Sanchez, Jane Kim and Eric Mar
Best for the kids and School Board by far.
(Stop corporate takeover of schools!)
Bernardo Bertolucci made a film masterpiece named ‘1900’ about the rise of fascism in Italy. He traced the roots of the disease to a combination of the insatiable greed of corporate power and the never-ending supply of political whores. Sadly, this is the present state in the San Francisco Unified School District.
Being ripped off by Bill Rojas and his banditos was bad news but when compared to the power of Warren Hellman and Don Fisher, it’s like the difference between having your local bank emptied by the James gang and watching your nation overrun by the Nazis.
It was Warren Hellman who chose Arlene Ackerman as Superintendent. This is the same Ackerman who lost over 2 dozen schools in Washington D.C. to a parental charter school revolt (does that explain to you why she hates charters?). This is the same Ackerman whose fiscal mismanagement led the district that includes the White House to remove her control of the purse strings. … She fought it bitterly and got run out of town.
Ackerman learned her lesson. She has acquiesced in every instance to the Hellman plans to allow his corporation to hire a Chief Financial Officer to be completely independent from the district superintendent. AND, Hellman is going to pay the salary of this CFO. These days, Ackerman’s head nods like a bobble doll when Hellman snaps his fingers. Anyone who thinks that the CFO that Warren Hellman pays out of his own pocket will not answer to Warren Hellman is a fucking idiot.
A cabal of cringing cowards
Hellman and his knuckle-dragging buddy, Donald Fisher play the game like the chicken shits they are. They hide in their mansions and send out lying, cheating scum like Duane Baughman to twist the truth on the phone and on the tube and on the radio and on the sides of buses and cabs. … And, they keep losing.
Why you suppose that?
They underestimate the people. … You know, I usually do too. Difference is, I’ve learned. I’ve come to realize that just because a town becomes gentrified doesn’t necessarily mean that the new elite will not be intelligent, energetic and … socially conscious. That’s happened big time in San Francisco.
People like that don’t like to receive heavy-handed negative mailers and phone calls. Hell, boy, they’ll vote for the people Downtown attacks just out of spite. And, that’s not just in progressive strongholds like District 5. Watch for Jake McGoldrick and Gerardo Sandoval to steamroll the SFSOS puppets in Districts 1 and 11. The City of St. Francis believes in fair play and Fisher and Hellman and Shorenstein and Baughman and Jaye are truly disgusting human beings.
How to solve the hotel strike
Like to take a trip to Paris for a good cause? How about Tokyo? Bangkok? … I was sitting on a bench at City Hall killing time … sitting there thinking about how multi-nationals are strong because they can use continuing profits from their non-union foreign holdings to offset any income they lose from lost business in striking American hotels. … Hey, I thought, why not send Newsom to Paris to walk a picket line in front of a Hilton or Omni there?
It’s one of those thoughts that kind of catches fire when you mull it over. I mean, why fly planeloads of American strikers all over the world to spread their hurt to ‘invulnerable’ overseas corporate holdings when it would be much cheaper to use their own methods against them? You get it? … Use the local populations. Yeah, outsource the picket line work to people who are seriously desperate in places where a couple of centuries of imperialistic corporate development have made life cheap. Think of it … SCAB PICKETS! You can hire one hell of a motivated picket in the third world for a dollar an hour. I’m willing to bet part of my welfare money that it will be easier to keep tourists from flying to the Manila Hilton than to keep them from coming to San Francisco. The Downtown moguls like to advertise us as a ‘world class city’. Well, let’s show them what a World Class Strike looks like. I don’t think that’s a category where they want to lead.
Closing thoughts
Last night’s School Board meeting was an exhilarating downer if you know what I mean. A totally fabricated political dirty trick orchestrated by fascists on one hand. But, on the other … what a crowd! Enrique Pierce, Carlos Petroni, Randy Knox, Willie Ratcliff, Kim Knox … teachers, students & parents. Every single speaker opposed the Hiles/Wynns attack on Mark Sanchez. It was amazing. Not one single person in the audience backed the censure move. Let’s see how the mainstream press plays it. But you, … you do the right thing. Grab your neighbor or roommate and go vote for: Sanchez, Jane Kim and Eric Mar … best for the District and kids by far …
Carlos Petroni & Richard Marquez
Marquez says that even though he bought me two jugs of Carlo Rossi during the Gonzalez campaign, I never mentioned him in a column. Well here you are precinct boy. Look around you. How does it feel to be the little kid in the school yard looking up at paragraph after paragraph full of heartless capitalists? I tried to keep you out of harm’s way but, oh no. Oooh nooo. Now you have your own cointelpro file, a phone tap and 2 guys drinking coffee in a car across the street. You happy?
Petroni has several phone taps, numerous bugs and an entire van full of guys across the street from his house. Now that’s status. … He was the first Argentine journalist to demand that Pinochet account for ‘the disappeared’. He’s been arrested nearly 200 times, been tortured and banished. He also has this great dog named Greta who is just a big old lover doll, she is (that’s the way you talk to a dog, dummy).
Nothing like 2 old commies drinking dark beer into the night and talking about the way it were … the way it is … and the way it should be. Carlos poured a sweet, warm burned cane liqueur and told me the story of the great ‘Yatasto’ who broke a leg and came back to win twice more with (he was a race horse, dip) … won 2 final races running with an understandable limp. Ahhh, they don’t make horses or commies like that anymore. Read Petroni’s Frontlines for the low down dirty truth. Say ‘hi’ to Eileen Left while you’re there.
Quotes
“We had a hundred year flood in San Francisco this morning.
… We had another one last February.”
(Gerardo Sandoval chides PUC for proper D11 drains)
“There was no plan when the sewage plant blew up.”
(Espinola Jackson laments no plan for ‘shit hitting fan’)
“We should increase the reward offer in the Tompengko case.”
(Fiona Ma takes indirect shot at Lillian Sing?)
Went to the last Board of Supes meeting before the election yesterday. It was good to see the old gang. Some, I’d imagine, for the last time. Like the dying Duval said to Tommie Lee Jones in ‘Lonesome Dove’: “It’s been some party, ain’t it, Woodrow.”
Four years with the progressive board. I’m gonna have to sit down and write a few words about that after Nov. 2nd.
Sanchez, Jane Kim & Eric Mar:
