Cruise ships to alleviate the housing crisis, temporary get-out-of-jail cards to allow prisoners to work, blue poles around the city with buttons that summon a police officer and many more gardens to grow food for San Franciscans.
These are all ideas from San Francisco mayoral candidates. Nope, not Mayor London Breed, Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, Aaron Peskin or Ahsha Safaí. Instead, they come from some of the other 48 candidates hoping to defeat incumbent Breed in November and claim Room 200 in City Hall.
These visions come from the longshots, the underdogs, the candidates all but certain to lose on Election Day, but who are making their appeal to San Franciscans regardless. Namely, that was Serena Hughes, Dylan Hirsch-Shell, Shahram Shariati, Guy McCoy and Honest Charley Bodkin.
Welcome to the San Francisco People’s Debate, a weekly mayoral forum that takes place every Saturday at Dolores Park.
Open to all those running for office, the People’s Debate is meant to provide a space for all the candidates most San Franciscans will never know. “Hear from the candidates for San Francisco mayor you haven’t heard from” is how the event’s website describes the debate.
On Saturday, June 1, at the first debate, only a handful of attendees showed up to listen to the five candidates who chose to participate.
It was a bright afternoon and all of the candidates wore their sunglasses as they faced east to a beautiful view of San Francisco’s landscape, one they hope to see as a mayor one day.
Questions touched on safety, homelessness, pedestrian safety, and Proposition 13.
“This country is putting people in a position where they are in a sink or swim,” said Hirsch-Shell, a former engineer at Tesla. “All it takes is your washing machine breaking down. You can’t wash your uniform for your job and then you lose your job, then you’re living in your car. You get parking tickets and then suddenly you’re on the street.”
When it came to street safety, Shariati, who is a transportation engineer at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority, said he would bring in a solution popular on university campuses: blue emergency polls residents can activate to call up the cops.
“Going back to college, we have those blue poles with call buttons for the police. I want to implement that in the city,” said Shariati. “That will help response times because the cops would know exactly where to go, and they can act immediately because we do have a low force right now. We have a shortage of police officers.”
McCoy, who runs a restaurant and a bar in Hayes Valley, agreed that the San Francisco Police Department is understaffed, so he proposed focusing on those who are first offenders, to make them understand they will get caught if they reoffend.
“If there’s a certainty of being caught, you’re going to be less likely to take that first step, and that’s where we need to really focus our attention: The people who are doing this for the first time,” said McCoy. “We need to take a different stance on repeat offenders. If you keep on doing it, then you shouldn’t be out in the streets.”
The audience, a mix of the candidates’ supporters and ordinary park-goers, also asked about Vision Zero. Most of the candidates agreed that it would be difficult to get to zero traffic fatalities in such a dense city, but they said City Hall could do more.
Bodkin jumped right into police car pursuits and spoke about his support for Proposition E easing the rules around car chases, which San Francisco voters approved in March. “We need the police to be able to have the option to pursue vehicles that are fleeing a crime at high speeds,” said Bodkin, who is a software engineer. “We can’t be advertising to the world, to our neighbors, to people that want to come here to commit crimes that they can come here and simply flee at high speeds.”
Hughes said she has the perspective of a driver, a cyclist and a pedestrian. She criticized the center-running bike lane on Valencia, and denounced Proposition E for allowing high speed chases, which she sees as counterintuitive to Vision Zero. Hughes also proposed yielding to cars and being polite on the road, because cars “are the hardest ones to stop.”
After about two hours, the candidates shook hands and attendees started to leave. The candidates said having this space every Saturday will allow them to speak to voters directly, so San Francicans know they have many choices come November.
The San Francisco People’s Debate will take place every Saturday until election day at the Miguel Hidalgo monument at Dolores Park from 1 to 3 p.m.
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OSCAR PALMA
Oscar is a reporter with interest in environmental and community journalism, and how these may intersect. Some of his personal interests are bicycles, film, and both Latin American literature and punk. Oscar’s work has previously appeared in KQED, The Frisc, El Tecolote, and Golden Gate Xpress.More by Oscar Palma
