The Voice of the People
... or at least my own
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... or at least my own | | ||||
February 17, 2003
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Perhaps you've seen those advertisements of people standing with cardboard slogans sponsored by some anonymous organization called "wewantchange.com." If you do not live in San Francisco, you would not know about these billboard advertisements that have hit the city in a massive full force campaign over the last year. But this revolution of the street that is taking place on these billboards is using the dollars of the "Hotel Council of San Francisco." Alas, you have to go to the web site to make that discovery, since the financial backers of these billboards are not proud enough to let you know on the actual billboards themselves. What is on the billboards is the listing of a website "wewantchange.com." Change for what, and for whom is what you should be asking? Hello? You don't actually think the "Hotel Council" represents the real "street" voice of san francisco merely because they have waged an expensive advertising campaign by posting photographs of persons holding cardboard slogans? The "Hotel Council of San Francisco" is a business-specific special interest group that does not represent the "street" voice of the people . Do the real people a favor and stop acting like you represent the collective opinion of San Francisco? News flash: You don't represent anything but a pampered, isolated elite that wants to get its way no matter what. Could the "Hotel Council" answer some questions ?
... Who are these people who are photographed? It is also interesting how every "face" of the city (white business executive in suit, a black laborer, an Asian male business executive in a suit, a white bespectacled "mother" and another white be-spectacled concerned politically active female) is represented. The Asian male's cardboard slogan states how he hates having to hold his nose when he walks past alleyways. One of the bespectacled females complains about the poor conditions of the streets. The white business executive complains that the problem of homelessness isn't solved yet even though the city spends $200 million a year.
This last advertised complaint is interesting because there is a wide disagreement on how much money was spent on homelessness in a year. The wewantchange.com site even
mentions this on the site .( Go there yourself ...http://www.wewantchange.com/facts.html .)
"How much money did San Francisco really spend on homelessness last year? Of course, the billboard decided to use the larger figure. Given that the San Francisco Chronicle and Mayor Willie Brown are not always reliable judges of accuracy, the $104 million figure is probably more accurate. Nevertheless one can safely say that there was very little concern for an accurate tally of the numbers by the "wewantchange.com" billboards. The "advertisements" of the black worker states that more homeless people died in San Francisco then any other city ? Come on now. San Francisco does not have sub-freezing temperatures ... and yet more died here than in New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C. or Philadelphia ? The data offered on the website to justify this claim is as follows :
Over 100 people classified as homeless die in San Francisco each year. (Source: San Francisco Medical Examiner data) You have to wonder about data that is sourced: 1) without a date, and 2) with no assistance or fotenote that could help someone locate the actual source. ( Again .... Go there yourself ...http://www.wewantchange.com/facts.html .) Notice the phrase"classified as homeless" was offered for the San Francisco Medical Examiner data, but not for the Chicago Department of Human Services data. This is a potential misleading remark, because the Chicago data offered might only show the homeless who died in the care of the Human Services Department, whereas the Medical Examiner would include all persons who were found dead in the city. Why other cities were not included? If the "Hotel Council" was truly interested in being convincing, one would think that a huge chart would be provided which shows the list of deaths in at least 5 other metropolitan areas. Why is this not the case? In order to be fair-minded, I decided to do my own investigation. Here is what I found by using google under the search topics "homeless deaths"
SAN FRANCISCO 1997
OTTAWA 1999
TORONTO 2000
MINNESOTA 2003
www.nlchp.org ... The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty 2002
ATLANTA 1991
ALBUQUERQUE 2002
www.nlchp.org ... The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty 2002 Now that last bit of information should give one pause. Since "few cities track homeless persons’ deaths, there is currently no national estimate," it was very difficult for me to find statistics of homeless deaths to compare with San Francisco's . There are a lot more places to sleep in San Francisco, and certainly the mild climate attracts the homeless, but these are not reasons for the problem, nor for the deaths. And how can anyone say with a straight face that San Francisco has more homeless deaths than any other city when few cities track homeless person's deaths at all? When there is very little data to make any comparisons, a billboard should not be comparing a potentially inflated amount of money with a number of deaths and then make, suggest, or even infer that city policies are wasting money, especially when homelessness is on the rise all across the nation. But the people behind the "wewantchange.com" billboards are not interested in accuracy or fairness, which is why the "Hotel Council of San Francisco" is nowhere to be found on these billboards. This organization is hiding behind the innoculous "wewantchange.com" because the "Hotel Council" can post biased and unverified opinions in order to lay the groundwork for its own political agenda. The purpose of the "Hotel Council" is merely to stir up people and focus on a problem that is difficult to solve so you can blame the current Board when the problem is not solved. Instead of trying to trace the issue of homelessness to cuts in Federal Aid that began 20 years ago with the Reagan administration, or mention the potential underlying causes of homelessness, the "Hotel Council" chooses to oversimplify the problem to suit what is a larger political agenda. This brings me to the recent San Francisco proposition N called "Care Not Cash" that was supposed to be a response to the homelessness problem. The proposition removed the monthly stipend to homeless people from an average of $395 to about $59 a month. The proposition passed with I think a 65% yes vote (forgive me if I do not state the exact percentage.) A local political opportunist named Gavin Newsome sponsored the act, going around tooting about how the city needs to solve its homelessness problem. But Gavin was just getting some "face time" in preparation for the upcoming Mayorial race. Mr. Newsom is a political puppet who as a supervisor did a lot of behind the scenes work for the city elite and Boss Willie Brown. Gavin Newsom is currently on the hot seat because "in his six-year political career, Newsom had failed to disclose about $11 million in real estate and business loans on his annual reports" (SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/11/BA121875.DTL.) These loans enabled hime to purchase (and thus benefit economically from) some Pacific Heights homes (the real estate market in San Francisco has been a great investment for home owners.) Newsom claims he was given bad legal advice from a deputy city legal attorney whom he has refused to name, even though "state law is abundantly clear that when a public official obtains a personal loan from a private party, he must disclose it." (SOURCE: ibid) In an interview, Louise Renne, who served as city attorney from 1986 to 2002, said there was "no way" Newsom had been mis-advised about the matter on her watch. "I know the deputy city attorneys in the city attorney's office who handle these matters and there is no way they would have been giving advice that you don't report such loans," she said. Current City Attorney Dennis Herrera ...said his office wasn't capable of steering Newsom wrong on the point. "I would reiterate it is utterly implausible that any attorney in our office, let alone any attorney with experience in ethics laws, would provide improper legal advice in response to a question like this," he said. "The law is clear, the requirements are straightforward and directions are explicitly stated on the form itself." (SOURCE: ibid) The poster boy for the "Care Not Cash" proposition is thus a symbol for the same "Hotel Council" who have posted and funded these fake billboard protests under the guise of "wewantchangel.com." He was given loans so he could make some money as a reward for his "services" as a political hack, and now that he got caught he is desperately trying to lie and play the naive fool so he can continue his role as servant to the billionaires that want to control the city council. The whole campaign of "Care Not Cash" was a well orchestrated campaign to give Mr. Gavin Newton an honorable face. The campaign is better summed up with the phrase "We Don't Care, Give Us the Cash" because the reality is the so-called services that were supposed to be replacing the cash were (and are) not even in the proposition, nor were they even guaranteed, and that was on purpose. Instead of trying to educate the public on the inevitable social problems of a homelessness problem that won't go away, these people choose to try and gain from the issue politically. Which indicates how little city patricians like the "Hotel Council" care about this city at all, save on how to make as much money as possible, regardless of the social consequences.
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