Museum Curator Resigns After He Is Accused of Racism for Saying He Would Still Collect Art From White Men - "Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster. "Gary's removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable," read the petition. "Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?"... Their sole complaint is that he allegedly concluded a presentation on how to diversify the museum's holdings by saying, "don't worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists."
Weird. We are told that decolonising the collection is about making it more inclusive
Are acronyms a symptom of 'white supremacy culture?' San Francisco Unified makes another disputable decision - "Now the Arts Department has taken a bold move by changing its name, "VAPA" because they say, "acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture."... The director of that department said, "We are prioritizing antiracist arts instruction in our work." So they got rid of the acronym "VAPA," which is short for visual and performing arts... "The use of so many acronyms within the educational field often tends to alienate those who may not speak English to understand the acronym," he added. That's based on a 1999 paper written by author Tema Okun titled "White Supremacy Culture." Okun told me that, "Our culture perpetuates racism when things continue to be written down in a certain way." But the San Francisco Unified School District uses so many acronyms on a daily basis that if you go to their website there's a section on how to find what their acronyms or abbreviations mean."
Armed robbers held up news crew as it interviewed Oakland’s chief of violence prevention
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition says not to call police about stolen bikes because it hurts 'Black and brown' people - "San Francisco crime has skyrocketed since 2020 and bike theft has grown into an epidemic in the Golden City. In response the San Francisco Bike Coalition wrote on their "considerations" section of their website that victims of bike theft should reconsider calling the police as "Black and brown" people could be harmed from the interaction... After two years of growth and learning the mostly white organization has seemingly concluded it's best to let black and brown San Franciscan's steal bikes... They delved deep into the intersectionality of race and bicycles and held panels to explore the topic. In 2020, they wrote, "We have a long way to go to understanding the intersectionality of race and biking. This panel of experts will discuss how anti-Black racism manifests in the biking community, in @sfbike, and in Bay Area urban planning." In 2020 they also promised to root out the rapid white supremacy in bicycling and touted it on their website with how they were "addressing white supremacy in our movement.""
Here's how many San Franciscans say they’ve been the victim of a crime - "A sweeping poll commissioned by The Chronicle drew sobering results: Nearly half of respondents said they were victims of theft in the past five years, while roughly a quarter were physically attacked or threatened. The majority had negative impressions of law enforcement... Forty-five percent of people surveyed for the poll said an item was stolen from them within the past five years. Proportionally, Black and mixed-race respondents felt a more severe impact than other groups, with a majority — 54% of Black respondents and 55% of mixed-race respondents — reporting they had suffered theft. Property crime rates were lower for white residents, 43% of whom lost a possession to theft within the time period... Others saw the percentage as low, given how prevalent property crimes appear to be in San Francisco. “I was surprised,” said Anni Chung, president and CEO of Self-Help for the Elderly, an organization that works with Asian American seniors. “If 75% had said they had something stolen, then I would say, ‘Yes, that’s pretty common.’”... The city was among many that tried a series of reforms after George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, though it seemed to retreat two years later, most notably with the recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin... Police Department statistics reveal a combined surge in burglaries in the Richmond, Ingleside and Taraval police districts, all on the west side, from 1,707 incidents in 2020 to 1,923 last year. This change in crime patterns may have contributed to Boudin’s ouster: Ballot box data showed high voter turnout west of Twin Peaks and in the Sunset, which heavily voted for the recall... Rates of physical and verbal assaults appear to be lower than property crimes, the poll indicated, with roughly a quarter of respondents — 24% — saying they had been threatened or attacked. Notably, Latino and mixed-race respondents reported higher rates of attacks, at 36%, while Asians reported the lowest rates of any group, at 19%, which conflicts with other data sets and media reports depicting a wave of violence against Asian Americans."
Weird. I thought the police prey on racial minorities. Turns out defunding the police is going to hurt minorities more - which will be taken as evidence of racism
Monitoring Bias on Twitter - "San Francisco’s Lowell High School plummeted way out of the top 100 in a national school ranking, in the first year that achievement data has become available since the school eliminated meritocratic admissions in favor of an "anti-racist" approach."
The power of structural racism!
San Francisco transgender guaranteed income program launched by city - "Mayor London Breed announced the launch of a new guaranteed income program for San Francisco’s trans community. The Guaranteed Income for Trans People program will provide low-income transgender San Franciscans with $1,200 each month, for up to 18 months, to help address financial insecurity within trans communities... The pilot program is the first guaranteed income initiative to focus solely on trans people, and will provide regular, unconditional cash transfers to individuals or households who qualify"
I'm sure the only reason more trans people will pop up is because there will be less "stigma"
San Francisco police propose using robots capable of ‘deadly force’
Timing of S.F.’s kink festival Dore Alley sparks worry amid monkeypox emergency - "Whether Dore Alley will be a superspreader event was hard to predict for UCSF Professor of Medicine John Davis, who identifies as gay, but he said that, as a matter of public health, approaches that ban or stigmatize a group of people from gathering tend to backfire. “What we’ve learned is that does not stop sexual activity,” Davis said. “The spread has been happening, and we have not had Dore Alley.”"
Of course, there's nothing wrong with stigmatising "covidiots" and lockdowns
SFUSD drops the word ‘chief’ from job titles to avoid connotation with Native Americans - "The word “chief” will no longer be used in reference to job titles in the San Francisco Unified School District in an effort, school officials said, to avoid the word’s connotation with Native Americans."
Better ban the use of the word "Indian" too, to avoid Native American connotations
EXCL: San Francisco start-up founder filmed screaming at ambulance says EMT was checking her PHONE - "A California cyclist who went viral after filming herself screaming at an ambulance parked in a bike lane said the paramedic was on her phone - while admitting she sounds 'crazy' in the video. Start-up founder Stacey Randecker, 51, of San Francisco, who goes by @drivingmzstacey on social media, filmed herself on Thursday yelling at a city fire department ambulance which was parked in the bike lane on 7th Street outside of a Room & Board furnishing store around 11.30am... 'You're killing us, get out of the bike lane!' she screamed. 'Unbelievable! They're killing us, they're killing us.'... The San Francisco Fire Department said in 2017 that adding more bike lanes, especially in the heart of the city, could cause more trouble for responders trying to get to emergencies. Former Chief of Operations Mark Gonzales said that protected bike lanes - much like the one on 7th Street which has a motorcycle parking lane next to the cycling lane - 'shift cars so that they’ll be parked in the exact position where that truck needed to be' when an emergency happens... Randecker is well-known in the area for having an agenda and wants to close the Embarcadero roadway, which runs along the eastern shoreline, to cars."
SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA on Twitter - "Thank you for sharing this. The crews did not say they “were on a break”, they were finishing a medical emergency with a patient care document from a call at that location which is why they moved to the other side of the street rather than engage with you. Have a safe day."
Cyclist + San Francisco = peak entitlement and selfishness
No, liberalism is fueling S.F.'s drug crisis. Libertarianism is - "San Franciscans’ liberalism is why the government offers generous health and social care services, without which overdose deaths would be higher, not lower. What bedevils the city instead is its libertarian, individualistic culture. Since at least the 19th century, Americans have come to San Francisco to be free of traditional constraints back East, to reinvent themselves, to escape the small-mindedness of small towns and to find themselves. This culture underlies the city’s entrepreneurialism, artistic energy and tolerance for diversity in all forms... Some public health advocates in San Francisco believe the city is following the Portuguese Model of drug policy, in which — they imagine — all formal and informal sanctions against drug use and dealing are removed, leading addicted people to flood into health and social care services that end their drug problems. These advocates are chasing a myth. Portugal is in no way a libertarian country. Rather, it’s a cohesive, communal society in which drug use is culturally frowned upon rather than celebrated as a sign of freedom. When drug-addicted people commit crimes in Portugal, they are sent to a “dissuasion committee” that can apply penalties to those who refuse to seek and stay in addiction treatment. Informally, this is backed up by pressure from family and community for addicted individuals to enter recovery. Portugal also places pressure on drug users to change by not tolerating flagrant open-air drug markets, such as the blight in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods"
Of course, they can't do anything but double down. The liberals would be the first to complain about "stigma" if Portuguese-style social pressure were applied
Story about California store owner pricing items at $951 to prosecute thieves is satire
K A L E O on Twitter - "Society is so broken in California that employees are basically trained to help assist tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise being stolen right in front of them (notice them holding customers back) as everyone else just stands around and watches. How did we get here?"
Companies Are Fleeing California. Blame Bad Government. - "In just the past few months, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. said it was leaving for Houston. Oracle Corp. said it would decamp for Austin. Palantir Technologies Inc., Charles Schwab Corp. and McKesson Corp. are all bound for greener pastures. No less an information-age avatar than Elon Musk has had enough. He thinks regulators have grown “complacent” and “entitled” about the state’s world-class tech companies. No doubt, he has a point. Silicon Valley’s high-tech cluster has been the envy of the world for decades, but there’s nothing inevitable about its success. As many cities have found in recent years, building such agglomerations is exceedingly hard, as much art as science. Low taxes, modest regulation, sound infrastructure and good education systems all help, but aren’t always sufficient. Once squandered, moreover, such dynamism can’t easily be revived. With competition rising across the U.S., the area’s policy makers need to recognize the dangers ahead. In recent years, San Francisco has seemed to be begging for companies to leave. In addition to familiar failures of governance — widespread homelessness, inadequate transit, soaring property crime — it has also imposed more idiosyncratic hindrances. Far from welcoming experimentation, it has sought to undermine or stamp out home-rental services, food-delivery apps, ride-hailing firms, electric-scooter companies, facial-recognition technology, delivery robots and more, even as the pioneers in each of those fields attempted to set up shop in the city. It tried to ban corporate cafeterias — a major tech-industry perk — on the not-so-sound theory that this would protect local restaurants. It created an “Office of Emerging Technology” that will only grant permission to test new products if they’re deemed, in a city bureaucrat’s view, to provide a “net common good.” Whatever the merits of such meddling, it’s hardly a formula for unbounded inventiveness. These two traits — poor governance and animosity toward business — have collided calamitously with respect to the city’s housing market. Even as officials offered tax breaks for tech companies to headquarter themselves downtown, they mostly refused to lift residential height limits, modify zoning rules or allow significant new construction to accommodate the influx of new workers. They then expressed shock that rents and home prices were soaring — and blamed the tech companies. California’s legislature has only made matters worse. A bill it enacted in 2019, ostensibly intended to protect gig workers, threatened to undo the business models of some of the state’s biggest tech companies until voters granted them a reprieve in a November referendum. A new privacy law has imposed immense compliance burdens — amounting to as much as 1.8% of state output in 2018 — while conferring almost no consumer benefits. An 8.8% state corporate tax rate and 13.3% top income-tax rate (the nation’s highest) haven’t helped. Of course, California isn’t alone in squandering such advantages. New York City has been the world’s top finance hub for many years, and increasingly had become home to a thriving tech community as well. But a similar blend of poor policy choices, high taxes, needless red tape, rising crime, and occasional outright hostility — as with the senseless opposition to Amazon.com Inc.’s proposed headquarters — has been pushing both industries to friendlier climes in recent years. Such carelessness is all the more damaging because a tech hub is more than the sum of its parts. Such clusters accelerate the flow of ideas, concentrate skilled workers and create productive new networks. They’re likely to boost investment, business formation, innovation, wages and growth. And their benefits are widely shared: By one estimate, each new tech job creates five additional jobs in other industries, a multiplier effect about three times larger than that for manufacturing. That’s not to mention the immensely popular products that result... no state can antagonize its companies so extravagantly and expect them to stay put forever. As every Californian knows, the open road is all too inviting."
From 2020
California keeps COVID-19 data private, saying data would 'confuse and potentially mislead the public' if released - "Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has said since the start of the outbreak that his response policy would be driven by transparency with the public on data and information as it develops. Now his administration is contradicting that sentiment by refusing to disclose key information on COVID-19 findings."
From 2021
Transparency is bad
California Legislature Votes to Strike ‘the State Shall Not Discriminate’ from Constitution, Opening the Door to Legalized Discrimination - "equality before the law is arguably the greatest pillar of a liberal society. It’s an idea that reaches back across time and civilizations, from philosophers like Guan Zhong (720 B.C. - 645 B.C.) to historians such as Thucydides, who at the funeral of Pericles stated, “If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way.” Equality before the law is at the heart of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the enumerated rights carved out by the General Assembly of the United Nations at its third session in 1948. In Article 7, it states clearly and proudly: "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”"
Does that mean that there can't be anymore judicial activism around equal protection?
Where Does California’s Homeless Population Come From? - The New York Times - "“This is a local crisis and a homegrown problem,” said Peter Lynn, the executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the agency that conducts the largest homeless census count in the country. Several years ago, L.A.H.S.A. added a question to its homeless survey that captured how long a person had been in Los Angeles and where they became homeless. The resulting data dispelled the idea that the homeless population was largely made up of people from out of state. “The vast majority fell into homelessness in L.A. County,” Mr. Lynn said. L.A.H.S.A.’s 2019 homeless count found that 64 percent of the 58,936 Los Angeles County residents experiencing homelessness had lived in the city for more than 10 years. Less than a fifth (18 percent) said they had lived out of state before becoming homeless."
So much for the claim that California only has a lot of homeless people because they're all from elsewhere, attracted by compassionate policies
California has failed the homeless and the mentally ill. It’s time for change. - "It is estimated by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Center that 52% of the homeless in California are either severally mentally ill or addicted to hard drugs. It’s important to note that these are self-assessed polls; the actual number is believed to be higher... Our current solution is the “Housing First” model for everyone, which means having people live on the streets until we place them in apartments (in Los Angeles where I live, at a staggering price tag of $740,000 per unit). Some in-treatment options are available, but that requires the mentally ill person to choose this option, and there are gaping holes in this logic... A Spring 2021 Harvard research study found that after ten years, only 12% of the people placed in a housing-first apartment remained housed. In 2018, the National Academy of Sciences concluded, “The committee found no substantial evidence that [permanent supportive housing] contributes to improved health outcomes, notwithstanding the intuitive logic that it should.”... He correctly identifies our current so-called “harm reduction” models as “addiction maintenance,” and with good reason; with no mandated treatment, no required hospital care, these well-meaning programs of clean needles and anti-overdose drugs only serve to keep people sick... Portugal’s “housing earned” model outlaws camping on the streets, instead providing the option of expanded shelters, mandated treatment, or if nothing else, jail. These systems incentivize recovery and lead to less jail time than our current jail-to-streets revolving door"
Homeless-enabling policies aren't necessarily a good thing - even for homeless people
Homelessness Statistics by State | United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH)
California has 162k homeless in a population of 39 million. Arizona has 11k in 7 million, New Mexico has 3.3k in 2.1 million, Texas has 27k in 29 million, Louisiana has 3.2k in 4.7 million, Mississippi has 1.1k in 3 million, Alabama has 3.4k in 4.9 million and Florida has 27.5k in 21 million. So the high homeless population is not because of the weather
California’s Housing Costs Threaten The State’s Future - "California (like many other jurisdictions) has made it progressively harder to construct new housing, through a combination of single-family zoning, homeowner opposition to new development, and suburban resistance to allowing multi-family housing... By analyzing building permits relative to job growth, analysts at Stessa ranked states on their housing production. And between 2010 and 2020, California was the nation’s worst on this measure. The state added 2.54 new jobs per new housing unit, so even as the economy expanded, housing prices rose faster."
A champion of California claimed that California real estate was crazy because people wanted to live there. He somehow also didn't see the problem with the poor being driven out of the state. Apparently lower cost labour is not needed for service jobs
Why Is the University of California Dropping the SAT? - The Atlantic - "the University of California announced an immediate end to the use of standardized testing in admissions and scholarship decisions at the nine schools in its system that accept undergraduates. It is a move so widely hailed by the administrators and faculty that you know someone’s getting hustled, and in this case the marks are the state’s low-income Black and Latino students––the very ones whom the new policy is supposed to help... The university has averred that standardized tests discriminate against low-income Black and Latino students; its evidence is that these students tend to perform worse on the SAT and ACT than students from other racial and ethnic groups. If we were to think about this assertion rationally instead of emotionally, we would have to face what California has done: consigned its most vulnerable students to some of the worst K–12 schools in America... All the standardized tests do is reveal the obvious outcome of our cruelty. Saying it’s the tests’ fault is like feeding children a poisoned sundae and then blaming the cherry on top for making them sick. Do the tests prevent low-income Black and Latino students from getting college degrees? This is the charge of a lawsuit filed in 2019 and settled by the university... Only the counterrevolutionary impulse would lead anyone to want to douse the flames of social justice with the fire retardant of fact. But the truth is that no high-school graduate in California is denied higher education because of a test score. The UC schools are some of the most competitive in the state, but the Cal State system has more than twice as many campuses and costs about half as much to attend, and some locations have an admission rate of almost 90 percent. Students reluctant to earn a degree from the “lesser” system may avail themselves of the best deal in American higher education: Earn a 2.4 GPA in the requisite courses at a California Community College, and your ability to transfer to a UC campus is guaranteed. Not a single standardized test need ever be taken. Here are some more of the fiercely held arguments for dumping the tests: Test scores don’t reflect the character-forging aspects of life as a poor teenager; the tests force students from underfunded schools to compete against “affluent whites” who can afford expensive test prep; high-school GPA is a much better predictor of students’ ability to succeed in a UC program anyway. These are not facts. They are assumptions, all of them flawed or flat-out incorrect... while high-school GPA has been found to be more predictive of success at college than standardized test scores at some schools, the exact opposite turns out to be true for students at UC schools... People in power today would much rather do something that seems to promote “equity” than make an evidence-based choice that could lead to accusations of racism. This is the kind of infuriating policy decision that looks like it is going to help poor, minority students but will actually harm them... There is only one group of students who are “overrepresented,” to use the chilling language of social engineering, at the university: Asian Americans. Twelve percent of K–12 students are Asian or Pacific Islander, compared with 34 percent of UC undergraduates. Aligning enrollment with state demographics would require cutting the share of those students by almost two-thirds. It would mean getting right with contemporary concepts of anti-racism by reviving one of California’s most shameful traditions: clearing Asians out of desirable spaces. In the 19th century, Chinese people were beaten and lynched in California, in a prelude to the state’s successful campaign for the Chinese Exclusion Act, which cut off immigration from China. In 1906, San Francisco tried to force all Chinese, Korean, and Japanese public-school children to go to a separate “Oriental School.” And in 1942, the first internment camps for Japanese Americans opened in California. The UC has an established history in this dirty art. In the 1960s, Asian enrollment at UC Berkeley was strong, and it soared through the ’70s. But in the ’80s, it plummeted mysteriously. Berkeley was investigated by the Department of Education, and in 1989, the chancellor apologized and pledged that this would never happen again. Until now. There is an ongoing discussion within progressive politics as to whether Asian Americans are a reliable part of the Black-brown coalition or whether they have been—to use another weird but fashionable term—“whitened.” Does the UC think it’s a good idea, in this era of racism and hate crimes against Asian Americans, to promote the idea that these students are hoovering up an unfair proportion of a precious resource?... What will dropping the tests really accomplish? It will give cover to the many forces invested in not improving the state’s K–12 education, especially in the poorest districts. Those include: Republicans, who don’t like pouring money into public education; taxpayers, who don’t like their dollars being spent on other people’s children; Democrats, who serve the teachers’ unions; and the mighty unions themselves, which seem more interested in protecting failing teachers than in reforming a failing system. “California is America, only sooner.” Californians are proud of that expression, and it still holds up. What’s happening out here—a homelessness crisis that turns deadly when the summer heat climbs; soaring crime in the cities; fires and coastal erosion spurred by climate change; strong students denied college admission because of the color of their skin and the “foreign” sound of their names; and a great research university obscuring, rather than revealing, the truth—all of that will happen where you live, too. We just got here first. Someday, in a textbook on world history, there will be a chapter about all of us—you, and me, and our shared moment. The title of that chapter will be American Decline."
Billboards are going up in California urging residents not to move to Texas and nobody knows if the people behind it are Californians or Texans 😂 - ""The Texas miracle died in Uvalde. Don't move to Texas," the billboard reads, alongside the sinister image of a hooded figure and a crossed-out "Don't mess with Texas" slogan"
Anti-police baker died after violent robbery, family doesn't want criminals prosecuted - "A California baker – who identified as an anarchist and social justice advocate – died after she was the victim of a brutal theft. Family and friends don't want the criminals who are linked to her death to be prosecuted because that would allegedly go against the woman's values. Jennifer Angel went to a Wells Fargo bank branch in Oakland on Monday afternoon. A car pulled in front of her vehicle and blocked her from leaving, Angel's fiance, Ocean Mottley, told the San Francisco Chronicle... The family and friends said, "We know Jen would not want to continue the cycle of harm by bringing state-sanctioned violence to those involved in her death or to other members of Oakland’s rich community. As a long-time social movement activist and anarchist, Jen did not believe in state violence, carceral punishment, or incarceration as an effective or just solution to social violence and inequity." The statement said that Angel "worked toward an ecologically sustainable" society, where "people are free and equal." The friends and family proclaimed that the criminals involved in Jennifer's death should not be prosecuted. "If the Oakland Police Department does make an arrest in this case, the family is committed to pursuing all available alternatives to traditional prosecution, such as restorative justice," the statement declared. The family and friends said that Jennifer's death should not be used to "further inflame narratives of fear, hatred, and vengeance, nor to advance putting public resources into policing, incarceration, or other state violence that perpetuates the cycles of violence that resulted in this tragedy.""
More people will die, and this will be cited as proof of how bad policing is. Brilliant!
