November 3 GREENZINE SF Green Party Weekly News and Events www.sfgreenparty.org twitter.com/sfgreenparty www.facebook.com/groups/SFGreenParty/ Dear Greens, Today is election day! Please vote, and encourage your friends to vote as well. The complete text of our Voter Guide is below--please forward to any friends interested in the Green Party's positions in this election. After the polls close at 8 pm, join Greens at election night parties tonight: * Francisco Herrera's party will be at 2969 Mission St, at 25th St (ANSWER coalition HQ) * Ross Mirkarimi's party will be at 2950 25th St, at Bryant (Puerto Alegre #2, NOT the one on Valencia near 16th St) After the election, we'll be working on organizing a San Francisco Progressive Alliance, modeled on Richmond's (see our endorsement of Wendy Aragon, below). We've moved this month's organizing meeting to November 18, and will send out details after the election. We'll be analyzing the results of this election and planning for a larger summit of progressive groups next year. *===========================* 2015 GREEN VOTER GUIDE Election Day: Tuesday, Nov 3 Mayor: Francisco Herrera (#1 choice) Amy Farah Weiss (#2 choice) Francisco Herrera is a musician, a long-time Green Party member, and an activist with the Living Wage Coalition. He is running for Mayor in order to "bring the wisdom of the neighborhoods to City Hall." In a speech to the League of Women Voters, he asked: How do we get City Hall to listen to the wisdom of our neighborhoods and respect our strengths? What kind of city do we want for our children and grandchildren - for ourselves? Francisco started the "People's Campaign" to form a long-term effort to develop a plan and vision of San Francisco as a city friendly and affordable to working families. Francisco's platform includes building more affordable housing, eviction protection, a budget that prioritizes arts and human services, safe streets and a better Muni system, public education, an expansion of Healthy SF, an end to deportations and cooperation with ICE, accountable policing, and more living wage jobs. Francisco's campaign has been endorsed by the Green Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, Tom Ammiano, John Avalos, Ross Mirkarimi, the Tenants' Union, the League of Pissed Off Voters, SEIU Local 1021, and AFT Local 2121, among others. You can find out more at: http://www.peoplescampaign.net/platform Since this is a ranked choice election, we urge voters to rank more than one opponent of Mayor Ed Lee. For your #2 choice, we support Amy Farah Weiss. Although Weiss is a Democrat, she agrees with the Green Party on many key issues. She supports a more ethical and open government, public power, and natural grass fields in parks. Weiss agrees with the Green Party on many aspects of City transit and development policy. She joins the Green Party in support of Props F and I, in opposition to her own official Party's position. You can read details of Weiss' answers to the Green Party's questionnaire online: http://sfgreens.org/questionnaires/weiss_mayor.html Sheriff: Ross Mirkarimi (sole endorsement) The Green Party strongly endorses Ross Mirkarimi for another term as Sheriff. In the face of constant attacks from Mayor Lee and the SFPD, Mirkarimi has been surprisingly effective at continuing the legacy of former Sheriff Mike Hennessey. He has succeeded in lowering the costs for inmates to stay in touch with their families by phone (a key factor in lowering recidivism). He has supported Five Keys, an award-winning high school inside the jail, which has received nationwide recognition including a $100,000 prize from Harvard University. Even LA County has established a branch of Five Keys within their jail. Mirkarimi has increased visiting hours for all inmates, and houses transgender inmates according to gender identity. He also helps to enroll inmates in Obamacare when they are released from jail. All of these factors have reduced recidivism and greatly improved public safety in SF. Sheriff Mirkarimi has made some tough decisions that have put him at odds with Mayor Lee. He strongly supports SF's "sanctuary city" policy, which allows undocumented immigrants to cooperate with law enforcement without fear of deportation. In contrast, his opponent Vicki Hennessy (no relation to the previous Sheriff) cooperated with immigration authorities at ICE when she was briefly appointed interim Sheriff, and she has promised to resume cooperation with ICE if elected. Mirkarimi is also is the only Sheriff in the state to have an Eviction Assistance Unit, which protects tenants and slows evictions. This assistance, while short of an outright refusal to evict (which would result in Mayor Lee suspending Mirkarimi), has put Mirkarimi at odds with landlords and developers. Just as in the SFPD, there have recently been some problems in the Sheriffs' Department (including an inmate death, staged inmate fights, and the death of a woman at SF General Hospital). Sheriff Mirkarimi responded appropriately and effectively in each case. And in the case of the inmate fights, Sheriff Mirkarimi even welcomed an FBI investigation. We suspect that his opponent, who is the favorite candidate of the Deputy Sheriffs Association, would have maintained a "blue wall of silence" in covering up internal problems. The deputies are resistant to having civilian oversight and control, and it is unclear to us whether the department's problems were in fact concealed by an insubordinate and defensive chain of command. It is essential that the Sheriff's Department be run by an independent civilian outsider like Mirkarimi in order to avoid the department being controlled by deputies and staff who would cover up such problems in the future. Mayor Lee, the SFPD, and the Chronicle have also attacked Sheriff Mirkarimi by manipulating the political process and media perceptions around a domestic conflict case that involved Mirkarimi and his wife Eliana Lopez. However, when Lopez was finally able to speak for herself, it became clear that the Mirkarimi-Lopez family is strong, loving, healthy and dedicated, and that the manipulations around the case were indeed nothing more than cynical political maneuvering. As we said in our statement at the time (http://sfgreenparty.org/issues/37-statement-on-sheriff-mirkarimi), the appropriate response to the domestic disagreement was both counseling and the empowerment of Ms. Lopez to decide for herself what she wanted for her life and her family. That response was embraced wholeheartedly by Ross Mirkarimi, and their family became far stronger through their shared adversity. Partly because of how well Mirkarimi and Lopez handled their personal conflict and the political firestorm that surrounded it, the San Francisco Women's Political Committee is supporting Ross Mirkarimi to be re-elected Sheriff. Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's accomplishments, both personal and professional, shine in the midst of the adversity surrounding both his family and our City. We strongly support re-electing him as Sheriff. Community College Board: Wendy Aragon Wendy Aragon is a long time activist who is seeking her first elected office on the College Board. We endorsed her in 2014, and she is running again after coming within 2 percentage points of winning a seat in that election. She has good ideas for how the current Board could have avoided the accreditation crisis, and her answers to our questionnaire (http://sfgreens.org/questionnaires/aragon_ccb.html) show that she supports many Green Party priorities, such as free education, open government, and equal rights for non-citizens. She has also been out front in the campaign to take back City College from the ACCJC, so we once again give her our enthusiastic endorsement. College Board elections do not use ranked choice voting, or even require a majority of votes to win. Because two candidates with backing from various progressive groups are running in this contest, Aragon unfortunately faces a tough uphill battle to win this election against the appointee of Mayor Ed Lee. Overall, we think Aragon is easily the best candidate: she is the most familiar with CCSF and its politics, she is the only major candidate opposed to military recruiting on campus, and she has no ambitions to use the seat as a springboard to higher office. She is also a woman, in a City where women are under-represented in politics, and in progressive circles in particular. As a feminist party, we strongly believe that women should not step back as candidates to allow ambitious men to lead on our behalf. In the last several elections, SF progressive groups have squandered electoral opportunities by foolishly opposing each other in cases like this College Board race, when discussions prior to making endorsements might have cleared up misunderstandings. Sadly, history may repeat itself in this election. Greens think we need to follow the model of Richmond CA, in which Greens, progressive Democrats, and other like-minded voters organized together in a solid, long-term alliance well in advance of individual elections. The Richmond Progressive Alliance swept Chevron-backed candidates in 2014 elections, despite being vastly outspent. Aragon agrees that a San Francisco Progressive Alliance is necessary, and we look forward to working with her and other progressive groups after this election to ensure we don't continue to be dominated by the so-called "moderates" from the Democratic Party Machine. SF Board of Supervisors, D3 No candidate from District 3 sought the Green Party's endorsement. SF City Attorney: no endorsement SF District Attorney: no endorsement SF Treasurer: no endorsement Local propositions: NO on A Prop A is a $310 million bond that is advertised by proponents as being for "affordable housing." In reality, this will be a slush fund with little oversight that the local Democratic Party Machine will use to pay off politically connected developers and nonprofits. The Green Party therefore opposes it. Because of demand for workers and materials due to the explosion of luxury housing, construction costs for affordable housing have risen above $500,000 per unit. Therefore, even if Mayor Lee spent 100% of the Prop A bond money on truly affordable housing, only about 620 units could be built. But the reality is far worse: Prop A is filled with loopholes that would allow Mayor Lee to spend most of the money on other things, such as "funding middle income rental housing units." Prop A does not specify that even half the money be spent on housing that would be affordable to current SF residents. The Green Party is also concerned about using bonds to fund expenses that should be part of SF's normal budget. SF now has a $9 billion budget, up from $5 billion in the Newsom years. Residents have seen little benefit from this increase: under Mayor Lee, the streets are dirtier and Muni is even slower than when he took office. $310 million for affordable housing is just a crumb from this huge pie. Even with current low interest rates, bond funding means that taxpayers will pay twice: once for overpriced land, and again for the interest on borrowing money from Wall Street 1%-ers (see our full Statement on Bond Funding, below). Vote NO on Prop A, and demand that the next Mayor spend a higher portion of our City budget on real affordable public housing. YES on B Prop B will provide more paid parental leave for City public employees. The United States provides far less paid leave on average than other countries, and is one of only two countries in the world that does not guarantee some type of paid parental leave for all workers. Although Prop B does not directly affect private employers, it will indirectly pressure them through competition with the public sector for skilled workers. Importantly, Prop B provides leave for both parents regardless of gender. Studies have shown that paid paternal leave is important for decreasing the gender pay gap. As feminism is one of our key values, measures that lower the pay gap are especially critical. NO on C Prop C would require "expenditure lobbyists" to register and file monthly reports with the Ethics Commission. An expenditure lobbyist is defined as anybody who spends at least $2500 in one month to influence other people to contact City government to advocate for legislative or administrative actions. Registering with the Ethics Commission would cost a flat fee of $500 each year, and the monthly reports would include details of all expenses related to influencing government action. The SF Ethics Commission put this measure on the ballot in order to close a loophole that allows corporations to create "astroturf" groups to lobby City government. For example, SFBARF is a billionaire-funded group that advocates for building more luxury housing. Other corporate astroturf groups lobby against restrictions on soda, or for the preservation of utility monopolies, or against regulating the conversion of rental apartments into illegal hotel rooms. Corporations like PG&E, Airbnb and AT&T spend many times more money on indirect lobbying through astroturf groups than they do on direct lobbying. Many City-funded nonprofits are part of the problem, spending City money to lobby for additional funding. Unfortunately, Prop C lumps in genuine grassroots groups with these corporate astroturf campaigns. For example, the Sunset and Richmond residents who organized opposition to Mayor Lee's plan to replace grass soccer fields in Golden Gate Park with toxic fake turf spent thousands of dollars on outreach to their neighbors. A neighborhood group that puts out a single mailing to area residents could pass the $2500 threshold to be defined as lobbyists, and the $500 registration fee and monthly reporting requirements would be very onerous to small groups that depend on volunteers and individual donations. In contrast, large corporations and their shell nonprofits could easily afford these expenses. Prop C also does not distinguish between money spent directly influencing government officials and money spent on ads or studies that ultimately result in ordinary citizens contacting their elected representatives. There's a huge difference between spending $2500 on an ad asking people to call their Supervisor, vs spending $2500 to directly pay people to pack a Board or commission meeting or flood an office with phone calls. The Green Party opposes Prop C, because it will stifle grassroots opposition to the Democratic Party Machine, while not solving the problem of well-funded corporate astroturf groups. Even the local Democratic Party, which is currently in the hands of developers and corporate interests, endorsed Prop C because they do not see it as a threat to their system of patronage politics. Vote NO on C, and support alternatives such as the DISCLOSE act and more transparency in how nonprofits spend City funds. NO on D Prop D would increase height limits for the Giants' proposed Mission Rock development from the current 40 feet to 240 feet for some buildings. Since last year's Prop B (which we supported) became law, public votes are now required to raise height limits along the waterfront, in order to ensure that the proposed project will provide sufficient benefit to the public. The developers of Mission Rock have made all sorts of promises about affordability of the project and the benefit to the public, but none of those promises would be legally binding if Prop D passes. We suspect that, like most other development supported by Mayor Lee and his allies, this project will almost entirely consist of luxury condos that will be off limits to the current residents of San Francisco. We urge voters to reject Prop D, so that the Giants can come back with a better proposal for developing this site. NO on E Prop E is billed as a "sunshine and open government law." It is the only proposal on the ballot on which Greens agree with both the Democratic and Republican parties: vote NO! Prop E would allow corporations to hire people from around the world to make videos and send them to Board and Commission meetings, where they would crowd out public comment from City residents. Prop E would allow our public debate to be dominated by hired trolls, with the same level of insight as SFGate.com's comments section. Prop E also looks like a stalking horse for David Lee, a probable future candidate for Supervisor in the Richmond District. By backing a different campaign, such as a ballot proposition, candidates can circumvent donation limits and build name recognition and donor lists, just as Mayor Newsom did with "Care not Cash" and Mayor Lee did with "Run Ed Run." Greens support open government and sunshine, and some ideas in Prop E should be recycled in a future ballot measure. For example, Greens support livestreaming and televising more commission meetings, and we support allowing SF voters to submit public comments online rather than having to show up to meetings in person. However, Prop E is so flawed that it belongs in the garbage bin. YES on F Prop F would create real regulations on companies like Airbnb and VRBO. These companies make huge profits from landlords who evict tenants and convert properties into full-time unlicensed hotels, avoiding zoning codes and other laws that apply to real hotels and bed-and-breakfasts. The current regulations on such companies were written by Airbnb, and are by design completely unenforced by the City. Prop F would require reasonable limits (75 days per year) on renting rooms, and would require companies like Airbnb and VRBO to report data to the City that would allow SF to enforce these limits. Airbnb is spending more than $8 million to defeat Prop F, including innumerable billboards and TV ads promoting the lie that Prop F will lead to neighbors suing their neighbors. The reality is that neighbors can already sue each other over nuisances, and Prop F does not change that. Airbnb is referring to a provision of Prop F that would allow people living near an illegal hotel to sue the hosting company as well as the landlord, if the City does not respond to complaints about illegal rentals exceeding the new 75 day limit. Opponents of Prop F also argue that tourists who stay in Airbnb rooms spend money in SF and help businesses. However, studies have shown that the residents evicted to make room for illegal hotels would have spent far more money than the tourists. Airbnb is therefore a net loss for SF taxpayers and businesses. The fact that the Democratic Party Central Committee voted to oppose Prop F just weeks after they received a $10,000 "contribution" from Airbnb says a lot about how such companies, and our local Democratic Machine politicians, operate. Vote YES on Prop F and support a Green alternative to politics as usual. NO on G, and YES on H: Prop G was originally put on the ballot by PG&E allies. It would manipulate the definition of clean energy so that our local community based program, CleanPowerSF, would not be allowed to call rooftop solar and other clean energy sources "renewable, greenhouse gas free," while allowing PG&E to call these very same sources "renewable, greenhouse gas free." Under Prop G, PG&E could falsely label its dirtier fossil fuel and nuclear energy mix "greener" than the much cleaner CleanPowerSF. Prop H was put on the ballot in response, and requires both PG&E and CleanPowerSF to follow the same rules under state law defining what can be called clean and renewable. PG&E has decided to avoid a nasty ballot fight by withdrawing support for Prop G. Be sure to vote NO on G and YES on H in order to support fair and accurate clean energy reporting rules. YES on I Prop I would create a temporary moratorium on building luxury housing in the Mission. The Mission is one the City's most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, and one in which many long-time residents are being evicted. Building luxury condos only encourages more gentrification in the immediate area. Mission landlords are falling for "get rich quick" schemes by evicting all their tenants and flipping their property for luxury condos while the housing market is hot. Long-established businesses are being forced out by skyrocketing rents in trendy areas such as Valencia Street. Prop I would call a "time out" on luxury housing, allowing 18 months for Mission residents to draw up plans for where new development should occur in order to displace as few current residents and businesses as possible. The Mission has always been a working class neighborhood, and its transformation into a playground for the rich has resulted in many priced-out workers having to drive for hours from Vallejo and beyond to get to their jobs in the City. Gentrification and displacement in the Mission should be a warning to all San Franciscans about the dangers of libertarian capitalism run amok. The Democratic Party Central Committee, controlled by developers and corporate investors, endorsed No on I, giving the green light to more luxury condos and the finger to current Mission residents. The Green Party stands as an alternative, and we strongly urge a YES vote on Prop I. NO on J Prop J claims to help local businesses avoid being displaced by skyrocketing rents. It would establish a "legacy business historic preservation fund" to help pay the rent for certain long-time (20 or 30 year old) businesses. We oppose Prop J, because not all legacy businesses could receive funding. Appointees of Mayor Lee would make the call, and use the grants to reward favored businesses (i.e., those whose owners make the right campaign donations) while ignoring the plight of others. The recipients of Mayor Lee's Prop J slush fund would also only receive a few hundred dollars per year per employee, at a time when rents are doubling and tripling as the result of gentrification. Although commercial rent control (which would solve the problem) is banned by state law, the City has other legal means to address commercial displacement. For example, the City could use property acquired by eminent domain to establish Community Land Trusts, and rent space in land trusts to long-time businesses. The threat of eminent domain would also make landlords think twice about destroying icons of SF culture in order to make quick buck. YES on K Prop K would establish priorities for building affordable housing on surplus City-owned properties. Currently, such properties are often turned over to politically connected developers to build luxury condos. Prop K would require 100% affordable housing to be built on smaller properties, and a mix of luxury and affordable housing on larger properties. Although Prop K could have been more aggressive about requiring 100% affordable housing on all surplus City-owned properties, it is an improvement over the status quo, so the Green Party supports it. SF Green Party Statement on Bond Funding The SF Green Party has often been hesitant to embrace bond financing. In addition to being environmentally and socially responsible, we are also fiscally responsible. Bond funding requires payments totaling about twice the actual cost of whatever improvements are made, and passes costs on to future generations. Because people who buy bonds are almost exclusively the wealthy, as investors are paid back over the 20-30 year life of the bond, wealth is transferred from middle and low income taxpayers to rich bondholders. Bond funding also helps rich people avoid paying their fair share of taxes, since interest on municipal bonds is exempt from both state and federal tax. As noted in the California Voter Guide in 1992, over 35,000 U.S. millionaires supplemented their income with tax exempt state and local bond checks averaging over $2,500 per week (that's over $130,000 per year tax free). They avoided paying federal and state taxes on over $5 billion, which must be made up by the rest of us. The SF Green Party calls on the public to join us in working to phase out this regressive and unfair subsidy of the rich and their investment bankers (who take millions of dollars off the top when the bonds are issued). There are a few cases in which Greens have supported bond measures. In general, we are willing to support bonds that are issued to in order to build urgently needed, publicly-owned infrastructure, such as a public hospital or high speed rail. We generally oppose bonds that fund ongoing maintenance projects; these should be paid for using City revenues (which should be increased by raising taxes on the wealthy). *===========================* To submit events for our newsletter, please email a short blurb to news@sfgreens.org. Messages to a mailing list will be rejected.