Ross wrote: "Who knew a single prosecutor wasn’t, in fact, the source of problems that had, in some instances, festered in the city for decades?"
Exactly no one thought that Chesa Boudin was the cause of San Francisco's challenges with homelessness, drugs, and crime. Those issues, obviously, all began before Boudin took office. The problem was that Boudin saw the police response, and not these problems, as the main challenge facing San Francisco and was essentially doubling down on the same approach that helped make these problems become uniquely bad in San Francisco in the first place.
And yest, more than a year later, the prosecutor who led the recall and occupies the DA's office has not magically solved, or made much of a dent, in any of these problems.
Agreed. The problems certainly aren't solved or even significantly dented. They're big problems and the city is also hamstrung by judicial rulings blocking the removal of encampments and an often dysfunctional Board of Supervisors.
And to be honest, I'm not in the weeds enough to know whether Brooke Jenkins is doing a good job. I certainly could be persuaded to support other candidates for DA.
That said, I am certain that Brooke is far better for the city than Chesa. Anyone who thinks that mass incarceration is the biggest challenging facing San Francisco right now has no business being in any public office, much less being the DA.
And I say that as someone who DOES believe that mass incarceration is one of the most important problems facing the country, and we do need to figure out a way to imprison far fewer folks. But I think the only one way to achieve that goal in a way that is good for society is to make it much more likely that people will be caught when they commit crimes (the biggest step one can take to reduce crime), while also figuring out alternative sentencing programs that are more effective at rehabilitation without sacrificing deterrence.
For anyone who seriously wants to address mass incarceration, having folks like Chesa Boudin and Alec Karakatsanis be seen as leaders in the movement is a catastrophe. The vast majoity of folks will (correctly) never support any movement that demonizes the police. The only path to improving the public justice systems is to improve police departments and make them allies in a holistic coalition for improving public safety.
Would love to hear how you think that could happen in New York, San Francisco, and other cities Ross. But taking potshots defending someone who was obviously unfit for office is not the way to do so.
"There is no single person or interest group to blame for what ails San Francisco, an otherwise very lovely city."
This is quite a breezy deflection. I suggest you read Michael Shellenberger and others for a clearer idea of how soft-on-crime wokery has been destroying the quality of life of so many residents. Of course Boudin wasn't the whole problem, but he was certainly part of it.
I'm generally unconvinced by this rebuttal. It link to Scott Alexander's review that supposedly "pulls apart significant claims" but in fact concedes far more than it "pulls apart."
Here is Alexander's conclusion in that very review:
"Along with all the problems and preaching, San Fransicko offers solutions. These won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s read this far: they’re basically the Amsterdam plan presented earlier. Break up open-air drug markets. Force addicts into rehab by threatening prison sentences for noncompliance. Ban camping on streets and force the homeless into shelters. Offer permanent housing when appropriate, but make it contingent on good behavior. Have a strong psychiatric system with ability to commit people who need it, and enforced outpatient treatment when appropriate.
Would these work?
I’m pretty sure they would work well for housed people and the city as a whole. Homeless people would no longer block the streets and assault passers-by; they would be safely out of sight in shelters or in mental institutions. A new generation of tough DAs would crack down on crime. Stores could reopen, and citizens could walk the streets without fear. It’s hard for me to imagine this not working."
There is no doubt that building more housing is the important step one can take to reduce homelessness, in San Francisco and everywhere else. I'm all in on the YIMBY proposals to build more housing throughout the Bay Area.
Having said that, there is also no doubt that building more housing is not enough to solve San Francisco's homelessness problem, which is definitely about drugs and mental illness as well as housing. My daughter spent last summer doing lots of volunteer work for Dignity Moves, the nonprofit behind 75 "tiny homes" for the homeless at 33 Gough. It was clear to her that getting many of the folks in these homes back on track in life would require far more than housing.
Having lived through the era you described in SF (but moving away immediately thereafter), and experienced the cataclysm of Dan White's murder of Moscone and Milk, I appreciate your summary. Diane F was a Lady of the Avenues, if I remember correctly, and she was painfully lackluster, centrist by the book -- but we were lucky she was able to , as I will lazily say, 'rise to the occasion.' I wish you'd bring in the king-making role of Willy Brown, throughout the state, in relation to black candidates, including London Breed, Kamala (Copmala) Harris, and Butler--but not, evidently Barbara Lee .
(As to Chesa Boudin, more needs to be said.)
It's worth noting that tech-driven monocultural gentrification has destroyed most of what made SF's high housing costs, insane even then, worth putting up with, including by driving away huge swathes of the population of color and largely crushing the vibrant art scene associated with Latino residents and the South SF African American neighborhoods.
I was around in SF during much of the Feinstein era (1971 - 1981) - I was sort of a pre-intern volunteer in the SF DA's office consumer protection unit in early 1976, and was also briefly a volunteer for the Delancey Street Foundation (more than a halfway house, limited to San Francisco at the time and locally famous). I don't personally know _any_ of the famous people of the time, but I have 2nd order connections to quite a few of them (e.g. 1) one of the residents at Delancey Street that I worked with, and who was making progress including a straight world job in a body shop, stole John Barbagelata*'s Ferrari from the body shop, was quickly caught, and went back to Folsom State Prison; 2) one of my friends' older siblings was one of the people killed with Leo Ryan at the airport near Jonestown; 3) my father got into a brief legal disagreement with Willie Brown back when Brown was the Assembly whip; etc.)
* Barbagelata was the fairly hardcore conservative supervisor who lost the 1975 mayoral runoff by 2%/4k votes to Moscone. There is a non-ridiculous case, which I have no emotional investment in either way, that the People's Temple "stole" the election for Moscone, but I tend to slightly doubt it.
Feinstein just barely missed out on the runoff in the 1975 mayoral election, missing second place by 1,196 votes/0.57%; a somewhat different configuration of other candidates - Moscone and Barbagelata together got 50.83% of the votes. I don't think anyone seriously argues that she would have beaten Moscone in a runoff (I'm not as sure about an RCV-IRV election with the 1975 electorate; I'm pretty sure she would win RCV with some sort of Condorcet).
I don't remember the 1975 election (in which I supported Feinstein) as making a big deal out of Moscone's working class background versus Feinstein's more professional UMC background (she was hardly patrician, but her father was a successful surgeon, she went to private school, etc). Moscone was running as I remember it (some quick rereading just now backs that up) as the candidate of organized labor and of the Burton political machine (q.v.), which was very much pro-gay and pro-black.
Organized labor up or down was IIRC a generally losing proposition among among those who weren't union members at the time (look up the 1975 SF police and firefighters' strike in particular) - it was associated with corruption from the building trades, what was left of the port, ...
Well-said. Certain things do tend to get airbrushed out of that era's SF history however; for instance, the (racially motivated) Zebra murders, and the wholehearted embrace of Jim Jones by everyone who mattered:
Ross wrote: "Who knew a single prosecutor wasn’t, in fact, the source of problems that had, in some instances, festered in the city for decades?"
Exactly no one thought that Chesa Boudin was the cause of San Francisco's challenges with homelessness, drugs, and crime. Those issues, obviously, all began before Boudin took office. The problem was that Boudin saw the police response, and not these problems, as the main challenge facing San Francisco and was essentially doubling down on the same approach that helped make these problems become uniquely bad in San Francisco in the first place.
A lazy take.
And yest, more than a year later, the prosecutor who led the recall and occupies the DA's office has not magically solved, or made much of a dent, in any of these problems.
Agreed. The problems certainly aren't solved or even significantly dented. They're big problems and the city is also hamstrung by judicial rulings blocking the removal of encampments and an often dysfunctional Board of Supervisors.
And to be honest, I'm not in the weeds enough to know whether Brooke Jenkins is doing a good job. I certainly could be persuaded to support other candidates for DA.
That said, I am certain that Brooke is far better for the city than Chesa. Anyone who thinks that mass incarceration is the biggest challenging facing San Francisco right now has no business being in any public office, much less being the DA.
And I say that as someone who DOES believe that mass incarceration is one of the most important problems facing the country, and we do need to figure out a way to imprison far fewer folks. But I think the only one way to achieve that goal in a way that is good for society is to make it much more likely that people will be caught when they commit crimes (the biggest step one can take to reduce crime), while also figuring out alternative sentencing programs that are more effective at rehabilitation without sacrificing deterrence.
For anyone who seriously wants to address mass incarceration, having folks like Chesa Boudin and Alec Karakatsanis be seen as leaders in the movement is a catastrophe. The vast majoity of folks will (correctly) never support any movement that demonizes the police. The only path to improving the public justice systems is to improve police departments and make them allies in a holistic coalition for improving public safety.
Would love to hear how you think that could happen in New York, San Francisco, and other cities Ross. But taking potshots defending someone who was obviously unfit for office is not the way to do so.
"There is no single person or interest group to blame for what ails San Francisco, an otherwise very lovely city."
This is quite a breezy deflection. I suggest you read Michael Shellenberger and others for a clearer idea of how soft-on-crime wokery has been destroying the quality of life of so many residents. Of course Boudin wasn't the whole problem, but he was certainly part of it.
Generally unconvinced by him. Owens here has a good rebuttal. https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-allure-of-san-fran-sicko
I'm generally unconvinced by this rebuttal. It link to Scott Alexander's review that supposedly "pulls apart significant claims" but in fact concedes far more than it "pulls apart."
Here is Alexander's conclusion in that very review:
"Along with all the problems and preaching, San Fransicko offers solutions. These won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s read this far: they’re basically the Amsterdam plan presented earlier. Break up open-air drug markets. Force addicts into rehab by threatening prison sentences for noncompliance. Ban camping on streets and force the homeless into shelters. Offer permanent housing when appropriate, but make it contingent on good behavior. Have a strong psychiatric system with ability to commit people who need it, and enforced outpatient treatment when appropriate.
Would these work?
I’m pretty sure they would work well for housed people and the city as a whole. Homeless people would no longer block the streets and assault passers-by; they would be safely out of sight in shelters or in mental institutions. A new generation of tough DAs would crack down on crime. Stores could reopen, and citizens could walk the streets without fear. It’s hard for me to imagine this not working."
That's the heart of the matter..
There is no doubt that building more housing is the important step one can take to reduce homelessness, in San Francisco and everywhere else. I'm all in on the YIMBY proposals to build more housing throughout the Bay Area.
Having said that, there is also no doubt that building more housing is not enough to solve San Francisco's homelessness problem, which is definitely about drugs and mental illness as well as housing. My daughter spent last summer doing lots of volunteer work for Dignity Moves, the nonprofit behind 75 "tiny homes" for the homeless at 33 Gough. It was clear to her that getting many of the folks in these homes back on track in life would require far more than housing.
Having lived through the era you described in SF (but moving away immediately thereafter), and experienced the cataclysm of Dan White's murder of Moscone and Milk, I appreciate your summary. Diane F was a Lady of the Avenues, if I remember correctly, and she was painfully lackluster, centrist by the book -- but we were lucky she was able to , as I will lazily say, 'rise to the occasion.' I wish you'd bring in the king-making role of Willy Brown, throughout the state, in relation to black candidates, including London Breed, Kamala (Copmala) Harris, and Butler--but not, evidently Barbara Lee .
(As to Chesa Boudin, more needs to be said.)
It's worth noting that tech-driven monocultural gentrification has destroyed most of what made SF's high housing costs, insane even then, worth putting up with, including by driving away huge swathes of the population of color and largely crushing the vibrant art scene associated with Latino residents and the South SF African American neighborhoods.
I was around in SF during much of the Feinstein era (1971 - 1981) - I was sort of a pre-intern volunteer in the SF DA's office consumer protection unit in early 1976, and was also briefly a volunteer for the Delancey Street Foundation (more than a halfway house, limited to San Francisco at the time and locally famous). I don't personally know _any_ of the famous people of the time, but I have 2nd order connections to quite a few of them (e.g. 1) one of the residents at Delancey Street that I worked with, and who was making progress including a straight world job in a body shop, stole John Barbagelata*'s Ferrari from the body shop, was quickly caught, and went back to Folsom State Prison; 2) one of my friends' older siblings was one of the people killed with Leo Ryan at the airport near Jonestown; 3) my father got into a brief legal disagreement with Willie Brown back when Brown was the Assembly whip; etc.)
* Barbagelata was the fairly hardcore conservative supervisor who lost the 1975 mayoral runoff by 2%/4k votes to Moscone. There is a non-ridiculous case, which I have no emotional investment in either way, that the People's Temple "stole" the election for Moscone, but I tend to slightly doubt it.
Feinstein just barely missed out on the runoff in the 1975 mayoral election, missing second place by 1,196 votes/0.57%; a somewhat different configuration of other candidates - Moscone and Barbagelata together got 50.83% of the votes. I don't think anyone seriously argues that she would have beaten Moscone in a runoff (I'm not as sure about an RCV-IRV election with the 1975 electorate; I'm pretty sure she would win RCV with some sort of Condorcet).
I don't remember the 1975 election (in which I supported Feinstein) as making a big deal out of Moscone's working class background versus Feinstein's more professional UMC background (she was hardly patrician, but her father was a successful surgeon, she went to private school, etc). Moscone was running as I remember it (some quick rereading just now backs that up) as the candidate of organized labor and of the Burton political machine (q.v.), which was very much pro-gay and pro-black.
Organized labor up or down was IIRC a generally losing proposition among among those who weren't union members at the time (look up the 1975 SF police and firefighters' strike in particular) - it was associated with corruption from the building trades, what was left of the port, ...
Well-said. Certain things do tend to get airbrushed out of that era's SF history however; for instance, the (racially motivated) Zebra murders, and the wholehearted embrace of Jim Jones by everyone who mattered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_murders
https://www.city-journal.org/article/jim-jones-made-in-san-francisco
From the Right, the conflict between SF elites and hard-core progressives has also been observed:
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/san-francisco-values/
Informative history here. SF has really slipped. Retrospectives like this could help fix the city.
Very helpful historical context and analytical perspective in the wake of all the rote articles after DF died. Thanks!