiful statue which has sat on the corner just three blocks from land’s end of San Francisco overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The vandalism was akin to an unlawful assault on a neighborhood citizen.

The willful abuse provoked a heartfelt response of the mistreatment visited upon one of its neighborhood icons.

Kuan Yin is almost human in the adoration it draws from the citizenry.

Whether it be a vandalized work of art or a member of the neighborhood who is mistreated the people will speak out.

A profile:  The German version of Donald Trump.

Deustche Welle  2.7.2020

Nearly a quarter of voters in Thuringia voted for the far-right AfD last fall. The party’s state boss, Björn Höcke, a man who is cheered and jeered across the nation, symbolizes the AfD’s hard-right surge.

Earlier this month, the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party caused a political earthquake in the eastern German state of Thuringia, sending shockwaves across the nation. It did so by withdrawing its own candidate for state premier at the last minute during a parliamentary vote and instead backing Thomas Kemmerich of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP). Ultimately, AfD support secured victory for the FDP politician, and though Kemmerich stepped down the next day, the compact that Germany’s parties had sworn to — the promise of never working with the AfD — had been broken by the FDP and politicians from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). There can be little doubt that Björn Höcke, Thuringia’s extraordinarily polarizing AfD party leader, was behind the plot.

Read more: A disgrace for Germany

Highly divisive figure

Höcke’s ability to rile voters is infamous, and it was on full display last October, in the run-up to state parliamentary elections. When Höcke takes the stage things get very loud, with some in the crowd cheering him with chants of “Höcke, Höcke,” while others boo and scream “Nazis out.”

On that October day in the small Thuringian town of Bad Langensalza, the growing division in German society could not have been clearer, and no one seemed to enjoy the agitated mood more than Höcke himself. He threw up his arms to greet his supporters as he took the stage, wearing a smirk that would remain for the duration of his speech.

Höcke is undoubtedly the most divisive politician in the country. But when Thuringians went to the polls on October 27, he also led his party to historic gains, taking 23% of the vote — making the AfD the state’s second most popular party. Opinions polls showed, however, that only 8% of voters would have voted for him as state premier.

Still, for many in his own party, Höcke is a man who is too far to the right of the political spectrum. It is not hard to imagine why, Höcke has called for a “180-degree turnaround” in the way Germany looks at its past, and he regularly uses expressions like “degenerate” or “total victory” in his speeches — despite the fact that as a former history teacher he knows full well which dark chapter of German history he is conjuring up.

Axel Salheiser, a right-wing extremism researcher in the eastern German city of Jena, says the speeches that Höcke and many other AfD politicians deliver are riddled with words and phrases “confusingly similar” to those used by the Nazis.

Read more: Nazi ‘bird shit’ and the limits of free speech in Germany

Playing with racial stereotypes

On stage in Bad Langensalza, Höcke knows just what to say to get those sitting at beer-drinking tables at the event up on their feet and cheering. Most gathered here are angry about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policy, especially her decision to open Germany’s borders to allow hundreds of thousands of immigrants primarily fleeing civil wars into the country back in 2015.

Many complain that establishment parties don’t care about them. They call Merkel the “Führer of the regime,” they complain about the “elites,” and when Höcke rails against the “cartel parties” they eat it up.

Read more: Merkel slams ‘unforgivable’ far-right backed state premier vote

Another ingredient in Höcke’s recipe for success is playing with racial stereotypes. Sometimes he labels the entire African population “propagators,” at others he claims that thousands of German youths “experience school as a fearful place, because African thugs mob, terrorize and beat them there.”

Though many gathered in Bad Langensalza would not agree with Höcke’s way of presenting his argument, they also don’t condemn it. One AfD politician says his colleague Höcke’s words are often taken out of context. A supporter at the rally says: “He should tone it down a bit, especially with elections coming. But he’s right about everything.” The man says Germany has enough poor people of its own, and doesn’t need to spend money on “foreigners.”

Read more: Germany’s far-right AfD aims at a forgotten demographic

Höcke (center) at a demonstration of his far-right AfD party and the anti-immigrant Pegida movement in Chemnitz, Germany in September 2018

‘The Wing’ versus the rest of the AfD

As in many other eastern German states, Thuringia’s AfD is dominated by an extreme-right contingent known as “The Wing.” It is estimated that as many as 40% of AfD party members identify themselves with the movement and Höcke, its leader.

On the political scale, far-right extremism researcher Salheiser says The Wing falls somewhere between “right-wing radical and far-right extremist.” Germany’s intelligence services treat the group as suspicious, and a court ruling last September found that it is legally acceptable to label Höcke a fascist.

The aim of Höcke and his supporters is to push the AfD further to the right. Höcke himself has no problem marching arm-in-arm with right-wing extremists, as he did in the eastern German city of Chemnitz in September 2018. But more moderate AfD politicians who seek to present the party as more centrist see Höcke as a thorn in their side. Two years ago, the party’s national executive board sought to have Höcke’s membership revoked, but that plan was shot down by a court of arbitration. Höcke himself has said he intends to expand his influence within the party.

Read more: Open-minded Germans must speak up to counter rightward drift

But Höcke didn’t only attract supporters last fall in Bad Langensalza. A number of people vehemently opposed to his presence also came. One of those people was Pastor Dirk Vogel. Pastor Vogel was furious that the AfD had chosen his parish church as the backdrop for its campaign event.

Vogel thinks Höcke is divisive, that he is exclusionary, and that he is condescending when speaking to and about people from other cultures. Although Vogel quietly watches from afar, others scream “out with Höcke,” while others simply weep. Jeering them from the stage, Höcke calls them “communist Nazis” and suggests they should take medication.

Höcke rarely speaks with media outlets, whom he and many AfD voters denigrate. He has given very few interviews since he walked out of one with German public broadcaster ZDF ahead of last fall’s elections. He ended that interview by telling reporters that he may well become a very interesting political figure in Germany in the not-too-distant future. The thought may thrill some, but for others it would be a nightmare come true.

https://www.dw.com/en/afds-bj%C3%B6rn-h%C3%B6cke-firebrand-of-the-german-far-right/a-52297134

The Neo Nazis are rising in Germany.  Fortunately the public is motivated to take to the streets and call out the danger.

Sadly, politics in America do not reach this fever pitch of activism in the face of an increasingly demagogic and dictatorial leadership in Washington.

It could well be that America is taking the slow road to Fascist leadership.

The citizenry is allowing the scourge of  fascism to prevail, through willful ignorance.

Deutsche Welle 2.15.2020

Thuringia’s controversial election pact and Dresden’s day of remembrance have stirred memories of Germany’s Nazi past. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Dresden and Erfurt for marches against the far right.

Thousands of people took to the streets of the German cities of of Dresden and Erfurt on Saturday to demonstrate against political deals with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The Erfurt protest was the latest response to a controversial vote that saw politician Thomas Kemmerich elected as premier of the state of Thuringia after the business-friendly FDP and center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) made a secret pact with the far-right AfD.

The decision broke a political taboo in Germany, caused nationwide outrage, and prompted the resignation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s likely successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as head of the ruling CDU.

During Saturday’s rally, many protesters in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia, held up placards which read: “No pact with fascists” or “No place for Nazis” as they gathered at Erfurt cathedral square.

Busloads of activists

Organizers said at least 50 busloads of people from all over Germany had descended on Erfurt. An estimated 18,000 people participated in the protests, according to organizers.

“By making a pact with the AfD, the CDU and FDP opened the door of power to the extreme right,” said a spokeswoman for the “Unteilbar” (Indivisible) movement, made up of union and charity workers, artists and politicians. Thanks to the unrelenting protests, “we, as civil society, have managed to slam this door shut again.”

Michael Rudolph, chair of the DGB Hesse-Thuringia branch told German public broadcaster MDR that Saturday’s demonstration would not be the end of the protest against the vote.

The scandal in Thuringia unfolded when Kemmerich, an FDP politician was elected on February 5 thanks to the AfD’s backing. He won by one vote against the popular Left politician Bodo Ramelow.

In the face of massive pressure from Berlin, Kemmerich resigned after just three days in office.

Parallel demo in Dresden

Anti-fascist counter-demonstrators, meanwhile, forced a route change on a far-right march in Dresden on Saturday.

“On a day like this, you can’t just stand idly by. We are here to say that this is not our Dresden,” Jan, a 27-year-old counter-protester, told DW, with his face partially covered. “There is no room for Nazis in this city — not now, not ever.”

DW correspondent Dana Regev reported that around several hundred neo-Nazis had begun their “funeral march” from the city’s central station.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-protesters-rally-in-dresden-erfurt-denouncing-political-pacts-with-far-right/a-52387989

The needless expenditure by law enforcement for frivolous and retaliatory action to satisfy the needs of a few is obscene.

Property speculators need to be told. There must be limits on their sense of entitlement. Property rights are not without limits.  The People are more important.

To get attention and results it takes a radical step. Housing prices are obscene. People are being evicted. The Oakland mothers will not be prosecuted.  The Alameda District Attorney took the correct position in not causing further anquish to these  women and their families.

San Francisco Chronicle 2.14.2020

The Alameda County district attorney has declined to file charges against four people, including the two members of Moms 4 Housing arrested last month when a judge ordered the eviction of mothers living without permission in a vacant West Oakland home.

District Attorney Nancy O’Malley quietly dropped the case on Thursday.

Her decision concluded a dramatic chapter in the region’s acute housing crisis that gained national attention when sheriff’s deputies in riot gear and armored vehicles evicted a rotating group of four homeless mothers who took up residence in the empty house in November to highlight the shortage of affordable housing.

The saga escalated on Jan. 14, when the deputies arrested Tolani King, 46, Misty Cross, 38, and Jesse Turner, 25; all of Oakland, and Walter Baker, 28, of Berkeley.

They faced charges of resisting eviction and obstructing a peace officer, and have been out on bail.

On Friday, with the charges dropped, Moms 4 Housing — now a nonprofit group — issued a statement calling on the Sheriff’s Office to disclose how much it spent to evict the mothers and send in the tanks, and to explain why they did it.

“Residents of Alameda County have the right to know the county’s justification for using tanks to remove nonviolent mothers from a previously vacant home, and to know the cost to the taxpayers for such behavior,” the group said in a statement.

The operation, which ended when police quelled the two-month act of civil disobedience, removed the women and boarded up the home.

Meanwhile, Wedgewood Properties, which owns the Magnolia Street home and specializes in house-flipping, agreed in January to sell it to a nonprofit affordable-housing group, which in turn would give it to the mothers.

But as the mothers resolved their housing dilemma, their legal troubles persisted — until now.

“We declined to file charges,” Teresa Drenick, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said Thursday.

Earlier, King, Cross and their supporters, Turner and Baker, received a notice to appear Thursday at an Oakland courthouse. They showed up with nearly two dozen other supporters expecting to be arraigned. But a deputy told them they weren’t on the court schedule.

The uncertainty inflamed the sense of injustice among the four and their advocates.

“Not knowing if you will be charged or might be charged, this is unacceptable. This is ridiculous,” said Carroll Fife, regional director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, an organization working with Moms 4 Housing.

In an effort to avoid another “Moms 4 Housing”-style protest and help resolve Oakland’s shortage of affordable housing, Oakland Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas introduced legislation on Jan. 30 that she said would give landlords an incentive to offer tenants, affordable housing developers and land trusts first right of refusal when selling a property.

The proposal doesn’t yet specify what the incentive would be. The city’s Community and Economic Development Committee is expected to take up the issue on March 24.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Moms-4-Housing-D-A-won-t-file-criminal-charges-15057307.php#photo-18884960

“Are you an American or a Republican?  U can’t be both?”

San Francisco will continue to show the way for Progressive values exemplified by Speaker Nancy Pelosi who tore up The wannabe President’s mindless and incendiary  speech in front of the worldwide media and her Congressional companions.

It sent the clueless Republicans into bloviation overdrive.

This poster says it all about the spineless, cowardly and totally cowed by the Clown in the White House Republicans who allowed this Huckster to walk away and continue his destruction of the nation’s political system.

Not one shred of integrity has been exhibited by these trolls.

San Francisco Chronicle 2.5.2020

Dozens of protesters rallied at Market and Powell streets in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon to protest the acquittal of President Trump, accusing the GOP of a cover-up.

Activists with community organization Indivisible SF organized the gathering to protest Trump, who was acquitted Wednesday by the Senate of both impeachment charges of abusing his power and obstruction of Congress.

Megan McCrea, 34, said the United States’ system of checks and balances failed when the Senate acquitted Trump, calling the verdict a “cover-up.” She joined dozens of other participants and speakers in calling for people to register to vote ahead of the November election.

“(Trump) is now completely emboldened to do any lawless behavior that he wants to do to try to get reelected,” McCrea said.

Indivisible activists said the gathering was part of a nationwide day of action calling for accountability in what they call a “cover-up” by the GOP-controlled Senate to protect Trump from removal from office.

Some protesters pulled black handkerchiefs over their eyes, others pulled knitted pink caps over their heads, and chanted, “Move Trump, get out the way, get out the way, Trump, get out the way,” to the beat of a Ludacris song. One woman dressed in a red cape and white bonnet, the style of enslaved women in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian book, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Theresa Kaviani, of Lafayette, wore a green khaki jacket with the phrase, “I do care, and you should to” in white lettering — a response to the jacket First Lady Melania Trump wore the day she visited a shelter for migrant children near the Texas border.

“I heard them reading out the verdict and I think this country has allowed our democracy to die, I really do,” Kaviani said through tears, her voice breaking. “I think it’s emotional whenever a criminal is acquitted.”

Paul Hazell, and his husband, Graham Cruiskshank, both 52 of Richmond, thrust handmade caricatures of US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump in the air and listened to speakers take turns at the microphone near the cable car turnaround, joining in on chants of, “Vote him out.”

Cruiskshank said he felt a sense of responsibility to protest the acquittal on behalf of his students at Pacifica’s Oceana High School, whom he says have disclosed fears of being targeted by the Trump Administration’s rhetoric because they are undocumented immigrants or they identify as LGBTQ.

“Right now we’re left with one primary option, and that is the election,” Cruiskshank said. “We all have to get behind that (Democratic) candidate, even if that wasn’t our first choice. We have to rally.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Protesters-rally-in-San-Francisco-against-15034087.php#photo-18989523

Every Picture Tells a Story

2.5.2020  State of the Union

It takes a Woman leader to put this disgraceful representative of America in his place.

 The trash can.

BuzzFeed 2.5.2020

It took zero time before the tension between President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was evident at the State of the Union address on Tuesday when the impeached president ignored her outstretched hand to greet him.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/trump-nancy-pelosi-outstretched-hand-sotu