Lee Heidhues 5.6.2022

The chaos at the Hall of Justice on Friday is illustrative of what’s at stake as reactionary forces try to bring down Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Boudin ran and was elected on a platform of  Justice for all. Which means holding renegade cops accountable for their law breaking. 

The forces of law and order are spending millions to oust Boudin and give free rein to the cops, once again.

Excerpted from Mission Local 5.6.2022

On Friday San Francisco Superior Court Judge Russell Roeca pushed back the preliminary hearing of former SFPD Officer Chris Samayoa, who shot dead Keita “Icky” O’Neil in 2017.

The hearing was delayed until July, a decision that caused outrage among O’Neil’s supporters, who were thrown out of court for the outburst.

“I’m so emotional, this is affecting me more than I thought it would,” said April Green, O’Neil’s aunt who attended Friday’s hearing at the Hall of Justice. “I was believing in a system that I thought was fair. I don’t know how to respond to this.”

“Oh my God,” Green loudly said from the second row, appearing in disbelief. “Oh my God, oh my God.”

A sheriff’s deputy on the opposite side of the room told Green to quiet down.

James Conger, an attorney with the District Attorney’s office who is prosecuting Samayoa, argued the defense is “doing District Attorney shopping. In other words, the recall is in June, and they hope it succeeds and they’ll get a better deal with a different District Attorney,” he said during the hearing.

“April, please,” Conger told her quietly from his podium.

The side of the courtroom where O’Neil’s supporters sat then began speaking frustratedly. One young man in the third row said something to a deputy, causing a deputy to approach and chastise him. “Step outside,” he ordered. Green and another woman seated in the row ahead began calling to the deputy, telling him to bother them instead of the young man. Suddenly the court erupted in chaos, with O’Neil’s supporters talking over each other and four deputies swarming the area.

“You’re fucking with us, you fuckin’ pigs,” O’Neil’s supporters said as they left the courtroom. 

“The judge has ordered the court closed,” another deputy yelled. “If you fail to leave, you will be detained.”

“Are you serious?” O’Neil’s supporters said. One woman at the front said, “You are evil. Evil. Evil!”  

O’Neil’s group walked out, and a deputy locked the door. Meanwhile, Judge Roeca told Samoya’s defense attorney Julia Fox the hearing would occur on July 14.

Green stood out in the hallway of the Hall of Justice in a ring of supporters with Conger, looking forlorn. She bemoaned that without a district attorney who presses charges on police officers, Black and Latino men would be vulnerable to police use-of-force and killings.

“I believe the judge already made his mind up,” Green told Mission Local. “Did you notice how extra police officers appeared just before he gave  the decision?”

She worries the case will change with the postponement. The first time Boudin called her to let her know that he pressed charges, she was “in disbelief. A white man in a position of power cares for a minority man and brought charges. They know if he is not in office, [Samayoa] is walking.” 

O’Neil’s supporters fear that postponing the matter to July may alter the case, since District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s office is prosecuting Samayoa, and he faces a recall election in June. 

On Dec. 1, 2017, Samayoa shot O’Neil, who was unarmed, video footage showed. O’Neil was pursued as a potential carjacking suspect. In November 2020, District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed felony criminal charges against Samayoa for voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, excessive force, and assault with a firearm. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors granted O’Neil’s mother a $2.5 million settlement. 

Chaos erupts as judge delays hearing of officer accused of killing Keita O’Neil

Top photo – April Green, the aunt of Keita O’Neil, talking to supporters after she and others were thrown out of the courtroom in the Hall of Justice. Attorney James Conger, right, is prosecuting Officer Chris Samayoa for the shooting of O’Neil in 2017.

Lee Heidhues 5.5.2022

For the latest manifesation of the Far Right extremists increasing their judicial and political power in America one need look no further than the pending Supreme Court decision taking away a woman’s right to control their bodies.

The United States is going to extremes to thwart anything deemed liberal and progressive.

In my home City of San Francisco wealthy reactionaries, tapping into fear and paranoia,  want to overthrow the progressive District Attorney in a Recall election.  It will take place on June 7.

This is one battle being waged by fervent reactionaries attempting to destroy anything which resembles progressive thought and action.

Taken to its most severe manifestation this totalitarian way of governance manifested itself in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The German government, 80 years after the destruction of the Nazi regime, plans to make permanent a living memorial so people never forget the assualt on humanity.

The Voice of America reported Antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in the United States in 2021, the Anti-Defamation League said in its annual assessment released in late April.

There were 2,717 incidents last year, representing an increase of 34% over 2020 and the highest on record since the New York-based Jewish civil rights group started tracking such cases in 1979. The ADL divides antisemitic incidents into harassment, assault and vandalism.

https://www.voanews.com/a/antisemitic-incidents-set-all-time-high-in-us-in-2021-/6545852.html

One day in the future America may be creating a similiar memorial for its legacy of genocide, racism, discrimination and abolition of individual rights.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.5.2022

In 2020, the German Bundestag advocated creating a documentation center for the victims of the German war of extermination and the Nazi occupations.

The center aims to shed light on how the devastating Nazi dictatorship with its war, destruction and extermination, including the atrocities of the Holocaust, affected all of Europe. Its focus will be placed on victims in Poland, the Baltic States, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Greece.

Two years later, the federal government approved a proposal by Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth for the realization of the “German Occupation of Europe in the Second World War” (ZWBE) documentation center, which was designed by the German Historical Museum (DHM).

The new documentation center’s goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the present. “Above all, this remembrance should be directed toward the future and make clear how important democracy, the rule of law and active diversity are for the European project and for our country in the heart of Europe, how crucial our commitment is in and for Europe,” Roth said.

The idea is to illustrate the dimension of the Nazis’ reign of terror across Europe. With its decision to establish another memorial and documentation site in Berlin, the German government is advancing key remembrance policy projects decided on in the previous legislative period.

The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it’s the German Resistance Memorial Center.

The World War II Documentation Center is not the only memorial in need of a home — three other memorials are supposed to be built in the German capital: for the victims of communist tyranny, the Polish victims of war and Nazi terror, and Nazi victims among Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Top photo –  1943 photo shows Jewish women and chaildren being deported from the Warsaw Ghetto

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-plans-documentation-center-on-nazi-occupation-in-europe/a-61690542

 

Lee Heidhues 5.1.2022

We acted as ushers and met Kathy Boudin at the inauguration of her son Chesa as San Francisco District Attorney on January 8, 2020.

May she Rest in Peace.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.1.2022

Kathy Boudin, a former member of the radical Weather Underground who took part in a robbery that killed three people, an act that sent her to prison for 22 years and left behind a young son who would become the district attorney of San Francisco, died Sunday at 78.

Chesa Boudin, who was 14 months old at the time of the fatal robbery and was left with a babysitter, was raised in Chicago by the leaders of the Weather Underground, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers.

Her son, Chesa Boudin, speaking to The Chronicle on Sunday, said he took a red-eye flight to New York overnight and was able to say his final goodbyes. In a statement, he said that “my mom fought cancer for seven years in her unshakably optimistic and courageous way. She made it long enough to meet her grandson, and welcome my father home from prison after 40 years.”

While imprisoned, she taught literacy programs, helped gather funding for college programming in the jail, worked with fellow inmates who were HIV-positive, and earned her master’s degree in adult education.

“She always ended phone calls with a laugh, a habit acquired during the 22 years of her incarceration, when she wanted to leave every person she spoke with, especially me, with joy and hope,” Chesa Boudin said. “She lived redemption, constantly finding ways to give back to those around her.”

Upon her release, Kathy Boudin accepted a job with the St. Luke’s Hospital HIV/AIDS Center, where she helped create programs for women.

Gilbert was granted clemency last year by outgoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and was released from prison on parole in November.

Kathy Boudin, David Gilbert and Chesa Boudin – November 2021

Kathy Boudin and Gilbert reunited immediately after Gilbert’s release, Chesa Boudin said.

“My dad was here with her every day,” Chesa Boudin said.

After more than two decades of incarceration, Kathy Boudin became the co-director and co-founder of Columbia University’s Center for Justice, where her work focused on the criminal justice system and the harm caused by mass incarceration.

Kathy Boudin was a fugitive when she was arrested for the Brinks robbery. She’d fled from an explosion in 1970 at a Manhattan town house where the Weathermen made bombs. The daughter of civil liberties lawyer Leonard Boudin, Kathy Boudin had grown up in a home in which law and politics were debated.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Kathy-Boudin-formerly-imprisoned-radical-leftist-17140432.php

Lee Heidhues 4.29.2022

Supervisor Connie Chan’s proposal to open JFK Promenade to cars crashed on April 26, 2022 when seven of her fellow legislators said NO. The newly minted JFK Promenade is a signal victory for “Progressives” who fought a pitched battle against Supervisor Chan and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

There will be a settling of scores at the ballot box in the newly drawn boundaries of District 1 in San Francisco. Some Political observers are already saying Connie Chan is at risk. Why?  The inclusion of the Sea Cliff enclave into the District. Wealthy moderate voters.  The area in Red on the Map above shows the additions to the District 1. The toney Sea Cliff, north of Lake Street and Presidio Terrace.

I would argue Connie’s political problem lies elsewhere. It is her flat out betrayal of the “Progressive” base which lifted her to victory.

The San Francisco District 1 Supervisor eked out a 123 vote victory in the 2020 election. (Connie Chan 17,030 – Marjan Philhour 16,907). A victory in large part the result of her environmental commitments.  Candidate Chan earned the nod from the influential national political group Sunrise.  Featured in a recent issue of The New Yorker.

Once in office in 2021 now Supervisor Chan proceeded to turn her political back on the crucial “Progressive” segment of her voters.  Beginning in March 2021, in well documented actions, Supervisor Chan was worked on by the influential Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.  Work which continued through 13 months and up to the final vote which made JFK Promenade a reality.

Supervisor Chan held the first of 14 documented meetings with FAMSF CEO Thomas Campbell, FAMSF management, Platinum Advisors, the well paid and politically connected lobbyist for FAMSF.  See Attached Public Records Request 4.5.2022

IDR Redacted Connie Chan 4.5.2022

Supervisor Chan phone log of conversation of her office phone call with Platinum Advisors 7.27.2021

“Progressives”, particularly those who waged this political battle,will be waiting to teach the Supervisor a tough lesson at the ballot box.  You do not betray the people responsible for your success. The people who waged this battle have long memories and will not soon forget her betrayal.

Liz and Lee Heidhues 4.28.2022

It was a celebratory windy, sunny afternoon on now official JFK Promenade in San Francisco’s historic Golden Gate Park. A struggle which has been ongoing 50 years.

The celebration was attended by San Francisco officials City Attorney David Chiu, SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeffrey Tumlin, and State Senator Scott Wiener.

The Senator made pointed remarks talking about the “Shit” advocates for JFK Promenade confronted. Wiener talked about SB 228 which passed the legislature in 2020 and made possible the expedited decision to create JFK Promenade. Absent this State law creation of JFK Promenade would have been mired in bureaucratic infighting for years.

It was two years ago today in the depths of The Pandemic that Mayor London Breed decreed JFK Drive to be a car free zone for The People.

Two years on, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, following a lengthy pitched battle, voted YES on behalf of future generations in an era of Climate Change.

Thousands of citizens rallied for over a year to make JFK Promenade reality.

Overcoming entrenched opposition from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Prevailing despite citizens who feel it their birthright to drive their climate killing cars anywhere anytime.

San Francisco strikes a blow for the environment and reaffirms it will be a leader in preserving open spaces for The People.

Following are photos from the joyous celebration.

Lee Heidhues 4.26.2022

THE SAN FRANCISCO BOARD OF SUPERVISORS JUST VOTED TO MAKE JFK DRIVE IN GOLDEN GATE PARK A PERMANENTLY CAR FREE SPACE.

The People must give the Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF and thousands of people of all ages and abilities credit for this truly historic event in San Francisco.

In this moment of  victory we cannot ignore, forget or forgive the Institution which did everything in its power to kill Car Free JFK Drive. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Wealthy. Entrenched. Politically connected. 

The People prevailed and  overcame a monied, well connected political force which spared no expense in its non stop effort to destroy car free JFK Drive.

It is a joyous day and makes San Francisco a true leader in the Climate Change debate.

 

Liz and Lee Heidhues 4.25.2022

Connie Chan’s year-long siege to attack car free spaces – JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park and The Great Walkway along the Pacific Ocean – in San Francisco will have its day of reckoning tomorrow, April 26, 2022.

The Board of Supervisors will decide if they have any core beliefs when it comes to climate change and the environment. Or just choke on the fumes of political expediency.

Confronting Supervisor Chan’s 10 Supervisorial colleagues will be her proposal to permit pernicious climate killing cars onto JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park after a marvelous two-year absence.

Connie Chan has already driven back the 24/7/365 Great Walkway (aka Great Highway) along the Pacific Ocean into a weekend only car free area.  A sneak attack on The People launched behind closed doors when the Supervisors were on summer break in August 2021.

Now Supervisor Chan is closer than ever to achieving the biggest climate-killing victory in her lifetime. Only in San Francisco could a faux “progressive” politician like Connie Chan attack car free public spaces and achieve her coup d’etat.

Amsterdam, Brussels, Helsinki, Oslo, Paris, Utrecht – to name several large cities – have successfully turned their municipalities into largely car free meccas.

This past year Supervisor Chan has aligned herself with the most strident fossil fuel advocates and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (FAMSF) to further her goal to extinguish car free spaces. It is a well documented, tawdry tale.

Connie Chan’s betrayal of the Green New Deal Pledge which she advocated in 2020 is shameful.

Sadly, advocates of a car free JFK Drive –  and there are thousands  – have refused to openly condemn Connie Chan’s duplicity. 

San Francisco is hard core money driven politics.  It is NOT Civics 101.

Connie Chan is a fierce political warrior who knows how to play the City Hall insider backroom game in her adopted City.

Let’s hope the good government types who play by the rules do not get taught a tough lesson in how San Francisco really works.

Artwork – Liz Heidhues

 

Lee Heidhues 

French voters have the common sense to turn away its reactionary presidential candidate.

It’s disconcerting that America seems to be headed in an entirely different direction.

France 24 – April 24, 2022

Emmanuel Macron was elected to a second term as French president on Sunday evening with 58.2% of the vote, according to an estimate from the Ipsos polling institute. His far-right challenger Marine Le Pen won 41.8% of the vote in an election that saw the country’s highest abstention rate in 50 years.

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220424-live-follow-the-results-of-france-s-presidential-election-run-off

Lee Heidhues 4.23.2022

The reactionary mob  has invaded California.

A convoy of protesters descended on the private residence of an East Bay legislator in an act of harassment. These are the reactionary tactics increasingly being used by the strident American right wing as it pushes its agenda of intolerance, hate, racism and an assault on women’s rights.

This is the same strategy we are witnessing in San Francisco as the reactionaries trying to overthrow the democratically elected Distrist Attorney engage in tactics of harassment and disruption. 

The tactics being used by these reactionaries are a clear and present danger to American democracy.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 4.23.2022

A group of people drove their trucks and vans in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood outside the home of an East Bay state legislator while she was reportedly inside protesting legislation that would end a state requirement that coroners investigate stillbirths.

The protest, captured in online videos, involved a convoy of about 20 vehicles, according to the California Highway Patrol. Protesters gathered in opposition to a pair of bills by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, that would also require California businesses to mandate COVID vaccinations among their employees. Wicks already announced in late March that the vaccination bill was being put on hold.

Protesters in the videos could be heard voicing opposition to vaccine mandates and AB 2223, the legislation written by Wicks that would do away with a state law requiring coroners to investigate fetal deaths related to a suspected self-induced or criminal abortion.

The law  appears to do the opposite of a controversial Texas law that effectively bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy by allowing private citizens to sue anyone who helps someone obtain an abortion; Wicks’ bill would prohibit someone who helps a pregnant woman obtain an abortion from facing civil or criminal liability.

AB 2223 so far has cleared two legislative committees. The bill needs to pass floor votes in the Assembly and state Senate before it can make its way to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

AB 2223 aligns with a legal alert by Attorney General Rob Bonta that instructed the state’s prosecutors and police not to pursue charges against mothers who deliver stillbirths or have miscarriages. In his announcement, Bonta cited the case of Adora Perez, a Kings County woman who spent four years in prison for using drugs before giving birth to a stillborn child.

Last month, a judge overturned Perez’s conviction with support from Bonta, saying that “there is no crime in California of manslaughter of a fetus.”

Officer David Arias, a CHP spokesperson, said protesters remained peaceful and no arrests or citations were issued. The protest convoy remained in the area for about an hour, Arias said, and caused temporary traffic congestion.

Online videos of the protest showed testy, expletive-laced exchanges between onlookers and protesters as the latter made their way past the Safeway on College Avenue. One video showed onlookers throwing eggs at trucks as they loudly blared their horns, shouting at protesters to leave the area.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Truck-convoy-protests-outside-the-home-of-East-17122465.php

Lee Heidhues 4.22.2022

San Francisco should be ashamed of itself for being bullied into burying its racist history.

I am mortified in ‘Progressive’ SF any parent is upset their kids were asked to feel sharp edges of a cotton plant Parents fearful their kids will be exposed to the vicious reality of slavery in America Shame on anyone who thinks America is just a 4th of July party

The teacher should be commended for the innovative approach to teaching the horrors of Slavery in this country. Instead, we have smug righteous parents fearful that their darlings will be exposed to the vicious underbelly of American history.

Shame on these luddites who continue to delude themselves and stunt their children’s intellectual growth in the process. The teacher should NEVER have issued an apology for the innovative classroom lesson.

 

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 4.22.2022

Amid a national conservative push to remove lessons about racism from school curricula, a San Francisco teacher’s use of a cotton plant to illustrate the hardships of slavery has left parents divided over the teaching method itself, given the sensitive subject, and the backlash that followed.

The social studies teacher at San Francisco’s Creative Arts Charter School brought in cotton plants, or bolls, to class on March 3 so her eighth-grade students could feel the sharp edges that had pierced hands while picking cotton and pulling out the seeds. The lesson was about the cotton gin and the impact it had on slavery and the industrial revolution.

Within 24 hours, the leadership at the school had launched an investigation into the classroom exercise — what some described as an inappropriate simulation of slavery.

A parent, whose child considers the teacher one of his three favorite people in the world, said it’s “unbearably cruel” what the teacher has endured.

“I think it’s insane they would treat a teacher like this and basically discard a teacher that has been so inspiring and dedicated,” said the parent, who requested anonymity to protect her child. “It feels like it was a lesson in sensitivity and empathy. That’s why my mind is so blown and I can’t stop being angry about it.”

On March 4, the school’s director apologized in a letter to families for the “unacceptable, harmful” and “inappropriate” teaching that did not reflect the school’s “anti-racist, progressive-minded curriculum.”

The teacher was not at the school for five weeks after the controversial class. The school declined to confirm whether or how she was placed on leave or disciplined during the investigation, but parents attributed her absence to disciplinary action. When the teacher returned on April 15, she issued a written apology to families.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/An-S-F-teacher-used-a-cotton-plant-to-teach-17121022.php