{"id":21429,"date":"2022-02-13T13:38:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-13T21:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=21429"},"modified":"2022-02-13T13:38:52","modified_gmt":"2022-02-13T21:38:52","slug":"the-chesa-boudin-recall-stopped-being-only-about-san-francisco-a-long-time-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2022\/02\/13\/the-chesa-boudin-recall-stopped-being-only-about-san-francisco-a-long-time-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chesa Boudin recall stopped being only about San Francisco a long time ago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Adam Johnson Feb. 12, 2022 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Protesters
Protesters hold signs outside San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin\u2019s office on Feb. 3.Noah Berger\/Special to The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The attempt to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin and the attendant \u201ccrime in San Francisco\u201d narrative is one of the \u2014 if not the \u2014 single biggest causes celebres for national right-wing media and wealthy conservative donors at the moment. Two-thirds of the Boudin recall campaign\u2019s biggest PAC, $1.8 million, is funded by a single Republican donor.<\/a> Fox News\u2019 website has more than 1,000 mentions of Boudin over the past year alone, Breitbart over 400. Tucker Carlson talks about him nonstop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Is it because the New York-based producers at Fox News care about crime in San Francisco? Is it because Florida-mansion-dwelling Carlson is deeply concerned with the homeless population of San Francisco?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s because, for national conservative media, San Francisco isn\u2019t a place \u2014 it\u2019s a pejorative, a partisan punchline, an ideological watchword. It\u2019s important for self-identified liberals and progressives to understand this context and understand who they\u2019re aligning with when they give the old refrain, \u201cI\u2019m a progressive, but … \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This battle is not limited to right-wing media. Indeed, if it were, then it wouldn\u2019t be such heavily contested terrain. To politically agnostic and centrist Middle America, \u201cSan Francisco,\u2019\u2019 like \u201cChicago,\u201d isn\u2019t a city; it\u2019s a caricature of liberalism run amok. Whereas \u201cChicago\u201d is racialized shorthand for \u201cBlack criminality\u201d that is lurking inside inner cities, \u201cSan Francisco\u201d refers to a \u201cfar left,\u201d feminist, progressive, queer, communist ideology that\u2019s gone too far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at San Francisco, this is what your future holds if you don\u2019t vote for Republicans<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one cartoonishly tabloid, anti-homeless Carlson segment from January 2020<\/a> entitled \u201cAmerican Dystopia,\u201d he rails against the then-recently-sworn-in Boudin, turning to the camera and soberly telling the audience over images of human feces on San Francisco\u2019s streets, \u201cWhat\u2019s happening there could be happening in your neighborhood. The people doing it would very much like that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t to say there isn\u2019t genuine, organic opposition to Boudin in San Francisco outside of the right-wing media echo chamber. San Francisco, with the highest home prices in the country, has no shortage of wealthy liberals. As polls show<\/a>, those with advanced degrees and more wealth \u2014 and who are white \u2014 tend to have much greater trust in police and related institutions. There\u2019s also organic working-class frustration with reform-minded district attorneys. Despite reformers\u2019 best attempts to act otherwise \u2014 and the fact that opposition does tend to be whiter \u2014 this doesn\u2019t mean it exclusively is. We must contend with the reality that multiracial working-class opposition to progressive district attorneys \u2014 and support for aggressive policing \u2014 does exist and grapple with how to address these real concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s not really what\u2019s driving the recall effort. As a matter of reality, it\u2019s certainly not who\u2019s funding it, why media is fueling it and who is using \u201cSan Francisco\u201d not as a real place with real people, but a partisan proxy battle with the Boudin recall simply serving as a stand-in for anti-liberalism and 1990s \u201ctough on crime\u201d politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often when I, a Chicago-based writer and media critic, comment on the national attacks on Boudin or Proposition 47<\/a> or the border reform movement in California, I am met with a torrent of criticism insisting that I, having not lived in the Bay Area, could never understand what\u2019s really going on. Strangely, this refrain is never used for the literally thousands of stories in New York-based Fox News, the San Diego based-OANN, the New York-based New York Post or London-based Daily Mail when they rant and rave against the \u201cwoke prosecutor\u201d in San Francisco or any of the over 300 outlets<\/a> that covered the now-infamous Walgreens shoplifting episode \u2014 all but a handful of which are outside the Bay Area. One must live in San Francisco to defend police and prison reform in San Francisco, but this is not a requirement to pile on the attacks on it or fund the Boudin recall campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s \u201csocialism for the rich\u201d and \u201ccapitalism for the poor\u201d adage, the loudest pro-recall voices demand hyperlocalism for those lobbying for reform and decarceral solutions to crime and homelessness, while ignoring the well-funded-by-outside-money global campaign for those working against them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true, some pro-Boudin money comes from donors outside San Francisco, but a larger amount<\/a> of outside money pours into the pro-recall political action committees and groups. And even those who nominally live in San Francisco, such as pro-recall billionaire funder Miriam L. Haas, have multiple residences outside of the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put another way: This stopped only<\/em> being about San Francisco a long time ago. The recall, and broader attacks on reform in San Francisco, carries with it tremendous stakes for reform efforts across the country. Wealthy, pro-carceral forces are trying to make an example out of Boudin: Don\u2019t toe the \u201ctough on crime\u201d line, and you will suffer costly political battles nonstop.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other progressive district attorneys, like New York\u2019s Alvin Bragg, got the message and are backing off meaningful reforms after facing similar media piling on.<\/a> And, on Feb. 2, the San Francisco Police Department unilaterally<\/a> terminated a memorandum of understanding with Boudin\u2019s office to cooperate on \u201cuse-of-force incidents\u201d \u2014 effectively telling the world that the department will just investigate its own misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberals aligning with these forces do so at tremendous costs. The U.S. is already the most incarcerated country on the planet, ranking No.1 <\/a>in putting humans in cages per capita out of 195 countries. The idea that the solution to our social ills is to unleash police to put even more people in cages defies all common sense. Yet it\u2019s the logical outcome of the current anti-reform backlash. Liberals backing the recall may view Boudin as a purely local matter who can be bifurcated from the broader push to bring back 1990s-era crime laws \u2014 but a foaming right-wing media machine certainly doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Johnson is co-host of the \u201cCitations Needed\u201d podcast and writes\u00a0at his Substack, \u201cThe Column.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"newspaper's<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"HEARST<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u00a92022 Hearst
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Johnson Feb. 12, 2022 (SFChronicle.com) The attempt to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin and the attendant \u201ccrime in San Francisco\u201d narrative is one of the \u2014 if not the \u2014 single biggest causes celebres for national right-wing media and wealthy conservative donors at the moment. Two-thirds of the Boudin… Continue reading → <\/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\/21429"}],"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=21429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21430,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21429\/revisions\/21430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}