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https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/sfjazz-pays-tribute-to-the-masters/ | Since 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts has been awarding Jazz Masters fellowships to musicians considered to have reached an “exceptionally high standard of achievement.” Besides the monetary award, the designation is considered one of the highest honors a jazz musician can receive.
The 2022 awards will be celebrated on Thursday with a tribute concert at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco honoring this year’s recipients — bassist Stanley Clarke, drummer Billy Hart, singer Cassandra Wilson and saxophonist/educator Donald Harrison Jr. — and featuring such stars as singer Dianne Reeves (who’s also hosting the show), Jeremiah Collier, Joe Dyson, Ethan Iverson, Dan Kaufman, Salar Nader and more, as well as the SFJazz Collective.
The 7:30 p.m. show is sold out but a late batch of tickets will be sold at the SFJazz Center box office 6-7 p.m. You can also livestream the show on the venue’s website, https://www.sfjazz.org/.
It’s free but registration is required. Meanwhile, the sensational Reeves, a 2018 Jazz Master, will perform at SFJazz Center at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $50-$115. Proof of vaccination is required, and masks must be worn in the theater. Go to https://www.sfjazz.org/. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/big-oil-companies-accused-of-falsely-inflating-gas-prices-in-anti-trust-lawsuit/ | By Joe Dworetzky
Two dozen individual consumers filed a massive lawsuit Monday in federal court in San Francisco alleging an antitrust conspiracy two years ago by big oil companies to curtail worldwide oil production in order to boost the price of gas. The defendants include Exxon Mobile Corporation, the world’s biggest oil company, Chevron Corporation, Phillips 66 Company, Occidental Petroleum, and a number of smaller oil companies.
The case has its roots in March 2020, when an agreement among members of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia, the world’s number 3 oil producer, was set to expire. The agreement limited the amount of oil that each of the countries could produce.
Plaintiffs allege that in meetings in Vienna on March 6, Russia declined to renew the production agreement because U.S. oil producers, not a party to the agreement, were expanding production and undercutting Russian prices.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s second largest oil-producing country after the United States. Russia’s position was adverse to Saudi interests. To retaliate against Russia, Saudi Arabia publicly announced that it would boost its production and cut prices.
This led to what the complaint characterizes as “a worldwide price war” and as a result, “prices for oil and gasoline began to drop precipitously.”
At first, then-President Donald J. Trump trumpeted the falling prices, even predicting that a gallon of gas would fall to 99 cents. He described the results as “like giving a massive tax cut to the people of our country.” Trump reportedly said, “The free market is a wonderful thing.”
But if the gas prices were a boon to consumers, the world’s biggest oil companies were not thrilled. The complaint alleges that the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association for American oil producers, began to talk publicly about the need for U.S. oil producers to “balance the oil market” in order to stabilize domestic oil prices.
API allegedly arranged a meeting on April 3, 2020 with then President Trump. In attendance were the CEOs of API, Exxon, Chevron and Phillips. David Bernhardt, the United States Secretary Department of Interior, was also present.
The complaint says that after talking to API and the oil companies, President Trump’s attitude toward the falling gas prices “changed dramatically,” and at the request of the defendants he began to lobby to stop the price war.
Plaintiffs allege that Trump spoke directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and urged them to make peace.
Saudi Arabia and Russia allegedly said that in order to call off the price war, the U.S., Canada and Mexico would have to agree cut their production.
Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Secretary of Energy announced that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (the U.S. government oil storage system) had agreed to store 21.3 million barrels of “excess oil” from U.S. producers, thus essentially taking that supply off the market. Trump allegedly tweeted that there would also be a reduction of U.S. production and the Secretary of Energy later estimated that U.S. production would fall by 2 to 3 million barrels a day.
On April 9, 2020, OPEC and Russia announced an end to the price war and an agreement to cut production. The complaint quotes the CEO of API saying that “strong U.S. diplomacy” had helped to stabilize world oil markets.
The plaintiffs see it differently. They say that the defendants “used the former President of the United States as a facilitator to obtain agreement from Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut oil production, along with the American Defendants.”
Plaintiffs describe the result in dramatic terms, “The American oil companies… agreed to the demands of Saudi Arabia and Russia. The cartel now included the Americans. It was, in effect and fact, OPEC++ (OPEC plus Russia plus America).”
Plaintiffs say that the effect of the agreement was to dramatically increase the price of a barrel of oil from less than $20.00 to over $100.00 per barrel. They also say that the actions “ignite[d] the fire of inflation throughout the country.”
The complaint asserts that the defendants violated the antitrust laws by conspiring to fix oil prices and eliminate or suppress competition. In addition to damages and injunctive relief, plaintiffs ask the court to split Exxon, Chevron, and Phillips into smaller companies so that they do not have the power to control prices or engage in other anti-competitive behavior.
Private companies are generally forbidden to make agreements among themselves to fix prices or eliminate competition. When that happens, the antitrust laws allow affected consumers to sue for the damages they have incurred. In some circumstances, they are allowed to recover three times their actual damages.
No answering pleading in the case has yet been filed, but the defendants are expected to assert that they are immune from antitrust liability under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine, a judge-made rule that where the challenged joint conduct involves petitioning the government to adopt a law or directive (or complying with that law or directive once adopted), the actors can’t be held liable.
The rationale is that the First Amendment allows individuals and companies to petition the government to enact a law or create a mandatory directive, and if the government decides to adopt the law or directive, the companies can’t be liable for following it.
The Free Speech Center, a non-partisan public policy center devoted to First Amendment issues, explains, “even though a would-be monopolist who attempted to establish a price-fixing cartel would have been subject to anti-trust liability, the same actor who attempted to reach the same result by lobbying for legislation to fix prices would not have been subject to liability.”
Plaintiffs are represented by Joseph M. Alioto of the Alioto Law Firm in San Francisco.
Alioto thinks that Noerr Pennington has little applicability because the defendants weren’t trying to get a law passed or to enforce an existing law. They were looking for government help to further purely private commercial interests.
Stanford Law Professor Douglas Melamed, formerly the chair of WilmerHale’s antitrust group, has written extensively on antitrust issues. After reviewing the complaint, Melamed says that the plaintiffs’ theory, though a “long shot,” is “not crazy.”
Taking what the complaint says on its face, Melamed expects plaintiffs to argue that even if the defendants’ entreaties to the Trump administration to take action to limit production is protected by Noerr-Pennington, that won’t end the inquiry. The question then is whether the government required or mandated the defendants to cut production. If there wasn’t such a law or mandatory directive and the defendants, as a group, agreed to cut production, that could be an antitrust conspiracy.
Melamed suggested that the defendants will likely argue that there was no agreement among themselves to cut production, rather each company made its own decision. If that turns out to be the case, plaintiffs will need to prove an agreement by looking to all the circumstances surrounding the defendants’ conduct. “That’s what the case is going to come down to, I suppose,” Melamed predicted.
Alioto says that when he read about was happening in 2020, “I actually wrote to CEOs and the chairman and I warned them and told them that they cannot do that… it’s a plain violation of the law, because if you have an agreement on production that just immediately affects price, that’s what supply and demand is all about. But they went ahead and did it anyway.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/employee-vaccination-bill-withdrawn-from-state-legislature/ | By Eli Walsh
A bill that would have required all California workers to prove they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19 was withdrawn from the state legislature just before its first committee hearing, one of the bill’s authors said Tuesday.
Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, said the authors of Assembly Bill 1993 decided to withdraw it from consideration in light of the state’s sharp decline in COVID cases over the last two months.
The bill would have required all employees and contractors working in the state to prove that they were vaccinated against the virus or demonstrate a valid exemption by Jan. 1, 2023.
Wicks introduced the bill last month with Assembly members Evan Low, D-San Jose, Akilah Weber, D-San Diego, and Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, as co-authors.
“We are now in a new and welcome chapter in this pandemic, with the virus receding for the moment,” Wicks said in a statement Tuesday. “This provides for us the opportunity to work more collaboratively with labor and employers to address concerns raised by the bill.”
Wicks said the bill was also withdrawn due to opposition from law enforcement and public safety unions, and expressed hope that they would continue working with state officials to ensure the state’s police and fire department employees get vaccinated.
State employees, teachers and health care workers are already required under state health guidance to prove their vaccination status or provide a valid religious or medical exemption.
Wicks, Law, Weber and Aguiar-Curry are all members of the legislature’s COVID-19 vaccine work group, along with Sens. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, Dr. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, and Josh Newman, D-Fullerton.
The legislators formed the work group in January in an effort to work with medical experts to determine the best ways to encourage state residents to get vaccinated against COVID and combat misinformation about the safety and efficacy of the available COVID vaccines.
“Vaccines, and vaccine requirements, remain a critical tool for moving from pandemic to endemic,” Wicks said. “That work is still needed, and it could still ensure that millions more Californians become vaccinated.”
As of Wednesday, 74.5 percent of state residents age 5 and up have completed their initial vaccination series. Another 9.4 percent have received at least one dose. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/everyone-has-crypto-fomo-but-does-it-belong-in-your-portfolio/ | By Tara Siegel Bernard
The New York Times
Larry David travels through the ages, pooh-poohing many of the world’s greatest innovations — indoor plumbing, the dishwasher and, lastly, cryptocurrency. “Don’t be like Larry,” the Super Bowl commercial urges. “Don’t miss out on the next big thing.”
The presence of a boomer comedian pitchman, though, is just the latest sign that crypto has left behind its bleeding-edge roots. Institutional investors are pouring billions into digital tokens, athletes and mayors are taking part of their salaries in cryptocoins, and you may have already run into a bitcoin ATM at your grocery store.
And then there are bitcoin’s FOMO-inspiring, albeit insanely volatile, price movements: After peaking near $69,000 on Nov. 9, it was recently trading at about $39,300 — still almost five times its value in March 2020, according to Coinbase.
It’s challenging for a casual observer to disentangle the hype from any true potential, and yet it’s also hard to shake that feeling: Are digital tokens worthy of a spot in my portfolio? Are they even a viable asset class at all?
There are conflicting signals: The White House is moving toward developing a policy approach to crypto, but federal regulators overseeing workplace retirement plans all but banned it from those most sacred of accounts.
Even so, a growing share of steely buy-and-hold investors are being tempted. In a recent Bitwise/ETF Trends survey of financial advisers — who tend to be hired by the non-YOLO set — 16% said they had allocated crypto to their clients’ portfolios in 2021, up from 9% in 2020.
That’s not surprising: There are more ways in than ever.
It has been easy enough to open a basic account to buy cryptocurrency on the big trading platforms like Coinbase or Gemini, and it’s even possible through apps like PayPal or Venmo. But crypto is trickling deeper into traditional investment realms: Several bitcoin-linked exchange-traded funds hit the market in 2021, making it possible to just click “buy” in any brokerage account. Just last month, Betterment — an established roboadviser known for managing staid portfolios of cheap but reliable index-related funds — bought a firm that provides baskets of cryptocurrencies and related assets.
And there’s a steady beat of developments: BlackRock and Charles Schwab recently filed to register funds that track the crypto economy, while other providers continue to lobby regulators to let them unleash more products.
But even digital currency evangelists admit that investing in bitcoin and its brethren remains a largely speculative bet on an unknown future.
“This is a fast-moving market, and it’s hard to know where it will go,” said Matt Hougan, the chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, which has $1.3 billion under management in roughly a dozen crypto-related funds.
Cryptocurrencies and their blockchains — the open and communally maintained electronic ledgers that record transactions — have potential that we don’t fully understand, Hougan said. Think of it like trying to guess the internet’s future in the early 1990s.
“The internet clearly represented a new way to distribute information and could have major consequences,” he wrote in a report. “But moving from that to predicting that people would, for example, regularly use smartphones to rent out a stranger’s house rather than staying in a hotel is a whole different matter.”
As enticing as it is to think you’re getting in on the next Google, it’s worth remembering that the dot-com boom went bust. Even Hougan believes regular investors should tread carefully when deciding how much of their portfolio to commit.
“Above 5%, it becomes the driver of the most painful drops in your portfolio,” he said. “It becomes very risky.”
The curious do not lack for choice. There are nearly 9,700 coins and tokens collectively valued at $1.9 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap, which tallies coins that meet certain minimum criteria. Bitcoin, which has been around for 13 years and is now legal tender in El Salvador, accounts for roughly 42% of that value. Ether, which has been around since 2015 and has more sophisticated abilities that allow it to be used in payroll and other arrangements, is roughly 18%.
Fidelity, which is better known for its giant 401(k) business but now has an arm dedicated to holding crypto for institutional investors, believes bitcoin should be viewed separately from the rest of the pack, with potential as an alternative currency or store of value, like gold.
“It just makes sense as an entry point for most investors,” said Chris Kuiper, director of research at Fidelity Digital Assets.
There’s no consensus, of course: Some experts suggest cryptodiversification. But no matter your preferred strategy, there are a variety of ways in, which are familiar to many investors.
One of the latest and potentially most seamless ways comes from Betterment, which recently bought Makara, a registered investment adviser that offers a series of ready-made, indexed crypto portfolios that provide direct exposure to the assets themselves.
There are dedicated baskets for bitcoin and ether, and a “blue chip” basket that holds the 10 largest digital assets on Makara’s platform. A so-called DeFi, or decentralized finance, basket — one of its more speculative — goes a step further and invests in companies that aim to re-create financial services without the middlemen, using blockchain and other technologies. Baskets with different assets charge a fee of 1% annually (a bitcoin- or ether-only basket does not charge fees), and the firm passes on trading costs of up to 0.35%.
Betterment CEO Sarah Levy said the company was still working through exactly how it would integrate Makara. But there will be disclaimers: “Part of what we will do as a fiduciary is explain that there is more risk,” she said.
Betterment said it wouldn’t recommend that customers put any more than 10% of their holdings on the platform into crypto, but it will “give customers agency within that context to make their own decisions,” Levy said.
Exchange-traded funds, which are baskets of investments that trade like stocks, may appear to be an efficient solution, but analysts and other experts say those available now probably aren’t the best way to buy and hold.
The reason: Instead of holding the cryptocurrency itself, these ETFs invest in futures contracts — essentially agreements to buy or sell an asset at a certain price sometime later. That can end up being more expensive because the contracts expire — and must be sold and repurchased, or “rolled,” each month. Those costs can be potentially significant, particularly when the new contracts cost more than the previous month’s, causing managers to buy high and sell low. Investors must also pay annual fees between 0.65% and nearly 1%.
“Futures-based ETFs are a lousy option for long-term exposure to bitcoin,” Ben Johnson, an analyst at Morningstar, wrote in a note. “Roll costs and fund fees will likely lead these funds’ long-term returns to lag the performance of bitcoin — probably by a wide margin.”
None of that stopped money from pouring into the first bitcoin-linked ETF, ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF. Its trading volume on its first day in October surpassed any other ETF in history, according to Morningstar, and it collected $1 billion in assets faster than any other ETF.
Several similarly structured funds have followed: Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF, VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF and Global X Blockchain & Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which, besides bitcoin futures, invests in another ETF that holds blockchain-related stocks.
Thus far, U.S. regulators have denied applications for ETFs that would hold cryptocurrencies directly. The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, recently said the futures market was more heavily regulated, making it a safer bet for investors.
Other fund vehicles hold crypto directly, but they’re grappling with different structural problems and carry higher fees, which are a drag on returns.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the largest bitcoin vehicle, with $27 billion in assets, costs 2% and trades on the “over the counter” market. But these trusts don’t have the flexibility of regular mutual funds and ETFs to balance supply and demand, so their share prices may deviate from bitcoin’s price. Another provider, Osprey Bitcoin Trust, became available (for a fraction of Grayscale’s cost) in February, but it faces the same challenges.
Grayscale, Bitwise and other providers have said converting to an ETF structure would solve these problems, but they haven’t received the green light from regulators, who worry that the underlying coins may be subject to manipulation and fraud. (ETFs that hold actual coins do exist elsewhere, though — the Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF, for example, is available in Canada.)
Investors seeking professional guidance may find that more financial advisers now have firsthand cryptocurrency experience — some of which may be driven by an effort to educate themselves and field questions with more confidence. About 47% of advisers reported owning crypto assets in 2021, according to the Bitwise/ETF Trends survey, which polled 619 advisers. That was nearly double the result the previous year.
One adviser, Ritholtz Wealth Management, has gone as far as introducing, with partners, a crypto-related index providing broad exposure for its clients through a separately managed account. It charges 0.50% annually, and has a sign-up fee of 0.70%.
Crypto is “hard to ignore at this point,” said Michael Batnick, Ritholtz’s director of research.
Cristina Guglielmetti, a financial adviser in New York City, called the vast majority of her clients “prime crypto-curious”: “mid-40s, familiar with tech/pop culture — it’s all around them.” She tries to understand why they want crypto, while making sure that they’re aware of its place in their investment mix.
“Are we putting off other goals so you can do this?” she said. “Or have we handled everything else that needs handling, and now you’re in a good place to be doing more speculative things?”
That makes cryptocurrencies just like any other boom-or-bust investment, Guglielmetti said.
“We just have to understand what role it’s playing for you,” she said. “Having some fun and exploring new things is a perfectly valid role.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/how-bad-is-californias-drought-as-dry-season-approaches/ | By Soumya Karlamangla
The New York Times
Thursday marks the final day of California’s rainy season.
December, January and February are typically the wettest months in the Golden State, with 75% of the state’s annual precipitation falling between November and March.
Now we’re about to enter our dry season and the drought is nowhere near over. Gov. Gavin Newsom this week, in an attempt to curb water usage, proposed banning businesses from watering their lawns. More than 93% of California is considered to be in severe or extreme drought.
“We are definitely very much at the tail end of our wet season in California,” Jeanine Jones, drought manager with the California Department of Water Resources, told me. “We are not expecting any significant amount of additional precipitation — certainly not something that would make any difference for the drought.”
Jones added, “In other words, most of what we’re going to get, we have gotten.”
So where does that leave us?
All of California’s major reservoirs are currently at below-average levels. The state’s snowpack Wednesday was a dismal 39% of what it typically is this time of year, according to state data. Newsom hasn’t yet announced mandatory water cuts for Californians but faces increasing pressure to do so.
The water year in California runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 and is defined that way so that the winter rainy season falls within a single water year.
Between October and December — the start of this water year — California received more rainfall than it had over the previous 12 months. Atmospheric rivers shattered records and replenished reservoirs.
But then we entered 2022. January and February represented the driest two-month start to a year on record in California, according to state officials. March is unlikely to be much better, even after this week’s storms.
The whiplash isn’t unusual in the Golden State; California has more climate variability than any other state in the nation, Jones said. And the weather has recently become even more unpredictable because of the effects of climate change.
Still, the heavy rains from the end of 2021 were not enough to overcome the past three exceptionally dry months.
At the end of December, the state had received 150% of the precipitation it typically has at that point in the water year. That figure has since dropped to below average — to roughly 70%.
Unfortunately, with March coming to a close and no storms on the horizon, we can say with near certainty that California’s drought in 2022 will keep getting worse.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/lgbtq-groups-criticize-redistricting-plan-that-would-separate-the-tenderloin-from-soma/ | As San Francisco is set to redraw its district lines, a coalition of LGBTQ groups on Wednesday blasted a proposed plan that, according to the coalition, would separate LGBTQ communities.
The city’s nine-member Redistricting Task Force is set to approve a new district map that better reflects the latest census results by April 15.
Recently, the task force approved moving forward with a draft map that would move the Tenderloin from District 6 to a newly redrawn District 5, separating the Tenderloin from the South of Market area and enjoining it with the Western Addition neighborhood.
According to the coalition, the move, although not final, could displace some of the city’s most disadvantaged residents, as well as disconnect Compton’s Transgender Cultural District — the world’s first and only transgender cultural district — from nearby SoMa.
The coalition is calling for the Tenderloin and SoMa, both home to LGBTQ communities, be kept within the same district.
The coalition is made up several groups, including the Transgender District, the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District, the Alice B Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club and the Tenderloin People’s Congress.
“The Tenderloin represents one of the last vestiges of housing affordability, socio-economic and racial diversity, trans and queer cultural heritage, and a dense concentration of legacy businesses that have been long-lasting community centers for all of San Francisco,” Transgender District Director of Social Justice and Empowerment Initiatives Jupiter Peraza said in a statement. “Keeping the Tenderloin and SoMa together in District 6 is an urgent and imperative matter — one that if not defended, could displace vulnerable communities that are already fleeing San Francisco at alarming rates.”
Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District Board President Bob Brown said, “Despite mobilizing dozens of community members to speak at the Task Force hearings, the current proposals do not maintain the current cultural district boundaries within the same district. We are united in making this collaborative effort to ensure that communities of interest have their voices heard.”
“LGBTQ people are not accurately or adequately counted in the census. The Redistricting Task Force has to do more to listen and engage with queer and trans people to keep our communities intact,” Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club President Edward Wright said. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/massive-monument-to-e-commerce-proposed-for-the-bayview/ | The southeastern corner of San Francisco could be destined for a new landmark: a mammoth monument to our e-commerce addiction.
The global warehouse developer Prologis is requesting approvals for the San Francisco Gateway, a two-building, 2.16 million square foot industrial facility bracketing Interstate 280 in the Bayview. The three-story structures would rise over 100 feet tall, in order to accommodate trucks on every level of the building. The buildings, which would include over 1,000 parking spaces shrouded by rooftop solar panels, would tower over the freeway and nearby grocery wholesalers.
Just days after Amazon put its San Francisco fulfillment center proposal on ice following a chilly reception at the Board of Supervisors, Prologis’ plan demonstrates the continued appetite for storage and logistics space in The City. While this project has yet to attract much attention from neighborhood and environmental groups, these kinds of developments have become political lightning rods elsewhere in the country.
The project, which has been in the works since 2016, still has many hurdles to clear. The environmental review process is expected to last into the second half of 2023, with multiple opportunities for public input along the way. After environmental clearance, the project will require several discretionary approvals from city agencies. Construction will take an additional two and a half years.
On Wednesday evening, the Planning Department hosted a virtual information session as the kickoff to the project’s environmental review process. The forthcoming environmental review will specifically focus on air quality, traffic, and noise, department consultants said. The presentation went on to describe how the project intends to transform the four 1940s-era warehouses on the site into a modern logistics behemoth.
The most conspicuous aspect of the project is its size. At nearly 2.2 million square feet, San Francisco Gateway would be triple the size of Amazon’s controversial Showplace Square proposal. (For context, Salesforce tower clocks in at 1.6 million square feet.) Amazon hit pause on its project earlier this month after the Board of Supervisors, pressured by organized labor, passed an 18 month moratorium on new parcel delivery services in San Francisco.
Prologis’ two, near-identical buildings would be designed for flexible use, potentially hosting multiple tenants with very different businesses. The space could be configured for truck or bus storage, a goods warehouse, a last-mile delivery center, or even a research lab. Each floor would have direct vehicle access via truck ramps at the southern end of each structure. The facility would accommodate an average of nearly 2,000 workers every day.
Prologis is also proposing significant changes at the street level, building new sidewalks and adding street trees, and making adjacent McKinnon and Kirkwood streets one-way to improve truck circulation. The ground level of the buildings would include retail and office space.
Despite calls for feedback at Wednesday’s meeting, no members of the public spoke up.
Over the past decade, and even more so since the pandemic-induced e-commerce boom, warehouses have emerged as one of the most lucrative real estate categories. In the New York area and Southern California’s Inland Empire, warehouse projects have triggered fiery development battles, pitting environmentalists and locals against economic development officials and consumers demanding ever quicker delivery services.
Since last year, the Sierra Club and organized labor organizations have been fighting several proposed Amazon warehouses across the Bay Area, highlighting the environmental toll of trucks going to and from warehouses, often through low-income Black and Latino areas.
With its Bayview location, the SF Gateway project is sited in a historically marginalized neighborhood, although it’s fairly distant from residential areas, unlike Amazon’s proposed facility in Showplace Square.
While it’s too early to assess the project’s environmental impact, the developer says that the rooftop solar panels could be used for electric vehicle charging. California regulations require truck manufacturers to gradually phase out gas-powered truck sales between 2024 and 2045. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/sfpd-arrests-suspects-in-castro-theatre-burgulary/ | San Francisco police arrested three men on Tuesday morning after officers allegedly caught them burglarizing one of the city’s most iconic entertainment venues.
According to police, around 6:35 a.m., officers received reports of suspects trying to break into the Castro Theatre, located at 429 Castro St.
At the scene, officers saw broken glass at the theater’s front entrance and a man inside. Officers detained the suspect.
During a subsequent search of the rest of the theater, officers located two more men inside and detained them as well, police said.
Officers also located what appeared to be burglary tools.
Officers arrested the three men on suspicion of burglary. They’ve been identified as 25-year-old Nicholas Degrego, 38-year-old Gary Marx, and 32-year-old Jason Kilbourne. In addition to burglary, officers also arrested Degrego on suspicion of possessing drug paraphernalia, and Kilbourne for violating probation, police said.
The historic Castro Theatre turns 100 years old this year. According to Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, whose district includes the Castro, the broken glass has already been repaired. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/troubled-local-hospital-under-scrutiny-for-onsite-overdoses/ | Laguna Honda is under the gun again.
The hospital is temporarily instituting tighter safety measures following threats from state and federal regulators to withdraw Medi-Cal and Medicare funding, putting the hospital in jeopardy of closing.
The warning comes after the hospital reported two non-fatal overdoses at the facility last year.
New security measures include stricter rules around visitors, such as searching care packages, and an increased number of safety searches among residents and patients.
But regulatory scrutiny at Laguna Honda is not new. It dates back to a 2019 scandal when an investigation found 130 patients at the hospital had been affected by multiple workers who violated patient privacy rights and both physically and psychologically abused patients.
The City paid a $780,000 fine as a result of the case, and more than tripled the staff in the hospital’s quality management department. It also made changes to its safety and reporting protocols. That, in turn, led to the hospital reporting two overdoses in July 2021, according to a statement from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which owns and oversees Laguna Honda.
The two nonfatal overdoses involved methamphetamine and fentanyl, according to Wilmie Hathaway, Chief Medical Officer for Laguna Honda.
The overdose incidents spurred an extended review by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). In October 2021, that review found the hospital to be in a state of “substandard quality of care,” according to a statement provided by The City’s Department of Public Health.
Now, one of San Francisco’s largest skilled nursing facilities is facing possible closure after failing to meet compliance in a series of state follow-up visits between October 2021 and March 2022.
In January 2022, during one follow-up inspection, a staff member was found not following undisclosed protocols and the hospital remained in non-compliance.
Then on March 16, on a second revisit from CDPH, a patient was found smoking in a community bathroom; smoking is prohibited indoors at the hospital. During the same inspection, another patient who was on oxygen was found in possession of a lighter, which can pose an extreme fire risk.
The hospital is now nearing the end of the six-month window it was given back in October to get back on track, and it has until April 14 to resolve any remaining issues that put the hospital out of compliance.
Hospital officials are now working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to move forward and avoid terminating the patient funding channels.
“(CMS) have made it clear they believe it’s in the best interest of San Francisco that Laguna Honda remain open and they are extending every resource to make that happen,” Roland Pickens, Director of the San Francisco Health Network, the parent organization that Laguna Honda is a part of.
The vast majority of patient care at Laguna Honda is funded through Medi-Cal and Medicare. Losing the funding programs would severely impact the hospital’s 700 patients, many of who are extremely low-income. Losing participation in Medicare and Medi-Cal programs could put the hospital at risk of closure.
Patients and live-in residents at Laguna Honda have a wide range of complex health challenges, including severe mental illness, dementia, substance use disorder and more. It is not a locked facility, meaning most patients can come and go.
“We are an open campus. We allow visitors to come and visit loved ones and we do allow patients to go in and out of the campus if they are capable of it,” Hathaway said, adding that it’s possible that is how the contraband could have been brought in undetected. “There are patients rights and human rights we need to follow.”
Pickens added that the overdoses at the hospital mirror a broader health crisis that The City is now facing.
“Laguna Honda is reflective of the San Francisco community, and we all know the Mayor’s emergency declaration about substance use in The City,” said Pickens. “Many of our patients are able to go into the community, we don’t have control of what they get in the community but at least now we can do increased searches so they don’t bring anything inappropriate or illicit back into the community.”
Hospital officials said they are optimistic that compliance will be reached. But it’s unclear what would happen to the more than 700 Laguna Honda patients and residents if their correction actions fall short.
“That hopefully is a road we will never have to go down,” Pickens said.
sjohnson@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/state-approves-grants-to-convert-hotels-into-permanent-housing-for-homeless-residents/ | By Eli Walsh
Oakland and San Francisco have been awarded a combined $22 million in state grants to convert hotels in each city into permanent housing for homeless residents, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said Wednesday.
The city of Oakland will receive $14.8 million to buy and renovate the Piedmont Place hotel, located at 55 MacArthur Blvd., into 44 studio apartments and one two-bedroom housing unit.
Once completed, the complex will serve as permanent housing for chronically homeless residents and will offer counseling and other social services.
San Francisco will receive a $7.48 million grant to convert a 25-room hotel into permanent housing for young people aging out of the foster care system as well as residents at risk of homelessness who make 30 percent of the city’s Area Median Income, which was $119,136 as of 2020.
Like the Piedmont Place project, the complex in San Francisco will include supportive social services for its residents.
Both grants and projects are part of the state’s Homekey program, which the state launched in 2020 in an effort to expand housing access through the conversion of vacant hotels, motels and other buildings into both permanent and transitional housing units.
The state has awarded more than $1.3 billion in Homekey grant funding across the state since launching the program. Those funds have supported the creation of nearly 8,000 housing units, according to state officials, including hundreds in the Bay Area.
“We are continuing to act with urgency to fund quality Homekey projects, because that’s exactly what the moment demands — swift, decisive action to assist the most vulnerable Californians,” Newsom said in a statement.
The Oakland and San Francisco projects are two of 10 Homekey awards announced statewide Wednesday, totaling $136.6 million, according to Newsom’s office. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/the-battle-for-homeless-youth-housing-in-the-haight/ | Supervisor Dean Preston’s campaign to transform the former Red Victorian Hotel in the Haight-Ashbury District into transitional housing for young people might be a lost cause. But he hasn’t given up.
Now he’s demanding that the city find a new home for homeless youth somewhere in the Haight.
Preston introduced legislation last week that would require The City to identify 20 units of transitional housing for people aged 18 to 29 years old in the neighborhood. It’s a place with a Panhandle-long history of welcoming wayward youth, but in recent months has become squabbles over homeless services.
“This should not be a controversial piece of legislation, nor should it be controversial to provide bridge housing for homeless (youth) in the Haight,” Preston told The Examiner in an interview last week.
In Preston’s opinion, The City has made a habit of cowing to a small-but-vocal contingent of residents opposed to homeless services, which they fear might make the neighborhood a magnet for the homeless.
Groups like Safe and Healthy Haight have sprouted up on Facebook, arguing that Preston has pushed to open homeless services but is out of touch with their impact on the neighborhood.
Preston’s legislation comes after he was unsuccessful in getting The City to ink a deal with the nonprofit sellers of The Red Victorian, a historic building now under contract with a different buyer.
The city deemed the Red Vic as unfit for use as transitional housing for a number of reasons, including its relatively small size and overall condition.
Preston’s bill essentially sends a message to Mayor London Breed’s administration: if you won’t take up my offer on the 21-room Red Vic, find a better location yourself. The legislation would require the city to find 20 transitional housing units in The Haight by the end of March of 2023.
“It is a response to an unfortunate pattern over the last handful of months of the administration not being willing to move forward and provide housing and services in the Haight,” Preston said.
The city dropped its plans last year for a drop-in center at the site of a former McDonald’s at 730 Stanyan Street, which had been used as a safe sleeping site for 37 tents to replace shelter lost during the pandemic.
Under Preston’s bill The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing would have to update the Board of Supervisors on The City’s progress within four months of the bill’s passage.
The department did not respond to questions from The Examiner by press time.
The money for a new transitional housing facility is essentially already in hand, Preston argued. It’s the same pot of $10 million earmarked for youth transitional housing that Preston had hoped to use on the purchase of the Red Vic.
As the home of the Huckleberry House, Larkin Street Youth Services and the Homeless Youth Alliance, the Haight has a tradition of taking in young people experiencing homelessness.
But Preston argues that it’s actually lost services over the last decade, including the 2013 closure of a drop-in center operated by the Homeless Youth Alliance at the corner of Haight and Cole Streets. The nonprofit now offers mobile services.
The Huckleberry Youth Health Center, also at the corner of Cole and Haight Streets, serves young people up to age 26, and about two-thirds of its clients are over 18. It’s one of the city’s coordinated entry hubs that works to connect people to housing, but the supply is short.
“We assess more than 100, less than 200 a year, and very few of them, even if they qualify, have the opportunity for housing because there isn’t enough,” said Doug Styles, executive director of Huckleberry Youth Programs.
Styles sees the need for transitional housing.
“Anything would be good because there are people that qualify…and then we have to look at them and say you’re not qualified enough, you’re not desperate enough,” Styles said.
Despite recent struggles to locate new homeless services in the Haight, Preston believes the majority of neighbors support the efforts to open drop-in services on Stanyan Street and The Red Vic.
But groups like the Cole Valley Neighborhood Improvement Association advocated against the purchase, The Chronicle reported. It wrote in a letter to the Board of Supervisors, “The last thing this neighborhood needs is another attraction for street dwellers, many of whom are drug addicts and behaviorally challenged.”
Preston notes that nearly half of displaced youth in San Francisco were last housed in the city, according to the most recent Point-In-Time Count survey conducted by The City. A disproportionate number of them are people of color or LBGTQ youth.
If not for services provided by places like Huckleberry House and Larkin Street Youth Services, “there would be many many more problems with young people on the street,” Styles argued.
“We are in contact with a lot of them, we diffuse situations, we get people housing, we get people support for employment,” Styles added. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/without-the-sat-and-act-whats-next-for-cal-state/ | By Mikhail Zinshteyn
CalMatters
In the acronym soup of California public higher education, gone are two three-letter combos that led legions of students to plug their noses annually: The SAT and ACT are (functionally) no more.
After the California State University system formally ditched the SAT and ACT as admissions requirements last week, the state is now the first — and only — in the United States to have no public university accepting standardized test scores for admissions.
The Cal State system followed in the University of California’s footsteps, which swore off the SAT and any other admissions test last year.
Cal State officials and the system’s academic senate cited studies showing that high school grades better predict how well students will perform in their first year of college than test scores. Other data showed that predictive power only went up marginally when test scores were combined with high school grades; the makers of the SAT say the test’s predictive boost is significant. Critics have also long maintained that the SAT rewards students who have the financial resources to hire tutors or enroll in prep courses to improve their test scores, leaving low-income students at a disadvantage.
Both the UC and Cal State system are now “test-blind” — a rarefied club of 86 academic institutions and systems nationwide. Another 1,825 other campuses don’t require test scores but will still assess them if a student submits that information, a concept known as “test-optional.”
So, what will the era of admissions without tests look like at the nation’s largest public four-year university?
The future of Cal State admissions
Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the system’s 23 campuses chiefly admitted students based on a formula of high school grades and ACT or SAT scores. Only in the last two years, after suspending its SAT requirement during the pandemic, has the system relied on other factors.
The system’s Admissions Advisory Council plans to submit a final set of admissions eligibility criteria to the California State University Office of the Chancellor by late spring.
The recommendations will largely reflect the work the system did during the pandemic to replace its testing requirements with additional information about an applicant’s high school grades and socio-economic factors.
Currently, the minimum eligibility requirement is a 2.5 grade point average for California high school graduates and a 3.0 if the applicant isn’t a state resident. Another is to complete the required 15 courses in math, English, science, history and other subjects, known as A-G courses. Some campuses accept slightly lower GPAs but consider other academic and socio-economic factors.
The Admissions Advisory Council — in the first change to the system’s eligibility index since 1965 — is instead proposing that the minimum eligibility criteria include four factors:
- the students’ GPAs for the 15 required courses;
- whether students passed more than 15 of the required courses during their time in high school;
- whether students attend either a high school that is near the Cal State campus to which they’re applying or attend a high school with a high percentage of students who receive federal meal subsidies because they’re low-income;
- other socio-economic and interpersonal factors, such as whether students worked during high school, had no one else in their family complete college, had family commitments or volunteered.
The system is now developing the minimum GPA and weights for these factors. Once published, campuses will be able to use a formula to calculate whether applicants are eligible for admissions. It’s a quantitative approach that resembles use of an eligibility formula during the SAT era. Officials may continue to tweak it over time.
The Cal State system will roll out its new criteria gradually, giving it time to communicate the details to high school counselors. Current high school juniors who apply to enroll at a Cal State in fall 2023 will be admitted based on the current minimum eligibility criteria. Today’s high school sophomores seeking entry into a Cal State for fall 2024 will be admitted based on the current criteria or the new eligibility index in the works — whichever is more advantageous for them. Students applying for fall 2025 admissions will be governed by the new index.
Abandoning test-based criteria couldn’t come sooner for low-income students, said Cal State trustee Krystal Raynes, an undergraduate at Cal State Bakersfield.
“I remember saving up my lunch money to take both the PSAT and the SAT because my parents didn’t know what that was and didn’t want to spend money on me taking a test,” she said at the March board meeting, a day before the trustees voted unanimously to ditch admissions tests. “Meanwhile I knew students who were prepping with tutors in junior high, so there’s definitely that economic gap there.”
Criteria for more competitive campuses
But minimum eligibility isn’t enough of a cut-off for numerous Cal State universities. Right now seven universities are fully impacted, a technical designation meaning a major, program or the whole university receives applications from more qualified students than there’s space. All but seven campuses have at least one major program that’s impacted.
The Cal State admissions policy plan is to allow these oversubscribed programs to continue using a combination of up to 21 different admissions factors to admit students. These overlap partly with the newly proposed minimum eligibility criteria but include other variables, such as grades in specific high school subjects, whether students qualify for an application fee waiver and their military status. No campus uses all 21 factors for admissions.
Like the minimum eligibility index in development, all of these factors are data the Cal State application already collects. The system software is sophisticated enough to calculate the admissions scores for each campus based on the admissions criteria they select.
Though the Cal State system admits 93% of the California high school students who apply, several campuses are far more selective. Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo, and San Diego State, the most competitive, admit only a third of their California freshmen applicants.
Spotlight on admissions criteria at popular campuses
Presently six of the 23 Cal State campuses won’t consider any in-state student with a GPA below a 2.5. Even within this group, campuses are using multiple factors to handle their influx of applicants by balancing academic and socio-economic factors.
“Unequivocally, I think it is a great move” to remove admissions tests, said San Diego State President Adela de la Torre. “If we’re going to talk about diversity and inclusion, you have to have metrics that reflect a broader set of criteria.”
The San Diego university expanded its criteria for admission for students entering last fall. Half of the admissions score is based on the GPA a student earned in the 15 required courses for entry. The other half includes the grades in math and science courses, foreign language, history and whether a student comes from a local high school. The university also gives extra points for signs of socio-economic hardship among students applying from nearby high schools or entering special programs for marginalized students, like for foster youth.
San Diego State will largely keep this formula beyond 2023, but like other campuses, it may change its weights and add more admissions variables over time.
Long Beach State guarantees admission to local high school students who meet the minimum eligibility requirements. Other students will be held to a higher admissions standard. All impacted Cal State campuses give some kind of admissions priority to applicants attending local high schools. Long Beach State has more than 50 public and private high schools in its local service area.
At Cal Poly-Pomona, 86% of the points in the admissions formula come from academic factors and 14% are based on non-academic areas.
Unlike the UC, Cal State has no admissions readers
The UC campuses hire hundreds of part-time application readers who undergo training to go through every application. The Cal States have no readers and never did. And unlike the UC, the Cal State application doesn’t ask students to provide essays or extended written responses.
UCLA hires 200 part-time readers who earn stipends of $1,350 to $2,500 depending on the number of applications they review. The university received nearly 150,000 freshmen undergraduate applications for fall 2022 enrollment, the most in the country. Other UC campuses shared that they bring on 50 to 160 readers; the numbers vary depending on each campus’s application volume.
The price tag for readers at UCLA is between $400,000 and $500,000. Meanwhile, the entire operating budgets of the admissions offices at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and Cal State Fullerton are around $2.2 million.
Cal State campus admissions officials will occasionally review individual applications, such as when a denied student files an appeal. Admissions teams also spot-check applications to see if students omitted required information. Plus some music and performing arts programs require applicants to submit portfolios that faculty then review.
For the record: This story has been corrected to reflect the accurate price tag for readers at UCLA. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/editorial-san-francisco-must-take-urgent-action-to-expand-homeless-shelter-options/ | By The Examiner Editorial Board
Is 2022 the year when San Francisco leaders will finally do what’s necessary to provide shelter to the thousands of people living in misery on our streets? It depends on whether the Board of Supervisors decides to support Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s proposal to require The City and the county to offer shelter to anyone experiencing homelessness.
Mandelman’s “A Place for All” proposal would require the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing to quickly develop an “implementation plan” to provide shelter for those in need of it. This plan would include an estimate for the number of people expected to seek such housing and the costs of creating and providing such shelter on an ongoing basis. City officials would also be required to conduct an inventory of available city buildings and lots that could be used as shelters.
“San Franciscans are frustrated, and rightly so, that after multiple decades and many billions of dollars spent to ‘solve homelessness,’ thousands of unhoused people continue to sleep on the streets night after night,” said Mandelman in a March 22 press release introducing the ordinance. “For all the money we spend and have spent, it’s reasonable to expect clear improvement in the situation on the streets, and frankly people are not seeing that.”
Mandelman’s proposal, a revised version of a previous effort that failed in 2020, is co-sponsored by supervisors Matt Haney, Gordon Mar, Myrna Melgar and Catherine Stefani. Haney, who said he opposed Mandelman’s previous proposal because it relied to heavily on tent encampments, supports the new version because it focuses on getting people into more traditional forms of shelter.
“The pandemic proved that we are capable of doing amazing things — coming up with creative solutions and implementing them successfully,” said Haney in a statement. “We need to approach homelessness with the same urgency and focus and come up with a plan to get people off the streets and into care.”
With San Francisco poised to spend $1 billion on homelessness in the next few years, taxpayers will expect results in a city where the problem only seems to get worse with each passing year. The lack of available housing and shelter has resulted in an explosion of tent encampments as well as people sleeping in whatever alley or doorway they can find.
San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, needs more affordable housing. Yet a policy of defunding shelters in order to focus on solutions like permanent, affordable housing has helped create crisis levels of unsheltered homeless people on our streets, according to a 2021 report by the Bay Area Council.
“While this reprioritization is consistent with national trends and numerous studies on the long-term effectiveness of permanent housing, the high-cost Bay Area has been unable to scale permanent housing faster than the rate at which residents are becoming homeless,” according to the “Bay Area Homelessness: New Urgency, New Solutions” report. “The result has been the de facto warehousing of increasing numbers of homeless residents on Bay Area streets, cars, and RVs along with the intraregional shifting of shelter burden to the City of San Francisco, which was the only Bay Area County to have increased its shelter inventory over the past decade despite already providing far more permanent housing and shelter per capita than other Bay Area Counties.”
Among other things, the report called for Bay Area cities to expand the availability of emergency shelters, noting that the number of unsheltered homeless people in the Bay Area increased by 63% between 2010 and 2020. In San Francisco, the number of unsheltered homeless people increased by 76% during the same period of time.
The City now faces a homelessness crisis of unprecedented proportions, and Mandelman is right to call for a new approach. While The City must continue to build more housing, including affordable and permanent supportive housing, the growing problem of homelessness far outpaces our ability to build new housing units to match the need. Trying to solve the urgent homelessness crisis on our streets with permanent housing only is like trying to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon.
Mandelman’s proposal lays out San Francisco’s 40 years of failed attempts to make a dent on homelessness and sets forth a clear plan to do better. It calls for The City to expand its shelter program with a mix of options, including shelters, converted hotels and tiny homes. It also caps safe sleeping tent sites at 20%.
The proposal deserves a full debate by the Board of Supervisors, and anyone opposed to “A Place for All” should present an equally thoughtful plan to address the crisis of homelessness with the urgency it deserves. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-growsf-is-using-the-school-board-recall-to-promote-a-more-conservative-san-francisco/ | The fallout from the school board recall has taken an ugly turn, and at least some recall proponents are revealing their efforts were never just about education policy.
As pretty much the whole country knows, San Francisco voters chose to recall three members of the school board in a February election that was not very close. A consensus formed that The City’s substantial Asian American electorate played a key role by voting heavily in favor of the recall. Incidentally, that mobilization helped recall Faauuga Moliga, the first Pacific Islander to hold a citywide elected position in San Francisco, so the extent to which this was a clear triumph for the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community should be questioned.
Now, the politics of Asian American voters have taken another turn. GrowSF, a conservative PAC that supported the recall and wants to see San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin recalled as well, sent a mailing to the districts of Supervisors Gordon Mar and Connie Chan. Both Mar and Chan are Chinese American, and both represent the western part of The City — the Sunset and Richmond respectively, with large Chinese American populations.
The mailing, which was printed in both English and Chinese, attacked the two supervisors for not supporting the recall and suggested they were sacrificing the well being and education of young people in their district. However, GrowSF, a new organization seeking to mobilize tech workers and others new to San Francisco politics to promote a more conservative vision for The City, overplayed its hand here, revealing itself to be less concerned about young people and more about expanding its political power and conservative agenda in San Francisco.
GrowSF’s rancor at Mar and Chan may be related to the recall, but it actually arises from the two supervisors’ positions opposing GrowSF on building large amounts of market-rate housing in the western part of The City, closing the Great Highway to cars and the Chesa Boudin recall.
Ironically, while GrowSF seeks to position itself as a kind of no-nonsense, solutions-oriented organization, which can cut through the lefty politics which allegedly have ruined San Francisco, the political action committee attacked Mar specifically for opposing recalls. Earlier this year, both Mar and Chan voted with the majority on the Board of Supervisors to make recalls more difficult in San Francisco.
“Nearly 82% of your neighborhood voted to recall the school board, yet Supervisor Mar opposed it and he even voted to make recalls harder. Gordon Mar is out of touch,” reads the flier from GrowSF.
Mar and Chan’s position on the recall process, with apologies to GrowSF — which claims to be for “common sense solutions to our city’s problems” — is, in fact, common sense.
Recalls are expensive, distract politicians and are a way for weaker political forces to gain power by exploiting technical loopholes rather than by winning elections. Most are unsuccessful and a waste of time and money. Californians need to look no further than the attempted recall of Governor Gavin Newsom, which cost taxpayers more than $200 million.
By quickly turning on Mar and Chan, GrowSF revealed that its movement is not focused on improving education or helping young San Franciscans. Rather, it is an effort to move the city rightward by people who understand that in San Francisco phrases like “common sense” or “competence” are a more politically palatable code for “conservative.”
Supervisor Gordon Mar explained to me, “GrowSF and downtown special interests in support of luxury housing development, especially on the west side, understand that agenda and that message doesn’t resonate with most residents of our city, especially on the west side, so they are clearly trying to find other ways to promote their agenda … by focusing on slogans like common sense solutions.”
Supervisor Connie Chan made a similar argument when we spoke. She criticized GrowSF and other “right wing political groups disguising themselves as moderates … Any time they have any disagreement or resentment they immediately go to recall.” Chan added: “‘Competence matters’ what does that mean?”
It is notable that both targets of GrowSF’s direct mail campaign are Chinese American. Thus far, GrowSF has not targeted non-Asian elected officials, such as Supervisors Dean Preston and Shamann Walton, who also opposed the recall. Instead, GrowSF is using Chinese American support for the school board recall as a wedge issue to promote a more conservative vision of San Francisco.
Mobilizing voters, regardless of ethnicity, to support a recall is simply politics. And if Asian Americans were largely in favor of the recall, then targeting them for the recall effort is fair game. However, going after the two Chinese Americans on the Board of Supervisors because they don’t take the position that GrowSF would like San Francisco’s Chinese American voters to have is a bit different.
When we spoke, Mar said the racial politics at work in the mailer are clear.
“This is a cynical ploy by GrowSF and the interests they represent to attempt to exploit the Chinese community for their own agenda,” Chan said. “They’re also targeting Chinese Americans and the only AAPI on the Board of Supervisors. They are pitting the AAPI community against their electeds.”
Grow SF’s tactics reveal that the School Board recall was much bigger than children and education, and that victory has emboldened the right in San Francisco. Those forces will now turn their attention to recalling Chesa Boudin and — if they are successful — will seek to move the Board of Supervisors rightward, either through recalls or generously funding more conservative candidates.
The new San Franciscan conservative movement is emerging, cloaked in platitudes about common sense and brandishing recall petitions.
Lincoln Mitchell has written numerous books and articles about The City and the Giants. Visit lincolnmitchell.com or follow him on Twitter @LincolnMitchell | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/the-2022-giants-will-win-or-lose-in-the-margins-its-what-they-do/ | By Mark Kreidler
Special to The Examiner
Wait: Is it really going to come down to Steven Duggar?
You know what? It just might.
Duggar is not the name you’re thinking of. I understand. You’re thinking of other Giants as the people who might be making the difference between a playoff-contending team and a thanks-for-stopping-by collection of pretty well-liked grinders. We all reach for the familiar names: Crawford, Belt, Longoria.
And it is certainly true that the old guard came up huge last season. The Brandons both had something very close to career years, respectively, and the now-departed Buster Posey had easily the finest season of the last several — one of his best all-around campaigns in total, influenced heavily by the Giants’ limiting him to 113 regular-season games.
But you go a little farther inside that 107-win monster of a success, and you see where the difference was made. It wasn’t just veterans putting up exaggerated versions of the solid seasons normally expected of them. The success was very much in the margins.
Darin Ruf? Incredibly important piece, and a breakout winner. Tyler Rogers and Jake McGee broke out as bullpen arms. Donovan Solano was really important and mostly really good. Wilmer Flores was needed way more than the Giants had planned, and he held the fort, appearing in 122 games at either third base, short or second.
It was like that. And now, with Posey gone and Solano gone and rotation leader Kevin Gausman gone (we didn’t mention Gausman; had the best season of his life at age 30), it’s going to come down to the margins once again.
We’re not talking about 107 wins — we’ve already discussed that. But to be a contender in an expanded playoff format? That effort will be built on the Giants’ continued ability to help players find the best versions of their professional selves. Gabe Kapler’s staff has been pretty great at that. This year, we’ll see.
We will see about Duggar. He’s no kid; at age 28, the outfielder is very much at a point where his career is ready to launch. He has had parts of four seasons in San Francisco, and now, with LaMonte Wade Jr. on the injured list to begin the year, Kapler has indicated that Duggar is in line for an enlarged role.
Duggar is a left-handed hitter with some pop, and he can play anywhere in the outfield. He’ll matter immediately, because the Giants have little choice — they need to keep a lefty bat in the lineup most of the time. But this is also about what Duggar can become: more selective and patient in counts, a better user of his excellent speed. If you’re looking in the margins, he’s there.
Mike Yastrzemski — he’s in the margins. For two years, Yastrzemski was a tough out, and in 2020 he also took walks willingly. Incredibly patient. Last year, without much warning, his numbers fell off the table. You wouldn’t say the Giants won in spite of him (he still hit 25 homers) but he was nowhere near as fearsome a force as he had been.
Yastrzemski, now 31, is working through a tight quadriceps, so he may not exactly blast out of the gate. But if you’re trying to figure out how the Giants stay competitive offensively in the full post-Buster era, he’s one of the first places to look. Yastrzemski went .224/.311/.457 in 2021, a weird step backward. If he steps forward, it matters.
You want to see the Giants play meaningful games in September and October, watch Joc Pederson for more than a minute. The club signed Pederson to help them navigate this new era in the National League, the era of the designated hitter. Pederson is a career .232 hitter — but there’s power there, if he can reach it. If he can, Pederson is a credible home run threat almost all of the time. The Giants have to help him reach it.
And that’s life in the margins, right? General manager Farhan Zaidi and Kapler and the entire staff turned 2021 into a sort of ongoing exercise in finding the right player for the right moment, and also in the moments of ongoing need. Third baseman Evan Longoria, a team leader, played only 81 games last year because of injury, and he’ll miss at least six weeks this season after surgery on his right index finger. Filling that spot defensively, and making up for the loss of Longoria offensively — those are the kinds of locks that the Giants successfully picked a year ago.
This year? Maybe it comes down to Mauricio Dubon finding his niche, or to Logan Webb building off of his outstanding work as a starter in ‘21. Webb took a quantum leap, so it’s probably unfair to expect another — but maybe Camilo Doval is ready to be great out of the bullpen. You’re not expecting Doval, because he was just a rookie last year. It could be time, though. That’s how winning happens.
There’s no getting around the big stuff. If Belt can’t get or stay on the field, if Crawford regresses in a harsh way for some reason or Joey Bart struggles behind the plate — if big guys don’t perform, the Giants are already in trouble. But let’s assume competence. Let’s assume the starting rotation is as solid as it looks, and that the Giants are going to be right there.
“Right there” means close, not in it. To get all the way in it, to be in another playoff hunt, requires that a franchise now clearly built on recognizing and developing emerging talent – no matter the age — comes through once again. Duggar. The return of Yaz. Doval. Pederson.
They’re not the people you’re thinking of, because these aren’t the Dodgers. You can’t just scan the superstars and make your prediction. The 2022 Giants will win or lose in the margins. It’s what they do.
Mark Kreidler is a freelance contributor to The Examiner. Read more of his columns at https://markkreidler.substack.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/whats-wrong-with-the-warriors-heres-the-deal/ | By John Krolik
Special to The Examiner
With a handul of games left to go in the regular season, the strengths and weaknesses of the Warriors are becoming clearer and clearer.
Most importantly, Golden State’s half-court offense is out of sync. It goes beyond the absence of Stephen Curry. The Warriors are attempting to do what they usually do, which is use passing and off-ball movement to break down defenses while keeping dribbling at a minimum. Problem is, it’s not working. The Warriors are struggling to get good looks.
Draymond Green is still responsible for doing most of the playmaking in the half-court. But his decision-making has been off. Green has the highest turnover rate (the percentage of a player’s possessions that end in a turnover) in the entire NBA. Green’s turnover rate is a sky-high 18.5. That would be bad for a stone-handed big man encouraged to do as little as possible on offense. (For a point of reference, DeAndre Jordan has the second-worst turnover ratio in the league.) For a player who is relied upon to be a primary decision-maker, it’s absolutely unacceptable. Green is trying to force passes through holes that aren’t there.
It makes sense that Green would be trying to generate offense through riskier passes in the absence of Curry. Unfortunately, the fact that everybody in the building knows Green isn’t going to look for his own shot in the half court compounds the issue. He still yet to score in double-figures in 2022. When the opposing defense doesn’t have to worry about the player with the ball being a scoring threat, they’re going to stick to their assignment more tightly and shrink the window a pass could go through. Green does seem to be turning a corner physically after missing a significant amount of time with an injury. Steve Kerr noted as much after Wednesday’s game against the Suns, saying it was “definitely” Green’s best performance since his return.
The Warriors don’t run teams off the floor like they did earlier in the Kerr era. However, when the situation calls for it, this is still a team capable of injecting some organized chaos into the game when the situation calls for it. The Warriors looked like they were heading towards the wrong side of a blowout early in Wednesday’s game. Then they started to push the pace, attacking in transition and trying to strike as early as possible in the shot clock. That’s when good things began to happen.
This is where Green really shines. When he gets the ball in the backcourt off a miss and starts flying up the court before the opposing defense can get set, he’s a true weapon. Not many frontcourt players can match Green’s straight-line speed off the dribble. When he gets a head of steam before the defense sets up and the Warriors go into their half-court actions, he’s far more willing to call his own number and attack the basket. And Green’s superb court vision is never more valuable than it is in a full-court situation against a scrambling defense.
When asked about what the Warriors can do to increase their pace of play and what they need to improve in half-court situations after Wednesday’s game, Kerr said the following:
“Defense and rebounding allows you to get out and run. One thing Draymond allows you to do is push the pace. We’ve gotta get the wings out to run, and in the half court obviously we’ve got to practice and get our guys to execute better there.”
One positive for the Warriors is that they seem to have a budding star in Jordan Poole. Poole went for 38 points on 11-22 shooting from the field and 7-15 shooting from beyond the arc against the Suns. He did it all offensively. He’s clearly learned some things about off-ball movement watching Steph Curry for as long as he has. He was in constant motion without the ball. He slalomed around screens to free himself up for three-point shots. When the defense overplayed him, he flew backdoor for layups. There was no doubting it – some of the off-ball tricks he was using to get his shot were straight out of Curry’s playbook. He used step-backs to get himself space. He attacked the basket off the dribble. He set up teammates when the defense collapsed on him. And he did it all with the supreme confidence of a player who knows he has the skill to be an impact player.
After the Suns game, Kerr noted that Poole is getting himself space but no longer rushing when he gets open. He’s calm, confident, and collected. He’s going to be a key player for the Warriors down the stretch run.
Unfortunately, Poole’s confidence seems to have been directly transferred to him by Klay Thompson. Thompson still hasn’t found it. He went just 1-10 from beyond the arc on Wednesday, and at times was visibly frustrated after missing a shot. After the game, Kerr noted that Thompson has been “pressing,” which is exactly what Poole hasn’t been doing during his breakout season.
So that’s where things stand with the playoffs looming and Curry still in street clothes. The half-court offense needs to get its timing back and take better care of the ball. The Warriors can still do damage in transition, especially with Green commanding the fast-break. Jordan Poole is looking like a bona fide offensive force, while Klay Thompson is still looking for his All-Star form. The Warriors will need to step things up if they want to compete for a championship, but there are still plenty of reasons for optimism.
John Krolik is a freelance contributor to The Examiner. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/study-shows-eye-popping-percentage-of-s-f-tech-jobs-are-now-wfh/ | If you wondered just how work-from-home cozy San Francisco tech got last year, here’s an eye-popping stat:
Eighty-one percent of tech job postings in San Francisco last year allowed working from home, new industry data shows. That dwarfs all other tech hubs, especially San Jose, where just 18% of 2021 job postings were for remote jobs.
“Among all tech job postings in 2021, 28% specified a WFH or hybrid work option, or slightly over 1 million job postings,” writes the nonprofit Computing Technology Industry Association in its new State of the Tech Workforce Report. But The City was way out in front of other tech hubs, no doubt in part due to our early-applied and only recently relaxed COVID-19 guidelines.
The low Silicon Valley number may be due to jobs at big tech companies invested in large campuses. Seattle, with Microsoft nearby, had just 23% remote jobs among its postings, with Boston at 29% and Austin at 33%. Only San Diego was anywhere close to our WFH number, with 49% of its postings giving the option.
Here’s something else that jumps out: San Francisco is already booming in 2022 with job growth, which the report projects will be 4.3% this year – and that is the highest rate in the country. One big area of that growth is emerging tech, like AI and cryptocurrency. In fact emerging tech is the second-biggest job category in The City and in San Jose, behind only software engineering.
“If you look at the San Francisco and San Jose metros, you do see the emerging tech category as number two, and that probably does differentiate that region compared to others,” Tim Herbert, CompTIA’s chief research officer told me.
Last stat: The Bay Area also led in salaries for the 90th percentile of workers. Hey, tech workers in San Francisco, look around the office or Zoom call: One in 10 of your coworkers makes, on average, $217,477. In San Jose, the top 10% of workers average a salary of $228,223…
This is intriguing: AirMyne, a new Berkeley startup, says it is developing a machine to suck carbon dioxide from the air. “AirMyne is developing a way to remove CO2 from the air to permanently reverse emissions,” its website says. And the machine is “built for scale,” the website says. PitchBook says it just joined the startup incubator Y Combinator and has quickly picked up two small funding rounds…
You may have wondered why on earth anyone would buy “digital fashion” – clothes or “flair” that you can put on an avatar in the metasphere. Well it turns out there may be a dollars-and-sense reason to buy a meta sweater, or cap, or purse: It’s way cheaper than the real world version, and you can see if you like it before plunking down real money. “By emulating clothing, users may explore trends, styles, and brands without needing to purchase physical pieces,” explains Victoria Trofimova, CEO of Nordcurrent, a game developer in Lithuania…
The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security on March 28. The non-profit digital rights group is demanding records related to what it says was “a multi-million dollar, secretive program that surveilled immigrants and other foreign visitors’ speech on social media.” EFF says the program grew out of the “extreme vetting” initiatives of former President Trump…
Finally, there’s this: The non-fungible token craze (NFTs) has come for Leonardo da Vinci, and a multi-million-dollar hologram of a classic work is the result. It is due to be unveiled in our fair city soon.
The people who sold the most expensive digital artwork ever are unveiling a hologram of da Vinci’s masterpiece “La Bella Principessa” during a blockchain conference April 4-5 at the swanky Ritz Carlton Hotel in the Financial District. This thing could go for big bucks when it is auctioned April 21. MakersPlace, a San Francisco company that hosted the $69 million sale of a Beeple artwork on its online marketplace, is working on the project with an outfit called the Holoverse.
The companies say this about the artwork: “The hologram is generated by rotation at very high speed (900 rotations per minute) of four blades containing 256 micro LEDs and microprocessors, which use an algorithm to compose the work in the air.”
I have no idea what that means, either. You can check it out here: theholoverse.io. If Leonardo were alive, I bet he could figure it out.
Send items to jelder@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/celebrated-local-theatre-marks-its-100th-birthday/ | Throughout its 100 years, the Golden Gate Theatre staged everyone from Josephine Baker to Frank Sinatra and Sting, while it operated first as a vaudeville house, then a major movie theatre and finally as a performing arts venue.
“The Golden Gate has served as an anchor, bringing millions to enjoy entertainment under its iconic four-story neon sign, giant stage and ornate lobby,” said BroadwaySF managing director Rainier Koeners. “It has served as a home for touring Broadway shows now for more than four decades and its future is bright.”
Designed by G. Albert Lansburgh, the 2,300-seat venue opened in March 1922 with a silent feature starring Gloria Swanson and a seven-act vaudeville show. Back in the day, the Examiner equated the theatre to being as “spacious as the outdoors.”
The racial integration of workers, performers and audiences served as a distinction for the theatre. Baker, who refused to play in front of segregated crowds, became the venue’s first performer to have her shows extended by popular demand.
In 1949, billionaire Howard Hughes bought RKO Pictures, the company that owned the Gate, and alternated between live performances and movies.
Live shows were gradually phased out and the Golden Gate was soon converted into a Cinerama theatre, where images from three synchronized 35mm projectors were displayed on a giant wraparound screen.
To accommodate the screen, the lobby’s giant marble staircase was removed and drop ceilings were installed.
Facing stiff competition from other movie palaces, the Gate was split into two separate theatres and the mezzanine was rechristened as the “Penthouse Theatre.”
By 1970, the Gate’s owner went bankrupt. At the time, Sam Perlman, the venue’s manager, told the Examiner, “There are no more good pictures to show in them anymore. The so-called fine arts pictures which are mostly concerned with sex and mental aberration, have taken over the market.”
The theatre shuttered its doors in 1972.
BroadwaySF purchased the venue in 1979, removing the false ceilings as well as the escalator. The stage was updated to accommodate modern productions that toured in San Francisco.
Golden Gate reopened to the public on Dec. 29, 1979 with the musical “A Chorus Line.”
Over the years, productions such as a revival of “The Music Man” starring Dick Van Dyke and a national tour of “Hello Dolly!” starring Lowell High School graduate Carol Channing made pit stops in The City.
Since its reopening, the theatre has welcomed productions including a national tour of “Fiddler on the Roof,” starring Harvey Fierstein and a touring production of “Pippin,” starring Lucie Arnaz.
The theatre has also held several world premieres, including the Broadway tryout of “Legally Blonde: The Musical.”
Refurbishments were made to the theatre in 2017. New additions included customized light fixtures as well as upgraded electrical and air conditioning systems. Burgundy stage drapery and a red and gold carpet were also installed, with elements including scrolling leaves and flourishing rosettes.
Though digital signage was added to the theatre’s exterior, its iconic 4-story marquee remained intact and will soon be flashing upcoming productions like “Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles,” “Oklahoma!” and “Cats.”
jsalazar@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/fun-free-cheap-what-to-do-in-san-francisco-this-week-15/ | By Johnny Funcheap
Special to The Examiner
Rare painting on display for first time in 200 years
During the French Revolution, artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist set out to prove that women could render history paintings just like the men and created a work to showcase at the Paris Salon of 1791. Following the exhibition, Benoist’s “Psyche Bidding Her Family Farewell” was hidden away in a private collection for over 200 years. On March 24, the Legion of Honor acquired this rare Neoclassical painting to showcase in its main galleries. And now the public — and all Bay Area residents who get free admission to the museum on Saturdays — can admire the work of this groundbreaking artist and see it in person for the first time in centuries. On view in Gallery 16 of Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave., S.F, Free admission for Bay Area residents every Saturday. legionofhonor.famsf.org
29th annual Cesar E. Chavez Festival & Parade
San Francisco pays tribute to labor and civil rights leader Cesar E. Chavez with its annual parade and festival in the Mission honoring his contributions to farm workers and the Latino community. The parade starts from Dolores Park and ends up at 24th Street, where you’ll find a five-block street fair filled with two stages of mariachi bands, ballet folklórico dancing, brassy banda big bands and youth spoken word. There’s also a lowrider car show taking over an entire block with 50+ classic cars from the 1930s-1960s and an entire COVID relief vendor booth area dedicated to helping people not only get vaccines and boosters, but also guide them through all the rental relief options and job placement. Saturday, April 9; festival: 10 a.m.-5 p.m., 24th Street between Folsom and Bryant; parade: 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Dolores and 19th to Folsom and 24th; Free. cesarchavezday.org
Golden Gate Park Circus Day
If you want to run away and join the circus, you don’t have to go far. Local nonprofit Circus Center takes over Golden Gate Park’s music concourse for an afternoon of live music, interactive circus workshops and back-to-back circus performances. This is your chance to learn balancing tricks and juggling from helpful circus coaches. Or if you just want to sit back and watch someone else do it, turn your eyes toward the bandshell stage where more than a dozen performers show off acrobatic tumbling, hoop diving, aerial arts, juggling feats and the ancient Mongolian art of contortion. Saturday, April 9, 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., Golden Gate Park Bandshell, Music Concourse Dr., S.F., Free. sfrecpark.org
Sunday Streets 2022 season kick-off
Before there were “slow streets,” there were Sunday Streets. The cars get a day off — and your feet, bikes, tricycles and roller skates get a day on — as this monthly event transforms a mile or so of city streets into a long car-free block party. This year’s series kicks off in the Tenderloin with Larkin Street, Ellis Street and Golden Gate Avenue filled with block after block of brass band parades, poetry, flea markets, giveaways, DJs, art activities, hula hooping, chalk art, a pop-up BMX and skateboard park, a Thai New Year celebration and tons more. Sunday, April 10, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., Larkin Street, Ellis Street and Golden Gate Avenue, S.F., Free. sundaystreetssf.com
2022 Soapbox Derby
Watch art literally go downhill. Back in 1975 and 1978, SFMOMA commissioned hundreds of artists to make custom-designed soapbox derby cars and ran gravity-powered races pitting a car made entirely of bread and a vintage bathtub on wheels. And now after 40+ years, the derby back. Fifty six teams will coast their wild designs down the curves of John F. Shelley Drive to compete for artist-designed trophies where style wins over speed. In between heats, there’s live music, food and family fun, along with “SideCaraoke” from a custom-made Filipino motorized tricycle with a built-in karaoke machine. Sunday, April 10, 12-5 p.m. Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, McLaren Park, S.F., Free. sfmoma.org
Visit Funcheap.com for a hand-picked list of more fun, free and cheap things to do in San Francisco. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/women-take-and-make-the-stage-in-fefu-and-her-friends/ | American Conservatory Theatre is using the entirety of its Strand Theater facility to open a unique and experiential event this month. First produced Off-Broadway in 1977, “Fefu and Her Friends” is a highly regarded play by María Irene Fornés, described by Jesse Green of the New York Times as “more often read and studied than seen” in his review of a rare 2019 revival.
There’s a reason for that. The play has three distinct sections, and the middle one requires four different scenes to be performed simultaneously — just like in real life! — for an audience that has been clustered into four groups. This means four distinct but reasonably adjacent performing spaces that allow the audience pods to move around with ease and witness all four sequences before returning to the proscenium stage for the conclusion.
“We’re taking this opportunity to put these four spaces in different locations all over the Strand,” says Pam MacKinnon, director of the play and artistic director of A.C.T. since 2018.
“So, it’s not just the normal experience of passively listening to a play.” She adds, possibly as a reassurance, “None of it is scary. There are elevators!”
“María Irene Fornés was a prolific playwright as well as a director and an educator,” MacKinnon continues, “and she has a big before and after in the American theater that I don’t think has registered beyond a tighter circle. She also had a huge, huge influence as a teacher of playwriting.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning writers like Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard and Edward Albee agree, citing Fornés as an inspiration and influence.
Another aspect of the play abnormal for a typical theatergoing experience is that the cast of eight is all women. As the play’s title tells you, this is time spent with Fefu and her friends, and MacKinnon has gathered an ensemble of what can only be described as leaders of the Bay Area talent bank.
This rare occurence generated expressions of joy, frustration and hope in a roundtable discussion with MacKinnon and company early in the rehearsal process.
“I think the order in which the audience sees the four scenes will create different experiences because things are going to unfold in a different pattern for each one,” suggests Lisa Anne Porter, actor and frequent director and dialogue coach. “I imagine coming into the third act, every group will be in a slightly different place based on the last echo they’ve heard.”
Catherine Castellanos, a regular on Bay Area stages and at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, plays the eponymous Fefu and concurs. “If your final scene is the bedroom scene, where a character is having a hallucination, a very buzzy scene — that’s the lens with which you step back in to watch part three and that’s a very different experience perhaps than the garden scene between Fefu and Emma.”
“I think, as an actor, it’s really fun to get to repeat something four times (in one performance),” offers Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, whose credits include work with Aurora Theatre Company and the African-American Shakespeare Company.
“Eight on matinee day,” adds actor-director Cindy Goldfield with a rueful smile, having just completed work on “A Grand Night for Singing” at 42nd Street Moon, which overlapped rehearsals for “Fefu.”
“I think it’s like an invitation for myself as an artist to build a different type of muscle in stamina and then to play,” says Sarita Ocón, who plays Christina. “How to stay ever-present given all the factors coming into each room each time.”
“It feels very fly on the wall,” adds Mbele-Mbong, “because even though there is something untraditional about the movement, the scenes themselves still have that fourth wall.”
Shakespeare is a prevalent thread across these actors’ resumes. Though, despite a handful of compelling female characters, the Bard has proven no panacea for women over four centuries.
“So are you the queen or are you her servant?” asks Stacy Ross in a velvet-over-steel voice dripping with hauteur.
“Then you have a 45-minute break,” adds Castellanos. “We’re in the kick-off, and then we have a break until Act V.”
“Where we all shut up anyway,” adds Ross for the rimshot.
That dearth resulted in the birth of many all-female Shakespeare companies like A Woman’s Will and the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, where many in the “Fefu” cast have credits.
“It was a game-changer for me,” says Porter of experiencing titles like “Hamlet” or “Richard III” with all women. “I didn’t even know what was changing until I was in the room and realized that I could just go and be in my body.”
“I was just thinking about that,” adds Mbele-Mbong. “It didn’t occur to me when I was with Woman’s Will. There is something super fun and exciting to playing Count Orsino, but here all of the characters are actually women. We can be all be women in this space, and that’s kind of a different thing.”
“My origins with an all-women cast started with Lilith Theatre in the Bay Area,” says actor-playwright-comedian Marga Gomez. “I was 20, and I wound up on tour in Europe with them, and it was deliberately a feminist theater. It was an amazing way to start earning my living as a performer.”
“Fefu and Her Friends” is set at a summer home in New England in 1935, placing it within the generation of women’s suffrage, though for white women. The play was first produced in 1977, during the women’s liberation movement. Today, we live in the tension of #MeToo, a still unratified Equal Rights Amendment and shifting gender roles and identities. These juxtapositions, the near-absence of men in the creative process and the artists’ lived experiences have all informed the rehearsal process.
“We spent many long days talking about the state of the feminine, the state of gender politics and the state of privilege,” says Goldfield. “I think that there are huge resounding echoes from each of those time periods. It’s a room full of women here — the performers, the stage managers, the staff, everybody. Then, every once in a while, a man walks in and at least I feel it. I’m aware of what we’re saying and how it lands. That is my internalized patriarchy speaking. I’m don’t want to ruffle the fancy feathers of the men. Still, their absence and then occasional presence heightens the awareness of how women behave when they’re out of the male gaze.”
“The characters are having large conversations, but the soapboxes are not about feminism. They’re about education and other things,” adds Mbele-Mbong.
“It’s a bold act that we’re putting eight women on the stage and that it is a Fornés play,” observes Ocón. “I think it is a challenge to steer audiences away from compartmentalizing women. … It is my hope that when our audiences come, they will see bold, brave, courageous, thought-provoking humans. See our human essence on stage.”
“I think part of the muscle of this play is it’s not asking for any permission,” says Castellanos, almost in counterpoint.
“I believe in putting complicated human stories on the stage,” MacKinnon adds, “and Fornés was someone who, as both writer and director, challenged herself each time up to bat, to play with form, but also to really obey her voice.”
IF YOU GO:
“Fefu and her Friends” by María Irene Fornés
Presented by American Conservatory Theater
Where: Strand Theater, 1127 Market St., S.F.
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays–Fridays; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Sundays. Closes May 1.
Tickets: $25 to $110
Contact: (415) 749-2228, act-sf.org | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/lieutenant-governor-eleni-kounalakis-becomes-first-woman-to-pass-a-state-law-in-california/ | By Emily Hoeven
CalMatters
A whopping 172 years after California joined the Union, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis on Thursday became the first woman in state history to sign a bill into law.
Kounalakis, who is serving as acting governor while Gov. Gavin Newsom is abroad on a family vacation, signed a bill to protect hundreds of thousands of renters from eviction hours after state lawmakers sent it to her desk and hours before the protections — which had already been extended twice — were set to expire.
Kounalakis wrote on Twitter: “I remain more determined than ever to ensure that while I may be the first (woman) to (sign a bill into law), I will certainly not be the last. … Today’s action will provide additional time to thousands more (renters) who are in the process of acquiring emergency relief.”
Under the new law, Californians who applied to the state’s backlogged pandemic rent relief program before 11:59 p.m. Thursday will be shielded from eviction through June 30, CalMatters’ Manuela Tobias reports. As of Tuesday, California had paid just 223,000 of the nearly 507,000 households seeking relief, according to a state dashboard.
The stopgap measure left many unsatisfied.
Some lawmakers and tenant advocates said the state should have extended the rent relief application deadline past Thursday, arguing that many needy Californians weren’t aware of the program or faced language barriers. Renters who didn’t apply by the Thursday deadline can face eviction proceedings starting Friday.
Other officials denounced a provision of the bill that blocks some cities from implementing local eviction protections until July 1. “It’s completely outrageous,” San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston told the Associated Press. “The state should be helping us here and not tying our hands.”
Meanwhile, some landlord groups said the bill wasn’t fair to them. “Landlords are dying under this financial pressure,” said Daniel Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. “There have been no resources really provided to rental property owners throughout this process.”
Finally, Attorney General Rob Bonta put eviction lawyers on notice, saying his office had received reports that some landlords or their attorneys were seeking to push through evictions by “falsely declaring” tenants hadn’t notified them of pending rent relief applications.
Against this intense political backdrop, Kounalakis is set to continue serving as acting governor until April 12, when Newsom returns from vacation. It isn’t the first time she’s filled in for Newsom at a high-stakes moment: Last year, she represented California at the United Nations climate change conference in Scotland after Newsom abruptly canceled his trip there to spend Halloween with his family.
These high-profile experiences — plus her tweet — suggest that Kounalakis may be gearing up for a future gubernatorial run. And, if the certified list of June 7 primary candidates Secretary of State Shirley Weber released Thursday is anything to go by, Kounalakis looks to be headed for an easy reelection as lieutenant governor. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/whats-johnny-love-been-up-to-just-ask-him/ | Johnny Love turning 60? Say it ain’t so.
As San Francisco’s favorite restaurateur and bartender put it, “Holy smokes. How did that happen?”
For anyone who spent the ’90s boozin’ and schmoozin’ at the man’s eponymous club on Polk Street, that may be a sobering thought. But here’s the good news. He’s still going strong. And he’s still having more fun than you.
We caught up with Johnny ahead of his April Fools Day birthday bash, for which he planned a party at the Blue Light, the place he bought from Boz Scaggs back in the day. Looking back on his career, it’s been quite a ride.
Before he became Johnny Love, he was just John Metheny, a rugby player at Cal who played on the great Jack Clark’s first national championship side. (One night, one of his frat brothers saw him chatting up a young lady at a bar and coined the nickname. It stuck. “My mom called me Johnny Love,” he said with a chuckle.)
Love bartended his way through college and Clark helped him get a job after graduation at the famous fern bar, Henry Africa’s. (Mr. Africa was actually named Norman Hobday, but chose a nom de consume for his watering hole.) He tried his hand as a stock broker, but that didn’t work out. “My third day was the crash,” said Love, referring to Black Monday, in October of 1987. “I just knew it wasn’t good timing to be there. I stayed two years, but I kept bartending.”
It was around that time that Love met Harry Denton, another legendary San Francisco clubkeeper, and he was off on his true path.
Denton helped him open his first joint, the Fillmore Grill, on the corner of Clay, and they remained lifelong friends.
“He was the first guy to say you’ve got to open up your own bar. He was very helpful,” said Love. “A lot of people thought we were partners. Just because he was so helpful. It was one of these odd couples. He was an older gay man and I was a younger heterosexual. But we had the same sense of humor. I loved the guy to death.”
(Denton passed away in August of 2021 in Seattle. Anyone who ever heard his voice will never forget it.)
So, yeah, Love bought the Blue Light. Opened up Johnny Love’s on Polk Street. Opened two more, in San Diego and Walnut Creek, and became one of San Francisco’s celebrity nightlife characters. His clubs were the place to be back in the day.
“That went on for many years,” Love told me. “It was unbelievable. I have pictures of Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Pelé, Mark McGwire. …”
He forgot to mention Gregg Allman, Herb Caen, Chris Isaak and Richard Branson, to name a few more celebs. But I’ve seen the pictures.
I asked him if he ever settled down, after the party died down. “I never did get married. Had some close calls. I’ve lived with girls,” said Johnny. “And no, never had kids. But I’m the best uncle in the world.”
All these years later, Love remains in the business, owning four S.F. restaurants and planning to launch a fifth. You can find him at the Toy Soldier and Vida Cantina SF, both on lovely Belden Place. Like for most restaurant owners, the pandemic was no fun for Love.
“The parklets have been brilliant. They saved our lives,” he said. “We did it. We survived. … It was just a roller coaster.”
Cheers Johnny. San Francisco still loves ya.
♦
Couple of leftovers from the Charlotte Mailliard Shultz memorial at Grace Cathedral this week. Willie Brown stole the show, as he is wont to do. He told us Charlotte had arranged her own funeral. And his. He joked that the lord now has a chief of protocol. And like any great politician, he was counting on the support of his friends.
During Charlotte’s new tenure in heaven, Brown hopes she will act as a diplomat, “because some of us will not have earned the right to enter. Charlotte will tell Him why Willie should be there.”
On another note, when they piped in Henry Kissinger’s voice into the grand cathedral to give a eulogy, it sure felt like the voice of God raining down on all of us. Who knew God had a German accent?
♦
Let’s end this week’s journey on Hippie Hill. Reefer madness will return to what used to be Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow April 20, where thousands should gather to celebrate cannabis.
There shall be tributes to Robin Williams and Bob Saget. Mike Tyson will be there, hyping his Tyson 2.0 pot brand. Jeff Ross will be roasting people and blunts.
Sure sounds like San Francisco is getting back to normal. But commercializing 420? You asked for legalization, people. It comes with a price.
Editor’s note: The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/hunters-point-homeowners-win-settlement-over-toxic-waste-exposure/ | A federal judge this week approved a settlement between housing developers and homeowners at the San Francisco Shipyard over allegations the homes — located at the site of a former naval shipyard — were built over toxic waste.
Back in July 2018, homeowners at the San Francisco Shipyard, a housing development located on the site of the former Hunters Point U.S. Navy shipyard, sued Tetra Tech Inc., Lennar Inc., and Lennar’s affiliate FivePoint Holdings Inc.
The suit alleged defendants Lennar and FivePoint Holdings developed and sold about 350 homes on a portion of the former naval site for about $1 million each. The suit further alleged that while the homes were marketed to prospective buyers as clean and safe, Tetra Tech — the environmental firm hired by the Navy to clean the site — failed to properly rid the site of toxic materials.
According to court documents, on Monday, U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the $6.3 million settlement between the homeowners and Lennar and FivePoint, despite objections from Tetra Tech.
Tetra Tech has denied any wrongdoing and is not a part of the settlement. Despite this, attorneys for the plaintiffs consider the settlement a big win for Hunters Point residents, who have long alleged the area continues to be contaminated.
“As we celebrate this victory, we are mindful that the fight for our community continues. We are grateful for the thousands of community members who are litigating in order to hold Tetra Tech and others responsible,” plaintiff and Salvation Army Director of Homeless Initiatives and Community Development Theo Ellington said in a statement.
Attorney Joe Cotchett with the law firm representing the plaintiffs, Cotchett, Pitre, and McCarthy, said, “The battle is just beginning — this case is part of the largest environmental fraud litigation in the country’s history. At their core, the cases are about environmental racism. Southeast San Francisco carries a tremendous environmental burden — it is the most polluted part of the city and has been for generations.”
“The settlement with Lennar and FivePoint took over a year of negotiations,” said plaintiff attorney Anne Marie Murphy. “The Tetra Tech scandal, as described in our case and related cases brought by the Hunters Point residents, police officers, and whistleblowers, really rocked the city — with this settlement done, we can be laser-focused in proceeding with the case against Tetra Tech.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said the settlement will be given to plaintiffs in payouts ranging from hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands.
The former 500-acre Navy shipyard in Hunters Point was exposed to radiation when it was used between 1946 and 1969 as a radiological defense laboratory by the Navy to study the effects of radiation on animals and materials and to decontaminate ships used in atomic bomb testing. In 1974, however, the site was closed and developed into housing, offices and industrial facilities.
In 2002, the Navy hired Tetra Tech to clean up the radiation, however, ten years later in 2012, former workers contracted by Tetra Tech alleged the firm’s cleanup data had been falsified and manipulated in order to minimize evidence of soil contamination. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/snowpack-report-signals-bad-news-for-californias-drought/ | The Sierra Nevada roughly translates to “snowy mountain range” in Spanish, but as the world warms, the dense snowpack that gave the high peaks its name is waning.
As the summer months inch closer, state officials have made clear that the drought gripping the state is set to continue based on snowpack data released Friday.
“Some may say this is a wake-up call. I disagree. The alarm has already gone off,” said Wade Crowfoot, the state’s Natural Resources Secretary, standing at Phillips Station, a scarred and snowless meadow just west of Lake Tahoe that burned in last year’s Caldor Fire. “Climate change is here, and climate change has been here in California and across the American West.”
The first of April marks an important date for state water managers because it indicates when the snowpack is at its peak for its water content, said Sean de Guzman, manager of the Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting for the Department of Water Resources (DWR).
“California is now facing a third consecutive year of dry conditions and extending this ongoing drought,” he said. “We have less snow right now than we did last year at this time.”
The reason for concern is not purely the decline of the snow-capped mountains but also because a third of the state’s water supply is sourced from the Sierras. Data collected from such surveys determine how much water will be allocated to reservoirs and residents in the warm, dry summer months ahead.
The survey recorded Friday at Phillips Station, one of 260 sites DWR monitors, revealed just 2.5 inches of snow depth and a snow water equivalent of one inch – four percent of average. Snow depth is the overall snow on the ground, while the snow water equivalent is the amount of snowmelt that turns into freshwater. Statewide, the snowpack was 38 percent of average, said de Guzman.
The dismal results came on the heels of news that the start of this year has been the driest in a century. It’s a reality that prompted Governor Gavin Newsom to issue an executive order to encourage local water authorities to activate stricter conservation measures.
“Conservation at this point in time is really the largest piece of the puzzle that we have a direct influence on,” said Dr. Andrew Schwartz, the station manager and lead scientist at UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Laboratory. “We can’t control the weather. We can’t control how fast our snowpack melts or how much of our snowpack there is every year. Ultimately, we have to be able to alter our own behavior to use the water that we do have efficiently.”
Although San Francisco’s water exists separately from the State’s Water Project that feeds much of the Central Valley and Southern Califonia, the Tuolumne watershed, managed by The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, currently sits around 41 percent of average, noted Schultz, “so San Francisco might need to worry a little bit, too.”
Another challenge is that warming temperatures are shifting the behavior of snow and complicating forecasters’ ability to accurately predict Spring runoff.
“The problem – and this is a really big issue – is that it turns out that more and more of the snow isn’t running off. It’s what we call sublimating, which means it’s literally evaporating into the air,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, a scientist and president emeritus of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute.
Last year, the April snowpack essentially vanished, never turning into the runoff Californians depend on for drinking water, agriculture, and industrial uses, and causing headaches for DWR, which had already allocated the water.
“They grossly overestimated how much water, even the little bit of snow that we got, would produce,” said Gleick. “This year, the worry is that even that amount of snow will again not produce the amount of runoff that the models tell us to expect. And that makes everything even worse.”
Although evaporation has always occurred, said Schultz, fire scars like that at Phillips Station also accelerate these conditions. “In these very large fire scars that we have, evaporation actually increases a substantial amount because of the increased temperatures and higher winds that result after the trees are damaged or moved by the fires,” he said.
Another issue, experts say, is that California is operating a system of dams and infrastructure based on an old water system.
“We built an entire system on a different climate,” said Caitrin Chappelle, an associate director of the California Water Program at the Nature Conservancy. “What we’re seeing right now, literally right now, is that it’s so much warmer in the Sierras is that that water is either melting faster – it’s not maintaining its snowpack – or it’s coming down quicker or it’s just sinking into the ground. It’s not creating a slow release that we’re used to in our system.”
While the fierce winter storms that blanketed the Sierras in snow this year have helped alleviate some of the drought impacts from last year’s paltry precipitation numbers, many of California’s reservoirs remain below average, leaving state officials once again imploring all Californians to take further actions to conserve water.
“The fact that the climate is changing is clear,” said Crowfoot. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
jwolfrom@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/riders-rejoice-van-ness-bus-lane-now-in-service/ | For some San Franciscans, this April 1 was a major holiday — no joke.
Just outside the War Memorial Opera House, a crowd of about 200 people gathered at 9 a.m. to celebrate the long-awaited opening of the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit line. Dignitaries spoke, opera was sung and a ribbon was cut, but the real action was on the bus.
After enduring nearly six years of construction, transit enthusiasts young and old couldn’t wait to try out the red bus-only lanes stretching along the median of Van Ness Avenue from Mission Street to Union Street.
“Last night I couldn’t go to sleep because I was so excited for this,” said Mac Lester, 12, as the 49 bus glided past Tommy’s Joynt.
His friend Austin Lee, 18, was similarly enthusiastic. “This is going to be the ride of a lifetime,” he said while capturing footage for his YouTube channel.
Others came on the inaugural ride to mark the important milestone for The City. “I ride the bus all the time and I’m a senior,” said Roseann Gould, 84. “I wanted to acknowledge all the hard work that’s been done here.”
The long-delayed and over-budget construction project loomed over the day’s festivities. Several public officials at the ribbon cutting event used the phrase “long time coming.” Mayor London Breed assured the crowd, “No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.”
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Director Jeffrey Tumlin apologized to the community surrounding Van Ness for the disruption they endured as The City replaced 150 year-old underground utilities and built the transit line. He added the transit agency has learned a lot from the project, and is applying those lessons to forthcoming projects, such as the one on Geary Boulevard.
But the new and improved Van Ness also serves as one of the most vivid examples — second only to car-free Market Street — of The City’s efforts to reallocate street space for transit, bikes and pedestrians. The project is “part of our efforts to re-imagine San Francisco’s streets,” Tumlin said, “to rethink our streets to allow them to move more people as The City grows.”
Later this year, SFMTA will mark an even bigger transit milestone when it opens the Central Subway project linking Chinatown, Union Square and Mission Bay.
While riders celebrated, some were frustrated by the fact that as this year’s major projects open up, no others will be under construction. “This has been the most important bus project in The City, so it’s great to see it coming to fruition,” said Peter Straus, a transit activist and former SFMTA planner. But, he said, “we’re not moving fast enough on other projects,” like the extension of the Central Subway to Fisherman’s Wharf or the tunnel connecting Caltrain to the Salesforce Transit Center downtown.
For 49 Van Ness-Mission bus riders, the new lanes provide a considerably improved experience. With no traffic ahead, buses whiz from stop to stop. The ride from Market Street to Union Street takes about 15 minutes, a travel time improvement of over 30%.
Eventually, buses should only have to stop at bus stops, thanks to timed traffic signals. But on day one, some of those signals had not yet been activated, and buses got caught at a few red lights.
For bus operator Brandon O’Bannon, driving the new lanes was “a lot of fun… It feels great not to deal with traffic and lane closures.”
O’Bannon also noted the pavement felt very smooth under the tires, quite different from the bumpy conditions on Mission Street and other routes.
He wasn’t alone. Tomer Bear, 4, was able to stand up on a moving bus all by himself for the first time.
bschneider@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/state-extends-pandemic-eviction-protections-hours-before-expiration-deadline/ | By Eli Walsh
Bay City News Foundation
State officials enacted a last-minute extension Thursday of some pandemic-related eviction protections, just hours before the deadline for tenants to apply for rent relief.
Assembly Bill 2179 — authored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Tim Grayson, D-Concord — will shield some renters from eviction through June 30, 2022, by requiring a judge to delay an eviction hearing if the state has not yet processed a tenant’s rent relief application.
Starting Friday, those who have not applied to the program will no longer be protected from eviction proceedings even if they have not paid rent due to lost income during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tenants can only apply to the rent relief program if they have outstanding unpaid rent due to a loss of income caused by the pandemic, as the state’s full moratorium on evictions due to pandemic-related income loss ended Sept. 30, 2021.
“Today we upheld our promise to hundreds of thousands of Californians — renters and landlords alike — that we will help them through the financial hardships caused by the pandemic, and keep them in their homes while we do it,” Grayson said in a Twitter post.
While the state has dispersed some $2.5 billion to cover tenants’ unpaid rent, roughly 284,000 applications are still pending, according to data from the state’s rent relief program. Tenants will have until 11:59 p.m. Thursday to apply to the program.
The state Assembly approved AB 2179 62-1 on Monday while the Senate approved it 36-1 on Thursday as legislators hustled to keep protections in place for applicants before protections were set to end April 1.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, the state’s acting governor while Gov. Gavin Newsom is out of the state, signed the bill into law shortly after the Senate’s vote, becoming the first woman in California’s history to do so.
“I am deeply humbled to take this action and to be part of history today as the first woman in state history to sign legislation into law,” she said in a statement. “I remain more determined than ever to ensure that while I may be the first to do so, I will certainly not be the last.”
In addition to protecting tenants with pending rent relief applications, AB 2179 will also prevent some local governments from enforcing their own COVID-related eviction protections until after July 1 if they were originally adopted after Aug. 19, 2020.
As a result, local eviction protections in cities like San Francisco and Richmond will be postponed and superseded by the state’s eviction rules, while those in the city of Oakland and Alameda County will remain in place.
That portion of the legislation drew opposition from Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, and Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco. Wiener and Ting were the lone dissenting votes against AB 2179 in both chambers.
“There is no policy rationale for overriding local eviction protections in San Francisco, etc., while allowing other cities to protect their renters,” Wiener and Ting said Monday in a joint statement. “This arbitrary distinction is harmful to San Francisco renters, as well as renters in other cities and counties that aren’t part of the favored group of cities.”
AB 2179 also drew opposition from tenants’ rights advocates, who echoed the same concerns as Wiener and Ting.
“Their intent with this bill is to protect the 300,000 applicants still waiting for rental assistance, which is good,” said Christina Livingston, the executive director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.
“But by forcefully removing the local protections of nearly 4 million renters on April 1, and providing no state-level equivalent of protection, AB 2179 is a horrific deal that will result in a surge in evictions statewide, and far too many families becoming homeless,” Livingston said.
Advocacy groups for property owners and landlords, meanwhile, called for Thursday’s extension to be the last, arguing that some property owners may be forced to lose their properties if they cannot collect past-due rent or evict tenants for not paying.
The California Rental Housing Association said in a March 25 statement that it opposed AB 2179, with the group’s president Christine Kevane La Marca arguing that pandemic-era protections were no longer necessary as the virus has receded statewide and many other state health mandates have been rescinded over the last two months.
The CalRHA says it represents some 20,000 members who own more than 575,000 housing units across the state.
“Enough is enough,” Kevane La Marca said. “Some of our members have not received rental income for more than two years and can no longer make ends meet.”
The California Apartment Association, which also represents the state’s property owners, supported the extension but also argued that pre-pandemic eviction rules should return on July 1.
CAA CEO Thomas Bannon also suggested in a statement Thursday that “unethical tenants” have fraudulently withheld rent payments and hid behind pandemic-related restrictions.
“We’re hopeful that program administrators will do whatever it takes to finish the job and provide both renters and housing providers the help they’ve been promised,” Bannon said. “Come June 30, when all qualified applications are paid, there will be no need for any more COVID eviction moratoria, state or local.”
Tenants and landlords can apply to the rent relief program at https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/index.html. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220401 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/giants-2022-will-they-thrive-or-dive/ | By Chris Haft
Special to The Examiner
Here’s one way of placing the Giants’ 2021 season in perspective … and in the rear-view mirror. If they endured a 17-game dropoff this year, they’d still win 90 games. And that would probably be enough to qualify them for the postseason in the newly expanded, 12-team format.
Amassing 90 victories would mean losing an average of three more games each month, given the Giants’ franchise-record victory total last year. Their 107-55 finish reflected sheer consistency: They recorded winning percentages of .600 or higher in all six full months of the baseball calendar.
With that kind of steadiness, when will the inevitable decline occur? Or will a decline even occur?
It borders on preposterous to believe that the Giants can win 100-plus games again. The Giants have accomplished this back-to-back feat exactly twice, most recently in 1912 (103-48) and 1913 (101-51).
But that’s ancient history, and this is 2022. The slate is clean for San Francisco, and 29 other teams, so anything is possible.
Here are three reasons why the Giants can reach or even just approach 100 wins again, followed by three reasons why they’re due for a slump.
Why they’ll thrive
1. Attitude
The Giants have regained much of the swagger they possessed when they were winning World Series’ in 2010, 2012 and 2014. They regard winning as a given.
“You think you can do it again, that’s first and foremost,” Giants broadcaster and former pitcher Mike Krukow said. “When you have that belief before the first pitch is thrown, you’ve already accomplished a lot. You play six months and each month you play .600 ball, you come to have expectations. It’s healthy. Only a catastrophe changes that mindset. Everybody within that clubhouse expects nothing less than what they had last year. Now, will they win 107 games? No. That’s the first time they’ve done it in 139 years.”
Then Krukow cited a published prediction that called for the Giants to finish 79-83. “That’s insulting,” Krukow said. “They feel like they’re getting slighted. So they’re highly motivated once again.”
2. In Farhan We Trust
Except for Giants lifers Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford, veteran Evan Longoria and preserved prospects such as Joey Bart, Camilo Doval, Sean Hjelle, Heliot Ramos and Tyler Rogers, many key performers, as well as manager Gabe Kapler, were obtained by Farhan Zaidi, the club’s president of baseball operations who earned credibility with a series of low-profile yet astute transactions. Examples include Mike Yastrzemski, Darin Ruf, LaMonte Wade Jr. and Jake McGee.
“It’s kind of like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” said Krukow, referencing the popular 1969 film starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. “They’d be in some really bad predicament and Sundance would look over and say, ‘You’ll think of something, Butch. You always do.’ We kind of feel that way about Farhan Zaidi. He’ll think of something.”
3. Rodon’s an artist
Free agent pickup Carlos Rodon has impressed witnesses with his electric ensemble of pitches. The Giants believe he can improve upon his 2021 numbers with the White Sox (13-5, 2.37 ERA, 185 strikeouts in 132 2/3 innings).
“I think he could win a Cy Young Award with his stuff,” radio talk show host and ex-pitcher Bill Laskey said.
Why they’ll dive
1. History
Winning 100 games or thereabouts doesn’t guarantee success the following year. Check Giants history for proof. The still-legendary 1962 team, which cruised to a 103-62 mark with future Hall of Famers Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Gaylord Perry in tow, tumbled to 88-74 the following year. The 1993 and 2003 Giants, who finished 103-59 and 100-61, respectively, checked in at 55-60 and 91-71 in their succeeding years.
2.Offense
Sustaining offense could be an issue. Buster Posey retired following last season. Kris Bryant fled to Colorado in free agency. Longoria is sidelined for six weeks by an injured right index finger. That doesn’t count the knee injuries that are nagging Belt and Wade. “Their offense went back a step,” Laskey said.
3. Paging Joey Bart
It’s up to Bart. This will turn into an asset if Bart, Posey’s highly touted successor behind the plate, can deliver on his promise. Right now, he’s a question mark.
“Early success will give him early confidence, and then everything else, we hope, falls into place,” Krukow said.
Defense is Bart’s top priority, as is the case with every catcher. But he’ll likely feel better about handling the pitching staff if he’s handling the bat capably.
“If you’re swinging the bat, you’re a better defensive player,” Krukow said. You’re not distracted on the field by thoughts of your swing. You’re thinking about nothing but defense.”
Chris Haft is a longtime Bay Area baseball writer who covers the Giants for The Examiner. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220402 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/endorsement-gavin-newsom-the-clear-and-only-choice-for-california-governor/ | By The Examiner Editorial Board
With Gov. Gavin Newsom running virtually unopposed in 2022, it would be silly to pretend his reelection is in question. He crushed last year’s recall election, handily defeating a circus parade of wannabes like Larry Elder, Caitlyn Jenner and a guy who roamed the state with a rented Kodiak bear.
This year’s “candidates” are even more obscure and unimpressive. Not one formidable person opted to run against Newsom by the state’s March 11 filing deadline. Instead, his opposition is a joke slate of third-rate publicity hounds and people who apparently get a kick out of seeing their names printed on ballots.
The most notable thing about Sen. Brian Dahle, the Republican standard-bearer, is that he’s a Donald Trump supporter who has refused to get the COVID vaccine. Other than that, he’s a termed-out legislator with nothing better to do than run a hopeless campaign.
Dahle’s laughable candidacy is testament to how far the California GOP has fallen. A party that once produced presidents can now muster nothing better than a pro-Trump anti-vaxxer with no chance. California Republicans have abdicated their opposition party role, embracing radical Trumpian stances that alienate most voters and risk ceding their side of the ballot to Democrats and/or opportunists in California’s open primary.
This brings us to Michael Shellenberger, a professional attention seeker running for governor (again) in an effort to get on the Fox channel and sell his error-riddled books (his 2018 campaign ended with a ninth place finish). In Shellenberger’s upside-down disinformation universe, climate change is really no cause for concern and Democrats get blamed for everything wrong with society.
Yet Shellenberger’s major accomplishment in electoral politics involved working as an image consultant to socialist Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. Thanks to the policies of Chávez and his handpicked autocratic successor, Venezuela’s economy cratered, its crime rate soared and its democracy died. Shellenberger is not a serious person, but any journalist choosing to elevate his absurdity should ask how serving disastrous socialist regimes qualifies him for governor.
Like the other two dozen random candidates on the ballot, Dahle and Shellenberger have zero chance of victory. Newsom will win reelection on Nov. 8, 2022.
Voters strongly endorsed Newsom’s steady leadership in last year’s recall election. The only challenge for Newsom now is to make good on the ambitious promises he made when he ran under the slogan of “Courage for a Change” in 2018.
Unfortunately, Newsom’s high hopes were interrupted by the COVID pandemic, which plunged the world into a deadly emergency and made crisis management Newsom’s top concern. Unlike governors in Republican-controlled states, Newsom embraced science and erred on the side of caution, a decision that undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. He also used the crisis as a springboard for action on homelessness, launching ambitious and unprecedented efforts to house the state’s spiraling homeless population.
Upon taking office in 2019, Newsom inherited a state budget that had gone from multibillion-dollar deficits to massive surpluses under Gov. Jerry Brown. Unfortunately, he also inherited a state with social crises that had become so grave after decades of neglect that they make Brown’s celebrated budget bonanzas seem quite small. Homelessness, a rising problem Brown essentially ignored, has now become a top issue for voters who have seen California’s streets fill with tents even as its budget coffers overflow with funds.
Unlike his predecessors, Newsom has taken responsibility for solving homelessness. He’s backed up his promise with an unprecedented investment of $14 billion to create more housing and get people off of the street. This year, he proposed the creation of a new “CARE Court” program to help steer addicted and mentally ill people into housing and treatment – an approach that will presumably come with the resources to provide the required care.
Newsom’s work on homelessness alone would be enough to recommend his reelection, and the success of his governorship depends on the progress California makes on this issue. Yet it is far from the only issue he has tackled as governor.
Despite the pandemic’s disruption, Newsom has mostly delivered on the progressive wish list he vowed to support during his 2018 campaign. He has expanded anti-poverty programs and early childhood education. He has pledged to wean California off of fossil fuels and he moved to ban oil fracking. He supports racial justice, immigrant rights and equality for women and the LGBT community. Through it all, California’s economic growth has continued to outpace other states.
Some criticize Newsom for taking on too many thorny issues at once, but California is a big state with endless challenges. We need a leader unafraid to face them all, and to stand up for California’s values no matter how much political capital it costs.
Some press outlets may wring drama from this dead race by playing up poll gyrations and platforming fools, but most of us had our fill of such ridiculousness during the recall farce. Newsom’s second term essentially began when the recall imploded. There’s no point in pretending otherwise or dragging out the process.
The Examiner Editorial Board enthusiastically endorses Gavin Newsom for governor of California. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220404 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/helgi-tomasson-who-transformed-the-s-f-ballet-into-a-world-class-institution-begins-his-long-goodbye/ | From his third-floor office on Franklin Street, past the pink-tutued honey bear artwork by fnnch that graces a window, Helgi Tomasson has a direct view of the War Memorial Opera House (not to mention San Francisco City Hall just beyond it). His balcony overlooks a crosswalk that he has traversed thousands of times over the past three-plus decades, commuting between the building that houses San Francisco Ballet’s administrative facilities as well as dance studios and the 1932 Beaux-Arts landmark venue where he forged his legacy as an innovator.
Tomasson’s 37-year reign as SF Ballet’s artistic director and principal choreographer will conclude at the end of the 2021–22 season, appropriately with a revival of his production of “Swan Lake.” The romantic Tchaikovsky ballet was responsible for one of Tomasson’s most memorable achievements during his tenure and helped transform the company into a world-class institution.
Soon, intensive days filled with casting, classes and rehearsals will give way to a looser, undetermined schedule. “Whatever happens … traveling, I hope,” Tomasson offers when recently asked about post-retirement life. For now, the only concrete plan that he and his wife, Marlene, have entails a trip to Germany to visit their son Kris and two grandchildren, who they haven’t seen in two and a half years. (Another son, Erik, lives locally.)
Tomasson, 79, had already decided to step down from S.F. Ballet when COVID-19 restrictions halted the season in March 2020, and he unexpectedly found more time for personal pursuits, such as reading books by authors from his native Iceland. While the pandemic may not have prompted his decision, it did cause him to postpone retirement so he could help see the company through the period and provide it more time to find his successor as artistic director, which SF Ballet announced in January would be Spanish ballet star Tamara Rojo.
The pandemic also represented the biggest challenge of his career. “It was horrendous to be off work and sheltered in place all those months, with dancers trying to keep their morale up and stay in shape in their apartments,” Tomasson says. “When they were finally allowed to get together in class in our studios, it was only six dancers at a time, masked and 10 to 12 feet apart. It was a logistical nightmare, but we managed to do it. We had class going on all day, and then The City eased restrictions and we could start rehearsing and creating works. That was a wonderful thing, but we did that in pods, which could not mingle.”
Fortunately, S.F. Ballet had a long rehearsal period before it returned to live performances at the War Memorial Opera House in December 2021, and it did so with “Nutcracker,” a work the dancers were extremely familiar with and therefore an ideal opus to reopen with, according to Tomasson.
“To have dancers be off almost two years — that’s a very long time in a dancer’s career, and it’s taken them quite a while to come back,” Tomasson says. “Right now the company is dancing very, very well and I’m happy about that.”
Tomasson found creative opportunity out of the crisis the pandemic brought when, during the company’s division of classes into pods, he conceived “Harmony,” set to music by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Premiering in April as part of this season’s Program 5, it is the last work Tomasson choreographed during his stewardship of S.F. Ballet.
“I wanted to think of this work as something coming out of the pandemic, eventually — and harmony was something we needed to be aware of among ourselves and other people,” he explains. “The music inspired me, and as always, there’s an inspiration I get from working with dancers in the studio.”
“Harmony” is among the 50 ballets Tomasson has choreographed for S.F. Ballet since joining as its artistic director in July 1985, including full-length stagings of “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Don Quixote,” “Romeo & Juliet,” “Nutcracker” and, above all, “Swan Lake,” which in 1988 was his first major production for the company. Upon its opening, the New York Times raved that Tomasson’s “Swan Lake,” “one of the most beautifully designed in recent years, now puts the San Francisco Ballet on the international dance map.” Indeed, the work elevated the company’s global profile and turned it into a touring powerhouse, with performances in ballet hubs such as New York, London, Paris and Copenhagen.
Stepping onto the world stage
Back when he signed his initial three-year contract with S.F. Ballet, it was no doubt unimaginable that he would still hold the post 37 years later. San Francisco, though, proved a tremendous fit for his ambitions.
“It took a lot of hard work, but it was my aim from the beginning to create something here that would be truly remarkable. I think with all the new works I have fostered, and getting incredible choreographers to come work with us, that has made the company, to quote others, the envy of the ballet world,” Tomasson says. “It also took some wonderful dancers I’ve had the opportunity to work with, and the board was very supportive of my artistic vision — I always felt I was given leeway and able to pursue it — and I’m grateful for that.”
Tomasson knows from personal experience the pivotal role dancers play in ballet and the inspiration they provide, as he started his career as a dancer in 1957, joining the Pantomime Theatre in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens at age 15. He went on to the Joffrey Ballet in 1962 (he met Marlene, a fellow dancer, at the company); then the Harkness Ballet in 1964; and ultimately became a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet in 1970 (he retired in 1985).
Tomasson cites Erik Bruhn, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov — the last of whom in 1969 won gold for Russia to Tomasson’s silver for the U.S. at the First International Ballet Competition in Moscow — as the three dancers who had the largest impact on his career as a dancer and helped inspire him.
As for the individual who shaped him the most as an artistic director, Tomasson credits Robert Joffrey, who hired him when he was 19 to dance for his then-New York company. “At the time, he was the first director of a ballet company to engage the modern dance community’s choreographers — John Butler, Norman Walker, Anna Sokolow — so I was exposed to a totally different way of moving than I had been trained for, and it was fascinating and challenging,” Tomasson says. “It influenced me as a director of this company to seek new works, new choreographers, respect the old classics.”
Stretching the limits of choreography
Tomasson has collaborated with and commissioned works from several renowned choreographers, including Mark Morris, Alexei Ratmansky, William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon, Cathy Marston and Dwight Rhoden.
“Helgi has managed to consistently keep this tradition of making new work, constantly challenging his dancers and pushing them in new directions, and bringing the best from all over the world through these doors,” says Wheeldon, who choreographed “Finale Finale” as a tribute to Tomasson; it premieres in SF Ballet’s Program 6 this season.
Marston’s seductive “Mrs. Robinson” debuted in S.F. Ballet’s Program 1. She points out several attributes that have stamped Tomasson as a great artistic director — and a joy to work with. “Working with Helgi is very liberating; he trusts you and allows you to come into this company and make what’s in your heart and doesn’t interrupt or question you,” Marston says.
Rhoden, whose ballet “The Promised Land” also premieres in Program 6, expands upon the list of kudos for Tomasson. “He’s always 10 steps ahead, a pioneer whose vision is always forward — thinking,” Rhoden says. “That’s how he has transformed this company into the major arts institution that it is. I look to him with the greatest reverence for how he is as a leader and artistic director.”
Tomasson, who is confident that S.F. Ballet made the right choice in Rojo as its next artistic director, will continue to contribute to the company in a few key ways. “I will be involved with the [San Francisco Ballet School Spring] Festival in 2023 because I chose those choreographers, and the board would like me to have the same role I had with Unbound [festival of new works], which is to decide who would be in what program and in what order,” Tomasson says. “And if there are going to be ballets by me performed here, Tamara has indicated to me she would very much like me to be involved with that.”
On April 24, Helgi Tomasson: A Celebration will commemorate his career with performances of ballets he choreographed — and handpicked for the special occasion. But “Swan Lake,” opening on April 29 and featuring his 2009 production, which he considers “more contemporary looking” than his earlier one, resonates with Tomasson like no other work. And it is the most fitting artistic flourish for his farewell.
“It is a beautiful ballet. That music is glorious, and the company dances it very well,” Tomasson says with emotion. “I think it’s probably the most favorite ballet around the world, and we accomplished that the first time in 1988. I was just starting then, so why not finish with it?”
A longer version of this article appeared in the April 2022 issue of the Nob Hill Gazette. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/san-francisco-born-colin-woodell-takes-a-ride-toward-movie-star-a-list-in-ambulance/ | Household name recognition could be coming soon for San Francisco-born actor Colin Woodell, who has landed a sizable role in the new Michael Bay mega-production “Ambulance.”
In the movie, which opens Friday, Woodell plays a rookie EMT named Scott, sharing scenes with the top-billed Eiza González.
González plays his more experienced partner, Cam Thompson, who gets kidnapped by adoptive brothers Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal) when a bank robbery goes awry. They hijack her ambulance and embark on a chase/escape that lasts for most of the rest of the movie.
Woodell says he did some research on being an EMT, and even tracked one down to interview.
“The reality is that there’s only so much an actor can do, because most of their job is preparation, like cleaning the truck and making sure everything is ready for the day,” he says.
In one of his first scenes, which was also his first day of shooting, Scott and Cam arrive at the scene of a grisly car crash, where a metal post has pierced the torso of a young girl.
“Nothing prepared me,” he says. “When you’re working on a Michael Bay film, there are no floaty devices. You just jump right in. Thank goodness I can drive an ambulance because no one checked. And Michael does that intentionally. He wants to create chaos because it gets captured in the film.”
Speaking via phone, Woodell recently talked about growing up in The City, and acting at a young age while enrolled in the youth program at the American Conservatory Theater.
He performed works by Arthur Miller, and of course “Our Town,” while headquartered at the Children’s Creativity Museum, a.k.a. Zeum, in Yerba Buena Gardens.
“I did ‘Christmas Carol’ a couple of times. That was the pinnacle,” he says.
Those shows were performed on the glamorous stage of the Geary Theater, the young actor intermingling with seasoned professionals as well as MFA students from ACT.
“It was probably a circus for the adults,” Woodell says. “I remember my class came to visit me and see the show for a field trip. They all gave me a standing ovation, and I threw my arms in the air, which is not protocol, and I got a scolding from my teacher.”
The actor attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory before moving to Los Angeles to earn his degree at UCLA and launch his career. His home base and his family are still in the Bay Area, and he says he tries to visit at least once or twice a year, and plans to “have some semblance of a home” in San Francisco someday.
“It’s so weird… the longer I was away from home, the more the Bay Area seems to change and evolve,” he says. “I feel like a lot of the people I knew began to leave. It’s a strange feeling to go home and not have all those people there, and to go down a street and your favorite restaurant isn’t there. But every time I’m home it’s the best feeling in the world, it’s like pressing a reset button.”
According to his Wikipedia page, he is currently “best known” for his role as Rick Betancourt on the TV Series “The Purge” (based on the movie franchise) and for his lead role in the 2018 horror sequel “Unfriended: Dark Web.”
“Those were the types of roles that found me and I found them,” he says. “Acting in the genre is so much fun. It’s taxing, for sure, and putting yourself in dangerous situations is challenging. Coming straight out of drama school, that channel of myself was really accessible.”
However, he confesses he’s not a fan of watching horror films. “I get scared very easily,” he admits.
Another break came when he was cast in the 2020 film “The Call of the Wild,” based on Jack London’s classic novel, alongside Harrison Ford. Woodell found himself starstruck by the living legend.
“You introduce yourself and they say their name, and it’s like… well, yeah,” he laughs. “I shook his hand and said, ‘It was such a pleasure working with you.’ He just had this familiar look in his eye, like, ‘You and me, we get it, but the rest of the world doesn’t.’ He has that charisma.”
On working with Bay, Woodell says, “He beats to his own drum. He was one of the guys; he just wants to talk and hang out and suddenly remembers he’s making a movie. He does everything, and he does it at a pace that I’ve never seen before. He operates the camera. He’s lighting from windows 30 stories up, things so intricate that they’re not on the surface.”
Despite the chaos, he had a great partner in González. Her experience working on Hollywood productions of this size, such as “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” was an asset.
“She had some knowledge to share with me along the way. She set the tone for me. She was remarkably thorough. She even went head-to-head with Michael. She’s incredible,” he says.
Bay asked Woodell to improvise some of his dialogue with González. Her character is all business, emotionally distant, while Woodell’s Scott tries to lighten the mood and get to know his partner a little. The result is a terrific onscreen chemistry, and some of the funniest moments in the movie.
Another highlight of the film was getting to work, even briefly, with one of his heroes, Gyllenhaal.
“It’s always a tricky thing working with someone you admire,” he says. “You want to watch them work, and at the same time you’re having an out-of-body experience. He was in the zone and not really taking in anything other than what he was doing in front of him. At one point when we were blocking, I did get the chance to say, ‘Hey. I’m Colin.’”
Woodell did bond with actor Abdul-Mateen, who recently appeared in “Candyman” and “The Matrix Resurrections,” and is also from the Bay Area. He calls Abdul-Mateen “inspirational,” describing how he followed his dream, from being an athlete to secretly taking classes at ACT, and even working in the Mayor’s office for a time.
“We immediately clicked,” he says. “He just had that Bay Area vibe. When you’ve been in L.A. long enough, when you meet someone from the Bay Area, you just bond.”
IF YOU GO:
“Ambulance”
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Colin Woodell
Written by Chris Fedak
Directed by Michael Bay
Running time 2 hours 16 minutes
Rated R for intense violence, bloody images and language throughout
Opens Friday, April 8 in San Francisco theaters | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/the-man-who-made-norcal-counterculture/ | By Paul Wilner
Special to The Examiner
“He lit a spark,” veteran technology author John Markoff says about Stewart Brand. The indefatigable entrepreneur, best known for launching The Whole Earth Catalog in 1968, has also been at the center of countercultural movements for decades.
The first person believed to use the term “personal computer,” Brand cofounded the pioneering online community The Well and CoEvolution Quarterly, which featured contributions from Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. More recently, his Long Now Foundation tries to separate the signal from the noise and focus on the challenges of the next 10,000 years.
Markoff, a Palo Alto native who retired from the New York Times in 2016 and previously authored “What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer,” remembers visiting the Whole Earth Truck Store in Menlo Park when he was on break from college up in Washington. His new biography, “Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand,” traces the impact of this latter-day Zelig. Many lives, indeed.
“There was a straight line from the Trips Festival” — the famously acid-drenched Longshoreman’s Hall event Brand organized at the behest of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters in 1966 — “to the rise of the Haight,” Markoff says. “But by the time the Summer of Love happened, he was gone. When everybody else showed up, he would take off.” (Brand famously passed out buttons reading, “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?” after an acid-induced epiphany on a North Beach rooftop.)
Born in Rockford, Michigan, Brand was a “stereotypical Midwestern kid” who was “completely seduced by California” when his brother enrolled at Stanford, Markoff recalls. Brand followed in his sibling’s footsteps at The Farm, but by his senior year he’d discovered North Beach and fallen in love with its nascent Beat scene as it was morphing into hippiedom. But he was always a searcher.
“What he took away from Buckminster Fuller was that if you want to create social change, train someone to use a new tool,” Markoff says. “The Whole Earth Catalog emerged at the same time Silicon Valley was being formed and had a huge impact on that culture, best expressed by Steve Jobs’ Stanford commencement speech in 2005 (quoting Brand’s aphorism): ‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish.’”
Unlike the tech billionaires he inspired, Brand has never tried to cash in. However, he has enough to keep him afloat on the Sausalito tugboat he shares with his wife, Ryan Phelan.
“Look at the Google founders,” Markoff says. “They were supposed to destroy evil, and wealth corroded them. Apple was about the chemistry between Steve Wozniak, who just wanted to share computer design with his friends, and Jobs, who understood there was a market. That’s the canonical story of Silicon Valley. Stewart was about something else. He’s always been more intellectually curious than people realize.”
Both Markoff and Brand will celebrate the book’s launch on April 7 at 6 p.m., in conversation with Mike Cerre at Sausalito Books by the Bay. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/california-law-requiring-diversity-on-corporate-boards-struck-down/ | By Erin Griffith
New York Times
A California law requiring diversity on corporate boards of directors has been struck down in a blow to the state’s efforts to address racial and gender disparities in the workplace.
In response to a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit conservative advocacy group, Judge Terry Green of Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday found that the law violated the state constitution.
The law, Assembly Bill 979, went into effect in 2020. It requires publicly traded companies based in California to have board members from underrepresented communities including people of several races and ethnic groups and people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. Gov. Gavin Newsom, in signing the bill into law, proclaimed it a victory for racial justice and empowerment.
Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, filed a month after the law was signed, argued that it was unconstitutional because it mandated quotas.
Green did not specify the reasoning for his decision. In one hearing, he described the law as “a bit arbitrary” on which groups it aimed to help, according to Law360.
In a statement after the ruling, Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, decried the law as part of “one of the most blatant and significant attacks in the modern era on constitutional prohibitions against discrimination.”
California has led the country in pushing companies to diversify their top ranks, starting with a 2018 law that required corporate boards have at least one woman. Companies that do not comply face fines.
Since the 2018 law was passed, the number of women on boards more than doubled, according to a report from California Partners Project, a nonprofit focused on gender equity that was founded in part by Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Last year, more than half of new board appointees were women, the group said.
In a statement, California Partners Project called the decision “disappointing but not determinative.” The group pointed to studies showing business outcomes were better “when all of our rich talent is represented in positions of leadership” and noted that investors motivated by these outcomes would continue to pressure companies to have diverse boards.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a rule by Nasdaq, set to go in effect this year, that will require companies listed on its exchange to disclose the ethnic and gender makeup of their boards and have at least two “diverse” members or explain why they do not. Other states, including Maryland and New York, have required companies to disclose board diversity statistics, but none have enacted mandatory quotas.
Judicial Watch filed a separate lawsuit over California’s gender diversity law, making the same argument against quotas. It has also pressured the SEC to abandon its approval of diversity rules.
It was not clear whether California would appeal Green’s ruling. The office of the secretary of state did not respond to a request for comment.
The decision was not a complete surprise, and California’s gender diversity law may face a similar fate, said David Bell, co-chair of corporate governance at the law firm Fenwick & West. “Under constitutional principles, the courts have generally been hostile to quotas,” Bell said.
Still, if Green’s decision holds up after any potential appeals, Bell said he did not expect it to change much for companies that are already being pushed to diversify their top ranks.
“It has already set a bench mark for expectations by a lot of different stakeholders — institutional investors, employees, customers,” he said. “The bench mark exists and those expectations are going to carry forth in the world.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/despite-national-decline-bay-area-gas-prices-remain-at-record-highs/ | While the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline has decreased by 5 cents to $4.19 over the past week, Bay Area drivers are still paying $1.66 more a gallon than the rest of the country.
According to new data from the Energy Information Administration, an increase in the total domestic gasoline stock combined with a drop in demand helped nudge prices downward, according to AAA. If demand continues to decline as gasoline stocks continue to build, the national average will likely continue to move lower. The U.S. said Thursday it will release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
As of Sunday, the average price in California for a gallon of regular gas was $5.85.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, current average regular gas prices and month-over-month increases are as follows in these metro areas: Oakland, $5.83, up .85 cents; San Francisco and San Jose, $5.90, up about .85; San Rafael, $5.87, up .78; Santa Cruz, $5.80, up .90 cents; Santa Rosa, $5.86, up .78; Stockton, $5.69, up .89 (though currently ranking as the 10th least expensive region in California); and Vallejo, $5.75, up .80.
The cheapest gas in the state can be found in the Hanford area, $5.57 for a gallon of regular.
The global oil market remains highly volatile, so additional news that threatens supply could put upward pressure on oil prices, AAA said. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/march-data-showed-promising-growth-for-s-f-economy-but-were-not-back-to-normal-yet/ | By Keith Burbank
Bay City News
A range of economic indicators for San Francisco points to good news and a strong recovery from the effects of the omicron variant of COVID-19, according to a monthly report by the city controller’s office.
Good news came in the form of data from March on job creation, tourism, housing, office attendance and among other indicators, new business formation.
But San Francisco’s chief economist Ted Egan was real about the state of the economy.
“I don’t think the good economic news in our March report changes the fact that San Francisco still has a long way to go in its economic recovery. Our job creation, tourism, and housing are all moving in the right direction. But they are still well below where we were before the pandemic, and far behind where comparable cities are.”
The San Francisco metro area added 12,300 jobs in February, more than half of which was in the leisure and hospitality sector, a sector hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment was at 3 percent, the lowest rate for the pandemic era.
The number of housing units permitted jumped again. San Francisco permitted about 325 units in January, up from fewer than 200 in October and fewer than 50 in November 2020.
A few new businesses opened at the beginning of the year in the neighborhood services classification, which includes equipment repair, dry cleaning, and among many other things, pet care services.
Local travel is recovering but residents are still cautious about getting out, according to the controller’s office. Weekly hotel occupancy topped 50 percent in mid-March in San Francisco, only the second time that’s happened since the pandemic began.
But the city is still behind other leading destinations when it comes to hotel revenue recovery.
Office attendance continues to recover sharply since the beginning of the year and from April 2020 when it was below 10 percent. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/mass-shooting-in-sacramento-marks-californias-12th-this-year/ | The shooting of 15 people, six of them fatally, in Sacramento early Sunday morning is the 12th mass shooting in California this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
There have not been any mass shootings in the Bay Area so far this year. The last of note to occur was the San Jose VTA rail yard attack in May of 2021 that left 10 people dead.
All told in 2021 there were 49 mass shootings in California, 15 of which were in the San Francisco Bay Area, with Oakland recording the most violence of any one city, with 46 people shot, five of them fatally.
The organization, which collects data on gun violence from law enforcement, media, government and commercial sources, defines a mass shooting as four or more individuals shot or killed in a single event, not including the shooter.
According to the Sacramento Police Department, the shooting occurred at 10th and J streets just two blocks from Capitol Mall. No further details are yet available. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/oakland-man-charged-with-selling-fentanyl-and-meth-in-the-tenderloin/ | A federal judge charged an Oakland man Friday with allegedly selling fentanyl and methamphetamine in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District.
The charges against 26-year-old Oakland resident Jose Alvarado were announced Friday in a news release from U.S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds and Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge Wade R. Shannon.
Prosecutors allege Alvarado engaged in four transactions selling drugs to three separate undercover law enforcement officers between November 2021 and February 2022.
The charges include two counts of distribution — one of five or more grams of methamphetamine and the other 40 or more grams of fentanyl — each carrying a penalty of a minimum of five years in prison and minimum of four years of supervision following prison.
The news release pointed out that the charges contained in the criminal complaint are only allegations. As in any criminal case, the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/s-f-s-emergency-psych-unit-faces-dire-conditions/ | Nurses in San Francisco’s primary emergency mental health care unit say they are vastly overwhelmed, creating a bottleneck in The City’s efforts to provide appropriate treatment and urgent care for individuals in a mental health crisis.
“We are short-staffed every day,” said Shamideh Engel, a registered nurse in the Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) unit at San Francisco General Hospital. “We are asked to work a 16-hour double shift and come back the next day.”
Since May 2020, the PES unit at SF General has been on what’s known as “condition red,” meaning patients who would otherwise be sent directly to the unit are rerouted to the emergency room, where they must first get tested for COVID. Condition red is also an indicator used during and prior to the pandemic to indicate when the unit has reached maximum capacity.
Nurses in the psychiatric unit say the reality on the ground is dire. The unit’s 19 beds are typically filled and psychiatric patients will often end up waiting for hours in the ER, where they sit alongside people experiencing all kinds of medical emergencies.
“We have a bunch of psych emergency patients who need care, and when we are at capacity, they are held up in the ER. That forces the ER to go on diversion sooner,” said Joseph Hunter Rose, a registered nurse who works in the psychiatric emergency unit at SF General. Diversion occurs when the emergency room reaches capacity and ambulances and other emergency responders are redirected to other facilities. “It’s a whole hospital impact when we are at capacity.”
PES is the only acute hospital unit in San Francisco that provides 24-hour psychiatric emergency services. Patients arrive through a number of channels. This includes self-referral and 5150 psychiatric holds, where an adult experiencing a mental health crisis is involuntarily detained for a 72- hour psychiatric hospitalization. Patients may also arrive by way of The City’s street crisis response team, launched in 2020 as an alternative to policing to respond to mental health and substance use crises in San Francisco.
Help on the way?
More than 200 health care workers, including pharmacists and behavioral health clinicians, recently have been hired to focus on the rising challenge of supporting people experiencing homelessness, mental illness and substance use disorder. The hiring spree is part of Mental Health SF, the landmark mental health legislation passed in 2019 that aims to overhaul how The City’s mental health system works.
“We are thrilled to welcome in so many new people and see such energy and enthusiasm to better the health and well-being of San Franciscans,” said Dr. Hillary Kunins, director of Behavioral Health Services. “We have staffed up to a level that can begin to address the scale of need we see in our communities around mental health and substance use. The City has focused many resources toward addressing these critical needs, and now we have new staff members to join us in making it happen.”
Many of the recent hires will staff the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which opened in fall under an emergency declaration and aims to connect individuals with social and housing programs, food and hygiene services, as well as referrals to substance use disorder treatment.
In theory, more health care workers outside of the emergency room could help cut down on the number of hospital visits by supporting people who are at risk of a mental health crisis before it escalates to the emergency level.
Still, the nursing staff at S.F. General said there is a need for more support. The new hires will expand the behavioral health staff in the Tenderloin and other parts of The City but will not be deployed directly to PES, according to the Department of Public Health.
Negotiations are now underway between hospital employers and SEIU 1021, the union that represents thousands of San Francisco city workers including hospital staff. Many nurses are calling for more streamlined hiring processes for temporary health care workers who have stepped in to relieve staffing gaps throughout the pandemic.
It’s often faster to hire and onboard temporary nurses, often called traveler nurses, but that class of health care workers does not receive the same benefits and union representation as their full-time peers.
“The travelers are nice, they give us a buffer for a short amount of time. But when their contract ends, we are back to where we were before,” Rose said. “Systems can change overnight; we saw that in the pandemic. And we need to hire more full-time staff. It will benefit not only the unit but the patients in the long run.”
During 2020-21, there were 4,665 visits to PES, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Public Health. The unit’s bed capacity is currently at 19, just a slight dip from the 20 before the pandemic, which was set to allow for social distancing during the pandemic.
“In many cases, patients are seen by a psychiatrist in the emergency department and are assessed and treated without needing a visit to PES,” public health officials said. “Patients do wait in the emergency department for space to open up, but generally patients are able to access PES as soon as they have completed COVID screening or any needed medical assessment/treatment in the emergency department.”
Specialized care
In the emergency room at S.F. General, where psychiatric patients are rerouted for COVID testing, staffing is so low that nearly half of the available 60 beds are not activated on a typical day, according to Heather Bollinger, a registered nurse in the emergency department.
The emergency room backup then creates longer wait times for all kinds of urgent care needs, such as a broken arm or severe illness, and creates cramped emergency rooms among sick families, patients experiencing mental health crises and more.
Diverting ambulances to other facilities helps reduce patient overflow. But it also can mean patients may end up at facilities less equipped to handle the kind of mental and behavioral health issues that people come to PES with, Engel said.
Conditions and challenges patients arrive with include risk of suicide, severe depression or an intent to harm themselves or others. Some patients need help getting back on medication, and many individuals who come also struggle with substance use disorder, homelessness or both.
In recent years, methamphetamine has been one of the most common substances found among patients admitted to PES, Engel said.
“When I first started, alcohol was the number one problem,” said Engel, who has worked in the department for about 12 years. “I’m seeing a lot more meth now. People are self-medicating with meth, it’s easy to obtain in The City and it’s easy to use.”
A large portion of patients who make it to PES experience drug-induced psychosis.
Almost half (47%) of patient visits to PES from 2017-18 were related to methamphetamine use, according to a 2019 report from the Department of Public Health. The vast majority (89%) of patients who had at least eight psychiatric holds, also known as 5150 holds, had used only methamphetamine and about 25% used methamphetamine mixed with opioids, cocaine or alcohol.
Among the 98 overdose deaths that occurred in San Francisco between January and February this year, fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine were the most commonly found substances, according to data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Short staffing also poses a physical risk to hospital workers.
“About monthly, we have to hit the panic button where we are extremely scared and (law enforcement) has to come in,” said Engel.
Rose echoed many of Engel’s experiences.
“With this demographic — people who are marginally housed and/or struggle with substance abuse — they need those clinicians who can go above and beyond,” Rose said. “When we don’t have adequate staffing, we’re just trying to keep our head above water in our shift.”
Despite the staffing challenges, both nurses said they are hopeful conditions can improve.
“My co-workers are family and we go through emotional things throughout the day. I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else, especially because of my co-workers,” Rose said. “Nurses are really special people. They take on these stresses and support each other.”
sjohnson@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/tent-dwellings-are-down-in-the-tenderloin-but-rising-across-the-city/ | As the number of tents were taken down in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood during Mayor London Breed’s recent emergency declaration, sidewalk dwellings increased overall across San Francisco, new city data show.
The collective data paints a complicated picture of whether or not the emergency initiative is making good on its goals, or just shuffling homelessness to other parts of The City.
From June 2021 to March 2022, tents in the Tenderloin decreased by about 55%, going from 77 to 35, according to The City’s data dashboard on the Tenderloin Emergency Initiative. Meanwhile, the total number of tents in San Francisco increased by 55% over the same time period, going from a total of 387 structures in June 2021 to 601 in March 2022.
As of March 2022, 6% of tents citywide are in the Tenderloin, down from 20% last summer.
The results largely reflect a doubling down of operations in the Tenderloin to address homelessness, particularly under Breed’s 90-day Tenderloin Emergency Initiative, which allowed The City to waive certain government rules and implement a series of initiatives aimed at reducing crime, homelessness, overdoses and other challenges. But broader factors contributing to homelessness — racial and economic disparity, cost of living, and access to healthcare and high-paying jobs — have not budged.
“In the background of the Tenderloin effort is a brutal reality that outside of San Francisco in our region and our world, the factors that lead to homelessness are increasing,” said Sam Dodge, Director of the Healthy Streets Operations Center, which organizes encampment clearings and attempts to move people living on the street into shelters.
Nearly 540 individuals have been placed in temporary shelters during the emergency initiative, the dashboard data show. And 84 people experiencing homelessness were placed into longer-term housing, according to The City’s dashboard.
Still, many individuals living in encampments that get cleared must simply relocate if housing offers do not match their needs, such as having a pet or medical needs, or relocation offers may be scant to begin with. In those situations, a person might simply move to another part of the city or even just a few blocks away after a tent encampment is cleared.
“It’s been a long game of sidewalk shuffling folks,” said Carlos Wadkins, human rights organizer for the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco. “If there is an abundance of resources and people can move into housing, you see actual change. But when people move from block to block, you’re not going to see these numbers change.”
While a part of keeping sidewalks accessible, breaking up encampments can often be traumatizing and destabilizing for those living on the street. Reports have shown that when clearing encampments, individuals may lose items like medication, wheelchairs or other important personal items.
“We are placing hundreds of people into life-changing programs. Oftentimes these are people who have been out for a long time on the streets. But sometimes they go from neighborhood to neighborhood,” said Dodge. “It’s not our intention to simply dislocate people from one neighborhood to the next.”
Counting tents provides only a limited window into the scale and types of homelessness in San Francisco by focusing only on its most visible extremes. Other individuals who experience homelessness may not be able to afford a tent, reside in cars or temporary shelters, or stay with friends and family.
San Francisco has more than 8,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in 2019, according to the most recent Point-In-Time count, a biannual survey of the city’s homeless population. Many homelessness experts believe that number likely grew during the pandemic.
Tents are nevertheless one metric by which The City measures its housing crisis and provides a window into understanding street homelessness and other challenges that often intersect, such as the overdose epidemic that is disproportionately impacting unhoused populations in San Francisco. Between 2020 and 2021, overdose deaths skyrocketed to more than 1300 in San Francisco.
The operation brought together the Department of Emergency Management, Department of Public Health, police, the Mayor’s Office and many other emergency responders and nonprofit social service providers, who put their heads together to address challenges in the Tenderloin.
The operation led to the creation of the Tenderloin Linkage Center, a homeless services and navigation center where guests can get a hot meal, do laundry, take a shower or just take respite in a safe space. The facility also assists with signing up for programs like Medi-Cal, medication assistance and referrals to other health programs. More than 50 overdoses have been reversed at the center from January 17 to March 27, according to a data dashboard tracking the initiative’s progress. Very few individuals have been placed in addiction treatment directly through the facility, however.
At a recent public hearing probing the Tenderloin plan, several supervisors including Matt Haney, whose district includes the Tenderloin neighborhood, praised the Linkage Center for meeting basic needs but questioned the initiative’s overall efficacy. Some supervisors from other districts meanwhile said they have seen conditions deteriorate in their jurisdictions while attention and resources, such as police, have been focused on the Tenderloin.
“Since (the Tenderloin emergency initiative) started, conditions in the Mission have gone down to a degree that I haven’t seen since I started as a supervisor. I’m at a loss and I’m a little frustrated,” Supervisor Hillary Ronen said in the meeting. “Our housed residents and our unhoused residents are suffering.”
The Tenderloin historically has had the highest concentration of homelessness, as well as challenges related to drug use and dealing, compared with other parts of The City.
Housing and homelessness advocates are now wary that a similar trend of reshuffling people on the street could follow in neighborhoods like the Mission if permanent and supportive housing placements are not prioritized over removing tents.
“We moved people out of the Tenderloin, and they went somewhere else. Where do they go from there?” said Wadkins of the Coalition on Homelessness. “It’s a constant game we will play.”
sjohnson@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-is-california-overextending-its-budget/ | By Dan Walters
CalMatters
“Don’t bite off more than you can chew” is one of those old, but valid, aphorisms that people and institutions ignore at their peril.
Most of us know people who have taken on more debt than they can afford or make promises to friends and families that they cannot honor, with adverse human consequences.
Corporations wind up in bankruptcy court when they expand too rapidly or misread markets. That sometimes happens to governments as well, such as the three California cities that have gone bankrupt in recent years by taking on too much debt for projects and benefits that were politically attractive but financially unsustainable.
California’s state government has been on an expansionist binge of late, thanks to a torrent of unanticipated tax revenues and immense amounts of federal aid tied to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scarcely a week passes without Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing some new program or expansion of an existing program, such as extending health coverage to more undocumented immigrants, increasing slots for pre-kindergarten care and education, and moving mentally ill homeless people into treatment and housing.
There is some financial risk in these expansions. The state is seeing a surge of revenues now, but its finances are dangerously dependent on a relative handful of wealthy taxpayers and even a mild downturn could — as we have often seen in the past — quickly lead to shortfalls.
The promises being made in the expansive services Newsom and the Legislature are launching raise expectations that could turn to dust if the economy turns sour, as it periodically does.
There’s also another aspect that could backfire even if money is not a problem — actually delivering the new services.
Alas, the state’s track record on accomplishing what it promises is not a good one. The managerial meltdowns at the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Employment Development Department attest to that syndrome, as are the state’s numerous high-technology projects that have either failed or become expensive sinkholes.
Capitol politicians have a tendency to enact high-concept “solutions” to perceived problems without fully vetting the capability of delivering or even delving into their performance after the fact.
A prime example of the syndrome is how California has dealt with — or failed to deal with — its immense homeless population, an issue that ranks very high in the public consciousness.
Countless billions of dollars have been spent on multiple approaches, but indications are that the number of people on the streets has continued to increase.
A year ago, the just-retired state auditor, Elaine Howle, issued a highly critical report on California’s efforts, saying “its approach to addressing homelessness is disjointed. At least nine state agencies administer and oversee 41 different programs that provide funding to mitigate homelessness, yet no single entity oversees the state’s efforts or is responsible for developing a statewide strategic plan.”
“As a result,” Howle told the Legislature, “the state continues to lack a comprehensive understanding of its spending to address homelessness, the specific services the programs provide, or the individuals who receive those services.”
Given that, one must wonder whether any of the new programs being rolled out will be any more successful.
How, for instance, will the state deliver more pre-kindergarten care and education if the K-12 system is already many thousands of teachers short? Will extending Medi-Cal health care coverage to more people make any difference when existing recipients already struggle to find doctors? Will there be enough professional staff to handle the mentally ill who would be forced into treatment under Newsom’s “Care Court” plan?
In short, is California continuing to bite off more than it can chew? | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/deep-determined-and-dangerous-why-the-warriors-pose-a-major-threat-in-the-playoffs/ | By John Krolik
Special to The Examiner
With the playoffs looming straight ahead of us, the Warriors showed over the course of a weekend just how dangerous they can be. It’s not just that they won back-to-back games over the Utah Jazz and Sacramento Kings. They showed resilience. They showed depth. Perhaps most importantly, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green put in absolutely monster performances.
Thompson had ended March with an absolute nightmare of a performance against the Phoenix Suns. He shot 5-21 from the field and 1-10 from beyond the arc. He missed wide-open shots. He became visibly frustrated with himself. In what ended up being a four-point loss, Thompson’s woeful shooting night stung that much more.
Fortunately, Thompson showed he has a very short memory. He went for 36 points against the Jazz. He shot 14-28 from the field and 8-17 from beyond the arc. He was comfortable working without the basketball. He swished threes from seemingly impossible angles. When the defense overplayed the three, he curled to the free-throw line area and drained pull-ups with ease. He was absolutely white-hot. Directly after a game where Thompson’s shooting woes gravely hurt the Warriors’ chances in a close loss, his hot shooting was the biggest reason the Warriors were able to surge back from a 20-point deficit against the Jazz.
There are still causes for concern. Klay remains relatively ground-bound. Only one of his 28 shots on Saturday came at the rim, and he failed to get to the free-throw line a single time. It’s no secret why Klay is having trouble exploding to the rim after two major surgeries. His pull-up game is a decent backup option. Still, it would help the Warriors if Klay could find ways to get himself to the rim and the line (where he shoots a tidy 91.1%) more often.
Green, for his part, had his best game since returning from injury. He finished with 10 points, nine rebounds, and seven assists. As is always the case, the stats never really tell his story. What’s far more impressive than the numbers he put up (including his first double-digit scoring performance in 2022) is the way he went about doing it. As always, he pulled the strings of the Warriors’ offense in the half-court. He grabbed the ball at the top of the three-point line or in the high post, waited for a teammate to get open, and delivered the ball on time and on target.
What was really promising is that Green started to move in the half-court in a way he hasn’t done much this season, especially since his return. He faked his usual passes and used his dribble to create a better angle for the delivery. He played the give-and-go game. As mentioned above, he wasn’t afraid to call his own number and take the shot himself. All of his baskets came in half-court situations, where Green has been extremely reluctant to shoot all season long. Green was able to use his savant-like basketball IQ in conjunction with more energy and movement. The increase of pressure that combination put on the defense was exponential.
On Sunday, the Warriors showed their depth when they beat the Kings 109-90 the day after beating the Jazz. Thompson understandably had the night off. The Warriors were able to maintain a large lead throughout the game. That meant the Warriors were able to give minutes to players who haven’t been in the rotation much as of late. They didn’t disappoint, and showed how the Warriors have been able to persevere through so many injuries this season.
Against Phoenix and Utah, Jonathan Kuminga played a grand total of nine minutes and didn’t attempt a shot. That would throw most 19-year-olds off their rhythm. Kuminga is not most 19-year-olds. He scored 17 points in 31 minutes against the Kings. He went 2-3 from beyond the arc, which was a good sign after he struggled from distance in March. He even threw in five rebounds and four assists for good measure. Even if Kuminga doesn’t make the playoff rotation when the time comes around, he’s a valuable asset.
In a further testament to team depth, Jordan Poole went for 22 points yet again. Poole scored 12 points on March 1st. Since that day, Poole has yet to score less than 20 points in a game, and has scored 30 or more points five times. For the month of March, he averaged 25.4 points per game on 49.5%/44.4%/89.9% shooting. When Stephen Curry returns, Steve Kerr will have an absolutely ludicrous amount of firepower at his disposal.
Andrew Wiggins, who has struggled since starting the All-Star game, pitched in 25 points, which happens to be his highest total since the All-Star game. Nemanja Bjelica showed off his all-around game with 19 points on 7-11 shooting from the floor and 3-6 shooting from the three-point range to go along with 12 rebounds and six assists.
The Warriors’ stars are rounding back into form. They’re deep. They’re determined. And come the playoffs, that will make them dangerous.
John Krolik is a freelance contributor to The Examiner. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/who-are-the-best-golfers-in-san-francisco-harding-park-decided/ | By John K. Abendroth
Special to The Examiner
The City crowned its new golf champions over the weekend for the 106th time. For some perspective on the San Francisco City Golf Championships, Woodrow Wilson was president the first year it was played.
Held at TPC Harding Park, the contest involves about 600 players each year, and it’s widely considered one of the longest-running amateur contests in the nation.
In terms of star power, “The City,” as the tournament is affectionately known, has hosted some big names over the years. Famed golfers Juli Inkster, George Archer and Ken Venturi are all past champions. Hall of Famers Tom Watson and Johnny Miller have both played in it, but neither ever won the championship.
This year, 17-year-old Adora Liu from Newark won the women’s championship, outlasting her good friend Olivia Duan in match play. Our new champ didn’t make a single bogey over the 28-hole finals. She plans to play for UC Berkeley in the fall.
On the men’s side, 35-year-old Michael Jensen came out on top with a victory over Kyle Dougherty. Jensen played steady golf, hitting most of the fairways en route to the win. He first played in “The City” some 20 years ago. In the intervening years, he played golf at Cal and went on to to a five-year professional career. Jensen grew up in Los Altos but now lives in San Francisco.
In a fun story that evolved on the final day, Chris Miller, who hails from Discovery Bay, won the senior championship while his daughter Sammie Miller went on to win the Juli Inkster flight, a secondary championship held for women participants. The two wore matching-colored shirts each of their matches and had fun having a photo taken together with their trophies. Sammie is also the reigning champion of the San Francisco City Junior Championship played at historic Lincoln Park.
John K. Abendroth, who is a member of the PGA, is a freelance contributor to The Examiner. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/versatile-composer-trombonist-jacob-garchik-lands-home-again-sfjazz/ | You have to hand it to San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet. In its nearly 50 award-winning years as an eclectic string ensemble, it can spot potential young talent almost preternaturally early.
S.F-born trombonist Jacob Garchik, for instance — the hand-picked artist in residence at its annual Kronos Festival, staged at the SFJazz Center this week — was only a teenager when he first caught the keen ear of founding Kronos violinist David Harrington, way back in 1988.
“His daughter Bonnie and I went to school together, all the way back to elementary school,” recalls Garchik, now 47 and based in New York. “And I always knew that her dad was a musician, but she and my brother were taking Russian in high school then, and they did an exchange program with the Soviet Union, and all the parents got together at my parents’ house, including David, who said, ‘I hear you’re into writing music — do you have any string quartets?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m sorry,’ but I thought that was crazy — asking a 12-year-old for string quartets!”
Fifteen years later, Garchik bumped into Harrington while playing in a Brooklyn brass band that specialized in interpreting Balkan music, which had secured a coveted opening slot for Kronos. His elder not only remembered him and his family, but — after comparing notes on obscure Balkan music backstage — contacted him a couple of weeks later with his first official Quartet assignment: The meticulous arrangement of a lullaby from Iran, which Kronos eventually recorded as “Lullaby” on its 2009 album “Floodplain.” It was also an acid test of sorts.
“It was very difficult to transcribe — it used a double oboe, had microtones and was rhythmically imprecise,” says Garchik, who has, to date, arranged over 115 pieces for his benefactors. “They really liked what I did, so I guess I managed to capture something, because they still play that one.”
It seemed inevitable that this versatile instrumentalist would step into the Kronos spotlight one day. He was offered the residential festival chair in 2020, but the coronavirus had other plans. Like the Wizard of Oz, he explains, he’s usually comfortable working behind the curtain, then watching his arrangements play out in concert from a comfortable audience setting. “It’s quite unusual for me to be the focus,” he says.
But over the three-day Kronos Festival at SFJAZZ, he’ll be performing as well, anchoring his Pete Seeger-inspired “Storyteller” and then “Upon a Star,” a suite based on a John Williams soundtrack. Additionally, Garchik will oversee “Flow,” a work composed with his occasional New York collaborator Laurie Anderson, and “The Heavens,” a sans-Kronos concept piece featuring his Atheist Gospel Trombone Choir.
Garchik’s career has always been something of a learn-as-you-go affair. Until he delved into the history of Seeger three years ago, he says, “I always saw him as the guy that sang the children’s music that I listened to as a kid, that my hippie parents had on vinyl. But when I started studying him in depth, I discovered that Pete Seeger was doing what I do for Kronos — and in my own work, too — way back in 1945, doing stuff from all over the world, different eras and different styles of music, and doing concerts where he played Korean music, Stravinsky and Beethoven alongside prison songs. And I really felt a kinship with him.”
Likewise, Garchik says, the idea of an all-trombone orchestra didn’t start with him. Sonically, folks have understood for years that the instrument works well layered in large groups, going back to German churches and continuing through a Gospel tradition launched by the American World House of Prayer school in the 1970s. “And that really inspired me — when I heard that trombone music, I made my own spin on the sound,” he says.
Garchik’s typically busy schedule slowed down during lockdown. But he managed to complete a new jazz quintet album called “Assembly,” plus several new Kronos arrangements, and has returned to teaching chamber ensemble arrangement at the New School and appearing onstage in Broadway’s hit musical “Hades Town.” At COVID-19’s onset, Garchik says, he was so shaken that he, his wife, toddler son and dog drove to the secluded safety of his brother’s place in Iowa. “I was actually going to be a farmer,” he says. “It felt like we were in flight for our lives.
“But as things became clearer, I regained my optimism about being a musician. And the good thing about music is how great it can make you feel — part of our brains as humans has evolved to really enjoy art and culture, and you just can’t get rid of it. And I think it really has healing properties.”
IF YOU GO:
Kronos Festival
Where: SFJazz Center, 291 Franklin St., S.F.
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, April 7-9
Tickets: $25
Contact: www.sfjazz.org, (866)929-5299 | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/grazing-urban-goats-help-reduce-s-f-s-fire-risk/ | The goats came early this year. But with warming temperatures, so did the spring vegetation – a creeping carpet of flammable flora draped across The Bay Area’s parklands, backyards, and open spaces, ready to spark.
Thanks to these bearded bovids with names like Dipper, Thor and Burrows, San Francisco’s burgeoning fire risk is being digested by a herd of 100 goats spread across nearly 70 sites. Known as nature’s lawnmowers, these goats have been hard at work clearing overgrown areas across the Bay Area, chomping on poison oak, thistle, and Himalayan blackberry.
Overseeing the herd on a grassy hillside in the Presidio was Genevieve Church, executive director of City Grazing, a non-profit grazing company based in the Bayview.
“We’re the last working herd of animals in San Francisco,” she said, citing The City’s long history of urban herds, a tradition that stretches back nearly a century.
Although the use of livestock to clear vegetation is not new, a growing movement of Bay Area departments, universities, and landowners are seeking out grazing companies like Church’s to manage landscapes, restore grasslands and mitigate wildfire risks as drought conditions continue to plague the state.
“Once people see it, they can’t unsee it,” said Andree Soares, a third-generation California rancher and owner of the grazing company Star Creek Land Stewards, referencing the sometimes dramatic impacts of goats and sheep on landscapes. “It just makes so much sense with regard to the impact and how beneficial it is to the landscape, to the climate.”
Unlike wildfire and forest conservation measures of decades past which left vast acres of forests and grasslands untouched, the goats represent a shift in the thinking about fire and land management as a long-term strategy.
Grazing is a nearly carbon-neutral weed control technique that is nontoxic, nonpolluting, and cost-effective, studies show. Goats can be picky eaters, as evidenced by their apparent avoidance of the foxtails that had sprouted into feathery fronds before Church and her goats arrived at the Presidio site. But in general, their competitive nature and lightning-fast metabolisms make them excellent consumers of woody shrubs, invasive species, and various other plants that pose a fire risk.
Church, who grew up on a ranch in the foothills of Yosemite, has always been intimately aware of the wildfire threat in California. Her family has long defended their vast acres using grazing, but she didn’t think the fires would follow her to San Francisco.
“When I moved to San Francisco as a 20-year-old, I was like, I’ll never have to worry about smoke inhalation from wildfires again,” she said. Now, “I’m ten blocks out of the ocean. I have two air purifiers from my apartment.”
Over the past decade, Church has seen San Francisco’s once-verdant hillsides transform into tinderboxes waiting to ignite. Before “you might worry about encampments, you might worry about rodents, you worry about undesirable wildlife populations, but you weren’t worried about fire,” she said. “Now, we’re worried about fire.”
Grazing has already saved countless acres from recent wildfires in the North Bay, noted Soares, who works closely with local fire departments to clear what’s called defensible space – the buffer zone between a building or house and vegetation that surrounds it – and create safer staging hubs for firefighters.
“In one of the areas that we had grazed, they were able to stage all of their equipment in that area knowing it was safe because nothing would burn around it,” said Soares. “The fire stopped when it got to the grazed area.”
Once a seasonal activity, grazing takes place nearly year-round from the hillsides of Marin County to Muni yards in downtown San Francisco. “Now I have people saying, ‘how quickly can you get here? I want this done in March’ because fire season really starts earlier and earlier every year,” said Church.
Transit agencies, including BART and Caltrain, have also used goats to clear brush and cut firebreaks around stations and other infrastructure. This reduces the agencies’ reliance on fossil-fuel-powered equipment and increases safety for workers, BART said.
“Mowers can spark fires on this kind of brush that we see in a drought,” said Josh Soltero, an irrigation/grounds worker in BART’s grounds maintenance department. “The goats can get into places we can’t. They save a lot of shoulders and backs.”
Additionally, sheep and goats can improve soil health and water retention and aid in the carbon sequestration cycle by gnawing invasive annual plants, breaking up the soil with their hooves, and leaving nutrient-rich poop behind.
“That native vegetation is really what we want to leave on the landscape,” said Soares. “The animals are a tool that helps at particular times to improve the impact of vegetation on the soil. They help the plants do what needs to be done – the plants are taking the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Photosynthesis is making it happen. Then we’re shoving that carbon back down into the soil.”
Left unsupervised, however, goats can have a detrimental effect on the environment. Known as “the razor of the globe” for their insatiable appetites, goats have garnered a bad rap for leaving forests sparse and barren. It’s a balance that Church and other grazers work hard to maintain by moving herds frequently.
Soaring temperatures can also slow goats down and make them less likely to eat – a challenge when clearing areas in the hot summer months most prone to wildfires. “Their appetites are affected by the weather,” said Church. “Heat makes them slow down.”
But when managed properly, these herds can save lives and restore ecosystems. This month, thousands of Soares’ goats are scheduled to be released into the hillsides of Marin County, where retired San Francisco Fire Department Assistant Deputy Chief Rich Shortall oversees the region as the executive coordinator of the nonprofit Fire Safe Marin.
Since introducing the herds to the area, Shortall said, he’s seen the invasive brushes and broom shrubs give way to native oak trees and grasses. “The landscape has transformed out here,” he said. “It’s getting back to what it should look like.”
For Soares, whose family has been managing goats and sheep for over a century, her herds represent a returning of the land back to what it used to be — and a path forward for communities confronting climate change.
“It’s absolutely critical to the landscape. It’s what we’ve done and have been doing for centuries in California,” said Soares. “Before the sheep (and goats) were here, the herds were here. The herds of elk, the herds of deer, the herds of buffalo that really helped promote a beautiful landscape that everybody found when they came to California.”
jwolfrom@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220405 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/april-magazine-specializes-in-sonic-snippets-that-are-amorphous-and-ever-changing/ | Listening to the songs of lo-fi San Francisco collective April Magazine can be like viewing a film scene en media res — a stolen glimpse into a fully formed world of private conversations and secret meetings. The tunes start among quiet chats in the background or end under the beguiling hum of tape hiss, acting as receptacles of found audio footage — material that was never supposed to be shared, making it all the more special that it has been circulated.
“That’s how we keep things interesting,” said Peter Hurley, founder of April Magazine. “Those recordings really only capture a moment of the song, and we know that they can change and evolve whenever we play them live.”
These sonic snippets are amorphous and ever-changing, reflecting the nature of the band. Currently a quartet, April Magazine boasts a lengthy roster of rotating cast members reminiscent of an editorial staff, making the band name more than just a cool moniker.
“I always considered this a collective,” said Hurley. “We don’t have members, we have contributors. Like it’s a literal magazine more than a band.”
Now composed of the multi-instrumentalist Hurley, vocalist and bassist Katiana Mashikian, drummer Katie Dilly and guitarist David Diaz, April Magazine issued two full-length records last year and is set to open for iconic musician Dean Wareham at the Chapel on Friday night.
“He’s one of my idols,” Hurley said of Wareham, founding member of the legendary slowcore group Galaxie 500. “We definitely consider Galaxie 500 to be the proto-April Magazine.”
April Magazine is the latest, and perhaps most noteworthy, project of Hurley’s lengthy tenure in the local music scene, which stretches back some two decades. The group formed in 2017, while Mashikian and Hurley were living together as roommates and sharing the same love for offbeat demo productions of bands like the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Stone Roses.
“I would hear Peter jamming something from the other room,” said Mashikian. “And I would walk by and be like, ‘Put words to that song!’ And eventually I’d just put random lyrics together and he’d put random lyrics together. That’s how we really wrote most of the early stuff.”
The bedroom recording quality is a defining trademark of the April Magazine sound, which fuses the craggy garage rock musings of bands like the Brian Jonestown Massacre with the druggy, downtempo atmosphere of no-wave pioneers Suicide and psych rockers Spaceman 3.
The band has perfected the formula of making ugly things beautiful, patching shiftless dissonance and gurgling feedback into a lucid framework of spoken-word soliloquies and hushed vocals that are strangely uplifting. Shards of guitar chords and looped programming manipulations evoke the tranquil, pre-dusk hours. This is the music to listen to as the sun sets.
“I think we really like that kind of unpolished sound because it’s so relatable,” said Hurley. “We love that sound of someone creating someone in their own room.”
April Magazine is one of numerous local bands chasing that lo-fi aesthetic, many of which can be found on Paisley Shirt Records, a San Francisco tape label that features contemporaries such as Cindy, Flowertown and Sad-Eyed Beatniks. Those same bands often showcase their wares at the Hit Gallery, a Mission District art studio founded by Hurley which serves as an occasional live music and practice space for that community.
“I’m just so grateful to have an affordable studio space and be at a point in my life where I can spend a lot of time there and share it with other artists and bands,” said Hurley. “It’s been great. We’ve had some really beautiful shows there.”
Hurley also uses the studio space to explore his painting endeavors, although he doesn’t necessarily find inspirational touchstones between the two crafts. (“Music and painting are different like a milkshake and a ham sandwich are different.”) The band is also using the studio space as a venue to record new music. Hurley said they plan on releasing “If the Ceiling Were a Kite: Volume 2” in the coming months, a follow-up to 2021’s collection of various singles the band recorded over the years.
The new material will likely follow the same template that April Magazine has specialized in since their formation — meandering, wending journeys that capture fleeting feelings and moments that dissipate into the ether.
“I think the hardest part for us is deciding when a song is finished,” said Mashikian. “Because for us, it’s never really done. There are always things we can do to change it and make it different. And I think that’s what makes this band so special.”
IF YOU GO:
April Magazine with Dean Wareham
Where: The Chapel, 777 Valencia Street, S.F.
When: 9 p.m., Friday, April 8
Tickets: $25
Contact: (415) 551-5157, www.thechapelsf.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/community-music-center-celebrates-a-century-with-100-new-pieces-of-music/ | By Georgia Rowe
Some birthday presents are bigger than others. In honor of the Community Music Center’s 100th birthday, composer Cava Menzies is producing a gift worthy of the milestone: a commissioning project to create 100 new works of music.
Now, she’s about to unveil those works. “(Re)Imagine: 100 New Works From Cava Menzies and Community Music Center” makes its debut in streamed performances available April 4 to May 23, and a live, in-person event on May 14.
Composing, producing and performing are nothing new for Menzies, an Oakland-based musician, visual artist and educator. The daughter of famed jazz trumpeter Eddie Henderson, her musical roots are deep, and her collaborations have included work with artists such as Daveed Diggs, Coldplay, Dave Grohl and others.
When she learned that Community Music Center (CMC), the 100-year-old nonprofit music school and performance space with branches in San Francisco’s Mission and Richmond districts, was turning 100, Menzies — a founding faculty member at Oakland School for the Arts — went to work on the new project, enlisting a wide range of students and professional musicians to compose new works.
In a recent interview, Menzies recalled the early days of the pandemic, and said the cancellation of classes was devastating, both for her and her students.
“Just the abruptness of it, the lack of access to my students, was pretty heartbreaking,” she said. “The norm in our classroom was to have a musical space where everybody was always collaborating. At lunchtime, we’d always keep the room open; people would be playing piano, drums, and I’d sometimes jump in there.”
One day Menzies, using an online app, asked drum student Jayla Hernandez to send her a drum groove, and reached out to New York MC Ajai Kasim to contribute. With Menzies on keyboards, the impromptu trio created a new work; she posted it online, and the response was startling, she said.
“I immediately started getting a flood of texts from other students, saying, ‘That’s so cool, can I do it with you?’,” she said. “It started out with students, and alumni started to catch wind of it.”
Soon she was getting messages from South Africa, Jerusalem, Madagascar, Mexico. “It just started to build a life of its own — everybody wanted to connect with each other.”
The CMC project, she added, seemed to come at just the right time.
It was Sylvia Sherman, CMC’s advancement director, who suggested the 100 years, 100 videos concept. That morphed into the “(Re)Imagine” project, which pulled in 50 student groupings — duets, trios, brass and woodwind ensembles, jazz duos and quartets, Latin jazz and vocal music.
Half of the resulting 100 works are by Menzies and her collaborators; the other 50 are by international and local musicians, CMC’s Young Musicians and Mission District Young Musicians programs.
Today, Menzies says that the turbulence of the time — the COVID shutdowns, the epidemic of homelessness, the killings of Black Americans like George Floyd and others — yielded an atmosphere in which musicians had a lot to express.
“It was like a pressure cooker,” she said, one that yielded responses from dozens of students and artists she knew.
“It’s been really cool to go there and work directly with the students, come up with ideas with them, and just watch how they’re creating with each other,” said Menzies, who continued to create a compilation of her own videos — the initial works from 2020, along with new collaborations.
Drawing on her network of professional artists — musicians such as Kev Choice, Jennifer Johns, Valerie Troutt, Justin Ouellet and Jaz Sawyer — the project continued to expand and grow.
As it progressed, three principal themes emerged: community, cultural identity and international music. Menzies said that many of the younger students wanted to focus on community issues, and they spent many sessions delving into that.
“If the topic is homelessness, what does that feel like?” she said. “What’s the climate of homelessness? Is it warm, cold, hard? How do you represent that in music? We did a lot of exercises like that, exploring how to take thoughts and ideas, and make musical representations of those.”
CMC executive director Julie Rulyak Steinberg praised Menzies’ work on the project.
“Collaboration, inspiration and empowering the music in everyone have been fundamental values of Community Music Center since it was founded 100 years ago,” she noted. “Our centennial is more than a chance to look back at a century of music making — it calls us to imagine a future of learning, loving and making music together. ‘(Re)Imagine’ is a bold demonstration of the power of music to unite and inspire.”
Menzies believes that the pandemic, in an unexpected sense, freed students to work in new ways.
“Working in music education, there’s all these technical standards of being a musician,” she said. “The idea was just to take all that off the table. I felt like all the preconceived notions we had about what life was supposed to look like, how we’re supposed to function, what does productivity look like, didn’t really matter during COVID. Everything got sort of flipped on its head.
“Part of the philosophy behind this project was that every kid could enter wherever they were at. There was no right or wrong expression. That was very freeing.”
In that way, she added, “(Re)Imagine” was an apt title for the project.
“I think as a creative person, re-imagining is something that you always do,” she said. “You’re always re-thinking, reflecting, re-building; taking things apart, building them back again. So I love the idea of ‘(Re)Imagine.’ It’s not a fixed thing. If there’s anything we’ve learned from this time, it’s fluid. There’s still a lot of ambiguity. It’s a time stamp of this moment, versus anything fixed.”
“(Re)Imagine: 100 New Works From Cava Menzies and Community Music Center” will be offered as videos to stream April 4 to May 23. A live, in-person event will take place at 7 p.m. May 14 at a venue to be announced. For more information, and to register to receive the videos via email, visit https://sfcmc.org/reimagine/. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/s-f-gay-mens-chorus-premieres-songs-of-the-phoenix-featuring-13-composers-and-lyricists/ | The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus has not been seen or heard at Davies Symphony Hall since before the pandemic, but the group’s lush sonority is set to return to the venue April 10 when the chorus performs “Voices Rising,” a concert that marks the world premiere of the diverse song cycle “Songs of the Phoenix,” reprise memorable SFGMC commissions and performances, and include a tribute to the late composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
SFGMC has survived two major pandemics since its founding in 1978 — first with HIV/AIDS, which claimed the lives of more than 300 of its members, and now with COVID, which forced cancellation of the group’s performance at Davies in spring 2020 and led to the loss of three of its beloved holiday season concerts in 2021. Thus “Voices Rising” is a particularly apt name for a concert in which SFGMC will give voice to its moving stories after the ensemble-silencing challenges of the pandemic.
“The real challenge to a choir is you need to sing together, and with all of the technology we have there is no platform that allows choruses to sing together and hear each other,” said SFGMC artistic director Tim Seelig. “If you’ve ever been in a group and tried to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ on Zoom, it is unbelievably bad — there is delay and you can’t sing on Zoom — so you really cut out all rehearsals.”
Seelig, who will be one of the honorees at “Crescendo,” the SFGMC’s 16th annual fundraiser at 6 p.m. April 8 at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel, said that with the exception of one outdoor gathering at the Mission Dolores church parking lot last May, the group wasn’t able to regularly rehearse until September — and then only when distanced and masked. Rehearsals became difficult again when the omicron variant prematurely ended the holiday season performances, but the pandemic imposed additional challenges upon the group.
“A chorus like the Gay Men’s Chorus is really a family; it’s a large family with 270 singers, and it becomes your social outlet, your family and friends, and it’s really important that we do that, and we lost that,” Seelig said. “And the other leg of the stool that is so important is its activism — we are a social justice arts organization. We had the community part taken away, and we had the activism taken away. We could do a virtual video, but we were not able to go out and do the kind of performances that ordinarily we are able to do throughout the year.”
Indeed, themes of social justice are at the heart of “Songs of the Phoenix,” whose uplifting name also alludes to the mythical bird that graces the flag of The City of San Francisco. Thirteen composers and lyricists from various backgrounds contributed 10 songs to the song cycle that was curated by Tony Award-nominated Broadway composer Andrew Lippa (2010 for “The Addams Family”) and produced by Academy Award winner Bruce Cohen (1999 Best Picture Oscar for “American Beauty”), and they recount stories of hardship, rebirth and victory.
The gay Black composer and lyricist Joriah Kwamé, 24, has employed an eclectic mix of musical styles in his career and wrote “Song of Tomorrow,” his contribution to “Songs of the Phoenix,” with a fusional style he describes as “modern R&B and hip-hop meet choir.” Kwamé’s inspiration for “Song of Tomorrow” arose from his viewing the searing George Floyd video, and the song opens with the poignant line, “That face on the screen looks a lot like mine, looks like my brother; we could share a mother.”
“Seeing the image of a Black man being murdered in real time by police was an eye-opening moment for a lot of us, but specifically for someone who is of that descent, it hit close to home, so that’s what I wanted to capture in that first line,” Kwamé said.
The timing of George Floyd’s tragic death in the midst of a pandemic generated a feeling of hopelessness and sadness for Kwamé, but also sparked a sense of hope that is central to “Song of Tomorrow.”
“I realized that hope was not in today but in tomorrow and the changes this unfortunate situation will cause,” Kwamé said. “It’s a hopeful idea that the song of tomorrow — what the chorus of the song harkens to — says that as terrible as these things that happen are in our history in general, but also in 2020, there will always be hope for the future as long as we can sing in it.”
In addition to “Songs of the Phoenix,” which will include narration and choreography provided by the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Company, the concert will present highlights from notable SFGMC commissions: Lippa’s “Unbreakable” and Julian Hornik’s “@queerz,” which originally was scheduled to premiere in spring 2020.
SFGMC will also stage a 10th anniversary performance of thrice Academy Award and four-time Grammy Award winner Stephen Schwartz’s “Testimony.” The performance of that work, which was inspired by the “It Gets Better Project,” will come on the heels of enactment of an LGBTQ+-shaming “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida.
“I came out in the 1980s when it was still really hard, but we thought it would get better, and Dan Savage started the organization ‘It Gets Better,’ and, indeed, it does get better,” Seelig said. “But I think it’s harder these days to come out — the bashing of LGTBQ people is so rampant — and when Trump was elected, we knew that laws would start to be reversed, and are we ever seeing that, and not just in Florida. When I was coming out 35 years ago, we didn’t have laws banning books, for God’s sake!”
The paean to theater legend Sondheim includes a piece that was cut from his musical “Assassins,” and SFGMC’s presentation of it will be the first time it will be performed by a chorus. The inclusion of this piece came after Lippa appealed to Sondheim for a composition.
“When Lippa reached out to Sondheim, he said, ‘Well, I’m not taking any more commissions, but I do have a piece I would like to give to the Gay Men’s Chorus,’” Seelig recounted. “We were recording it for him on Sunday of Thanksgiving and he died on Friday, and he had asked, ‘Can you please record it for me with some singers so I can hear what it sounds like.’ We had 24 singers who had learned it and were ready to record it Sunday, but he never got to hear it.”
Seelig, who will be retiring from his position at SFGMC this summer, is optimistic about the group’s future.
“The chorus, with 44 years behind it — the sky’s continually the limit — and I have no doubt that my successor, who will be named on April 19, will take the chorus to even greater heights,” Seelig said effusively. “As has ben the case throughout its history, it has never lacked vision, the chorus is 100% focused on its mission, and it’s going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
IF YOU GO:
San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus
Where: Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave., S.F.
When: April 10, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 to $125
Contact: (415) 392-4400 or sfgmc.org. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/the-pride-parade-is-back/ | The San Francisco Pride Board of Directors announced on Monday that SF’s annual Pride Parade will return after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus.
The 52nd Annual San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Celebration and Parade will take place on Saturday and Sunday, June 25 and 26.
Sadly, the 50th anniversary of the celebration had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, but the organizers promise to make up for lost time— and fun.
“We are looking forward to celebrating with the entire city in June,” said Carolyn Wysinger, president of the SF Pride Board of Directors. “We are welcoming thousands of LGBTQ+ family members from across our diverse communities to dance, sing and love each other like never before. We have a waited a long time and now it’s finally here!”
Pride 52’s theme is “Love Will Keep Us Together,” sure to put the Captain and Tennille in the heads of anyone born before 1980.
This year’s festivities will include rallies, stages and the famous parade. 200 parade contingents have signed up along with more than 20 community-run stages and venues, according to Pride 52’s media spokesperson. The stages will include Trans Stage, Latin Stage, Homo Hip-Hop, Urban Global Village, API LGBT Stage, Soul of Pride, and a Sober Drag Show.
The full lineup of people and events will be announced “in the near future,” said the organizers. A new SF Pride app will be available in May as well.
For more information and to sign up for the app, go to sfpride.org. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/elon-musk-added-to-twitter-board-of-directors/ | By Lauren Hirsch
Elon Musk is joining the board of Twitter.
The company announced the appointment on Tuesday, one day after Musk revealed that he had bought a 9.2% stake in the social media giant, a purchase that appeared to make him its largest shareholder. That news sent Twitter’s shares skyrocketing more than 20% on Monday.
Twitter’s stock opened nearly 8% higher on Tuesday after the news of Musk’s board appointment.
Musk is set to be appointed to a board seat that expires in 2024. For as long as he is serving on Twitter’s board, and for 90 days after if he chooses to step down, he will not be allowed to own more than 14.9% of Twitter’s stock.
“Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our board,” Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, tweeted on Tuesday.
The filing detailing Musk’s investment in Twitter was dated March 14, which is the day he crossed the 5% threshold that requires regulatory disclosure. He could have been building up his stake long before then.
“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months,” Musk tweeted in reply to Agrawal.
Musk had been quiet about his intentions for the purchase of a big stake in Twitter, which was worth about $2.9 billion before it was disclosed but is now worth much more. He registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission via a document called a 13G filing, indicating that he planned for the investment to be passive and that he did not intend to pursue a larger role in the company.
Twitter’s announcement on Tuesday said that other than the agreement that he limit the size of his stake in the company, there were no “arrangements or understandings” between Musk and Twitter that led to his director role.
“It is theoretically possible” to join a board in a “passive monitoring capacity,” said Joshua Mitts, a professor of corporate law at Columbia Law School. But the presumption is that someone would join a board to effectively exert influence on the company, he said. “It doesn’t mean that you couldn’t try and convince the SEC otherwise, but I think it would be an uphill battle,” Mitts said.
Musk has criticized Twitter in recent weeks for failing, in his view, to adhere to free speech principles, and he has argued that users should be allowed to choose the algorithms that select the tweets they see or build their own, instead of relying on Twitter to curate posts.
The idea was one that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder, championed while leading the company. “The choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone,” he tweeted last month in response to a tweet from Musk pushing for open-source algorithms.
Dorsey stepped down as Twitter’s chief executive in November and plans to leave the company’s board when his term ends next month. Dorsey said Tuesday he was “really happy” about Musk’s joining the board.
On Monday, in one of his first tweets after his stake in Twitter was disclosed, Musk posted a Twitter poll asking users whether they wanted to be able to edit tweets, perhaps hinting that he wanted to influence features offered by the company.
“Do you want an edit button?” Musk asked on the site. Agrawal responded to his tweet with an apparent reference to an earlier poll by Musk about free speech: “The consequences of this poll will be important,” Agrawal wrote Monday. “Please vote carefully.”
As a director and major shareholder, it is not clear the extent to which Musk will be able to influence policy decisions, like Twitter’s approach to content moderation and misinformation. When representatives from the activist fund Elliott Management and the private equity firm Silver Lake joined the board in 2020, they agreed to refrain from offering opinions on policy.
When asked whether Musk would be expected to abide by similar rules, a Twitter spokesperson said that while the board played an important advisory role, the site’s day-to-day operations and decisions would be by Twitter management and employees.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/first-latino-member-of-s-f-airport-commision-takes-office/ | San Francisco Mayor London Breed has sworn in the first Latino member of the Airport Commission, her office announced on Monday.
Jose Fuentes Almanza was appointed to the five-member body charged with establishing the airport’s policies. The commission oversees construction, management, maintenance, extension and operational base decisions and financial aspects of the San Francisco International Airport, also known as SFO.
Almanza is an San Francisco native, born and raised in the Mission District, according to the mayor’s office. Currently, he serves as a business representative for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 6. Almanza represents the union’s private sector electrical workers.
“San Francisco’s rich diversity is a big reason why so many people fly into our airport,” said Almanza. “I look forward to bringing my lived experience as a Latino-American and representative of working families to this commission and to all decisions that will help shape the future of SFO.”
Almanza graduated from Balboa High School and entered the San Francisco Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee’s electrical apprenticeship program in 2000. He is the son of a Mexican father and an El Salvadorian mother. He currently lives in the Parkside neighborhood with his wife and their son, according to the mayor’s office. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/details-emerge-about-victims-of-sacramento-shooting/ | By Andy Furillo, Emma Goldberg and Thomas Fuller
The six people killed in an eruption of gunfire in downtown Sacramento over the weekend, one of the worst mass killings in the city’s history, ranged in age from 21 to 57, the county coroner’s office said Monday.
It was still unclear Monday afternoon who was behind the shooting, which took place outside nightclubs in the early hours of Sunday. The chief of police, Katherine Lester, said several gunmen were involved.
Police said Monday that they had arrested Dandrae Martin, whom they described as a “related suspect” in the shooting. Martin was arrested on charges of assault and illegal firearm possession, police said in a statement, adding that officers searched three residences in the Sacramento area in connection with the case.
The dead — three women and three men — included a supermarket cashier, a homeless woman and a landscaper. They were identified by the coroner’s office as Johntaya Alexander, 21; Melinda Davis, 57; Sergio Harris, 38; Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi, 32; Yamile Martinez-Andrade, 21; and Devazia Turner, 29.
Twelve more people were wounded.
The shooting, which occurred a short walk from the state Capitol, stunned a city that has not yet recovered from the pandemic. Sacramento, especially the downtown area, saw a number of restaurants and other shops go out of business, largely because state employees stopped commuting to offices downtown.
Most state employees in the city are still working from home. Even so, downtown Sacramento has seen business revive at night in recent months, residents and business owners said.
“Everybody’s trying to go out and enjoy themselves, everybody’s sick of being inside,” said Anthony Montes, a manager at Rodney’s Cigar and Liquor, a shop on the street where the shootings occurred. When he closed for the night at 11 p.m. Saturday, he felt a heightened energy, Montes said: “You could sense something. There were too many people out.”
Several popular longtime Sacramento establishments closed down during the pandemic, contributing to a sense of eerie quiet downtown, he said. But as mask mandates have been lifted in recent weeks, Montes said, the local nightclub scene has boomed.
Sacramento residents said they were shocked by the sheer number of rounds that were fired during the shooting. One local television station that analyzed video taken at the scene counted at least 76 gunshots in less than a minute. Police said Monday that they had recovered more than 100 shell casings from the scene.
“It woke me up, and I thought it was a war going on out there,” said Anthony Ballard, who lives on the street where the shooting occurred.
“I’ve lived here most of my life,” Ballard added. “It’s changed during the pandemic.”
Violent crime rose in Sacramento last year, especially murders. The city recorded 55 murders, a 31% increase from the year before and the highest level of murders in 15 years.
Lester said in a statement Sunday that her department was investigating whether the shooting had any link with a fight outside the nightclubs Sunday.
“We are aware of a social media video that appears to show an altercation that preceded the shooting,” Lester said. “We are currently working to determine what, if any, relation these events have to the shooting.”
One stolen firearm was recovered at the scene, Lester said, adding that a police camera captured parts of the attack.
Grieving relatives — a father, a sister, a nephew — were confounded by the sudden cutting short of their loved ones’ lives.
Johntaya Alexander’s father, John Alexander, said his daughter dreamed of being a social worker and had been working as a cashier at Smart and Final, a warehouse-style retailer. She had recently moved into her own apartment in Sacramento. Alexander received the news of her killing from her sister, Tezha, who had been out with Johntaya Alexander on Saturday night.
“She was a beautiful young lady just starting to experience life,” John Alexander said.
Johntaya Alexander, who ran track and loved to swim, was “a high-spirited child, always looking to explore, always willing to be challenged,” her father said.
Tezha Alexander said of her sister, “She was loving. She was caring. She was the life of the party.”
Tezha Alexander said she did not have any information on possible motives for the shootings.
The family of Harris said he was a landscaper with three young children.
His sister Kay Harris said she heard the news early Sunday morning from her cousin, who watched Sergio Harris take his last breath.
Kay Harris rushed downtown and saw bodies on the ground.
“I was just crying in disbelief,” she said.
Davis, another victim of the shooting, was homeless.
“She was simply waiting for the streets to clear so that she could go to sleep,” Darrell Steinberg, the mayor of Sacramento, said in a text message.
“Her murder should not be forgotten,” the mayor said. “Every person who lives without basic housing and shelter is vulnerable to the worst kinds of deprivation and danger.”
Devazia Turner, another victim of the shooting, worked as a night manager at Wingstop restaurant, where his wife worked as the morning manager, said Turner’s mother, Penelope Scott.
Scott said her son leaves behind four children between the ages of 3 and 10.
He loved to come over to barbecue for her, clean and run errands, Scott said.
“I want them to get justice for my son,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/study-finds-trump-may-have-swayed-some-covid-19-vaccine-skeptics/ | By Eli Walsh
Former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of the COVID-19 vaccine may have spurred some skeptics to get vaccinated, according to a study released Monday by researchers at a quartet of universities.
Researchers at four universities, including Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, created a 27-second advertisement showcasing Trump’s support for the vaccine and placed it on videos across more than 150,000 YouTube channels in more than 2,000 counties across the country.
The advertisement played between Oct. 14 and Oct. 31, 2021, in 1,083 counties with vaccination rates below 50 percent. Another 1,085 counties did not receive the ad and were included as a control group.
The study analyzed the number of vaccine doses administered in the relevant counties one month before the campaign and one month after and found that 104,036 more shots were administered in counties that received the advertisement than those that didn’t.
That increase, however, was limited to counties in which fewer than 70 percent of voters chose Trump in 2020, as the counties with the most Trump voters showed little movement following the campaign.
According to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the researchers spent just under $100,000 on the advertising campaign, amounting to about $1 for each new vaccine dose.
“Creating an intervention that effectively costs about $1 per extra vaccine is remarkably cost-effective, and a small fraction of the cost of other interventions,” said Steven Tadelis, a co-author of the study and a professor of business and public policy at the Haas School.
The team behind the study, which also included researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, set out to determine a potential method of breaking through the partisan divide among those who remain unvaccinated.
According to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, three-fifths of the U.S. residents who were unvaccinated in October identified as Republicans, compared to just 17 percent who identified as Democrats.
That gap has persisted even after Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump got vaccinated privately at the White House in January 2021, shortly after the vaccines became available. Trump said in December 2021 that he had also received a booster vaccine dose.
“We felt like there should be a better way to send a message that would resonate with people on the right,” said Brad Larden, the study’s lead author and an economics professor at Stanford University.
The advertisement included clips of a local news anchor in Salt Lake City, Utah, commenting about the Trumps getting vaccinated.
It also included a portion of an interview between Trump and Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo from March 2021 in which he said “I would recommend (the vaccine) to a lot of people that don’t want to get it, and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.”
While the researchers did not have control over where the advertisement would appear on YouTube, the website’s advertising platform Google Ads placed it most often on videos posted by Fox News, including those featuring personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham who have expressed skepticism over the vaccines’ efficacy and safety.
The advertisement also played before videos on YouTube channels run by MSNBC, NBC News and Saturday Night Live. Ultimately, it was placed before some 6 million unique viewers, according to the study.
“We believe that, as long as Americans on the political right are a significant bastion of hesitancy, Donald Trump’s support for vaccination will represent a potent tool that public health messengers can use,” the researchers said in the study. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/can-california-really-push-back-against-red-states/ | By Jill Cowan
If there’s one thing we know about California’s officials, it’s that they love to declare that California is a leader in everything — whether it’s tackling climate change or transforming the world through technology.
In recent months, California has taken the lead in yet another way: as conservative states move to enact far-right legislative agendas, politicians in California say they’re spearheading the resistance. State lawmakers have proposed measures that would make California a kind of legal sanctuary for women seeking abortions and parents with trans children. Gov. Gavin Newsom called for gun control legislation modeled on Texas’ abortion law, which would allow private individuals to sue makers of restricted firearms.
And as my colleague Shawn Hubler and I have reported about why red and blue states are shifting even further apart, Newsom has also become more vocal in his criticisms of the policies implemented by his conservative counterparts.
“We are not going to sit back and neutrally watch the progress of the 20th century get erased,” he told us.
Of course, for years, leaders of states like Texas and Florida have painted the Golden State as a dystopian hellscape in efforts to appeal to their Republican bases, and to lure businesses and residents.
Experts told us that this kind of us vs. them tension among states benefits elected officials politically by creating a clear vision of the opposition — and perhaps by distracting from the problems that the nation’s biggest states have in common.
As Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a consulting firm based in Los Angeles, told me, both Texas and California have skyrocketing housing prices and have been hit hard by the effects of climate change.
“If you drive down a standard road in Houston and a standard road in Los Angeles, you’re going to hear the same gripes and complaints,” he said. California is still relatively unaffordable, which limits the state’s status as a refuge for people fleeing policies in less-expensive states.
But does that mean efforts to make the state a safe haven are purely symbolic? Definitely not, as advocates and lawmakers told me.
Scott Wiener, the state senator who proposed the legislation aimed at making California a legal haven for families with trans children, said that California’s government must be able to multitask as families face emergencies on a variety of fronts.
LGBTQ communities around the country over decades have endured “wave after wave” of legislation aimed at restricting their rights — including efforts to bar gay couples from getting married or adopting children, various regulations targeting trans children, and recently, efforts to ban teachers from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.
So Wiener said his proposal was meant to send a message: “We will do everything in our power to protect you and give you refuge from disgusting people who are using trans children as political pawns.”
At the same time, Wiener acknowledged, “you can’t solve every problem with one bill.”
The state’s housing crisis, he said, must be addressed, too: “This massive, intentional housing shortage makes communities less diverse and less welcoming — less diverse racially, and in terms of income.”
People from other states cast out of their homes do “run up against this housing shortage” when they come to California, said Alexis Sanchez, the director of advocacy and training at the Sacramento LGBT Community Center.
Still, Sanchez said that California leaders’ outspoken support of LGBTQ communities could have tangible effects for young trans people — whether or not they’re directly affected by policies in other states — just by showing what’s possible.
That’s the reality for Violet Augustine, 37, an artist, art teacher and single parent in Dallas who plans to move with her 6-year-old trans daughter to California.
On a recent video call, her daughter, Isa, bounded around her room, showing off her “rainbow light,” and introduced a SpongeBob SquarePants stuffed animal. Her mother laughed and tried halfheartedly to corral the girl, who wore a multicolored floral print dress. Augustine said that Isa wasn’t always like this.
When Isa was a toddler, Augustine recalled, she started to display what the mother later confirmed were signs of gender dysphoria.
“She started talking about how she hated herself and she basically wanted to die,” Augustine said.
When she started affirming Isa’s identity as a girl, she told me, it was like meeting her child for the first time. But she said she felt unsafe being in public with Isa in Texas.
So although she knows it’ll be difficult to afford to live in Los Angeles, the way Augustine sees it, she doesn’t have a choice.
“Figuring out how to financially make it is just the price I’m going to have to pay,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/opinion-amid-horrific-violence-sacramento-da-should-end-attorney-general-campaign/ | by Gil Duran
I was writing a column about skyrocketing violence in Sacramento under District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert when the news broke: Six people dead and 12 wounded in a gun massacre one block from the California State Capitol.
The tragedy stopped me in my tracks. Until last summer, I lived in Sacramento and served as editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee. K Street, the gritty thoroughfare where the shooting occurred, is a place I know well.
My first thought was for the families and their suffering. With the shock so fresh, it seemed like the wrong time to write about Sacramento’s trending violence. It’s bad form to politicize tragedy, right?
Yet politicizing crimes and tragedies is exactly what politicians like DA Schubert do best. She’s a longtime Republican now running for California attorney general as an independent because Republicans can’t win statewide office. Her entire campaign is based on exploiting crime fears to score political points. If she can find a way to blame Democrats for Sunday’s massacre, she’ll try.
In September, I wrote about efforts by Schubert’s supporters to blame Democrats for the murder of a 61-year-old woman who was killed by a drifter on the quiet Sacramento block where I lived. An independent expenditure committee supporting Schubert immediately launched ads blaming Attorney General Rob Bonta. As it turns out, Sacramento’s pro-Trump Republican sheriff released the suspected killer, who should have stayed behind bars after an earlier arrest.
The ads disappeared, but Schubert’s strategy remained the same. She regularly attacks Democratic leaders, tying them to heinous crimes. Regular targets include Bonta, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón.
Unfortunately for the longtime Republican running for AG as an independent, her track record can be depicted as one of murder and mayhem.
“But in Sacramento, where Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert has repeatedly attacked Gascón over crime rates during her campaign for attorney general, violence actually surged more between 2019 and 2021 than it did in L.A.,” wrote James Queally of the Los Angeles Times last week. “Homicides went up 67%, according to city records, while aggravated assaults jumped 43% in that time frame.”
Given these terrible facts, Schubert should be worried about a recall election, not a promotion. Violent crime in her jurisdiction outpaced violent crime in Los Angeles on her watch. Despite her tough poses, this AG candidate has feet of clay.
Schubert makes DA Boudin look like a true-blue crime fighter. In 2020, the city and county of San Francisco had 48 murders while Sacramento County had 122. In 2021, S.F. had 56 murders while Sacramento County had 109. When a former public defender can boast better stats than a “tough on crime” conservative, the script has flipped.
But these inconvenient details didn’t stop Schubert from parachuting into The City earlier this year for a quick Twitter tour during which she decried “open drug dealing” and “human souls drugged out.” I responded by posting a photo of a jar containing used hypodermic needles collected during a recent street clean up in Sacramento.
I’d seen the picture on the NextDoor app, where I still monitor my old neighborhood and where, according to passionate citizen testimony, Sacramento has become a hellhole unfit for human habitation. If Schubert wants to criticize lawlessness, she needn’t leave Sactown.
Imagine a place where homeless encampments seemingly spring up on every corner and the streets glitter with smashed car window glass. A place where intruders regularly try to break into your home or steal packages from your porch. Where drug paraphernalia litters the streets, where random gunfire punctuates the night and where teen thugs assault little boys for no reason at all.
“We live in a city, literally littered with open air drug markets,” wrote one Sacramento resident on March 26. “I’m not trying to be unkind, but there are disorderly, often dangerous drug addicts wandering all around the city.”
This is Sacramento as seen through the worst lens – the anecdotes of the fearmongering, paranoid and toxic NextDoor site. It makes Sacramento sound just like the worst depictions of S.F., except public stats actually back up Sac’s violent reputation.
The stats also provide an incomplete picture of the city I called home for five years. Sacramento, like San Francisco, is a fine city if you can afford it. Yes, there’s crime and poverty. Someone stole my bike from my yard and I once had to call the police when a drunk neighbor choked his wife, but that’s life in America.
Sacramento is also an exciting city brimming with new bars and restaurants. Residents swarm in from the Bay Area, raising the rents and increasing the demand for hipster luxuries like natural wine and overpriced home goods. It’s a city with a small town feel where I felt perfectly safe taking long walks after dark.
Some crimes have spiked, but despite the social media hysteria we’re nowhere near the violent peaks of the mid-2000s. The past decade in California has been one of the safest in history – a fact Schubert might use to her advantage if she weren’t trying so hard to indict Democrats for public safety failings of which she herself appears most guilty.
We live in a country where it has become normal to wake up to news of yet another massacre. Democrats blame guns, Republicans blame “evil” (or Democrats) and nothing gets done in our deadlocked political system. In a society where anyone can get a gun and shoot dozens of people, it’s not surprising that criminals feel emboldened to smash car windows and snatch Amazon packages.
Yet despite the prevalence of homicidal violence (which is worse in Republican-led states than in Democratic-led states, according to a recent study) some people seem to believe we should feel safe from lesser crimes. When we don’t feel safe – statistics be damned – we need someone or something to blame.
Is it fair to blame the DA for everything? No, but that seems to be the name of the game in California today – at least when the DA is a Democrat. If this massacre had taken place in S.F., it would be another talking point against Boudin. Schubert would gladly play along.
When the DA is a conservative, however, we’re supposed to be satisfied with thoughts, prayers and tough talk. We’re supposed to understand the limitations of prosecutorial power and accept that gun violence is simply a price we pay for a free society. We must respect the victims by refraining from politics … until the next tragedy.
Forget that. Let’s apply the rules fairly. Even before Sunday’s shooting, Schubert had fallen down on the job. If she thinks Boudin should be recalled despite S.F.’s relatively low rates of murder and violent crime, what’s the rationale for promoting her to state attorney general despite spiraling violence in Sacramento?
There isn’t one. Schubert should take her own medicine and end her campaign for AG.
gduran@sfexaminer.com, @gilduran76 | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/farewell-pandemic-bart-it-was-a-helluva-ride/ | Farewell pandemic BART. We had some good times, dear friend.
For the past year, I’ve enjoyed the old tin cans. The ghost rider experience has been fantastic. Tons of free parking. Empty cars. Plenty of seats. You half expected a bar cart to come rollin’ by, serving Irish coffees and niblets, with a coronavirus chaser.
But like any good thing, it’s ending.
People are coming back to work. Which is great. And my private chariot is starting to get crowded again. Ridership data shows March was the busiest month on the trains since the pandemic began, peaking on March 24 when 138,794 souls hopped on board. That’s only 34% of budget projections, but just the same. It’s starting to feel the like the before times.
And that’s making me sweat. Literally. I remember the pre-pandemic crunch, when a drunken sailor couldn’t fall down in a rush hour train. Packed in like Vienna sausages, we’d sway and flow as a group, BART’s unique screeching feeding our general sense of despair. The dance of the living dread.
At the height of the Bay Area’s economic boom, getting in and out of The City was essentially unbearable. You could sit in traffic, counting the minutes until your next anxiety attack. Or you could pack into the trains, counting the seconds until your next anxiety attack.
By contrast, the pandemic era was horrible for our economy, but delightful for our psyche. You could drive up to the front of any BART station, take the very first parking spot and amble on up to the platform, assured a comfy seat with no one nearby. For veteran strap-hangers, it was nirvana.
Sure, the cars still stunk. Someone was usually smoking weed. There was always a passed-out individual in the back-corner seat. Sure, you still couldn’t hear your headphones through the rattle. And you never quite knew why the floors were so sticky. But it was kinda civilized. Relatively speaking.
Which brings me to the next part of my whinge.
Did you catch that Bay Area Council report last week? The one that showed 48% of our residents are likely to move away from the region in the next few years? The one that said 64% of us believe we’re heading in the wrong direction?
It was sobering stuff for an area that’s prosperity incarnate.
“Like many places across the United States, the Bay Area is still reeling from the pandemic and the devastation it leveled on all of us,” said Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. “Add to that rising global inflation, continuing uncertainty about the economy and general fear and anxiety about larger geopolitical disruption — and you’ve got a perfect recipe for deep gloominess.”
I hear you, Jim. I’ve become a world-class doom scroller. But what if we looked on the bright side a bit? Perhaps the pandemic has shown us the light?
My goofy take on the BART trains is a good example. The Bay Area’s infrastructure was bursting prior to COVID. Maybe a little slower, a little less, will be good for us. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If people want to move out of the area, we should rejoice. Don’t let the Golden Gate hit ya on the way out.Departures will ease the housing crunch, keep our highways and byways less congested and, bless it, keep the trains manageable.
If workers want to embrace a hybrid work model, all the better. We can work on repurposing office space to address our housing shortage. (Fwiw, a closer look at BART ridership data reveals folks are, indeed, coming into the office midweek, leaving the cars blissfully empty on Mondays and Fridays.)
Let’s stop praying before the altar of growth at the expense of our own well-being. Let’s embrace a sustainable pace, folks. Maybe full tilt isn’t the best speed for San Francisco.
Wunderman seems to agree.
“The poll measures a point in time. While we can’t ignore problems like housing and homelessness that have bedeviled us for years, I remain optimistic that brighter days are ahead, as we continue to reopen the economy and bring people back to offices and downtowns, add jobs and adjust to tectonic changes in how we live and work,” he said. “As a society, you just don’t go through what we’ve gone through in the past two years without a major hit to our collective human psyche.”
Hear, hear, Jim. Let’s mind our mentals. And trade our Google buses for a seat on BART. We’ll all be happier.
The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-californias-e-waste-programs-need-a-recharge/ | By Josh Newman and Jacqui Irwin, Special to CalMatters
We all know we’re not supposed to throw rechargeable devices such as electric toothbrushes, smartwatches, wireless earbuds, power tools and cell phones into the trash, but many of us do. Proper disposal of these devices and their lithium ion batteries is often unclear, inconvenient, expensive or unavailable where we live and work. So into the trash they go, with catastrophic consequences.
Consumers clearly need help properly disposing of expended batteries and products. That’s why, working with a broad coalition, we’ve proposed the Responsible Battery Recycling Act (Senate Bill 1215 and Assembly Bill 2440).
This measure would create a collection and recycling program in which consumers can dispose of small household batteries and battery-embedded products at free collection sites. The legislation would require companies that manufacture lithium-ion batteries and battery-embedded products sold in California to develop, finance and implement this program in collaboration with CalRecycle, the state office that oversees waste management, recycling and waste reduction programs.
When we add old batteries and products embedded with lithium-ion batteries to landfills, they can leach toxic, corrosive chemicals such as mercury, cadmium, lead and nickel into the soil and water table, which endangers the environment and human health. These chemicals are extremely difficult and expensive to clean up.
Improperly discarded batteries can also cause destructive fires.
In 2018, a California Product Stewardship Council survey found that lithium-ion batteries caused nearly 40 percent of fires at waste facilities over the previous two years. This issue gained added attention when, in 2016, a lithium-ion battery ignited a fire inside a waste recovery facility in San Carlos, resulting in nearly $8.5 million in damages, a three-month facility closure with over 50 employees furloughed, and a six-fold increase in insurance premium costs. Fortunately, no one was injured in the blaze, but fires in such facilities risk employees’ and firefighters’ health and safety due to the combination of high heat and toxic fuel sources.
The Legislature recognized this problem years ago. In 2005, California banned lithium-ion batteries from the regular trash stream while requiring some retailers to provide a battery-return option. It was a good start: In 2020, more than 400,000 pounds of lithium-ion batteries were reported collected. That, unfortunately, is a fraction of those discarded. Resource Recycling Systems estimates that 75% to 92% of expended lithium-ion batteries are discarded improperly.
Most of us have a bag of used batteries in our junk drawer that we swear we’ll properly discard at some point. But we lack a straightforward, simple disposal option. We won’t be able to reduce the risk of waste facility fires or leaching chemicals until we create a system that’s easy for consumers.
California already successfully employs this model, called extended producer responsibility, to properly dispose of and recycle a variety of consumer products made with hazardous or toxic materials, including carpeting, paint, mattresses, pharmaceuticals, medical needles, and more. In recent years, these consumer-friendly programs have cut millions of dollars in costs for local governments while preventing these household hazardous waste products from ending up in landfills. It’s no wonder that the Statewide Commission on Recycling Markets & Curbside Recycling strongly recommends including lithium-ion batteries and battery-embedded products in such a program. In March 2021, the District of Columbia’s all-battery bill officially passed into law, making it the first all-battery producer responsibility law in the country.
It’s high time to make sensible changes to end dangerous, expensive waste facility fires and prevent contamination of our food and water supplies. It’s definitely past time to make discarding old rechargeable electronics easy and free for all Californians.
_____
Josh Newman, a Democrat, represents District 29 in the state Senate.
Jacqui Irwin, a Democrat, represents District 44 in the Assembly.
Josh Newman has previously written about reforming the recall process and low turnout during recall elections. Jacqui Irwin has previously written about governmental tracking. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/a-giants-opening-day-argument-with-myself/ | So… you going to Opening Day?
I’d rather visit my dentist. I mean… this offseason made me sick. Billionaires fighting with millionaires. And I actually felt bad for the millionaires. The whole thing turned me off. In fact, I’ve pledged a vow of purity. I’ll only follow the NFL.
That makes sense. You can’t spell highbrow without HGH. C’mon, man. Opening Day is our annual rite of renewal. Spring hope’s eternal. Everyone’s in first place. After a 107-win season, you’re going to turn your back on the Giants?
Yep. You know my buddy Frank, right? He hasn’t bought a baseball ticket since 1994. He never got over the strike. I’m going to join him on the DL …. disinterested list. The lockout was the final out for me.
Wait a minute. Isn’t that the same Frank who’s always hitting me up for free tickets?
Well… yes. He sat between us for a four-game set against the Padres a few years back. But that’s not the point. It’s the principle. He won’t give Major League Baseball a dime.
Unless it’s for beer. Then he forks over $15.
Principles only go so far.
I don’t know, fella. We’ve been going to baseball games all our lives. Seals Stadium. Candlestick. Pac Tel. Pac Bell. Ma Bell. AT&T. Oracle. We’ve earned the Croix de Stadium Naming Rights, fer crissakes! Besides that, the place should be packed. We’re getting back to the before times, man.
My before times had guys named Timmy and Buster and Matt. It hasn’t been the same since the last championship. Since Boch left. The team’s run by a bunch of eggheads who check a spreadsheet before calling the bullpen. Bochy and Flan, man. They just knew when to push the buttons. Analytics. … The only WHIP I wanna see is in a jockey’s hand.
You’ve grown bitter, my friend. Gabe Kapler was borderline genius last year. And the team seems behind him. I hear your wife’s a big fan, too.
Careful.
Sorry. Maybe you’re just scared of the Dodgers. I know I am.
Listen. The Dodgers run their baseball team like Jeff Bezos runs his spaceship. Throw money at it and hope you hit the moon. If those dunderheads don’t win the World Series, there should be an investigation. I heard they bought Ted William’s frozen head, just in case.
Wow. So you’ve been following the hot stove league after all? Thought you were done with baseball.
What I do in the privacy of my own home is my business. And Facebook’s. And Twitter’s. And Bill Simmons’. The fact is, I’ve been watching the Giants’ roster closely, and I’m not impressed. Farhan didn’t land the right-handed bat they need. If you’re counting on Joc Pederson as your biggest new bat, I don’t know. They’d be better off giving Bonds his locker back.
There you go again. Dreaming about the good old days. You should hear yourself. “If only Marvin Benard were roaming centerfield again….”
Benard was an underrated hitter and fielder. And great for the clubhouse. Don’t you blaspheme Benard. Not in this bar.
Alright. Alright. I’m just saying that these Giants are worth watching, regardless of the idiotic labor stoppage. And the creamsicle uniforms. In Farhan we trust. …
In LA we bust.
There’s no talking to you anymore. You’ve turned your back on the national pastime. You should be ashamed of yourself.
The national pastime is gambling. And Worldle. Baseball has depended on our loyalty for too long. They’ve abused our trust. Starting a runner on second base in extra innings. The Designated Hitter in the Senior Circuit. It’s all madness. Even our beloved stats don’t mean anything anymore. There was a holy benchmark against which all players could be judged equally. Now? It’s anyone’s guess. Kind of like Joey Bart. Who the hell knows what we have in that guy.
Well, he tore it up in Spring Training. Maybe Buster knew something before he left town. Maybe it’s time for the kid to lead us into the future.
Buster knew something alright. He knew his body had had enough. That’s the smart money, buddy. Pick up your chips while the gettin’s good.
Yeah… Well, speaking of ducats, my boss gave me two for Friday’s game. Lower box. I was gonna take you as an early Mother’s Day gift. You know anyone who wants to go?
I’ll meet you at Momo’s.
The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/giants-season-preview-can-gabe-kapler-work-another-miracle/ | By Mark Kreidler
Special to The Examiner
It has already been an adventure. That’s the first thing. Gabe Kapler got to the Giants’ organization long enough to say howdy, and then COVID showed up, and his first season devolved into a weird, fractured, crowdless 60-game hunchback of a campaign. He lost two more contests than he won.
Buster Posey didn’t play that year. Brandon Crawford underwhelmed. Logan Webb was still learning how to pitch in the majors. Kevin Gausman was fine, not spectacular. One year later, all were brilliant.
That was last year, when the Giants, projected to finish somewhere between distantly awful and the Hades bullpen, stunned their own fans and MLB at large by winning 107 games. It was the most victories in franchise history and the first plus-.500 finish for the team in five years.
Kapler’s reward? A 99-day lockout. He spent his time not talking to his own players, as required by the owners’ silly decision to close camps, and checking Twitter like the rest of us. When the lockout finally lifted, Kapler looked around the Scottsdale complex: No Posey, no Gausman, no Kris Bryant, Brandon Belt knicked up, Evan Longoria out, Tommy La Stella recovering, LaMonte Wade Jr. trying to get back.
Maybe Kapler just isn’t destined to do normal. Maybe that’s the ride that Giants fans are on, yet again, here in 2022.
He’s a process guy. That’s the second thing. Gabe Kapler is one of those exotic baseball creatures who means what he says, and what he usually says is, Let’s talk about today. He doesn’t love projections. He’s not a huge “It’s a marathon, not a sprint!” type of manager. He is more of an improve-your-process-in-this-moment person, if you know what I mean.
The Giants’ coaching staff reflects Kapler’s approach, laying down tools for players to better their practice habits or hone their pregame routines, relying heavily on analytics-based instruction that identifies weaknesses, strengths and trends. The pitching coaches all operate from the same four points of emphasis: frequency of strikes delivered; success at throwing first-pitch strikes; getting ahead in the count; making quality two-strike pitches.
It’s focus, focus, attention, focus. That is Kapler’s style, assuming anybody needs to define it, and it is a lot easier to both understand and accept when your team is winning, oh, I don’t know, 107 games. But win or lose, Kapler is all in on process.
He’d have to be, right? He would have to be fully committed. It was the same approach he tried in Philadelphia, his first managing stint, but the Phillies were caught in an in-between phase of franchise development in which anything that wasn’t old-school was pretty quickly suspected as fraud. The Phillies went 80-82 and 81-81 in Kapler’s two seasons. Folks thought some of the young players should have progressed more excellently, and Kapler’s GM, in firing him, insinuated that it was difficult for an analytics-based approach to work in a place like Philadelphia.
That GM is no longer in Philly. The person who replaced him, former Stanford star Sam Fuld, is executing an analytics-based approach to coaching and teaching throughout the Phillies’ system. The man who quickly hired Kapler in San Francisco, Farhan Zaidi, didn’t need to be convinced. It’s a process world.
Baseball resists continuity. That’s the third thing. Even in places where you’d think that money buys certainty, you’d be wrong almost all of the time. The Dodgers are stacked, stacked, stacked, but they’re also the organization that lost Corey Seager and turned out Kenley Jansen and is hoping more than knowing that Clayton Kershaw will be healthy again and is, you know, just praying that Cody Bellinger, once an MVP, can find himself.
So the Giants looking so uncertain right now isn’t maybe the biggest thing. Kapler will know soon enough about Belt and Wade and La Stella, but even that is not the biggest thing. The biggest thing, for Kapler, is finding out what – or, rather who – comes next.
That glory run of 2021 was built on surprises – Wade, for one, but also Gausman developing into an absolute killer of a starting pitcher. Tyler Rogers emerged as a critical arm in the bullpen. Posey and Crawford had stunning comeback seasons – what else would you call them? Kapler and his coaching staff squeezed new, elite production out of emerging players and established veterans alike, and that is a skill.
But things change. Donnie Ecker, one of Kapler’s most valued coaches and a person credited by Wade with helping him transform his offensive game, left for Texas. Ron Wotus, an important bridge from the Bruce Bochy era to Kapler, retired from coaching. The roster turned over.
And that’s what happens. Players succeed and cash in and leave, or they decide they’ve had enough and quit. Coaches get rewarded for being really good, and all of a sudden you have to replace them, too. It’s a rolling carnival. Kapler is trying to be the ringleader without becoming a barker, and about that, we’ll see.
Oh: The Giants are supposed to stink. That’s the last thing. The projection systems – FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus – pretty much hate their chances in 2022. They could win in the low 70s, one said. They might be closer to Arizona than Los Angeles. (That’s not a compliment.)
It’s certainly possible. On the other hand, I didn’t see last year coming. Maybe no one did. I doubt that Gabe Kapler saw it coming, either, but that’s because he doesn’t spend too much time scanning the horizon line. Can you win in baseball by keeping your head down? For Kapler and the Giants this season, here’s a better question: Can you do it two years in a row?
Mark Kreidler is a freelance contributor to The Examiner. Read more of his columns at https://markkreidler.substack.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/can-the-giants-win-the-national-league-west/ | By Benjamin Hoffman
New York Times
In the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the National League West had the two best teams in the majors during the 2021 regular season. But after winning the NL East (again), the scrappy Atlanta Braves knocked off the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series and then upset the Houston Astros in the World Series. While hoping for a repeat, Atlanta faces a daunting challenge in the form of Steven Cohen’s huge bank account, as the New York Mets’ owner seems determined to spend whatever it takes to get his childhood favorite team its first title since 1986. Here is a team-by-team look at the reasons for each NL club to be optimistic and pessimistic this season. (Teams are in order of predicted finish.)
NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST
New York Mets
Last season: 77-85 Key additions: Max Scherzer (P), Chris Bassitt (P), Starling Marte (OF), Eduardo Escobar (3B), Mark Canha (1B/OF), Adam Ottavino (P) Key subtractions: Michael Conforto (OF), Kevin Pillar (OF)
Half Full: While Jacob deGrom will likely be out for multiple months with a shoulder injury, the additions of Scherzer and Bassitt make losing deGrom sting far less than it did last year. The team also addressed its offensive depth. With Cohen paying the bills, there is also the expectation that there will be more additions as the season progresses.
Half Empty: Despite his high price tag, Marte is not a good defensive center fielder, leaving that position a bit shaky. When factoring in Scherzer’s age and deGrom’s injury history, there is the potential for a huge offseason to end up as a very expensive letdown.
Atlanta Braves
Last season: 88-73 Key additions: Matt Olson (1B), Kenley Jansen (P), Collin McHugh (P) Key subtractions: Freddie Freeman (1B; face of franchise), Jorge Soler (OF)
Half Full: Atlanta rebuilt its roster on the fly last season and most of the team is back, with huge reinforcements coming in the form of Olson and outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. A two-time All-Star, Acuña is targeting May for his return from knee surgery. Jansen and McHugh add to an already-strong bullpen, and the team’s rotation could be better than expected if Max Fried and Ian Anderson continue to develop and Mike Soroka gets back on the field after sustaining an Achilles tear last season.
Half Empty: Soler had a huge World Series, but his loss will barely make a ripple compared to the vast wave of hard feelings at the departure of Freeman, a beloved fixture in the team’s lineup for more than a decade.
Philadelphia Phillies
Last season 82-80 Key additions: Nick Castellanos (OF/DH), Kyle Schwarber (OF/DH) Key subtractions: Andrew McCutchen (OF)
Half Full: The additions of Castellanos and Schwarber should drastically increase the team’s run production, and the development of the left-hander Ranger Suárez could give Philadelphia a solid No. 3 starter behind right-handers Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola.
Half Empty: Have you ever seen Castellanos or Schwarber play defense? Until the NL allows a team two designated hitters in the lineup, the Phillies will be in for some miscues.
Washington Nationals
Last season 65-97 Key additions: Nelson Cruz (DH), Dee Strange-Gordon (2B/OF) Key subtractions: They traded nearly everyone last July, and Ryan Zimmerman retired.
Half Full: It is absolutely exhilarating to watch outfielder Juan Soto play baseball, and Washington’s rotation has enough talent to win some games even if the rest of the offense doesn’t do much.
Half Empty: After trading away Max Scherzer, Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber last season, the team signaled that a big rebuild was in the works. It does not appear that it is anywhere close to done.
Miami Marlins
Last season 67-95 Key additions Jorge Soler (OF/DH), Avisaíl García (OF), Joey Wendle (INF), Jacob Stallings (C) Key subtractions Derek Jeter (CEO)
Half Full: Despite a reputation for avoiding spending money, the Marlins made some definite improvements through free agency. Soler in particular could thrive in the middle of the team’s batting order.
Half Empty: Those expensive upgrades were necessary because Miami traded away most of its notable players last year. That Jeter decided to walk away is not a good sign for the team’s direction.
NATIONAL LEAGUE CENTRAL
Milwaukee Brewers
Last season: 95-67 Key additions: Andrew McCutchen (OF), Hunter Renfroe (OF) Key subtractions: Jackie Bradley Jr. (OF), Brett Anderson (P)
Half Full: The band is back together, with no significant departures from a team that easily won its division last year. McCutchen and Renfroe are solid additions in the outfield, and a top-notch starting rotation returns three aces in Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, and Corbin Burnes, the 2021 Cy Young Award winner.
Half Empty: Outfielder Christian Yelich has spent two years struggling after he won the NL’s MVP Award in 2018 and finished second in the award’s voting in 2019. It is unclear if his days of stardom are over.
St. Louis Cardinals
Last season: 90-72 Key additions: Steven Matz (P), Albert Pujols (1B/DH), Corey Dickerson (OF) Key subtractions: Andrew Miller (P) and Jon Lester (P) retired
Half Full: The team — which briefly looked dominant in a 17-game winning streak down the stretch last year — hopes a shift to Oliver Marmol at manager will help even things out in 2022. Pujols’ return is mostly symbolic but Matz, a left-hander, could be a huge addition to the starting rotation.
Half Empty: Former superstars returning to their original club in their 40s is not usually a recipe for success, and many of the Cardinals’ problems from last year — a top-heavy lineup, a thin rotation, a questionable bullpen — are still very much there regardless of who is managing.
Chicago Cubs
Last season: 71-91 Key additions: Seiya Suzuki (OF), Marcus Stroman (P), Yan Gomes (C), Clint Frazier (OF), Jonathan Villar (3B) Key subtractions: None of note after the trade deadline
Half Full: The team got a huge rebuild started early by trading away the core of the 2016 championship team last summer — even some noncore players were sent packing — and is now in build-back mode with the additions of Suzuki, a power-hitting outfielder from Japan, and Stroman, a right-hander who was an All-Star for the Mets last season.
Half Empty: The roster is not barren, but it is unrecognizable after so many franchise mainstays, like Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo, were sent packing. Given the high price tags each of those core players fetched in free agency, the Cubs may have made the right call, but it could be a while before Chicago is a contender.
Cincinnati Reds
Last season: 83-79 Key additions: Jake Fraley (OF), Justin Dunn (P) Key subtractions: Nick Castellanos (OF), Jesse Winker (OF), Eugenio Suárez (3B), Amir Garrett (P)
Half Full: If you can ignore the rest of the team, second baseman Jonathan India, the 2021 NL rookie of the year, is delightful, and first baseman Joey Votto is a true professional on an unconventional path to potential Cooperstown induction.
Half Empty: The rest of the team — stripped bare in a series of cost-cutting moves — is still there.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Last season: 61-101 Key additions: Roberto Pérez (C) Key subtractions: Jacob Stallings (C)
Half Full: Third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes has the talent to be a star, and outfielder Bryan Reynolds already is one after hitting .302 with 24 home runs last season. Even better Reynolds has said he would like to stay in Pittsburgh long-term.
Half Empty: The Pirates, as the Pirates do, have indicated that Reynolds, 27, may be too old to be part of the team’s long-term future, so the starting center fielder in last year’s All-Star Game could be on the move soon.
NATIONAL LEAGUE WEST
Los Angeles Dodgers
Last season: 106-56 Key additions: Freddie Freeman (1B), Craig Kimbrel (P), Kevin Pillar (OF), Andrew Heaney (P) Key subtractions: Corey Seager (SS), Max Scherzer (P), Kenley Jansen (P)
Half Full: If you can lose an All-Star shortstop, but you already had another one, and you can lose an ace starter, because you have two others, you are the Dodgers. A team with outrageous depth built through years of shrewd moves (and outrageous spending), Los Angeles might not even take a step back with the addition of Freeman.
Half Empty: Even after they addressed the departure of Jansen by trading for Kimbrel to be the closer, the Dodgers are placing an awfully large bet on Heaney being able to hold down a rotation spot until Dustin May can return from injury.
San Francisco Giants
Last season: 107-55 Key additions: Carlos Rodón (P), Joc Pederson (OF) Key subtractions: Buster Posey (C), Kris Bryant (3B/OF), Kevin Gausman (P)
Half Full: Coming off a 107-win season, the Giants have developed a system of developing talent at the major league level that has continued to churn out success stories. In Rodón, a former Chicago White Sox pitcher, they added a left-handed starter who could challenge for a Cy Young Award if everything goes right.
Half Empty: An aging team said goodbye to Posey, its longtime captain, who retired, and the addition of Rodón is offset by the loss of Gausman. The team’s aging roster, and a sense that nearly everyone had career years in 2021, makes a repeat as division champions seem unlikely.
San Diego Padres
Last season: 79-83 Key additions: Luke Voit (1B), Jorge Alfaro (C) V Key subtractions: Mark Melancon (P)
Half Full: A starting rotation with Joe Musgrove, Yu Darvish and Blake Snell should make the Padres competitive at all times, and it seems as if the team’s luck almost has to be better than it was last season, when they went from World Series hopefuls to not even finishing at .500.
Half Empty: The wrist injury Fernando Tatis Jr. sustained in a motorcycle accident takes San Diego’s biggest bat out of its lineup for the foreseeable future and calls into question the judgment of one of the game’s brightest stars. Even worse: Wrist injuries have a tendency to linger with power hitters.
Colorado Rockies
Last season: 74-87 Key additions Kris Bryant (3B/OF), Randal Grichuk (OF), Alex Colomé (P), José Iglesias (SS) Key subtractions: Trevor Story (SS), Raimel Tapia (OF), Jon Gray (P)
Half Full: The Rockies recognized the extreme value of Ryan McMahon, rewarding the versatile infielder with a $70 million contract. He and outfielder Charlie Blackmon are rock solid, and Bryant could be a monster at Coors Field if he can get back to where he was offensively a few years ago.
Half Empty: Letting Story depart to Boston as a free agent after failing to trade him at the deadline last year was tough, and it is hard to see the team competing in a top-heavy division even with a few solid offseason additions.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Last season: 52-110 Key additions Mark Melancon (P), Ian Kennedy (P) Key subtractions: Kole Calhoun (OF), Tyler Clippard (P), Joakim Soria (P)
Half Full Ketel Marte is a very good baseball player.
Half Empty: You can almost imagine the Diamondbacks’ front office acquiring veteran relievers like Melancon and Kennedy with a plan already in place to trade them away to contenders in July.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/drowning-in-cairo-about-gay-rights-in-egypt-and-universality-of-repression/ | When playwright Adam Ashraf Elsyigh was four years old, growing up in a religious Muslim family in Egypt, the police raided the Queen Boat, a gay nightclub docked on the Nile River in Cairo. By the time Elsyigh was 12 or 13, a self-professed bookworm looking for literature and Googling “gay” and “Arab,” he read about that seminal incident. And by the time he was a theater undergraduate at NYU Abu Dhabi, the Queen Boat incident had fired his imagination.
It led to the drama “Drowning in Cairo,” a world premiere now opening at Golden Thread Productions, the nation’s first Middle East-focused theater, founded in 1996 by recently departed artistic director Torange Yeghiazarian.
The play weaves in and out of the lives of three (fictional) gay men who were arrested and imprisoned that fateful night on the Queen Boat. In a non-linear chronology comprising 11 scenes, we see the men from age 14 onward over almost two decades. Khalid and Moody are educated, privileged; the third, Taha, is the son of the concierge in the building where they all live.
Elsyigh himself comes from a privileged background; his parents are doctors. After receiving his B.A. — which included semesters abroad in London, Florence and New York — he knew he wanted to emigrate to New York.
Now, happily entrenched in the theater scene as he completes his M.F.A. in playwriting at Brooklyn College, he is finally seeing the fruits of five years at work on “Drowning in Cairo,” after a process that included a workshop at the Indian Ensemble Theater in Bangalore, India, in 2017 and readings in Abu Dhabi, New York, Cairo and at Golden Thread’s New Threads Festival in 2018.
Looking back on the development process, Elsyigh, on the phone from his office at NYU in Manhattan — where a newer play of his, “Memorial,” is about to open at Tisch School for the Arts — he says that “Drowning in Cairo” has changed enormously over the years, although he did consistently follow a few guiding principles: The play would be about several men, not just one; and it would about being gay in Egypt with the proviso that “I cannot speak to all of queer life in Egypt.”
Nor, he emphasizes, can he claim to speak for Arabs or Muslims. “I do not represent ‘how hard it is for gays over there,’” he writes in a strongly worded note in Golden Thread’s program. “This is a single story by a single writer. It’s a story about three people who can’t be themselves in their community… It’s a story about a broken, fragile chosen family that perpetuates toxic cycles of violence. None of these realities are unique to Egyptians or Arabs or queers.”
“I was interested,” he elaborates on the phone, “in these relationships to family, career, romance — how that would evolve …” A decision to not open the play with the pivotal arrest scene led to the non-linear rolling out of scenes: “I don’t want to identify people through their moment of trauma,” he explains. “I want to see these characters first.”
The lives of Khalid, Moody and Taha are clearly shaped by a variety of factors, not just their growing up gay under a restrictive regime and their unlucky presence on the Queen Boat that night, but also by class, family relationships, personality and other factors.
The play’s complexity, the span of time that it covers and the fact that the characters speak some Arabic make it a staging challenge. But Golden Thread’s new executive/artist director, Sahar Assaf, chose it as her first play to direct here, and the first play at Golden Thread after the two-year shutdown.
It was a natural choice for Assaf, who came to Golden Thread from acting, directing and producing in her home country, Lebanon. She is especially interested in documentary theater, so “Drowning in Cairo”’s basis in a real-life event attracted her. She also felt a personal connection — her son is three years old. What must it be like, she wondered, for a young man, just starting to explore, to be “crushed by a system that couldn’t see their humanity?” She herself was 20 at the time of the Queen Boat arrests, and knew of it, but when she went back to read about it in preparation for the play, “it shook me to the core,” she says. “It’s important to remember these incidents and not let them fall into oblivion.”
Directing it presents challenges, starting with casting. All three actors need to speak some Arabic. As it happens, Amin El Gamal is of Egyptian descent and grew up speaking Arabic; Martin Zebari, who is Iraqi American, speaks some Arabic; and the only local actor in the cast, Wiley Naman Strasser, had to learn it. In the play, Khalid and Moody go easily back and forth from English to Arabic, as Elsyigh himself does, having learned English from the Disney channel starting at age 3; Taha is being taught English by Moody.
Elsyigh says he has found himself profoundly influenced by the different actors who have played the roles over the past five years of workshops. The play, he says, has changed radically because of their insights.
And he has also been hugely influenced by the audiences who’ve seen the earlier incarnations. At an early reading in Egypt, in a friend’s house, strictly word-of-mouth, about 40 gay Egyptians showed up on a sweltering night with no AC. “That’s the one audience that matters to me most,” he says. “If they didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have touched it, I’d have shelved it.”
Assaf says the play spoke to her as a straight Lebanese woman: “I did not need to be gay or an Egyptian… . It’s about repressive systems no matter where we are in society. I’m hoping the audience will be able to see the universality of the story. We make sure of the cultural specificity — the world of the play is Egyptian — but we fail if it’s only seen as an Egyptian story. It’s not a story about there; it can be a story of here and now. This is Golden Thread’s interest: putting the light on our shared humanity. This play is a case in point.”
IF YOU GO:
“Drowning in Cairo”
Where: Potrero Stage, 1695 18th St., S.F.
When: April 8-May 1; also video on demand
Tickets: $15-$100
Contact: (415) 626-4061, goldenthread.org | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/cartoonist-keith-knight-demystifies-getting-woke/ | Keith Knight knows that laughter can put smiles on people’s faces while also bringing attention to knuckle grinding political and social topics.
His quick wit was long on display in “The K Chronicles,” an autobiographical comic strip that proffered satirical observations of life in San Francisco between 1993 and 2007. Knight’s penchant for subversion now extends to “Woke,” a live-action comedy on Hulu that is loosely based on Knight’s life and set to premiere its second season on Friday.
Both works are displayed in the Cartoon Art Museum’s exhibit “Keith Knight’s WOKE in San Francisco.” The exhibit gives attendees a retrospective look at Knight’s 17-year cartooning career in The City, while also illustrating how the strips inspired the creation of Knight’s television show.
“You have to use humor to get some of these serious issues across because people don’t want to be preached to,” said Knight, who adeptly uses comedy to confront matters like racism and police brutality without undermining the subject’s nuance or his audience’s intelligence.
Knight, 55, moved to San Francisco in the ‘90s and rose to local prominence with “The K Chronicles,” which won the Harvey Kurtzman Award for Best Syndicated Comic Strip in 2007. A self-described people person, Knight sourced material for his comics through daily interactions with friends, family and strangers alike. He and his wife featured heavily in the cartoon as did President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, God and Knight’s ex-roommate and drinking buddy, Gunther.
Except for the politicians, Knight said, “I only make fun of people and things I love,” and insists that he makes jokes at his expense more than anyone else.
While “The K Chronicles” appeared in publications like The Examiner and Salon, Knight also had his spot in the alternative weekly landscape. His earliest projects included making zines, three of which were used to create a live-action German short film, “Jetzt Kommt Ein Karton.”
As Knight churned out comics from his rent-controlled, three-bedroom apartment in the Inner Richmond, he sensed a shift in the area’s artistic landscape. “I saw myself 25 years later, being in the same apartment and then complaining about how San Francisco used to be really cool,” said Knight.
In 2007, Knight moved to Los Angeles in search of a new project that would challenge him creatively and play to his strengths as a cartoonist. He teamed up with screenwriter Marshall Todd of “Barbershop” fame to create “Woke,” a comedy series centered around a fictionalized version of Knight.
The show tells the story of Keef Knight, a Black cartoonist played by “New Girl” alum Lamorne Morris. Speaking at a panel for Knight’s exhibition, Morris said, “I got the script and I just thought, ‘Well, this is amazing.’ And I also felt that I was very similar to Keith in reading it. I auditioned and that was it.”
Each episode was primarily written on the fly and the flexible nature allowed the cast to improvise their work. “That’s my favorite environment to work in. I come from an improv background so it’s fun when we actually flex that muscle,” said co-star and “Saturday Night Live” alum Sasheer Zamata, who also spoke at the Cartoon Art Museum exhibition.
Season one revolves around Keef wanting to keep his cartoons light by not commenting on social and political issues. This approach falls apart when Keef is racially profiled by the police, an ordeal which draws from Knight’s experiences.
Keef becomes “woke” and notices the racism and microaggressions that he’s tried avoiding in his personal and professional life. This revelation brings viewers into Knight’s amusingly absurd world — where objects like trash cans, markers and 40-ounce bottles are animated in comical exchanges with Keef about what it means to be “woke,” especially as people’s understanding of the word evolves.
The term, which got a first major citation in Led Belly’s 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys” about nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women, first served as a reminder for Black people to be aware of the harshness of racial relations in America. The word evolved with the Black Lives Matter movement as activists used it to acknowledge U.S. racial inequities and particularly police brutality. Recently, as the term entered the American mainstream, the word has been used ironically by both the left and right as a sign of false progressivism.
Just as people try grappling with their levels of “wokeness,” Keef spends season two wrestling with how far someone needs to go to be considered socially and politically conscious. Matters are complicated for Keef as his journey comes at a time when big businesses, activists and others want to cash in on being woke for personal and financial gains.
With a museum exhibit, a television show and other projects to his name, Knight credits his success to the stories told through “The K Chronicles” and its accompanying laughs and lessons. “It’s like a diary to me and it’s great for my kids because I could say, ‘See? You wonder why your dad is so crazy? Look at this book, and you’ll find out.”
jsalazar@sfexaminer.com
“Woke” (TV-MA) season two premieres Friday, April 8 on Hulu.
IF YOU GO:
“Keith Knight’s WOKE in San Francisco”
Where: Cartoon Art Museum, 781 Beach St., S.F.
When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. daily except Wednesdays, through June 26, 2022
Tickets: $8 adults, $7 S.F. residents, $6 seniors/students, $4 age 6-12, free for children under 6
Contact: (415) CARTOON, www.cartoonart.org | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/climate-change-report-outlines-grim-consequences-of-environmental-destruction-in-california/ | By Rachel Becker and Julie Cart
CalMatters
Painting alarming scenes of fires, floods and economic disruption, the California Legislature’s advisors on Tuesday released a series of reports that lays out in stark terms the impacts of climate change across the state.
The typically reserved, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office outlined dire consequences for Californians as climate change continues to impact most aspects of daily life. Much of the focus of the six-part series details the economic cost as the changing climate alters where and how Californians build, grow food and protect the most vulnerable residents.
Wildfires, heat and floods will force more frequent school closures, disrupting education, child care and availability of free school lunches. More than 1,600 schools temporarily closed because of wildfires each year between 2017 and 2020, affecting nearly a million students a year.
Workers in outdoor industries such as agriculture, construction, forestry and recreation — 10% of California’s workforce and mostly made up of Latinos — will continue to bear the brunt of extreme heat and smoke.
Wildfire smoke may have killed about 20 people among every 100,000 older Californians in 2020, and is projected to become more deadly. A 50% increase in smoke could kill nine to 20 more people among every 100,000 each year.
Housing, rail lines, bridges, ports, power plants, freeways and other structures are vulnerable to rising seas and tides. “Between $8 billion and $10 billion of existing property in California is likely to be underwater by 2050, with an additional $6 billion to $10 billion at risk during high tide.”
Extreme heat is projected to cause nine deaths per 100,000 people each year, “roughly equivalent to the 2019 annual mortality rate from automobile accidents in California.”
Lower-income Californians, who live in communities at greater risk for heat and floods because of discriminatory housing practices, will be hit especially hard by climate change and have fewer resources to adapt.
Housing will be lost: For example, in the Bay Area alone, 13,000 existing housing units and 104,000 job spaces “will no longer be usable” because of sea rise over the next 40 to 100 years.
Beaches will disappear, too: Up to two-thirds of Southern California beaches may become completely eroded by 2100.
The report’s unsaid but unambiguous conclusion: Climate change could alter everything, and spare no one in California, so legislators should consider preparing for sweeping impacts.
“These hazards will threaten public health, safety, and well-being — including from life-threatening events, damage to public and private property and infrastructure, and impaired natural resources,” the analysts say in their report.
The pain, and costs, will be shared among state, regional, local, private and industry sectors, according to the report.
Changing course
Scientists say it’s not too late to stop the most severe effects, although the clock is ticking. Technologies and other solutions already exist to reduce greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and other sources and prevent more irreversible harm, according to a landmark international scientific report released Monday. But international accords and plans continue to fall far short, with emissions expected to keep increasing.
California’s legislative analysts did not conduct new research; instead, they compiled existing data and projections, providing a comprehensive clearinghouse for legislators as they enact policies and approve budgets.
State Sen. Bob Wieckowski, a Democrat from Fremont and chair of the budget subcommittee on resources, environmental protection and energy, said he plans to turn to the reports as references and rationale for the subcommittee’s budget proposals.
“It’s impressive,” he said. “(It) turns the climate conversation into an all-hands-on-deck versus, ‘Oh, this is just some tree hugger over here.’”
The analysts make no explicit policy recommendations but they advise legislators to consider such questions as: How can the state avoid exacerbating climate impacts? How can lawmakers protect the most vulnerable Californians? And how should California pay to prepare and respond to climate change?
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat from South Gate (Los Angeles County), asked the Legislative Analyst’s Office to assess the impacts of climate change on a variety of policy sectors, and the reports grew from there. They frame climate change as a complex, multi-disciplinary problem that requires response from all of the state’s agencies.
Project manager Rachel Ehlers said the aim is to assist lawmakers incorporate climate change into decisions outside of traditionally environmental realms, including housing, health and education. For instance, would a new housing policy “have the potential to inadvertently worsen climate change impacts?” she said.
Last year’s budget package reflected the overarching scope of the problem, proposing to spend $9.3 billion over three years to bolster the state’s responses to drought, floods, fire and sea level rise.
Budget decisions
The reports come in the lead-up to California Gov. Gavin’s Newsom’s May revision to his January budget blueprint, when the administration can reframe and update its proposals. Thus far, the proposed budget included more than $22 billion for climate chang e efforts that include protecting communities against wildfires and extreme heat.
Despite the state’s climate-forward reputation, critics and many legislators note California’s follow-through has been inconsistent.
“I don’t at all feel that we are leading the world anymore,” Rendon told CalMatters last year.
Although the state passed a $15 billion climate budget, California Environmental Voters, an advocacy group, gave California its first “D” grade for what it called its climate inaction last year.
“We’re plagued by ‘climate delayers’ in Sacramento, members of the Legislature who talk about climate change but don’t back up those words with action,” California Environmental Voters CEO Mary Creasman wrote in a CalMatters commentary.
Last month, a coalition of California’s environmental justice advocacy organizations pushed for a phase-out of fossil fuels, and warned that clean air regulators have failed to adequately consider public health in crafting the state’s blueprint for curbing greenhouse gas pollution.
Warnings ahead
California is already reeling from climate change.
The analysis made clear that many of the worst consequences are already here, even as it noted that future impacts are coming sooner and may be worse than scientists had predicted.
Summer temperatures scorched records as the state’s second-largest wildfire tore across Northern California during the third-driest year on record for rain and snowfall. California must brace for yet more climate hazards, the reports warn, from extreme heat to more severe wildfires, whiplash from drought to flood and sea level rise along the coast.
Drought clutches California and a statewide heat wave forecast this week is poised to sap the remaining snowpack that supplies about a third of the state’s water. California’s firefighting arm warns that a record-dry start to the year could spell a devastating fire season ahead.
It’s a disaster drumbeat that Californians have heard many times before. The Legislative Analyst’s Office has released report after report assessing the state’s climate policies and spending. It has warned that sea level rise will submerge billions of dollars in homes, roads and businesses by 2050, and that the state must accelerate planning to protect state assets including college campuses, prisons and even state workers from soaring heat, flooding, fire and extreme weather.
Newsom’s administration launched a preemptive response to the reports with the Monday release of its updated climate adaptation strategy. The guidelines pull together plans from 38 departments and address priority issues, such as protecting communities vulnerable to climate change and combating risks to health and safety.
California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said the strategy is “a matter of protecting our residents and our communities, our natural places, from climate threats that are already here.”
State officials regularly recalibrate the official response to climate change, often in response to dire reports. Four years ago, California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment released under former Gov. Jerry Brown warned climate change would lead to death and property damage on the order of tens of billions of dollars by 2050.
Though Tuesday’s reports were focused largely on how California must adapt to the ravages of climate change, the Legislative Analyst’s Office also has warned repeatedly that California’s landmark greenhouse gas market, cap and trade, will fail to meet California’s goals to reduce emissions.
CalMatters is a nonprofit newsroom committed to explaining California politics and policy. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/how-uber-failed-and-lyft-nailed-one-trans-womans-frustrating-hr-issue/ | As a transgender woman, Grace Kwasniak really looked forward to moving to San Francisco from Phoenix. “I moved to this city because this is a place where the culture is more accepting,” she said.
But Kwasniak ran into a civil rights issue and human resources challenge with the two ride-sharing companies she drives for, Uber and Lyft, the San Francisco-based rivals.
This is not Kwasniak’s story alone. Other trans drivers have faced similar struggles, prompting three California city attorneys to look into the issues. San Francisco’s city attorney, David Chiu, has taken an interest in her case.
Signing up to drive in California meant using identification from both her prior identity, and now, to satisfy background check requirements.
Lyft human resources gave her personal attention and respect. “I was able to talk to someone in person,” Kwasniak said. “They even gave me a goodie bag.”
Uber, on the other hand, reverted her identity to her “dead name” (as some trans people refer to their prior name) multiple times, paused her account, and demanded identification that the company then rejected, she said.
Kwasniak explained her situation in multiple messages reviewed by The Examiner, even sending Uber a picture of the estrogen prescription she used in her transition.
Uber has now fixed the issue, after The Examiner reached out, Kwasniak notes. An employee who called her apologized profusely and told her “their press team contacted him,” she said. A spokesperson said the company was already working on the issue before The Examiner asked questions.
The Uber spokesperson told The Examiner: “We are investing in improving our processes and systems to better support transgender drivers, and we regret when we don’t meet their expectations.”
Similar issues were exposed in December, when The Los Angeles Times reported that “Uber at times has blocked transgender and nonbinary people from driver and delivery jobs by treating their documents as fraudulent.” Months before her move, Kwasniak also received correspondence with that language, according to screenshots reviewed by The Examiner.
The Times also reported that, like Kwasniak, “Some haggled with Uber for days to get their true name displayed instead of their ‘dead name’ from before they transitioned.”
The Uber spokesperson said Kwasniak’s case was different from those depicted in earlier coverage because Kwasniak’s identity issues were prompted by her move to a different state. “We are looking into how this happened and intend to take remedial steps,” the spokesperson said.
The Times’ reporting led three California city attorneys – including San Francisco’s Chiu – to write a letter citing “potential legal ramifications,” and asking Uber what the company is doing to address the issues.
“These are serious issues,” Chiu told The Examiner. “Wrongful conduct could lead to liability.” Chiu said Uber has provided his office with information on their recent efforts to address the problems. The company said it has helped more than 1,800 transgender employees who asked to change their names, profile photos, or both, and provides them with online help.
Chiu said his office would be happy to review Kwasniak’s case and take it back to Uber.
Chiu also said his office has heard better reviews of Lyft’s HR in this area. “We have heard similar stories in the marketplace. Lyft has had fairly robust practices in place going back a number of years in this area.”
Kwasniak laughed at Uber’s handling of the issue, but said this is a serious issue for other trans workers. “Many trans people are actively working in their transitions in their daily lives. It’s not just me.”
And the two companies’ different handling of Kwasniak’s case are meaningful in the tech world’s competition for talent, experts say.
Katrina Kibben, a Colorado recruiting and HR expert who identifies as trans and non-binary, said real inclusiveness – not just lip service – may be more important that ever. “People are leaving jobs for new reasons – like values.” Kibben pointed out that while trans workers are just 1% of the workforce, how companies address their needs is a meaningful measurement of an organization’s ability to evolve and help all employees.
John Sumser, a San Francisco human resources analyst at HRExaminer, said trans rights are more than just a legal and ethical issue for tech companies. They are a competitive advantage.
“The company that’s welcoming the people who are different is going to have a longer run,” Sumser said. “There’s a significant competitive difference.”
Lyft said in a statement that the company “is committed to creating a safe and inclusive community in which all drivers and riders are treated with respect and dignity. We support the right of individuals to express their true identities, and we want to make sure Lyft’s values are reflected in our features and policies.”
Kwasniak is moving on to a new role, as a peer counselor for a crisis team, the job she moved to San Francisco for. The nearly 7,500 rides she gave for Uber and Lyft have brought her on a journey to a new job in a new city. But this experience left a lingering impression.
She got the first email alerting her to the recent issues with her Uber profile on March 31, International Transgender Day of Visibility, which was started by activists in 2009 to raise awareness of discrimination faced by trans people.
She notes that on that day, President Biden said in a proclamation that “Transgender Americans continue to face discrimination, harassment, and barriers to opportunity.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/meet-dall-e-an-ai-algorithm-that-can-draw-anything-on-command/ | By Cade Metz
New York Times
At OpenAI, one of the world’s most ambitious artificial intelligence labs, researchers are building technology that lets you create digital images simply by describing what you want to see.
They call it DALL-E in a nod to both “WALL-E,” the 2008 animated movie about an autonomous robot, and Salvador Dalí, the surrealist painter.
OpenAI, backed by $1 billion in funding from Microsoft, is not yet sharing the technology with the general public. But on a recent afternoon, Alex Nichol, one of the researchers behind the system, demonstrated how it works.
When he asked for “a teapot in the shape of an avocado,” typing those words into a largely empty computer screen, the system created 10 distinct images of a dark green avocado teapot, some with pits and some without.
“DALL-E is good at avocados,” Nichol said.
When he typed “cats playing chess,” it put two fluffy kittens on either side of a checkered game board, 32 chess pieces lined up between them. When he summoned “a teddy bear playing a trumpet underwater,” one image showed tiny air bubbles rising from the end of the bear’s trumpet toward the surface of the water.
DALL-E can also edit photos. When Nichol erased the teddy bear’s trumpet and asked for a guitar instead, a guitar appeared between the furry arms.
A team of seven researchers spent two years developing the technology, which OpenAI plans to eventually offer as a tool for people like graphic artists, providing new shortcuts and new ideas as they create and edit digital images. Computer programmers already use Copilot, a tool based on similar technology from OpenAI, to generate snippets of software code.
But for many experts, DALL-E is worrisome. As this kind of technology continues to improve, they say, it could help spread disinformation across the internet, feeding the kind of online campaigns that may have helped sway the 2016 presidential election.
“You could use it for good things, but certainly you could use it for all sorts of other crazy, worrying applications, and that includes deepfakes,” like misleading photos and videos, said Subbarao Kambhampati, a professor of computer science at Arizona State University.
A half-decade ago, the world’s leading AI labs built systems that could identify objects in digital images and even generate images on their own, including flowers, dogs, cars and faces. A few years later, they built systems that could do much the same with written language, summarizing articles, answering questions, generating tweets and even writing blog posts.
Now researchers are combining those technologies to create new forms of AI. DALL-E is a notable step forward because it juggles both language and images and, in some cases, grasps the relationship between the two.
“We can now use multiple, intersecting streams of information to create better and better technology,” said Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, an artificial intelligence lab in Seattle.
The technology is not perfect. When Nichol asked DALL-E to “put the Eiffel Tower on the moon,” it did not quite grasp the idea. It put the moon in the sky above the tower. When he asked for “a living room filled with sand,” it produced a scene that looked more like a construction site than a living room.
But when Nichol tweaked his requests a little, adding or subtracting a few words here or there, it provided what he wanted. When he asked for “a piano in a living room filled with sand,” the image looked more like a beach in a living room.
DALL-E is what artificial intelligence researchers call a neural network, which is a mathematical system loosely modeled on the network of neurons in the brain. That is the same technology that recognizes the commands spoken into smartphones and identifies the presence of pedestrians as self-driving cars navigate city streets.
A neural network learns skills by analyzing large amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of avocado photos, for example, it can learn to recognize an avocado. DALL-E looks for patterns as it analyzes millions of digital images as well as text captions that describe what each image depicts. In this way, it learns to recognize the links between the images and the words.
When someone describes an image for DALL-E, it generates a set of key features that this image might include. One feature might be the line at the edge of a trumpet. Another might be the curve at the top of a teddy bear’s ear.
Then, a second neural network, called a diffusion model, creates the image and generates the pixels needed to realize these features. The latest version of DALL-E, unveiled Wednesday with a new research paper describing the system, generates high-resolution images that in many cases look like photos.
Although DALL-E often fails to understand what someone has described and sometimes mangles the image it produces, OpenAI continues to improve the technology. Researchers can often refine the skills of a neural network by feeding it even larger amounts of data.
They can also build more powerful systems by applying the same concepts to new types of data. The Allen Institute recently created a system that can analyze audio as well as imagery and text. After analyzing millions of YouTube videos, including audio tracks and captions, it learned to identify particular moments in TV shows or movies, like a barking dog or a shutting door.
Experts believe that researchers will continue to hone such systems. Ultimately, those systems could help companies improve search engines, digital assistants and other common technologies as well as automate new tasks for graphic artists, programmers and other professionals.
But there are caveats to that potential. The AI systems can show bias against women and people of color, in part because they learn their skills from enormous pools of online text, images and other data that show bias. They could be used to generate pornography, hate speech and other offensive material. And many experts believe the technology will eventually make it so easy to create disinformation, people will have to be skeptical of nearly everything they see online.
“We can forge text. We can put text into someone’s voice. And we can forge images and videos,” Etzioni said. “There is already disinformation online, but the worry” is that this scales disinformation to new levels.
OpenAI is keeping a tight leash on DALL-E. It would not let outsiders use the system on their own. It puts a watermark in the corner of each image it generates. And though the lab plans on opening the system to testers this week, the group will be small.
The system also includes filters that prevent users from generating what it deems inappropriate images. When asked for “a pig with the head of a sheep,” it declined to produce an image. The combination of the words “pig” and “head” most likely tripped OpenAI’s anti-bullying filters, according to the lab.
“This is not a product,” said Mira Murati, OpenAI’s head of research. The idea is to “understand capabilities and limitations and give us the opportunity to build in mitigation.”
OpenAI can control the system’s behavior in some ways. But others across the globe may soon create similar technology that puts the same powers in the hands of almost anyone. Working from a research paper describing an early version of DALL-E, Boris Dayma, an independent researcher in Houston, has already built and released a simpler version of the technology.
“People need to know that the images they see may not be real,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/litter-strewn-bay-bridge-entrance-will-soon-transform-into-an-urban-forest/ | It doesn’t look like much now, but a barren patch of cement strewn with trash and scrawled with graffiti at the mouth of the Bay Bridge will be transformed into a nursery growing the future of San Francisco’s urban trees.
This week, the Department of Public Works (DPW) unveiled plans to build a nursery at 5th and Bryant, turning this oft-ignored concrete cranny under Interstate 80 into a burgeoning greenspace.
“This site is a gateway to San Francisco,” said Cheryl Chambers, deputy district director of external affairs for Caltrans, which partnered with Cal Fire and DPW on the project. This place, she said, pointing to the blank concrete slab behind her was once blighted and forgotten. But now, she said, “this area will transform into a green oasis and a living classroom.”
Sandwiched between onramps, this urban nursery is planned in a part of town where traffic routinely snarls in both directions, releasing polluting exhaust fumes into the nearby SOMA neighborhood.
But soon, some 1000 young trees will help absorb emissions spewing from tailpipes and provide green space for residents who lack access to street trees or nearby parks. The trees will be cycled out when they’re mature enough and planted in neighborhoods that suffer from especially low canopy cover, said Rachel Gordon, spokesperson for DPW.
The nursery will also double as a workforce development training ground and DPW will recruit and train people from underserved communities in tree-care and forestry jobs, Gordon said.
Trees in urban spaces are considered a key climate solution by the world’s top scientists, who released a report earlier this week that focused on solutions to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. Green infrastructure, including urban forests, can sequester and store carbon, the report found, while also inducing a cooling effect reducing energy demand for water treatment.
As climate change accelerates warming temperatures, urban trees can also help offset the “heat island effect” and create shade for residents and neighborhoods as the number of sweltering days is growing in San Francisco.
“Our built environment is not weatherized to withstand extreme temperatures,” San Francisco’s Department of Public Health (DPH) said in a recent report. Right now, it said, The City “has limited cooling capacity, and this cooling capacity is not equitably distributed.”
The Examiner found that the city’s tree density is also unevenly distributed, leaving poorer neighborhoods exposed to hard, hot asphalt and concrete spaces. According to San Francisco’s Climate and Health program data, Chinatown has 5 percent tree cover compared to 32.8 percent in Presidio; Bayview/Hunter’s Point has 6.7 percent to Seacliff’s 29.3 percent, and Excelsior has 10.3 percent shade to Noe Valley’s 15.5 percent.
Although San Francisco has ambitions to be a climate leader, The City has fallen short of its tree-planting goals.
Despite The City’s goals to expand the street tree population with 50,000 new trees by 2035, the overall number of trees planted decreased from 3955 to 3377 compared to the previous fiscal year, data showed. As of last June, the total number of street trees is estimated at 123,782.
Funding is one challenge urban forest initiatives face, but the current drought is also taking a toll on tree health, leading to greater mortality and reduced canopy growth Public Works reported. “For trees already stressed from pest and disease problems, the drought is yet another compounding factor,” it said.
Still, the nursey will be an important hub for boosting The City’s supply of native and drought-tolerant trees, said Carla Short, the interim director of DPW, who said that The City has struggled to source certain species from commercial nurseries.
“The site is going to be really important because we sometimes have trouble finding the species we want to plant,” she said. “The idea is here is that we’ll be growing it ourselves.”
Short said her department is hoping to bolster San Francisco’s tree population through the construction of this nursery, which is being funded through a $2.4 million grant awarded by Caltrans and CalFire and slated for development next year.
Soon, this noisy patch of asphalt will be fertile ground for the next generation of San Francisco’s trees.
jwolfrom@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/s-f-resumes-covid-19-rent-relief-program/ | Recognizing that many renters are still struggling with financial hardship stemming from pandemic-related job loss or illness, The City’s supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to restart a local relief program for tenants.
More than $50 million will be available through the local program, called San Francisco Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP), which began in 2020 but then paused when The City deferred to the state program. Applications can be found at www.sf.gov/renthelp.
“There is a lot of anxiety around this issue, I think rightfully so,” said Supervisor Ahsha Safaí in the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday. “There are a lot of families concerned about losing their home, they are concerned about being displaced, and they are concerned about the magnitude of rent they might not be able to make up.”
The decision to resume local cash relief comes shortly after California lawmakers recently voted to extend the state eviction moratorium and distribute financial assistancethrough June 30, but only for people who applied by the program’s deadline of March 31.
The new legislation, AB 2179, prevents landlords from evicting tenants who applied and are still waiting on their rent relief payments from the state. Renters may file appeals past the state’s March 31 application deadline if requests are denied or not fully met.
But AB 2179 also puts limitations on renter protections created at the local level. The new state law grandfathers in some local eviction protection policies passed before Aug. 19, 2020, such as the eviction moratorium in Oakland. But cities including San Francisco, where the local eviction moratorium expired on Dec. 31, 2021, are now preempted from re-enacting the local eviction ban under the new state law.
In other words, the state’s COVID-19 rental relief program will provide cash assistance and ban evictions through June 30 for all California tenants, as long as they applied by March 31. San Francisco’s program kicked off on April 1 to provide financial assistance directly to local renters who missed the state’s application deadline. However, the state’s eviction moratorium does not apply to this group.
The $50 million in new relief funds for San Francisco will add to the millions of dollars already distributed throughout the pandemic. In May 2021, San Francisco received $90 million in federal funding for its local rent relief program. Applications for those funds were accepted from June to September 2021. But by fall 2021, renters in San Francisco were directed to apply through the state’s program instead.
San Francisco has so far distributed $21 million among 3,000 households in its federal funding intended for local COVID-19 relief, according to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
City officials on Tuesday bemoaned the back-and-forth rules around rental protections and assistance that have occurred throughout the pandemic at the state and local levels.
“It has been a mess not due to our making,” said Supervisor Dean Preston. “The state… has completely dropped the ball when it comes to implementing rent relief legislation.”
Critics of the state law include Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), who support rent relief but argued that preempting local eviction moratoriums in some cities would prevent further needed assistance.
“There is no policy rationale for overriding local eviction protections in San Francisco, etc., while allowing other cities to protect their renters. This arbitrary distinction is harmful to San Francisco renters, as well as renters in other cities and counties that aren’t part of the favored group of cities,” Wiener and Ting said in a joint public statement, announcing why they did not support the bill.
As of April 5, more than 20,800 households in San Francisco applied to the state rent relief program, but only about half of those applicants (10,174) have been served, according to the California COVID-19 rent relief dashboard. About $115.2 million in total funds had been paid to San Francisco tenants, according to the dashboard.
Meanwhile, the number of employed residents remains below pre-pandemic levels, data from the Office of the Controller shows. And demand for rent relief continues to outstrip the amount of money allocated.
The vast majority of applicants (80%) make less than 30% of the area median income in San Francisco.
“AB 2179’s preemption of San Francisco’s eviction moratorium is a fatal flaw in the bill,” Wiener and Ting said. “Without this change, we stand opposed to this legislation.”
sjohnson@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/shooting-in-sacramento-spurs-crackdown-on-illegal-firearms/ | By Soumya Karlamangla
New York Times
Despite its strict gun laws, California is by no means spared from the pains of gun violence.
In 2022, the state has already experienced 13 mass shootings, defined as a single event in which at least four people were shot, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.
The deadliest of these came over the weekend, when six people were killed and a dozen wounded in a crowded late-night strip of downtown Sacramento. The tragedy has fueled a push to further clamp down on guns in California.
“We’re standing right outside our great Capitol building, just blocks away from the horrific scene of the worst mass shooting in Sacramento history,” state Sen. Robert Hertzberg said in a news briefing Tuesday afternoon. “The alarm bells are blazing. We could not have a clearer call for action on gun violence.”
The Sacramento shooting has shined a light on an epidemic of illegal guns in California. The first weapon recovered had been stolen and converted to being capable of automatic gunfire, The Associated Press reported. In another shooting in Sacramento this year, a man used an unregistered assault weapon to kill his three daughters and then himself.
On Tuesday, Hertzberg and his colleagues promoted a package of bills aimed at reducing gun violence, including one that would make it easier for people to sue gun companies for liability in shootings. Other measures would tighten restrictions on unregistered firearms and marketing guns to minors.
Arguably the most controversial of these proposals called for by Gov. Gavin Newsom is modeled after a Texas abortion ban that allows private citizens to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion.
California’s proposal, SB 1327, would offer $10,000 bounties to encourage lawsuits from private citizens against anyone who manufactures, distributes or sells assault weapons, .50-caliber rifles, ghost guns or ghost gun kits.
Hertzberg, the bill’s lead author, said he opposed the Texas law, which he said had been “horribly upheld” by the Supreme Court. But, he added, “every gun that we can take off of the street — if that’s a ghost gun or an assault weapon — through any creative means, to me is a good thing.”
The announcement comes as new research reveals the dangers of having a gun in the home in California. Stanford University researchers published a groundbreaking study this week that found that people who lived with someone who owned a handgun were almost twice as likely to die by homicide as their neighbors without guns.
After the Sacramento shooting, President Joe Biden called for movement on federal gun legislation. He pleaded with Congress to ban ghost guns, require background checks for all gun sales, and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
“We must do more than mourn; we must act,” Biden said in a statement.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/the-city-poised-to-add-two-buildings-for-homeless-families/ | With its emphasis on co-living arrangements and shared space, the building on 12th Street was an ideal choice for city officials looking to expand housing options for families.
The City is poised to add new two properties to its growing portfolio of permanent supportive housing, including its first targeted at homeless families.
The investment totals more than $150 million.
One is the shelter-in-place hotel 685 Ellis Street that has been used by the city for safe shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic. The second, a 200-unit building at 333 12th Street called Common City Gardens, opened in 2021 and would exclusively house families experiencing homelessness.
Mayor London Breed announced the proposal to purchase the buildings on Tuesday, and the Board of Supervisors will have to review and sign off on the deals — $145 million for the 12th Street property and $19.9 million for the Ellis Street hotel — before they’re finalized.
“The acquisition of these two properties will not only add 274 new homes for those who are homeless, which will help us address the crisis we see on our streets, but for the first time we will have a building dedicated to helping families,” Breed said in a statement.
The buildings would become the seventh and eighth properties purchased by San Francisco for use as permanent supportive housing under Breed’s Homelessness Recovery Plan. The effort has been supported with funding from Proposition C, which city voters approved in 2018 to fund homelessness response efforts, and the state’s Project Homekey.
The City is on pace to exceed Breed’s two-year goal of buying or leasing 1,500 new permanent supportive housing units by July, with 1,490 now online. The city funds about 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing, which offers tenants a permanent, affordable home coupled with social services.
Officials tout the efficacy of permanent supportive housing noting the eviction rate of tenants in such units is below 2%.
Tuesday’s announcement comes as The City struggles to fill hundreds of vacancies in the existing network of permanent supportive housing, as reported by the San Francisco Public Press in February. A new dashboard posted online by the department Homelessness and Supportive Housing shows 800 of the city’s permanent supportive housing units were vacant in March.
As it looks to remedy that issue, The City is charging ahead with the purchase of more housing.
The 12th Street building is a mix of multi-bedroom units, making it perfect for family housing, according to city officials.
“This is practically unheard of and an incredible resource to serve families with children,” Emily Cohen, deputy director for communications and legislative affairs at HSH, said at a March community meeting.
Common is a New York-based company that operates buildings like the one on 12th Street throughout the country, including several in the Bay Area, pitching their shared living arrangements as a way to save on rent in otherwise tight housing markets. The company marketed its SoMa apartments as “the ideal home base for your urban adventure.”
Attempts to reach the company for comment on Wednesday were unsuccessful.
The 333 building is brand new and doesn’t need repair, meaning families would be able to begin moving in right away after closing on the property this summer – assuming everything goes according to plan.
There were 208 families with children experiencing homelessness in San Francisco, according to the most recent survey of the homeless population conducted in 2019.
The Ellis Street site is a single-room occupancy hotel nestled in the heart of the Tenderloin and has 74 units that would serve adults experiencing homelessness.
The purchases received quick support from Supervisor Matt Haney, whose district includes the Tenderloin and South of Market area where the buildings are located.
“These acquisitions represent huge steps to provide desperately needed permanent affordable housing,” Haney said in a statement. City Gardens gives us an opportunity to finally increase our deeply affordable housing stock for families. And by converting the current Shelter in Place hotel at 685 Ellis into permanent supportive housing, we are following through on our commitment to get people out of shelters and into permanent housing.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-in-san-francisco-democrat-has-become-a-meaningless-label/ | For four decades, San Francisco has been a one-party city. The dominance of the Democratic Party is complete.
The City has not had a Republican mayor since George Christopher left office in early 1964. No Republican has made a strong bid for mayor since 1975. The Board of Supervisors has not had a Republican member for decades. And The City’s representation in Washington and Sacramento has been dominated by the Democratic Party for about that long as well.
In the recent attempt to recall Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, 86% of the voters in The City opposed it. This century, Democratic candidates for President regularly receive more than 80% of the vote in San Francisco. Democratic dominance in national politics reached its height in San Francisco in 2016, when Hillary Clinton outpolled Donald Trump 84-9. Trump came roaring back in 2020, with support surging to 13% in The City, trailing Joe Biden by only 72%.
All of this may make San Franciscans feel good and see the demise of the GOP in San Francisco as evidence of The City’s strong progressive tradition. Yet the story is not quite that simple.
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously observed, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party.” The San Francisco equivalent is that in a true multi-party system Supervisor Aaron Peskin and Mayor London Breed would not be in the same party either. But San Francisco has a one-party system where almost all politicians and almost all policy views are forced under the overstuffed umbrella that is the Democratic Party.
One-party systems are functionally no-party systems, making it more difficult for voters to choose between candidates or hold their elected officials accountable when there is no incumbent. After all, how can you know which bums to throw out when they are all in the same party?
Instead, the absence of a functioning multi-party system means voters have to work harder to know which candidates and politicians have which positions, which interest groups best reflect their views and which endorsers to trust. But most voters don’t have the time to sort through all that.
Much of the blame for San Francisco’s one-party system can be laid at the feet of the GOP whose steady move rightward since the 1980s has made the party uncompetitive in many big cities with sizable nonwhite and LGBTQ populations. The ascendancy of Donald Trump and the corresponding transformation of the GOP into a hybrid of far right populism and authoritarian cult made the party even less palatable in liberal and diverse San Francisco.
In S.F., the progressive left and pro-business moderates — those who want to build affordable housing and those who want to allow developers to build what they want, those who support a pro-police tough-on-crime position and those who want to push back against the carceral state — all share a distaste for Trump and the GOP. So ironically and definitely strangely, they all find themselves in the same party.
The absence of a viable Republican Party does not mean that there is no conservative politics in San Francisco, just that conservatives find their way to the Democratic Party as both a matter of practical politics and frequently as a genuine revulsion at today’s GOP and its leadership. Thus, while San Francisco is a solidly Democratic city, it does not automatically follow that it is a progressive city.
But being against Donald Trump is a very low common denominator for political forces that have very different visions.
Politicians, media and activists often frame San Francisco politics as pitting the progressives against the moderates. This is a useful paradigm, but it is one for insiders rather than ordinary voters. Most voters, in San Francisco and elsewhere, understand that Republicans are conservative and Democrats are liberal. Without those labels, terms like progressives and moderate are of limited value to voters, because there is no easy way to tell who is in which camp.
The problem here is that in San Francisco, Democrat has become a meaningless label, and certainly does not indicate progressive politics. Rather, it is essentially the party you identify with if you want to get elected, as well as a label that provides cover for many conservatives.
This is not unique to San Francisco, although it may be more acute in The City.
Most American cities today are dominated by the Democratic Party with little or no Republican presence. Similarly, many suburban and rural areas are one-party Republican systems. Most Americans know that we have a two-party system, but from a practical perspective our system is more accurately understood as two parallel one-party systems with only a few places where both parties are competitive — and San Francisco is certainly not one of those places.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way out of this conundrum. The Republican Party will remain on the periphery of San Francisco politics unless it changes radically — and there is little indication of that happening. And the Democratic Party is strong enough in The City that no progressive alternative can viably compete. San Francisco will continue to deliver huge majorities to statewide and national Democratic candidates, while city politics will remain confusing to voters and driven by byzantine fights over who is the real progressive.
Lincoln Mitchell has written numerous books and articles about The City and the Giants. Visit lincolnmitchell.com or follow him on Twitter @LincolnMitchell | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/giants-season-preview-position-by-position-analysis/ | By Chris Haft
Special to The Examiner
The Giants appear to be at a disadvantage as they begin defending their 2021 National League West championship.
Resident legend Buster Posey retired after last season, preferring domestic tranquility to absorbing a succession of foul tips off his skull — though raising two sets of twins will test any family’s tranquility. Put in terms of accomplishment and talent, that’s one Most Valuable Player and one Rookie of the Year Award winner gone.
Talented handyman Kris Bryant defected to Colorado in free agency. That increased the talent drain to two MVPs and two Rookies of the Year. Injuries increase the Rookie of the Year count to three, with third baseman Evan Longoria (right index finger) slated to miss the start of the regular season. Add outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. (knee) to the injured list, and you can add a second Willie Mac Award winner to the contingent of wayward Giants.
Yet the Giants, who’ll open the season at home for the first time since 2009 when they welcome the Miami Marlins to Oracle Park on Friday, seem poised to contend for a playoff spot under the newly expanded postseason format. San Francisco broke the bank in 2021 with a franchise-record 107 victories under manager Gabe Kapler, who understands that pitching is baseball’s currency — and that he holds the keys to the mint with a largely intact pitching staff.
“Our goal is to do it again with a lot of the same guys we had last year,” All-Star shortstop Brandon Crawford told MLB.com.
Around the horn
Catcher. The Giants hope Joey Bart can realize the expectations that were heaped upon him when they selected him second overall in the 2018 draft. Bart will inevitably suffer in comparison to Posey, whose diverse skills made him the finest performer at his position in Giants history. The Giants drafted Bart while knowing they’d need a supremely talented player to succeed Posey; they just didn’t guess it would happen this soon. If Bart falters or simply needs a rest, Kapler won’t hesitate to summon backup Curt Casali, a skilled defender who’s expected to improve at the plate due to better health.
First base. Right knee inflammation kept Brandon Belt out of Cactus League action for virtually the entire spring exhibition schedule. But “the Captain,” who kept busy by performing baseball-related activities in camp, has maintained he’ll be ready for Opening Day. The Giants would be overjoyed if Belt can approach the power he displayed last year when he clobbered a career-high 29 homers in 97 games. He blew by his previous best of 18 in 2015 and 2017.
Second base. As a left-handed batter, Tommy La Stella figures to be the primary starter at this spot — that is, if he has recovered sufficiently from offseason Achilles surgery. Regardless of La Stella’s condition, Thairo Estrada, who hit seven homers in 52 games last season, continues to push for more playing time. Estrada is out of minor league options, but the 28-man roster limit that will be in place until May 1 will help the Giants stall as they ponder this and other personnel decisions.
Shortstop. Can Crawford top himself? He reached career bests in multiple offensive categories last year, including homers (24), batting average (.298), RBIs (90), OPS (.895) and OPS+ (141). Defensively, he was rangier than ever. But he’s 35, an age that will keep the skeptics talking.
Third base. Wilmer Flores likely will be the primary replacement for Longoria, who was expected to provide much-needed power. Not that Flores lacks pop. He matched a career high with 18 home runs last year while making 58 of his 139 appearances at third base. Jason Vosler is among the possible fill-ins here.
Outfield. Newcomer Joc Pederson joins Steven Duggar, Darin Ruf, Austin Slater and Mike Yastrzemski. It’ll be intriguing to see how Kapler blends Pederson, an ex-Dodger, into a group that has been largely intact the last few years. It’ll be just as intriguing to see how the Giants make room for Wade, one of their best clutch hitters last year, when he’s ready to return. None of these guys would admit it, but they’ll be looking over their shoulders at top prospect Heliot Ramos, wondering when the Giants will summon the 22-year-old slugger to the big leagues.
Designated hitter/bench. See above. An outfielder not stationed at a position probably will find himself receiving four plate appearances (or more) as the DH. Ruf looks like a prototypical DH. Duggar’s speed makes him ideal for pinch-running situations. Expect Estrada and Mauricio Dubon to play all around the infield and, in Dubon’s case, the outfield when necessary. Vosler proved last season he can give the Giants versatility.
On the mound
Starting rotation. Logan Webb, Carlos Rodón, Anthony DeSclafani, Alex Wood and Alex Cobb combine to form what could be one of the National League’s most effective contingents. Webb would have looked at home pitching alongside Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. Rodón possesses jaw-dropping stuff but has lacked durability, working 165 innings only once in seven seasons with the White Sox.
Bullpen. Though Kapler named Jake McGee the closer, Camilo Doval is likely to receive some late-inning opportunities as a right-handed complement to the veteran left-hander. Sidewinder Tyler Rogers remains an absolute marvel. Jarlin García, Dominic Leone, Zack Littell and others provide depth.
Chris Haft is a longtime Bay Area baseball writer who covers the Giants for The Examiner. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220406 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/for-stanford-nurse-kimberley-reed-overtime-shifts-are-no-longer-sustainable/ | By Margaret Hetherwick
Special to The Examiner
Working in a fast-paced, high stakes environment, where sick people rely on you for their recovery and every move counts — all while on your feet — is not everyone’s idea of a dream workplace. But for Kimberley Reed, a nurse in the post-op cardiovascular ICU unit at Stanford Hospital, a great day at work looks just like that.
Reed, who lives in San Mateo, has been a nurse at Stanford for 18 years, and she’s had some long days. Her average shifts last up to 12 hours. Her position in the CVICU means that her patients are very vulnerable; they require attentive care and a strong advocate to get their needs met.
“Those patients come out extremely sick, bleeding, requiring tons of interventions, medications and fluids. I fight for them the same way I would fight for my family,” she said. “But when I come back two days later and see them sitting up in a chair, that’s how I know I’m doing what I was supposed to. That’s a great day at work.”
In addition to being an intensive care nurse, Reed is the representative for her fellow nurses in the independent union at the Stanford and Packard Hospitals, the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (CRONA). Right now, CRONA is renegotiating their contract with the hospital, which expired April 1. Nurses rallied the morning of April 4 in an effort to draw attention to their demands, and will vote to strike on April 7.
The union is focusing on nurse’s well-being for this round of bargaining: Demands include mental health support, workplace violence prevention, stay-on bonuses and a no-cost medical plan. These proposals are CRONA’s response to a critical trend rising in healthcare workers — below the waves of sickness during the pandemic, burnout has been a riptide moving through the staff of hospitals.
“I think all of our demands — the safe staffing, the improved workplace protections, our aggressive mental health resources — those all speak to the ongoing discontent heard nationwide from nursing,” said Reed.
Nurses across the country have been reporting record levels of exhaustion and stress brought on by the workload they shouldered during the pandemic. The American Nurses Association warned the Biden administration about an “unsustainable nurse staffing shortage” across the nation back in September 2021. In January 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services found that 12% of US hospitals were chronically understaffed, and 23% of hospitals were anticipating critically short staff in the upcoming week. California ranked seventh among hospitals expecting to be short handed within the same week of the survey, with almost 40% of its facilities reporting low staffing numbers.
Unprecedented times aside, Reed says that tensions between the workforce and the administration of hospitals have been gradually rising since the start of her career. Back in the 2000s, workloads were manageable, she said. The tough days gave her a sense of accomplishment, “like you were doing something good for your patients.”
“Work went from being very patient-centered to more business-focused and budget-driven. Now everything is about the numbers, regardless as to whether or not the staffing fits those numbers. It’s very lean,” said Reed. “They cannot continue to run the hospital the way that they do and still expect the nurses to show up every day because we love what we do.”
Health care workers in California have some of the strongest unions in the country, but that does not exempt them from a national crisis. Reed reports that some of her coworkers were performing 12-hour shifts 10 days in a row. Reed herself developed an irregular heartbeat from stress. In a recent study by CRONA, 45% of nurses were considering leaving the profession.
“How much farther can we push our nurses? People are leaving in droves,” said Reed. “The hospitals made it very clear, ‘We want you more available to us.’ But how much more available can we be to you, if we don’t get to recharge and rest?”
The demand for their expertise is bottomless. In California, nurses cannot be forced to work overtime, except in cases where a government declaration of emergency is in place. California has now been in a state of emergency for over two years.
Stanford and Packard Hospitals have earned their 15th consecutive year on the Best Hospitals Honor Roll for their stellar care; for Reed, such a high accolade should correspond to equal quality treatment of nursing staff.
“We’re demanding sustainable working conditions right now, so that we can support the future generations,” said Reed. “I feel like we can set the tone for every other hospital in the Bay Area for what they should fight for: to get to protect their staff and their patients.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-a-generational-opportunity-to-address-historic-inequities-facing-black-residents-in-s-f/ | By Brett Andrews, Tomiquia Moss and Al Gilbert
Special to The Examiner
For the first time in a generation, we have an opportunity to bring forward true prosperity for Black San Franciscans. Plagued by a longtime crisis of social determinants and behavioral health, Black San Franciscans remain on the receiving end of criminalization, social stratification, misdiagnoses and punitive legal measures. Available social services have also woefully missed the mark on providing culturally informed and appropriate mental health or substance use treatment, often causing irreparable harm.
These are daunting challenges, which we founded the Black Leadership Council to address, and Governor Gavin Newsom’s proposed state budget represents an historic moment to confront these longstanding injustices. California boasts a staggering $45.7 billion budget surplus and while the governor is funding several programs that will support underserved communities, there are significant gaps in his financial blueprint that deserve additional resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only robbed the lives of countless African Americans, but it has also exacerbated the wealth gap in San Francisco for Black residents, a daunting disparity that is reflected in homeownership rates: African American homeownership in San Francisco stands at just 34.9%, the lowest among all metro areas, while white homeownership rates are 58.6%, a gap that is among the largest in the nation, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
CalHome remains one of the only state funding sources available for new construction of owner-occupied units, home preservation and access to homeownership for low- and very low-income households. A minimum increase in CalHome funding of $200 million should be directed for construction of these homes throughout the state, resulting in more opportunities for lower income Black homebuyers in cities like San Francisco for generations to come.
Similarly, the Governor’s $300 million allocation for public health includes no language that addresses racial health equity and injustice. That’s why we are working with the State Legislature to request an additional $100 million in funding for the Health, Equity and Racial Justice Fund, which will provide resources to community-based organizations, clinics and other organizations to identify pressing health and racial justice issues in metropolitan areas such as San Francisco.
The Governor’s budget has identified historic allocations for housing and homelessness initiatives, but it does not address the chronic under-investment in Black communities throughout California, particularly in the Bay Area. In fact, California’s Black homeownership rate is now lower than it was in the 1960s, when it was completely legal to discriminate against Black homebuyers.
To confront these ongoing inequities, the state should invest $500 million in a one-time pilot to support Black-led housing solutions and underserved neighborhoods throughout the region, which includes numerous communities in San Francisco. The funding should support capacity building, down payment assistance for Black homeowners and predevelopment, acquisition and rehabilitation support for African American development corporations.
We also believe that $2 billion should be directed to the Homeless Housing Assistance Program and $500 million for Homekey Supportive Services. Black or African American people in San Francisco represent just 5% of The City’s population but comprise 37% of the total homelessness population, according to a report from the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Historic investments must be made to bridge that unsettling disparity in The City.
The Black Leadership Council played an essential role in the passage of AB3121, which created the Reparations Task Force, and our organization has backed successful legislation that expanded broadband infrastructure, required implicit bias training for frontline health workers and eliminated discriminatory housing covenants. But there is still so much work left to do.
We understand that we are seeking major reforms, but these upheavals are necessary to improve the broken systems that have failed Black families across generations. We have an unprecedented moment to change that dispiriting narrative. We must not squander this opportunity.
Brett Andrews, Tomiquia Moss and Al Gilbert are founding members of the Black Leadership Council, a collection of leaders seeking to improve conditions for Black Californians and other vulnerable populations across our state. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/navigating-a-hit-and-run-claim/ | By Christopher B. Dolan and Kimberly E. Levy
I was rear-ended on the freeway a few days ago and the driver who hit me fled the scene. The police took a report but have not been able to identify the other driver. I ended up in the hospital with some serious injuries. I am not going to be able to go back to work for a few weeks, at least. The bills for my medical care are going to start piling up. I have no idea what to do. Please help.
— Kate R., Oakland
Thank you for reaching out, Kate. We’re sorry to hear about what happened to you and hope that you make a speedy recovery. Navigating the claim process for a hit-and-run case can be complicated. The good news is that you may have purchased several types of insurance coverages that can help you through this difficult time.
Medical Payments Coverage (med pay)
What is it? Med pay is an optional coverage that is part of your individual car insurance policy. Med pay covers reasonable and necessary medical bills when you (or your passengers) are injured in an accident. Med pay will even cover your reasonably necessary medical expenses if you are injured as a pedestrian or passenger in someone else’s car. This coverage applies regardless of who is at fault for the collision.
How does it work? There are two ways that med pay typically works.
1. You go to the medical provider of your choice and the provider bills the med pay directly as if it were health insurance; or
2. You submit bills and records to your insurance company for reimbursement of paid or outstanding bills.
Why do I need this coverage if I have health insurance? There are several reasons this coverage is useful even if you have health insurance. First, health insurance often leaves you to pick up the tab for co-pays and co-insurance amounts. With med pay coverage, you can be reimbursed for these out-of-pocket costs. Second, med pay enables injured people to seek treatment that would not normally be covered by their health insurance policy, i.e., acupuncture, massage and other alternative treatments. Finally, med pay allows you to seek a second opinion by a medical provider of your choice which is often beneficial when your health insurance coverage is an HMO plan.
Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Bodily Injury Coverage (“UM/UIM”)
What is it? Uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage applies when another driver is at fault for a collision but either has no insurance or not enough insurance to cover the injured person’s medical bills and other damages. Importantly, this coverage also applies in hit-and-run cases, such as yours, when the identity of the at-fault driver cannot be ascertained.
To protect yourself against hit-and-run drivers, uninsured drivers and drivers carrying the minimum amount of liability insurance (which is $15,000 in California), it is best to make sure you protect yourself with uninsured/underinsured coverage.
How does it work? With this coverage, your own insurance company covers your losses as if it were the at-fault driver — the insurance company steps into the shoes of the at-fault driver. In a UM/UIM case, you will make a claim against your own insurance company up to the amount of your purchased coverage.
In some ways, UM/UIM cases are advantageous. Because you are in a contract with your insurance company, your insurance company has a duty to treat you fairly and regard your interests equally as its own interests. Unfortunately, you will not be entitled to a jury trial on these cases. UM/UIM cases are typically resolved by settlement or through an arbitration process (trial in front of a neutral “judge” agreed upon by the parties).
If you are injured in a hit-and-run accident, specific rules apply to trigger UM coverage. First, there must have been contact between your vehicle and the hit-and-run vehicle. Second, within 24 hours after the accident, it must be reported to the police for the jurisdiction in which the accident happened. Third, within 30 days of the accident, you must provide your insurance company with a sworn statement that you were injured and that the person causing injury is unknown.
Facts explaining the same must be provided in the sworn statement. Typically, a copy of the police report showing hit and run will be sufficient to meet this requirement. These requirements are set forth in California Insurance Code section 11580.2(b)(1) and (2).
Will making a claim increase my insurance premiums? In California, it is illegal for an insurance company to raise rates when a policyholder brings a claim and was not at fault. (California Insurance Code Section 491). As long as the other driver was the cause of the accident, your premiums should not increase. If there is an increase in the cost of your coverage based on claims activity made necessary by the fault of another, this should be reported to the California Department of Insurance.
Do not concern yourself with the fact that payment is coming from your own insurance company versus the adverse driver or his/her/their insurance company. This is coverage that you have paid for and the insurance company is best equipped to bear the loss. The insurance company is free to seek reimbursement from an uninsured driver should that be feasible.
How long do I have to resolve my case? Generally, in a UM case, you have two years from the date of the incident to either settle your claim or make a “demand for arbitration,” a process where you formally notify your insurance company that you would like to resolve your case by arbitration. Your insurance company has an obligation to keep you informed of these deadlines and requirements throughout the process.
So often, we think of insurance as a means to protect our assets and property. It is equally important, however, to remember to protect yourself against uninsured and underinsured motorists who may cause you harm. Review your insurance policy to see if you have the applicable coverage.
For more information on Dolan Law Firm, you can go to Dolanlawfirm.com.
To read more articles on our blog visit us at: Dolan Law Firm Blog.
Christopher B. Dolan is the owner of Dolan Law Firm, PC. Kim Levy is a Senior Litigation Attorney in our San Francisco Office. We serve clients throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and California from our offices in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles. Email questions and topics for future articles to: help@dolanlawfirm.com. Each situation is different, and this column does not constitute legal advice. We recommend that you consult with an experienced trial attorney to fully understand your rights. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/its-a-broadway-cabaret-weekend-with-spencer-day-and-santino-fontana/ | As spring begins saving daylight and more performing arts venues start vocalizing and stretching after their long, enforced slumber, Bay Area music patrons are beginning to wrestle with their favorite conundrum — the “embarrassment of riches” syndrome.
Fortunately for Broadway and cabaret fans, this weekend allows for an “and,” not “or,” resolution.
First, you can catch up with local favorite jazz singer Spencer Day as he dips a toe into the show tune canon at Feinstein’s at the Nikko on Friday and Saturday.
Then, take advantage of a debut visit from Tony-winner Santino Fontana, courtesy of the return of Marilyn Levinson’s Bay Area Cabaret to the Venetian Room at the Fairmont on Sunday.
Former city-dweller Day is coming home, spiritually at least, to try out new material from his recent “Broadway by Day” release on the Club 44 Records label. The album is a bit of a throwback to the pre-rock days when Broadway drove popular music, and every major artist from Ella Fitzgerald to Mel Tormé recorded covers of songs, if not entire scores from musicals.
It will be family reunion time for California native Fontana, as well as a chance to close the loop on the concert engagement derailed by COVID. “I was still doing ‘Tootsie’ (on Broadway]) and the history of the (Venetian) Room and who had sung there before, plus the fact that a lot of my family has never come East to see me perform, so it was perfect. So now it is again, and this is one of the first performances I’ve booked since everything shut down.”
Santino Anthony Fontana was born in Stockton and left at age 10, but the roots run deep. “My parents were born in Antioch, I have cousins in Modesto, and in San Francisco, and Brentwood, Riverside, Rodeo, and I’m very familiar with the East Bay,” he says, “but I’ve never performed here.”
Not even on a tour? “I’ve never toured. I missed that boat somehow, which is weird because I love traveling.”
He did spend time in San Francisco. “We’d go to museums and ball games. I was at the Giants game in 1989,” he adds, referring to the game famously stopped by the Loma Prieta earthquake. “Yeah. My dad took me out of school that day. I was 7.”
Multifaceted is an overused word in entertainment career jargon, but it really fits in Fontana’s case. Whenever he meets a fan, it’s easy to quickly peg whether they are Team CXG (for followers of his two-year run as Greg Serrano on the musical series “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), Team Broadway (for “Tootsie,” “Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella” or other titles from his decade-long-and-counting New York stage career), Team Hans (for his voice work in the “Frozen” franchise), Team You (for the sociopath he voices in the popular trilogy of Caroline Kepnes audiobooks) or lately Team Midge (from his turn as strip club manager Boise in the current season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” on Amazon Prime).
The “Frozen” fans, primarily kids, provide a unique opportunity because the film is animated. “It’s the best thing. You have this giant secret nobody knows. This kid at a restaurant was being kinda fussy, and his mom opened a laptop and started the movie. I could really either make his day or scare the hell out of him. There’s nothing else like that feeling,” he laughs. “So odd, but great.”
Fontana likes to keep his concert setlist loose for Sunday. It could include songs from Stephen Sondheim’s “Anyone Can Whistle,” which he recently performed in concert with Vanessa Williams. “It was a really fun night but also stressful because it’s a hard score, and I only got one shot at it.” Well, not exactly. “My high school did ‘Anyone Can Whistle,’” he adds with a giggle. “I was a freshman, and I directed a production of it in college.” When the Fairmont returned to his calendar, he realized his concert music book had actually been sitting in San Francisco for two years. “I didn’t need it for a while,” he jokes, “so there may be some audience participation in the choosing of songs.”
Spencer Day has also been wrestling with song choices putting the “Broadway By Day” set together. “I’ve never done a full-on swinging ‘jazz-standards’ record, and I didn’t want to be lazy and do the same songs that everybody else does. Much as I love ‘Summertime,’ I can’t really think of anything I would do with that song that hasn’t been done better by a lot of other people.”
The pandemic unexpectedly quarantined him in Mexico. “I was there for some shows that didn’t end up happening, but in the process connected with some great musicians there and a studio.” A trade of studio time for voice talent allowed him to spend the enforced hiatus productively. “I’m now the voice for a public service announcement in Guadalajara!”
Jazz, Day’s usual milieu, and Broadway were cordial but only occasional collaborators. Some scores from the 1950s and ’60s, like “West Side Story” and “My Fair Lady,” have been embraced for instrumental riffs by the likes of Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, and Shelly Manne. However, the practice declined from the 1970s onward. “As someone who loves both genres, I think that there developed an elitism in jazz that viewed Broadway as too cheesy, or too gay, and I think Broadway people view jazz as something that became really esoteric and inaccessible.”
He’s tried to bridge that and a generation gap with Golden Age titles by Rodgers and Hammerstein blended with birthday sharers Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim, plus cuts from “Annie” and “A Chorus Line.”
“We really wanted to find songs where we could do something surprising but not gimmicky. Just because you can record ‘Old Man River’ in 7/8-time as a mambo doesn’t mean that’s really what that song wants to be. You kind of have to listen to it with respect and accept it for how it wants to live.”
IF YOU GO:
Spencer Day
Where: Feinstein’s at the Nikko, 222 Mason St., S.F.
When: Doors 7 p.m., Show 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Apr. 8-9
Tickets: $90
Contact: (866) 663-1063, www.feinsteinssf.com
Santino Fontana
Presented by Bay Area Cabaret
Where: Venetian Room, Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason St., S.F.
When: 5 p.m. Sunday, Apr. 10
Tickets: $90
Contact: (415) 927-INFO (4636), www.cityboxoffice.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/features/read-todays-edition-of-the-examiner/ | Read: Today’s edition of the Examiner By Nob Hill Gazette • April 7, 2022 1:19 pm - Updated April 7, 2022 3:14 pm Click to read the latest edition of the San Francisco Examiner Sign Up For The Daily Newsletter | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/s-f-s-environmental-official-resigns-over-alleged-25ooo-donation/ | The City’s top environmental official abruptly resigned on Thursday amid scrutiny about her alleged solicitation of a $25,000 donation from Recology for her department.
Department of the Environment Director Debbie Raphael’s resignation came two days after a San Francisco Standard story revealed the gift, and a day before the city controller’s office is expected to release a “public integrity review” that included an inquiry into her actions.
Stepping into Raphael’s role on an interim basis is Tyrone Jue, who is the assistant deputy general manager for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and an environmental advisor to Mayor London Breed, who announced the appointment on Thursday. Jue also serves as Breed’s appointee on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board of Directors.
Raphael quit as political pressure was only beginning to mount. Supervisor Aaron Peskin called for a hearing Tuesday amid the swirl of allegations of potential misconduct and ineptitude against the Department of Environment and “pay-to-play” politics in City Hall.
“This is more than deeply disturbing, it really makes me sick,” Peskin said. “And I am deeply concerned that it’s not close to over.”
The Standard reported on Tuesday that Raphael solicited a $25,000 donation from Recology at the same time the waste management company was inking a city contract to haul trash to its Solano County landfill in 2015.
The allegations echoed the dealmaking in City Hall that led to the downfall of former Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, who pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this year after accepting gifts from city contractors in exchange for city contracts.
Raphael, who served as director of the department for eight years, allegedly solicited the donation from Recology to help fund climate change awareness events organized under then-mayor Ed Lee. Simultaneously, the Standard reported, the city was finalizing its deal for trash hauling with Recology.
The Recology executive from whom Raphael requested the donation, Paul Giusti, played a key role in the Nuru scandal. Giusti ultimately pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe Nuru.
The Department of the Environment did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Breed lauded Raphael’s years of work for the city, including the development if its Climate Action Plan, in a statement.
“While this work has been important, issues with the Department have been raised recently by the Controller and the City Attorney,” Breed said. “At this time, new leadership at the Department will allow us to continue the important work started under Debbie’s tenure.”
Peskin also pointed to recent reporting in the Chronicle, which documented the disappointment of recycling advocates in the Department of the Environment’s new SF BottleBank. The mobile recycling program, which ostensibly exists to make it easier for people to return bottles and cans for a deposit, was shaped in part by grocery industry lobbyists.
The hearing Peskin called for on Tuesday, he said, would be used to analyze the Department of the Environment’s contracting processes.
Recology agreed earlier this year to pay $95 million to city residents after investigators looking into Nuru discovered that he had agreed to recommend a rate hike of 14%, double the company’s proposed 7% increase.
Peskin introduced a proposal to shift the responsibility of tracking – and proposing – the rates Recology charges San Francisco customers from the Department of Public Works to the Controller’s office. It will appear on the June ballot. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/this-is-a-goliath-effort-to-make-this-area-more-conservative/ | By the end of next week, San Francisco’s Redistricting Task Force will have voted on a new redistricting map, a guidebook by which supervisorial districts will abide by for the next decade.
But the journey of getting to the destination of redrawn lines is proving to be difficult for the task force.
After seemingly coming to a consensus last Saturday, the nine-member group reversed its selection of a preferred map at its following meeting Tuesday. In a shift from map 4D, the task force chose map 4B as a base to begin drawing district lines.
It was a contentious move. The subsequent meeting Wednesday night was dominated by more than 120 stakeholders who thought that there was a mutual understanding between the task force and its public – that a submitted “unity map,” which most closely resembled 4D, was the favored option.
In person and on Twitter, havoc ensued until past 3 a.m. Thursday.
What announcements were made as the Wednesday night redistricting meeting took form?
Hours into the redistricting meeting, 5th District Supervisor Dean Preston announced on social media that the city’s Elections Commission had scheduled a special meeting to discuss the possible removal of three redistricting task force members.
On Thursday morning, San Francisco Senator Scott Wiener confirmed the special meeting in a statement, but called it a “power grab.” However it’s unclear which members are being targeted.
The Elections Commission website Thursday afternoon lists a special meeting but does not clearly identify an agenda item that could potentially strip any member of their position.
“If the commission makes this move and replaces its appointees, those appointees will take their seats… literally the day before the task force is required to publish its final map,” Wiener wrote. “They would cast that critical vote without having participated in the months-long public process.”
A few hours later, San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued a statement supporting Wiener’s view of the matter.
“This undermines and corrupts what is supposed to be a transparent and non-partisan process,” Breed said. “This is neither transparency nor good government. The Elections Commission should recognize that a decision to remove members of the public who have served this city for months would destroy the integrity of the redistricting process.”
Regardless of who ends up on the task force, what are the potential effects of choosing either 4B or 4D?
The initial map, map 4D, keeps the SoMa and Tenderloin neighborhoods together in District 6. Though residents from other districts made their requests of the task force, the unification of the two neighborhoods was an ask from many surveyed in earlier months.
Map 4B, on the other hand, breaks up the SoMa and the Tenderloin by grouping parts of both with the Western Addition in District 5.
Many members and allies of the LGBTQIA+ community stood at the podium Wednesday and asked the task force to leave the community’s boundaries as is.
“This is a Goliath effort to make this area more conservative,” said Tenderloin resident Jupiter Peraza. “The Tenderloin and SoMa are filled with people just like me, first-generation immigrants and working class people who are translating their diasporas into tangible, visible reminders of where they come from.”
The first attempt to alter the map resulted in some consensual changes and other changes left at an impasse. For example, the task force agreed on keeping Potrero Hill whole through 16th Street in District 10 but disagreed on expanding District 4 into the Inner Sunset.
Why is the redrawing/remapping of supervisorial districts so contentious?
Redistricting, according to the city’s own website, is conducted with the results of each census in order to make sure districts are fair and proportionate. The San Francisco City Charter ensures that district boundaries adhere to local, state and federal laws — laws that call for equality not only through reasonably equal populations but also the grouping of communities who share similar ethnic, political or social interests (conveniently named “communities of interest”).
Keeping communities of interest together is beneficial to residents seeking “effective representation,” staff and consultants say.
Both District 5’s Preston and District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney oppose map 4B because, they argue, it would separate communities of interest.
“West SoMa, Central SoMa and the Tenderloin should stay together and stay in D6. Any map that pulls them out of the district or separates them is unacceptable and wrong,” Haney wrote.
Is there merit to the allegations coming from Supervisor Dean Preston that map 4B would gerrymander his district?
Preston has previously called the task force’s maneuver to favor map 4B “GOP-level gerrymandering” on social media.
“The most conservative forces in this city realize they can’t win district elections in a fair fight, so they’re not just moving the goalposts, they’re throwing the rules out the window,” said Preston, who describes himself as a “progressive champion.”
While no task force member has responded to the claim of gerrymandering, Wiener generally slammed Preston for his suspectedrole in trying to remove three members and accused him of favoritism.
“It also speaks volumes that Supervisor Dean Preston… is leading the charge to get the Elections Commission to take this inappropriate, unprecedented step, based on his unhappiness with the proposed lines for his own district,” Wiener wrote.
As a practical matter, how much of a difference does redistricting make? Why should residents care?
The League of Women Voters of San Francisco, an entity that has been engaging the community about redistricting in its ongoing mission to improve and protect voting rights, explained that redrawn district lines affects political power.
“In San Francisco, redistricting determines who will appear on your ballot and what parts of the city they will represent. Redistricting can affect your community’s ability to elect a supervisor who represents your interests and responds to your needs,” league members say. “By participating in local redistricting, you, your neighbors, and your community can have a voice in San Francisco’s democracy.”
mhartman@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/time-to-prep-for-future-covid-waves-s-f-health-officials-warn/ | San Francisco health officials are urging high-risk residents to make a game plan now for how and when to access time-sensitive COVID-19 treatments ahead of future surges.
“COVID-19 medicines can save lives and are important tools we can use to protect people who are medically vulnerable, but we must be prepared to get them to people quickly,” said San Francisco Health Officer Dr. Susan Philip. “This is one of the ways we can be prepared for COVID, as this virus will be with us for some time to come.”
The supply of COVID-19 therapies has vastly improved since the omicron surge for oral antiviral pills such as Paxlovid and monoclonal antibodies, which are administered intravenously and require observation by a clinician.
“We have a lot more supply than demand right now,” said Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at the University of California San Francisco. “People just don’t know how to get access to it. It’s not available in every drug store; it’s still kind of a mystery.”
As of Thursday, UCSF had 250 courses of Paxlovid and about 80 monoclonal antibody treatments available, Chin-Hong said.
Other therapy centers such as Total Infusion in Oakland are also stocked up with supplies, which can expire if not used within 12 to 18 months.
It’s a significant change from just a couple of months ago when treatment centers were struggling to keep up with patient requests during the omicron wave.
“We have an abundance (of COVID antibody treatments), so much so that I declined some the other day,” said Kee Conti, Director of Total Infusion, which administered monoclonal antibodies and other infusion treatments in East Oakland. As of Thursday, the clinic had around 250 courses of the monoclonal antibody drug called bebtelovimab.
The future of COVID may be uncertain, but health experts say preparation is key to moving forward safely and confidently. Here’s what else you may need to know.
Am I eligible for COVID-19 therapies? A person is eligible for COVID-19 treatment after testing positive if they are immunocompromised, over the age of 65, unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated, pregnant, or are at a higher risk of severe illness due to other medical conditions, according to state and federal guidelines.
How quickly should I get treated? Timing is key, and getting tested as soon as symptoms appear is critical to successful treatment. Results are best among patients who begin treatment within three to five days of showing symptoms, which can include a runny nose, fever, cough, difficulty breathing and loss of taste or smell.
Which COVID-19 medicines are currently available? COVID-19 medicines that are now available include the oral antiviral pill Paxlovid, which has shown to be 89% effective, and Monupolivir, which is closer to 30% effective.
For individuals with the highest risk of severe illness, such as organ transplant recipients or people who take medications to suppress their immune system, another option is a preventative medicine called Evusheld.
Patients should check whether their current medications could negatively interact with drugs like Paxlovid and Molnupiravir, the latter of which should not be taken when pregnant or breastfeeding.
Monoclonal antibodies, an infusion-based treatment that typically requires visiting a hospital or clinic for injection, are also available at hospitals and some Bay Area health clinics. The monoclonal antibody medicine bebtelovimab has been approved to treat the BA.2 omicron variant, now the dominant variant in the Bay Area.
Remdesivir, another therapy that involves a three-day intravenous infusion process, has also been approved to treat COVID-19.
Where can I get COVID-19 medicines? San Franciscans who test positive for COVID-19 and are at a high risk of severe illness should first reach out to their health provider, which is required by the local health authority to test patients within a day of reporting symptoms.
A map of Bay Area pharmacies that carry COVID-19 medicines is available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which can be found at https://covid-19-therapeutics-locator-dhhs.hub.arcgis.com/. More locations are expected to open in the coming months, according to a press release from SFDPH.
Mission Wellness Pharmacy at 2424 Mission Street offers COVID-19 treatments and appointments can be scheduled by calling 415-826-3484. San Francisco Health Network is also accepting appointments for its members and can be reached at 415-682-1740.
A list of other private and public healthcare options and where to find treatment can be found at https://sf.gov/get-treated-covid-19.
For Total Infusion, eligible patients who test positive can make an appointment without a doctor’s referral on the clinic website at https://totalinfusion.com/.
How else can I prepare for a future COVID wave? Dr. Peter Chin-Hong offers five tips to stay ready and flexible for when COVID cases begin rising again:
- Keep up on COVID data and news so surges don’t come as a surprise. “Look at COVID numbers like the weather report,” Chin-Hong said.
- Gather and refill up on supplies like masks, at-home COVID test kits, tissues and cleaning supplies while cases and demand is low.
- Get vaccinated, boosted and stay up-to-date on shots recommended for your risk level.
- Know how to access COVID-19 therapies like Paxlovid and monoclonal antibody treatments.
- Replenish your medicine cabinet with decongestants, Ibuprofen and other remedies for more mild COVID-19 symptoms.
sjohnson@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/is-this-warriors-season-steve-kerrs-coaching-masterpiece/ | By Mark Kreidler
Special to The Examiner
One phrase you really shouldn’t hear too much around Steve Kerr is “biggest challenge.” As in, “This is Steve Kerr’s biggest challenge yet!” Kerr has lived an actual life in addition to his sports life. He has endured family tragedy and personal physical trauma. I guess you could say that the concept of a challenge is something with which he’s familiar.
So let’s direct this conversation elsewhere: Could these Warriors, whose playoff future is just utterly uncertain, nevertheless represent the best coaching job of Kerr’s career?
You know what? They sure could.
The Warriors will end the regular season in the low-50s in wins. That’s insane for low-50s different reasons, but here are just a couple:
Klay Thompson, 30-something games played, still trying to find a groove in his first action in more than two years.
Draymond Green, 40-something games played, persevering through a painful disc injury.
Steph Curry, currently on the mend. We’ll see how he looks when he steps back onto the floor for the first time in nearly a month, after rehabbing the sprained ligament in his left foot.
James Wiseman, zero games played. (Just checking to see if you were paying attention.)
That’s the deal. Kerr has been tasked with holding together the fraying championship threads of a franchise whose roster was, by turns, either in full emergency or in the hands of some of its youngest, least experienced pros. And now that the postseason run is about to commence, Kerr will need to re-set his coaching clock back to that time when Curry, Thompson and Green were the nucleus of a stone-cold winner – because they’ll have to be that, again.
They have to, for the Warriors to have a shot. But they won’t have seen the floor together, all three of them, in weeks and weeks by the time the playoffs begin.
And that’s where Kerr comes in.
It’s remarkable, really. With Thompson’s double-injury nightmare rehab continuing, Curry older, Green older and more consistently beat up, Andre Iguodala less capable of playing heavy rotation minutes – with the old guard so tenuous for the 2021-22 season, the Warriors weren’t predicted to do much.
It sounded about right. The W’s had gone 39-33 in last year’s abbreviated campaign, and they missed the playoffs for the second time in a row after one of the great five-season stretches in modern NBA history. Steph would be asked to carry a huge load this time around, and nobody could say one way or another about Klay’s return – it might work out, it might not. Most predictions had Golden State winning in the mid-40s. The website FiveThirtyEight put the Warriors at 37-45.
Instead, Kerr found a way to build a new house on the old foundation. He and his staff helped Jordan Poole blossom into a critical scoring element, which allowed the coach to play with his perimeter lineups and find outside scoring even when Curry was off the floor. Kerr, a former guard himself, did it with tough love, pushing Poole to recognize and take responsibility for his talent as a third-year pro. It’s more than it sounds.
The Warriors managed to keep Kevon Looney healthy all season – a huge development, it turned out, not only because Looney knew how to play Kerr’s style but also because Wiseman’s anticipated return broke down along the way. At different points along the timeline, Gary Payton II stepped up. Otto Porter Jr. stepped up. Andrew Wiggins was there.
Kerr had to cook with what he had, and this was the season in which he had to constantly take inventory of the kitchen stock. He mixed and matched lineups, rotations, closing sets. He went small when he had no choice and big whenever it made sense. All coaches do that, of course, but Kerr was coaching practically game minute to game minute. There was no Kevin Durant around to just cover all contingencies. No plan felt secure for more than a few breaths.
Thompson’s return was a joyous thing, but even that was no day at the beach. It was on Kerr not only to reintegrate one of his stars to a lineup that had been playing without him for two years, to do it while managing Thompson’s minute restrictions, and to somehow still get Klay on the floor to finish games.
It worked except when it didn’t, and it is still in process. That’s pretty much on brand for this season’s Warriors. On the brink of a home-hosted first round series, Kerr has to figure out how often – and for how long – his trusted Big Three can be on the floor together, and a lot of that comes down to how Curry looks when he does return.
If you’re into the notion of challenge, that’s a fair one, but it isn’t everything. The big picture is still something to behold: Steve Kerr was asked to figure out how to contend with a bunch of injured former champions while blending in some of the younger talent that should – should – take the Warriors into whatever is the era that comes after this one.
It could have gone any which way. Instead, the Warriors got off to such a scorching start that people suddenly ratcheted up their expectations to “We win a ring” level. Now Kerr and his team are back on the roller coaster, which feels more like what an NBA season really is. Kerr knows that ride, and he’d better: His franchise’s short-term future depends on it.
Mark Kreidler is a freelance contributor to The Examiner. Read more of his columns at https://markkreidler.substack.com. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220407 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/high-profile-walgreens-burgulars-convicted/ | Two men who stole from Walgreens stores — including one who did so while riding a bike — were convicted, according to a news release from the office of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Jean Lugo Romero received a sentence of 16 months in prison for his theft, which was captured in a widely-circulated video that showed him riding through a San Francisco Walgreens while grabbing items from the shelves. Romero pled guilty to felony grand theft and misdemeanor petty theft.
Boudin also announced the conviction of Ahmad Shabazz, who was found guilty in 13 of the 14 counts of misdemeanor petty theft brought against him for five separate incidents in which he stole from three Walgreens stores. He is scheduled to be sentenced April 15.
“Whether the work of organized retail theft rings or of individual suspects, the burglaries impacting our local businesses will not be tolerated,” Boudin said in the statement. “The sentence and verdicts handed down are just one way we are working to hold individuals accountable for harm caused by retail theft in San Francisco. We are also continuing our work with partner agencies to dismantle the organized networks which make these crimes profitable.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220408 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/castro-fire-displaces-5-contained-with-no-injuries/ | Five people were displaced by a 3-alarm fire Friday morning in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, fire officials said.
No one was injured in the blaze, which was reported at 5:40 a.m. at a home in the 100 block of Noe Street.
The fire reached three alarms by 6:12 a.m. and spread to a nearby home, according to the San Francisco Fire Department.
More than 100 firefighters were called to fight the blaze. The fire was extinguished, but the scene is still active with overhaul operations and there are road closures in the area of 100-200 Noe Street, fire officials said about 8:20 a.m. on social media.
The Red Cross is assisting the residents who were displaced. The cause is under investigation, fire officials said. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220408 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/read-todays-edition-of-the-examiner/ | Read: Today’s edition of the Examiner By Nob Hill Gazette • April 7, 2022 1:19 pm - Updated April 8, 2022 9:40 am Click to read the latest edition of the San Francisco Examiner Sign Up For The Daily Newsletter | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220408 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/fun-free-cheap-what-to-do-in-san-francisco-this-week-16/ | By Johnny Funcheap
Special to The Examiner
Climate Action Month: 50+ free events
Fretting about the state of the environment and climate change? Here’s your chance to get inspired and do something about it. The San Francisco Department of the Environment hosts a series of over 50 events (most of which are free) for their 4th annual Climate Action Month. Although many of the options are virtual, there are still plenty of in-person events where you can join like-minded neighbors to get outdoors and make a difference. Find a volunteer work party at a nearby park, enjoy a palm tree walk in the S.F. Botanical Garden, join a protest at UN Plaza, take a bike ride through Golden Gate Park, find Earth Day celebrations, tour beautiful native plant gardens or find dozens of other impactful ways to have fun and help the planet. April 1-30, All over San Francisco, Most events free with RSVP. sfenvironment.org
Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival
In early 2021, some a**hole vandalized a pair of Sutter Street cherry blossom trees down to their trunks. A few months later, new trees from Oregon were planted and are now finally showing their first buds. Let that be a metaphor for slow but steady regrowth. The 55th Annual Cherry Blossom Festival returns to Japantown using measured steps as well. Although there’s no parade this year and there’s only one performance stage, the festival is (mostly) in bloom with a street fair, outdoor food bazaar and four days of taiko drumming, tea ceremonies, karate, cosplay and demonstrations of traditional arts such as origami, calligraphy and sword work. And giving inspiration to the newly-replanted trees on Sutter, the rest of the dozens of cherry blossom trees around Japantown are expected to be in full bloom by the second weekend of the festival. Saturday and Sunday, April 9-10 & 16-17, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Japantown, Post Street from Fillmore to Laguna, Free. sfcherryblossom.org
Paint the Town paint-by-numbers mural
There are over 1,000 murals in the city of San Francisco. If you want to help add to this number and bring more color to The City (but have absolutely no artistic skills), then nonprofits Paint the Void and TogetherSF are looking for you. Bring your lack-of-talent and your enthusiasm to Paint the Town — a community mural painting event that’s easy, paint-by-numbers easy. A local artist will sketch a wall-sized mural outline and you’ll help fill in the blanks. RSVPs fill up quickly, so don’t dawdle if you want to doodle. And if spots are full, don’t worry — more chances are coming soon. The event takes place over two weekends and the goal is to create a new community mural every month. April 15-16, 22-23, 12-2:30 p.m., Various venues in S.F., Free with RSVP. mobilize.us/togethersf
Pickin’ on the Polk: Free bluegrass festival
Will Hardly Strictly Bluegrass have an in-person festival in Golden Gate Park this year? Other than a vague “save the date” message listed on the website for Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, nothing is confirmed. In the meantime, some of the key team behind HSB have been fiddlin’ around with the Discover Polk community benefit district putting together the new two-day Pickin’ on the Polk festival. Stroll up and down six blocks of Polk Street’s bars and restaurants to hear free indoor bluegrass concerts at nine different pop-up stages. Or plop your banjo down at the outdoor “bandwagon stage” at Polk and Broadway on Saturday for six hours of old-timey jams from a handpicked lineup of great local twangers. Friday, April 15, 7-11 p.m., Saturday, April 16, 1 p.m.-12 a.m., Various locations on Polk Street from Broadway to California, S.F., Free. pickinonthepolk.com
Treasure Island Sailing Center opening day
If you’ve ever wanted to come sail away on the Bay but don’t know your jib from your keel, the Treasure Island Sailing Center is happy to have you climb aboard. During the TISC’s annual opening day event, arrive early to sign up for a spot and grab a lifejacket for a free 30-minute rental of a kayak or paddleboard or join one of their trained instructors for a free sailboat ride. It all takes place in Clipper Cove on the south end of Treasure Island, a protected harbor with (relatively) calm waters, which makes it great for beginners. A bonus is the gorgeous views of the Bay Bridge. Sunday, April 16, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Treasure Island Sailing Center, 698 California Ave. S.F., Free. tisailing.org
Visit Funcheap.com for a hand-picked list of more fun, free and cheap things to do in San Francisco. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/100-million-on-ca-budget-for-cybersecurity-concerns-in-community-colleges/ | By Michael Burke
EdSource
In an effort to stymie online theft of financial aid at California’s 116 community colleges, the campuses may soon receive about $100 million in total to beef up their cybersecurity.
The $100 million funding plan was brought Tuesday to lawmakers as an information item during a hearing of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education finance. The spending, initially proposed in January by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was endorsed by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan office that gives fiscal and policy advice to the Legislature. The subcommittee’s staff also signaled support.
“Our system needs a strong investment in technology resources, especially cybersecurity. The severity of our needs continue to increase,” Lizette Navarette, executive vice chancellor of the community college system, said during Tuesday’s hearing.
Lawmakers did not vote on the proposal, but none expressed dissent to it. Lawmakers and Newsom must agree to the budget by this summer.
The system’s 116 colleges have been dealing with security breaches since last year and have reported tens of thousands of attempts by scammers to apply and enroll. An EdSource survey of colleges last year found that hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost to the scammers, although the actual figure could be much higher. Often, the attacks have targeted a piece of the $1.6 billion that the federal government allocated to California’s community colleges for emergency financial aid as part of Covid-19 relief packages.
Navarette said during Tuesday’s hearing that one of the state’s 73 community college districts experienced a breach just last month, though she did not specify which district.
Under Newsom’s proposal, $25 million would be ongoing funding that the colleges would receive annually, mainly to increase cybersecurity staffing at the colleges. The remaining $75 million would be one-time support for the colleges and would pay for upgrades, such as anti-fraud technology and new security software.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office sees “a lot of merit” in Newsom’s proposal, said Paul Steenhausen, a policy analyst focusing on community colleges for the LAO. “Maintaining information security and preventing fraud is really critical,” Steenhausen added during the hearing.
Staff for lawmakers on the committee agreed with the LAO’s assessment. “More spending and more positions related to cybersecurity does seem warranted, given recent attempts to defraud the system to gain access to federal and state financial aid,” they wrote in an agenda item for Tuesday’s meeting.
The LAO has suggested that the Legislature give the system $23 million as a starting point to hire cybersecurity staff across the colleges. The LAO estimates that would be enough to cover at least one full-time person dedicated to cybersecurity at each of the colleges, though in the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting, the LAO added that districts with more than one college may eventually warrant more funding.
For technology and security upgrades at the colleges, the LAO is recommending that lawmakers give the system $69 million and direct the chancellor’s office to allocate the funding based on each of the college’s specific needs, not just on enrollment. Colleges that are less prepared to combat hackers, for example, would receive more funding than colleges of the same size that are more prepared.
“So trying to lift up all the colleges to a minimum level of cybersecurity, given that the case now is that there are pretty different levels of preparedness,” Steenhausen said.
Calbright
During Tuesday’s hearing, lawmakers also reiterated their desire to shut down Calbright, the state’s online-only community college that focuses on job training. Under Assembly Bill 2820, the college would cease operating by 2024 and money for Calbright would be reallocated to fund basic needs centers and student housing at the state’s other 115 colleges.
Calbright opened in 2019 and was designed as an alternative to traditional colleges, aiming to serve adult learners looking to get job training rather than associate degrees.
Ajita Talwalker Menon, CEO of the college, testified Tuesday that Calbright should remain open, saying the college has doubled its enrollment since July and “has met every milestone” outlined in its founding legislation.
“It’s important to remember that we’re still actually quite early in our seven-year startup period,” she said.
Lawmakers appeared unimpressed, pointing to low completion rates. By the end of 2021, just 70 students completed a certificate out of 748 that were enrolled.
Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, chair of the subcommittee that met Tuesday, argued that instructional changes during the pandemic showed that Calbright isn’t needed. He pointed out that colleges across the state shifted their instruction entirely online at the onset of the pandemic and continue to offer many courses in that fashion.
“So if we have colleges who are thriving and their faculty are learning how to do Zoom education, why do we need this experiment? It seems that it was an experiment and it’s not working,” he said. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/covid-concerns-persist-for-half-of-bay-area-voters/ | By Eli Walsh
Bay City News Foundation
More than two years into the pandemic, roughly half of Bay Area voters remain concerned about contracting COVID-19, according to poll results released Thursday by the Bay Area Council business group.
The poll, conducted by the Oakland-based market research firm EMC Research, sampled 1,000 voters in early March across the nine-county Bay Area about the pandemic and its effects on the region going forward.
Of those sampled, 49 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned about contracting the virus. However, 59 percent said the same about a family member contracting COVID.
Thirty percent of those sampled said they currently feel safe returning to “normal,” with another 32 percent said they will feel safe doing so in the next year.
The remaining respondents, however, varied wildly in their estimation of a return to pre-pandemic life, ranging from 1-2 years from now to 12 percent who said the Bay Area will never return to a pre-pandemic normal.
Those saying they’re ready to return to a pre-pandemic normal increased from 11 percent in last year’s Bay Area Council poll, while those saying the region will not return to normal also increased from 6 percent in 2021.
Bay Area Council officials said the implications of the poll could prove problematic for employers and transit agencies seeking to entice workers back to in-person work and downtown business districts.
Jim Wunderman, the group’s president and CEO, said that the region must “move forward,” even if COVID will never fully disappear.
“Restoring public confidence for returning to work, transit, downtowns and all the other activities that make life worth living must be among our highest priorities,” he said.
About one-third of those polled said they expect to work from home permanently, with another 29 percent saying they have already returned to in-person work.
Most of the remaining respondents said they expect to return to in-person work within the next year.
Large majorities, 79 percent and 85 percent, respectively, expressed concern about the pandemic’s mental health repercussions on both adults and children.
Roughly two-thirds of poll respondents also expressed concern about how the pandemic has affected and will continue to affect the Bay Area’s economy.
The full results of the poll can be found at https://bit.ly/3xasy0S. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/how-san-francisco-became-an-autonomous-vehicle-test-course/ | A couple of friends and I were out for a late-night walk at about 3 a.m. on New Year’s Day when a Waymo self-driving car came rolling down 16th St. Then came another, and then another, and another. We stared in disbelief as at least a dozen tricked out SUVs glided by, silent but for the whirring of their lidar sensors.
Perhaps these four-wheeled robots had just come from a New Year’s party of their own.
While a motorcade’s worth of autonomous vehicles remains an unusual sight, a self-driving car can be seen every minute or two in some parts of San Francisco. A growing number of these vehicles are now transporting passengers in fully autonomous mode, meaning there’s no backup driver behind the wheel.
San Francisco is the epicenter of autonomous vehicle testing in California, if not the world, where subsidiaries of leading companies — Google, General Motors and Amazon — teach their fleets the subtleties of city driving. If an autonomous vehicle (AV) can handle the chaotic conditions on the streets of San Francisco, these companies believe, it can handle just about anything.
Yet AVs remain something of a mystery to the general public — and not just because of their incredible technological capabilities. Basic information like how many AVs are being tested in San Francisco, where, exactly, they are permitted to travel without a backup driver and other details of their operation is difficult to find or unavailable to the public.
An Examiner investigation, consisting of public records requests, data searches, and interviews with regulators and AV companies bears out what’s obvious to city residents: The streets of San Francisco have become a giant, photogenic AV test course, where this technology will show its promise and perils in real time.
AV Capital
In a fast-moving field, where companies fiercely protect their trade secrets, precise data on autonomous vehicle testing and deployment can be difficult to come by. However, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has made some educated guesses.
“It’s possible that there has been more automated driving on SF streets than in any other major city in the world,” said Julia Friedlander, senior manager for autonomous vehicles at the SFMTA.
While 50 companies are registered to test autonomous vehicles in California, just two companies, both of which primarily test their vehicles in San Francisco, accounted for more than 75% of the 4.1 million miles traveled by autonomous vehicles in the state last year, according to data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
Waymo, a Google subsidiary, notched more than 2.3 million miles in 567 vehicles in 2021, the majority of which took place in San Francisco, the company confirmed. Cruise, a subsidiary of GM, recorded 876,000 miles of autonomous driving in 168 vehicles last year, all in San Francisco. Both companies do drivered and driverless vehicle testing, and offer limited driverless passenger ride-hail services.
Zoox, an Amazon subsidiary that tests in San Francisco as well as on the Peninsula, added 155,000 miles in 57 vehicles.
It’s no surprise that San Francisco, with its proximity to Silicon Valley, its varied geography and its (relatively) mild weather, would become a popular place to test AVs.
“We developed our vehicle in one of the most complex environments possible — San Francisco — to ensure that our vehicle can drive safely in even the most unpredictable circumstances and conditions,” Cruise wrote in a permit application obtained by The Examiner.
San Francisco also has value from a branding perspective. Its breathtaking views and unbelievably steep streets — the backdrop for so many movie car chases — figure prominently in the marketing materials for all three major AV companies testing in The City.
No City oversight
Even though a large majority of AV testing in the state takes place in San Francisco, The City has essentially no oversight over these companies’ operations. That responsibility falls to the state DMV, which regulates AV testing, and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates commercial operations like Cruise and Waymo’s ride hail services.
The DMV and CPUC do not require AV companies to disclose where their vehicles have traveled within California, meaning it’s impossible to know the exact extent to which their operations are concentrated in San Francisco.
State regulations have been a source of contention for SFMTA, which is accustomed to exercising broad regulatory power over The City’s streets, and sharing transportation data with the public. Over the past several years, the agency and other city departments have regularly submitted comments to the DMV and CPUC as they craft autonomous vehicle regulations.
The City has unsuccessfully fought for caps on the number of AVs deployed for ride hailing services, detailed origin and destination data to better manage traffic and universal wheelchair accessibility, among other policies.
SFMTA’s lobbying has been directly informed by its experience with ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft, which it says have undermined public transit and increased congestion. The agency is continuing to fight for state regulations that require disability access, safe pickup and drop off practices, and zero-emissions electric vehicles, Friedlander said. (Currently, Zoox vehicles and some Waymo vehicles are gas-powered.)
“AV companies and state regulators need to see cities as key stakeholders and work with us to maximize the benefits while minimizing the negative effects that could come from adding multiple new fleets of cars to San Francisco roads,” Friedlander said.
While he agrees with many of these concerns, Marcel Moran, a PhD candidate in urban planning at UC Berkeley who has studied AV policy, thinks the solutions are already clear.
“I can understand the rationale for wanting more information. But there’s also policy decisions that would make a difference regardless of vehicle type,” Moran said, citing examples like congestion pricing and transit-only lanes.
Situation on the streets
It’s only natural that AVs, with their bulky rooftop rigs, conspicuous branding and awe-inspiring technological promise, would attract extra attention from the public. They’ve also been observed behaving strangely: Consider the 50 Waymos per day that continually returned to a Richmond cul de sac last fall, or the platoon of Waymos I observed cruising the Castro in the early hours of 2022.
Waymo vehicles, mostly electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs as well as some gas-powered Chrysler Pacifica minivans, go on different missions throughout The City to train the Waymo Driver, its proprietary artificial intelligence, in different environments, a company spokesperson said. The vehicles sometimes travel in groups back to base after a shift.
Cruise, which uses modified electric Chevy Bolts with nicknames like Poppy and Tostada, also drive around The City to practice certain driving skills and to more accurately map the urban environment, a company spokesperson said. Cruise vehicles can learn 40 times more quickly in San Francisco than in a more suburban environment like the Phoenix area, another location where both Cruise and Waymo test their vehicles.
AV companies approved for testing with a backup driver can travel almost anywhere in California. However, driverless commercial operations have a more limited geography. Cruise’s operational domain for its free, late-night ride hail service (available only to a select few members of the public) covers parts of the Richmond, Sunset, and Fillmore, and only includes streets with a speed limit of 30 miles per hour or less. Cruise plans to expand its operational domain to encompass 70% of The City in the near future, a spokesperson said.
Waymo redacted its operational domain for driverless passenger service from documents sent to SFMTA, following approval from the CPUC, citing proprietary trade secrets. The company also declined to share its operational domain with The Examiner. Waymo’s vehicles are approved to drive themselves at speeds of up 65 miles per hour, and are currently providing driverless rides to employees in a portion of San Francisco.
With truly driverless cars now circulating The City, locals might wonder what would happen if these vehicles are involved in an accident, or get pulled over by the police.
It turns out, there’s a plan for that.
In their state-mandated “law enforcement interaction plans,” Cruise and Waymo explain how law enforcement officers can enter their vehicles and find the registration, and how first responders should act in all manner of unfortunate situations (a vehicle underwater, on fire, etc.) The companies also detail their cybersecurity efforts to prevent hackers from — in the absolute worst case — hijacking their fleets.
Regulatory frontiers
California regulators and the AV companies themselves have been forced to navigate these sci-fi scenarios in the absence of federal regulation. During the Trump Administration, when “regulations were considered evil,” the already slow process of regulating AVs was put on pause, says Steve Shladover, a research engineer at Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology at UC Berkeley, and an AV consultant for the DMV.
“In an ideal world, the federal government would have stepped out earlier and would have taken the lead on (regulations), but that didn’t happen,” Shladover said, adding that the Biden Administration has restarted the process of crafting AV regulations. In March, the U.S. Department of Transportation released new rules to ensure that custom-built AVs, including the pod-like vehicles that are currently being developed by Cruise and Zoox, are still subject to rigorous safety standards.
California’s regulations could use some work, as well. Current data reporting “only gives a very limited view of the maturity of the technology,” Shladover said. “I believe that there will need to be disclosure of a lot more information about the way the systems are designed and developed and about their performance.”
California regulations require that AV companies report every collision and every “disengagement,” when a human backup driver has to take over for the computer. The latter requirements need to be more precise and consistent, Shladover said.
Protecting proprietary trade secrets and ensuring safe operations is “a very difficult balancing act” that might demand new layers of separation between publicly accessible information, and information accessible only to regulators, Shladover said. In a test of these boundaries, Waymo in January sued the DMV to block it from responding to a public records request for more detailed data on collisions, disengagements, and Waymo’s operational domain in San Francisco.
The stakes of this technological arms race could not be higher. Some of the world’s biggest companies are plowing billions of dollars into this technology, hoping for a revolution in freight and passenger transport. AVs, which are never distracted and are programmed to follow the rules of the road, could provide huge safety benefits in a country where cars kill 40,000 people per year, and represent the leading cause of death for teenagers.
But the industry has also sparked fear in labor groups worried about robo-drivers taking their jobs, environmentalists worried about massive increases in driving and emissions, and city governments hoping to prevent gridlock.
Today, the impact of AVs on the roads is a San Francisco story. But at some point in the future, the rest of the country and world will have to reckon with this new technology.
bschneider@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/overtime-budget-soars-at-s-f-s-understaffed-fire-department/ | The San Francisco Fire Department has hemorrhaged firefighters as its workforce raced toward retirement age and burned out due to the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As of March, the department had 125 firefighter vacancies and was on pace to spend up to about $60 million on overtime this fiscal year — nearly double the budgeted amount.
The City is well aware of the problem, but it has struggled to hire firefighters at a pace adequate to keep up with departures in recent years.
And while there are signs of improvement, the union representing firefighters and emergency medical responders says the problem will take years — and significant funding — to rectify.
“All we’re asking is that we get the proper funding to be able to recruit and train our people and we sustain it so we don’t go into the cycle of high overtime (again),” Shon Buford, president of San Francisco Firefighters Local 798, told The Examiner.
The City hopes to graduate about 150 firefighters from three academies this year, but that will only begin to make up for the losses suffered during the pandemic. Buford said that pace will have to be sustained for the issue to be resolved.
Department leaders say they’re working on a long-term plan, but a solution has yet to be unveiled.
“We are working with (the Department of Human Resources) and our labor partners on overtime/leave policies to reduce mandatory overtime and other impacts of the staffing shortage while the hiring moves forward,” Lt. Jonathan Baxter wrote in an email to The Examiner.
Make no mistake, the pay is good. Several firefighters pulled in more than $90,000 just in overtime pay in 2021, according to city data.
Overtime spending began to fall in February after peaking in January, but firefighters are tired, battling the “sustained pressure of trying to meet the needs of The City versus taking care of their own health,” Buford said.
And fire is just one of several departments, including police, that are facing an acute shortage of workers. A coalition of public labor unions recently launched a campaign to fill the more than 3,800 jobs that are vacant across The City.
The fire department’s staffing shortage was so severe this year that the Board of Supervisors was forced last month to approve an additional $14.6 million to cover the department’s overtime expenses for the fiscal year. The department is expected to exceed its overtime pay budget by as much as $29 million this fiscal year. Officials could soon make a second request for funding to cover overtime costs.
In 2020 and 2021, a total of 200 uniformed personnel retired or left the department, compared to the typical 60 to 65, according to the department.
Meanwhile, hiring was stifled in part due to the pandemic, which delayed fire academies that serve as a pipeline for new hires. The department brought in only 63 new uniformed employees during 2020 and 2021.
The effect is cumulative.
Overtime shifts have steadily increased throughout the pandemic, reaching a high of about 120 every day during the omicron surge, compared to around 40 before the onset of COVID.
To begin to rectify this shortage, the department expects to graduate firefighters from three training academies in 2022. There’s room for 52 firefighters in each academy; how many are hired depends on how many pass.
The department is also starting to hire 60 paramedics to bolster its staffing on the ambulance side of its operations, which struggled to keep up with increasing demand as The City grew but staffing remained the same in recent years.
Though the problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, its roots trace back more than 30 years.
The fire department steadily — and significantly — increased staffing under a consent decree intended to improve the diversity of its workforce that lasted from 1987 to 1997. But time has caught up with The City, and now between 75 and 100 of those firefighters are becoming eligible for retirement every year.
After bolstering its ranks in the lean years following the Great Recession of 2008, staffing in the department peaked at about 1,800 people — only to decline in each of the subsequent four years, according to a report by the union in 2021.
Buford is pushing for The City to look at staffing on a 10-year cycle, as it does with infrastructure.
“We should be planning to be ahead of the curve on attrition,” Buford said.
ashanks@sfexaminer.com | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/report-slams-environmental-official-for-lax-attitude-on-ethics/ | The city’s top environmental official imbued a “lax tone” toward ethics into her department that led to numerous violations of city policy by herself and her employees, according to a new report released on Friday.
Among numerous ethical shortcomings outlined in a review by the City Controller and City Attorney, former Department of the Environment Director Debbie Raphael asked executives at Recology for donations as the waste management company was negotiating contracts with The City.
Raphael resigned from her post as director of the Department of the Environment on Thursday, a day before the report was published.
She is one of several top officials to exit City Hall since 2020, when revelations about the “pay-to-play” tactics of former Department of Public Works head Mohammed Nuru sparked a sweeping inquiry into corruption at the highest levels of San Francisco government.
Mayor London Breed announced Raphael’s interim replacement – Assistant Deputy General Manager at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Tyrone Jue – on Thursday, but did not expound on the accusations that led to Raphael’s departure.
The report issued Friday details the thin and permeable line that separated Recology, a private company, from the Department of the Environment, which plays a direct role in setting the rates San Francisco customers pay Recology for waste collection.
It also shows how SF Environment officials called on Recology for donations to support its initiatives, and how that money was shielded from public scrutiny by stashing it with the Friends of SF Environment.
Here are a few key takeaways from the report…
Friends of SF Environment
Friends of SF Environment is ostensibly a nonprofit separate from the city, but Department of the Environment Employees have signature authority to disburse funds for the former.
Those close ties allowed department employees to solicit donations to the Friends organization, then use those funds for things such as department events.
The Department solicited a $25,000 gift from Recology
In 2015, Raphael sought – and later received – a $25,000 donation from Recology. (The gift was first reported by The San Francisco Standard earlier this week). The moved raised red flags for investigators because, at the same time, Recology was working on securing a large contract to haul the city’s waste to its landfill.
Unlike other gifts, the department didn’t disclose the gift – intended to support an Earth Day event – on its website because it was actually directed to the Friends nonprofit.
Emails demonstrate that the gift was, as far as Recology was concerned, about business.
In an email to Raphael, a Recology executive said the gift was a “business development opportunity.”
Senior Management Withheld Documents
The Controller’s Office and City Attorney also accused the department of doing everything it could to withhold information about the $25,000 gift.
“Only after being pressed for complete documents did the department provide records related to the $25,000 donation to Friends of SF Environment,” the report states.
A lack of ethics training
Only top department officials received ethics training prior to 2021, according to the report, and lower-level employees were unaware that accepting non-cash gifts and meals from Recology was a violation of city code.
Recology helps hire SF Environment Employees
Recology not only built close relationships with department employees — it helped hire them.
“Based on information provided by SF Environment and the Department of Human Resources, two Recology employees served on at least six job recruitments in the last five years for positions ranging from assistant to senior coordinator,” the report states. “Most of these positions require some interaction with Recology and could contribute to contract oversight of Recology.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/opinion-time-to-obliterate-the-myth-that-republicans-are-solving-crime-and-overdose-deaths/ | By Gil Duran
Republicans love to pretend they know better than Democrats. They self-righteously decry crime and drugs, falsely blaming Democratic policies for bad outcomes. In the aftermath of the latest shooting in Sacramento, they’re at it again.
Look past the “tough on crime” talking points, however, and you’ll find an interesting fact: Democratic states like California often do far better than many staunchly Republican states on these issues.
Take crime, for example. The GOP presents crime as a simple problem to fix. Just flood the streets with police and impose draconian sentences for even low-level offenses. But there’s a major glitch in the narrative: Republican states tend to have higher rates of violent crime than Democratic states.
“In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden,” according to “The Red State Murder Problem,” a report from Third Way, a Washington think tank. “Eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.”
Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri — all pro-Trump states — have the five highest murder rates in the country.
On the city level, let’s compare San Francisco and Jacksonville, Fla., which have similar population sizes.
“Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations,” says the report.
No one blames the local prosecutor, a Republican, for Jacksonville’s “murder capital” reputation.
Closer to home, the report highlights the fact that “the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.”
In 2020, when USA Today ranked the most violent states, Republican states like Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina and Tennessee all made the top 10. California didn’t, but New Mexico did. The Democratic state had the second-highest rate of violent crime in the nation.
Yet New Mexico also “locks up a higher percentage of people than any democracy on earth,” according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. If prison solved crime, New Mexico would be the safest place on the planet. Yet the Land of Enchantment has an extraordinary amount of crime.
While California has become the poster child for property crime — and S.F. has one of the highest property crime rates of any big city — the problem is worse in many Republican states. In 2020, California had the 18th highest property crime rate per capita, behind stalwart GOP states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina. (The penal colony called New Mexico also ranks near the top of the list.)
Despite the posturing and propagandizing, these “tough on crime” Republican states should perhaps envy reform-minded California’s success.
How do Republican states fare on the issue of drug overdose deaths? San Francisco has been singled out as a poster child for the crisis, but the per capita drug overdose death rate is much worse in Trump country.
California has a drug overdose rate of 27 per every 100,000 people, according to the most recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control data compiled by the Washington Post. West Virginia’s overdose death rate was 90 per every 100,000 people. Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana Ohio and Tennessee all have much higher rates of overdose death than California, which ranks 29th in the nation.
Facts don’t matter to right-leaning critics who blame everything on Democratic policy despite the fact that, statistically, Republican states are worse off.
“Republican officeholders do a better job of blaming Democrats for lethal crime than actually reducing lethal crime,” according to the Third Way report. Unfortunately, the press often plays along.
It gives me no joy to point out these Republican tragedies. I spent years in Kentucky and Indiana and have family out there. But in 2022, in the middle of a major disinformation war, we must finally obliterate the myth that Republicans have easy solutions to society’s most vexing problems.
Democrats, traditionally weak at framing the political debate, must do a better job of proactively highlighting the truth. In reality, the Republican Party — which denies global warming, shrugs off COVID protections and doubts Joe Biden’s election victory — has also failed on the problems of crime and addiction.
gduran@sfexaminer.com, @gilduran76 | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-californias-employee-protection-law-paga-up-for-debate-in-u-s-supreme-court/ | By Dan Walters
CalMatters
On Oct. 12, 2003, five days after California voters decided he should be ousted from the governorship, Gray Davis signed Senate Bill 796, a valuable gift to the labor unions, attorneys and other groups that supported him during the recall election.
The measure created the Private Attorneys General Act, which opened the door to lawsuits against employers for alleged violations of state laws governing wages and working conditions.
California is the only state with such a law and nearly two decades later, PAGA, as it’s known, is the subject of a potential ballot measure and new skirmishes in the Legislature while the U.S Supreme Court weighs whether it should be erased because it conflicts with federal law.
Davis was able to sign SB 796, despite the Oct. 7, 2003 recall vote, because he remained governor until the election results were certified and successor Arnold Schwarzenegger took office five weeks later.
At the time, only the state’s Department of Industrial Relations was authorized to investigate labor law complaints and issue fines. Unions and employment attorneys contended that the state agency was overworked and that employers could easily escape penalties by requiring their workers, as a condition of employment, to agree that any disputes be subjected to arbitration rather than legal action.
PAGA authorizes lawsuits even when employees have agreed to subject disputes to arbitration.
Over the 18 years since PAGA became law, thousands of cases have been filed and many settled, but the state Chamber of Commerce and other business groups contend that while it has been a lucrative source of fees for lawyers, workers have seen few economic benefits.
The current “job killer” list issued by the Chamber of Commerce includes two bills that would expand PAGA. One, Senate Bill 1044, would allow employees to refuse to work if they consider it unsafe to do so. The other, Senate Bill, 1162, would require employers to file detailed reports on their workers’ salaries, broken down by ethnicity, gender and other criteria.
Business groups have filed an initiative ballot measure to repeal PAGA. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court last week heard oral arguments on a lawsuit that could doom PAGA because it allows suits even when employees have signed arbitration agreements.
The case, Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, stems from a suit filed by Angie Moriana, a former sales representative for Viking, alleging that the cruise line violated California labor law, even though she had signed an arbitration agreement.
Moriana’s suit not only applies to her case but other Viking employees, thus creating the potential for large awards of damages. State courts ruled for Moriana and the state Supreme Court refused to hear the case because it had already declared, in a 2014 ruling, that PAGA rendered arbitration agreements unenforceable.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned the state Supreme Court in that case, so Viking took its argument to the federal court.
Viking, backed by the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests, argues that PAGA violates the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act, which sanctions arbitration as an alternative to lawsuits in business disputes.
During last week’s oral arguments, members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said little, while liberal justices seemed to side with Moriana’s and California’s contention that PAGA is a legitimate tool.
If PAGA is overturned, the immediate effect would be on California, the only state with such a law, but if PAGA survives, it could spark efforts to enact similar laws in other blue states where labor unions have strong political power. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-the-sobering-reality-behind-the-fight-for-stricter-gun-laws/ | Among the most asinine things said after a mass shooting is that “now is not the time to politicize the issue.’’
Now is exactly the time to politicize the issue.
It is when the blood is fresh and the loss of life unbearable — whether on a Sacramento street or in a Sandy Hook kindergarten classroom — that the nation must confront its deadly obsession with firearms. It took less than 5,000 COVID deaths for the U.S. to shut down the nation’s schools and most of its economy. Guns kill six times that many Americans every year.
President Biden said “we must act,’’ a sentiment echoed by Speaker Pelosi, Senator Feinstein and Gov. Newsom. Waiting for a pause in the violence in a nation that averages 40 murders-by-gun a day is akin to never talking about it. Which is precisely what gun supporters want.
Yet those who rush to build momentum for stricter gun laws need to be clear-eyed about two sobering realities.
First, no measure will end gun violence. Not with 400 million weapons already in the public’s hands. Banning assault weapons might curb some of the most high-profile killings. Expanding background checks to include guns purchased at gun shows or making it tougher for those with a history of mental illness or violence to obtain guns might at least help slow access to those with deadly intent. Removing the gun industry’s liability exemption might make some manufacturers think twice about producing tools designed to kill.
But each may make only a dent in the nation’s horrific murder rate. Assault weapon killings grab headlines, but FBI statistics show roughly as many people are killed by fists or feet. Americans purchased nearly 20 million firearms last year. And among those used in murders, roughly nine in 10 are handguns. More exhaustive background checks may keep weapons away from some, though it will likely drive more sales underground.
That doesn’t mean these proposals aren’t worthwhile. Abandoning a measure because it doesn’t solve the entire problem would be as foolish as giving up on the COVID vaccine because it is only 93% effective. If gun control laws were just 10% effective, thousands of lives could be spared each year.
Gun supporters regularly point to California, the state with the nation’s strictest gun laws, as evidence that legislation won’t end the violence. Yet it is hard to draw that conclusion when those entering the state are stopped at agricultural checkpoints to make sure they aren’t carrying invasive pests, yet no one questions whether they are carrying a cache of deadly firearms.
And that brings up the second big barrier to enacting effective laws. In a nation of porous borders, it will take federal legislation to make a sizable dent in gun violence. And there is virtually no chance of passing gun measures through a Congress, which is structurally stacked in favor of rural, gun-loving states.
It makes no sense to many that the National Rifle Association — even with its vast resources — is able to stand in the way of legislation overwhelmingly favored by the public.
The explanation is that rural states, where gun ownership is high, have outsized voting power in the Senate, and can kill virtually any law that inhibits their ownership rights. The five states with the highest rates of gun ownership, starting with Montana, have a combined population of 6 million people — roughly the size of the Bay Area — and send 10 senators to Washington.
It is a quirk of American democracy. The majority of Americans favor tightening gun access to those with mental illness, requiring background checks at gun shows, instituting a national gun registry and banning assault weapons. Yet senators from the 21 states with the highest rates of gun ownership – with a combined population of roughly 19 million people or six% of the nation — can filibuster any piece of gun legislation no matter how the other 94% feel.
December will mark the 20-year anniversary of the rampage in Sandy Hook, in which a demented 20-year-old brought an assault rifle, two semi-automatic pistols and a shotgun into an elementary school and killed 26 people, most of them six- and seven-year-olds.
At the time, the NRA’s CEO Wayne LaPierre boldly asserted that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’’
Tell that to the families of those killed in Sacramento or any of the 150,000 Americans shot dead since. It’s a point that should be repeated every time gun violence is in the news.
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to not let him have it in the first place.
Marc Sandalow is associate director of the University of California Washington Program. He has written about Bay Area politics from Washington for nearly 30 years. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/opinion-the-wonderful-new-trend-of-book-banning/ | By Don Reed
Special to The Examiner
There’s an exciting new trend in education and tons of states are getting in on the action.
I’m talking about book banning. It’s the hottest movement since the attempt to block gay marriage. But Governor Newsom is against it and posted a pic on Twitter sitting beside a stack of banned books with the tweet: “Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of.”
Very funny, Gavey. Make a joke out of well-meaning, overreaching censorship.
When I think of all the books I shouldn’t have read growing up, I could have been protected from so many unnecessarily bold and groundbreaking ideas. What I would have given not to have read J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” That book deeply scarred me. That kid Holden was cussing left and right. Never mind that he dropped the F-Bomb only five times over 277 pages and there are more F-bombs in a single episode of “Orange Is the New Black” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
It’s just not a good idea to show that much independent thinking to young impressionable minds… in a book. “Catcher” was first banned in 1960, when a Tulsa school teacher was fired for assigning the book to his class. Did there really need to be 30 more instances of censorship for people to get the drift that the book is bad news? Good riddance, Holden Caulfield and your inappropriate Christmas break trip to New York City.
How about “To Kill a Mockingbird,” one of the books photographed in Newsom’s ban tweet? Yes, it won the Pulitzer in 1960, but it was also banned from some schools for racist language and themes while also trying really hard to point out racist language and themes. I think if something is getting a 50/50 level of reception, it ain’t no Pulitzer. Am I right? There must be a way to cancel those.
In any case, it’s important that we take censorship cues from the past, in order to lead us in a right future. For example, back in 1928 and then again in 1952, libraries in Michigan and Florida banned “The Wizard of Oz” — because the book presented a Good Witch and a Bad Witch. But that’s ridiculous because everyone knows there’s no such thing as a good witch because witchcraft is bad. Dumb analysis. Ban it.
I remember sitting in my high school English class in Oakland reading George Orwell’s “1984,” yet another book on Newsom’s stack. I was very focused on a beautiful classmate. I think her name was Sylvia. My enamored state was continually pushed off a dystopian cliff by the forced reading of Orwell’s nightmare, and was made worse by having to write a paper on it. The novel’s hopelessness is etched forever in my brain.
A cautionary tale? I think not. More like an unnecessary tale and way too dark. I don’t care that many of the things he warned against in the book are coming true, like Big Brother watching us with cameras from every conceivable angle and tracking our every move via electronic surveillance. No matter. That guy Orwell was a bummer.
Also in the tweet, Governor Newsom is photographed reading one of THE worst books ever written: Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” It’s a critical race theory double-decker of bad news, masquerading as a well-meaning novel on the black family in post-slavery rural South.
If we continue to allow books like these to be of use in our schools, EVERYBODY’S gonna know American history. They’re going to be exposed to the wrongful atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow legislation. Eventually, they’re going to find out about moves that were orchestrated in the past to block African Americans from voting. Wait, that’s kinda still happening now … but I digress. The book also has some kind of malevolent spirit or friendly ghost in it. Still spooky. Too occultish for me and definitely for the young. Ban that one, too.
Don Reed is a Bay Area native, comedian, diversity speaker and playwright best known for the one-man show “East 14th.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/sports/giants-opening-day-san-francisco-celebrates-return-to-normalcy/ | San Francisco has been waiting for this day. For two long years, we wanted normalcy. We’ve suffered through mandates and lockdowns, sheltering and shuttering. The whole thing pretty much sucked.
There were fits and starts, signaling a possible return. A reopening here, a return there. But no matter how hard we tried, it never felt like the before times. There was always the specter of fear hanging over us. Another variant. The subsequent surge. Was it safe to believe? Was it OK to venture out?
Well, we still don’t really know. But it’s clear we’re ready to try. The Giants’ Opening Day Friday at Oracle Park was a coming out party for The City. A recognition of where we’ve been and a celebration of where we’re going.
From foul pole to foul pole, bleachers and beyond, anyone who could fake a dentist appointment, ditch work and muster a ticket to the ballpark looked up to the sunny skies above and thanked the baseball gods for delivering. Simply put, it was a glorious day. The Miracle on Third Street.
It was also the Giants’ first season opener at home since 2009, a remarkable stretch considering. It took a dozen years, but it was worth the wait. Two years ago, the crowd consisted of cardboard cutouts. Last year, the limit on fans was 8,000.
This year? No COVID related mandates or requirements for fans. Whatsoever. And a sell-out crowd of 40,853 packed the place.
After a spirited and thoughtful pregame routine, in which the team honored local members of the sports world who had passed in 2021, along with victims of war in Ukraine, the U.S. Navy Leap Frogs Parachute Team dropped in from the sky, setting up a beautiful rendition of the National Anthem by Brian McKnight. Prior to that, Jenn Johns delivered an inspirational version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and many people did.
The team hoisted its 2021 National League West pennant, and unveiled a plaque honoring last season’s record 107 wins. It was a proud day to be a Giants fan, whichever way you cut it.
When Brandon Belt rode in from the left field tunnel in a boat wearing his “captain” hat, the crowd celebrated the inanity. Belt threw out the first pitch to manager Gabe Kapler and it was time to “Play Ball!”
♦
Then they did. And it was a doozy. The Miami Marlins were in town and it looked like they’d flop on the dock for the Giants, putting up minimal resistance for most of the game. The Giants were cruising behind six innings of solid pitching fromn starter Logan Webb, who gave up one run on five hits. Joey Bart and Belt both homered, and it looked like the Giants would cruise to a 4-2 victory. Until the ninth, when the Marlins exploded for three runs and took the lead, 5-4. Last year’s phenom reliever Camilo Doval pretty much imploded there, giving up a soul-crushing, two-run home run to someone named Jazz Chisolm, the Marlins’ second baseman … who bats ninth. The Giants countered in the bottom of the frame, when their own second baseman, Thairo Estrada, hit a ball deep into the left field bleachers. Off to the tenth we went. Remember, teams start a runner at second base in extra innings. The Marlins failed to get their man home in the top of the 10th. And so did the Giants, foiled by the boneheaded baserunning of Mauricio Dubon. But the Giants didn’t quit. Darin Ruf drew a walk, and then Austin Slater drove the big fella home, all the way from first, to create the perfect finish. A play at the plate for the win. Safe! Giants 6, Marlins 5. The players rushed the field and the fans rejoiced. Disaster averted.
All in all, the Giants looked sloppy all day. Errors in the field. Bad baserunning. Generally funky. Who needs spring training, right? I blame the owners. For everything.
Whatever the reason. It sure felt like Giants baseball alright. Sweet torture.
♦
All the expected swells were on hand, hobnobbing in an adjacent courtyard before the game. In one corner, Barry Bonds was deep in conversation with Mayor London Breed. Supervisor Matt Haney was on hand with his father. They’ve been season ticket holders for over 30 years. Giants President and CEO Larry Baer was holding court in the center of it all, greeting friends and customers while basking in the moment.
I couldn’t quite hear what Bonds and Breed were discussing, but the mayor was happy to talk about this day. For a public official who supported many of the lockdowns and mandates that helped San Francisco survive the pandemic, it was a special day.
“We’ve not been able to come together like this in a really long time,” she told The Examiner. “And you see all the orange and the black … people of all ages, of all races, of all walks of life. That’s what San Francisco is about. Bringing a lot of different people together to celebrate a common goal.”
But what about the baseball Your Honor?
“Let’s make sure that the Giants win on Opening Day! We want another World Series, and we want another parade.”
Well, whadaya say Mr. Baer? Can the Giants do it again? The mayor’s asking. Last year’s record-setting season is a hard act to follow. Especially without Buster Posey.
“We feel good about the season. You never know. Every year is a new movie,” Baer told me. “So we’re just trying to figure out what movie. The good news in sports, as opposed to movies, is you can change the cast in the middle of the season.” That’s gotta make the players feel good. But it’s true.
♦
And “Trader Farhan” (Zaidi), the team’s president of baseball operations, is known for mixing and matching his roster as much as anyone in the game. He doesn’t hesitate to make moves, and does not stand on sentimentality in doing so. The media had the chance to sit with Zaidi, and Kapler, on Thursday and hear them out on the upcoming season. They sounded enthusiastic, prepared, analytical and focused. You can’t help but feel their confidence, even if the Dodgers have a clearly better roster.
Said Kapler: “Yeah, I mean, last year was an extremely exciting year on so many fronts, and we had players have extraordinary years. So everybody’s looking to build on that success. And I don’t think that means like winning a certain number of games. But I think (it means) continuing to improve our processes and our practices. And so it’s kind of every time we go out on the field, every time we’re doing a drill, we’re doing a team fundamental, a simulated game, we’re trying to find the value at the margins or trying to ask ourselves, ‘Is that the best way we can prepare? Is that the best way we can practice?’”
The man should be a venture capitalist. Maybe he is.
Zaidi is even more no-nonsense, if that’s imaginable. His team is projected to win something like 85 games, by most prediction services. Doesn’t bother Zaidi: “It’s hard to get mad at an algorithm.”
His offseason was severely hampered by the misguided owners’ lockout, which restricted contact with players. But he took it in stride, binge-watching “Squid Games” to pass the time, among other pursuits. After a successful spring, with not too many injuries, Zaidi lauded the Giants’ starting rotation, which may be the best in the big leagues. It’s all very practical in Farhan’s world.
But even for Mr. Analytics, the opener meant something special.
“As far as Opening Day goes, a year ago feels like 10 years ago in some ways. We had really limited capacity and attendance at the time. So to have a big crowd on Opening Day. … It’s pretty exciting for everyone.”
♦
We’ll give the last word to Mr. Haney, San Francisco’s would-be state assemblyman.
“People have been saying for a few months now that The City feels like it’s coming back. And I’ve always said to them, ‘Just wait till the Giants return,’” said Haney, wearing a Giants gamer. “We couldn’t ask for a better day. To me, this is not only the Giants coming back, but The City coming back. That’s what we’re celebrating today.”
The Arena, a column from The Examiner’s Al Saracevic, explores San Francisco’s playing field, from politics and technology to sports and culture. Send your tips, quips and quotes to asaracevic@sfexaminer.com. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220409 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/bay-area-covid-19-updates/ | The latest developments around the region related to the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as of Wednesday evening include:
San Francisco’s rate of new COVID-19 cases is outpacing all other Bay Area counties as well as most of the state, according to local and state health data.
The city is confirming an average of around 13 new cases per day per 100,000 residents as of March 29, the most recent date for which complete data is available.
Only one other Bay Area County, San Mateo, is confirming more than 10 cases per 100,000 residents on average while the rest of the greater Bay Area’s 11 counties are confirming between five and seven cases per 100,000.
Likewise, many of the state’s largest counties including Los Angeles, Sacramento and Fresno are tracking even lower at 5.5 cases per 100,000 or fewer.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health said in a statement that even amid the uptick, cases are not increasing at rates similar to the winter surge tied to the highly contagious omicron variant.
In addition, DPH officials said, just 20 patients are currently hospitalized with COVID, down from a pandemic peak of 286 during the omicron surge and equivalent with pre-omicron levels.
—-
As of Wednesday, at 5:30 p.m., officials have confirmed the following number of cases around the greater Bay Area region:
Alameda County: 258,708 cases, 1,844 deaths (258,511 cases, 1,842 deaths on Tuesday) (Totals include Berkeley Health Department data)
Contra Costa County: 190,820 cases, 1,294 deaths (190,741 cases, 1,294 deaths on Tuesday)
Marin County: 33,552 cases, 270 deaths (33,527 cases, 270 deaths on Tuesday) (Totals include San Quentin State Prison)
Monterey County: 79,406 cases, 733 deaths (79,406 cases, 733 deaths on Tuesday)
Napa County: 25,905 cases, 137 deaths (25,897 cases, 137 deaths on Tuesday)
San Francisco County: 124,458 cases, 848 deaths (124,392 cases, 847 deaths on Tuesday)
San Joaquin County: 167,275 cases, 2,202 deaths (167,275 cases, 2,202 deaths on Tuesday)
San Mateo County: 122,058 cases, 745 deaths (121,767 cases, 745 deaths on Tuesday)
Santa Clara County: 310,710 cases, 2,228 deaths (310,483 cases, 2,228 deaths on Tuesday)
Santa Cruz County: 47,808 cases, 259 deaths (47,808 cases, 259 deaths on Tuesday)
Solano County: 84,664 cases, 413 deaths (84,664 cases, 413 deaths on Tuesday)
Sonoma County: 84,035 cases, 488 deaths (83,997 cases, 488 deaths on Tuesday)
Statewide: 8,503,930 cases, 88,355 deaths (8,503,930 cases, 88,355 deaths on Tuesday) | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220410 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/shooting-in-sacramento-found-to-be-gang-related-violence/ | By Andy Furillo and Thomas Fuller
New York Times
The Sacramento Police Department said Wednesday that “gang violence” was at the center of a shooting that killed six people and wounded 12 over the weekend and that at least five gunmen were involved.
“While we cannot at this time elaborate on the precise gang affiliation of individuals involved, gangs and gang violence are inseparable from the events that drove these shootings,” the department said in a statement.
The shooting, one of the deadliest in the city’s history, occurred outside nightclubs in downtown Sacramento early Sunday. Among the dead were a supermarket clerk and a homeless woman.
Police said Wednesday that the shooting involved at least “two groups of men,” but the notion of gang violence has changed significantly in the decades since the Crips and the Bloods gained notoriety in California.
Sacramento’s gang structure has splintered in the past two decades away from the traditional Crips and Bloods rivalry, researchers say. Several groups have since sprouted around the region, forming “subsets” of gangs in which confrontations are more personal and less about turf.
“It’s street politics,” said Freddie Dearborn, a former gang member who founded and now leads a local intervention program for youth gun violence.
Specific motives for the recent shooting could be any number of things, law enforcement officials said. But the widespread availability of firearms amplified the deadliness of the dispute. Police said Monday that they had recovered more than 100 shell casings from the scene, which was just a few blocks from the Capitol grounds.
“Different cliques see each other, and it could be a destructive thing, unfortunately, because of the politics,” Dearborn said. “There’s certain things you do and you don’t do. It could be about anything — money, people you mess with, jail.”
Law enforcement officials in Sacramento said they have not ruled out the possibility that some of the victims in the firefight were also gunmen. One of the victims, Sergio Harris, has been identified in previous cases as a gang member from Del Paso Heights, a north Sacramento community.
Police have announced the arrests of three men since the shooting, but the levels of involvement by those suspects remain unclear. More than five shooters may be identified, police said, after investigators untangle what weapons were used and by whom, studying evidence that includes 200 videos and photos.
Two brothers, Dandrae and Smiley Martin, face firearm possession charges.
Police said Wednesday that Dandrae Martin fired a weapon in the shooting. Smiley Martin was released on probation in February after serving four years in prison for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Another man, also charged with illegal possession of a firearm, Daviyonne Dawson, was arrested Monday after detectives spotted him carrying a weapon in the “immediate aftermath” of the shooting, a police statement said.
“At this time, Dawson is not charged with crimes directly related to the shootings,” the statement said. “Based on the type of firearm recovered, detectives do not believe that this gun was used in the shooting.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220410 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/ukranian-refugees-join-immigration-line-at-californias-doorstep/ | By Soumya Karlamangla
New York Times
A new chapter in the Ukrainian refugee crisis is playing out along California’s southern border.
As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, more than 2,000 Ukrainians have made their way to the Mexican side of the border in the past 10 days in the hope of gaining entry into the United States, and many of them have flooded into Tijuana.
The immigrants sometimes wait days to be allowed entry into California. The surge has created confusion and a backlog, and has drawn volunteers from across the state who are trying to provide shelter, food and other assistance.
“The system at the border is incredibly inefficient,” said Olya Krasnykh, who took time off from her real estate development job in San Mateo to help. “I don’t know how long we can sustain the volunteer-run effort.”
The war in Ukraine, entering its seventh week, continues its murderous course. Russia is scrambling for more soldiers after facing logistics problems and devastating casualties, as a litany of horrors keeps unfolding across Ukraine.
Since the invasion began, roughly 4.3 million Ukrainians have fled their country, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. Many have escaped to Poland, Romania or other nearby European nations.
President Joe Biden announced last month that the United States would accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, but details about the program have not been released, prompting some refugees to seek entry more quickly. Ukrainians who can afford the journey are traveling to Mexico, a country they can enter without a visa, to try to seek asylum in the United States, a country they cannot.
That has led to a stream of Ukrainians entering California in recent days. A church in the San Diego area has been converted into a place to sleep for new arrivals with nowhere else to go.
It is likely many of the new arrivals will eventually join relatives in the New York region, which is home to more Ukrainian immigrants than anywhere else in the nation. Some, however, may stay in California.
Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego are also among the nation’s biggest Ukrainian population centers, according to the Migration Policy Institute. And the Sacramento area has the highest concentration relative to its size: One in every 125 residents is of Ukrainian descent.
One Ukrainian refugee who is now staying in San Diego told KQED about her path to the United States: She flew to Germany with her two young daughters, then to Mexico City and then to Tijuana. A family friend crossed over from San Diego to pick them up and drive them back into California.
Once at the passport control booth on U.S. soil, the woman, whom KQED identified only as Maryna, told Customs and Border Protection officers that her family was seeking asylum. Although she was relieved to have made it into the country, she still thought about what she left behind.
“At night, I couldn’t sleep because of the emotions,” because her family was far away, she told the news outlet. “Yes, everything is pretty, everything is great here, but I can’t enjoy it or relax.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220410 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/have-you-texted-yourself-lately/ | By Brian X. Chen
The New York Times
A few weeks ago, I woke up to an early morning text message on my smartphone. It wasn’t my editor or a needy friend in a different time zone. It was a message from myself.
“Free Msg: Your bill is paid for March. Thanks, here’s a little gift for you” the text from my own phone number read, pointing me to a web link.
In the past month, I’ve received a handful of such texts. In online forums, many Verizon customers have reported the same experience.
It was clear to me what was going on. Scammers had used internet tools to manipulate phone networks to message me from a number they weren’t actually texting from. It was the same method that robocallers use to “spoof” phone calls to appear as though they are coming from someone legitimate, like a neighbor. Had I clicked on the web link, I most likely would have been asked for personal information like a credit card number, which a scammer could use for fraud.
Consumers have struggled with cellphone spam for years, primarily in the form of robocalls with scammers incessantly ringing to leave fraudulent messages about late payments for student loans, audits by the Internal Revenue Service and expired car warranties.
Only recently has mobile phone fraud shifted more toward texting, experts said. Spam texts from all sorts of phone numbers — and not just your own — are on the rise. In March, 11.6 billion scam messages were sent on American wireless networks, up 30% from February. That outpaced robocalls, which rose 20% in the same period, according to an analysis by Teltech, which makes anti-spam tools for phones.
Verizon confirmed that it was investigating the text issue. On Monday, it said it had fixed the problem. “We have blocked the source of the recent text messaging scheme in which bad actors were sending fraudulent text messages to Verizon customers which appeared to come from the recipient’s own number,” said Adria Tomaszewski, a Verizon spokeswoman.
Representatives for AT&T and T-Mobile said they had not seen the same problem. But text spam affects all wireless subscribers, and carriers now offer resources online for how people can protect themselves and report spam.
Text scams vary widely but often involve getting you to cough up your personal data with messages disguised as tracking updates for phony package deliveries, or information about health products and online banking. Their rise has been fueled partly by the fact that messages are so effortless to send, Teltech said. In addition, industrywide and government efforts to crack down on robocalls may be pushing scammers to move on to text messages.
“Scammers are always looking for the next big thing,” said Giulia Porter, a vice president at Teltech. “Spam texts are just increasing at a much more drastic rate than spam calls.”
Here’s what to look out for with text scams — and what you can do.
What Spam Texts Look Like
By far the most common text scam is the message impersonating a company that is offering a shipping update on a package, such as UPS, FedEx or Amazon, according to Teltech.
In the past week, I have received messages that said a Samsung TV — a big-ticket item meant to get my attention — could not be delivered. Another advertised an anti-aging skin cream. Another message touted the benefits of a product that cured brain fog.
Be on the lookout for these telltale signs of a fraudulent text:
— Scam texts typically come from phone numbers that are 10 digits or longer. Authentic commercial entities generally send messages from four-, five- or six-digit numbers.
— The message contains misspelled words that were intended to circumvent wireless carriers’ spam filters.
— The links in a scam text often look strange. Instead of a traditional web link composed of “www.websitename.com,” they are web links that contain sentences or phrases, like droppoundsketo.com. This practice, called URL masking, involves using a phony web link that directs you to a different web address that asks for your personal information.
How to Protect Yourself
First and foremost, never click on a link or file in a suspicious message.
Definitely don’t reply to such a message either. Even typing “STOP” will indicate to a scammer that your phone number is active.
To report a scammy text, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile offer the same number to forward the messages to: 7726. After forwarding, the carrier asks for the phone number that the message came from.
If text spam is becoming overwhelming, spam-filtering apps like Teltech’s TextKiller are meant to help. The app, which blocks spam texts for $4 a month, scans messages coming from phone numbers that are not in your address book. If the text is detected as spam, it gets filtered into a folder labeled “Junk.”
TextKiller was thorough — perhaps too thorough. It successfully caught five spam messages in five days, but it also erroneously filtered two legitimate messages, including a response from Verizon thanking me for reporting spam and a message from an AT&T spokesman. So I wouldn’t recommend paying $4 a month for this app, which is only available for iPhones, unless spam texts have become truly unbearable for you.
A more practical solution is to use free tools to minimize interruptions from spam texts. On iPhones, you can open the Settings app, tap messages and enable an option to “filter unknown senders.” That places messages from numbers that are not in your phone book into a separate messages folder. On Android phones, you can open the messages app, enter the spam messages settings and enable “block unknown senders.”
Finally, both iPhones and Android devices include the ability to open the settings of a message and block a specific number from contacting you.
Bottom Line
There’s a moral to this story: We can help prevent spam from flooding our phones if we stop sharing our phone numbers with people we don’t fully trust. That includes the cashier at a retail store asking for our phone number to get a discount, or an app or a website asking for our digits when we sign up for an account. Who knows where our digits eventually end up after they reach the hands of marketers?
A better idea is for all of us to carry a second set of digits, which can be created with free internet calling apps like Google Voice, that we treat as a burner phone number.
That way, the next time a scammer tries to send you a text from yourself, it won’t come from your number.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220410 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/gun-laws-in-california-have-failed/ | By Dan Walters
CalMatters
Inevitably, last weekend’s horrendous fusillade of bullets on a downtown Sacramento street that left six people dead and at least a dozen wounded generated demands for new gun controls in state that already has the nation’s most restrictive firearms laws.
However, if anything, what happened just two blocks from the state Capitol underscores the folly of believing that “gun violence” can be meaningfully reduced by trying to choke off the supply of firearms – any more than the prohibition of liquor or the war on drugs succeeded.
The state’s gun laws have hassled law-abiding hunters and gun hobbyists and some are in danger of being declared unconstitutional. However, Californians already own more than 20 million rifles, shotguns and handguns and are buying hundreds of thousands more each year.
Nor have these laws prevented the lawless from obtaining weapons via theft, smuggling from other states or the illicit manufacture of untraceable “ghost guns.” Indeed, state restrictions have made the black market even more lucrative, mirroring the side effects of Prohibition and the decades-long drug war.
Initial evidence indicates that those who fired more than 100 rounds in a street crowded with bar and nightclub patrons probably were violating one or more gun laws. The two brothers that police arrested and are suspected of involvement in the mass shooting were charged with illegal possession of weapons – one for possession of an illegal fully automatic firearm.
So why, if California’s much-vaunted gun control laws have failed to choke off the supply of legal and illegal weapons, do politicians continue to claim that enacting even more will have an effect?
Some may believe it, the evidence notwithstanding, while others want to appear to be doing something about a problem because they don’t have any other answers. And those who propose and enact new gun laws are often woefully ignorant about guns or even existing laws.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg lamented to a radio interviewer about California’s difficulty in reducing the number of guns, saying, “You just have to go to a gun show in Reno to buy an assault weapon without a background check and come right back to California.”
Advocates of more laws often cite a “gun show loophole” but it’s a myth. Under federal law, one must be a resident of Nevada and undergo a federal background check to legally buy a gun in Reno.
Moreover, while California professes to have banned “assault weapons,” the state’s definition of them involves cosmetic features, rather than their lethality. Perfectly legal semi-automatic rifles that lack those features are available for sale everywhere in the state.
The newest effort at gun control in California, backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, would authorize personal lawsuits against the manufacturers and sellers of illegal assault rifles or ghost guns, mirroring a new Texas law allowing suits against those who perform abortions.
The legislation, Senate Bill 1327, is just a stunt – one of Newsom’s periodic jabs at a rival state. Those who could be sued under the bill are already committing criminal acts in California and a federal law prohibits suits against manufacturers of legal firearms, including the “assault weapons” that California and a few other states purport – but fail – to outlaw.
The bottom line is this: Actor Alec Baldwin’s claims notwithstanding, guns don’t fire on their own. Someone must accidentally or purposely pull the trigger and that should be the focus of efforts to reduce violence – such as more vigorous enforcement of laws banning gun possession by felons and those under court order. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220410 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/faces/how-randall-kline-turned-san-francisco-into-an-international-jazz-center/ | By Yoshi Kato
Speciall to The Examiner
The jazz, performing arts and nonprofit communities all seemed to gasp collectively on March 22 when SFJAZZ announced its founder and executive artistic director, Randall Kline, would be stepping down in November 2023. Like a well guarded Apple product secret, there was no hint that Kline was even pondering retirement.
The 68-year-old Laurel Heights resident has guided SFJAZZ from its 1983 roots showcasing locally based musical talent at the two-day Jazz in the City festival, to becoming an internationally recognized organization that presents concerts and events throughout the year — mostly in its SFJAZZ Center, the first freestanding building dedicated to jazz in the U.S.
“He’s had a major impact on the Bay Area and jazz in general,” says Tim Jackson, artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz. “SFJAZZ has become one of the great jazz institutions of the world. And while nobody does this kind of work by themselves, he had the vision, the determination, the will and the know-how to get it done.”
Four days after SFJAZZ triumphantly produced and presented the 2022 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert at its Center, Kline spoke with the Examiner in an interview that revisited SFJAZZ’s humble past, examined the Center’e role in the musical ecosystem and looked into his transformation from an independent player on San Francisco’s concert scene to founding and running a major performing arts nonprofit.
Kline is always enthusiastic when introducing concerts from the bandstand of Miner Auditorium, the SFJAZZ Center’s 700-seat main hall. But there was an extra sparkle in his eye as he gave opening remarks for the Jazz Masters concert, which was held in person on March 31 after SFJAZZ had recorded and streamed celebratory events for the NEA Jazz Master Fellows classes of 2020 and 2021.
The National Endowment for the Arts had been an early supporter of SFJAZZ (née Jazz in the City), he said. And now SFJAZZ could reciprocate by hosting the NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert in San Francisco for the first time. That event honored the members of the 40th Jazz Masters class — alto saxophonist/cultural activist/educator Donald Harrison, Jr., drummer/bandleader Billy Hart, vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Cassandra Wilson and bassist/producer/television and film scorer Stanley Clarke — with speeches, live performances and video tributes.
“The first big grant we got from the NEA was a program called Jazz Management, back around 1986,” Kline recalls by phone from his home office. “We received half of a salary for a development director, and at the time I viewed it as being the most important thing some three years into our existence.
“We needed to be able to write grants and we needed to really raise money, if we were going to act like a real, bonafide nonprofit,” he adds. “Prior to that, I was writing grants, or we hired a grant writer. And so this was someone to really help us get established.”
About five years later, the NEA awarded another significant grant that helped shape SFJAZZ into a Hayes Valley occupant that could sit among older organizations like the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Ballet, he says. “It was to help advance startup, small nonprofits to becoming mid-sized nonprofits.”
“You were assigned consultants to write your strategic plan, and that was our first-ever strategic plan,” he continues. “The statistic I remember them giving at the time was half of the organizations that went into this program did not come out of it, because it really made you take a hard, hard look at whether you had the right things to move forward.”
That initial strategic plan included the proposition that the organization have its own building, which became a reality some 32 years later with the SFJAZZ Center’s opening night celebration on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2013.
The successful completion of the $64 million structure was a watershed moment that gave SFJAZZ a home venue with two stages, including the Joe Henderson Lab, or JHL, which is situated along Franklin Street, seating 100; top floor offices; a box office and mini gift shop; four separate bars; and a restaurant. But there are other less visible milestones, including the introduction of an expanded spring season in 2000 to pair with the autumn San Francisco Jazz Festival and the all-star SFJAZZ Collective house band’s founding in 2004.
When the Center opened and was successfully received, SFJAZZ quickly adopted an ambitious calendar with over 500 concert offerings from September through May as well as during the San Francisco Jazz Festival and summer sessions between June and August. (SFJAZZ still also presents concerts at third party spaces, such as Herbst Theatre, Grace Cathedral and the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, but the majority of shows are held in-house.)
Having more than one SFJAZZ Center stage as its disposal allows SFJAZZ to foster the career growth of musicians and groups, as they return to perform over the years.
“What’s great about having the Joe Henderson Lab is that it allows us to address a lot of developing and community artists,” Kline points out. Ideally, a headliner would progress from a single night in JHL to four nights and then one night in Miner followed by a four-night run, he says.
Among the thousands of concerts SFJAZZ has produced, there’s no lack of highlights. Candidates could include presenting both the 25th and 50th anniversary versions of Duke Ellington’s “Concert of Sacred Music” at Grace Cathedral in 1990 and 2015, to assembling an all-star sextet featuring tenor titans Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis and Joshua Redman honoring living legend Wayne Shorter.
Unsolicited, Kline offers a particularly special memory that nicely encapsulates his live music experience: “I remember being at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, coming out of my hotel room and seeing Sonny Rollins at the end of the hallway,” he shares. “Now I would never say Sonny is a good friend of mine. But we’ve had the great good fortune of presenting him a number of times.
“As I approach him, I say, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Rollins. How are you?’ And he immediately recognizes me. After the thousands and thousands of gigs he’s done, he doesn’t have to recognize me. And he asks how Sam, my oldest son, is doing and how he’s enjoying baseball, which he was really into at the time,” Kline goes on to marvel. “Here’s one the greatest artists in the world, and he’s got this kind, human element about him. It was a poignant reminder that it’s generally not a coincidence that the people with the greatest levels of humanity are also the greatest artists.”
SFJAZZ will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year, and the Center will turn 10. As Kline approaches his eighth decade, he reckons that 70 is a nice round number, too, for him to “pass the baton.” He has received thanks and congratulations from present patrons and past SFJAZZ employees and, after a career of looking forward, he’s finally able to reflect back a little. “Humbled and grateful is how I’m feeling,” he says. “It’s nice to hear all of the lovely comments.
“One of the things that’s driven me is I wanted to do this well because of how much I respect the music and the artistry and the artists themselves,” he concludes. “I know how hard this is. And if we can equal the level of work and commitment that they do on their side, we can create a situation where artists are able to be fully expressive in that hall doing what they want to do.” | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220411 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/governor-newsom-why-california-needs-to-push-back-on-a-national-wave-of-conservative-legislation/ | By Jill Cowan and Shawn Hubler
The New York Times
When Rick Perry was governor of Texas in 2013, he made headlines for his repeated attempts to woo businesses away from California. Perry, a Republican, showed up in Sacramento and bought radio ads decrying California’s taxes and regulations.
For the most part, Jerry Brown, the Democrat who led the Golden State at the time, did not respond to the provocations. (He dismissed the radio spots as “barely a fart.”)
That was then.
Perry’s successor, Gov. Greg Abbott, has continued the California bashing. And Brown’s successor, Gov. Gavin Newsom, has started to fire back more frequently — in speeches and with policy proposals.
Political experts have said that is not surprising. Now that California is not doing policy battle with the White House, Texas and other conservative states have taken former President Donald Trump’s place as Newsom foils, especially as they pursue legislation aimed at restricting abortion and LGBTQ rights.
“It’s the erosion that we’re experiencing in real time across this country of rights that have been hard fought and well-established — at least for most of my lifetime,” Newsom told us.
We asked Newsom why he thinks California needs to lead the pushback. Here is our conversation, edited and condensed:
Q: California and Texas have been considered rivals for a long time. What’s changed?
A: It’s not just Florida and Texas, although they sort of punctuate this moment. There are these copycat bills that are being advanced in states like Iowa, Arizona and Tennessee. And that’s why you may have seen recently my office express itself a little more pointedly about what the hell is going on.
We’re not only the largest state, but we’re also the most diverse state in the union. We’ve always been the state where people come from around the world for new beginnings, to remake themselves. It’s a point of pride.
I’m hardly naive about California’s challenges. Quite the contrary. Our biggest critique has been the homeless and housing and the cost of living. And we’re taking those issues on.
But my entire life, not just in my political life, I can’t stand the othering of people. And that’s what they’re doing. We need to stand up to that and let folks know we have their backs even if they’re not in our state, and give them some hope that we can turn this around.
Q: You’ve mentioned that you think even people in your own party need to be woken up to what’s happening. Can you expand on that?
A: I feel like the president’s got his hands full with Ukraine, inflation and other issues. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been doing her best at the House to actually pass bills on voting rights, abortion and the like. Sen. Chuck Schumer doesn’t have the votes.
So I do think the Democratic Party has to come together. There’s something really profound happening at the state level, and I just think we’ve been sleepwalking. It’s not an indictment of national party leadership. It’s an indictment of all of us. We’re so situationally focused, and the Republican Party is quite disciplined.
What’s happening to democracy, the anti-democratic impulses, the scapegoating, the conspiracies, what’s happening in these states, what’s happening in our courts, what will happen this year most likely. I couldn’t believe it: A U.S. senator — a sitting U.S. senator! — said he thinks it would be appropriate for interracial marriage to be determined by the states.
I mean, that’s just extraordinary. I’d taken for granted so much of the progress over the last 40, 50 years. I didn’t realize how vulnerable these rights are to the whims of these leaders in these states.
Q: You have previously criticized Texas’ abortion law, which allows private citizens to sue abortion providers, as a cynical attempt to undercut federal rights. But then you called for a gun control measure modeled on the Texas law. Why?
A: We were very honest about that. The Supreme Court made a terrible decision in letting the Texas law stand, but I said this is a door they opened, and we’re going to walk through that door. I’m critical of that door being opened, but the reality at the end of the day is that if this court is going to sanction putting women’s lives at risk, we will take advantage of that door being open to save people’s lives by advancing our efforts on gun safety.
Q: California is, at least for now, still a more expensive place to live than Texas and Florida. Are you worried that people will have to pay a premium in order to have their rights protected?
A: I often say: “We’re not going to be the cheapest place to do business. But we’ve consistently been the best place.” Our GDP has outperformed most Western democracies. There’s a robustness to our approach, and it’s because of our values, not despite them.
That said, I’m deeply aware and have been working hard for the last three years to address the affordability in the state and the cost of living in this state with our efforts on housing. It’s right that the issue of homelessness — which is a preexisting condition — is at crisis levels. And we have an obligation and responsibility to address that.
But California is one of many blue states. We’re not unique, and I wonder what world we’ll be living in in five years. The cost of living here is high, and we acknowledge we have work to do in that space. But there’s a maturity in California’s economy and democracy.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220411 |
https://www.sfexaminer.com/findings/making-sense-of-the-madness-the-citys-redistricting-process/ | Maps, votes and even participation have changed during the San Francisco redistricting process, but two things have remained the same: Lengthy task force meetings and a flair for the dramatic.
This weekend, with just five of its nine members present, the city’s group appointed to redraw supervisorial district lines voted through a draft final map. This marked the last opportunity they’ll have to make any serious changes to what will become the city’s geographical guidebook for the next ten years.
Why was I seeing videos of San Francisco redistricting task force members walking out of their most recent meeting on social media?
Jeremy Lee, J. Michelle Pierce, Chema Hernández Gil and Raynell Cooper walked out of the meeting that began Saturday at 10 a.m. and ended just before 6 a.m. on Sunday, according to Mission Local. It was quite possibly a new record for the task force.
Lee, Pierce, Hernández Gil and Cooper — three Board of Supervisors appointees and one Elections Commission appointee — made the bold decision to leave the meeting upon the task force’s vice chair, Ditka Reiner, requesting a reversal of a prior decision. She stated she didn’t understand the initial vote. Reiner, before leaving to move her car for street sweeping with the rest of her peers, had begrudgingly approved a map that placed Potrero Hill in District 9 and Portola in District 10. Today, Potrero Hill sits in District 10 and Portola sits in District 9.
When the vote was called, the original action was reversed. This upset the four members in a new way, a way that made them feel like they had the rug pulled out from underneath them. One, Cooper, called into the meeting remotely and another, Hernández Gil, posted an official statement on Twitter.
“I believe this draft map has been carefully designed to systematically diminish the ability of many of the most marginalized San Franciscans from having fair and effective representation,” Hernández Gil went on to say Monday. “It is the result of weaponizing the Federal Voting Rights Act to pit vulnerable populations against one another, purposefully cracking their communities of interest while going out of its way to preserve the most stable neighborhoods.”
So we’re at a point in the process where we’ve pulled away from maps with numbers and letters, such as maps 4B and 4D. What is the final draft map?
The final draft map presents major adjustments from the current supervisorial map. Some changes include the Tenderloin being slated to sit in District 5 rather than District 6 and plucking Potrero Hill and Portola from their homes in District 9 and 10 in a jurisdictionally oriented wife swap, so to speak.
No district made it through unscathed, as shifting had to happen citywide in order to balance out the population sizes to meet redistricting rules. District 6, which has been a hotspot for San Francisco’s growth in recent years, has an abnormally large population that needs shrinking. As a result neighborhoods across the city will be redefined, regardless of what tweaks task force members make Monday and Wednesday.
How come foul words are being slung at task force members during every public comment session?
Many San Franciscans — including members of the task force — feel as though public input of many has been set aside for the political gain of few during the redistricting process.
Removing the Tenderloin from the area sometimes described as the Transgender Cultural District is a choice that the LGBTQIA+ community has showed up in droves to protest, especially in the last week.
The community also spoke to keeping District 8, specifically the Mission Dolores neighborhood, together. Former District 8 supervisors Mark Leno, Bevan Duffy and Scott Wiener padded the pleas with a letter highlighting the area’s history.
Cutting Potrero Hill out of District 9 separates two boroughs of the city’s Black community from one another. This happened despite numerous requests from Black residents not to allow the move, as they felt it would dilute the voting power of their demographic.
The five aforementioned members of the Redistricting Task Force created and approved a draft map that I expect will not only be legally challenged if made final, but that will reduce the trust San Franciscans have in transparent government and our city’s commitment to the underrepresented,” Hernández Gil wrote.
Last week District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston was perfecting his use of the word “gerrymandering” on Twitter. Why has District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen taken up the same vocabulary?
A bizarre Twitter thread borne out of Ronen’s own controversial tweet Friday displayed her newly voiced frustration with District 6 Supervisor Matt Haney.
Haney did not engage with Ronen’s post about “standing with the Black, Latinx, LGBTQ community against gerrymandering in San Francisco. However, when Haney issued a message encouraging the Elections Commission to leave the task force intact ahead of its hearing Friday, Ronen called Haney’s words “disgusting.” A few hours later, the commission offered praise of the work task force members had done and elected not to act, noting that both bodies were supposed to be independent.
“You used to stand with us before you decided to abandon your district in your first term,” she wrote. “Thought that wasn’t a betrayal because Honey Mahogany was going to win. Not with these gerrymandered districts you’re standing up for.”
To these fighting words, Haney responded with three question marks. He later elaborated.
“I don’t support the draft map currently under consideration. I want to see the Tenderloin and SoMa stay together in D6, I’ve been very clear about that. But the process is ongoing, & removing 3 appointees on the eve of the final vote after months of service is not something I support,” he said.
“Matt, are you really starting to believe your own bullshit or is this just more bullshit?” Ronen rounded out the conversation.
Here’s a question we’ve posed before: Why does redistricting matter?
When speaking to keeping their communities of interest together, many populations have pointed to their voting record. There’s a history of putting Black residents in office in District 10. District 8 is the only one to regularly turn out LGBTQIA+ politicians in the city.
These communities have created representation. The passion and pride that stem from that representation have poured over into public comment for days on end. This is why the city’s charter, in addition to many other laws, encourages keeping communities together. | true | true | both | www.sfexaminer | 20220411 |
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