A San Francisco treat

Tom Ammiano has given us a memoir -- titled, of course, Kiss My Gay Ass. It's perfectly wonderful; you should read it; and as far as I can figure out, the only way to obtain a copy is through that link.

Ammiano is the flaming queen who carried assassinated Supervisor Harvey Milk's gay liberation cause right up through the stuffy auditoriums of the San Francisco School Board (1990-1993), on to the Beaux-Arts corridors of San Francisco City Hall (1994-2008), and finally into the corrupt precincts of the California State Assembly (2008-2014). And never has he retreated from his allegiance to class-conscious equality for people of all races, sexual inclinations, and gender identities.

His own liberation movement put Ammiano on track to storm the halls of power -- but his memoir makes clear that performing stand-up comedy might have been his true love. The quick quip was his defense while growing up in a very hostile world for a gay man -- he writes that he "weaponized it to protect me from bullies." Later he honed his comedy as as school teacher and in comedy clubs. Whatever his credentials, the San Francisco establishment of the 1980s would have recoiled at the prospect of a gay teacher running for school board, but his comedy career was a particular target of scorn from the newspapers.

"... comedy was used against me as a weapon. But I felt like, without really articulating it, there was no reason I could not do both those things: comedy and politics. I really loved comedy. Who wrote the rules that say you have to choose?"

As a legislator, Ammiano assembled a majority of the Supervisors (that legislative body would be a city council if the City were not a county) to pass Healthy San Francisco which extended health coverage to all residents in 2007. He led passage of protections for LGBT+ civil rights in both San Francisco and Sacramento. He fought for legalizing marijuana before that notion was cool. He repeatedly sought to revise California's tax-limiting measure Prop. 13 so that big business had to pay its fair share. (That one is coming back at us this November as Prop. 15.) Ammiano has been there for every progressive effort of his generation.

Gay people of Ammiano's generation, with rare upper class exceptions, never trusted that the policeman was our friend. Calling the cops after a gay bashing might just get the victim bashed again. So when Ammiano won his seat among the city Supervisors who have some say over the police department, he found himself in a contradictory position.

"Ironically, the Police Officers Association had endorsed me in my race for Supervisor! All they asked me about was my support for unions issues and I was strongly pro-union. They didn't ask anything about policing rules or independent investigations of police shootings.

"... There was a lot of shit I had to deal with about the police. A lot of the officers were white cops who didn't live in San Francisco. ... There were a lot of raids of gay bars. They would say "you're overcrowded" as an excuse, shit like that.

"... Soon after I was elected, there were a number of police shootings in the black community. I remember going out to the community and standing and holding hands with black ministers about the shooting of some kid by the police. ... Then the cops raided an AIDS fundraiser. ... When they raided it, the cops covered their name tags so they could beat people, that was common practice.

"... I took fixing the Office of Citizen Complaints up as my cause ..."

For all Ammiano's efforts, although the SFPD may have achieved some hiring "diversity," its union still seems committed to viewing law enforcement as an occupying army restraining uppity dark skinned people and other transgressives. The struggle goes on.

Ammiano thinks of himself as a "lefty." I might substitute "radical" in this summation of what's he's learned about keeping the faith inside the halls of power:

"... It has always been [a] struggle to come from the lefty point of view in any movement. There will always be moderate people. There will always be people who sell out. There will always be people on the fence. Then there will be people who push the envelope because it's more than about just one issue or one thing -- it's about a movement."

Movement makers are precious people. Ammiano is a San Francisco gem.

Full disclosure: yes, he's a friend. A guy like this is a lot of people's friend.