Lee Heidhues 7.14.2022

I need to step away from the cauldron of political life in San Francisco.  

Recalls of democratically elected “Progressives”;  District Attorney Chesa Boudin and three School Board members this year.  An upcoming ballot measure to take away hard fought car free spaces in San Francisco  

All of this negativity in so called Progressive San Francisco sends me scurrying for solace.  

Katie Kitamura’s novel is in a place so far removed from my current reality.

I am totally lost in the story which takes place in The Hague, Netherlands.  Reading the book also takes me back to my youth when I spent nearly a year living in Amsterdam.

It’s so nice to be able to dive into the pages of this story and momentarily forget about vicious San Francisco.

Excerpted from NPR 7.22.2021

The unnamed heroine of Intimacies, Katie Kitamura’s fascinating and mysterious new novel, observes that “none of us are able to see the world we are living in — the world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality … and its extremity.”

She’s a new interpreter at The Hague, responsible for the banal function of translating legal proceedings for extremely evil defendants: genocidal former heads of state.

We know only that the narrator came to The Hague by way of New York, her father has just died after a long illness, and her mother has returned to Singapore. Even her age and ethnicity are murky and, strangely, rarely commented upon. Kitamura seems to intentionally test the boundaries of how little biographical information an author can reveal about a protagonist while still making the reader feel intimately connected to them.

Readers will get a sense of both the importance and the futility of the International Criminal Court. The narrator points out that the Court primarily prosecutes crimes against humanity in African nations, becoming an “ineffectual” instrument of “Western imperialism.”

Of the building that the Court is housed in, the narrator observes “the modern architecture still seemed incongruous, perhaps even lacking the authority I had expected.”

I couldn’t help but crave a more open, incautious narrator, someone who is more than, as the accused puts it, “part of the institution that [she] serve[s].” The novel effectively comments on the elusiveness of intimacy, but perhaps at the cost of the reader’s emotional connection to the narrator. How much of what is factually revealed helps one understand a situation — or a person — more intimately?

Even the journalists covering the International Criminal Court “had merely fragments of the narrative and yet they would assemble those fragments into a story like any other story, a story with the appearance of unity.”

Kitamura’s novel has its own appearance of unity, but ultimately illustrates how one’s interpretations can fail to help them see the world in which they live.

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

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1018978359/fascinating-mysterious-intimacies-doesnt-let-readers-get-close-enough

Lee Heidhues 7.9.2022

Mayor London Breed, in her quest for law ‘n order, is responsible for the incipient political Civil War raging in San Francisco. The City is now riven over a political Coup d’etat, whose backers spent 7.2MM to oust Chesa Boudin, the democratically elected District Attorney.

At least one media outlet described choice of a Puppet District Attorney as an Academy Award style slap in the face to Chesa Boudin.  Breed could have been a diplomat and tried to cool the political heat.  Instead, she turned it to a boil.

Chesa Boudin’s supporters have taken notice.  Just today Chesa issued a cryptic “Good Morning” on his Twitter site. As of this evening nearly 1100 people have “Liked” it. The pressure on Chesa to run in the November 8, 2022 election is intense. By her action Breed has laid down a marker.

She did it intentionally.

On July 7, 2022 London Breed named Brooke Jenkins as Puppet District Attorney to replace Chesa Boudin.  The same Chesa Boudin she campaigned against for eight months as the most visible leader in the Recall campaign. Jenkins has now been handed the job by a Mayor who values loyalty over ethics. A Mayor who holds grudges. A Mayor who willfully ignores what common sense dictates.

London Breed could have selected an interim DA who did not participate in the Coup d’etat and would have assumed the office without the questions which now hang over the Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins.

Breed’s leadership, or abdication of it,  in the Coup d’etat resulted in the Recall of Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

This willful incendiary decision is the most blatant manifestation of her willingness to spare no political expense to lay waste to her opponents.

It is important to step back to 2019 when Chesa Boudin was running for District Attorney.  In early October that year then DA George Gascon resigned.  One month before the November 5 election.  Rather than let an Assistant District Attorney administer the office until a new DA was elected, Breed appointed Suzy Loftus as Interim DA.  Loftus was a Breed favorite, who also happened to be running for the job.

This crass political decision may well have turned the election in Chesa’s favor. A number of voters recognized this as an act of odious nepotism.  In fact I told a reporter the day Loftus was appointed interim DA, that Breed had just handed the election to Chesa.

Unfortunately, Breed didn’t learn any lessons from this debacle.

From the moment Chesa Boudin took office she has been one of his harshest critics.  It must have grated on her to sit in on Chesa’s Inaugural at the Marines Memorial Auditorium as a packed house cheered his ascension to the DA’s office. Adding insult to injury Breed swore DA Chesa Boudin into office.

We fast forward to 2021 when the Recall movement began in earnest. Extremist Republican Richie Greenberg launched the first Recall effort. Seeing this was not going to make the Ballot, Breed’s allies swung into action.  Her cronies Andrea Shorter and Mary Jung launched a second effort which spent $1,400,000 in a mercenary signature gathering campaign.  Through it all Breed remained silent.  The Recall measure qualified for the ballot in October 2021.  The election was put on the calendar for June 7, 2022.

It was at this same time that Brooke Jenkins, an Assistant District Attorney in DA Boudin’s office, quit.  Why? She had a dispute with Chesa over sending a man to prison who was deemed to be insane.  Jenkins wanted him in prison. Chesa wanted him incarcerated in an instiution where his illness could be treated.  She quit and immediately began campaigning against her former boss.

Ironically in 2020 Jenkins made several public comments praising Boudin’s stewardship of the DA’s office, in which she was an Assistant District Attorney.

Breed said nothing during the entire Recall campaign even though everyone in San Francisco knew she supported the Coup d’etat.  A public statement reminding voters Chesa was the democratically elected DA and there is a regularly scheduled election in November 2023 may have changed the result.

Instead, Breed remained silent.

On election night, Brooke Jenkins was proudly celebrating her victory in the Coup d’etat against her former boss.

Top photo – Mayor London Breed speaks at University of San Francisco Law School graduation – May 2021

 

Lee Heidhues with editorial assistance from Liz Heidhues 7.8.2022

Mayor London Breed, who was behind-the-scenes leader in the political Coup d’etat, has rewarded Brooke Jenkins by anointing her the chief Law Enforcement official in San Francisco.

July 8, 2022 will go down as one of the most abhorrent and desultory days in San Francisco’s political history.  

It is a vile and disgusting travesty seeing City Hall hacks and hangers-on cheer on a Puppet District Attorney who was a shameless agent in the ousting of Progressive DA Chesa Boudin.

The swearing-in of Puppet District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, a leader in the political coup d’etat ousting Progressive DA Chesa Boudin, ranks right up with the worst travesties in the City’s history.

• 1934 – Longshoremen’s Union workers shot by the San Francisco Police Department during an 83-day Strike, peaking with killing of two Strikers on “Bloody Thursday” July 5 
• 1960 – San Francisco Police Department officers brutally dragging protesters down City Hall stairs during notorious House unAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings 
• 1968 – Beatings of students by SFPD Tac Squad during the student Strike at San Francisco State 
• 1978 – Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk assassinated at City Hall by ex-cop Dan White 

Puppet DA Jenkins quit her job as an Assistant District Attorney in October 2021 after a dispute with DA Chesa Boudin over her insistence on sending a mentally handicapped man to prison.

Jenkins then spent the next eight months attacking DA Boudin she had previously praised on the record.

On June 7, 2022 her treachery was rewarded when 55 percent of the voters in San Francisco, following a vicious 7.2MM campaign funded with money from America’s most reactionary financiers, ousted Progressive DA Chesa Boudin.

Now the apostasy continues.

Will a lazy and compliant Media, aggressive agents in the destruction of a Progressive District Attorney, step away from their gaslighting and attack Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins with similar harsh scrutiny?

Will the portion of the public that brought into play Law ‘n Order rants, lies and half truths to destroy Chesa Boudin, cast a similar jaded eye at the Puppet DA?

Top photo – Puppet DA Brooke Jenkins being sworn in by San Francisco Superior Court Presiding Judge Samuel Feng 7.8.2022

Every Picture Tells a Story – Post Roe v Wade in San Francisco

Lee Heidhues – 7.5.2022

Street art at the Walgreens Store in the Outer Richmond District

Clip from documentary Gimme Shelter – Interview with Sonny Barger following Altamont concert

Lee Heidhues 7.3.2022

This afternoon I had a conversation with someone who has carefully studied the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF) ballot measure now being circulated by well paid mercenaries whose sole goal is to destroy car free areas in San Francisco. This citizen then told me about the bigger and potentially most destructive part of this mercenary signature campaign.

What the voters of San Francisco are unaware of is that this ballot measure has another horrific goal embedded in its text.

• STOP THE PROJECT WHICH WILL SAVE THE COASTLINE SOUTH OF SLOAT BOULEVARD AND PRESERVE THE OCEANSIDE WATER POLLUTION CONTROL PLANT

The FAMSF ballot measure would do much more than simply eliminate car free areas in San Francisco. It is a dangerous environmentally destructive measure.

The voter had refused to sign the Petition for all the reasons shown below.

Furthermore, the intention of this ballot measure is total destruction of:

• JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park
• The Great Walkway along the Pacific Ocean
• Car free zone on Martin Luther King Drive in Golden Gate Park
• Bernice Rogers Way
• Effectively decapitate all the Slow Streets programs in San Francisco

Next year The Great Highway from Sloat to Skyline Boulevard is scheduled for permanent closure. This stretch of land is eroding and falling into the Pacific Ocean. The City’s OCEANSIDE WATER POLLUTION CONTROL PLANT wastewater treatment facility is located in this area.

The reason for the closure, years in the planning, is to maintain the integrity of both the collapsing coastline and the wastewater treatment plant.

Should this ballot measure qualify and pass in November, San Francisco will be confronted with a financial and environmental catastrophe.

The woman who alerted me to this disaster in the making said we are talking about “Billions of dollars” should the OCEANSIDE WATER POLLUTION CONTROL PLANT project grind to a halt.

The mercenaries circulating the FAMSF petition are saying nothing about this disaster in the making to the environment.

The only language in the misleading ballot initiative reads, “Sloat Boulevard to Skyline” can be found on pages seven and nine (see attached link). There is not one word about the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant or the eroded coastline.

Click to access AccessForAll_LegalText.pdf

This is shameful and disgraceful treachery to mislead the voters.

The voters of San Francisco cannot let themselves be conned by this vicious dishonest petition campaign which the mercenaries are willfully failing to disclose the full impact of this obscene initiative

Last September The San Francisco Chronicle published an extensive article about the work being done along the Pacific Ocean by The Great Highway. The voters must be educated about what’s at stake should this misguided ballot measure qualify for the November ballot.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/How-to-save-southern-part-of-S-F-s-Ocean-Beach-16444844.php

Top photo: Roads, underground infrastructure and a major city wastewater treatment plant are at risk of being swallowed by the sea.
Amy Osborne/Special to The Chronicle

 

 

 

Lee Heidhues 7.1.2022

It’s a scandal. While America gets ready to celebrate its Independence Day one of its international sports stars is rotting in a Russian jail.

The Biden Administration is dawdling while American basketball Brittney Griner star has languished in a Moscow jail since last February,  Her continued detention on bogus drug possession charges is an outrage.

The only reason Ms. Griner is being held captive is Vladimir Putin’s evil utilization of her as a pawn while he wages his barbaric war of attrition against Ukraine. The Biden Administration could secure her release. It must secure her release and stop playing these political diplomatic games.

Excerpted from The New York Times 7.1.2022

Brittney Griner arrived in Russia in February to play basketball, one of the sport’s biggest stars. She arrived in a courtroom outside Moscow on Friday as something else entirely — a potential bargaining chip in Russia’s tense standoff with the West over the war in Ukraine, described by supporters as a hostage of the Kremlin.

After more than four months languishing in a Russian prison, and speaking no Russian, Ms. Griner, 31, went on trial, accused of carrying into the country vape cartridges with traces — 0.7 grams, the prosecutor said — of cannabis oil. In a legal system that rarely finds defendants anything but guilty, she faces up to 10 years in a penal colony if convicted.

Cherelle Griner, Brittney Griner’s wife and others have questioned whether the Biden administration is doing enough to secure Brittney Griner’s release, a view the State Department seemed determined on Friday to dispel. Elizabeth Rood, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, attended the trial and talked with reporters afterward.

“I did have the opportunity to speak with Ms. Griner in the courtroom,” Ms. Rood said. “She is doing as well as can be expected in these difficult circumstances and asked me to convey that she is in good spirits and is keeping up the faith.”

“The Russian Federation has wrongfully detained Ms. Griner,” she said, adding, “the U.S. government at the very highest levels is working very hard to bring Ms. Griner as well as all wrongfully detained U.S. citizens safely home.”

Ms. Griner’s arrest on Feb. 17 — a week before the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — pulled her into the maw of geopolitics as President Vladimir V. Putin faced a determined Western effort to help Ukraine fight back. She has been touted in Russian state media as an asset who could be traded for a Russian arms dealer sitting in an American prison.

 

Lee Heidhues 6.29.2022

Now that London Breed, her City Hall enablers, and her Myrmidons in the MAGA funded 7.2MM ‘Safer SF No Boudin’ campaign deposed of Progressive Chesa Boudin The Chronicle will now tell the inconvenient truth for those willing to listen about SFPD.

It is racist, violent, and after 30 months of having to act like human beings, is unleashed again to abuse People of Color with impunity.

Dr. Cora Ormseth, a UCSF physician and  author, told The Chronicle. “….. if you look back at the history, (of San Francisco’s racism) it all starts to make sense.”

Nothing changes in this reactionary regressive City.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 6.29.2022

A new UCSF study is drawing a sharp link between lingering racial segregation and the increased threat of police violence against Black residents. The study, published Wednesday in the JAMA Network, an online medical journal, also reveals something else:

Out of 52 California counties included in the study, San Francisco had the highest injury rate for Black residents.

Black people (in San Francisco) experienced 408 injuries from 2016 to 2019, but were only expected to experience 60 injuries based on their 6% share of the county’s population.

 

“San Francisco definitely stood out and it was certainly surprising to me because it’s considered such a progressive city,” Dr. Cora Ormseth, a UCSF physician and the study’s lead author, told The Chronicle. “But then if you look back at the history, it all starts to make sense.”

 

Oakland civil rights attorney Adante Pointer said “The Black population in San Francisco is next to nothing and yet, study after study point to data-driven evidence that show officers are harassing, and using more force against Black people.”

Using statewide hospital data, the study examined 27,671 “legal intervention injuries” — or injuries requiring hospitalization and resulting from encounters with law enforcement personnel — from Jan. 1, 2016 to Dec. 31, 2019.

Statewide, the study found that Black residents accounted for 18% of police-caused injuries over the four-year period, even though they represented 6% of California’s population.

 

White San Franciscans experienced 383 injuries, slightly more than the 355 they would be expected to experience.

Del Norte County, bordering Oregon in the state’s northwest, had the highest ratio of police-caused injuries for white residents with 57 injuries vs. 11 expected.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/police-violence-Black-residents-17272732.php

Top photo:  San Francisco State Strike. SFPD assaults student demonstrators 12.3.1968

Lee Heidhues 6.24.2022

Words can never describe the disgust and outrage over the Supreme Court decision totally screwing (pardon the bad pun) American women.

Rather than dwell on the Big Picture it’s preferable to single out one person who is responsible for this horrific decision. Republican Susan Collins of Maine.

The Nation nails it.

Excerpted from The Nation 6.24.2022

Rarely in history has a United States senator been so blatantly beclowned as Susan Collins was on Friday.

Four years ago this summer, the Republican senator from Maine announced that President Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, had assured her that he believed the recognition of abortion rights in the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision was “settled law.”

Collins vouched for Kavanaugh, even after California college professor Christine Blasey Ford testified that he had assaulted her when they were high school students.

Kavanaugh, a longtime conservative judicial activist, was lying, as was obvious to anyone who knew his record and was aware of his weak allegiance to the truth. Yet Collins announced that she believed Kavanaugh and, that fall, the senator cast the essential vote to put a justice who was widely understood to be opposed to abortion rights on the US Supreme Court.
In his concurrence, Kavanaugh declared that Roe was “wrongly decided” and pointedly asserted that the 49-year-old decision “should be overruled at this time.”

Collins’s colleagues and constituents warned her that her acceptance of Kavanaugh’s assurance could not be trusted. Two hundred and thirty Maine attorneys urged her to reject President Trump’s nominee because of their certainty that he would use his position on the bench to overturn Roe.

But Collins was a willing dupe, who placed her Republican Party affiliation ahead of her long-proclaimed pro-choice position.

Now, Kavanaugh has joined the activist majority on the high court in overturning Roe, with a sweeping decision that rejects almost five decades of precedent, as outlined in the 1973 ruling and the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey that sustained it. And, on the outside chance that there was any doubt about his position, Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion that added insult to injury by absolutely rejecting the notion that Roe was ever “settled law.”

Collins actively campaigned for Kavanaugh, delivering a Senate floor speech that went all in on the argument that the nominee’s acceptance of Roe as “settled law” was deeply rooted in his reading of the US Constitution. “To my knowledge, Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition, but rooted in Article III of our Constitution itself,” Collins declared in the October 2018 address. “He said decisions become part of our legal framework with the passage of time and that honoring precedent is essential to maintaining public confidence.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/brett-kavanaugh-susan-collins/

Top photo: Senator Collins with then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh – 2018

Lee Heidhues – 6.22.2022

This morning I read the news that San Francisco Mayor London Breed tested positive for Covid – 19.  What really grabbed my attention is Breed’s spokesperson PARISA SAFARZADEH. A position which she has held since last month.

As a zealous follower of all things San Francisco, particularly with the successful Mayoral backed Coup d’etat against District Attorney Chesa Boudin, I am familiar with the Mayor’s media team.

Safarzadeh’s appointment as  Mayor Breed’s media public face comes close on the heels of the appointment of former SFPD PR flak Matt Dorsey to fill a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

These two appointments raise the issue of how much Mayor Breed is surrounding herself with people whose close alliegance and experience with law enforcement is well documented.

This is troubling, particularly since Breed has successfully removed a Progressive District Attorney – Chesa Boudin who brought balance to San Francisco City Hall’s increasing law and order administration.

I did a bit of sleuthing. It took a couple of minutes. Ms. Safarzadeh has a robust Linkedin profile.

• Harris County Texas Sheriff’s Office – Social Media Manager – 2012-16; 2017-18
• Nextdoor – Social Media Manager – 2018-19
• Nextdoor – Communications for Public Agencies 2019-20

• Deputy Director Information Dissemination & Analysis – SF  COVID Joint Information Center 2021-22
• Media Unit Lead – Joint Information Center 2022

In Ms. Safarzadeh’s Linkedin profile is another accolade.

• Trailblazer Award – Women in Law Enforcement Symposium

https://www.linkedin.com/in/parisasafarzadeh