San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities
by
Michael Shellenberger
Published 11 Oct 2021
Courtland Milloy, “Mitch Snyder Found No Shelter from Pain,” Washington Post, July 8, 1990, www.washingtonpost.com. 68. Phil Matier, “What’s the Answer to Quality-of-Life Crimes in SF: DA Candidates Give Answers,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 27, 2019, www.sfchronicle.com. 69. Gabe Stutman, “Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s D.A.-Elect, Talks Homelessness, Jewishness and Taking on the Establishment,” Jewish News of Northern California, December 26, 2019, www.jweekly.com. 70. Chesa Boudin, interview by Alicia Garza (Inforum series, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, February 13, 2020), YouTube video, 1:07:54, www.youtube.com. 71. Phil Matier, “Shopping in SF’s Tenderloin Is Wide Open—for Illegal Drugs, That Is,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 13, 2020, www.sfchronicle.com. 72.
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“The San Francisco County Jails,” San Francisco Sheriff, San Francisco Department of Public Health, April 8, 2016, www.sfdph.org/dph/files/jrp/WG-MeetingCombined.pdf. 26. Chesa Boudin, interview by Alicia Garza (Inforum series, Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, February 13, 2020), YouTube video, 1:07:54, www.youtube.com. 27. Kate Wolffe, “‘Recycled Approach’: Some SF Leaders, Activists Bristle at Plan to Ban Dealers from Tenderloin,” KQED, September 25, 2020, www.kqed.org. 28. Michael Solana, interview by the author, January 8, 2021. 29. Lauren Hernández, “Chesa Boudin Offers Theories on Why Burglaries Are on Upswing in Bernal Heights,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 11, 2021, www.sfchronicle.com. 30.
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After 15 years of trying to help such people, almost anyone would be depressed.”67 Arresting and prosecuting the homeless for things like defecating in public, injecting fentanyl publicly, and living on the sidewalk is unethical, say a growing number of progressive political candidates and elected officials, because the people doing those things are victims of racism, poverty, and trauma. When he ran for office in 2018, San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin announced, “We will not prosecute cases involving quality-of-life crimes. Crimes such as public camping, offering or soliciting sex, public urination, blocking a sidewalk, etc., should not and will not be prosecuted.”68 Enforcing the law contributes to further victimization, says Boudin. “Jails do nothing to treat the root cause of crime,” read his campaign platform.69 In early 2020 Boudin said, “There are people who are harmed by the addiction crisis in this city, by open-air drug use and drug sales.”
Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History
by
Nellie Bowles
Published 13 May 2024
And while about 70 percent of shoplifting cases in San Francisco ended in an arrest in 2011, by 2021, only 15 percent did. The movement to decriminalize shoplifting in San Francisco began in 2014 with Proposition 47, the state law that downgraded drug possession and also recategorized the theft of merchandise worth less than $950 as a misdemeanor. It accelerated in 2019 with the election of Chesa Boudin as district attorney. The election of Boudin was thrilling for the city. It occurred during the heights of rage against President Donald Trump, when more and more white people were becoming aware of police violence against black people and demanding criminal justice reforms. London Breed, the city’s first black female mayor, wanted a liberal moderate for district attorney, but Boudin ran to the left as a fierce progressive ideologue whose worldview was shaped by his imprisoned parents, members of the Weather Underground.
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She was combative as I tried to gather facts about what really happened in San Francisco, even denying things her office had previously been proud to say they did. It became a bit surreal. Boudin announced on July 9, 2021: “This week, we launched a project to expunge nonviolent, low-level convictions for 37,000+ eligible SF residents.” A fact-checker wrote to Marshall, asking simply, “Is it accurate to say that, as district attorney, Chesa Boudin launched a project to expunge 37,000 low-level convictions?” “No,” Marshall responded. Boudin is a big proponent of “collaborative courts” that focus on rehabilitation over jail time, such as Veterans Justice Court and Behavioral Health Court. Under his tenure they began to try more cases than ever before.
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No one thinks about it as damning teachers and firefighters to mega-commutes. No one thinks of it as kicking out the middle class. Given the choice between housing people in sidewalk tents or in new buildings that might risk blocking an inch of their view of the bay, San Franciscans, for years, chose the tents. * * * ▪ The anger directed at Chesa Boudin probably could have been contained. The homeless and the street drugs were bad, but it was, at least, fairly consolidated. The petty crime was frustrating, but it wasn’t what lit the city up for revolution. The housing crush was miserable, but it’s been that way for more than a decade now. The spark that lit this all on fire was the school board.
The Passenger
by
AA.VV.
Published 23 May 2022
One need only compare the similarities of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union to the United States’ liberal Democratic party to see how this ideological ambiguity makes political discussion outside the confines of our national borders difficult, but understanding this about United Statesians can help the reader to understand the following story. When Chesa Boudin was elected San Francisco district attorney with only a sliver of a majority at the beginning of 2020, the right-wing propaganda, from both parties, came thundering down from the skies. In the 1970s, Boudin’s parents were members of the far-left Weather Underground, whose militant use of political violence led to a domestic-terrorist designation by the FBI.
Gray Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means for America
by
William McGowan
Published 16 Nov 2010
W., “Johnny,” Applebome, Peter Araton, Harvey Archibold, Randal Arian, Sami al- Ashcroft, John Associated Press (AP) Atassi, Dena al- Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlantic Monthly Atta, Mohammed Audacity of Hope, The (Obama) Auletta, Ken Awad, Nihad Awlaki, Anwar al- Ayers, William (Bill) Backlash (Faludi) Baghdad Museum Baker, Houston Baker, Peter Banderjee, Neela Baquet, Dean Barnard, Anne Barnes and Noble Barstow, David Bart, Peter Bay of Pigs Beck, Glenn Behind the Times (Diamond) Bellafante, Ginia Belluck, Pam Benjamin, Victor Bennett, William Bening, Annette Berger, Joseph Berke, Richard Berman, Paul Bernstein, Nina Bias (Goldberg) Biden, Joe bin Laden, Osama Birach, Michael Birmingham church bombing Black Liberation Army black liberation theology Black Power movement Blair, Dennis C. Blair, Jayson; and Boyd; and Raines Blind Date (Jones) Blodgett, Henry Bloomberg, Michael Blow, Charles Blumenthal, Sidney Body of Lies (film) Bond, Julian Boston Globe; purchase of Boudin, Chesa Boudin, Kathy Boudin, Leonard Bowe, John Bowen, William Bowman, Patricia Boyd, Gerald; and Jayson Blair; memoir; on Miller Boyer, Peter Boyton, Robert Bradbury, Steven G. Bradlee, Ben Bradley, Ed Bratton, William Brawley, Tawana Brentley, Kevin Brodhead, Richard H. Brokeback Mountain (film) Bronner, Ethan Brooks, David Brown, Patricia Leigh Brown v.
The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America
by
Victor Davis Hanson
Published 15 Nov 2021
Some officials, after the George Floyd rioting and arson, simply invented new statutes and discarded old ones. Especially culpable were dozens of state, county, and city prosecuting attorneys elected between 2018 and 2020 by a national progressive funding effort headed by billionaire George Soros. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, newly elected district attorneys such as Chesa Boudin and George Gascón declared an entire assortment of laws inert and announced that crimes from resisting arrest to prostitution would no longer be prosecuted.17 While rioting, looting, and arson plagued big cities—many under quarantine lockdowns—from June to November, very few Black Lives Matter or Antifa lawbreakers were ever arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.