Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 8

Frequently law enforcement officials field questions on the invention of more severe penalties for "quality of life" crimes. Gavin Newsom's public policy chief Julian Potter claimed during her June LPN meeting presentation on "problem-solving justice" that "the sheriff in this town has never put a person in jail for being homeless." At the November LPN meeting, Superior Court Commissioner Rob Albers claimed that "infractions are difficult to get outcomes on." Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo at the September LPN meeting claimed that "it's easier to prosecute when members of the bench come to meetings" like LPN's. At a meeting where Police Captain of Northern Station Kevin Dillon received a certificate of special recognition from Gavin Newsom, he claimed that "sleeping on the sidewalk" is a "big problem" because the criminal justice system fails to enforce severe enough penalties. At LPN meetings, Captain Dillon frequently describes this revolving door as being a huge snafu (alongside stories that the police force is terribly understaffed)-- adding to his woes he claims that you "can't arrest people for quality of life crimes."

Only 15% of infractions get dismissed.

Jennifer Friedenbach, Executive Director of the Coalition on Homelessness, describes situations where people have had possession of aluminum cans cited as "open containers."

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 7

A room full of white San Francisco professionals scowling at the black people on a street of Redhook NYC in a documentary establishing shot projected on the wall by Gavin Newsom's public policy chief Julian Potter during a presentation on "problem-solving justice" at an LPN meeting in June 2006.

To get this documentary image, personnel from the Mayor's office had to swap laptop powerpoint presentation projectors with a development agency LPN had invited to detail a proposed 130 foot tall, 107-condo (with garage and retail-- Trader Joe's was negotiating!) residential tower at 1285 Sutter, the former home of Galaxy Theatre. Marilyn Ponte of Bayrock Residential drew meeting attendees' attention to a "curved element" along the skyscrapers vertical line as seen from Hemlock Alley which the San Francisco Planning Commission had wanted.

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 6

At the June LPN meeting, during a presentation on "restorative justice" by the Mayor's public policy chief Julian Potter, those who gathered in the bar and grill dining room of the Cathedral Hill Hotel were asked what they felt the "strengths of Lower Polk" were.

Architect and LPN Co-Founder Ron Case's answer was:

A) Location
B) Diversity
C) Business
D) Architecture


The answer is B.

At the November O'Reilly's Holy Grail LPN meeting, Ron complained that the residential buildings of the Tenderloin and Polk Area are 90% rent control. Ron Case was integral to LPN's expulsion of gay hustler bar Rendezvous from Polk Street, collaborating with Dan Diaz (LPV), John Molloy (Polk Merchants Association) and Myles O'Reilly (O'Reilly's) against what they felt were "bad neighbors" and "bad for the neighborhood." Ron Case also profits from his architecture firm's design of the church which was built over the space that the bar occupied.

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 5

Now this blog will attempt to focus on the Captain Al Croce Casciato rant. Many of the most passionate members of LPN are only leading the specter of displacement by the nose right up to their own doorsteps. An interesting example of this was during the first happy hour LPN meeting where facilitator David Chiu's agenda got hopelessly railroaded by a very stream-of-consciousness Captain Al monologue. Bearing in mind that such a mode of expression is deeply respected around here (anyone who's read previous entries will know this to be true), figuring out how to portray Al's trip from ruminating about finding bargains on home video surveillance systems to al fresco dining to the tale of a "crazy" not-crazy homeless "not-homeless" woman is seriously a daunting task for even the most shrewd of criminal masterminds to tackle. Despite finding the agenda utterly displaced, David was able to recover some little modest corner for LPN to exist in the shadow of the police state.

We'll begin with probably the most poignant of Captain Al's classist and misogynist dream imagery, the legend of the "crazy" not-crazy, homeless "not-homeless" woman. We FADE IN on a bench in San Francisco. A sleeping figure has covered themselves with newspaper. Let's say the Chronicle. Or maybe the SF Weekly is easier to come by, although more difficult to spread out into a blanket. It's certainly way more useful as bedding than journalism. "This woman had this trash. Her belongings. She smelled," Captain Al soliloquized. "We sent her to the hospital. 5150. Amos Brown yelled at us and said if this was the Marina she wouldn't be here. We did Homeward Bound and Saturday she was back. The hospital let her go because she's not a threat to herself. She's not. [sic]" According to Captain Al, this problem continued right up until the reverend wanted to get a merchant to do a citizen arrest, when someone suggested about trying to get her in the church, "trying to get her into services." Captain Al free-associates further: "She was a boomerang. She's not homeless. She's mentally-impaired. Something tells her to collect trash and cover herself with it at night." Hmmm. Really, Captain? Could it be the cold?

"She's like a hand grenade," the Captain continued. Hey, that's not very nice, Al. Just because you might not like the way a person smells, there's no reason to suggest that they're going to spontaneously combust. Really now. "There was a murder when I became Captain across the street. One stabbed the other snapped. You have to tell them, 'John take your meds. John take a bath.'" Hmmm. Does that strike anyone as a little paternalistic? The world is truly bleak where the kindest words you'll hear in a room full of people are from a police officer.

This is just one small part of the Captain Al Casciato rant.

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 4

"Do you do something about illegal pigeon feeding?"
Carolyn Abst speaking to Robert Arevalo of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, October 6th 2007, O'Reilly's Holy Grail.

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 3

WARNING! IDENTITY THEFT!

There was a bit of confusion at a recent LPN meeting. In praising the city's "community justice center" idea, Superior Court Commissioner Ron Albers buoyed his claim as to the experiment's merit by mentioning to meeting attendees at O'Reilly's Holy Grail that a "homeless coalition" supports it and "is very eager" about it.

What follows is vital information on what you can do to protect yourself against identity theft. Know the difference between: 1) The Coalition on Homelessness and 2) The San Francisco Homeless Services Coalition. Don't you think it's kind of funny that there would be two groups within several blocks of each other in the Tenderloin with such similar names? I'm sure that Commissioner Albers didn't mean to confuse anyone. Why would a group that has over the years always voiced opposition to the onslaught of anti-poor programs City Hall has shat out suddenly become giddy about an experiment that would only make the connections between the police state and non-profits more devastatingly explicit?-- consider the recent spectacle of outreach workers leading the police to hidden homeless encampments.

At the LPN meeting in June of this year, Julian Potter from the Mayor's Office griped that the Coalition on Homelessness opposed the "community justice center." LPN member Dan Diaz asked her about "recalcitrant types," and she stressed that through using this new judicial system "the average person does finally break through." Albers concurred this, in describing a similar system employed at the Drug Court where he's served, "There used to be the thing that people said about leading a horse to water, and you can't make them drink... You can coerce them in a certain way to get that horse to drink that water." Now come on. Does the Coalition on Homelessness really support coercing homeless people to do anything they don't want to?

A recent article in the Guardian attacked the San Francisco Homeless Services Coalition as being a recent L.A. transplant org that's little more than a canvassing racket with a very well-compensated admin. Nobody's quite sure which "homeless coalition" Albers was referring to. It appears this was very intentional.

Jenny Friedenbach, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness has this to say: "We oppose a community court in the Tenderloin if it is going to include any infractions related to a person's status being homeless such as: sitting on the sidewalk, camping, open containers, urination and misdemeanors, 647's which include camping laws."

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 2

"I sleep well at night when I send people to state prison because you have multiple opportunities to turn yourself around in San Francisco." This is a direct quote from San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Sharon Woo at the first happy hour LPN meeting in September.

Adventures in Liberal Fascism Pt. 1

In case you cared, no the blog has not been taking a break on its updates. The horror of LPN is so overwhelming to comprehend, cope with and then describe concisely that it's taken this entire time to finally come up with a more effective editorial mechanism. What follows will be a series of snapshots from different things that have happened in the last 5 months of meetings. The idea is to keep it concise, however it is difficult to predict at the outset whether or not additional explanatory detail will be required.

On the title, admittedly it is clumsy. It could be interpreted as a conservative critique of liberals, perhaps of some imaginary situation where those with more privilege are getting saddled with the burden of sharing that privilege with those who have significantly less. To someone perhaps more familiar with the mission of this blog, it might suggest a frightful situation where liberals greatly compromise their progressive ideals. It's perhaps startling to intend to use the adjective "Liberal" to describe LPN to some, even granted the ways that Gay Shame has sought to repeatedly expose liberal hypocrisy in the past. What's happened is that LPN has shown nominal yet noticeable growth in their ability to disguise their agenda as vaguely pseudo-progressive. At this moment in San Francisco, "vaguely pseudo-progressive" is what passes as "Liberal."

Mostly though, a snappy-enough title was needed for this series of moments. Hopefully, when the series concludes we'll be all caught up, and we can continue with regular monthly updates. Okay, so let's get started.

One of the most telling moments from a recent LPN meeting was when David Chiu apologized to meeting attendees about the noise caused by the espresso machine in Cafe Yabon right in front of its owner who, after allowing his entire cafe to be completely taken over by the meeting, sat before attendees the first ever complimentary LPN meeting refreshment in 5 years of existence: homemade hummus with fresh baked bread.

In situations like this, certain things, such as the existence of a street culture created by people with little-to-no privilege in urban spaces, are simply impossible to complain about. But despite San Francisco's supposed PC heritage LPN finds a way. Meanwhile, the cafe's usual customers watch the packed-to-the-door meeting from the street as Carolyn Abst asks the person from the city attorney's office is there something that they can do to get the needle exchange that's in Hemlock Alley to move out of the neighborhood-- she's been trying for the past 8 years. Later, Captain Dillon from Northern Station notes that since sleeping on the sidewalk isn't criminalized harshly enough it's become harder to push the poor people out of sight.