Will San Francisco put these families out on the street?

 

On Monday morning, Vilma Arias spoke in front of a Faith in Action's banner outside Flynn Elementary School on Precita Park. She and her working husband and her two children are about to be thrown out of the non-profit shelter where they've lived  -- because the city is seeking to manage its homelessness problem through a revolving wait list. You can live in shelter for 90 days -- then you are out until you can manage to either find housing in this expensive place or overcome the paperwork to get back on the list.

From the neighborhood newspaper, El Tecolote: 

For the past 10 months, the Honduran mother, her husband and their two young children have lived in a San Francisco family shelter, waiting for a rent subsidy that might help them afford a place of their own. Her husband, who works as a garbage collector, earns just enough to keep them afloat but not enough to pay the city’s sky-high rents.

... She is one of dozens of homeless parents facing evictions this month due to a controversial city policy that limits family shelter stays to 90 days.

... With 318 families on the shelter waitlist, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) says the policy is meant to “increase the flow of families” through the shelter system and connect them with long-term housing solutions faster.

Faith in Action took a delegation made up of these families to meet Mayor Daniel Lurie. Nothing came of that.

“[Lurie] told us not to worry,” said FIABA advocate Brenda Córdoba. “We thought that meant he would mobilize, maybe talk to access points about giving all families extensions… but now he’s saying he didn’t commit to anything.”

At first, she said, the meeting with the mayor felt like a breakthrough. But when families reconvened on Tuesday, many still had eviction notices set for the coming week.

... Vilma, who is currently in asylum proceedings, says she’s been struggling to get her shelter to understand her situation. She says she’s seen a disconnect with what the shelter tells her she can do and what she’s required to do to gain another extension. 

“They tell us that we can’t attend meetings because we were on our way out, so we get a warning,” Vilma said. “But then they ask us why we didn’t request a meeting and we get a warning.”

 

Alyssa Wolf, a social worker at Flynn, spoke about the struggles of San Francisco schools to serve children who are homeless. Schools in the Mission serve a revolving group of 60 to 80 such children every day. The teachers union, United Educators of San Francisco, endorsed the homeless families' demand for stability.

 

After the rally, two families facing eviction were given an extension but it's hard to see any genuine resolution unless the city somehow finds the cash to house these San Francisco residents in urgent need.

Righteous rant: pseudo-intellectual Nazi lovers are simply vile and deserve denunciation

John Ganz writes the substack Unpopular Front. Sometimes I find his highbrow intellectual history a little precious. People have died, if not directly in consequence, certainly under the cover of fancy right wing racist apologia. They don't deserve much explication.

And as push comes to shove, Ganz does know it. He takes off after one such apologist. (I've added paragraph breaks for easier reading and emphasis on what I take to be the vital point.)

...  this guy is just totally baffled someone could feel passionately about anything—other than maybe that some races or groups are unnaturally inferior. 

It’s true that Nazi salutes make me feel burning rage and hatred. Nazis and fascists are my enemies as I think they should be everyone else of goodwill. That was my whole point. It might have something to do with the fact that these guys murdered my family members. It also might have something to do with the fact that I view that ideology and movement as the worst thing ever devised in history, as a deep affront to everything good and noble in the human experience. 

Racism, like the author’s, that tries to pass itself off as scientific or dispassionate does not soothe me into complacency: it makes me even more angry, because it is coldblooded and slimy. I don’t consider it a legitimate object of discussion. It’s an insidious ideology that dissolves the common bonds of humanity. 

I have more tolerance for ignorant prejudice than for “scientific” racism that tries to organize itself as a body of scientific knowledge that would systematically degrade and ultimately destroy the equality of mankind. 

To me, a preacher of racism—no matter how subtle or qualified—is not just my enemy, but the enemy of all mankind. Even if it were not all pseudoscience and charlatanism, I would reject it in principle. The division of humanity into racial castes is destructive of the very notion of shared humanity.

I try, imperfectly, to follow Adorno’s categorical imperative, that we must “arrange [our] thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself, so that nothing similar will happen.” To me, racist ideology, especially when it’s sanitized and scientized, is the first whiff of poison gas.

I also don’t think this person understands what a profound insult racism represents. My family fought and sustained wounds in Germany’s wars, they earned medals, they believed in the goodness and rightness of their nation, and felt called to sacrifice themselves for it. 

Look at the soldiers in America’s armed forces now being demoted, removed, and humiliated because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Or the attempts to erase black citizens’ contributions to America’s wars. These men and women were willing to sacrifice their lives for this country and now some in their country say they are not worthy. It’s been decided they are fundamentally not American. 

That betrayal should provoke anger in anyone with a sense of honor.

I’m charged with intolerance of those with different views than me, but even the author says that the right is now infested with Nazis. I’ve seen this political movement turn into something monstrous and absurd in my lifetime: a strange cult of personality around an evident moron, and then I’m asked for more forbearance towards my political opponents. 

I once had hopes in a rational center-right to reject these things. Those hopes have been repeatedly dashed, largely because people like this author are unable or unwilling to see things in their proper perspective. You may read but don’t remotely understand my work or much else in the world. ChatGPT will not help you. 

While claiming to be defenders of “Western Civilization,” writers like this one have already betrayed its greatest accomplishment in ways they will never fully understand.

Once upon a time, an earlier generation of Americans were much clearer in their thinking. I give you Dr. Seuss:

Righteous rant: where national values abide

Chris Geidner ably reviews legal developments under the Trump regime in a highly accessible manner.

 

And more, he goes straight to the political/ethical implications of what he is seeing.

We define “American values” — not Trump

That is the common thread. Time and again this past week, Trump declared that he has the right not only to define American values, but to define who is excluded — and then to act on it.

That is wrong.

This is not the end. Trump does not have that right. The Constitution, many federal laws, and legal precedent all clearly block him from doing so in many respects.

That, as we have too often seen, is not enough. Many people will have to act to ensure it remains so. 

Legal challenges, support for those challenges and the challengers, public officials lodging protests and insisting on accountability, and members of the public speaking out are just the start.

Judges will need to continue ruling against the administration when it acts illegally.

All people need to defend the law and oppose these sorts of actions, not because the law is always right or because it will be sufficient to moving forward and away from authoritarianism, but because the law is a foundational shared understanding that allows us to operate as a society.

Trump has regularly scapegoated groups of people — that has been a key part of his cruelty over the past decade and before. This week, to me, felt different because it went beyond broad attacks on large swaths of people. This was a series of directed attacks on individual entities that Trump believes have challenged him or his policies.

As I’ve written previously, the opening of the second Trump administration has been a series of efforts by Trump and others to see what they can get away with. Those have been extreme efforts at times, but they have, primarily, been about his authority within the government — in particular, when contrasted with other branches.

This week was a further escalation of that — testing out whether he can “get away with” taking a clearly more authoritarian path forward.

We must respond accordingly.

Trump and his acolytes and hangers on and enablers don't get to define what the American people value. We're being reminded that solidarity and empathy are the basis of communal civilization; the war of all against all leads only to collapse of what make us human. We need to take our country back from the stupid, shallow, and greedy.

"These are non-Jews trying to intimidate a Jew ..."

Timothy Snyder is the preeminent English-language historian of what he has labeled the Eastern Europe Bloodlands. Modern Ukraine, the western frontiers of what is now Russia, Belarus, Poland, the Baltic states were all places and peoples engulfed in human barbarism throughout the 20th century. These lands were where Nazi Germans attempted their "final solution," aimed to erase living Jews from Europe. 

Snyder's reaction to the Trump/Vance ambush of Ukainian president Zelens'kyi is long, heartfelt, and deep. Here's a taste; click on the title to read it all.

Anti-semitism in the Oval office
A confrontation seen with a historian's eye  

... The encounter in the White House was antisemitic. I am an historian of the Holocaust. I was trained by a survivor. Jerzy Jedlicki was nine years old when the Germans invaded, and fourteen when he emerged from hiding in Warsaw, and a prominent Polish historian by the time we met. ...

... Some forms of what [Jerzy] defined as antisemitism had to do with his memories of occupation. Jews had to show deference. Germans mocked the ways Jews dressed. That was before they were sent to the ghetto and murdered. Jews were scapegoated, made responsible for what the Germans wished to do anyway.

Some characteristics of antisemitism as he described it were more abstract. Jewish achievement was portrayed as illegitimate. Jews only gained success, antisemites say, by lying and propaganda. If a Jew was prominent, that only proved the existence of a Jewish conspiracy, and thereby the illegitimacy of the institution where the success was achieved. A prominent Jew was always, went the antisemitic assumption, motivated by money. 

Some of what Jerzy said had to do with his experience after the war. Non-Jews will deny the courage and suffering of Jews. They will claim all heroism and martyrdom as their own. ... there was after the war a Soviet antisemitism, with a broader and longer heritage, that claimed that Jews had somehow all remained at the rear while others fought and died. The facts were no defense.

... all of this should help us to see antisemitism in real life. Some cases are so overwhelming in scale that we find them difficult to confront and name. As Orwell noted, it can be hard to see what is right in front of your face.

Much has been said about the evils of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Its antisemitic element, however, has been underestimated. Russia's major war aim was fascist regime change, the overturning of a democratically-elected president in favor of some sort of collaborator. The premise is absurd: that Ukrainians do not really exist as a nation, and in fact would prefer a Russian.

But it was also antisemitic: that it is unnatural that a Jew could hold an important office. Volodymyr Zelens'kyi, the Ukrainian president, is of Jewish origin. Members of his family fought in the Red Army against the Germans. Others were murdered in the Holocaust. Although his Jewishness is not very relevant in Ukrainian politics, it is highly salient to Russian (and other) antisemites.

Ukraine, says Putin, does not really exist. But another theme of the propaganda is that Zelens'kyi is not actually the president of Ukraine. These two bizarre ideas work together: Ukraine is artificial and can exist thanks to the Jewish international conspiracy. The fact that a Jew leads the country confirms — for Russian fascists — both the unreality of Ukraine and the reality of a conspiracy. This Russian regime perspective is implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) antisemitic. Russian propaganda treats Zelens'kyi as obsessed with money and as subhuman. ...

• • •

Last Friday I happened to start watching the discussion at the White House between Zelens'kyi, Donald Trump, JD Vance and Brian Glenn towards the end, when Vance was already yelling at the Ukrainian president: "you're wrong!" I took in the tone and the body language, and my first, reflexive reactions was: these are non-Jews trying to intimidate a Jew. Three against one. A roomful against one. An antisemitic scene.

And the more I listened to the words, the more that reaction was confirmed. I won't speak for how Zelens'kyi regards himself. Ukrainian, of course. Beyond that I don't know. These things are complex, and personal.

But not for the antisemite.

It was all there, in the Oval Office, in the shouting and in the interruptions, in the noises and in the silences. A courageous man seen as Jewish had to be brought down. When he said things that were simply true he was shouted down and called a propagandist. 

• • •

... I had a strong personal reaction to that scene in the Oval Office, and I checked it for a week with friends and colleagues, who confessed that they had had the same reaction. I reconsidered what I had learned as a historian. I looked at the scholarly definitions. Everything, sadly, lines up. ...

In writing about antisemitism here I am obviously making a moral point. I am asking us, Americans, to think seriously about what we are doing, about Russia's criminal war against Ukraine, in which we are now becoming complicit. That Russia's war is antisemitic is one of its many evils; taking Russia’s side in that war is wrong for many reasons, including that one. ...

... In the world of the antisemite, all is known in advance: the Jew is just a deceiver, concerned only with money, subject to exclusion, intimidated by force. As soon as he is humiliated and eliminated, everything else will fall into its proper place. Consider the smirks in the Oval Office last Friday: the antisemite thinks that he has understood everything.

But in the actual world in which we actually live, Jews are humans, perilous and beautiful like the rest of us. The United States has never elected a Jewish president, and perhaps never will. But Ukraine has; and that president represents his people, facing challenges that those who mock him will never understand.  ...

... About one thing I am certain. Our eyes have to be open to what we do not wish to see.

Yes. Too much, sadly, lines up as we watch the Donald betray friends and attack our best hopes and aspirations.

Tortured and murdered

Perhaps we have to be grateful that the New York State Police still see evil when they meet it.

Children Were Forced to Torture Sam Nordquist, Prosecutors Say
Seven people are now charged with first-degree murder in connection with the death of Mr. Nordquist, a transgender man ... [gift article]

... The killing of Mr. Nordquist, who prosecutors have said traveled from his home in Minnesota to the Finger Lakes region of New York, where he was held captive and tortured, has prompted a national outcry over anti-transgender discrimination and violence.

... “To have two children have to participate in the beating of another human being, it’s deeply disturbing,” Kelly Wolford, an assistant district attorney in Ontario County, southeast of Rochester, said at a news conference on Wednesday....

... Mr. Nordquist was originally from the suburbs of St. Paul, Minn. Last September, prosecutors said, he traveled to New York to meet Ms. Arzuaga, who was living in Room 22 at a motel called Patty’s Lodge in Canandaigua, N.Y. The two had met online last year, according to investigators, and were in a romantic relationship.

According to the indictment, from roughly Jan. 1 to Feb. 2, Mr. Nordquist was kept in confinement, beaten, sexually assaulted and denied proper nutrition, among numerous other depraved acts. The torture, investigators said, eventually caused his death.

Ms. Wolford said that Mr. Nordquist’s body was then removed from the motel, wrapped in plastic bags and dumped on the side of the road in a field at a farm in nearby Yates County. Police discovered his body there on Feb. 12.

“In my 20-year law enforcement career, this is one of the most horrific crimes I have ever investigated,” Capt. Kelly Swift of the New York State Police said after the circumstances became public.

Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk and their goons didn't kill Sam Norquist. But their vicious denial of the complexities of gender certainly eggs on disturbed people.

This story is going to turn out to be complicated, I'm sure. The lives of poor, young, Black people often are complicated. 

But no presidential proclamation can erase the truth of gender fluidity; the Trump administration executive order trying to do so is in a category with trying to declare the earth is flat ...

It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.  These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. ...

So says Donald. As in so many areas, he's on a collision course with truth.

Time to get up and fight

Last fall I cancelled the Los Angeles Times when its owner refused to publish the editors' endorsement of Kamala Harris. Endorsements don't mean much, but how could I support the paper when its overlord puts a thumb on the scale? 

But today I still find the LAT's politics newsletter in my inbox; for how long I don't know. But for the moment, I still see some of Anita Chabria's opinion writing and it's so good and strong I'll post an excerpt, even though I can't link to it. She's got the spirit we all need in these times.

Hello and happy Thursday. President Trump addressed Congress — and America — Tuesday night in a speech that was both painfully long and studded with all the threats and grievance we have come to expect from our perpetually peeved commander in chief.

The World Health Organization? “Corrupt!” he cried.

The United Nations Human Rights Council? “Un-American!”

Federal employees? “They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.

All this while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to be chewing gum and Vice President JD Vance’s jaw hung open in glee. I couldn’t help but think he looked like a vintage Howdy Doody marionette, eternally trapped in smug if mindless satisfaction.

“Our country will be woke no longer,” Trump exclaimed to the roaring cheers of MAGA Republicans. And I fear he is right — if by woke, he means empathetic, inclusive and interested in civil rights.

Meanwhile the Democrats shot back with ... nothing.

... Texas Democrat Al Green takes the honor for at least trying to cause some good trouble, by shaking his cane at the president before being kicked out at the order of Speaker Mike Johnson.

“I’ll accept the punishment,” he told CSPAN afterward. “It’s worth it to let people know that there’s some of us who are going to stand up to against this president’s desire to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

And indeed, for those who are vulnerable and in MAGA’s sights, there was plenty of terror in Trump’s windy rants, even beyond those critical social safety nets. Migrants, legal or not, should know that the “great liberation of America” remains underway, a promise to continue to ramp up deportations.

Transgender people should know that Trump is “forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body,” and “we feel so much better for it, don’t we?”

Panama and Greenland? Coming for you.

Even farmers aren’t safe, with Trump proclaiming that they will “probably have to bear with me,” while his tariffs and halting of agricultural exports for foreign aid demolish their businesses.

But the sad spectacle of the Democrats just sitting there during the whole tirade reinforced that they simply don’t know how to handle Trump 2.0 — and Trump knows it.

... So the takeaway from Trump’s speech should be that MAGA has long known exactly what it wants, and now knows how to get it.

But Democrats have forgotten the most basic lesson [of politics] ... : When the attack knocks you down, get up and fight.

That's the spirit we need.

The war over our history

Did you know that one of Donald Trump's golf courses included a Civil War battlefield? Neither did I, but the Orange Toddler wants you to believe it did. 

 

He's not picking sides ... he's not yet saying he'd be all for the Confederate cause of preserving slavery. But we can guess. 

 

Much more from Kevin M. Kruse on the Trump/Hegseth zeal to rename military bases which lost their Confederate names during the necessary historical reassessment triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement.

Stop the Real $teal!

The sidewalks outside San Francisco's Tesla dealership on Van Ness are busy these days.

Protesters who've have beefs with Elon Musk (and King Donnie) were out in force Monday. And that followed a visitation from a different set of demonstrators on Saturday. 

 

Fired federal workers and friends got supportive honks from passing cars.

There was a message for complicit Democrats too. They need to show they are doing the job we elected them for. After all, this is San Francisco.

Posters on nearby lamp posts advertise future gatherings outside Tesla. Take your choice -- Saturday midday or Monday. Let's keep it up!

Probably misused, but still righteous

I have to admit I was gobsmacked to encounter several iterations of this photo on Facebook. The picture is of the lighted facade of the church in Washington DC which my Episcopalian comrades presumptuously call the Washington National Cathedral. It's the Protestant denomination's big diocesan church in the capitol, only by custom called "national." Episcopalians aren't "the ruling class at prayer" any longer. 

As far as we can tell, though many Christian nationalists intend to be our ruling class, broad based Christian nationalist attention to humble petition to God for the poor and suffering is pretty muted these days.

Nonetheless, I guess I'm happy to see being passed around what is clearly an affirmation of support for the brave and desperate people of Ukraine under Russian attack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the image derives from an ecumenical prayer service held alongside the Ukrainian ambassador in July 2023.

Anyway, I'm a Christian fully in the camp of supporting Ukrainians in their war for their country and their lives. It has not been simple for me to find myself supporting one side in a war. I've spent a lifetime opposing the wars of the United States empire; I've explored pacifism and find it the better way to live. But not in the case of this conflict. Ukrainians deserve their own country if they want it enough to fight for it and they've shown they do. The Russian invasion is brutal and criminal; it aims at the erasure of a particular history and people. Insofar as the US has been supportive of Ukraine, I think that has been a good use of a tiny fraction of my taxes. 

And I know Donald Trump's infatuation with and capitulation to Russia's strong man is a betrayal of all that is decent in our complex land.

Unity rally for transgender lives

 

Trans people and friends in the San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood yesterday asserted a straightforward message to the hostile Trump regime and to the world.

Trans people cannot be erased. And, as for so long, they know they must take care of their own. The rally of several hundred people was notable for making provision for disabled people and providing interpretation for the deaf.

 

One speaker reminded listeners of their indigenous roots here in Nuevo Mexico.

Professor of history Susan Stryker shared the story of the Turk Street site, where, in 1966, queer people fought police in what's remembered as the Compton Cafeteria Riot. 

Raise up their names! There are too many recent casualties of the war on Black Trans lives: Sam Norquist, Tahiry Broom, Amyri Dior, Ra’Lasia Wright. All were murdered in the month of February.

Despite the panic about gender variation which has seized our current rulers, trans and gender non-conforming people are not going to be erased. 

Foul Betrayal (2)

I bemoaned Donald Trump's betrayal of Ukraine and of this country last week. Our country is being disgraced by small empty men and the ignominy is just beginning.

Today I'll outsource commentary on the Trump/Vance boys bullying the brave Ukrainian President in the Oval Office to Phillips P. OBrien, an American historian and professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. 

Just Say Thank You and Shut Up

... The key theme throughout is that Trump is a great man who can work with Putin, while Ukraine needs to shut up, show gratitude, and take what is coming to it. Trump makes that clear when he criticizes the Ukrainians for basically wanting to fight for their freedom and not cave in to Putin, which he terms being “very disrespectful to this country” (this country being the USA—in other words, himself).

Then Trump and Vance go on what can only be called the great gratitude rant. Even though the USA under Trump has approved not a single new dollar in aid for Ukraine, Trump and Vance want Zelensky to constantly say thank you to them. Its, as always, an attempt to be humiliate a democratic state and for Trump to take credit for something other people have done. As Vance finally snaps. “Just say thank you.”

And then Trump lets the cat out of the bag. This was not a meeting or disagreement over the minerals deal. He was trying to pressure Zelensky into agreeing a cease fire along Putin’s lines and Zelensky refused. Trump comes out and says that explicitly at the end.

“You’re buried there. Your people are dying. You’re running low on soldiers. No, listen … And then you tell us, ‘I don’t want a ceasefire. I don’t want a ceasefire. I want to go and I want this… You’re not acting at all thankful. And that’s not a nice thing. I’ll be honest, that’s not a nice thing.

So there we have it. Ukraine should shut up and take Trump’s and Putin’s terms. It is not an independent, sovereign, democratic state, it is a dictator’s plaything which should be eternally grateful for the scraps from Trump’s and Putin’s table.

Thousands of Ukrainians didn't die for this -- and millions of Americans over three generations didn't fight fascism and for more complete democracy for this. As O'Brien goes on to say, it's now up to Europeans to step up and repudiate Trump's betrayal of all the European zone has stood for. Can they rise to their own defense?

The New York Times reports: 

European leaders quickly pledged their continued support for Ukraine on Friday after President Trump’s blistering criticism of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a meeting at the White House.

Leaders lined up behind Ukraine and praised its embattled president, the statements coming one after the other: from France, Germany, Poland, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Belgium, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Ireland. Canadian, Australian and New Zealand leaders added their voices to the Europeans’.

For once the paper got a headline right: 

The Orange Toddler defends his only friend. What a gaping hole for a soul that monster in the White House reveals.