Wardonk3y

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Wish we had some concrete evidence for this between the lines, yet, major fucking betrayal. Looking at you Jack Smith… A HEM! If hes willing to turn a blind eye to putin putting bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan this doesn’t seem to be beyond the pail.

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Bystandr•1d ago via Web

This alone should be all anyone needs. Betraying your own forces or agents is the highest treason. He screwed the soldiers in Afghanistan,

77217 replies

Badwolf09•1d ago via Android

40316 replies

StarshipSuperTrooper•1d ago

Remember when Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine despite it being authorized through Congress? Then, trump attempting to extort any information he could use on Biden? Did everything he could to withhold aid to Ukraine. Praised Putin and had several private calls with Putin? Like this shit isnt subtle

1631 reply

invaderjak•1d ago via Web

Smith isn’t at fault here, the documents case was handled for trump by his hand picked judge

1312 replies

writerbuddy•1d ago

CIA issued a global alert to all stations when they realized what was happening, but too late. It is beyond incredible that this traitor continues to be free and angling to steal the presidency again with Russian help.

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(Courtesy of Gwyllm LLwydd)

Self-Governance Is Growing Locally as National Elections Are Foundering—And That’s a Good Thing  

Stop conflating democracy with the nation-state, writes columnist Joe Mathews. “Ecclesiastical, and, political, state of the nation” (1780) by James Gillray. Courtesy of Yale University Library.

by JOE MATHEWS | OCTOBER 8, 2024 (ZocaloPublicSquare.org)

Democracy is not in decline. The nation-state is.

Making that distinction—between democracy and the nation—is crucial to understanding what’s really going on when it comes to self-government on this planet.

It’s a distinction we rarely make. When people around the world talk about how democracy is doing, we talk about democracy almost exclusively at the national level.

We see this every year, when think tanks and NGOs issue reports and rankings on the state of democracy—that consider the national governments only.

Take International IDEA, a Sweden-based intergovernmental organization that supports elections and democracy worldwide. In its September 2024 Global State of Democracy Report, IDEA declared that democracy remained in decline because only 1 in 4 nations were becoming more democratic, while 4 in 9 nations were becoming less so. IDEA also noted that 1 in 5 national elections is now contested by the loser, and that the global average for electoral turnout declined by 10 percentage points (65.2 % to 55.5 %) in the last 15 years.

Similarly, Freedom House, based in Washington D.C., points to growing numbers of nation-states with problematic elections and armed conflict to declare that this is the 18th consecutive year of decline. And, in its 2024 report, Varieties of Democracy, a global think tank in Sweden, says that democracy has been in decline for 15 years in a row because the share of the population living in nations that are becoming more autocratic is higher than the share living in democratizing countries.

To be sure, these national-level trends are not good news. But they paint an incomplete and misleading picture of the state of democracy on this planet, for three big reasons.

The first is rather obvious. Democracy is self-government, the business of everyday people governing themselves. And most democracy on this planet takes place where most people experience the ins and outs of day-to-day existence—in local communities, rather than at the national level.

Second, these global rankings of democracy rest heavily on elections, which are only one democratic process. Yes, trust and participation in elections are declining. But other forms of democracy—in which people themselves make decisions, rather than delegating power to elected representatives—are growing.

Consider four of these forms.

Direct democracy, in which people vote to enact laws or amend constitutions through referenda, is now a part of governance in more than half of countries. But such procedures are mostly used at the local and sub-national levels, according to the new Global State of Direct Democracy report.

Participatory democracy, involving tools that allow residents of a neighborhood or other jurisdiction to formulate budgets or development plans themselves, has been expanding rapidly since the launch of one such tool in 1990 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. People Powered, a global hub for democracy and participation, reports that more than 7,000 budgets—mostly in cities and local schools—have been made through the participatory budgeting process.

Deliberative democracy has become so popular in recent years that practitioners speak of a “deliberative wave.”  The most popular forms of such democracy are citizens’ assemblies—bodies of everyday people, assembled using “sortition” or lotteries rather than through elections. At a recent global conference for the network Democracy R&D, panelists estimated that about 1,000 such assemblies have been held to deliberate on and find solutions to difficult challenges, most at the local level.

Digital democracy is being used worldwide, often locally, to allow ordinary citizens to make proposals, develop policies, and govern their own communities. Among the best-known digital democratic tools is Decidim, an open digital platform developed by the city of Barcelona and now used in hundreds of localities and institutions worldwide.

Nation-states simply can’t manage up or manage down in the 21st-century world.

But beyond all this growth in local democratic practice, there’s a bigger reason why we are misunderstanding the state of democracy: Nation-states are in retreat, regardless of their systems of government. The signals so often interpreted as democratic decline are actually evidence of something larger and more fundamental.

Nation-states everywhere—be they more democratic or more authoritarian—are in crisis, with their rulers losing the ability to govern their own countries. The United States, as a nation, is in danger of breaking apart. So too is Russia, which is caught up in a war in Ukraine, and suffering long-term declines in the health and life spans of its people. Germany is losing its dynamism and cohesion, for sure, but so is China—struggling with a debt crisis, an aging population, profound corruption, and an increasingly isolated dictator in Xi Jinping.

Why is this happening?

“The most momentous development of our era, precisely, is the waning of the nation-state: its inability to withstand countervailing 21st-century forces, and its calamitous loss of influence over human circumstance,” the British novelist and scholar Rana Dasgupta writes in his book After Nations. “National political authority is in decline, and, since we do not know any other sort, it feels like the end of the world.”

Nation-states simply can’t manage up or manage down in the 21st-century world. Looking up, nation-states have proven incapable of handling planetary forces and threats—climate change, finance and capital flows, technological advances, disease, religious-oriented terrorism. If anything, nation-states have made such problems worse, while ceding more and more power (and formerly national functions like surveillance) to multinational institutions like big tech companies from my home state of California.

Looking down, nation-states can no longer unify their peoples. Instead, national leaders routinely exploit divides to maintain power. Almost all wars are between groups of people inside nation-states that are breaking down. Many of these civil wars have been internationalized by other nation-states, seeking short-term advantage. The most awful example is the current civil war in Sudan, fueled by Russia and the United Arab Emirates, which has displaced millions, killed hundreds of thousands by starvation, and reduced the city of Khartoum to a ruin.

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War is not the only tool that nation-states use to cling to their diminishing power. Leaders of nation-state democracies and autocracies alike have taken to scapegoating outsiders, especially migrants, and pledging to exert dictatorial power. But such authoritarian performances are really signs of desperation and weakness.

The void left by the decline of the nation-state is frightening, because of the potential for violence as our world’s governance infrastructure falls apart. But that same void is also an enormous opportunity for democracy and for those forms of democracy being practiced more often on the local level.

Tellingly, democracy is finding ways to grow even inside hostile and authoritarian nation-states. Turkey, with a religious autocrat as prime minister, has seen a wave of democratic participation in its cities, particularly Ankara and Izmir. Syria, ruled by a ruthless dictator, is the site of democratic cantons along its border with Turkey. Myanmar, in the midst of a crackdown by its military rulers, is sprouting new forms of local self-government.

Attacks on democracy also are redounding, to democracy’s favor. Ukraine, in the midst of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, is awash in ambitious local plans for rebuilding cities in more democratic and sustainable ways.

Around the world, alliances of cities are working together to address climate change, poverty, and other problems that the failing nation-states can’t solve and in fact are making worse. These alliances, which often combine democratic processes with technocratic expertise, point the way to a brighter future, in which stronger and more democratic local governments handle more of their own problems, together.

Visions of a local planetary replacement for the nation-state system might be dismissed as implausible, but the nation-state idea dates only to 1648, and the modern nation-state is less than a century old. It is obviously vulnerable.

And democracy—and particularly the people-driven forms of democracy now on the rise at the local level—is our best bet to replace that system.

JOE MATHEWSis a columnist for Zócalo Public Square and founder-publisher of the planetary publication Democracy Local.

Harris for president. Peskin for mayor. Yes on C and 33 …. complete Bay Guardian recommendations for the Nov. 5 election

By  Tim Redmond

September 28, 2024 (SFBG.com)

Nov. 5 will be a crucial, defining election on the national level—and to a lesser extent, on the local level. After months of concern that President Joe Biden would not be able to defeat Donald Trump (or even, some worried, finish his term), the Democratic Party has new life and new energy with Vice President Kamala Harris now atop the ticket. Harris chose a fairly progressive governor, Tim Walz of Minnesota, as her running mate.

Her platform is still vague, and so far, not terribly different from that of the Biden Administration (which is not all bad). She has moved to the center since her initial run for president in 2019; she supports a terrible border bill, she came out against a ban on fracking, she’s supported the terrible bloody Israeli war on Gaza, and the YIMBYs, perhaps without clear evidence, are claiming her as their own.

But none of that matters.

Progressive voters have no choice here: The election of Donald Trump for another term in the White House is as clear and present a danger to American democracy as anything we’ve ever experienced. Trump, whatever incoherent and rambling positions he takes on issues, doesn’t want to be president: He wants to be a dictator. He has vowed to take vengeance on his political foes, using the Justice Department and his far-right Supreme Court majority to put people who have stood up to him in prison. He has no interest in following the laws of the land, and might very well seek to remain in office beyond the legally mandated two terms.

He’s unstable, has in the past discussed openly using nuclear weapons, and has befriended international tyrants.

It’s pointless to argue about the details of Harris’s record or platform; everyone with any sense in this country needs to vote against Trump and for a candidate who could lead with competence and balance. We strongly endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

SAN FRANCISCO RACES

This is the year the billionaires have gone all out to take over San Francisco. A small handful of people with excessive real estate and tech wealth have formed a series of political front groups that have in essence unlimited funding. They recruited and funded a slate of candidates to take over the Democratic County Central Committee and spent an unprecedented sum to get a majority of them elected in what is typically a low-profile race. That gave them the power to put the Democratic Party behind another slate, this time for the Board of Supervisors.

They have a powerful, right-wing agenda that rests on tax cuts, more police, treating homelessness and substance abuse as criminal issues, deregulating land-use (allowing for massive demolitions of existing neighborhoods), and allowing corporations to use San Francisco as a testing lab for all sorts of new, potentially dangerous technology.

It won’t be easy to stop them; again, their political money has no limits, and they will spend whatever they need in their political coup. But if progressives turn out in large numbers to vote for Harris and Walz, and they can ignore the lies and propaganda from the right wing, there’s a path to victory.

Our endorsements reflect the political reality of 2024: Not every candidate we are backing is a solid progressive. But as the great local author Rebecca Solnit is fond of saying, sometimes a vote is a chess move, not a love letter. The goal here is to block the billionaire takeover, and in some cases that means supporting candidates who are more centrist that we would like—but are far better than the alternatives.

Mayor

Aaron Peskin

Let’s start with the basics. Mayor London Breed has been a failure, taking the city entirely in the wrong direction. During the pandemic she resisted using empty hotel rooms to get vulnerable people into shelter. She has opposed every ballot measure to raise taxes on big corporations to help fund affordable housing—and when they passed, she refused to spend the money.

Her administration faced, and is still facing, a massive corruption scandal, with five senior officials, including two department heads, sentenced to prison terms for participating in bribery schemes.

In the past year, she’s moved even further to the right, pouring money into the Police Department while other crucial parts of the public safety infrastructure, including the 911 center, SF General Hospital, and homeless outreach programs suffered from cuts and understaffing.

She urged the Supreme Court to gut the rights of the unhoused, and has been brutally sweeping thousands off the streets, seizing their possessions, when most have no offer of acceptable shelter and nowhere to go. (Her most recent idea: Send them on a bus somewhere else.)

She has completely bought into the YIMBY narrative that allowing developers to build more market-rate housing will bring prices down, and despite a total lack of evidence for that theory, she is now proposing to upzone neighborhood commercial districts to eight stories. That would instantly threaten the survival of hundreds of neighborhood-serving small businesses, as their storefronts would be demolished to make room for new taller buildings.

This city needs a new mayor.

Breed has four serious challengers: Sup. Aaron Peskin, Sup. Ahsha Safai, former Interim Mayor Mark Farrell, and billionaire nonprofit administrator Daniel Lurie.

Peskin is the only one that has no billionaire backers, the only one they all oppose—and the clear and only choice.

Peskin has extensive experience at City Hall, more by far than any other candidate. We’ll put it simply: He knows how to run a city. After years of incompetence and corruption in the Mayor’s Office, he can offer a strong hand to clean up what is a lingering political and financial mess.

We haven’t always agreed with Peskin, and we don’t always agree with him now. But on the big, critical, defining issues, he’s the only candidate who offers anything close to a progressive platform.

Peskin has long argued that allowing developers free rein to build anything they want is no solution to the affordable housing crisis. He is the only candidate who seems to understand the immediate costs of  upzoning commercial corridors. He’s the only candidate who has demonstrated a serious commitment to affordable housing. (Breed and Peskin co-sponsored the affordable housing bond in March, but Peskin was the only one who raised money and organized to help it win.)

He supported the taxes on big business to fund affordable housing. He supported budget measures that would spend that money on housing, which Breed opposed. He’s the only candidate who has any history of caring about and working with the neighborhoods. He has the endorsement of every major progressive leader and organization in the city.

Breed talks about how she supports municipalizing PG&E and bringing lucrative, sustainable public power, with lower rates, to San Francisco; Peskin would actually get it done.

Safai has been a decent supervisor, has sided with the progressives a lot of the time, and has the support of some labor groups. But he’s gained very little traction and has not shown the leadership skills the next mayor needs.

Lurie is the heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, and has poured personal millions into the race. He’s the founder of Tipping Point, a foundation that does good work. But this is a political job, and he has no experience in local politics.

Farrell is running so far to the right he might as well be a Republican.

We know that Peskin has not always sided with every progressive position. He’s been too ready to back more spending for cops (although he’s also the only candidate who represents a district with effective foot patrols, which most progressives agree are a good idea, and he says he will push citywide). Like Harris, he’s not perfect. But this is no time for progressives to demand perfection: The billionaires want to control this city, and in the mayor’s race, Peskin is the only one standing in their way.

Board of Supervisors, District 1

Connie Chan

Chan won this district, which is mostly the Richmond, by a narrow margin four years ago, and Marjan Philhour, who came in second, is challenging her again. It’s one of the key races on the right-wing billionaire agenda. It’s critical that Chan win re-election.

Chan chaired the Budget Committee and fought to turn a really bad Breed budget into something tolerable. She’s worked to hold department heads accountable (even when the head of Rec-Park worked with a private group to try to punish her by eliminating new park funding in her district). She has been with the progressive on every issue, every vote. Philhour is the candidate of Breed and the billionaires. That’s all you need to know. Vote for Connie Chan.

Board of Supervisors, District 3

1. Sharon Lai

2. Moe Jamil

None of the candidates running to replace termed-out Sup. Peskin have his skills, and none of them are as progressive in their politics. D3 is going to have a more centrist supervisor for the next four years. If Danny Sauter, the billionaire candidate, wins, it could have a right-wing supervisor.

We’re not thrilled with any of the candidates, but Lai and Jamil are the best of the lot.

Lai grew up in public housing, and is an advocate for more affordability. She also says that government should “get out of the way” of market-rate housing. She supports hiring 500 more cops. But she also argues that local government should have final authority over land use, putting her at odds with the YIMBYs and State Sen. Scott Wiener.

Moe Jamil, a deputy city attorney, has long been a neighborhood advocate and organizer. He argues that it’s important to protect existing tenants and small businesses from displacement driven by development. He’s also more than a bit harsh on the unhoused, saying at one campaign event that D3 needs to keep out encampments, even if it means (metaphorically) “building a wall.” Gack.

Again: Far from our ideal candidates. But they have the best chance, running with a ranked-choice voting strategy, of keeping the billionaire-backed right-wing Danny Sauter off the board.

Board of Supervisors, District 5

Dean Preston

This one’s easy. Preston has been the standard bearer, the leader, and one of the most important progressive politicians in San Francisco for the past four years. He’s the sponsor of every key measure to raise taxes on the rich to pay for affordable housing. He was among the most vocal and effective advocates of moving vulnerable unhoused people into hotel rooms during the pandemic.

He forced the Mayor’s Office to apply for federal money that will house 750 people (after they ignored the opportunity). He led the battle for a rent-relief program that the data shows kept 20,000 people off the streets during COVID. He found a way to bring rent control to a housing complex in the Western Addition where tenants faced eviction. He’s called out the Police Department over military gear and killer robots.

And he’s the number one target of the billionaire right. Elon Musk at one point said Preston should go to jail (for what?) and vowed to give $100,000 to defeat him. Their candidate is Bilal Mahmood, who can’t even keep his own record straight—he claimed he was a “neuroscientist,” until actual neuroscientists forced him to back off—and wants to allow more demolitions, more displacement, more cops, and less protections for tenants. Vote for Preston.

Board of Supervisors, District 7

NO ENDORSEMENT

Myrna Melgar has been the most progressive supervisor to represent this conservative West Side district since the return of district elections. She’s voted with the progressives fairly often, and is doing a great job pushing the city to back off from a dangerous court case against the EPA. She has the support of progressives like Sups. Hillary Ronen and Connie Chan. But she also worked with the Mayor’s Office to evict unhoused mostly Latinx families from Winston Drive when there was nowhere else for them to go. Besides, she doesn’t seem to need our endorsement: She has Mayor Breed, Sen. Scott Wiener, DA Brooke Jenkins, SF YIMBY, and Democratic Party Chair Nancy Tung, who was a leader in the billionaire slate. We aren’t going to be in that company.

Board of Supervisors, District 9

1. Jackie Fielder

2. Stephen Torres

For decades, since the return of district elections in 2000, D9 has been represented by some of the city’s most important and effective progressives. Tom Ammiano held the seat for eight years, then David Campos held it for another eight, followed by Sup. Hillary Ronen, who has been on the job since 2016. The billionaires want to change that, and they have a candidate, Trevor Chandler, who, like Mahmood, has some issues with honesty about his record.

Jackie Fielder is our first choice. She entered the political scene as the only progressive willing to take on incumbent state Sen. Scott Wiener, and without anywhere near his money or clout, won 40 percent of the vote. She’s been a member of the Local Agency Formation Commission, which is working for public power, and has been a leader in the move to create a public bank. She would be a worthy successor to Ammiano, Campos, and Ronen, all of whom are strongly supporting her.

Torres has been active in the nightlife and entertainment world, and was a leader in the battle to protect the legacy of the Castro Theater. He’s been a member of the Entertainment Commission and the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. He has some creative ideas about protecting small businesses, including working to build large-scale public markets for local merchants and street vendors.

Chandler is a terrible candidate. He opposes district elections, which should disqualify him instantly. He opposed the Gaza ceasefire resolution and has tried to hide the fact that he spent five years working for AIPAC, which supports right-wing Republicans if they are allies of Israel. He’s a fraud who is nothing but a front for the billionaires.

Vote for Fielder and Torres.

Board of Supervisors, District 11

1. Chyanne Chen

2. Ernest “EJ” Jones

D11 has been a swing district; John Avalos, one of the most progressive members of the board, represented the area for eight years, then it shifted to Ahsha Safai. This time around, two progressive candidates are up against Michael Lai, who is backed by Wiener, Sup. Matt Dorsey, and the representatives of the billionaires on the DCCC.

Chen has a history of progressive organizing, with  SEIU and the Chinese Progressive Association. She’s a strong supporter of affordable housing (but also “midrise” buildings in commercial corridors, which carries the risk of displacing existing small businesses). Jones is a former aide to Safai, but he’s also worked for the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center. He’s the only candidate who talks openly about restorative justice and alternatives to law enforcement.

Michael Lai is the billionaire-backed candidate who supported the School Board recall, supported the pro-police Prop. E in March (Jones and Chen opposed it) and was part of the right-wing slate for Democratic County Central Committee.

SAN FRANCISCO BALLOT MEASURES

Prop. A

School infrastructure bond

YES

We completely agree that many SF schools are old and badly in need of maintenance and upgrades. We never have problems endorsing bond measures for valid public works projects. Our only concern: This bond money shouldn’t be used for closing schools.

Proposition B

Community health and parks bonds

YES

As is so often the case, Prop. B is a compromise. The mayor wants the money for improvements at SF General, Laguna Honda Hospital and the Chinatown Public Health Center, and upgrades to Hallidie Plaza and Harvey Milk Plaza.  She left the San Francisco City Clinic, which serves a primarily LGBTQ population in SoMa, off the list. The Harvey Milk Democratic Club objected, as did Sup. Aaron Peskin, who said that some of Breed’s priorities were less important than public health. In the end, the controller did some math and figured out how to get all of those priorities into the bond without raising taxes. It’s an example of Breed’s divisiveness. It’s also needed.

Prop. C

Inspector General

YES, YES, YES

This is the most important measure on the ballot. In a city awash in corruption, Prop. C would create an Office of The Inspector General in the Controller’s Office, with the power to subpoena records and witnesses and issue search warrants.

The office wouldn’t do criminal prosecutions; that authority by law lies with the district attorney. But it could expose graft and fraud, make public the secrets that public officials use to hide malfeasance, and increase overall faith in local government.

The cost would be fairly minor, no more than $775,000 a year—and an office that can stop waste and corruption will more than pay for itself. At some point, if this works out, the city could consider shifting enforcement of the Sunshine Ordinance to the inspector general, since the Ethics Commission has utterly failed in that duty.

Proposition D

City commissions and mayoral authority

NO

San Francisco already has one of the strongest mayors in the country, and the last thing the city needs is another measure eliminating accountability and public input and giving the chief executive more authority.

Prop. D, sponsored by the billionaire-funded TogetherSF, would limit the number of city commissions to 65, immediately eliminating, according to the Department of Elections, the Public Health, Library, Human Rights, Human Services, Arts, Environment, Small Business and Juvenile Probation commissions.

Then a task force could move to eliminate even more.

In each case, the department heads would report directly to the mayor. Decisions would be made behind closed doors, with no community input. This is a terrible idea. Vote no.

Proposition E

Commission simplification task force

YES

Prop. E is Sup. Aaron Peskin’s response to Prop. D. It would create a task force to study the number and function of city commissions, but without a mandate to eliminate any specific number of them. We don’t see why any of this is necessary; the supes (not the mayor) ought to appoint a task force to meet openly and study overall City Charter reform instead of this piecemeal approach. But it’s a much better alternative to Prop. D.

Proposition F

Police deferred retirement

NO

Prop. F, by Sup. Matt Dorsey, would let cops who are eligible to retire remain on the force and also get their retirement pay. That means some police officers would be earning more than $500,000 a year. It’s not a new idea; the city tried it once before, in 2008, and it was a costly failure. Vote no.

Proposition G

Rental subsidies for low-income seniors

YES

Prop. G would create a modest city fund to subsidize rents in affordable housing developements for seniors and people with disabilities who make less than 35 percent of the Area Median Income. For these extremely low-income people, even the lower rents in affordable projects are out of reach. It has the unanimous support of the supes, the mayor, and the affordable housing developers. Vote yes.

Proposition H

Firefighter pensions

NO

Sponsored by Sup. Catherine Stefani, this measure would allow firefighters, who are now eligible to retire with full benefits (90 percent of base pay) at 58 to retire will full benefits at 55. The argument: Firefighters are exposed to dangerous chemicals and get cancer at higher rates than some other city workers. If they can retire early, that risk would be reduced. There are plenty of other public employees who face health risks (nurses, for example), and they don’t get this kind of benefit. Vote no.

Proposition I

Nurses and 911 operators pensions

YES

This one is far from a giveaway. It just corrects an injustice in the pension system: Per Diem nurses, who work for the city as needed, get no retirement credit at all. 911 operators, who are part of the public safety system, don’t get the same benefits as other safety employees. Nurses who worked an average of 35 hours a week could buy into the city’s retirement system. Dispatchers would pay more into the system, and get more out of it at the end. Vote yes.

Proposition J

NO ENDORSEMENT

We’re a little dubious about this one. Sponsored by Sup. Myrna Melgar, the measure would give the mayor and the superintendent of schools more power to oversee the spending of the Children’s Fund, which pays for services for children and youth. But it has the support of all of the progressive supes and no opposition.

Proposition K

Great Highway closures

NO

We’re going to get some serious flak for this position; all of the environmental groups, the bicyclists, and Sups. Hillary Ronen and Dean Preston support the idea of closing the Great Highway to cars and creating a new public park. It makes a lot of sense: The southern part of the highway had to be closed because of erosion and sea-level rise, and thousands of people enjoyed the use of the closed roadway during the pandemic. We have always taken the position that San Francisco should make policies that emphasize transit, walking, and biking, and not cars.

And yet: Sup. Joel Engardio, the SFMTA, and the Rec-Park Department came up with this plan without any adequate input from the people who live in the outer Richmond and Outer Sunset. The neighborhoods are overwhelmingly opposed, and for good reason: The highway, which carries thousands of cars a day, would shut down—with no concurrent increase in public transit. So those cars would wind up on neighborhood streets. Oh, and since population density is far lower around the Great Highway than in the parts of Golden Gate Park that are closed to cars, and since transit from much of the city to the West Side is slow and inefficient, many of the new park users will… drive there, and try to find parking in the neighborhoods. That’s more traffic, more congestion, and more pollution.

We’d be all in favor of turning the Great Highway into a park, and it’s going to have to close at some point anyway because of flooding (eventually, it may be more of a swimming pool than a park), but first create the transit infrastructure that’s needed to get people out of their cars, instead of sending those cars onto neighborhood streets.

Proposition L

Uber, Lyft, and Waymo tax to fund Muni

YES

Muni is facing a massive budget shortfall, in part because, as a new study from UC Davis shows, people are using so-called Transportation Network Companies—Uber and Lyft, and now Waymo—not as an alternative to their cars but as an alternative to public transit. So it makes perfect sense to tax these companies to help make up a little bit of the shortfall. Vote Yes.

Proposition M

Business tax changes

YES

Prop. M is a consensus measure to change the city’s business tax structure in the wake of the pandemic. It’s generally progressive—most small businesses would be exempt from taxes, and the biggest would pay more. The single biggest loser (thanks to reporting by Joe Eskenazi at Mission Local): PG&E. That alone is good reason to vote for it. There’s some concern that language in this measure would block any other tax measure on the November 5 ballot that gets fewer votes (part of a complicated effort to keep a bad alternative off the ballot), and potentially that could hurt Prop. L. But we support both.

Proposition N

First responder student loan reimbursement

YES

This one’s a tough call. The measure, sponsored by Sup. Ahsha Safai, stems from the problems the city is having hiring cops and sheriffs, and some other public safety staff. It would create a city fund, that could be filled with private donations, to reimburse cops, sheriffs, nurses, paramedics, and 911 dispatchers for up to $25,000 in student loans or training costs. It’s part of a larger conversation—rather, for example, than giving cops eligible for retirement huge bonuses to keep working, should the city work with local colleges to pay tuition for people willing to work as first responders? Who (beyond cops) should be eligible? We’re not sure, but this seems like a modest way to test out the idea.

Proposition O

Reproductive rights

YES

Prop. O does more than put the city on record defending reproductive rights. It’s a pretty extensive measure that would create a reproductive rights fund, that could include private donations, to support abortion rights and services and expand zoning laws to allow reproductive services clinics in more parts of town. It would also allow the Department of Public Health to post warning signs in front of the proliferating fake reproductive rights centers that are really just anti-abortion operations—and would forbid local law enforcement from providing information to law enforcement from other states about people’s reproductive health care decisions and services in this city. In essence, San Francisco would become a sanctuary city for reproductive freedom. Vote yes.

OTHER LOCAL RACES

San Francisco School Board

Matt Alexander, Virginia Cheung, Jaime Huling

First: The School Board race is taking place with very little public discussion about school closures. Closing schools won’t save that much money, but might save on facilities upgrades; at any rate, all of the candidates should be talking about it more than they are.

Second: The number of progressive candidates in this race is fairly limited—but there are plenty of conservative candidates.

The teachers’ union, UESF, worked with incumbent Matt Alexander to identify the best alternatives, and most progressive groups are going with Virginia Cheung and Jaime Huling. They are going to have a huge job ahead, with a massive budget deficit and the closures issue, but they all have the support of the Harvey Milk Club, the League of Pissed Off Voters, and most of the progressive supes.

Community College Board

Alan Wong

Four seats are up this year, and progressives are going to lose three of them. It’s a critical time for City College—budgets are tight, the school has cut so many classes that students can’t get their degrees (not to mention non-credit classes like English as a Second Language). The state wants community colleges to be nothing but two-year steps to a four-year degree, but City College has always been so much more.

The only progressive on the board seeking re-election is Alan Wong—and unlike the 2022 election, there are no other progressive candidates. Since the election is at-large, meaning the top four win, we are endorsing only Wong, in the hope that he gets enough votes to finish in the running.

BART Board director, District 9

Edward Wright

Another easy call. Wright, a former chief of staff for Sup. Gordon Mar, is a transit policy expert working for Muni, a former president of the Milk Club, and has a long history of working on progressive causes.

District Attorney

Ryan Khojasteh

San Francisco’s had some pretty progressive district attorneys, from Terence Hallinan to George Gascon and then reformer Chesa Boudin. The Boudin recall was a watershed moment in local politics, as Mayor London Breed and the billionaires worked a warped and disgraceful media narrative to create the impression that Boudin was allowing criminals to run rampant in the city. (The fact is that cops, angry that Boudin was prosecuting one of their own for homicide, essentially went on a working strike by not arresting anyone didn’t help).

When Boudin was forced out of office, Breed appointed Brooke Jenkins, who was paid by the groups that helped oust the incumbent. She’s been part of a terrible approach to law enforcement, pushing people who are high on drugs (not high level dealers) and the unhoused mentally ill into a county jail that can’t handle that population. She’s turning the clock way back, away from reform, and allowing the cops free rein to abuse people with no accountability. It’s an embarrassment for this city.

Ryan Khojasteh, who has worked as a prosecutor, is the only one willing to challenger her. He has little chance; his record is very thin, since he’s only been a lawyer for five years. But at least he’s talking about the right issues, and we’re willing to endorse him.

State Assembly, District 17

NO ENDORSEMENT

Incumbent Matt Haney will get re-elected to this seat, and the one-time self-identified progressive will continue to work with the real-estate industry and state Sen. Scott Wiener to deregulate housing and follow the YIMBY agenda. We can’t support him.

State Assembly, District 19

NO ENDORSEMENT

For the past 12 years, the West Side seat in the state Assembly was held by Phil Ting, who was hardly a radical leftist but sided with progressives on a lot of issues and endorsements (but also sided with Wiener and the YIMBYs on housing). He’s termed out, and Sup. Catherine Stefani, one of the most conservative members of the board, probably has a lock on this seat. We can’t support her.

There’s some support for David Lee, a Laney College professor who is the only one with the courage to take on Stefani, and we applaud his willingness to run. But Lee has never been there on progressive issues and candidates in the past, and while he’s probably a better alternative to Stefani, we’re reluctant to endorse someone who only recently moved to the left side of city politics.

STATE PROPOSITIONS

Proposition 2

Education facilities bonds

YES

The big problem with state bonds is that they don’t come with a tax source to pay for them. Local bonds are paid with local property taxes; state bonds come out of the general fund, and this $10 billion bond to pay for upgrades to admittedly crumbling schools and community colleges will be a $500 million annual hit to the state budget. Still, it’s a necessary investment.

Proposition 3

Marriage equality

YES

Prop. 3 amends the state Constitution (which still, in very old language, defines marriage as between a man and a woman) to enshrine a right to marriage equality. That seems like a simple idea, since the US Supreme Court has ruled that marriage equality is the law of the land, but it’s actually pretty important: The ruling overturning Roe v. Wade could be (and Justice Clarence Thomas says it should be) grounds to overturn the same-sex marriage decision. This would make sure California is a sanctuary for same-sex couples.

Proposition 4

Bonds for drinking water and climate protection

YES

Again, nothing wrong with this important measure—except that the Legislature doesn’t seem interested in raising taxes on the rich to pay for it.

Proposition 5

Affordable housing bond threshold

YES, YES, YES

Prop. 5 was part of a deal that could have been a total game changer for housing in the Bay Area. A $20 billion housing bond should have been on the ballot, and if Prop. 5 also passed, that bond could have taken effect with just 55 percent of the vote. But the MTC and ABAG folks who were coordinating the bond pulled it at the last minute, for reasons that made no sense then and make no sense now. This was the year to create massive amounts of affordable housing in the Bay Area, and we lost the opportunity which may not return for a decade.

Still, it’s critical to pass Prop. 5, which will lower the threshold for housing bonds from 67 percent to 55 percent. The two-thirds bond threshold is a hangover from Prop. 13 in 1978, and continues to deeply damage the state of California. Vote yes on Prop. 5

Proposition 6

Prison slavery

YES

Prop. 6 would end the practice of forcing inmates in state prisons to work without pay as a punishment for crimes. That’s an easy call.

Proposition 32

Minimum wage

YES

Prop. 32 raises the minimum wage in California for most jobs to $17 an hour now and $18 for 2026. It’s radically overdue.

Proposition 33

Rent control

YES, YES, YES

This is a critical measure during a massive affordability crisis.

Since 1995, the state of California has limited the ability of local government to enact meaningful rent control. It’s a long saga that shows how entirely the state Legislature is controlled by the real estate industry.

In the 1980s, three cities—Berkeley, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood—passed laws that imposed rent controls on vacant apartments. That is: Once a landlord set a rent for a place, that was the rent, except for modest annual increases, even after a tenant moved out. San Francisco could have had that law; the supes approved it 7-4 in the early 1980s, but then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein vetoed it.

Landlords sued, and the case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Berkeley’s law.

So then the landlords went to the state Legislature, where they have immense clout, and got a law called Costa-Hawkins passed, which bans local government from imposing rent controls on vacant apartments and on any housing built after 1979. (Then-Speaker Willie Brown could have blocked that bill but didn’t.)

Prop. 33 doesn’t impose any new rent controls. It simply repeals Costa-Hawkins and allows local governments to set their own rules, as they could until 1995. It’s likely that, at least in the short term, only a small number of communities would impose rent controls on vacant apartments. Remember, when Costa-Hawkins passed, there were only three, all of them relatively small cities.

Opponents, including the SF Chronicle, argue that allowing expanded rent control would discourage new housing. That’s an old, old argument that landlords have raised against all forms of rent control for decades. There’s no evidence that it’s true.

Vote yes.

Proposition 34

Revenge for Prop. 33

NO, NO, NO

Prop. 34 is nothing more than a landlord attack on the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which is sponsoring and funding Prop. 33. We haven’t always agreed with or supported AHF, which often wades into housing and other policy debates, but it’s the rare deep-pocketed organization that spends money on progressive housing issues. The measure has nothing to do with patient rights or health-care costs; it would simply bar this one organization from spending money on politics. Vote No.

Proposition 35

Funding for Medi-Cal

YES

This measure would simply extend an existing, modest tax on managed-care health insurance plans to fund healthcare for low-income people. It’s backed by Planned Parenthood and the California Medical Association. Vote yes.

Proposition 36

NO, NO, NO

Prop. 36 would repeal a reform law passed in 2014 that prevented district attorneys from charging low-level non-violent crimes as felonies. It’s kept thousands of people out of state prison, saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars—and helped people who commit minor crimes, like shoplifting, from heading into a life in the criminal justice system.

Supporters of Prop. 36 say it’s going to help fight crime, by allowing thefts of less than $950 be charged as felonies. We’ve tried to fight crime by locking more people up since the 1980s; it’s been a total failure.

Vote No.

‘When you get on a conference call and say those words — ‘kill an animal’ — it sucks’

By Amy Graff, Senior News Editor Oct 10, 2024 (SFGate.com)

The coyote that was killed by federal officials at Crissy Field on Oct. 6 was seen hunting for gophers in the grass of the park on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Inge_Curtis/Daniel Solorzano-Jones/NPS

The San Francisco coyote behind a string of attacks at a popular San Francisco park has been caught.

Federal officials killed the young male early Sunday morning at Crissy Field, after an investigation revealed he had killed at least three small dogs that were off-leash and bit multiple other dogs, including at least one on-leash dog, across several weeks in September and October, according to officials and biologists with the National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Phoebe Parker-Shames, a wildlife ecologist with the Presidio Trust, said there were also reports of the animal charging at people on a trail in the Presidio, the 1,491-acre park that includes Crissy Field.  

The coyote had grown comfortable around humans, said Parker-Shames. Officials had tried to scare the animal by hazing it, going as far as shooting it with a paintball gun, but were unable to quell the coyote’s unusually aggressive behavior. Coyotes are typically shy with a natural fear of humans, but this animal became habituated, likely in part due to humans illegally feeding it and encouraging their dogs to harass coyotes.

“It’s an accumulation of factors that bring it closer and closer to people without getting a negative response,” Parker-Shames said. 

The data and observations piled up. “In keeping with established wildlife management practices, NPS and Presidio Trust biologists made the difficult decision to lethally remove the animal in consultation with state and local authorities,” GGNRA spokesperson Julian Espinoza wrote in a statement.

A DNA sample was collected after the coyote was killed. It matched up with two dogs that were bitten. Katie Smith, a National Park Service biologist, told SFGATE on Wednesday that the team believes this is the same animal that killed the dogs.

“We have no reason to believe otherwise,” Smith said. 

A crescent of land fronting San Francisco Bay at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, Crissy Field is a former U.S. Army airfield that was restored into a glorious 100-acre park with beaches, marshes, grassy expanses and miles of paths always busy with walkers, joggers and cyclists. It’s hugely popular with dog owners, who are allowed to take their pets off-leash in designated areas if their animals are kept under voice control. 

The problem is that many dog owners don’t understand the true meaning of voice control, Parker-Shames said. “Even if your animal is distracted by seeing a coyote, it means it will return to you, and reliably. And if it can’t do that then you shouldn’t have it off-leash,” she said.

The GGNRA, which includes Crissy Field, is the only unit within the National Park Service with off-leash dog areas, Espinoza said. Since the spate of coyote attacks, GGNRA has posted signs throughout the park encouraging pet owners to keep their dogs on-leash in all areas. 

Smith and Parker-Shames were part of the team that led the investigation into the coyote reports in September. This included reports of the three dogs that were killed; SFGATE talked to two of the dogs’ owners and recounted their horrifying experiences in a separate story.

The two collected photos and patrolled Crissy Field, eventually determining it was a single coyote that was responsible for the brazen actions. The animal that was menacing the park had a telling scar on its upper right forearm. 

The decision to kill the coyote was made on Tuesday, Oct. 1. That day, the biologists observed and received reports of the coyote acting aggressively toward dogs in a half-dozen separate instances across the Presidio. On the Mountain Lake Trail near Paul Goode Field, it charged at an individual and then backed up and moved toward a group of people (nobody was bitten or injured).

“It wasn’t extremely aggressive but crossed the line,” Parker-Shames said. 

“That’s a little snapshot of the amount of chaos that can come from one animal,” Parker-Shames continued. “It probably felt like there were six coyotes in the park that day. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

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Alongside federal officials, the biologists set up a stakeout at the park that weekend, from 11 p.m. Friday to 4:30 a.m. Saturday. No luck: The animal with a scar was never spotted. 

They went out again Saturday night and found him this time. He was killed early Sunday.

“As we did our targeted removal, we did our best to ensure we got the right individual animal,” Smith said. “We have no reason to believe there’s more than one coyote exhibiting these bold behaviors.”

The biologist said studies have shown that it’s usually a single individual that is responsible for most conflicts, and once a coyote has learned a behavior that it benefits from — like, say, approaching humans for their food or preying on small dogs — it’s hard to counteract it.

Smith and Parker-Shames are confident the team made the right call, especially because the animal was acting aggressively toward humans without dogs.

“Obviously, we love dogs,” Parker-Shames said. “But when we decide to remove a coyote, it’s more about human safety than dog safety.”

Being at the center of the decision was not easy. “When you get on a conference call and say those words — ‘kill an animal’ — it sucks,” Parker-Shames said, getting emotional. 

The biologists are concerned the killing of one habituated coyote will lead dog owners to think it’s now safe to let their canines off-leash.

“This lethal removal is not a solution, this was a reactive response to an increasing public safety concern,” Smith said. “It’s not a solution to prevent issues like these moving forward.”

Martha Walters, the chair of the Crissy Field Dog Group, has been coming to the park for 40 years and has repeatedly called on officials to put together a plan for managing coyotes and share it with the public.

“The coyotes are still present at Crissy Field so people need to be on the alert,” Walters said Thursday morning. “Yesterday, a Crissy Field Dog Group member said there are three coyotes that went from the Marina Green to the Wave Organ and onto the East Beach at Crissy Field.” 

The biologists said it’s important that Crissy Field visitors continue to keep their dogs on leash and pack out their trash, as coyotes love feasting on stinky scraps. The overflowing trash cans at the park are attractive for coyotes, as is the chicken left at the pier by people using the meat in crab traps. 

“Coyotes are highly intelligent and highly opportunistic and if you give them an easy opportunity for a food source, they’re going to take that,” Smith said. “It’s important for us to remove those attractants if we want to change that behavior — that includes putting small dogs on a leash. The best thing you can do to keep your pet safe is to keep it on a leash and as close as possible.”

In particular, Smith said she had observed some disturbing behavior at the park that she thinks contributed to the young male coyote’s demise.

“I’ve personally observed visitors intentionally encouraging their dogs to interact with and harass a coyote,” she said. “It’s deeply disturbing because we’re animal lovers, and seeing folks intentionally put their pets at risk is incredibly disturbing, and it’s not at all helpful to the coyote.”

An estimated 100 coyotes live in San Francisco, making homes in the patchwork of green spaces spread across the city’s 49 square miles. After the killing of the coyote, Parker-Shames said four coyotes are still likely living in the Presidio: an alpha male and female, long-term residents who breed once a year and have not caused any significant problems. The pair likely had two pups in 2023, and one was the young male who was killed. Parker-Shames has not seen his sibling in many months, and she assumes the animal has either died or moved to another area. 

This year, the mother and father had two more pups. The wildlife biologists hope San Francisco residents can help keep those animals wild. 

“This was so hard,” Parker-Shames said of the recent killing. “I don’t want to have to be out here again. All of us come into this because we care about wildlife. I would rather be involved in the effort because I know we’re going to do it well and responsibly.”

More Coyote Coverage

— New study reveals what urban coyotes are really eating in San Francisco
— ‘Awful, horrific experience’: Coyotes are killing San Francisco pets
— ‘They’re just everywhere’: San Franciscans question whether coyotes belong in the city
— Trapped coyote found living in San Francisco backyard for several days
— Three dogs reportedly killed by coyotes at San Francisco’s Crissy Field
— Pack of coyotes surround, kill dog on popular San Francisco beach

Oct 10, 2024

Amy Graff

SENIOR NEWS EDITOR

Amy Graff is the senior news editor for SFGATE and leads the site’s news desk. She was born and raised in the Bay Area and got her start in news at the Daily Californian newspaper at UC Berkeley, where she majored in English literature. She has been with SFGATE for more than 15 years and writes about a little bit of everything but is obsessed with weather. You can email her news tips at agraff@sfgate.com.

A male Guam kingfisher is seen at a zoo in Wichita, Kansas, in July 2024. 

(Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“This is not just about wildlife,” an expert said. “It’s about the essential ecosystems that sustain human life.”

EDWARD CARVER

Oct 10, 2024 (CommonDreams.org)

Monitored populations of the world’s vertebrate animals declined on average by 73% between 1970 and 2020, according to a major report released Wednesday by the World Wild Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London.

The 94-page report, 2024 Living Planet Report: A System in Peril, details the extent of loss for over 5,000 species of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, and reptiles. The findings are based on studies of about 35,000 local populations of the studied species.

It’s the latest version of a comprehensive report that has in the past been heavily cited by media, nonprofit, and government figures around the world. The previous version, published in 2022, found a 69% decline using data through 2018.

WWF released the new report, which is based on data in the Living Planet Index (LPI) maintained by ZSL, in advance of the COP16 global biodiversity summit that starts in Cali, Colombia on October 21.

“It really does indicate to us that the fabric of nature is unraveling,” Rebecca Shaw, WWF’s chief scientist, toldThe Washington Post.

https://x.com/OfficialZSL/status/1844227355977417121?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1844227355977417121%7Ctwgr%5Edf0f61bb78c92a599dc7f93a2532c0368824fd37%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fliving-planet-index-report-73-percent-decline

The LPI, though seen by many as a key metric for following biodiversity loss, has been misinterpreted in the past and is not without its critics.

The findings don’t mean that the total number of vertebrates or vertebrate species declined by 73%—rather, the figure shows an average change in population size. That is, in the index, a change in the population size of a very small population of, say, Guam kingfishers would have the same weight as a change in the population size of a far more populous animal.

A study published in June in Nature Communications questioned the mathematical techniques used by the LPI’s authors and found that they had likely overstated vertebrate population decline. The LPI authors are preparing a rebuttal.

Some scientists, including Louise McRae, a ZSL researcher who works on the index, have suggested that it may in fact underestimate biodiversity loss because amphibian and reptile populations, which are struggling the most, are not fully represented in the database, as they’re hard to monitor.

In any case, even the index’s critics agree with the underlying argument that there is a crisis of biodiversity loss underway.

“This is unequivocal,” Vox‘s Benji Jones wrote in an article that scrutinized the LPI. He continued:

Coral reefs are overheating and dying en masse. North America has lost some 3 billion birds. Insects are indeed vanishing. The rate of extinction is accelerating. In Hawaii, which has been called the extinction capital of the world, entire species of birds—and all the cultural heritage they carry—are blinking out as I write this.

WWF scientists emphasized that the biodiversity crisis is a crisis for humankind.

“This is not just about wildlife,” Daudi Sumba, the group’s chief conservation officer, said in a press call. “It’s about the essential ecosystems that sustain human life.”

Mike Barrett, a scientific adviser at WWF, agreed.

“Please don’t just feel sad about the loss of nature,” Barrett told the BBC. “Be aware that this is now a fundamental threat to humanity and we’ve really got to do something now.”

Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said this urgency was why the new report was useful.

“It shows us that we’re still not doing enough,” he told Vox. “The most important thing to understand is that unless we can save biodiversity there’s no way we can save humanity.”

Humans are indeed the cause of the biodiversity crisis. Habitat loss and degradation, “driven primarily by our food system,” is the most reported threat to wildlife populations, WWF says. Other threats include overexploitation, invasive species, and climate change.

The United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali is the first of its kind since December 2022, when the world’s nations made a potentially historic agreement to protect 30% of the world’s lands and waters by 2030—30×30, as it’s called.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” The Nature Conservancy has written of the Cali summit. “The goal is to transform the commitments of the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework into actionable plans.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

EDWARD CARVER

Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. on October 7, 2024.

 (Photo: Ting Shen/AFP via Getty Images)

“If you want people to vote for you, you gotta give them a reason,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.

JAKE JOHNSON

Oct 10, 2024 (ColmmonDreams.org)

With the high-stakes U.S. presidential election less than a month away, warnings about the possible political consequences of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris‘ refusal to break with President Joe Biden on supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza and beyond are taking on fresh urgency amid new survey data showing the vice president narrowly trailing GOP nominee Donald Trump in Michigan—a critical battleground state.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found that Harris is trailing Trump by three percentage points in Michigan—a reversal of the university’s survey last month, which showed the vice president with a slight lead over her Republican opponent. The new survey showed Harris leading in Pennsylvania and Trump leading in Wisconsin.

While Trump’s polling lead in Michigan was within the margin of error, the results amplified preexisting concerns about Harris’ chances in the state, which has a large Arab and Muslim population—many of whom have lost family members in Israel’s yearlong assault on the Gaza Strip, a relentless military campaign that has intensified in recent days as the prospects of a cease-fire agreement appear nonexistent.

The Quinnipiac poll found that by a margin of 53% to 43%, Michigan respondents said they think Trump—who has expressed support for Israel’s devastating bombardment of Gaza—would do a better job “handling the conflict in the Middle East” than Harris.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, toldRolling Stone earlier this week that he has expressed to the Harris team that “if you want people to vote for you, you gotta give them a reason.”

“They don’t seem to care enough about the Arab American vote to do something to get it,” said Zogby.

Last month, Zogby’s organization released a poll of its own showing that support for Harris would climb nationally if she endorsed an arms embargo against Israel—something she has openly opposed despite pressure from advocacy groups who say it’s essential to end Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s obstruction of cease-fire talks.

Zogby noted in his interview with Rolling Stone that Michigan’s Lebanese American population is the largest in the United States—potentially compounding Harris’ political vulnerability in the state as Israel ramps up its assault on Lebanon with the support of the Biden administration.

“Many of the constituents are Lebanese who have deep attachments to Palestinians,” said Zogby, arguing that Israel’s escalation in Lebanon “will either put an exclamation point on the outrage or depression—causing them either not to vote or to flip and vote elsewhere.”

“The reaction I’m getting, when I go around the country and talk to people, is they want to punish Democrats,” Zogby added. “That’s not a smart political move, but that’s what people are feeling. And I don’t have an argument to make because [members of the Harris campaign] haven’t given us arguments to make.”

“Harris should give a speech in Michigan where she breaks with the Biden administration on Israel.”

Harris has repeatedly acknowledged, including during her speech at the Democratic National Convention in August, the “immense suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have experienced so much pain and loss over the year.”

But Harris has rebuffed calls to create distance between herself and the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel’s assault on Gaza and Lebanon.

“No,” the vice president responded when asked during a recent televised interview whether she would support withholding U.S. arms shipments to Israel, whose forces have used American weaponry to commit war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon.

Harris has also declined to meet with Americans with family members in Lebanon and Gaza, according to the co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement.

https://x.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1844188937344213149?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1844188937344213149%7Ctwgr%5Eee5eb2a886635067af05919a9bc0e481cf725861%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fharris-michigan-2024

Speaking to Mother Jones earlier this week, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud—who is Lebanese American—said Trump “is a threat” to Arab Americans and hardly an advocate of peaceful resolution in the Middle East.

But Hammoud said the Harris campaign is not helping its case with voters when it fails to support an arms embargo against Israel, a position that—according to one recent poll—is backed by a majority of the American electorate.

“What I keep pushing back on is it’s not this community that has to move in its values and principles and any issues that it’s taken a stance on. It’s the candidates who have to move,” said Hammoud. “And don’t move because of Dearborn, by all means. I’m not telling you to move because this small city in the Midwest is telling you to move on these issues. Move because the general American populace has said these issues matter to them.”

“And this idea that people will forget?” he continued. “Remember we heard this nine months ago: ‘People will forget come November.’ People are not forgetting… Genocide is not something you can cast aside.”

On Thursday, Emerson College released survey data it collected with The Hill showing that Trump and Harris are in a dead heat in Michigan—further indicating that a small swing in favor of either candidate could tip the scales and potentially decide who takes the White House.

Moira Donegan, a columnist for The Guardian, argued Wednesday that “Harris should give a speech in Michigan where she breaks with the Biden administration on Israel.”

“This is very obviously in her self-interest to do,” Donegan wrote on social media, adding that she doubts the vice president will take her advice.

If she did, wrote IfNotNow co-founder Yonah Lieberman, it “would be a seminal political moment that would win Michigan, stop a second Trump administration, and help end a genocide.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

JAKE JOHNSON

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >

WIGS • Oct 13, 2012 Subscribe to WIGS on YouTube today! http://wigs.ly/SU4amA Like us on Facebook: http://wigs.ly/NY4Tlg Follow us on Twitter: http://wigs.ly/SUi368 Explore the world behind WIGS on Pinterest: http://wigs.ly/MHaG2Z About “Laleh”: When Laleh Behbehanian isn’t teaching or researching as a part of her PhD studies at UC Berkeley, she works as an organizer for Occupy Oakland, protesting and bailing her comrades out of jail. About WIGS: WIGS is a digital channel producing high-end, original, scripted dramatic series and short films about the lives of women. About WIGS Unscripted: WIGS expands beyond its fictional series and short films to bring you characters and stories from the real world. Credits: DIRECTED BY Antoneta Kastrati and Casey Cooper Johnson PRODUCED BY Casey Cooper Johnson and Casey Fenton CAMERA Antoneta Kastrati EDITED BY Casey Cooper Johnson and Casey Fenton ADDITIONAL VIDEO PROVIDED BY Karl Baumann — “Move In Day”, “May Day” Protests, Port of Oakland Occupy, Various Occupy Protests Rene Franco — “January 28th” Footage Kraig Fujii — Occupy Oakland Camp Footage The Secret Store — Port of Oakland Chopper Footage Timeless, Infinite Light — Scenes from Occupy Oakland 10.25.11 Whitehouse.gov – President Obama Kresling, Ben Cruz — Oakland Policeman Throws Flash Grenade Into Crowd. Occupy TVNY — Police Brutality in Zuccotti Park Brandon Jourdan — Police Brutality at Occupy Oakland STILL IMAGES PROVIDED BY Laleh Behbehranian José Antonio Galloso Kim Beavers Daniel Arauz Noosha Kahali Justin Borsuk And Wiki Commons: Occupy_Nick Carson mercurywoodrose Piotrus another believer Martijn Janssen Joe Mabel David Shankbone Vasilken Chris Cherif Clément Bucco-Lechat Adam Katz John Ramspott Conner McKee traxus4420 Uncommon Frittility Ryan Griffis Visitor 7 Rept0n1x Yerpo Fibonacci Blue Temi KOGBE Biella “Gabriella” Coleman Ildar Sagdejev Congressional Budget Office TWP Chrischerif MartinD ANIMATIONS PROVIDED BY Occupy Design MUSIC “COMING TO AGE” Written and performed by: DJETC Courtesy of Greenwise Records “NIGHTS OF GLORY” Written and performed by: Suspicious Saturday Courtesy of Greenwise Records “OCCUPATION FREEDOM” by Ground Zero and the Global Block Collective ft. Hon. George Rithm Martinez and Clara Sylara Martinez Courtesy of F. Bustamante and Global Block Music SPECIAL THANKS TO Occupy Oakland University of California, Berkeley Occupy Design Karl Baumann Cicily Cooper

(Courtesy of JP Massar)

Former US President Barack Obama on Thursday criticized Donald Trump, calling him “crazy”, and urged voters to support Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris during a rally in Pennsylvania. Obama compared Trump’s lengthy speeches to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s and said the Republican nominee was disconnected from ordinary Americans.

Issued on: 11/10/2024 – France24.com

By: NEWS WIRES

Former US President Barack Obama lashed out at “crazy” Donald Trump Thursday and urged voters to back Kamala Harris as he brought his star power to the 2024 election campaign trail for the first time.

As he hit the stump in the must-win state of Pennsylvania, Obama also chided Black male voters for what he called hesitancy in supporting Democrat Harris because they “just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

Obama trained his fire on Trump during a pumped-up rally in Pittsburgh, comparing the Republican’s long speeches to late Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro’s and calling the billionaire out of touch with ordinary people.

America’s first Black president admitted that “this election’s going to be tight” as many voters were still struggling with high prices.

But he told the crowd that “what I cannot understand is why anybody would think that Donald Trump will shake things up”, adding: “You think Donald Trump ever changed a diaper?”

The popular Democrat called Trump’s schemes to sell bibles as “crazy” and used the same word to describe the 78-year-old former president’s embrace of conspiracy theories.

As the crowd booed Trump, his successor in the White House, Obama added: “Don’t boo — vote.”

“Kamala is as prepared for the job as any nominee for president has ever been,” he added.

‘Reasons and excuses’ 

Vice president Harris’s campaign said Obama’s appearance, the first in a series in battleground states before the November 5 election, was designed to get people out to vote in crucial Pennsylvania.

Obama took aim at male voters who might be attracted by the Republican’s appeals towards machismo.

“I’m sorry gentlemen, I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior, the bullying and the putting people down, is a sign of strength,” he said.

“And I am here to tell you that is not what real strength is.”

Earlier, in a surprise stop before the rally at a campaign field office in Pittsburgh, Obama made an unusually direct appeal to Black men, whose support polls show Harris has struggled to mobilise.

Saying he had some “truths” that he wanted the Black community to hear, Obama said that “you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that.”

“Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”

Harris was in battleground Nevada for a town hall hosted by the Spanish language network Univision Thursday and later spoke at a rally in Arizona aimed at reaching out to Latino voters.

When a woman asked Harris at the town hall to name three of Trump’s virtues, she replied: “I think Donald Trump loves his family, and I think that’s very important…. But I don’t really know him, to be honest with you. I don’t have much more to offer you.”

In Arizona, Harris addressed the devastation caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, saying the federal government “has mobilised thousands of personnel” to recover and rebuild the region.

The White House said Harris had also taken part in a virtual briefing on Milton, which has sparked a political storm between Republicans and Democrats.

‘Dumber than hell’ 

Trump was in the hotly contested state of Michigan on Thursday, unveiling new details of his protectionist plans for the US auto industry, including sweeping tariffs on vehicles not made in America.

Trump also ramped up his personal attacks on Harris, branding her “dumber than hell,” and assailed the auto industry capital Detroit itself as run down as he was speaking to the city’s economic club.

“Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” he said.

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Harris meanwhile said she had accepted an offer for a CNN town hall on October 23 in Pennsylvania, after Trump turned down a final televised debate with her.

“I think it’s a disservice to the voters,” Harris said in Arizona about Trump rejecting a second debate. “I also think it’s a pretty weak move.”

Democrats are hoping Obama could give Harris a boost in a race that has been locked with Trump for weeks, after her initial boost in the polls after she took over from President Joe Biden as the party’s nominee in July.

Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama delivered rapturously received speeches backing Harris at the Democratic National Convention in August.

(AFP)

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