{"id":19875,"date":"2021-09-04T11:29:15","date_gmt":"2021-09-04T18:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=19875"},"modified":"2021-09-04T11:29:46","modified_gmt":"2021-09-04T18:29:46","slug":"what-is-san-francisco-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/09\/04\/what-is-san-francisco-for\/","title":{"rendered":"What is San Francisco for?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2zwmzkbocl625qdrf2qqqfok-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/26365188_web1_copy_190313-sfe-baybridgefile-001.jpg\" alt=\"San Francisco\u2019s true purpose is at the center of every policy debate facing The City today. (Kevin N. Hume\/Examiner file)\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>San Francisco\u2019s true purpose is at the center of every policy debate facing The City today. (Kevin N. Hume\/Examiner file)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018We are about our neighborhood politics\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Sep. 2, 2021 2:00 p.m.<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news\/\">NEWS<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/news-columnists\/\">NEWS COLUMNISTS<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/daily-headlines-newsletter\/\">NEWSLETTER<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/opinion\/\">OPINION<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfexaminer.com\/the-city\/\">THE CITY<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><ins><strong>By Lincoln Mitchell<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><ins><strong>Special to The Examiner<\/strong><\/ins><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Fox News and the rest of the right-wing ecosystem, San Francisco exists to be ridiculed and held up as an example of what happens when progressives take power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some believe that San Francisco is a place for a small number of people to get very rich and then treat The City as an expensive urban playground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Others see it more benignly as a place of commerce, trade and business that can generate high tax revenue and benefit more people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But maybe San Francisco\u2019s purpose is more interesting than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The purpose of The City might be for people to find themselves or their tribe and experience a kind of freedom and belonging that cannot be found elsewhere \u2014 and to create neighborhood groups where people can thrive and build movements and communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan was getting at when she described San Francisco as a place for neighborhood and localized concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor every idea that exists, San Francisco has a group representing that idea,\u201d she told me. \u201cWe are about our neighborhood politics. San Franciscans always joke about the microclimate. That is actually how we see ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Neighborhoods, as Chan suggests, have been at the core of San Francisco\u2019s purpose for decades, but neighborhood activism and advocacy is imperiled as housing continues to be prohibitively expensive for many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arnold Townsend, a longtime activist in the Western Addition who has been in San Francisco for over half a century, made this point too, and was quick to tell me Black neighborhoods and businesses are not part of The City\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not sure what San Francisco is for,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m 100 percent sure what it\u2019s not for \u2014 and that\u2019s Black people. What I would like is a return to people having some control of their own communities, a viable Black community with black-owned businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rodney Fong, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, stressed that the high cost of living makes it hard \u201cfor families to reside and root in San Francisco and businesses to be able to root multi-generationally.\u201d Both, he said, are central to The City\u2019s purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chan, Townsend and Fong\u2019s thoughts about neighborhoods are more than just different answers to an admittedly strange query. Because the question of what San Francisco is for, in one way or another, is at the center of every policy debate facing The City today and will remain so as it forges its post-pandemic way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of this is particularly new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 1950s and 1960s, state highway planners proposed a network of highways to crisscross The City, making it easier for commuters to get to, and through, San Francisco. These highways were supported by much of the business and political leadership who saw an opportunity for San Francisco to become a more efficient center of commercial activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, thousands of San Franciscans of all races, ethnicities and political views did not want their neighborhoods destroyed by a noisy and polluting freeway. For them, The City was about livable neighborhoods, not just economic growth. Residents organized and led what came to be called the Freeway Revolts. The movement lasted over a decade, and managed to preserve much of San Francisco from the threat of destructive freeways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Freeway Revolts were the quintessential neighborhood movement and led to further battles in the 1970s and 1980s to wrest power away from downtown business interests and give it back to local communities. George Moscone rode that theme all the way to City Hall in his 1975 mayoral campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the core of the neighborhood versus business interests debate, which still rages today, is this question of what The City is for, with the lines drawn between downtown and economic growth on the one hand and collections of residents on the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Freeway Revolts were followed by enormous growth in The City\u2019s diversity, which led to another vision, and set of debates, around what San Francisco might be for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beginning in the 1960s, many San Franciscans sought to create a city where asserting and exploring identities was more important than economic growth or smoothing the path for downtown business interests. Those efforts were at the core of the LGBTQ and other civil rights movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the 1970s, when the LGBT movement began to gather strength, it was not obvious that it would place San Francisco at the forefront of a civil rights movement that would affect much of the world in subsequent decades. But those activists believed the experiment was worth it, and they centered much of their activity in the Castro, drawing a new community of LGBTQ people to the neighborhood. From that neighborhood, LGBTQ San Franciscans were able to build community institutions and support networks that strengthened the movement throughout the city and beyond. It was also neighborhood activism that led to the election of Harvey Milk, The City\u2019s first gay elected offical, in 1977.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fast forward to the 2020s. San Franciscans are still debating business versus neighborhood interests. Neighborhoods are also divided over questions of how much and what kind of new developments to allow. While the issue is no longer highway construction, the question of balancing existing neighborhoods with the need for The City to grow are similar. The political cleavages may be different than they were 50 years or more ago, but the central question of what The City is for lies at the heart of today\u2019s debates about the character of neighborhoods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chan and Fong both argue San Francisco must be seen as an ongoing \u201cexperiment\u201d in identity, diversity and the ethos of San Francisco. Chan noted The City bears the name of St. Francis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a refuge for a lot of people who come here,\u201d she said. \u201cThat becomes fundamentally the reason why The City thrives. This is a place that people look to for ideas, for innovation, for creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Chan also warned that the experiment may be compromised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are so deep into our ideology and identity politics that at times we can\u2019t free ourselves for collaboration or to mingle ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the COVID pandemic simultaneously winds down and lingers, Fong says, \u201cThe feeling on the street right now is that The City is naturally organically resetting itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This means that we have an opportunity to rethink what San Francisco is for, what experiments have worked or failed and which ones we want to try in the future. Just as new ideas about equality gained momentum in the Castro \u2014 while drawing ire from other parts of The City \u2014 and then changed the world in subsequent decades, it is possible that new ideas about criminal justice spearheaded by a district attorney who makes his home in the Outer Sunset and that resonate in communities throughout The City, while being rejected in others, could have a similar impact in the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u200b\u200bLincoln Mitchell has written numerous books and articles about The City. Visit lincolnmitchell.com or follow him on Twitter @LincolnMitchell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>San Francisco\u2019s true purpose is at the center of every policy debate facing The City today. (Kevin N. Hume\/Examiner file) \u2018We are about our neighborhood politics\u2019 Sep. 2, 2021 2:00 p.m. NEWS NEWS COLUMNISTS NEWSLETTER OPINION THE CITY By Lincoln Mitchell Special to The Examiner For Fox News and the&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/09\/04\/what-is-san-francisco-for\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19877,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19875\/revisions\/19877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}