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Posted by kbaum at November 25, 2003 01:04 AM | TrackBackA major reason why I live in San Francisco is that I value its culture of tolerance. Recently, I walked into one of my favorite haunts, Acorn Books on Polk street, and came across a old book with a remarkably timely title: ?Culture and Civility in San Francisco.? My first thought when I saw that title was, ?Where did it all go??
The book, published in 1970, is a compendium of articles written for Society magazine about San Francisco. The common thread in all the articles is that our city has been able make a special place for itself with large numbers of people because of our development of what is referred to as a ?Culture of Civility:? a moral regime whereby a sophisticated and eminently livable city has been created by accommodating people, colonies, and societies of all kinds. People were accepted as individuals, and behaviors and attitudes of individuals were evaluated on their own, whether they be markers of culture or subculture, rather than as emblematic of other trends in behavior, negative, normative or otherwise. The end result was that a sense of sophistication about deviance became a norm, and a city where people in business suits were as accepting of people in hair shirts and beads as vice versa. People of stripes regarded as ?deviant? in other places found it easy to make a home in San Francisco and take up stakeholdership, benefiting themselves and others. In this vision, San Francisco is the one city in America that has adopted successfully the Latin American norm of ?Limited Good,? where everyone fairly automatically gives up something to get something. Certainly, this is still a given for most people who live here, and significant factor in why they continue to stay here. It certainly is for me.
However, in my experience in the politics of San Francisco, much of the givens in San Francisco?s worldview seem to be turned inside out. Rather than accommodation, I hear most people scream about entitlement. Rather than ?It?s alright, let?s work it out,? I often hear, ?I got mine, screw you.? People who talk about stakeholdership, stewardship and long-term planning are painted as elitist or even fascist, and the word ?CONSENSUS? seems to have been reclassified as an obscenity. It would appear that the Progressive ?Culture of Civility? has all but disappeared, and has been replaced by the Cult of the Middle Finger. And it often seems that both ends of the political spectrum have embraced the Cult. Homeowners fight against efforts to put more housing in the city. Nonprofit service providers fight against government efforts to bring needed reform in homelessness policy. Bicyclists and motorists fight over control of the streets, rather than working towards accommodating each other. And, in a reduction of the conflict to absurdist proportions, we have seen the lobbying efforts of the self-entitled, short-of-sight and slow-of-wit, pit the interests of children versus that of the family dog with regard to use of our public parks.
?Where did it all go??
Whatever you do, don?t ask Matt Gonzalez. I don?t think he knows, or cares. And the fact that his candidacy has become the one to beat in San Francisco speaks volumes about where the City is right now, and where we need to go.
For many, the mayor?s race, given the candidates we have, has become a sort of proxy war for the mindless bickering over entitlements. And Gonzalez seems to have won the lion?s share of support from the entitlement-bearers. Gonzalez is endorsed by both Joe O? Donoghue and Randy Shaw, two presumably antagonistic individuals who were jointly responsible for the creation of the Board of Permit Appeals and have worked together from opposite ends to make it almost impossible to develop new housing in San Francisco. Gonzalez is also endorsed by something called the ?San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union.? He is also endorsed by, predictably, the Bicycle Coalition and DogPAC.
Recently, Arthur Evans put together a good summary of Gonzalez? policy record, and how it affects people like him: Evans, a longtime Gay community activist, in many ways represents the quintessential beneficiary of our City?s former Culture of Civility. Among the items Evans highlights are Gonzalez? opposition to Stay-Away Orders for convicted drug dealers; opposition to cleaning up homeless encampments; opposition to graffiti removal; opposition to loitering bans in at-risk areas; opposition to quality of life ordinances; opposition to reform of the City?s Delinquency Prevention Commission; and opposition to grant money for programs in neighboring districts. The sum total of Gonzalez? legislative record looks like it came from same playbook used by San Francisco?s Left for the past generation: self-interested governance by veto. For Evans, the prospect of a Gonzalez mayoralty is grim:
[quote]?You?re right, though, that I?ll leave the city if Gonzalez wins.
In the last two decades, my neighborhood (the upper Haight) has made gains in improving its quality of life. Against tremendous odds, we got a handle on the drug thugs and the bullying street people who made life miserable and dangerous for the residents.
The progressives fought us every step of the way. They shouted ?Stop! You?re attacking the homeless!? They called us ?fascist anti-youth activists.? But we reclaimed the Haight for civilization anyway.
If Gonzalez wins, the same forces that opposed the reclaiming of the Haight will gain added clout at City Hall.
The likely result will be a return of the Bad Ol? Days in my neighborhood -- crack dealers with guns on corners, slobbering alcoholics sprawled out on every sidewalk, street-people defecating at the front door in broad daylight.
There's no way I?ll go back to that.?[/quote]
Matt Gonzalez has portrayed himself as the champion of Progressive values, which implies some deference to the City?s former Culture of Civility and the tolerance it once represented. He has done his best to appropriate the imagery of that time, including staging a rally at Castro and Market where he was handed Harvey Milk?s bullhorn. But while Milk died fighting for the tolerance and accommodation implied in the Culture of Civility, the constituency which Gonzalez has come to represent doesn?t seem particularly interested in or capable of fighting and dying for anything. Most of the people I know who are working with Gonzalez tend to fit the mold of the Wanna-Be New Age Alpha Male: young, mostly straight, stridently antiestablishment in pose, and misogynistic in outlook.
Moreover, Gonzalez himself belies the exaltation of the working classes he publicly espouses: the son of an upper class family in the border suburbs of Texas, Gonzalez is a graduate of Columbia and Stanford Universities, and his family makes considerable money from various holdings, including a partial interest in a maquiladora just across the border which produces fishing lures.
Gonzalez represents more the politics of entitlement and indulgence than that of accommodation and tolerance. It is most certainly possible that he, like many of his supporters, has confused the two. That is not the case with many of his more powerful backers. They know exactly what they are paying for: the maintenance of business as usual.
Meanwhile, many of us find the candidacy of Gavin Newsom to be lacking. Whether it is his socialite background, his callow and effete demeanor, his presumed naiveté about reforming city bureaucracy, or his deference to the more entitlement-oriented in his base constituency (particularly on housing), there is always something that many of my friends and colleagues can find to criticize Newsom and his candidacy. Nevertheless, he is the only candidate that has consistently campaigned for the policy goals that we share: better public safety, encouragement of stakeholdership, and reform of homelessness policy. He is also the only candidate that has made the effort to reach out to everyone in the city, both in his campaign and as supervisor. And I?ve talked with him enough to know that he truly believes in what he?s doing.
I firmly believe that electing Gavin Newsom mayor will be a first step towards restoring a politics of consensus to San Francisco. And it is a politics of consensus which we desperately need to weather these times. When you vote next month, please consider that.