“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
Call your Congressperson and your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121
How does a democracy die? What can we do to save our own? What lessons does history teach us?
In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before. Drawing insightful lessons from across history – from Pinochet’s murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan’s quiet dismantling in Turkey – Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.
(An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.
Steven Levitsky is an American political scientist and Professor of Government at Harvard University. A comparative political scientist, his research interests focus on Latin America and include political parties and party systems, authoritarianism and democratization, and weak and informal institutions.
March for Billionaires participants and counterprotesters gather in front of San Francisco City Hall on Feb. 7.Craig Lee/The Examiner
There is a conceivable future in which San Francisco could be represented by a congressperson and led by a mayor and a governor who each tapped into his own immense wealth to propel himself into office.
Congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti and gubernatorial hopeful Tom Steyer are investing millions in their own political successes, hoping to duplicate what Mayor Daniel Lurie achieved here in 2024.
Tech millionaire Chakrabarti is a leading candidate to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, while hedge-fund billionaire Steyer is among the front-runners in the splintered field running to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in California.
As candidates, the three have been able to saturate social-media feeds, air television ads and canvass communities in ways other candidates — even those with backing from wealthy donors — have been unable to match.
And all three share a similar message: The political system needs upending.
Voters are attracted to wealthy candidates in part because they’re perceived as too well-off to be bought by outside interests, according to Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Chakrabarti, for example, touts in campaign ads that he doesn’t accept political contributions from corporate PACs.
“The dominant trend of American public opinion now is massive cynicism,” West said. “People don’t trust leaders — they figure they’re out for themselves. And the advantage that wealthy individuals have is they’re so rich that people think they’re not subject to normal political calculations, they can rule in the public interest more often, and they will be less swayed by political wheeling and dealing.”
Steyer, who became a billionaire running San Francisco-based hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, is dramatically outspending rival Democrats in the governor’s race. He spent $132 million on his candidacy for governor through mid-April, including more than $100 million of his own money since Jan. 1, according to CalMatters. His will likely end up being the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in California history.
Chakrabarti has thus far put $4.8 million of his own money into his congressional bid, easily outpacing his opponents, state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan.
Lurie, whose former Inner Sunset campaign headquarters Chakrabarti now occupies, is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who dropped $9.5 million of his own money on his 2024 mayoral bid.
California is not the only place to draw political candidates from the affluent, nor is such interest confined to a single political party, according to Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of “The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy.” But he noted that it’s a relatively new phenomenon in American politics, beginning with billionaire Ross Perot’s independent candidacy for president in 1992.
What money buys
Billionaires are spending money to shape American politics and policy as much as ever. In 2024, billionaires and their direct family members accounted for 19% of all federal campaign contributions, according to a New York Times analysis. In San Francisco, Lurie, his mother Mimi Haas and billionaires Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, Chris Larsen and Michael Bloomberg accounted for six of the eight largest donors in local political contests that year, according to city campaign finance data.
Historically, the wealthy have tended to exercise their power by supporting other candidates. Steyer and Bloomberg, for example, were already both major political donors prior to jumping into the 2020 Democratic primary for U.S. president as candidates.
“It used to be, people with large amounts of money wanted to influence things behind the scenes,” West said. “But now they prefer to run for office and make decisions themselves.”
Winters argued that the wealthy have been emboldened by victories like reducing the top federal marginal income tax rate from 94% in 1944 to 37% today, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that enshrined political spending as a form of free speech.
“Oligarchs have been winning so big for so long that they see no reason not to just directly run the country as the politicians themselves,” Winters said.
The typical self-financing candidate exists outside the traditional political establishment and promises to disrupt the existing one. They enjoy numerous advantages in their quest to do so.
An independently wealthy candidate is an inherently viable one. Unlike their opponents, they won’t be forced to line-up early support from well-heeled donors before the primary campaign begins.
Lurie, for example, not only tapped his vast personal resources, his mother, Haas, launched an independent PAC boosting his campaign with an early $1 million donation.
“It’s very hard to crowdsource that, because very often, no one knows you yet,” Winters said of early campaign cash. “so, if you have an oligarch or a mom who can jump in at a key moment and make you viable, then the chance that you are going to attract other resources becomes very high, and the chance that you’re going to actually be able to win becomes very high.”
The network-security company is letting go 21% of its workforce, with company officials saying they want to restructure its operations around agentic artificial intelligence
Assemblymember Matt Haney and Supervisor Matt Dorsey both have bills to expand sober housing, but with different specifics and levels of support
The classic way to build a political career has been to start at the local level, then ascend to the state level, and then take a run at federal office, West said.
“When you’re ultra wealthy, you can skip those earlier steps and just run for governor or senator,” he said.
Once on the campaign trail, while other campaigns might have to scramble to raise cash, self-financed candidates can focus solely on the campaign.
What money can’t buy
Immense wealth has not always translated to success at the ballot box. Money can buy an endless stream of campaign mailers, but it can’t force the public to like an unlikable candidate. Only two of the top 10 biggest self-funding spenders in the 2022 federal election cycle won their races, for example, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog group.
Money certainly gets a candidate’s foot in the door and allows them to put their name in front of people but, in the end, “people still have to take a liking to you,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at Open Secrets.
“That’s the final hurdle that it’s hard for the money to overcome,” Glavin said.
By pouring so much money into a race, often at the very start, candidates also raise the threshold for the entire field, and “it creates an arms-race situation.
“You don’t have to beat them, but you have to be able to compete at a certain threshold — if you’re just not out there at all, then people are gonna forget about you,” Glavin said.
There are advantages to the painstaking work of grassroots campaigning. Small donors are supporters who have a vested interest in a candidate’s success, can often be counted on for future donations, and are “more likely to actually go out and vote,” Glavin said.
Chakrabarti’s campaign has asked supporters to contribute $1 to prove he has grassroots support. At the same time, his resources have allowed him to dispatch paid canvassers, who Mission Local reported are compensated by up to $45 an hour, to help spread his campaign message in corners of San Francisco where he has little name recognition.
But even paid canvassers can come with downsides, Gleason noted.
“There’s a difference between someone who volunteers to go talk to other people about why they should support you, and when you pay someone to do that, and the energy you’re going to get and the passion you’re going to get,” Gleason said.
Will voters buy what the wealthy are selling?
One important outstanding question is how receptive the ostensibly progressive voters of San Francisco and California are to the argument that it takes a millionaire or billionaire to fix a system many voters believe has been rigged by them.
In an ad displayed prominently on Steyer’s campaign website, he laments that “the richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves.”
“Bulls—,” he adds.
Chakrabarti, who supports a proposed tax hike on California billionaires, has made a federal wealth tax a central component of his platform.
“We’ve transferred tens of trillions of dollars from working people to the wealthy, so, yes, it’s time we tax the billionaires a lot more,” he wrote on Instagram.
Being a billionaire doesn’t necessarily mean that, once elected, you’ll pursue policies that exacerbate wealth inequality, Winters noted.
“It’s just incredibly likely that you will do that,” he said, “but it doesn’t actually guarantee that you’ll do that.”
Voters will have their say June 2 in the congressional and gubernatorial primary elections.
President Donald J. Trump speaks to the press before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, April 25, 2025. Photo credit: The White House / Flickr (PD)
Whether it was unwittingly or not, the way the media covered the April jobs report was a massive journalistic fail and made a non-accomplishment sound like a big win.
There is a long list of media failures when it comes to the coverage of Donald Trump and his administration. Too many reporters regurgitate obvious lies and propaganda without conducting simple fact checks or providing necessary context. Few of them dare to point out the president’s precarious mental state or that he seems to live in a fantasy world of his own creation.
When journalists do uncover important information that the public deserves to know, they frequently hold on to it for future “tell all” books. And, of course, it’s not great that some news organizations are settling bogus lawsuits to appease the president.
And then there is what we call the “low expectations game.”
That’s when Trump does something that is wholly unremarkable, yet the media treats it like a real accomplishment.
Like Friday’s jobs report.
Before we get to that, it’s important to note that attributing employment gains and losses to presidents is a bit of a fool’s errand. Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden are great examples of this.
Six years ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that the economy had lost 20.5 million jobs in April of 2020 and that the unemployment rate had shot up to 14.7 percent. This happened on Trump’s watch, but it was obviously not his fault. Rather, it was the result of the full effects of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the US economy.
Conversely, people started hiring again when the worst of the pandemic was over, and this greatly benefitted Biden, who oversaw a hiring boom (while being hurt by pandemic-related supply chain issues and other problems that led to massive inflation in the first couple of years of his presidency).
The point is that, sometimes, the fate of the economy hinges on events outside the control of presidents and even they are just along for the ride. Some of them get lucky and take the helm at a time of great prosperity, and others experience the opposite.
Still, long after the pandemic was over, companies kept increasing their payrolls while Biden was in office (although hiring slowed significantly in his last year). In fact, even taking into account the substantial downward revisions made after the BLS announced its initial estimates, we now know that the economy added jobs in every full month of his presidency.
That has not been the case for Trump in his second term.
In the 15 full months since he took over, employers shed jobs five times. His best month came this March, when payrolls increased by 185,000 (a mark his predecessor eclipsed three times in 2024).
If you compare Biden’s last 15 months in office to Trump’s first 15 months (not counting the one they shared), then you’ll see that the former averaged 126,000 jobs added compared to the latter’s 31,000.
And that brings us to Friday’s BLS report (by the way, the above is what we mean by “providing context”).
It showed that payrolls were up 115,000.
Based on everything you just learned, that’s pretty good… but only if measured by Trump’s low standards.
April was his 3rd best month but would only have been Biden’s 41st best.
Keeping that in mind, you’d think that the response would have been somewhere between “muted optimism” and the kind of encouragement you give a child when he brings you a drawing of a horse that actually looks like a dog.
After all, an increase of 115,000 new payrolls is pretty pathetic… and that’s not according to our standards, but rather Trump’s.
President Trump and Republicans are creating new jobs, getting people back to work and protecting benefits for AMERICANS who truly need them! pic.twitter.com/BaofFJaCUn
“Strong April jobs report. Added 115,000 new jobs — nearly double expectations,” stated loyal MAGA disciple Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). “President Trump’s economy is working.”
No argument there. The president’s personal economy is working. After all, he has nearly tripled his own wealth since taking office.
As for everybody else… Well, that’s another story.
Another thing Jordan mentioned, however, merits a closer look.
The lawmaker, as well as other Republicans and the president himself, made reference to a survey of “experts,” which had predicted that job growth in April would only be about 60,000.
And this is where the first media failure comes into play.
Who gives a hoot what these experts think? Their prediction is completely irrelevant. It’s like asking someone to weigh in on what the Powerball numbers might be before the drawing.
Sure, economists can guess if they want, and even have their own office pool for all we care, but that doesn’t change the fact that their forecast is meaningless.
Objectively, 115,000 isn’t an impressive number, and with apologies to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), it is certainly not “HUGE.” To be clear, it’s not terrible either, just nothing to write home about nor evidence that the “Trump economy is working.”
However, because “experts” felt things would be much worse, all of a sudden, the employment report went from pedestrian to “strong,” with most news outlets making reference to the figures being “surprising” or “beating expectations,” which isn’t exactly difficult when they are so low.
Essentially, just about every reporter covering this story made the jobs numbers sound a lot better than they were — both objectively and, as we have demonstrated, historically.
However, that wasn’t the media’s biggest failure.
Here, for example, is how The Washington Post started its article:
Employers added 115,000 jobs in April, notching a strong gain for the economy as it faces headwinds from soaring fuel prices, tariffs and immigration restrictions.
Other outlets also pointed out that the US economy is facing the challenges mentioned above.
What most of them did not do — and certainly didn’t do emphatically — is to note that they are all of Trump’s own making.
As we pointed out before, it is often unfair to blame presidents for some of the things that happen on their watch, like a pandemic or a resulting supply-chain crisis.
However, in this case, the problems are entirely self-inflicted.
The “soaring fuel prices” are the direct result of Trump’s war with Iran. Without the attack, and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz, they would be more than $1/gallon less.
Then there are the tariffs. Even after the Supreme Court declared them to be illegal, and it has been shown that American companies and consumers are forced to shoulder their cost, the president just keeps on trying to impose them — and even an adverse ruling in another case last week won’t stop him.
Finally, even his own administration has admitted that Trump’s aggressive deportation policies are a threat to an affordable food supply.
The fact that most stories failed to explicitly mention these things is not only a dereliction of duty but, unfortunately, also not much of a surprise and on par with the incredibly poor handling of the day-to-day coverage of this administration.
Klaus Marre Klaus Marre, a former congressional reporter, is a senior editor for US politics at WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.
Sidewalk drug users do more than hurt San Francisco’s image—they also undermine the city’s remaining low-income and working-class neighborhoods. Communities our elected officials continually vow to protect.
Harm reduction policies targeted to street addicts force low-income and working people to navigate drug-filled sidewalks. Harm reduction leaves children afraid to walk to their homes, small businesses losing customers, and seniors trapped in their homes out of fear of what they will confront outside.
No supervisor or mayor publicly claims that San Francisco should prioritize sidewalk drug users over working people. But that is what’s happening. That’s what the city allowing nonprofits to distribute pipes and foil to facilitate sidewalk drug use is all about.
San Francisco’s extreme drug crisis began with COVID. But its continued for over six years! And despite the mayor’s declaration of a fentanyl emergency, the reconstitution of street outreach teams, increased police recruitment, and similar measures, there is no clear end in sight.
San Francisco’s open air drug activities are unique to major North American or European cities.
Why?
Undermining SF’s Working-Class Neighborhoods
There are now two San Francisco’s. The affluent villages outside the central city have few if any sidewalk drug users. They are thriving. When they have a crime problem—such as the wave of car break ins that occurred under Mayor Breed—scarce police resources are quickly dispatched to abate the crisis.
The difference in the city’s approach to car break ins and open air drug activities is illuminating. It reflects a contrasting view of “success” between affluent and working-class neighborhoods.
When the city sought to end car break ins, success was measured by fewer break ins. It was not measured by the number of arrests. The city knew people wanted results, not arrest numbers.
But for tackling the sidewalk drug crisis we only hear about rising arrests. Not whether there has been any actual reduction in sidewalk drug users.
The city does not count sidewalk drug users. It counts encampments, which likely explains why tent numbers have been sharply reduced. But the city’s actual progress in reducing sidewalk drug use is not tabulated.
Imagine if City Hall had to provide a monthly report on the number of drug users on sidewalks. I bet that, as with tents, overall numbers would sharply decline.
Drug arrests are not even included in city crime statistics. This allows city officials to hail crime reductions when drug activities still dominate many sidewalks..
Harm Reduction Funds Popular Nonprofits
Glide, the SF AIDS Foundation, and the Gubbio Project all get money to hand out drug materials to street addicts. These are very popular nonprofits. Every San Francisco mayor in memory has served food at Glide. The Lurie Administration has expanded the group’s city funding to include community ambassadors. This despite Glide’s longtime failure to stop open air drug activities on and next to its 300 block of Ellis headquarters.
The Harm Reduction industry, via HealthRIGHT 360, got San Francisco to spend $22 million on a Linkage Center that wreaked havoc in the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, SOMA and the Civic Center. The negative community impacts of this destructive project are still being felt.
Uncounted Tenant Displacement
Since the late 1970’s San Francisco has seen the steady displacement of the non-rich. This outflow of longtime residents has been slowed by a powerful tenants’ movement that has enacted the strongest anti-displacement protections of any major city. This has kept low-income and working class rent-controlled tenants and those subsidized by nonprofits in place.
But the number of tenants who are forced to leave their affordable homes due to surrounding drug activities is not measured. And for many Tenderloin tenants, the drug activities have left them desperate to move.
I describe in my book about the Tenderloin how nonprofit housing helped the neighborhood avoid gentrification. But keeping the Tenderloin affordable was never supposed to come at the expense of living in a neighborhood lacking the high quality of life of more affluent communities.
Making San Francisco neighborhoods affordable but unlivable means San Francisco is not a city for All. It is a wonderful city for those who can afford to live outside the impact of harm reduction policies. It’s a tough place to live for those who cannot.
Many reporters, professors, doctors, and politicians are razor focused on how harm reduction impacts the addict. Far too few balance this against the overwhelmingly negative community impacts. I would encourage the media when interviewing harm reduction advocates to challenge them about how this policy impacts surrounding communities.
I know Mayor Lurie is deeply unhappy with the survival of the open-air drug activity that he campaigned against. But as much as the mayor uses social media to send a message that sidewalk drug use won’t be tolerated, the city’s support for handing out pipes and foil to street addicts says otherwise.
If the city wants to stop young addicts from coming here to use drugs, it must end support for drug handouts.
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.
Buoyed by billions in assistance from the state, real talk about what it takes to run New York City, and some taxes on the rich, the mayor closed a historic leftover budget deficit.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a press conference on May 7, 2026. Credit: Katie Godowski/MediaPunch/IPX
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a city budget on Tuesday that completely eliminates what he has described as a $12 billion deficit left over from the Eric Adams administration, the largest gap since the Great Recession. The budget does not include the property tax increases Mamdani threatened earlier in the year or any new taxes on ordinary New Yorkers, and the mayor’s office says there are no cuts to city services for those in need.
Solving the budget riddle, which is still subject to negotiations with the city council and the resolution of a state budget that funnels billions to the city, clears a major hurdle that threatened Mamdani’s expansive agenda before it even got started. The mayor had planned for several new investments, including universal child care, free and fast city buses, a pilot of five public grocery stores, and much more. Some of these priorities are embedded in the new budget.
The deficit closure is achieved in part through addressing what Mamdani has called gimmicks and making more forthright assessments of what the city can bear. But it also adopts the kind of government efficiency critics often argue that democratic socialists refuse to provide.
“Many said the only way out of this was slashing services and passing an austerity budget. We rejected that,” Mamdani said in a video accompanying the announcement. “Our city is now on firm financial ground.”
Much of the budget hole was filled by changing the relationship between New York state and its largest city. Earlier on Tuesday, Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a total of $8 billion in state assistance for New York City over the next two fiscal years, achieved through reducing costs on the city while formalizing the expansion of universal free child care (worth $1.2 billion annually) and making investments in education and infrastructure.
“I have been committed to ensuring New York City succeeds, because a strong and stable City means an even stronger New York State,” Hochul said in a statement.
The state, which must approve nearly all new city taxes, has allowed one major tax on second homes valued over $5 million, known as the pied-à-terre tax. This has angered ultra-wealthy New Yorkers like Citadel founder Ken Griffin. Mamdani has added another tax on wealthy individuals, by limiting something called the unincorporated business tax (UBT), which is largely a benefit for sole proprietorships and LLCs.
But the pied-à-terre tax raises an estimated $500 million in revenues per year, just a fraction of the $12 billion needed, and the limitations to the UBT would yield $68 million. Mamdani and state leaders dealt with the bulk of the budget deficit through other means.
One provision that will have a legitimate effect on city residents is a negotiated delay to a class size reduction law that would have kicked in for the upcoming school year, requiring 80 percent of city classrooms to have between 20 and 25 students, depending on the grade level. Mamdani has been negotiating for the city for an additional two years to meet the mandate, while state legislators have talked about a percentage compliance reduction (for example, 70 percent of classrooms might comply next year).
Mamdani’s office said it was working through the final details with state officials and labor unions. The administration has committed to hiring 1,000 more teachers to begin to implement the class size reduction, but what they call a more realistic timeline will save $500 million in the next fiscal year.
Full compliance with the original timeline would have cost $1.7 billion per year for new teachers alone. Most of the city’s high-poverty schools are under the class size cap; the delay would primarily be for higher-income schools.
The Mamdani administration has also been talking about restructuring the timing of certain pension payments, while making no changes to benefits for retirees or current employees. Some have criticized this step as increasing long-term obligations while freeing up money in the short term. The final deal makes no changes to a mandatory contribution to city pension funds, while smoothing out the Unfunded Accrued Liabilities (UAL) payment, which is based on an actuarial analysis of future needs. The current schedule can fluctuate by hundreds of millions of dollars every year; Mamdani extends those payments by five years and makes them consistent, while banking the difference for the next fiscal year. City pension funds would continue to be funded above the national average, Mamdani’s office says.
CityFHEPS, a rental assistance program for poor New Yorkers that the city council expanded in 2023 but which has yet to be implemented, will also see changes that the Mamdani administration characterizes as addressing chronic underbudgeting and reining in cost growth, both by centralizing support functions, limiting emergency hotel use, and using other tools to help residents find permanent housing. The city has not been realistic about increases in CityFHEPS spending, the mayor pointed out in his preliminary budget. The proposed savings would total about $519 million in the next fiscal year.
Mamdani has faced protests from housing advocates after his administration filed an appeal in a lawsuit initially pursued against Adams to implement the expansion. The mayor’s office says settlement negotiations for the lawsuit are ongoing.
Another significant chunk of the deficit is reduced by making city government more efficient. The city found $1.77 billion in operational savings by reducing overtime, negotiating better rates on outside contracts, modernizing software and technology, consolidating leases and giving up excess property, phasing out programs nobody was using, claiming revenue owed to the city, and better estimating actual expenses.
In addition, the budget proposal would reduce so-called Carter cases, whereby families of students with disabilities can get their private-school education expenses reimbursed by the government if the city itself cannot provide a public education for those students. New York City spent $1.3 billion on Carter cases last year, so investing in special education to accept students with disabilities in public schools actually saves money. The administration estimates an increase in Carter spending this year but it will drop in 2027, with $149 million in net annual savings.
The proposed budget also restores $2 billion to the city’s rainy day fund and adds $5.2 billion to the Retiree Health Benefit Trust.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who would negotiate the final budget with Mamdani, released the following statement: “We are pleased with Governor Hochul and the state legislature’s commitment to providing the City with billions in additional funds and savings … We have important work ahead to advance key priorities including affordability, public transit access, and investments in the services New Yorkers rely on every day.”
Mamdani’s administration believes that any attempt to address the affordability crisis will only succeed if it is honest about past budgets that papered over significant gaps. Incorporating realistic and predictable estimates can identify what resources are legitimately available for the rest of the agenda.
In the video, Mamdani touts “investments in citywide trash containerization, cheaper groceries, safer streets, [and] relief for taxi drivers,” along with spending on libraries and parks, public-housing repairs, and capital improvements at the City University of New York.
“We’re proud to put forward a budget for the working people of this city,” he adds. “And we’re going to do it again next year.”
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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90. More by David Dayen
He’s emceed Woodstock, lived with Bob Dylan, clowned for the Grateful Dead, co-founded a summer camp and saved the eyesight of millions. A resident of Berkeley since the ’70s, he’s being feted this weekend in San Francisco.
Ninety years does not seem like enough time to contain the life of Wavy Gravy. The hippie icon is probably best known as the emcee of Woodstock, but his impact on American culture goes far beyond those three days of peace and music.
He was Albert Einstein’s neighbor, Bob Dylan’s roommate, and the official clown of the Grateful Dead. His friends are a who’s who of 1960s counterculture: Lenny Bruce, Ram Dass, Ken Kesey. He’s been a beatnik poet, a hog farmer and a jester. An actor, an activist, an artist. A Merry Prankster, a Yippie and an ice cream flavor. He introduced granola to the hippies at Woodstock and ran a pig for president against Richard Nixon.
He once ran for Berkeley City Council, promising “a rubber chicken in every pothole.” He’s been called a “living Buddha” (by the daughter of Jerry Garcia) and declared by a police officer to be “too weird to arrest.” He’s also the co-founder of a commune, a summer camp, and an organization that has provided sight-saving surgeries and other eye care to 75 million people worldwide.
The longtime Berkeley resident is being honored at a 90th birthday party and benefit concert this Saturday, May 16, at the Masonic in San Francisco with performances by Steve Earle, Cat Power, Aloe Blacc, and more. The concert will raise money for the Seva Foundation, the Berkeley-based eye-care nonprofit he founded with Dr. Larry Brilliant, Ram Dass, and others.
Wavy Gravy and his wife, Jahanara Romney, perform along with David Grisman and Tuck Andress of Tuck & Patti at the Sweethearts for Seva concert at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco on Feb. 14, 2010. Credit: Jay Blakesberg
“It has been incredible to work for Seva after all these years,” Wavy Gravy told Berkeleyside via a recorded video. “From the beginning of the founding of the organization until this very moment, we have restored sight to millions of people throughout the planet.”
Earle, who has played many benefit concerts for Seva, said via text message that “We all show up for Wavy because he’s a genuine cultural icon and a rock and roll hero who wakes up every morning and asks himself, ‘How may I be of service?’”
Wavy Gravy will also be in attendance at a special screening of the 2009 documentary “Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie” on Friday — his actual birthday — at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco, followed by a Q&A with Wavy, his wife, Jahanara Romney, Dr. Brilliant, director Michelle Esrick and producer David Becker. The conversation will be moderated by music historian Robert Santelli. The screening will benefit the scholarship fund for Camp Winnarainbow, the Berkeley-based performing arts and circus camp Wavy founded with his wife in 1975.
“When you’re in front of Wavy Gravy, you sort of get elevated to another level, which includes being inspired to want to go help people,” said Esrick, who spent 10 years following and documenting the life of Wavy Gravy.
From Princeton to the Hog Farm
Wavy Gravy was born Hugh Romney, Jr. on May 15, 1936, in Princeton, New Jersey. As a child he remembers taking walks with neighbor Albert Einstein. And while he doesn’t remember the conversations he had with the world-famous physicist, he does remember the way he smelled, according to an interview he did for the podcast, “American Prankster: Wavy Gravy’s Life Story.”
“I’ve never smelled it since,” he said. “But someday I’ll walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hey man, you smell like Albert Einstein!’”
Romney’s parents divorced when he was young, and he moved with his mother to Albany, New York, sometimes taking the train into New York City to visit his architect father. He later moved with his mother to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he graduated from high school in 1954 and then joined the Army. He studied theater at Boston University on the GI Bill, then moved to New York where he started reading poetry at the Gaslight Cafe, the heart of folk and beatnik culture in Greenwich Village. He regularly shared the stage with the likes of Tiny Tim, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan, who wrote the lyrics to “A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall” on Romney’s typewriter when the two shared an apartment.
“Someday I’ll walk up to somebody and say, ‘Hey man, you smell like Albert Einstein!’” — Wavy Gravy
He also became friends with the infamous comedian Lenny Bruce, who took a shine to young Hugh Romney, becoming his manager and taking him out to California, where Romney recorded a comedy album and was the opening act for Thelonious Monk.
Romney and his wife soon settled in a small cabin north of Los Angeles, but were evicted after his landlord dropped by one day as Ken Kesey and some 45 of his Merry Pranksters were visiting. But in an instance of what Wavy would refer to as “kitchen synchronicity,” the farmer at a nearby hog farm had just suffered a stroke and the farm was in need of caretakers. Romney and friends decamped for the spot, and the group became collectively known as the Hog Farm, keeping the name even after they moved away from the area and began traveling the country by bus.
Around this time, Romney coined the term “Electric Kool-Aid,” i.e. Kool-Aid laced with LSD, during one of Kesey’s famous acid tests. Tom Wolfe would use the phrase as the title of his book about Kesey, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
Breakfast in bed for 400,000
In 1969, the Hog Farm, known for organizing events at the commune, were tasked with providing security at Woodstock.
“If there is serious trouble we have ordered a carload of lemon pies and seltzer bottles for riot control,” Romney told a news reporter at the time.
Wavy Gravy backstage with Joan Baez and Steve Earle at the Sweethearts for Seva concert at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco on Feb. 14, 2010. Credit: Jay Blakesberg
The group referred to themselves as the Please Force and set up “freak out tents” to help concertgoers experiencing bad LSD trips, and a free kitchen to help feed the hungry hordes.
Romney made several announcements from the stage at the festival, and came to be known as the emcee of Woodstock.
“What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000,” Romney said one morning as members of the Hog Farm passed out granola in Dixie cups.
“If there is serious trouble we have ordered a carload of lemon pies and seltzer bottles for riot control.”
Two weeks after Woodstock, the group was invited to bring their Hog Farm magic to the Texas Pop Festival. Romney again took over emcee duties, but because of his bad back — the result of repeated police beatings at political rallies — he spent a fair amount of time lying down on the stage. He was in such a prone position when B.B. King and his band were set to perform. King, after learning about the bad back of the poor fellow, said to him, “You’re wavy gravy” and promptly leaned Romney up against his amplifier.
Romney had no idea what the phrase meant — a Southern term for “gravy that had a tiny bit of meat in it,” according to Brilliant — but was taken by it and began calling himself Wavy Gravy, eventually making it his legal name.
A ‘Journey to the East’ to deliver food and medical supplies
In 1970, the newly named Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm were cast in a film called Medicine Ball Caravan, in which 150 hippies crossed the country by bus, stopping at rock concerts along the way.
“We spent six weeks going across the country,” said Brilliant, who was also cast in the film. “I was the ‘rock doc,’ and Wavy was the master of ceremonies.”
After crossing the U.S., the caravan moved to England, with the trek culminating at a Pink Floyd concert in Canterbury in August.
“When it was over, we all kind of said, ‘Wait a minute. Let’s keep doing this,’” said Brilliant.
Wavy and Brilliant and friends were still in England when a massive cyclone struck Bangladesh, then known as East Pakistan. The cyclone was the deadliest on record, killing between 300,000 to 500,000 people. The Hog Farm decided to drive from England to East Pakistan to deliver food and medical supplies. They dubbed the trip “The Journey to the East,” after the 1932 Herman Hesse novel, which Wavy would read out loud during the long drives.
Wavy Gravy backstage at the 50th anniversary benefit concert for Camp Winnarainbow on Oct. 1, 2025. Credit: Jay Blakesberg
When they finally reached the border of East Pakistan they were turned away because of the Bangladesh Liberation War, and instead headed north to Nepal. When they reached Kathmandu, Wavy, Jahanara, Brilliant and his wife, Girija Brilliant, along with two Tibetan porters and filmmaker Ruffin Cooper, spent 30 days trekking in the mountains, offering aid and medical care to the people they came upon.
“The people were so kind to us,” said Brilliant. “Breathtakingly kind. They didn’t have anything, but they shared what they had.”
The experience eventually led to the birth of the Seva Foundation, the founding mission of which was to treat blindness in Nepal.
“Seva has now given back sight to 10 million blind people in 25 countries and treated 75 million people, mostly for free,” said Brilliant. “And that wouldn’t have happened without Wavy.”
“I became a clown when these docs came to the house in Berkeley and asked me to come cheer up kids.”
“I actually got to put on a doctor suit and enter into an operating theater to see a person having eye surgery and getting his sight restored,” said Wavy when asked about his favorite Seva memory. “Somebody who’d been blind for a considerable time suddenly being able to see their children, their grandchildren, their wife, and it has been truly incredible and amazing.”
Wavy has helped organize dozens of benefit concerts for the foundation, with acts like The Grateful Dead, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, Odetta, Ani DiFranco, David Crosby and Graham Nash lending their voices to the cause.
“He’s always used his fame as a lightning rod to call attention to the issues he cares about,” said Kate Moynihan, CEO and executive director of the Seva Foundation.
Wavy has also organized concerts to benefit Camp Winnarainbow. The camp, with offices based in Berkeley, is held each summer in Laytonville.
“It’s an incredible, affirming, warm, wonderful place where kids have agency and the ability to take risks in a safe environment,” said Jordan Auleb, who first attended the camp at age 13 and went on to help Wavy organize benefit concerts for the camp and the Seva Foundation.
In Berkeley, Wavy becomes a clown, a candidate and an ice cream flavor
After travelling by bus for several years, Wavy and the Hog Farm eventually settled in Berkeley in the late 1970s, eventually buying a home on Henry Street near Live Oak Park. Berkeley was the perfect fit for a hippie icon like Wavy Gravy. It’s also where he first donned clown make-up, as a volunteer at Oakland Children’s Hospital.
“I became a clown when these docs came to the house in Berkeley and asked me to come cheer up kids,” he told Vanity Fair in 2011. “I’d just had my third spinal fusion and I was looking for something to take my mind off the pain I was in.”
Wavy Gravy, costumed as The Cat in the Hat, paints the face of 5-year-Old Jesse James Nugent backstage at the Oakland Coliseum during a Grateful Dead concer February 14, 1993. Credit: AP/Eric Risberg
During Wavy’s 1990 run for Berkeley City Council, Ken Kesey came to town with his bus Furthur filled with “a bunch of old Merry Pranksters” and drove through the Berkeley Hills tossing out candy and handing out leaflets, recalled Brilliant.
Wavy got just 31% of the vote, losing to incumbent Shirley Dean, who went on to serve as mayor.
In 1993, Wavy was given a rare honor, when Ben & Jerry’s named an ice cream flavor after him. The flavor was discontinued in 2001 and now sits in the brand’s Flavor Graveyard, but Wavy is still a member of the Free Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream for Life Club.
Looking back on 90 years of Wavy Gravy, it’s been quite a run for a man who didn’t think he’d make it to age 30.
“Everything Wavy does is truly to make the world a better place,” said Auleb, who is organizing Saturday’s concert. “Whether it’s small scale, bringing joy and affirming children or helping cure people of blindness and raising awareness and money for that. He put his body on the line at so many protests, was in full body casts protesting the war, he was a big part of the no nukes scene. He’s always dedicated himself to trying to make the world a better place.”
“Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie,” with Wavy Gravy live in person, plus special guests. Friday, May 15, 7pm. Presidio Theatre, 99 Moraga Ave., San Francisco.
Will you help us spread the Pissed Off Voter Guide and Get Out The Voter for June 2nd primary? Join us for two pub crawls, tonight and Friday: WHEN: Wednesday, May 13th, 6-9pm WHERE: District 5, RSVP for Location! WHEN: Friday, May 15th, 6-9pm WHERE: Inner Sunset, Fireside Bar, 603 Irving @ 7th
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Abortion in Israel is legal and highly accessible, with over 99% of requests approved by mandatory termination committees. It is free for women aged 20–33 and in specific circumstances (e.g., rape, health risk, age under 18 or over 40). The process requires approval from a committee, but procedures are in place to allow it throughout most of pregnancy. Wikipedia +2
Legal Status
Legalized in 1977: Abortion is not an absolute right but is legal under specific conditions.
Committees: Women must appear before a committee to get approval, though reforms in 2022/2023 have aimed to digitize and ease this process.
Conditions: Approval is given if the woman is under 18 or over 40, if the pregnancy results from illegal/forbidden relations (like rape), if the baby has a defect, or if the pregnancy risks the woman’s physical/mental health.
“Married” Clause: While unmarried women can get approval easily, married women technically must meet one of the criteria above, though many cite mental health risks to get approval. Haaretz +4
Cost and Funding
Free for 20-33 Year Olds: The state funds abortions for women within this age range.
Subsidized or Free: For others, if it fits the committee’s criteria, it is heavily subsidized or covered by national health insurance.
Cost: If not covered, the cost is around 1,500 shekels (~$370). Haaretz +1
Recent Reforms As of late 2022, Israel eased regulations allowing for abortion pills at local clinics and reducing the need for in-person committee appearances. AP News
A surprising look at the big business of owning small businesses and what America’s franchise economy means for its workers.
Walk into a McDonald’s anywhere in the United States, and it will be identical to every other McDonald’s in the country. Yet, that particular store is almost certainly owned and operated by an “independent” franchisee. While McDonald’s presents an image of centralized uniformity to the consumer, it shows a different face to the small business owners operating its stores under its control and the workers preparing its product to its standards. How then does McDonald’s—and its big business peers—manage to be two things at once?
In this revelatory work, economist Brian Callaci shows how franchisors have altered the legal treatment of corporations in their favor through a decades-long crusade of lobbying and litigation. Their efforts subsequently unleashed a slew of legal and economic sins upon the US economy and labor force, allowing multinational corporations to control continent-spanning empires while outsourcing employment and scapegoating legal responsibilities onto small businesses. The result: the unfettered growth of some of America’s most recognizable businesses, at the aggregate expense of America’s workers.
Remarkable in both its scale and synthesis, Callaci’s story is the first chronicle of this business movement—initially resisted by US courts before experiencing a dramatic reversal of fortune after decades of campaigning by some of America’s most established entrepreneurs. An urgent and erudite history, Chains of Command reveals how the US labor market was tamed one small business at a time.
(Amazon.com)
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THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 2023 AT 2 AM – 4 AM PDT How to create trust in a group? Details Event by Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circles online EMPATHY CAFE Duration: 2 hr Public · Anyone on or off Facebook How to create trust in a group? This is the question that arose in our... Continue reading →
RSVP » The bottom line is this: Our outreach is working. Since ramping up our efforts, the number of candidates signing the pledge has surged. In the month since our last POP Action Call, we’ve secured over 70 new signers, which is a sharp surge in engagement. That’s a direct result of... Continue reading →
CBS + SF Examiner Gubernatorial Debate Registration Register here to attend the CBS KPIX + San Francisco Examiner Gubernatorial Debate. Guests will be selected at random on May 10 and receive a confirmation email on May 12. Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026 Time: 5:30 – 7:30 pm Location: 465 California... Continue reading →
When you volunteer for Saikat, it’s on us to give you a great experience and a genuine chance to make a difference. We don’t want to waste a second of your time. That’s why we’re always optimizing. And I’m excited to report that this Saturday we talked with 300% more... Continue reading →
Trump Regime Takedown: Every Saturday Saturday, March 7, 2026 12:00 PM 2:00 PM Tesla San Francisco999 Van Ness AvenueSan Francisco, CA, 94109United States (map) Google Calendar ICS Keep democracy alive every Saturday by showing up, taking a stand, and sticking together for the long haul. Standing together is better than standing alone. Let’s get together... Continue reading →
This Sunday’s Town Hall: Announcing This Week’s Progressive Town Hall: Every Sunday at 4pm ET/1pm PT RSVP HERE Join PDA activists online from across the country to discuss the importance of progressives reclaiming the American story from the MAGA right, an issue of heightened importance as we’re now within one... Continue reading →
We protest Heritage Foundation EVERY MONDAY (Join us!!!!) By admin | September 2, 2025 | Uncategorized Cliff Cash Comedy Premiered Jul 26, 2025 Every Monday at The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Ave. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza Every Friday at Fox News D.C. 400 N. Capitol St. Washington D.C. 4pm protest 6pm pizza We are... Continue reading →
Join the San Francisco Public Press and KALW for a panel discussion about San Francisco’s propositions C and D, the competing business tax measures described in the articles linked above in this newsletter. Where: KALW, 220 Montgomery St., San Francisco When: Tuesday, May 19, at 6 p.m. RSVP via Eventbrite. What questions... Continue reading →
Milk Club May General Membership Meeting Date: Tuesday, May 19 Time: 7-9 PM Location: SF LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco Zoom Link: Click here
One Million Rising: Strategic Non-Cooperation to Fight Authoritarianism Virtual Event · Hosted by No Kings Time Wednesdays 8 – 9:30pm EDT Location Virtual event Join from anywhere About this event Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations,... Continue reading →
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