The San Francisco DPW crew showed up on a Monday morning and with brisk efficency completed the job of repaving our street.
I appreciate their good work and thanked the crew chief.
The only other exchange I witnessed was when a neighbor came out as the street repaving job concluded and asked a crew member, “Can I park my car here now?”
Scant appreciation.
We know people’s car centric priorities in this town.
Following is a photo montage of DPW employees on the job maintaining The Streets of San Francisco.
Early Monday morningEquipment in placeThe Vögele ashphalt machineOn the jobTaking a measurementEyeballing the photographerThe equipment is joinedThe crewThe tree stands tallSurveying the finished jobPacking upThe street repaving is completed
The Sunday morning massacre in Sacramento, California which left six people dead and many wounded is a typical American event.
On July 27, 1967, the black activist H. Rap Brown gave a rancorous speech at a press conference in Washington, D.C. that is widely cited as the origin of his well-known quote:
“Violence is as American as cherry pie.”
In a way, it was the origin. However, that seven-word aphorism is the shortened, popularized version of what Brown said in his speech.
What he actually said that day was: “I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary.”
Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke eloquently about the scourge of violence in America. He experienced it all too well. His father, a university professor, was assassinated in Beirut, Lebanon in 1984.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 4.3.2022
SACRAMENTO — Warriors head coach Steve Kerr didn’t think it was appropriate to talk about basketball ahead of Sunday’s game against the Kings in Sacramento. There were far greater issues that needed to be addressed.
At least six people were killed and 12 others were wounded in a mass shooting in downtown Sacramento early Sunday morning near 10th and K streets, close to Golden 1 Center.
The death toll and number of wounded made it the worst mass shooting in Sacramento’s history. As of Sunday evening, the Sacramento police still don’t have any suspects in custody.
Hugs of anquish and despair in Sacramento
“It’s devastating news,” Kerr said. “I didn’t know about it until this morning when I woke up. First and foremost, just thinking about the city of Sacramento and all the families who were effected, the victims, the survivors, the people who were injured. Just so many lives devastated. So everybody with the Warriors, we all share in your city’s grief. There’s not a whole lot you can do or say. But we’re all crushed to day as we prepare for this game.”
For Kerr, each senseless act of violence in this country hits close to home. His father, Malcolm, was assassinated in 1984 while serving as the president of the American University of Beirut. He’s been a strong supporter of stringent gun control and and background checks. He’s repeatedly used his platform as an NBA coach to express his disappointment with the government’s response to mass shootings.
His response to Sunday’s tragedy was no different.
“At some point our government has to decide are we going to have some common sense gun laws,” Kerr said. “It’s not going to solve everything, but it will save lives.”
The families have to live with the scourge of American violence
Kerr discussed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, sponsored by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena. It cleared the House with support from both sides of the aisle, but never reached the Senate floor.
San Francisco Department of Public Works (DPW) has been taking care of business on our block in the Outer Richmond District the past two months.
On the First of April a crew arrived with approximately 10 pieces of equipment and got to work. Following is a pictorial essay of The City taking care of the neighborhoods.
DPW arrives on a Friday morning
Taking a lookThe project commencesDigging awayThe operator and his BIG machineGetting ready to go to workGravel being transferredThe DPW crew looks after a neighborhood street treeSurveying the landscapeThe gigantic visitor in our drivewayHeavy equipmentGrinding awayChecking out the workThe job is finished for now
Team USA is back in the World Cup and will face daunting challenge when it goes onto the Pitch in Qatar to meet England.
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 4.1.2022
DOHA, Qatar—Eight years after its last appearance at the World Cup, the U.S. men’s national soccer team learned its fate for the 2022 tournament in Qatar on Friday. And even in a random draw, the result felt somehow inevitable: The U.S. will have to face England.
The other two opponents on the Americans’ road through the group stage are Iran, ranked No. 21 in the world, and one of Scotland, Wales, or Ukraine, pending the results of a playoff.
Nothing in that group, however, will draw the attention of England-U.S. on the day after Thanksgiving.
Steven Gerrard of England pursues Landon Donovan of theU.S. during the 2010 World Cup. The match ended in a 1-1 draw. PHOTO: PHIL COLE/GETTY IMAGES
Elsewhere, the host nation Qatar landed with Senegal, the Netherlands, and its opponent for the opening game of the tournament, Ecuador. The customary “Group of Death,” meanwhile, never quite materialized, but five-time champion Brazil landed with a challenging trio in Serbia, Switzerland, and Cameroon. Defending champion France has a comparatively smoother road with a group featuring Denmark, Tunisia, and a team that has yet to be determined from South America or Asia.
There are already potential blockbusters on the cards from the quarterfinals, should the group stage go according to form: England vs. France, Netherlands vs. Argentina, and Spain vs. Brazil.
For the U.S., the first major clash will come much sooner. The last time the Americans met the game’s inventors at a World Cup was in Rustenburg, South Africa, in 2010 when they salvaged a 1-1 draw thanks to a mistake from England goalkeeper Robert Green. The U.S. was ultimately eliminated by Ghana in the round of 16.
It’s uplifting to read a story about someone who made a positive contribution to the World and brought happiness to her students.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 3.31.2022
As a professor at San Francisco State University, Julie Marshall taught her students to use art to work through personal issues, a process she employed during her own four-year struggle with a bone marrow disorder.
“She really began to believe that art teachers were going about it the wrong way,” said her sister, also an art educator. “They were teaching students how to hold a brush. Julia thought the ideas you were trying to express were what art was all about.”
“Canary with Tags,” the final unfinished work in Julia Marshall’s triptych involving IV bags. Morley Knoll/
Her main courses at SF State were called “Art for Children,” and “Curriculum and Instruction in Art,” both requisites for the K-12 single-subject teaching credential in California. Her classes were always full, usually with a waiting list.
“The thing that was so cool about it is that we were making art at the same time we were learning how to be teachers of art,” said Lisa Hochtritt, who studied under Marshall and went on to teach art at Half Moon Bay High School.
“Julia had a kiln, she had paints, she would bring in tons of art-making materials. And she didn’t just give us assignments. She’d do the work with us, too. She was curious about everybody and everything and made it so much fun,” Hochtritt said.
As a professor at San Francisco State University, Julie Marshall taught her students to use art to work through personal issues, a process she employed during her own four-year struggle with a bone marrow disorder.
“Rabbit” by Julia Marshall, from a triptych she was working on prior to her death in February.Provided by Leonard Turner
During long treatment sessions, she’d take the intravenous infusion in her left arm to leave her right arm free to draw interpretations of the IV drip bag that was her inescapable companion. Her goal was a triptych of paintings that re-imagined the drip bag as personal totem. Each painting was offset by a mouse, a rabbit and a canary to symbolize her own vulnerability.
Marshall finished the first two and was at work on the third when she went into the hospital on Feb. 10. She died five days later at UCSF Parnassus from complications related to aplastic anemia, a disease in which bone marrow is unable to adequately produce blood cells. She was 74.
“Julia had always used visual imagery to extend her verbal ways of thinking about issues that concerned her, both involving the world at large and her own thoughts,” said her husband Leonard Hunter, retired professor of art at SF State. “Once she got terminally ill her emotions overwhelmed her logical mind, and the paintings represent her sense of urgency and what fate held for her.”
“Mouse” by Julia Marshall, part of a triptych she was painting prior to her death in February.Provided by Leonard Turner
The assault on criminal justice reform continues unabated. Now it’s New York with a new Conservative Governor and a former cop now sitting in Gracie Mansion in New York City.
Whether it be through the attempted Recall of Progressive District Attorneys or at one time Progressive legislators caving into the law and order chants. A fearful public is pushing to dismantle hard won reforms.
Reforms and reformers are in danger of being swept away in the current environment of paranoia and trusting law enforcement to solve society’s ills.
Progressives and reformers need to stay strong and think of George Floyd and countless other black people who lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement and not be swept up in this time of fear.
George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, MN
Excerpted from The Nation 3.27.2022
The Kathy Hochul honeymoon is coming to an end. It’s New York, after all, and few politicians glide above scrutiny or avoid agita. For many months, it was good enough for Hochul to be not-Cuomo; smiling and shaking hands, taking everyone’s phone calls, and offering encouraging words.
In Hochul’s calculus, pivoting right on criminal justice could help bolster her numbers in the suburbs and upstate for a primary and general election. She should remember, though, that Democrats in the state legislature were able to perform well in 2020 as the GOP demagogued around bail reform. Republicans will trot out the same playbook under more favorable circumstances and hope a red wave washes more of them into power.
Hochul was a conservative Democratic representative and eventual Andrew Cuomo ally who shifted left with her party as she rose to power.
But Hochul, in an apparent alliance with Eric Adams, the pugnacious new mayor of New York City, has made her first decisive move against progressives in Albany. Last week, the New York Post leaked news that the governor is seeking to significantly weaken the state’s bail and criminal justice laws in her proposed $216 billion budget, which is due at the beginning of April.
In particular, Hochul wants to give judges far more discretion to order cash bail, dealing a blow to a law many reformers championed in 2019, when Democrats in the state legislature dramatically limited the cases in which money could be used to keep defendants in jail. Hochul also wants to try minors accused of gun possession in criminal court, which would undo another reform passed several years ago.
Progressives and socialists in the state legislature immediately denounced Hochul’s proposals and vowed to vote against the budget if they were ultimately included in the final version.
Both legislative leaders, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, shot down Adams, a former police captain, when he made a pilgrimage to Albany recently to ask state lawmakers to roll back these criminal justice reforms. Without much evidence, Adams has blamed changes to New York’s bail laws and the age of criminal responsibility for the spike in gun violence that has come during the pandemic. Hochul has been more muted, but she made it clear in her budget proposal that she is siding with Adams and a raft of fearmongering conservatives.
What makes the fight over bail so galling, though, is how fact-free it remains. The rise in violent crime, beginning in 2020, is a serious matter, and one progressives must reckon with and not hand-wave away.
A recent analysis from the city comptroller’s office showed that a change to bail laws isn’t driving the crime spike. Pretrial rearrest rates remained nearly identical before and after bail reform, according to the analysis.
For the institutional left, the coming weeks will be incredibly important. Hochul, who has raised more than $20 million, has many powerful interests in her ear telling her to take the fight to progressives in the name of winning elections.
The Right Wing mercenary funded Recall attempt to oust Progressive San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin is a 21st century political lynching.
Wealthy extremists spent over $1,400,000 using paid signature gatherers to qualify the Recall for the June 7, 2022 election ballot. *
Reactionaries paid signature gatherers to peddle the DA Recall measure. Vicious foes of Progressive justice. Wealthy reactionaries and their political action committees appealing to the most basic fears of San Francisco’s citizens. Marching into San Francisco as into the Coliseum of ancient Rome. They hope to stick their knives into progressives. Win a symbolic victory in their law and order crusade. Using dark money and fear as their power to destroy good leadership.
Extremists actively aided by the San Francisco Police Officers Association and a shamefully quiet media that stands by and doesn’t speak out.
Silence means acquiescence.
Recallers disrupt and harass Chesa Boudin rally – 3.5.2022 Photo: Lee Heidhues
People pushing the DA Recall campaign are using tactics better suited to a totalitarian State: Disrupting DA Boudin campaign events and publishing racist red baiting campaign posters.
The local media, particuarly San Francisco’s daily newspaper The Chronicle, is a willing collaborator in this political lynching. The Chronicle has not published one article exposing the money behind the DA Recall and the tactics being utilized by Recall supporters. Tactics which will be found in a study of Weimar Germany of the 1920’s leading to the ascendancy of the Nazis to power in January 1933.
*A prime mover in the DA Recall is David Oliver Sacks (born 25 May 1972)[1] is an entrepreneur, and investor in internet technology firms. He is general partner of Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017. Previously, Sacks was the founding COO and product leader of PayPal[1] (acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion)[2] and founder/CEO of Yammer[3] (acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion).[4] In 2016, he led the turnaround of Zenefits as interim CEO.[5] In 2017, Sacks co-founded Craft Ventures,[6] an early-stage venture fund. His angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, Palantir Technologies, Airbnb and Houzz.[7][8][9] He is a co-host of the podcast All In.[10]
Excerpted from Wikipedia
Photos – Liz Heidhues: ‘Soul of a Nation. Art in the Age of Black Power’ – De Young Museum Fall 11.9.2019 – 3.15.2020
Chris Hedges is one of the most outspoken and honest journalists in the United States.
His book “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” is a primer on how nation states rally the population in time of conflict. Chris Hedges, even though he is a Pultizer Prize winning journalist who spent 15 years with The New York Times, is never interviewed on the Mainstream Media. His voice is effectively silenced.
A good friend provided me with an essay he published this week, “The Lie of American Innnocence.” I am attaching some excerpts along with a link to the entire article. It is sobering reading.
Chris Hedges – excerpted from Consortium News 3.22.2022
The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States.
But, like Putin’s Russia, those who expose these crimes are silenced and persecuted. Julian Assange, even though he is not a U.S. citizen and his WikiLeaks site is not a U.S.-based publication, is charged under the U.S. Espionage Act for making public numerous U.S. war crimes. Assange, currently housed in a high security prison in London, is fighting a losing battle in the British courts to block his extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison.
If we demand justice for Ukrainians, as we should, we must also demand justice for the one million people killed — 400,000 of whom were noncombatants — by our invasions, occupations and aerial assaults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. We must demand justice for those who were wounded, became sick or died because we destroyed hospitals and infrastructure.
We must demand justice for the thousands of soldiers and marines who were killed, and many more who were wounded and are living with lifelong disabilities, in wars launched and sustained on lies.
Civilians in every war since have been considered legitimate targets. In the summer of 1965, then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called the bombing raids north of Saigon that left hundreds of thousands of dead an effective means of communication with the government in Hanoi.
McNamara, six years before he died, unlike most war criminals, had the capacity for self-reflection. Interviewed in the documentary, “The Fog of War,” he was repentant, not only about targeting Vietnamese civilians but about the aerial targeting of civilians in Japan in World War II, overseen by Air Force General Curtis LeMay.
“LeMay said if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals,” McNamara said in the film. “And I think he’s right … LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose, and not immoral if you win?”
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is a blatant repulsive Southern demagogue. It’s regrettable the Mainstream Media does not call out this foul creature for what he really is. A swamp dwelling Racist.
He race baited his Black opponent during the 2020 election campaign. He is continuing this reprehensible style, which fits right in with Republican Party thinking, as he browbeats and tries to dominate Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Excerpted from New York Magazine 3.23.2022
Unlike some of his posturing colleagues, Lindsey Graham is on no one’s short or long list for president in 2024.
So if Graham doesn’t harbor presidential ambitions anymore, and he isn’t facing an election any time soon (he was reelected in 2020), why is he so out of control at the Jackson hearings? Maybe it’s just who he is.
Republicans participating in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson can mostly be sorted into two groups. Some are being fairly civil and more or less relevant in their questioning, pausing frequently to congratulate themselves for behaving better than Democrats did during Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings (which involved serious sexual-assault allegations). But some Republican senators aren’t behaving well at all, and their outbursts often have little to do with Jackson.
But none of these senators can match South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham in terms of heated, out-of-control expostulations. Maybe the fact that he brought up Kavanaugh at least three times is unsurprising since Graham was the face of Republican fury over the allegations against Kavanaugh when they arose in 2018.
Foulmouth racist Lindsey Graham
But if possible, Graham is even angrier now. At one point on day three of Jackson’s hearings, Graham badgered the judge, demanding that she say how she’d feel if the Judiciary Committee confronted her with an “ambush” like the one that he claimed Kavanaugh had faced.
This wasn’t a lone, retroactive burst of petulance. In his first round of questions a day earlier, Graham got increasingly heated about policies that allowed the release of prisoners from Guantánamo Bay (which was only tangentially related to a long-ago case in which Jackson represented prisoners) and stalked out of the room when his tirade ended.
His 2016 campaign crashed and burned before voters even voted (the day before he suspended his campaign in December 2015, RealClearPolitics showed him with a polling average of 0.5 percent of GOP voters supporting his candidacy).
Supervisor Connie Chan, faux Progressive, is the most vocal foe of car free areas on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park and along The Great Walkway adjacent to the Pacific Ocean.
A review of filing with the San Francisco Ethics Commission makes it clear that Connie has met regularly with lobbyists who oppose the car free designation.
Supervisor Chan has met with Platinum Advisors, lobbyist for the Fine Arts Museum San Francisco (FAMSF), nine times since taking office less than 15 months ago.
The first meeting took place on March 10, 2021 shortly before supporters for a car free JFK Drive held their first rally in Golden Gate Park.
Connie Chan in yellow struts her “Progressive” cred meeting with Civil Rights icon Jesse Jackson
The most recent meeting took place on February 17, 2022. At that time the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission and the Metropolitan Transit Authority were meeting to approve JFK Drive as a permanent car free zone.
Supervisor Chan met with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition seven times during 2021. The last meeting was on December 9, 2021, over three months ago.
She did not meet with them while this issue was being debated before City agencies.
Since assuming office in January 2021 representing the City’s Richmond District Connie Chan has met with registered lobbyists 55 times. A list which includes 24 organizations. A review of the San Francisco Ethics Commission site makes it obvious Supervisor Chan has sat down with lobbyists far more than any of her 10 fellow Supervisors.
Connie Chan ran as a Progressive in 2020 vowing to protect the environment and signed her campaign mailers, “In Solidarity.” The list of organizations with whom she has met hardly fit the “Progressive” description.
Amongst the lobbyists she has met the list includes such organizations as:
University of San Francisco – 6 times
San Francisco Travel Association – 5 times
Teamsters Union – 4 times
The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce – 3 times
The list includes other organizations. The most interesting is Hines. While Hines is not a household name it is huge. It is an 83.6BN multi-national which owns 101 California Street. It owns and manages companies worldwide. Hines lobbyist met with Supervisor Chan to discuss a project at 550 Howard Street.
Attached is a list from the San Francisco Ethics Commission of Supervisor Chan’s lobbying contacts along with a link to the Ethics Commission website.
The local media, particuarly San Francisco’s daily newspaper The Chronicle, is a willing collaborator in this political lynching. The Chronicle has not published one article exposing the money behind the DA Recall and the tactics being utilized by Recall supporters. Tactics which will be found in a study of Weimar Germany of the 1920’s leading to the ascendancy of the Nazis to power in January 1933.
Lee's Perspective 