The week of December 13, 2004
Dreams
Deferred, Dreams Won
By Kim Knox
American
Women dismantles the myth that Rosa Parks simply had a hard day in
Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955.
Three Stories, One Moral
- Or, It’s All a Matter of Scale
By
Betsey Culp
We live in in a city whose world-renowned symbol is a monument to the
automobile.
The Courage to Risk Everything
By
Kim Knox
"The results announced by the Central Electoral Commission are rigged.
Do not believe them."
“My first job was to remodel a kitchen”
Walter Wong interviewed by Matt Gonzalez
MG: I thought it was
interesting how during the mayor’s race, after you decided to support me
in the race, Newsom started attacking you. Is it true he sought your
support?
WW: Yeah, he came to
see me many times to get my support.
Instant Runoff Voting
- A Progress Report — December 2004
New
exit poll study of Ranked Choice Voting reports positive results - Large
majorities prefer and understand system; some differences by racial and
ethnic groups
From the office of Supervisor Matt Gonzalez
Only 13% of Asians and 15% of Chinese speakers reported a lack of
understanding of RCV, compared to 12% of whites and 23% of Spanish
speakers.
Success for
ranked choice voting in San Francisco… But potential trouble on the
horizon from opponents
By Steven Hill
Just as San Francisco has led the nation in so many ways, from gay
marriage to cutting edge computer and biotechnologies, San Francisco now
is leading the United States with modern democratic methods.
Letter from
Santa Clara - Sandra Tsing Loh deconstructs "The Nutcracker"
By Bill Costley
Sandra sulks alone in her room eating big bags of Fritos, knowing she's
forever doomed to being an almost-anonymous ballet-cow.
The week of December 6, 2004
Salvation Brought to You by Pseudo-Dummies
By Bill Costley
What’s up with those Gideon Bibles distributed free
to all hotels & motels, bus-stations, etc., aren’t they part of a
long-ongoing bibli-material strategy to force this vast land to become a
de-facto Christian Nation of Otherwise Illiterate Insomniacs?
The Apocalypse Is Just Around the Corner
- Tim LaHaye’s “Glorious Appearing”
By
Betsey Culp
Imagine 400 pages that
alternate between scenes from a very gory video game and excerpts from
sermons.
Fighting City Hall with a British Accent
By
Kim Knox
Almost every government plan started as a quick decision by a very busy
(and important) person (mayor, supervisor, department head, etc.) several
years earlier.
Letter from Santa Clara
- “Ex-hackie Santas Winter…Here!”
By
Bill Costley
He said Safeway had just told the Sallies’ Santas to buzz off, so he
was quickly relocated to an Albertson’s in Santa Clara.
The week of November 29, 2004
Pictures in Our Heads
- Decision-making in a Complex World
By
Betsey Culp
Some of the city’s finest recalled the bad old days when officialdom
was reserved for straight white males. It was, after all, Hongisto — a straight white male
— who had fought most conspicuously to open up first the Police and then
the Sheriff’s Department.
From the Archives: Assessing
Hongisto - Supervisor Matt Gonzalez interviews Assessor Candidate
Dick Hongisto (January 14, 2002)
The Bay Times issued an edition lampooning me on
the cover. At the time, a lot of the officers working to stop
the rioting were taking a lot of abuse everyday they went to
work — being called names,
spit at, and having bottles thrown at them.
Good as Gold
By
Kim Knox
Sometimes our allies decide on a different path.
Or they disagree with us and choose to work on the other side of an issue.
Happy Thanksgiving — Your car has been towed!
By
Kaye Griffin
San Francisco authorities went out towing cars on Thanksgiving day. Who
could possibly have ordered the Department of Parking and Traffic or the
police to send out their brave officers on a search-and-destroy mission to
tag and tow on Thanksgiving day!
My Aqu@rium Adventure
By
Bill Costley
There's something to be said for being wheeled about at
eye-to-nipple-level of young moms who are busily pushing baby carriages.
Especially if you're a reasonably fit looking 62 year old semi-grey-haired
male.
The week of November 22, 2004
Two Sides of a Coin
- Middle America and Iran
By
Kim Knox
These books talk about the lessons that fundamentalists in the U.S. and
Iran have learned about using values to reach the electorate.
Remembering Margaret Hassan
By Lucy Colvin
I am mourning for Margaret Hassan. The day after her capture her
picture stared out at us from the front page of the morning newspaper.
The $20,000 Incumbent Bargain
By
Steven Hill
What if you could pay $20,000, and for that modest sum end up with
lifetime employment at a salary of $158,000 annually, with the best health
and retirement benefits, frequent travel to Washington DC, and staff and
paid expenses, all on the public's dime?
What's Happening at Laguna Honda
By
Michael Lyon
The Health Department claims it is expanding the mission of Laguna
Honda to care for new vulnerable populations, but this is a poor excuse.
Fixing? Helping? Or Serving?
By Dr. Stan Goldberg
The Guest House is a restored Victorian
home in San Francisco with space for five residents who are not expected
to live for more than six months.
Letter from Santa Clara
- No Gropenatorial Hypermuscularism
By
Bill Costley
You see, we just don’t do hard, here, in
NorCal (as they call it here), despite both Dubya & The Gropenator’s
hypermuscular rhetoric.
The week of November 15, 2004
By
Betsey Culp
Chris Carlsson's The Political Edge creates a picture of the
city where Gonzalez’s candidacy was possible.
By Matt Gonzalez
Democrats are on notice that they have only four years to fix elections
or suffer future defeats — regardless of how “evil” the Republican
candidate.
By
Charles Kalish
Our victories in this election have handed us a reprieve — a second
opportunity to make this truly a progressive city.
Prepared by the
Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco, November 2004
We run the risk of falsely classifying all homeless people as substance
abusers or mentally ill. We run the risk of incorrectly conceiving of
homelessness as stemming primarily from individual personal problems.
By
Bill Costley
Back in the late '60s, I used to ask myself whether I
wanted to live in: (A) a just society, or, (B) just one where my activity would really make a
difference.
The week of November 1, 2004
By Betsey Culp
(With apologies to somebody)
Twas the night before the election, when all over
town...
By h. brown
I have no idea who is going to win any office, anywhere, come Tuesday.
By Bill Costley
The dancers walked like Egyptians, pointed and struck like asps, dove
like herons, etc. demonstrating that De Nile was overflowing their
collective minds.
By Howard Williams
Afghanistan is not a utopia, nor is it on its way to becoming one. But
it is an independent country and an ally.
Iraq is a nation with the world's second largest proven oil reserves.
The week of October 24, 2004
By
Rose Tsai
I'm tired of being afraid because our future is too valuable for
someone else to waste.
By
Tys Sniffen
Do they know the who, the why, and the what’s been tried on the issues
of the district?
From Jennifer Baity Carlin
It's important that as many people watch this animation featuring Ed Asner
urging support for Prop 63 as possible.
By Sue Peters
He gave me about three answers: "Not in this city. Maybe back in
Texas." and "I'd rather run for governor." and "I couldn't get the money."
By
Bill Costley
When a grammar-school classmate showed me his great-great grandfather’s
dark blue civil war jacket (with a bloody bullet-hole in its chest), I was
astonished. It was just not part of my usable past.
The week of October 18, 2004
By Betsey Culp
10.24.04: When Rebecca Silverberg goes ballistic, and Bernal goes gaga
10.25.04: When D2 courts Arts Forum SF, and artists rule
10.26.04: When Ranked Choice Voting is explained, and Dorkery is
unmasked
The week of October 18, 2004
From the
Coalition on Homelessness
Most of the Sanctuary's residents were stunned to learn that they had
less than 24 hours notice before they were required to relocate to
makeshift accommodations at other shelters.
By
Michael Lyon
Business and government plan huge health cuts, which would cause many
more injuries and deaths.
By
Richard Knee
A measure on the statewide ballot, Proposition 59,
would fix into the state constitution the principle of the public's right
to know.
By
Steven Hill
Even if John Kerry is elected, that will not change the fact that
representative democracy in the United States is severely broken.
By Bill Costley
Yesterday I caused a stir at a breakfast meeting when
I called the question “What is your dream job?” infantile.
October 12, 2004
The October 4 issue of the
New Yorker contains a profile of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, written
by Tad Friend, a resident of Brooklyn, New York. Here is the Call's
response:
By Betsey Culp
Wherever you were, I don’t live there.
By Betsey Culp
I had forgotten, until the vice presidential debates, how easily the
subject of same-sex marriage makes even articulate speakers like John
Edwards squirm.
By Betsey Culp
Business leaders, grasping every possible lifeline, demanded cleaner,
less intimidating streets — and cleaner, less intimidating people on
them.
By Betsey Culp
It’s easy to find a parallel between the mayor’s forays into
low-income areas and Kennedy’s explorations of Bedford-Stuyvesant in the
1960s.
October 4, 2004
By
David Freedlander
We are given our assignments and I head out to the wealthy peninsula
enclave of Hillsborough, mostly “red” territory but still firmly enough in
the Bay Area that it lies as a potential gold mine if you knock on the
right door at the right hour.
By Sue Cauthen
The widespread furor over a
National Endowment for the Arts study which found that book reading is
seriously in decline continues to build momentum.
By Susan King
I am a transportation activist and lifelong cyclist who does not own a
car. I am dedicated to changing the way we view transportation.
For your amusement - the following has been making the rounds of the
internet:
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with
water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because
some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.
September 28, 2004
By
Howard Williams
I did say that this war is bringing out our best side, too. And after
we do recognize and forgive our “worsts,” we still
have to use our “bests” to get us out of this mess.
By
Bill Costley
Declared nativist Todd C. O'Donnell (running for Seat
7) gave away black & white pens with the tag-line "The American Man"; his
flyer sports an American flag. His bizarrity, however, is his obsession
with Star Wars.
September 24, 2004
By Betsey Culp
Many of the major donors to the Californians for an Open Primary PAC served on Schwarzenegger’s transition
team.
By Steven Hill and Roy Ulrich
This could result in a decline in racial minorities being elected, and
the California legislature being less diverse.
September 20, 2004
By
Betsey Culp
It’s
easy to imagine the consternation of the Dems when they realized they might lose a major
urban stronghold as well.
District
Elections, à la 2000
In fall 2000 the SFCall published a weekly series that explored each
district and its candidates.
By Allen White
The gay liberation movement brought tens of thousands to San
Francisco’s Castro district. Certainly one of many compelling reasons was
the music of Sylvester and those incredible singers, Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash.
By Bill Costley
The Brits ought to tell us to shut & shape up: what they
went thru in WW2 was more spectacular than 9/11 by many magnitudes.
August 27, 2004
By
Betsey Culp
We the people of the United States, in order to
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this Customer Service Plan for the United States of America.
The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the
end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding
clubs and with their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33
women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."
By Bill Costley
We've moved to Santa Clara, California three times now, twice into
apartments, but this time, we've bought a house in what we now realize was
once (and still is) a Luso/Portuguese Zone.
August 20, 2004
Here, for your kind attention, is a new publishing
concept: a weekly series of genuine “Letters from California.”
Betsey Culp
There’s a
myth flying around the country that all our social ills can be alleviated
by applying a few good business principles to government. Like a moth near
a flame, this myth is headed for disaster.
Gray Brechin
I said that the United States was the product of the eighteenth century
Enlightenment. What we are seeing in the twenty-first century is The Great
Endarkenment.
Steven Hill
By 2050 most of the U.S. will look like California today.
And California will look more like… Mexico.
