New York Governor Andrew Cuomo should take the correct and humane step by releasing Chesa Boudin’s father from prison after nearly 40 years.

David Gilbert murdered no one. He was an accomplice to a murder. Now 76, it serves no useful purpose to continue his incarceration.

Andrew Cuomo will hear the outcry from law enforcement and the victims family.  The incumbent’s goal is re-election in 2022 which may preclude him taking a humanitarian action.

I hope I am wrong.

San Francisco Chronicle 11.16.2020

A coalition of faith leaders is urging New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to grant clemency to David Gilbert — the father of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin — who is serving a 75-year-to-life sentence for his participation in the fatal robbery of a Brink’s armored truck in 1981.

A young Chesa Boudin and his dad David Gilbert

The letter, signed by 45 inter-faith leaders and activists, asked Cuomo to show mercy to the 76-year-old Gilbert, both because of the COVID-19 pandemic and because they said Gilbert has taken responsibility for his role in the robbery. Among those who signed the letter are the Rev. Dr. Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ela Gandhi, the granddaugther of Mohandas Gandhi.

“However long these sentences are, they were not intended to be a death penalty,” the letter to Cuomo said. “We see daily that elders in prison, especially those with compromised immune systems and underlying heath concerns, are in grave danger and many have died. For us, like you and your father before you, opposition to the death penalty is a religious and moral principle.”

Gilbert, along with Chesa Boudin’s mother Kathy Boudin, were members of the radical leftist organization Weather Underground. On Oct. 20, 1981, they joined members of the Black Liberation Army in the botched robbery of a Brink’s armored truck in New York. Other members of the group shot and killed a Brink’s guard, Peter Paige, before killing two Nyack police officers, Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady. Chesa Boudin was 14 months old at the time.

Gilbert and Kathy Boudin did not pull the trigger; both were unarmed getaway drivers. They were charged and convicted under New York’s felony murder law, which says that all participants in a felony that leads to a death can be charged with murder, even if they were not directly responsible for the killings. Kathy Boudin was paroled in 2003. Gilbert continues to serve his sentence at New York’s Shawangunk Correctional Facility.

In an interview with The Chronicle on Monday, Boudin said he was told there have been more than 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 at Shawangunk.

“I haven’t seen my father since December of last year,” Boudin said. “It’s one of the longest times in my lifetime — if not the longest — I’ve gone without visiting him, and I wish I could go see him.”

Boudin said he has not spoken with Cuomo about the possibility of granting clemency to his father, and that his involvement in his father’s clemency campaign is “extremely limited.”

Cuomo’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, nor did Brink’s or the mayor of Nyack, the town where the two slain police officers worked. Boudin said he would not presume to guess how the families of those who died would feel about the possibility of his father’s release. Boudin has had “limited contact” with some of the families, while his father has reached out to them through clergy.

“My father is serving a 75-year sentence for a case in which he was unarmed and he did not personally or directly hurt anyone,” Boudin said. “No other country in the world with a civilized legal system would allow somebody who’s unarmed to serve a 75-year sentence.”

David Gilbert, Chesa Boudin and Kathy Boudin

The letter said Gilbert has taken responsibility for his role in the robbery and mentored younger people incarcerated with him.

“We are confident that David Gilbert’s release presents no threat to public safety,” the letter said. “To the contrary, his release would help peacefully resolve an era of tragic conflict.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Faith-leaders-urge-clemency-for-David-Gilbert-15732089.php#photo-18752953

It boggles the mind that Supervisor Gordon Mar is driving the City to permit cars onto the Great Highway, again.

The picture display is proof positive that turning this former vehicle highway into a pedestrian, runner and cyclist thoroughfare is the best thing to happen to San Francisco in 2020.

The citizenry of all ages like it as evidenced by what I saw on this Sunday afternoon.

Write Gordon Mar and the front office at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority and tell them to bury Supervisor Mar’s idea in the sand at Ocean Beach.

gordon.mar@sfgov.org

jeffrey.tumlin@sfmta.org    Director of Transportation San Francisco MTA

kristen.holland@sfmta.org    Acting Media Relations & Customer Communications Manager San Francisco MTA

Photos by Lee Heidhues – 11.15.2020

The assorted deplorable Proud Boys, QAnon, neo-fascists, Klan supporters and, oh yes several Republicans descended on Washington to howl at the wind one more time before their bloviating spin meister wannabe tinpot despot Trump sinks into the morass of American history.

The good news is that the Orange Monster will be resucistated shortly after crawling out of Washington to face the myriad criminal investigations he so richly deserves.

Daily Beast 11.14.2020

The takeaway from the day was pretty simple: There is no way to make these people believe that they’ve lost, because they don’t believe in democracy. There is no recount that will satisfy them. There is no version of America they want unless their voices, their lives, and their votes take priority.

Let’s just call what happened in Washington, D.C. today what it was: An anti-democracy protest by an assortment of white supremacists, violent fascists, and conspiracy nuts. They came to town to collectively demand the disenfranchisement of more than 78 million Americans, Joe Biden voters, and to reaffirm that “legal votes” can only be cast by white folks outside of miscegenated cities.

The attendee list was a who’s who of prominent white nationalist groups and QAnon supporters, including the Proud Boys, Groypers, and Pizzagate pushers. The media repeatedly refers to these groups as “far right” or “fringe,” but this was actually a pretty perfect representation of mainstream Republicanism. In fact, GOP politicians Louie Gohmert, Mike Kelly, and Marjorie Taylor Greene were there to co-sign this display of white entitlement, and egg the whole show on.

Had they been marching against anti-Black racism or police abuse, cops would probably have violently rioted against them. Instead, the crowd of overwhelmingly white anti-democratic whiners and agitators made their way from Freedom Plaza to the Supreme Court with nary a tear gas canister lobbed or billy club deployed.

The disparate groups of demonstrators called the protest by various names, including “Stop the Steal,” “March for Trump” and the “Million MAGA March”—the latter of which was cribbed from the 1995 “Million Man March,” because these people can’t go a day without stealing from Black folks. There were far less than a million people there, though the White House way overinflated the numbers on hand for Trump, just as they did four years ago at this administration’s inauguration.

There’s a pretty rich irony in people who can’t properly count crowd numbers taking to the streets to demand that the nation accept their feelings about the vote count in various states. And yet the attention paid to a march of however many dozens of thousands of disgruntled and deluded supporters of a candidate who lost by more than 5 million votes is a perfect metaphor for the Trumpism movement. From the moment its leader descended an escalator to the cheers of actors paid $50 each to cheer him, they’ve managed to be the center of the national political conversation.

The white reactionary politics were on full, proud display. There were plenty of “All Lives Matter” chants, OK hand signs, and posters with slogans including, “Ban Homo Marriage” and “Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.” Fox News caught sight of a sign that read, “’Coming for Blacks and Indians, Welcome to the New World Order,” which was clearly meant to be read as a threat. These aren’t people who are actually angry about election fraud. They’re people who believe that having Black and brown votes counted is unfair. White people have rights, damn it. That’s their only real message.

The GOP legislators smiling at all this and hyping these people up know that Trump lost. They know that the unfairness of this election can be found in their gerrymandered districts, our undemocratic electoral college, and Trump’s tampering with the USPS. They know that they are potentially stoking violence, delegitimizing the incoming Biden administration, fomenting white racist hate and undermining democracy. They’re just too invested in maintaining their own power to care.

Speaking of not caring, Trump, who teased an appearance at the rally on Friday, passed through the crowd in his motorcade. Here was a moment when the president, who has been gassing up his followers on conspiracies and racism since before he made it to the White House, could stop his car, step outside, and address his fawning adorers—who unlike the press he’s assiduously avoiding, won’t have any follow-up questions about the timeline for conceding his historic loss. Instead, he rolled right through them, in his mobile version of a castle, and headed to where he really wanted to be—the golf course. His supporters carried on their protest for Trump, unable to see themselves as the pawns that they are.

This was an exhibition protest of sorts. There will be more to come. And we should expect that it’s going to be, at the least, an annoying four years.

San Francisco Supervisor Catherine Stefani representing the toney Pacific Heights neighborhood tells DA Chesa Boudin to deal with it.

His office, overwhelmed in its case load, particularly in a year of increasing domestic abuse during the pandemic is getting short shrift. Supervisor Stefani, herself a one time Assistant District Attorney in a neighboring county, told the DA to “budget within his means to deliver public safety for all San Franciscans.” Stefani knows, absent adequate funding, it’s an impossible task.

If DA Boudin does not prosecute crime he will be pilloried for neglecting the citizenry. It takes money and personnel to do the job. Stefani knows this all too well.

Stefani’s comments are just typical San Francisco political posturing.

San Francisco Chronicle 11.13.2020

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said his office is inadequately funded and unable to fully staff units that investigate homicides and domestic violence cases — a situation, he said, that has reached a “tipping point.”

In an Oct. 29 letter, Boudin told Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors that his office is understaffed and overwhelmed by their caseloads. In the General Felonies Unit, for example, Boudin said his staff is handling between 185 and 229 cases a year, far more than the national standard of 150.

Boudin said the lack of adequate staffing impedes his office’s “ability to provide constitutionally required services.”

The letter came shortly after the city closed a massive, $1.5 billion budget deficit largely caused by the pandemic, and a few weeks before City Hall learned they had another $116 million deficit to contend with. As many departments faced budget cuts this year, the District Attorney’s Office received a slight increase in its budget from $73.59 million to $73.72 million.

Despite the slight increase, Boudin said his office has still been strained amid the pandemic as “COVID-19 has impacted staffing capacity due to illness, family leave and court closures” that have caused delays in processing court cases. He added that the department’s staffing issues existed long before he took over in January.

Additionally, he said, the short-staffed Domestic Violence Unit has seen a 60% increase in demand for services related to children witnessing domestic violence during the pandemic. The issues have also been “aggravated” by the need to investigate alleged misconduct of a forensic laboratory analyst from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner.

Supervisor Catherine Stefani, the most fiscally conservative member of the board, said Boudin should “be budgeting within his means to deliver public safety for all San Franciscans.”

At the beginning of the pandemic, Breed placed a hiring freeze on vacant city positions in an attempt to stave off layoffs and service cuts. Any department that wanted to fill a vacancy had to convince the mayor and board that such a position was essential. The District Attorney’s Office was allowed to hire four of the eight positions they requested, but David Campos, Boudin’s chief of staff, said that was not enough.

“People have to understand that this is serious and we all have obligations and responsibilities,” he said. “But we need the resources.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-DA-Chesa-Boudin-says-department-is-15726636.php

9.2.2026

UPDATED

The following message was sent to then D4 Supervisor Gordon Mar in November 2020.

Fortunately Gordon Mar, who opposed Proposition K in 2024 which resulted in the creation of Sunset Dunes Park, is now opposing Proposition G on the November 3rd ballot.

November 13th 2020

The past seven months has seen the Great Highway, astride the Pacific Ocean, turn into a thoroughfare for cyclists, runners and pedestrians of all ages.

It is one of the best things which has happened to San Francisco in this cataclysmic 2020.

Now out of a craven cave-in to motorists you want to end it.

I am shocked and disgusted and disappointed that you would even think of reopening the Great Highway to environment destruction with cars. Particularly since you are one who advocated for this move which let car owners know they don’t rule the world.

Who bent your ear?

Let car owners Deal with It and be forced to go out of their way.

How can you call yourself a “progressive” ever again? I’m disgusted.

You are showing yourself to be just another cynical typical pol who bows and genuflects to the car.

Shame on you.

San Francisco Examiner 11.13.2020

Supervisor Gordon Mar, whose district encompasses the Outer Sunset, has demanded action to address speeding and congestion around the currently car-free Great Highway.

Without it, Mar said he will no longer support the ongoing, temporary closure of the Great Highway to vehicles, a move his office actually asked for back in April in order to provide space for socially distant recreation.

Since April, when it was closed to traffic, the Great Highway has been embraced as a new kind of public place for San Francisco residents, not just as an outdoor haven for thousands of people and families from all over The City but also as the backdrop for community-building, marches for social justice and public art. Some residents have even pushed to make it car-free on a permanent basis.

San Francisco’s westernmost coastline at Ocean Beach has always been an iconic destination for visitors and residents alike.

“But we cannot sacrifice safety for recreation, and I cannot continue to support the temporary closure of the Great Highway if we cannot make it safe for my constituents in the near-term,” Mar wrote in a letter to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors, Executive Director Jeffrey Tumlin and a number of staff members Tuesday.

The District Four office’s letter is a formal request for the transit agency to dedicate some of its technical expertise and staff time to mitigating the traffic impacts that have spilled over onto surrounding neighborhood streets in the Outer Sunset.

“We want SFMTA to move with the same urgency on pedestrian safety and traffic calming as they have with closing the Great Highway,” said Edward Wright, one of Mar’s legislative aids.

SFMTA spokesperson Kristen Holland said the agency had been in contact with Mar’s office, and that multiple staff members would be participating in a virtual town hall on the topic Friday afternoon.

“We take the concerns of the Supervisor and the residents of District Four very seriously. We will be responding to him and to his constituents after a discussion in today’s town hall meeting,” she said. “We appreciate our ongoing coordination with the Supervisor’s Office.”

At the same time, the closure has resulted in traffic moving to nearby streets that aren’t equipped for the high volume of high speed cars traveling north to south, and Mar says it’s making neighbors who live, play and work on the surrounding residential streets feel unsafe.

Over 5,000 cars each day are traveling along nearby Lower Great Highway, with a “significant percentage” of those cars driving at unsafe speeds, according to the District Four Mobility Study out of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

Though SFMTA implemented new detour signs and new turn restrictions to redirect traffic to Sunset Boulevard, some weeks after the Great Highway went car-free, these ideas emanated from Mar’s office rather than traffic engineers, and Mar remains “unconvinced that these are sufficient to address the real and urgent safety concerns.”

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/temporary-great-highway-closure-could-lose-support-from-district-four-supervisor/

Trump has been Toast for days.  This news just makes it toastier.

The announcement that President-elect Biden has captured Arizona’s 11 electoral votes is further affirmation that the Donald disaster will careen to its conclusion in 69 days.

In 70 days Trump will be gone from the White House. Voluntarily or otherwise.

Today The soon to be ex-President and his missus Melania appeared in public separately to mark Veterans Day.

Neither had anything to say about the election or what the future may hold.

Vanity Fair 11.11.2020

It’s Veterans Day in America, where we thank the veterans for fighting so hard to protect whatever this is right now.

Melania Trump wore a tweed coat and an equally grim expression. She had thanked veterans via Twitter just before the ceremony. 

In Philadelphia at the Korean War Memorial Park, President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Jill wore masks (double mask on Joe!) for their own short ceremony. He in a suit, she in a peplum skirt suit. A crowd gathered to watch the procession there as well.

In Arlington the lame duck Donald Trump was somber-mugging to match the weather, the occasion, the state of his presidency. Vice President Mike Pence, who just reportedly canceled his Florida vacation, followed behind him, and their wives were escorted by military personnel carrying umbrellas.

Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and adviser, wore a floppy felt hat, the kind favored by the L.A.-matcha-latte set five years ago. It was surely a decent fortress against the rain. She also wore a mask, as did many who stood opposite from the office-holders, who did not wear masks.

In this, the first moment the public has laid eyes on the first family since the election was called for their opponent, it was impossible to see signs of…anything…anything at all. No one said a few words to honor the moment besides the statement released prior to the ceremony (“We enjoy the privileges of peace, prosperity, and freedom because of our veterans, and we are forever indebted to them beyond measure”); it was just out as fast as they were in. The only moment of note was when President Trump reached out and touched the wreath while his face arranged itself in an “I’m doing a serious moment” way.

It’s about time.  Ever since the Nixon Administration instituted the War on Drugs in 1969 countless billions have been wasted on the incarceration of drug users.

It has taken over 50 years but the times are changing. Last week Oregon voters decriminalized psychedelics.  Now California wants to join the nationwide movement to sensibility.

Law enforcement and the courts have better things to do than bust and jail drug users.

San Francisco Examiner 11.10.2020

State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said for the first time Tuesday that he would introduce legislation to decriminalize psychedelic drugs in California.

Wiener made the announcement in a series of tweets after voters passed ballot measures decriminalizing psychedelics in Oregon and Washington, D.C.

In Oregon in last week’s election, voters allowed for the therapeutic usage of magic mushrooms and eliminated criminal penalties for possession of small quantities of certain drugs including LSD and psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in the mushrooms.

Washington, DC voters directed police to treat the enforcement of non-commercial psilocybin mushroom cultivation as a low priority.

Wiener did not elaborate on what his legislation would entail, but argued that psychedelic drugs have medicinal value for treating conditions including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We need to stop criminalizing drug use & addiction,” Wiener wrote. “There’s strong support for ending the failed War on Drugs, which criminalizes communities of color & those suffering from addiction. People need treatment, not prison.”

Wiener said he would work on the legislation with assemblymembers Evan Low and Sydney Kamlager, and introduce it when the Senate reconvenes.

Locally, both Oakland and Santa Cruz have made the enforcement of magic mushroom cultivation a low priority for police.

The legislation is not Wiener’s first foray into harm reduction and drug legalization. He has twice before sought unsuccessfully to legalize safe injecting rooms in San Francisco, with the support of city officials including Mayor London Breed, and has also introduced legislation seeking to authorize new treatment options for methamphetamines.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/sen-wiener-wants-california-to-decriminalize-psychedelics/

Oakland, California. News from Vice-president elect Kamala Harris’ birthplace

In November 2019 a group of  women in Oakland occupied a home to keep it from being sold off to speculators in the ongoing gentrification battle of Oakland.

Thus began a campaign which gathered world wide attention.  The women were evicted in January in a brutal action by Alameda County sheriffs.

After a huge outcry the speculator who purchased the property backed off and sold the property to the Oakland Community Land Trust.

Surprise surprise.  A leader in that campaign has been elected to the Oakland City Council. 

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 11.9.2020

When activist Carroll Fife choreographed homeless mothers and their kids taking over an empty house in West Oakland to spotlight the city’s housing crisis, it drew international coverage.

Oakland City councilwoman-elect Carroll Fife

Now, Fife, the mastermind behind Moms 4 Housing, has unseated two-term City Council incumbent Lynette Gibson McElhaney in a stunning victory in District Three. The race — one of the most hotly contested among the five seats up for grabs on the council — is for a district that includes West Oakland, Downtown, Uptown, Jack London, Pill Hill, Lake Merritt and the Port of Oakland.

Fife’s win signals a shift to a more progressive electorate in Oakland. Her campaign centered on the idea that “housing is a human right” and that public safety should be reimagined — a nod to Oaklanders’ shifting priorities amid a growing homelessness crisis and a racial reckoning over police brutality.

Fife was one of the lead organizers behind Moms 4 Housing, a collective that began when homeless mothers took over a speculator-owned house on Magnolia Street in West Oakland in November 2019. The incumbent, McElhaney, was the first Black woman to be elected president of the City Council by her colleagues in 2015 and has a background in affordable housing but was seen as generally more moderate than Fife.

Fife plans to focus on pro-tenant regulations, convert abandoned and dilapidated homes to affordable housing and give renters the first right of refusal to purchase the home where they live if it goes up for sale.

Fife said impact fees, which developers of residential buildings are required to pay if they don’t build a certain amount of affordable housing in market-rate projects, are a “failed process.” Instead, Fife told The Chronicle that she wants to require those developments to have at least 20% of units be affordable.

About policing, Fife campaigned on reassigning traffic stops to civilian staff and having mental health staff respond to non-violent 911 calls.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/In-upset-Oakland-s-Moms-4-Housing-activist-15713520.php?utm_campaign=premiumsfgate_breakingnews_20201109&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

Great article in Politico taking a deep dive into the “You’re fired” soon to be ex-President’s loser campaign.  

The best is buried deep in the story.

Politico 11.8.2020

‘This fucking virus’: Inside Donald Trump’s 2020 undoing

Senior campaign officials, meanwhile, had been getting reports that Kimberly Guilfoyle had been berating her staff. Appearing together at fundraisers, Guilfoyle and her boyfriend, Donald Trump Jr., would banter in sexually suggestive ways that made some donors uncomfortable.

During a December donor event at Trump Hotel in Washington, Guilfoyle offered to give a lap dance to whoever raised the most money, according to two people who were present and another person who was familiar with the episode.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/07/this-f-ing-virus-inside-donald-trumps-2020-undoing-434716