I've been seeing articles like this for years, but the people I have talked to in the real world say they don't see any of these problems like how they are reported online. There must be some kind of perception gap going on.
It is definitely there but there is a very widespread effort to demonize SF by any right leaning media organization (even NYT loves to hate on SF). Therefore the death of San Francisco has been widely over exaggerated much like the plight of San Franciscans. That and a lot of the headlines generate solid click through ad dollars.
There are very real problems in SF (as with every other major american city). Take your news sources with a serious dose of skepticism.
> Therefore the death of San Francisco has been widely over exaggerated much like the plight of San Franciscans.
Depends on your definition of 'death'.
I take issue with JumpCrisscross's definition of 'it's not going to be as wealthy as it was.'
In fact I mourn the opposite.
The city is too expensive.
Specifically too expensive for new voices to take risks on interesting food ideas, or unique boutiques, or artistic expression.
The story of San Francisco is the story of gentrification chasing culture. Dating back to development of the Fillmore Jazz culture precipated by poor people moving into the boarded up buildings in what was then Japan town following the US government's rouding up and interning of Japanese residents.
I think San Francisco is dead, or at least 'dying', because all of the unique neighborhoods have become homogenised 'techie' centers; 'dead' because everyone seems unintersted in making efforts to push back on legislatively.
If the majority of your residents are primarily consumers of culture, and monied to the point that producers of culture are unable to afford to live there, then your city will lose any cultural identity.
I think it was perfectly encapsulated in a scene in "The Last Black Man In San Francisco". The protagonist was sitting at a bus stop and a fully nude person walked up and sat at the bus stop. They sat quietly together until the nude person asked how long the protagonist had been waiting. The protagonist answered and added a personal note about thinking it'd just be faster to skateboard instead. They nod in aggreement and then a party bus full of people adorned in what appears to be startup swag stop in front of the bus stop and drunkenly point out the 'hillarity' of this old naked person just sitting at a bus stop.
Something that was unconventional social behaviour was treated as normal by our San Francisco loving protagonist and the drunken tech mob vocally mocked and denigrated that part of the city's identity.
That two minute scene encapsulated the last 15 years in the city for me, and it broke me.
I have heard some people hope that the now many vacant store fronts that suffered the ultimate fate due to the pandemic means the city could have a resurgence, but I have grown cynical, and fear it will just result in further consolidation of ownership in a wealthy few.
It happened to Manhattan too; another city I love. It belongs to the banks and uber wealthy now.
The recreational cannabis rollout was delayed when the city, in my opinion rightly, realised that the dispensary licenses were being granted to a wealthy few. (And likely people who had previously financially lobbied against the legalisation for years.)
Build more housing. Shut down streets to car traffic. Encourage first time business owners. Expand social programs. Fund the arts. Make these wealthy companies buying up property pay for it. If they threaten to leave for Salt Lake or Austin then kindly wish them well.
SF is a highly compartmentalized city. If you walk through some areas to go to work, you see it. If you live just 400m away, you may never. That actually may possibly be part of the problem.
I was in Berkeley for a couple years, living in the hills and working downtown. The two areas are just a 20 minute walk apart, but you wouldn't ever see the deep social issues and poverty on the streets if you never left the hills.
I guess. I stopped going to SF back in 2015 because of how pathetic the city was _back then_ and I've heard from numerous friends who have left the place, pushing south to SV/San Jose, out to Davis and Sacramento, or even leaving the state entirely over the last 6 years that it's only gotten worse.
Or investors in real estate that hired PR companies to try to increase "attractiveness" in areas they would want to develop. If you repeat it enough, it will be believed.
This article is just a piece of the long-running right-wing propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting Chesa Boudin. In SF, it's driven by VCs furious that he's sued gig economy companies for worker misclassification. In other cities, like Philadelphia, the backlash is driven by police unions (the DA in Philadelphia was the subject of a similar string of articles in the local and national press and then won reelection by a 2:1 margin over his closest rival).
I certainly expect that there's a problem to solve here, but it's completely obvious how much this writer is trying to steer my opinion by the third paragraph. I can't treat this as journalism, it's just a constant stream of appeals to emotion and accusations.
Does anyone here pass through that area? How bad is it actually?
Well of course it is - any persuasive piece is only going to link to sources that push the same position it does. That's why I was asking for a personal experience of the place.
My expectation is that there is a drug problem in the area, the 'article' is exaggerating it by an order of magnitude, and that that the real goal is political and not humanitarian.
>There is only so much law enforcement can do, though. San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin resists prosecuting the dealers whom officers arrest, claiming that these individuals, often illegal immigrants, are victims of trafficking (there is scant evidence for this assertion) who should be protected by the city’s sanctuary policy.
>Boudin was born in New York City to Jewish parents.[4] His parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, were Weather Underground members, both convicted of murder.
Wait, he’s saying there is nothing can be done? He’s actually just letting them go? As a SF resident I’d be furious. You damn well know Chesa lives somewhere he doesn’t deal with the ramifications.
Since Chesa is under a recall campaign there is a concerted social media effort to defend him on places like Twitter.
Look up the efforts to discredit Dion Lim who has done stories about the Asian American victims of crimes committed by career criminals who were released by Chesa.
> Why are the crimes of his parents relevant at all?
I've seen Chesa speak once. He referenced his parents when telling his story and has lobbied for their early release [1].
We aren't defined by our parents. Their crimes aren't our own. But if a child defends his parents' crimes and advocates against their prosecution, it's fair to bring it up.
He's also literally said that his father has influenced how he performs his job as a DA. Boudin has done basically everything possible to make his parents relevant to voters.
Chesa Boudin's connection to his imprisoned Weathermen parents and his appeal for clemency has been brought up on HN multiple times.
But not once, not once has anyone ever mentioned why he is seeking their release, as if that's not even relevant.
From the article:
"The move comes after a separate request for Gilbert's clemency last week, reported by the Chronicle, that was signed by 45 faith leaders, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, and Mohandas Gandhi's granddaugther. Also appealing to Gov. Cuomo since the prison in question is in his state, they wrote that "We see daily that elders in prison, especially those with compromised immune systems and underlying health concerns, are in grave danger and many have died. For us, like you and your father before you, opposition to the death penalty is a religious and moral principle.""
"New York's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision data shows that in that state, there have been 3,400 coronavirus cases and 23 deaths in the prison system.
Boudin told the Chronicle there are more than 100 cases at his father maximum security prison, Shawangunk Correctional Facility.
""I'm worried my father could die of COVID-19 in prison. He has always expressed great remorse for the victims and he has never tried to deny or minimize the role he played in a serious crime," he added, to SFGate. "There is no compelling reason for my father to remain incarcerated.""
But the actual HN comments don't mention that. They only ever mention that he wants them released, but never why.
It's a fact that a lot of HN readers never actually click through to read the articles people post anyway, so most people go by the contents of the comments not the articles.
I'd bet you anything that most people who read this thread didn't click through and read that article itself, which is why I quoted it. Now they damn well know what it says.
Dude, because he's defended their actions. Last year didn't he refuse to press charges against a guy snuck up behind two cops and fractured one's skull with a glass bottle and cut the other's face open, all caught on video?
How many rapes has he refused to prosecute?
And then he turns around and blames the cops, even though the reason they are overwhelmed is he keeps letting repeat offenders off to immediately commit new crimes.
His views on justice are incredibly twisted, likely starting with the pretzel he had to turn is brain into to justify his parents being murderers.
"And then he turns around and blames the cops, even though the reason they are overwhelmed is he keeps letting repeat offenders off to immediately commit new crimes."
You're implying the reason cops are abusing their power is that they're overwhelmed?
How about the sadistic, power tripping cops among them that actually murder people, assault or torture them, plant evidence, lie and frame people, etc...
No, being overwhelmed (even if they are) doesn't remotely excuse any of that.
"he keeps letting repeat offenders off to immediately commit new crimes"
What crimes? If they're crimes of drug possession, in my eyes they should be let off because the War on Drugs is unjust, ineffective, and wrong.
No one said anything you think they said. What you are talking about is a completely different subject.
If you actually paid attention to what is going on, this DA is saying the cops aren't bringing him enough cases to prosecute. The cops say they're arresting people with multiple outstanding violent offenses against them, so that they can't ever reduce the number of offenders because they keep getting let back out.
Do you not give a shit about assaults, rapes, robberies and violent people being let out over and over? You one of crazy people who would rather just get rid of all the cops and enjoy some Wild West mob justice/lynchings? Cause humanity went without cops for far longer than it had cops, and we know exactly how that works out.
Yes cops need reformed, but tell that to someone who's daughter was raped by a repeat felon, awaiting multiple trials, who some turd DA thinks restorative justice means license to rape.
Parents shape one's character (usually), where the offspring generally become similar to the parent, or in other cases the antithesis. In this instance, it seems the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
I also had some fun researching how the CIA (I thought was probably) involved in all of this. Found some stuff on Wikispooks.com about Chesa Boudin and also this comment (and more) from [1]:
> The whole Weather Underground was a project of Cointelpro-New-Left. The idea was to brand students as radical and violent marxists and put out propaganda about them to break up genuine student organizing in opposition to the Vietnam War. It’s a classic guilt-by-association strategy – by labeling progressive policies as “Crazy San Francisco” it causes a reactionary policy implementation almost everywhere else. Boudin is so obviously CIA as was Gascon and now we have yet another phony CIA culture war that gets everyone outraged, divided, and distracted.
Drug abuse should not be a law enforcement issue, but a medical issue.
The problems on that street are a failure of the mental health system, lack of social safety nets, and the abject failure of the war on drugs which forces people to use unsafe drugs in unsafe ways instead of making sure that safe drugs can be used safely (which is what legalization or at least decriminalization would help ensure).
"even if that means feces and human despair littering the streets and parks"
The solution is not criminalizing these people but giving them more support.
More bathrooms, not more prisoners.
Safe, clean places for addicts to use drugs, and ensuring that the drugs they get are pure and clearly labeled as to their dosage, which is the best way to minimize unintentional overdoses.
A stronger social safety net so that no one has to be homeless ever again.
More and better mental health services for everyone.
A diversion of wealth and resources from who have way more than enough for themselves and their families to those who have nothing.
That's what we should be doing, not imprisoning more people and ruining more lives.
It's pretty clear at this point that harm reduction policies are failing worldwide and that only the lessons learned at a higher stage of moral development will get us out of this mess. Relationship-focused consequentialist thinking leads to this downward spiral.
> Users are not prosecuted in a huge number of jurisdictions already
Here [1] are some stats from just a week ago from oh-so-liberal New York City:
"Police in New York City continued to arrest and issue summons to thousands of people over simple marijuana possession in the first quarter of 2021--which ended on the same day the governor signed a cannabis legalization bill into law.
Data from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) released late last week showed that police made 163 arrests and handed out 3,687 summons for marijuana possession in the city's final quarter of prohibition. And as has long been the trend both locally and nationally, those enforcement actions disproportionately impacted people of color.
Of the 3,687 possession-related summons issued from January through the end of March, for example, 2,374 were issued to Black people, 1,089 were for Hispanic people and just 102 were for white people. When it comes to arrests, 78 targeted Black people, 70 involved Hispanic people and just six white people were arrested for cannabis.
That's despite the fact that rates of consumption are comparable across those races.
Put another way, Black and Hispanic people accounted for 94 percent of the total marijuana summonses and 91 percent of cannabis arrests in New York City last quarter--a rate that is greatly disproportionate to the racial makeup of the city's population."
And here [2] is Forbes reporting that "An estimated 40,000 people today are incarcerated for marijuana offenses".
That's not to mention all of the other schedule one drugs, which (unlike cannabis) are not legal almost anywhere in the US, and people are still getting arrested for them.
In addition lots of jobs still require passing drug tests, which I would consider persecution.
It completely doesn't matter to me whether the people persecuted or prosecuted are dealers or users. If their only crime is possession they should be free, because drug laws are unjust.
> so you must mean making the chemicals themselves legal to produce and sell.
I do, but not without regulation. Safety regulation and good manufacturing processes overseen by the FDA like every other medicine would save infinitely more lives than the War on Drugs ever did.
"Selling Fentanyl over the counter at Walgreens isn't going to get people off the streets."
Neither is the War on Drugs. That's been an abominable failure.
The real solution for getting people off the streets is to address the causes that they're on the streets for in the first place, which isn't drugs but the miserable environment they grew up in, their broken home lives (where many people's parents are in prison due to a racist, unjust legal system), lack of mental health care or a social safety net, and lack of opportunities and discrimination in their adult lives.
People aren't on the streets because they prefer it to living in a safe suburb with a home of their own. They're there because their life sucks, and they're shooting up because their life sucks. There's a hole in these people's lives which is not going to be filled by sending them to jail and further ruining their and their family's lives.
You could argue that it's not society's job to fill that hole, but it's exactly that thinking which has gotten us the cold-blooded society we're suffering through now.
Finally, I'll say that I am for full cognitive liberty among adults. It is your own business and no one else's what you feel, what you think, and what your mind state is, and no means of achieving your desired state of mind should be restricted unless it harms someone else, which using neither cannabis nor Fentanyl nor any other drug does.
Tolerating homelessness and the tent cities and open air drug use which victimize nothing but the eyes and noses of the uptight need not be analogous with tolerating rampant car break-ins, package theft and other petty "crime with a victim". Furthermore, the "real crime" that greatly reduces quality of life is not necessarily committed by the people shooting up on the sidewalk.
Enforce laws against theft.
Enforce laws against public indecency and disorderly conduct.
Enforce laws which will have the most positive impact on everyone's quality of life.
People being homeless isn't the problem. People being allowed to get away with all these other behaviors that reduce quality of life for everyone else is the problem.
You may think it isn't a crime to shit in public, and stand in the middle of the street moaning and pissing yourself because you are so high you are mostly catatonic.
So I hope you and people like you never move to where I live.
"You may think it isn't a crime to shit in public, and stand in the middle of the street moaning and pissing yourself because you are so high you are mostly catatonic."
You think these people prefer to shit in public?
Lots of them are sick (mentally and physically) and drugs and alcohol can make one lose control of one's bowels or bladder.
When you have to go you have to go, and there are very few public toilets in SF, and many businesses just won't let homeless people or people who look poor use their bathrooms, especially not in places where there's a large homeless population, like the Tenderloin.
So where are these people supposed to go?
If SF residents really wanted to do something effective about all the shit and piss in the streets they'd build many, many more public bathrooms and lift people out of poverty. But they don't.
"You think these people prefer to shit in public?"
Yes I do. Shitting in a plastic bag is available to everyone. Peeing in privacy behind a dumpster is available to everyone. Taking any half assed steps towards public hygiene is available to everyone. I've seen a homeless drug addict stick the water fountain bubbler into his bunghole while he was washing his ass with it.
The same reason they aren't shitting into bags and throwing them in the trash, or peeing into storm drains, is the same reason they're homeless - addiction makes people into sociopaths.
People using everywhere as their bathroom certainly decreases quality of life for everyone else but it's not even a blip on the radar when you lose a couple packages a month and your car gets broken into once a year.
In other parts of the country junkies take day gigs. Installing roofing and screeding concrete are two of the stereotypical ones.
Obviously stealing cats or being a porch pirate is a better ROI with the side benefit that you get to be your own boss. But junkies don't do these things to anywhere near the same extent in other parts of the country because they can't get away with them to the same extent. Addiction is a powerful motivator. If stealing stuff to get your fix is likely to result in withdrawal in a holding cell people will find the next best way to get their fix.
Drugs should not be so expensive that people should have to steal to afford them. Their prices could be massively lowered if they were legal, since the cost to produce them is almost negligible.
People with severe mental health issues have trouble holding down jobs, so I'd be very surprised if the people the original article talks about who are running around screaming at invisible demons could manage to work installing roofing or doing anything else.
If you're too far gone to get a day gig you're usually also too far gone to have the industriousness required to cause real problems for society. If you're screaming at demons on the sidewalk you also aren't breaking into stuff. The people who have made a regular income stream out of victimizing people are higher functioning than that. They're just regular old tweakers picking the best option available to them. The former needs mental health care. The latter needs their best option to be something that doesn't victimize other people (whether you use a carrot or stick to achieve that matters not).
True. But the statistical apple only falls so far from the statistical tree.
You gonna put trust the future of your community to the kid of some "activists" or are you gonna trust the future of the community to someone raised in a household where the parents were a little more professional?
Furthermore, the apple in question has spoken at length about their beliefs and seems to have only learned that you can't bomb your way into making people agree with you. It's one thing to judge someone by their parents when you have no indicators or when you have indicators that they're different from their parents. It's a much safer bet when you have evidence confirming they are the same.
I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt but that's impossible to do for Chesa Boudin since there is no doubt.
I hope the people who have so much sympathy for Venezuelans fleeing the country are willing to open their own country's doors to them.
Somehow, though, I suspect those very same people will instead give them the middle finger and build a wall to keep them out, because they really don't give a shit about Venezuelans but just want to score political points by being against a left-wing government.
It's not sustainable to take in unlimited numbers of immigrants from every badly-governed country in the world. It'd be way better to fix Venezuela's government so people don't need to flee anymore.
Pretty much every issues they are laying at the feet of our DA predates his tenure by decades. He’s got responsibility to work to improve the situation now but the previous approaches did not work any better and he’s certainly not the cause of these problems.
It's true that San Francisco had a lot of problems even before he was DA. The problem is that not only is he not making them any better, but that he's actively making them all worse.
Prosecutorial discretion is up to the DA, and he's quoted in an article linked to this one defending it. Maybe the residents believe prosecuting crimes would help.
"Tucked deep in San Francisco's sixth district is Dodge Place, a residential street located in the notorious Tenderloin neighborhood. It's been overtaken by drug users who come to get high, descend into madness, and then destroy themselves and their surroundings."
Never even considering that there could be any causes for any of this other than drugs.
Many people have mental health issues even before trying any drugs, and many self-medicate or try to cope with street drugs because the established mental health system and social safety net has failed them.
"At any given time, dozens of people congregate in the small alley to inject or smoke their substance of choice."
Where else are they supposed to go?
Many of them are homeless, after all, and if they have homes they may not want to do drugs in front of their families so as not to set a bad example or because their families would not be supportive.
In some countries there are clean facilities where you can get clean drugs and clean needles and be monitored by medical staff.
In the US you're forced to use mystery drugs that you could easily overdose from because you neither know what you're getting, what the purity is, or the dosage is, use dirty needles, and/or do your drugs on the street where you can get attacked while you're passed out.
This is a failure of society, not of drug abusers, who are victims and need medical help not sensationalistic, moralistic screeds.
"Teenagers to seniors, of all races and demographics, jab needles into their bloody, bloated limbs, hands, and feet."
They're bloody and bloated because they're not getting adequate medical care.
Again, a failure of society and of the medical system.
"One inexplicably common figure is a man neatly dressed for a day at the office who drives syringes deep into other people's necks. Soon after imbibing, users stand still as statues but bent at the waist, colloquially known as the "fentanyl fold." Some collapse and crawl, while others sit listlessly on the curb, lining the walls."
What many people who've never tried heroin (which is probably what this reporter is describing) don't understand is that when the high hits you feel incredibly good, and users are just paying attention to the overwhelming internal sensations as the outside world becomes not as relevant.
So give these people somewhere clean and safe to lie down, if the mere sight of them harshes your mellow and offends your delicate sensibilities so much.
"Or they wander, run, or flail, screaming at each other as well as invisible demons."
More mental health funding would be in order here, not demonization of people suffering from mental issues.
"Many urinate and defecate in their clothes, on the pavement or doorsteps, despite the 24-hour facilities nearby."
24-hour facilities which are dangerous to go in because they're windowless and you could be jumped when you get out... and "nearby" is often not nearly near enough if you're sick or under the influence of drugs that make you lose control of your bowels or bladder.
Again, there's a right way to deal with all these issues, which is to provide clean, safe facilities for drug use and make drugs legal.. and a wrong way: which is to demonize drug users and support the failed policy of prohibition.
>what does this even mean exactly in this day and age
From the fine article:
>Scores of dealers, nearly all young males from Mexico and Central America, openly sell narcotics.
Score means 20.
Scores to me mean at least 40 (more than one score). Is the writer implying that there are at least 40 drug dealers in a tiny dead-end street [0]?
that's like arguing about the proper use of the word "decimate." but I don't think the above commenter was referring to this article, they were either referring to some other article about CRT or about the publication as a whole
“Scores” is also used as a rhetorical device to mean “too many” (in fact, I doubt more than 10% of people can define “score” as 20). “Few”, meaning “more than a couple” often implies that there isnt enough of something to matter. Id say that -given that turf violence is a thing - even a couple (two), of competing drug dealers are too many in “tiny dead-end street”.
Human minds are not compilers, we’re capable of nuance. Being as pedantic as when you're programming is counter productive in human conversation.
the commenter you're replying to is arguing that the article is referring to a single street instead of the larger tenderloin area, because racism/xenophobia has caused them to irrationally believe that a single street has "scores" of drug dealers, as opposed to the entire Tenderloin area, which makes much more sense.
"The sky is falling all the time" is the modus operandi of such alarmism.
Yet in actual reality, SF is SO bad that literally half of the world's tech professionals are crowding themselves into the city.
In the conservative American cities with 'better policies' and 'better policing' and near zero taxes to 'promote business', crickets are chirping instead of the prophesied economic miracles.
Free market religion combined with cultural conservatism not being able to stomach their belief not being proven true, needing to make hit pieces about the successful 'heretics'.
"How can they be successful without having the faith and doing how we do."
There’s a lot of “ideological boilerplate” being thrown around in these comments. @dang maybe you can step in and moderate the responses? This right-wing propaganda seems to be triggering a flamewar.
I see two things wrong with that statement: 1: the obvious attempt whip up racism/xenophobia, and 2:
Score means 20. Scores to me mean at least 40 (more than one score). Is the writer implying that there are at least 40 drug dealers in a tiny dead-end street [0]?
In the article linked by this one about the sanctuary policy, The DA defends not prosecuting drug crimes by claiming it's a way to deport offenders. It seems he and he author are of a similar mind on who police are arresting.
As I've said elsewhere, why do you think that statement was talking about just that street? It's totally reasonable to think there's at least 40 drug dealers in the whole Tenderloin.
