Why have San Francisco and the Bay Area punched so far above our numerical weight in California and even national politics? Here's what I mean: if you think of the whole of California, it is a fact that most of the people live in the south of the state, millions more than live in the Bay Area. Yet, we're on our second governor in a row from the Bay. Since 1992, all our Senators (Boxer, Feinstein, Harris) have come from the Bay. The Speaker of the House comes from San Francisco -- and her predecessor in that San Francisco seat, Phil Burton, was in the House leadership when he died young at 56. (Yes, his wife, Sala Burton, filled the seat briefly, but the story goes she anointed Nancy Pelosi as her successor when dying after a brief tenure.) Sure, there's a lot of liberal-ish money here, and there's Silicon Valley nearby. But this line of political heavyweights coming out of this area began before those advantages were so clearcut.
The passing of Jane Morrison this week at age 100 reminded me of one of the reasons for the area's political prominence. Morrison was a member of a cohort of diligent, mature, mostly white, affluent San Franciscans who put lives into the usually banal business of progressive Democratic Party politics. Others included
Agar Jaicks (d. 2016) and his more radical partner,
Diana Jaicks (d. 1998). All these leaders sponsored fundraisers, brokered alliances, and mentored up-and-comers. But they did more. The
Chronicle obituary for Morrison catches what I think made these people the durable backbone of progressive San Francisco:
Political people ... liked Morrison because she knew the basics of organizing — how to find people to spend a day licking stamps and stapling election fliers, or making sure that gatherings went smoothly with good food and drink close at hand.
“She would tell me at first that when she hit 80, she was going to retire and just go to lunch. That never happened,” [Jennifer] Clary, [president of the environmental group San Francisco Tomorrow] laughed. “She had a stable of volunteers and the most amazing energy. It wasn’t unusual for me to get six to 10 messages in a day when she was putting something together.”
These leaders worked at the mundane tasks of grassroots politics.
Their example helped San Francisco progressive politics make room for generations of activists who have been willing to do the work, to endure the tedium of endless meetings, to navigate roiling ambitions and not a little self-dealing. Our politicians rise high because area politics are a rough and tumble school -- a school to which a generation of elders added a leaven of principle and practicality. We have been fortunate to have that generation among us; can a city so rich and yet so troubled preserve their progressive legacy?
No comments:
Post a Comment