Activism

OccupySF REJECTS Mayor Lee's Attempts to Move the Camp to Fenced-in 16th & Mission Ghetto

Back in last Wednesday's otherwise forgettable pre-Thanksgiving edition of the Chronicle, columnists Matier & Ross spread word about the city's plan to relocate the downtown camp to an abandoned trailer park on Mission at 16th.

The plan was simple: appease downtown businesses and building owners—whose patience with the protest is growing increasingly thin—by relocating the encampment to the 'already blighted' Mission District.  The City offered up the old Phoenix Continuation High School site, which looks and smells a lot more like a concentration camp than the West Coast stomping ground of American's premiere financial institutions, free-of-rent for the next 7 months.  In the politician's minds, the offer was a goldmine for the protest, ludicrously thinking the 16th and Mission location would better help the movement deal with the homeless and opportunistic drug users who “are detracting from their message.”

Of course, OccupySF wasn't too thrilled with the offer:

Getting the self-proclaimed leaderless group to agree, however, may be impossible.

Plus, says Occupy member Richard Kreidler - who has been in on the talks at the mayor's office - activists suspect that the city is “looking for a place that will be out of sight, out of mind.”

Well, last night OccupySF officially rejected the ploy, as reports Mission Local:

The general assembly, attended by about 75 members, was called after Mohammed Nuru, interim director of the Department of Public Works, handed the group a “facility license agreement” earlier on Tuesday for the site at 1950 Mission St. The agreement, which is good until June 30, 2012, includes a list of 17 provisions, including no pets, no minors and no cooking.

Some members declined to relocate to the Mission District site because they did not like some of the provisions; others did not want to be told what to do by the city, and some objected because of hygiene issues associated with the proposed site.

“We are not going to take the crumbs the city is giving us,” said occupier Meagan Malony, adding that they done that for too long. “We want the five-course meal.”

It remains to be seen if the city will just employ violence to get their way.  But in the meantime, it appears some have gone ahead and just claimed the site for the movement:

Don't Forget to Vote Today! (And Don't Vote For Ed Lee)

TL;DR: Look up your polling place & Don't Vote for Ed Lee!

I've long resisted making any sort of political endorsement on this blog, solely because this isn't a political rag and we already have enough political propaganda hanging off our door knobs. However, I've spent a decent amount of time discussing the mayoral contest with my friends and neighbors over the past few months and the unfortunate truth is this: the majority of 20-something in the neighborhood have only lived in SF for 6 months-3 years, moved here to either work in tech/related marketing industries or go to school, and have no idea what's going on in the election. Many still don't know who they are voting for and barely know the names of all the front-runners, never mind the candidate's positions on the issues that matter.

This is not anyone's fault. There's something like 80 people running for Mayor.  They're almost all Democrats who have worked for The City at some point (being either elected or appointed) and all pretty much agree with each other's views. The rest are a hodgepodge of activists, Valley VC's, Mission bar owners, and journalists.  I think I even read somewhere that Broke-Ass Stuart was running as “broke-ass” write-in campaign.

There's just too much to keep up with, and our “Interim Mayor” has leveraged the confusion and lack of populist consensus for his own benefit.

He secured a bunch of fancy endorsements from out-of-town tech billionaires (none of whom are registered to vote in SF), sports celebrities (including the man trying to move the 49ers out of SF), and rappers (one from Los Angeles and the other being the poster child for fireball failure), had Napster founder and known-pervert Sean Parker donate $100,000 to cover the costs of producing a viral video, and had TechCrunch plug him with a thinly-veiled endorsement (the same publication also called Google Wave “the future,” but I digress).

And it worked! I keep hearing from of Mission Kids who plan on voting for Ed Lee because he released a goofy campaign video and Michael Arrington likes him and he saved Twitter from going bankrupt or whatever and Brian Wilson told them to “do it.”

Don't.

The simple fact is Ed Lee is “the next in line” in the ineffectual political dynasty that Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom established 16 years ago.  If you believe the direction SF has taken in those years has been a good one, then you should vote for Ed Lee—he's your guy.  But if you're like the rest of us—those of us who believe that the technological epicenter of the world should be able to figure out how to make Muni functional, that mid-Market doesn't need to be a shithole, that events like Halloween in the Castro and Bay to Breakers and street fairs shouldn't be shut down because of civic ineptitude, that our roads shouldn't be covered in potholes, we shouldn't be selling out our city to big business, etc. etc. etc.—then Ed Lee is NOT your guy.  He's just the next cog in the machine that hasn't been getting it done since the mid-90s.

There's a lot of great candidates to vote for today.  While I won't say whom I'm voting for (although you can probably figure it out), I sat down with a few friends over the weekend to make a website explaining the reasons you shouldn't vote for Lee.  Read it.  Share it.  Hopefully we make a convincing case.

Polls opened an hour ago.  Get out there and do your thing.

[Photo via reader John J.]

ABC News Sponsors Free Ice Cream Giveaway in Exchange For Epic Shots of Occupy Oakland

Nothing is quite as appalling as seeing Yet Another Food Truck and ABC News setting up shop directly outside a general strike.  Don't get me wrong—I'm all for ice cream on a hot day.  But to drive up to sell ice cream to a bunch of people trying to shut down commerce for the day?  Well, that's just tacky.

But in true activist Oakland fashion, “Treats for the Streets” is no San Francisco food truck.  They have no website, Yelp profile, Twitter feed, Facebook page, Tumblr, Groupon deal, or daily 7x7 Magazine coverage and they give their ice cream away for free.

Everyone involved seemed a little too busy to give me the low-down on how this mobile gift economy scheme works, but I'm digging it.

Dolores Park's Cookie Dude Joins General Strike

And he was committed!  I was, like, hungry and shit after smashing the state all morning; so I walked up to him holding a five, half expecting him to unzip that middle finger to unveil a secret tank-top pouch full of freshly-baked oatmeal raisin cookies.  No dice!

The OccupySF Raid That Never Was

WIth rumors of an epic showdown between Occupiers and SFPD circulating all day, the mood was undeniably tense at Justin Herman Plaza this evening.

At least a hundred people dedicated themselves to be arrested by SFPD, should they invade the camp, in an effort to protect the vital services that have been established over the weeks.  The medical tent found itself insulated by two waves of linked protesters while lines of linked Occupiers ran anti-dispersal drills nearby.

While the police never showed, the occasional fits of collective calm that would come over the camp rapidly morphed the relatively festive stratosphere into an anxious, eery gloom.  Resigned to being arrested, dedicated protesters would exhibit a zen-like calm between being educated in their rights and yelling “WE LOVE YOU” to any police officers who could possibly hear them.  Medical volunteers would tend to the front-lines, making sure everyone was prepared for the inevitable barrage of tear gas and beatings.  The National Lawyers Guild ensured everybody, regardless if they planned on getting arrested, had a lawyer's number Sharpied to their arms.

Then the brass band would kick it up again, and everyone seemed to forget, even if only temporarily, that six buses were filling up with SFPD's goons a little over a mile away.

(Sidenote: I'm not completely sure what this sign means, but I think it is subliminal messaging telling me to go eat an entire bag of chocolate-covered pretzels from Whole Foods.)

Anyway, enough with serious matters…

When it comes to media, this bum has the game figured out: he runs around the camp holding up an iPad that streams video and pushes around a shopping cart filled with batteries connected to WiFi equipment.  I think I saw a couple of empty beer cans in there.  But I digress.

If you've been watching the livestream of The Occupation, this intrepid lunatic and his pimped-out Safeway cart is to thank.

Elsewhere, this reporter from Telemundo had to stand a fucking box to report the news.

As it became evident that SFPD wasn't going to bloody up the unemployed, uninsured, and homeless, the scene began to focus on the politicians (who, to their credit, seemed to do a bang-up job of putting pressure on Mayor Ed Lee to not use Oakland-style Gestapo tactics to clean out the porta potties/acting as a human shield).  So Supervisors David Campos, Jane Kim, John Avalos, and Eric Mar posed for every journalist, photographer, blogger, and mediocre camera phone that wanted to documentent the spectacle.

And while the media was busy taking snaps of political quartet, they missed the real story: John Avalos smearing a partially-eaten Subway sandwich all over the back of Eric Mar.

(There's a better joke in there involving betrayal, Julius Caesar, and a controversial dry cleaning bill, but I'm too exhausted to think of it right now.)

Because city politics is basically a used car salesman's version of the high school cafeteria, the progressive clique didn't seem particularly keen on letting Senator Leland Yee and his hipster henchmen hang out with them (not that it slowed him down).

Speaking of politics, the lines to squeeze out a shit were hella gnarly.

Finally, I took a photo of this Angry Bird, should she be disappeared by the cops.

OccupySF Takes Over Dolores Park

At some point Saturday afternoon, throngs of OccupySF protested marched through the Mission and Occupied Dolores Park, disrupting an epic game of catch.  A few observations on the protest:

  • Protesters were really confused as to why I wanted to finish my beer and not stand in a circle and yell at other like-minded strangers.
  • Gannnnnnnnja treats.
  • The visible major of OccupyDolores participants love anti-choice/anti-war/anti-government Texas Republican Ron Paul and pro-bicycle/pro-create-a-public-SF-bank/pro-universal-healthcare San Francisco Liberal John Avalos.
  • Surprisingly, Cold Beer Cold Water was not apart of the protest.
  • Unlike previous park protests, this one was actually fun.
  • John Avalos' motorcade rolled by the park, with Avalos sitting in the back of a convertible.  I kept waiting for a second shooter to emerge from the grassy knoll, but no such person surfaced.

  • John Avalos will literally do anything to become mayor.

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