Now there's a ballot I'd like to see

The San Francisco Department of Elections is still trying to explain "ranked-choice voting" to the citizenry. I loathe this electoral gimmick; fuller explanation here. They came up with this amusing sample ballot to try to explain the process.

The only plausible defense of the system is that it makes elections cheaper than requiring a run-off vote if no candidate gets over 50 percent. I imagine however that it loses a good deal of its economic benefit, if -- as in this case -- voters like me who face only one non-competitive race under the system, have to be mailed a trilingual, two-sided, glossy flyer of explanation.

Reconsidering Columbus Day

I don't remember ever much celebrating Columbus Day as a child. I thought of it as our Italian neighbors' ethnic festival: nice for them, good food, no particular content though I think we got off school.

The 500 year anniversary in 1992 was seized by indigenous people to make the always relevant point that what looked like discovery to Europeans meant genocide for the people already here.

At the last Episcopal Church General Convention in 2009 where I worked for LGBT inclusion, one of the more thought-provoking resolutions was one putting the denomination on record as repudiating "the Doctrine of Discovery." The existence of such a thing was news to me, though it took only an instant of reflection to get the idea. Apparently a succession of 15th century popes assured European rulers that, if their exploring minions found a new land, their Christian religion entitled them to claim dominion over it -- and by extension over its inhabitants. The Anglican Church of Canada has recently also renounced this historical assertion.

The Doctrine of Discovery was a principle of charters and acts developed by colonizing Western societies more than 500 years ago.

It begins with “the very simple idea in the Western tradition that is if you discover [a] place, you have control and ownership over that place,” said National Indigenous Anglican Bishop Mark MacDonald speaking to the resolution.

I am glad to see Christian churches reflecting on and drawing back from our unconsidered arrogance that has justified the dispossession and sometimes extermination of so many peoples.

But I also wonder whether consumer societies couldn't use the Columbus anniversary to delve more deeply into our accustomed paradigms. Doesn't our sense of the good life begin and too frequently end with the almost instinctive assertion: See, Want, MINE? This makes the economy work (when we can afford it).

But is endless acquisition and "getting mine" any way to live? Ultimately, that's the subject of Columbus Day, for me.

H/t to The Lead for reminding me of the Doctrine of Discovery repudiation.

A snapshot from outer sprawl-land, part two

That brown field in the foreground is where the rest of the south Tracy housing development where I canvassed on Saturday would have been built if the housing boom had continued. I believe I canvassed this same area in 2006 when it was only half constructed and newly occupied, but that could have been could have been one adjacent. Nonetheless, I'd been "here" before.

Read "part one" of this canvassing story here.

Our canvass aimed to speak with union voters. Our lists of union houses specified past voter behavior (for example, the voter turned out in 2008 and 2006, but skipped the 2005 special election), party registration and what labor union they were members of. We were to identify how they planned to vote on Democrats Jerry Brown for Governor, Barbara Boxer for U.S. Senate and Jerry McNerney for Congress. And we were to talk and listen.

Some observations:

• It is common to visualize suburbs as islands of white people, but that is far from true in California. In addition to white residents, I met Filipinos, South Asians, African-Americans, Latinos, and lots of people whose less than obvious ethnic origins made them what I think of as "Californians."

• In sharp contrast to 2006, there were no signs for the state or federal candidates in the neighborhood. The most common lawn signs were for a school bond and a local pension funding measure. Perhaps people are not looking around broadly at the political context? Or campaigns aren't getting out there?

• In this development, union workers were from the construction trades, from health care workers, from government and teachers. Come to think of it, that's who has a labor union these days.

• The union members I talked with were horribly anxious about their lives and prospects. "Look, my buddies -- guys I've worked with forever -- have been laid off, they've lost their houses, they've lost their marriages ..."

• They weren't eager to turn out for Democrats. "We elect these people over and over, but things don't get better."

• Jerry Brown was a known quantity. "We had him before, a long time ago." "A lot of bad stuff got started then."

• These union voters were well informed. They understand that California has annual budget stalemates because it takes 2/3s of the legislators to pass anything, so the Republican minority gums up the works every year. Probably many get it because they are state employees; would that the rest of Californians understood that we've created a dysfunctional legislative process!

• Members of teachers' unions were the most ready to say they'd vote for Jerry Brown. "Meg Whitman would get rid of our pensions!"

• Many others were less eager to state their preferences. They understood that Whitman was trying to buy the election with her millions, but many weren't ready to throw down with Brown.

My sample is much too small to be meaningful, but I came away from these conversations thinking that Brown's race will probably be the squeaker that points the way in many California contests. Boxer seems to have pulled ahead of Fiorina in the Senate race. Current polling shows Brown pulling marginally ahead on Whitman.

For those trends to stay on course, the voters I talked with will have to come around to voting a Democratic ticket. My sense is that most of the current undecideds will hold their noses and do just that. If they do, Congressman McNerney will probably pull through, maybe even beating Brown's totals in the district. If not, we'll have to live with yet more Republican destruction of good government and our state's future prospects.

A snapshot from outer sprawl-land, part one

On Saturday I added myself to a voter canvass of union members in the San Joaquin Valley community of Tracy. We spread out through the neighborhoods to identify who'd be on board with state Democratic candidates, Jerry Brown for Governor and Barbara Boxer for Senate. We were also identifying supporters of incumbent CA-11 Democratic Congressman Jerry McNerney.


Yes, that bucolic looking cul-de-sac complete with SUVs and boats in driveways is what middle class housing looks like in this corner of the United States. There's a lot going on beneath the quiet surface.

Northern San Joaquin Valley towns are one of the areas hit hardest by the Great Recession. The housing bubble here was wild. Because house prices in the core San Francisco Bay Area shot up to stratospheric heights, families seeking more space and suburban environments traded long commutes and longer hours working multiple jobs to buy in mushrooming developments here. But that's no longer viable. According to a Los Angeles Times report,

Now, building has all but stopped. Home prices in San Joaquin County have fallen 63 perecent since the peak median price of $451,500 in November 2005, according to MDA DataQuick. .. In San Joaquin County, ... 1 in 104 [had received a foreclosure filing]-- nearly double the California average....

Much of the economy consisted of home building and the associated real estate, insurance and financial activity. All that is dead these days. Unemployment in San Joaquin Country was 16.6 percent in August and that masks local variations that show a rate higher than 25 percent in some areas.

I last worked on an election in Tracy in 2006 when Democrat Jerry McNerney knocked off long time sleazebag Republican Congressman Richard Pombo, a local rancher. By highlighting the incumbent's ethical lapses and building a progressive, environmentally-focussed coalition, McNerney scored an upset that was underpinned by the changing demographics of the district as newcomers flooded into previously agricultural areas. To understand the magnitude of McNerney's victory, you have to know that this is the only California Congressional district that has changed party since the current boundaries went into effect in 2002. Democrats and Republicans agreed then to an incumbent protection map that ensured little change in who held office. Who lived in McNerney's district had changed and so we were able to swing that one to the Dems.

But the area still has deeply Republican areas and a loud Tea Bagger variant. This time around, McNerney is very much at risk. According to Nate Silver, the Republican challenger has a 55 percent of taking the seat. Recent polls show that more than 70 percent of CA-11 voters think the country is on the wrong track, a tough hill for any incumbent. McNerney has been doing the right things, such as bringing federal foreclosure assistance funds into the county, but this will be a tough race.

I'd like to keep Jerry McNerney in office. That's why I wanted to canvass in Tracy. What were voters thinking? Some observations on that in the next post.

Dismal thought for the day

This seems so apt, I'll just reproduce it.

Democracy generally doesn't apply to warmaking. Until the last weeks of the 2008 campaign, it was dominated by the differences in approach to war and foreign policy between Barack Obama and George W. Bush and many of my friends told me that the main reason the preferred Obama over all the other candidates was his bold stand in that arena.

That was election talk. It's been that way my whole life. Obama and his people figured out early on that they share power with the Military Industrial Complex and they had little desire to use political capital to exercise what they have. What they didn't figure out is that (since 1968, anyway) Democratic presidents get screwed regardless. The MIC knows it has the place locked up --- at this point it's about the spoils, and they get slightly fewer goodies and more petty political hassles under Democrats. (Plus there's the macho Jesus factor.)

I don't know what to do about it. I guess you have to hope that Democrats who run like Obama ran in 08 will want to at least make some changes around the margins that will hold over time. But that's about the best you can hope for as long as America is the world's dominant imperialist power. Until that changes --- and it will, because it's unaffordable --- we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we are voting for people who will do these things differently, regardless of what they say on the stump.

Digby

Go read the whole thing.

Free Farm Stand on 10-10-10

The climate change campaign group 350.org is mobilizing thousands of people around the world today.


Here in the Mission, they are pointing folks to The Free Farm Stand at 23rd and Treat at the Parque Ninos Unidos where urban gardeners and urban farmers share their surplus produce with people in need. The Free Farm Stand is open every Sunday, 1-3 p.m.


It was a lovely day in the neighborhood.

In San Francisco, even Republicans pitch from the pseudo-left

John Dennis is the Republican who this year is mounting a sacrificial challenge to Rep. Nancy Pelosi here in Congressional District 8. His web site reports a claim that he is "a genuine alternative to the Democrat in a liberal district."

Ever wondered what a Republican pitch might look like here in Left Coast City? Check out this mailer the guy sent me the other day (above). Here's some of his platform:

• John Dennis will fight for immediate withdrawal form Iraq and Afghanistan.

• John Dennis will fight to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, work to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and make sure that all couples of all types receive equal treatment.

• Unlike Nancy Pelosi, John Dennis lives here, works here, and knows what we need from Washington, DC.

• John Dennis will pass the middle-class tax cut extension to help our families.

Somehow I suspect that John Dennis' family would benefit from the tax cut for those making more than $250,000, but I have no evidence about that.

The mailer doesn't highlight the candidate's effort to appropriate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for Dennis' notion that remedying the harm of racism is just discrimination against white men.

Dennis also seems to be a gold bug, a variety of economic crackpot even more out of touch with reality than Wall Street traders dealing in delusional mortgage securities.

After November 2, John Dennis will crawl back under whatever rock he came from.

Saturday scenes and scenery: New tree grows in the Mission (we hope)

Two weeks ago San Francisco Friends of the Urban Forest dropped off the trees in a neighborhood garage. Previously they had paid a contractor to cut out the concrete in the designated planting sites. Somebody got some stimulus money -- I hope.


A slightly blurry group of volunteer tree planters checked out the terrific spread of donated breakfast goodies. We needed some sustenance before getting to work.


There's an orderly system on FUF projects.


Soon the sidewalk was a mess of labeled trees, support poles and milling workers. Some of us have been through this before. I mentioned to another volunteer that I'd been part of a tree planting down that block about 20 years ago. Not long after, the tree have been demolished by a drunk driver. He sighed, resigned. "Yet, sometimes people get buzzed ..."


Labels to be stapled on the trees' support poles needed to be assembled. I don't imagine this helper could read them.


Pretty soon, it was time to greet our own tree. We turned out to have pretty healthy and easily dug soil under the sidewalk -- who'd have expected that?


Planters were instructed in how to free up any root-binding left over from the tree's incubation in a plastic pot.


A neighbor drove in a corral of stakes to protect our new baby.


She's an eriobatriya deflexa, a Bronze Loquat.


Now it is up to us to water her and clean out her enclosure for two or three years. Let's hope she makes it; Mission streets can be tough.

Peaks and valleys of progressive activism

Democrats are expected to get creamed in the midterm elections. It's not that as a country we have decided we want to be governed by a bunch of flat-earth, climate change denying, poor-hating whores for the plutocracy. It's that many of us don't see a lot of urgency to vote this time around. According to Public Policy Polling, even people in the center of the spectrum still don't like Republicans.

Barack Obama defeated John McCain 60-39 with self described moderates, according to the national exit poll. Our last national generic ballot poll found Democrats ahead 58-28, showing no improvement whatsoever.

But the 2008 electorate -- younger, browner, poorer -- isn't who will show up on November 2. Unless something extraordinary changes, the voters will be overwhelmingly old, white, and conservative. There's an emerging majority that doesn't look like that, but it isn't ready to settle in to governing. Economic anxiety kills enthusiasm, as had the Obama bunch's decidedly compromised record in office of playing the insider game with the likes of big banks and BP.

***I'm reading and enjoying David Plouffe's Audacity to Win, a recounting from his campaign manager's vantage point of the 2008 Obama run. This sort of book is candy to anyone who has worked in numerous campaigns as "field scum," responsible for the mass of grunts who actually make contact with the voters.

Plouffe is tender with all the usual Obama-ites. I'm sure he loves them, but that's not really interesting. I don't give a damn about (current press secretary) Robert Gibbs or (former chief of staff) Rahm Emmanuel. I'm not reading this for the gossip. And I don't believe a lot of Plouffe's waxing lyrical about loving the Obama volunteers. But the guy has an eye for what is really going on in a political moment.

Usually when reading something like this I don't blog about it until I finish, but this time I won't resist sharing some tidbits as I go along. Here are a few phrases from the introduction, describing what so many felt on election night in 2008.

... a kind of primal joy at seeing wrongs righted, at having risen up to achieve something cynics said couldn't be done. For most of us under a certain age, any prior familiarity with this feeling came secondhand, from history books. Now we owned it.

Yeah, it was a high. And from such a peak, we've crashed hard. We can't expect to live on the peaks forever. Now's the time for sticking with what we believe in (with or without Democratic office holders), defending what gains we can, and building for a different future.

Judge refuses to undermine foundation of law

This is what you get when you adopt torture as an interrogation method.

Minutes before a major terrorism trial was about to begin, a federal judge barred prosecutors in Manhattan on Wednesday from using a key witness.

The government had acknowledged it learned about the witness from the defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, while he was being interrogated while being held in a secret overseas jail run by the Central Intelligence Agency.

New York Times, October 6, 2010

Adopt torture as policy, and you not only disgrace the country, you also make trying a probable criminal in any real court impossible.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan spelled out the issue very clearly:

“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly,” Judge Kaplan said as he read his order from the bench. “It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction. To do less would diminish us and undermine the foundation upon which we stand.”

The judge did indicate that he believes the government could hold this person prisoner for the duration of the war on al Qaeda, whenever that might be. The government may find some way around this clear decision -- but for the moment, the country should be grateful that some of our institutions have not been completely corrupted by fear, arrogance and vengeful anger.

Not so mixed together as we like to think?

Eric Fisher explains this map of the San Francisco Bay Area:

I was astounded by Bill Rankin's map of Chicago's racial and ethnic divides and wanted to see what other cities looked like mapped the same way.

To match his map, Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Gray is Other, and each dot is 25 people. Data from Census 2000. Base map © OpenStreetMap, CC-BY-SA

We do seem to segregate ourselves.

Follow the link and look around in Fisher's photostream to see how other cities appear when mapped in this way.

As we begin the 10th year of U.S. war in Afghanistan: vets speak

Enough!

The faith of Zeitoun

...what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith? There is no faith like the faith of a builder of homes in coastal Louisiana. And there is no better way to prove to God and neighbor that you were there, that you are there, that you are human, than to build. Who could ever again deny he belonged here?

This is the assertion that I cannot get over, that haunts me as I try to assimilate Dave Egger's Zeitoun.

In all my voluminous reading, I've never encountered anything quite like this magical work of truthful non-fiction. Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy survived both Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent terrified security regime that brought terror to their home. They emerged ready to tell their tale. Eggers was there to hear and construct it for us to share. He is a novelist, writer, editor, publisher -- and on the strength of this volume, a most sensitive witness to the vagaries our fragile civilization.

The Zeitoun clan came out of a Syrian port and its trajectory seemed bound up with the sea. No wonder, somehow, that Abdulrahman came ashore and into married life in New Orleans.

Following Abdulrahman about the drowned city in the days after the storm, we learn that devastation can contain beauty. Following Kathy in exile from her husband and city after the storm, we learn that that the one who seems to escape can also suffer.

One myth that dies in this book: no one should assume that Muslims can't abide dogs.

I'm not going to tell more here. Just read it if you have not yet done so. ***This volume is the focus of San Francisco's One City, One Book citywide literary event that urges residents to read the same book and discuss it together. Quite coincidentally, I've just read what everyone else, I hope, is reading.

San Francisco bus shelter ad.

Pundits just don't get it ...

The liberal punditariat was buzzing yesterday about a poll that revealed that only one third of Democrats think that this Congress has achieved more than other recent ones.

... these numbers shed fascinating new light on the enthusiasm gap problem. Just wow.

Greg Sargent, The Plum Line/Washington Post

Putting aside whether one approved of the policy breakthroughs, this poll result makes it seem as if much of the public simply doesn't realize that the policy breakthroughs were unusual.

Steve Benen, The Washington Monthly

This is just nuts. This is, objectively, a very productive Congress. Now, right-wingers think it's been productive at dystopian, freedom-destroying confiscations of wealth that remind them of an Ayn Rand novel. But clearly Congress is doing a lot.

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic

I'm sure these are smart guys, but they just don't get how Congress (and the Administration) look to ordinary people.

Most of us think it is Congress' job to accomplish something every session. So they either did or they didn't. If they did, they did what they were expected to do and shouldn't expect any special congratulations. Passing necessary legislation is their job. We are expected to do our jobs if we are lucky enough to have them; they should do theirs. If they don't do their work, why do we pay them?

Meanwhile, the economy isn't fixed, so it seems likely they didn't do their jobs. That seems simple from where most of us sit.

For Democrats, the sense that Congress didn't do its job is even greater. This Congress' job was to undo as much as possible of eight years of pure destruction and disgrace inflicted on the country by Bush and his gang of wealthy looters and torture lovers. Instead we got chummy relations with Wall Street crooks, an incomprehensible health law that won't take effect for years, a pointless war that drags on killing for nothing, and a timid Justice Department that is still in the business of covering up for the crimes of the last guys and the spooks. Plus no action at all to permit unions to organize, to fix the immigration system, or to keep the planet from frying.

And we're supposed to think the Congress has been productive? These guys are living in another world.***
Here in the real world, we have to go out and elect more Democrats, despite all this. Why? Because the other guys are sick and bat shit crazy, given to watching someone's house burn down rather than intervene for failure to pay a $75 fee. It's a tough sell, but at this time there are no alternatives.

S-Comm, Democrats, immigration policies and Latino voting

A very small crowd rallied outside the State Office Building today in San Francisco to protest Attorney General (and Governor-candidate) Jerry Brown's failure to help willing cities to opt out of the Secure Communities program. According to an email from organizers:

Secure Communities (S-Comm) is a federal program that automatically shares with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) all fingerprints taken by local police departments when anyone is arrested--no matter how minimal the charge and even when the individual is eventually found to be innocent.

S-Comm brings Arizona's SB1070 to every state in the U.S., putting people at risk for being deported for missing a stop sign or selling ice cream! S-Comm terrorizes the most vulnerable communities, including immigrant families, domestic violence victims, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. ICE's own data shows that 79 percent of people deported through this program are non-criminals or were picked-up for lower level offenses such as traffic violations.

San Francisco authorities want nothing to do with this program which is certain to drive a wedge between immigrant communities and necessary law enforcement. More here.


Today's rally seemed to draw largely from the rapidly organizing domestic workers in the area, including women from La Colectiva and Mujeres Unidas y Activas.*** Today's effort to get the Democratic candidate for governor to take action for immigrant rights underlines questions about how such issues will play out for Democrats in the November elections.

• It is a fact that the Obama administration is deporting more undocumented persons than the previous administration.

• It is a fact that the Obama administration has greatly increased militarization of the U.S-Mexico border.

• It is a fact that Democratic majorities in Congress have not been able or willing to move any kind of immigration reform.

Will Latino voters, who gave Obama huge margins in 2008, vote Democratic this year despite these failing?

A recent Pew Hispanic Center report says that Latinos still look to Democrats as more attuned to their concerns by wide margins. It is full of fascinating tidbits.

Latinos like Obama personally, but are not so sure his administration has done well by them.

When it comes to opinions of President Barack Obama, a greater share of Latino registered voters approve of his job performance than do all U.S. registered voters -- 63 percent versus 47 percent. Yet when asked about the effect of his administration's policies on Hispanics, Latino registered voters are divided. More than half (51 percent) say his policies have had no effect on Latinos, while one-in-four (26 percent) say they have been helpful to Latinos and 13 percent say they have been harmful. ...

Significantly, for many Latino registered voters, immigration policy is not their first concern; education, jobs and health care rank much higher. That probably bodes well for Democrats getting their votes. Yet Pew found an interesting wrinkle: Latinos concerned about immigration are somewhat more likely to vote than those who were less so.

... the survey finds that two-thirds (66 percent) of Latino registered voters say they talked about the immigration policy debate with someone they know in the past year. It also finds that those who have had these conversations are more motivated to vote in the upcoming election than are those who haven't. Nearly six-in-ten (58 percent) Latino registered voters who have discussed the immigration debate say they are absolutely certain they will vote in November, compared with just four-in-ten (39 percent) of those who have not talked about the immigration debate.

Pew doesn't speculate about what is going on here, but I will, based on a couple of decades of watching California elections.

Latinos are less likely to vote than some other citizens because so many of them belong to demographic groups that are always unlikely to vote, especially in midterm elections. Many are younger, less well off, and less educated than the groups in the overall electorate that vote more heavily.

When Latinos do vote, they like to be hopeful about their choices, rather than engage in defense. After all, in this state anyway, they know they are a community on the way up, numerically and economically. Immigration policy may be a back burner issue to the hopeful concerns -- but it hangs there around the edge of public conversations, because it is about family. Just about everyone knows someone -- has an aunt or nephew -- whose immigration status is clouded.

As Pew found, Latinos who do vote will hold their noses and vote for the least-worst alternative who is most always a Democrat these days. Latinos aren't dumb; they know Republicans have embraced the nativist panic. Democrats should be doing everything they can to get out the Latino vote because they will get most of it. And they could get it more easily if they'd dare to make generous moves on immigration policy issues.

Creative destruction

Lost Weekend Video, a relic of another time, killed by the streaming tubes. On rapidly gentrifying Valencia Street, this feels another loss for the quirky creativity of the neighborhood.

Harry Belafonte: "The giant called democracy is at last stirring again."

By way of Democracy Now, here's a transcript of Belafonte's speech at the One Nation Working Together rally in DC on Saturday.

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the steps of this memorial and declared that this nation should come together and embrace its greater ideals. He said that we should rally together and overcome injustice and racism, and that all citizens should not only have the right to vote, but that we should exercise that right and make America whole.

That is part of why we are today. But we’re also here to tend to other grievances. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “I Have a Dream” speech forty-seven years ago, said that America would soon come to realize that the war that we were in at that time that this nation waged in Vietnam was not only unconscionable, but unwinnable. Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in that cruel adventure, and over two million Vietnamese and Cambodians perished. Now today, almost a half-a-century later, as we gather at this place where Dr. King prayed for the soul of this great nation, tens of thousands of citizens from all walks of life have come here today to rekindle his dream and once again hope that all America will soon come to the realization that the wars that we wage today in far away lands are immoral, unconscionable and unwinnable.

The Central Intelligence Agency, in its official report, tells us that the enemy we pursue in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, the al-Qaeda, they number less than fifty—I say fifty—people. Do we really think that sending 100,000 young American men and women to kill innocent civilians, woman and children, and antagonizing the tens of millions of people in the whole region somehow makes us secure? Does this make any sense?

The President’s decision to escalate the war in that region alone costs the nation $33 billion. That sum of money could not only create 600,000 jobs here in America, but would even leave us a few billion to start rebuilding our schools, our roads, our hospitals and affordable housing. It could also help to rebuild the lives of the thousands of our returning wounded veterans.

Dr. King loved this nation. He saw, as all of us here today see, that this great nation should not be allowed to perish. Martin’s vision was also the vision of Abraham Lincoln, who understood the evil of slavery and, in abolishing that evil, saved America. Although slavery may have be have been abolished, the crippling poison of racism still persists, and the struggle still continues. We have the largest prison population in the world. And as we industrialize these prison systems, we rob hundreds of thousands of workers of the jobs that they need and the wages that are rightfully theirs.

The plight of women bear no better. Their oppression refuses to yield, as rape and domestic violence and sex slaves and teenage pregnancy abounds.

But perhaps the greatest threat of all is the undermining of our Constitution and the systematic attack against the inalienable rights of the citizens of this nation, rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution. At the vanguard of this insidious attack is the tea party. This band of misguided citizens is moving perilously close to achieving villainous ends.

This gathering here today is America’s wake-up call. The giant called democracy is at last stirring again. Citizens are coming together to say freedom does not sleep. It may have been fueled and lulled for the moment into a lethargy, but it’s fully awake now. And we the people are its engine. We must awaken the apathetic, the cynical, the many angry doubters, who see their future as the perpetual hopelessness, and show them that our greatest weapon is the vote. And it is the answer to much that nags in us.

On November 2nd, in the millions, we must overburden our voting booths by voting against those who would see the nation become a totalitarian state. Americans know that Dr. King’s dream is not dead. Let us vote on November 2nd for jobs, for jobs, for jobs, for peace, for justice, for human rights, for our children and the future of America. And let us put an end to war. Peace is necessary. For justice, it is necessary. For hope, it is necessary, for our future.

I love you all, and God bless America.

My emphasis.

A small step in the right direction

Voters in San Francisco have a chance to enact a minor reform that just might make the city a little more democratic (small "d") and a little more responsive to its residents.

We elect our Board of Education. This may or may not be a good thing. Too many politicians with little commitment to the intricacies of education use the Board as a stepping stone to higher office. That's not fair to students, parents and teachers. On the other hand, cities that have fled elected school board structures, usually to centralize school governance through the mayor's office, can see voter revolts against school changes implemented without parent buy-in. When people think some bureaucrat is dicking around with their neighborhood institution and their kids, passions flow. Washington DC just saw an incumbent mayor bounced for supporting school changes that looked like arrogant meddling to the neighborhoods.

Trouble is, as in most big cities, a huge fraction of our public school parents -- the people for whom school policy is most meaningful -- can't even vote in Board of Ed elections. They are immigrants, often permanent non-citizen legal residents, years away from citizenship. So Prop. D on the November ballot would allow non-citizen parents of current public school children to vote in Board of Education elections.

This is not as radical a reform as it might sound. The Supreme Court has upheld such arrangements in other areas. Localities get to set their own rules about eligibility for their own offices.

When I first looked into this a decade and a half ago, there was a clear pattern to which jurisdictions allowed non-citizen school election voting: they were clustered in the suburbs of Washington DC in places like Takoma Park and Chevy Chase, MD. Perhaps these towns had a lot of residents from overseas who were in Washington to act as diplomats or experts -- who were members of that class of parents who expect some say in their children's education. In any case, it seemed to work and even was not very controversial. In some circumstances, non-citizen voting in education elections has also been allowed in New York City (until the current mayor dumped the school board altogether) and in Chicago.

So what are the chances of passing Prop. D this November? All the city supervisors ("council members" they'd be called most places) support it except the two most conservative. The opposition arguments speak of excess costs, always the last recourse against popular initiatives. (When pretty much the only thing you hear about a ballot measure is that "it costs too much," you can usually suspect that focus groups have convinced opponents they lose if they argue on the merits.) The proposed mechanics are interesting:

Because noncitizens only would be allowed to vote in the school board election, city election officials will have to develop special procedures before the November 2012 vote. The most likely solution will be to have noncitizens register through the school board and vote only by mail, said John Arntz, the city's election director.

San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 30, 2010

Our San Francisco elections department is famously inefficient, but they might be able to manage that.

The measure is a second try. Voters turned down a similar initiative in 2004 by a tiny margin of 51 percent.

I cannot believe that very many non-citizen public school parents would actually avail themselves of the opportunity to vote, though I might be proved wrong. It's notoriously hard to get over-worked, usually under-paid, low English-proficiency people to the polls in any election.

I support Prop. D because I think it is a small move in a good direction that has important antecedents in our history. Until 1926, it was commonplace and accepted that newcomers to the United States would vote. City politicians and their machines had a tremendous incentive to get immigrants on the rolls because at the state level they were in a tussle for resources with rural areas. Some of the highest levels of voter participation this country has ever seen were in cities in the 1890s at the height of immigration from southern and eastern Europe.

Just as today, that wave of newcomers appeared threatening to people only slightly up the economic ladder from them. Their arrival raised anxieties about whether these foreigners -- these Catholics, these Jews, these people whose languages didn't even use a recognizable alphabet -- would ever assimilate into white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant culture. (They did and didn't and they changed us both less and more than people of the day feared.) The 1920s saw a nativist panic that led to laws restricting immigration (to those considered "white") and to conferring voting rights through a protracted, complicated citizenship process. The thrilling sense that coming to this country meant breathing free, new air and participating in a democratic society partially dissipated into a bureaucratic morass.

Allowing voting on vital matters that concern their (mostly citizen) children is a great way to bring non-citizens already here into a lively democratic participation in the country they live in. That's why I like it; I think it is fair to say that is also why many opponents hate it: they don't want these people here, period. But immigration isn't going to stop, so figuring out how to bring people inside in a healthy way is essential to all of our well-being.

Signs of the times: a vicious circle at the food bank

Yesterday on leaving the San Francisco Food Bank after putting in our orders for the church food pantry, I was given a handout:

Over the past couple of months, the inventory level on the shop floor has been down. [For example,] granola bars have been non-existent., the flow of Capri Suns has become unstable...The largest factor is that donations are down.

John Curry, Food Resources Manager, discussed the situation. He states that manufactures are running tighter ships in their production lines and the big corporations spending less on promotional items in today's tight market. In addition, he also commented about the increased competition with "dollar store" retailers as companies try to milk every dollar they can for their product.

Let me decode that communication.

The Food Bank collects and centralizes corporate food producer and vendor donations of unsold food. The donors get a tax credit. The agencies and pantries that distribute food get the food (and frequently other curiosities like vitamin water) though a centralized distribution point.


In the current Great Recession (don't try to tell me this is over when nearly 20 percent of everyone who wants/needs to work is still hurting), U.S. corporations are using the downturn to get leaner and meaner. Improvements in communication and information collection have made it possible to more accurately predict what quantity of a product will sell. Likewise, these information improvements have made it more possible to avoid mismatches between where the foodstuffs are and where a market exists. The rise of "dollar stores" sucks up some more product. All this is genuinely efficient; getting the quantities right is more profitable than over- (or under-) production. There's less waste in the system. And the waste in the system is what used to go to the food banks.

Productivity per worker is rising at the food corporations. With the increased efficiency, it takes less workers to process and distribute the appropriate quantities of food. So some workers become waste in the system too -- and they get laid off. They become job hunters and stop being able to buy stuff. Everyone who sold them stuff takes a hit -- and the producers of the stuff are tipped off that they should avoid waste by producing less. Etc. and around we go ...

The economy is caught in a vicious circle.

What's interrupts of a vicious circle? Economists such as Paul Krugman say government should push money out into the system in the form of such direct help as unemployment checks (so laid off people keep buying food and other stuff) and an indirect stimulus such as rebuilding crumbling roads and encouraging green energy development. They think it doesn't much matter that the government will run up some debt because 1) right now, lenders are looking for borrowers and will lend cheaply and 2) if more of us were working, tax revenue could recover and get the government (us) out of much of the national debt.

This is too simple for Republicans and ConservaDems. As with health care reform, their apparent response to what's happening in the real world is, "sorry, go die." Oh, and lower taxes on the rich on your way out.

One Nation Working Together in DC

Says it all. Now comes the work part of this great idea ...