 Well, thank you very much for being here tonight. It's a real honor not only to be in front of so many readers, which I really appreciate, but also some folks here who, Louise, who I've seen in many different iterations at the Chronicle. David, certainly I admire his work, and we've talked professionally. Belva, I've been interviewed by her. Payback comes tonight. And then meeting Chris tonight. It's really, really an honor. I trust that by now most of you, perhaps all of you, have had a chance to read Season of the Witch. It's the law now, isn't it? I think. I have to say I have recommended it personally to so many people because I think it's such a terrific primer on a really consequential period of change in this city. And the thing I loved about the book is that even those of us who are pretty much familiar with the institution, people, and events that the book, in this book, had to be impressed with not only the fresh and vivid detail that David found, but also his ability to put it together in a compelling context. Yet, I have to ask, David, did you really have to call one chapter on the Chronicle the Daily Circus? Truth be told, I thoroughly enjoyed that chapter about Scott Newhall era at the Chronicle. And as David put it, the cool clink of ice in a chrome shaker could always be heard in the pages of the Chronicle. Now, I'll say we try and be a little more sober these days, perhaps too sober if you saw David's Facebook post about the Chronicles post-election covers. But anyway, it's really a. We'll have a drink later, John. We'll work it through. I think that you've got to have that shaker going before we can really discuss it. But I know we've got a lot of rich material to cover tonight about that evolution, as David describes it, from enchantment to terror to deliverance in the city of love. Let me start. I have to ask you, David, in reading the book and you really put together a great narrative of a period in San Francisco history. How did you pick that particular time frame? And as you were going through the writing process, did it expand or contract or change in some way? Did you know from the day you started researching it exactly what it would be? Yeah, I just thought as a journalist, it was the great story that hadn't been told. And of course, if this had been New York, there would have been 40 books about it. New York tends to be a pretty provincial and insular publishing capital. And I learned this when I started Salon back in the 90s. And suddenly, the East Coast was struck by how there was intellectual life west of the Mississippi. And Salon was showcasing some of this terrific writing. So yeah, this to me was the untold, the great untold story. And I couldn't believe that when you looked at this period of time and how much convulsion, how much creativity, how much change there was within such a short span of time, I couldn't think of any other American city that had been a stage for this kind of dramatic history. And I would tell my kids who I raised in San Francisco, my two sons when I was driving them to school every day about these different places in the city. We drove by People's Temple. We drove by the Fillmore and tell them these stories. And they were gobsmacked, they say, in England. And so I knew that in a younger generation, this was complete foreign territory to them. And I knew that I had to, before I got too old, put it on paper for future generations. But in terms of the time frame. Well, I always had that time frame pretty much in mind between the summer of love and not just the first Super Bowl victory for the 49ers. But really, the book concludes its true climaxes with how the city came together to deal with the AIDS epidemic. And that, to me, was the true test of San Francisco values when the rest of the country under Reagan was spurning sick young men. In fact, other cities were putting sick AIDS patients as we remember those of us in our generation on airplanes and having them dumped on San Francisco. This city could have gone back into the abyss. People were terrified. They didn't know what at that point about the medical and scientific basis for the disease. And instead of panic, giving into panic and fear and fury, as the city had done so recently with the killings of our mayor and Supervisor of Milk, and all the kind of traumatic things we'd been through, the city instead went forward. The city came together, starting with the people on the front lines at the AIDS ward at San Francisco General, those incredible nurses and social workers and doctors and the gay community and the lesbian community. All the people on the front lines, then showing through example that this is the way you dealt with an epidemic like this through compassion and coming together and through the leadership of Mayor Feinstein, who, I believe, was the right person at the right time to address this. So it ends definitely on a high note, as you know, if you've read the book, with Cleve Jones' story. Cleve was a great hero of mine, the young activist who came up with Harvey Milk. And he lives at the end. He survived long enough to enjoy the medical benefits that were starting to come online, and he lived. And so that's the way I wanted to end the book. Bill with Davis has often said that journalism is the first draft of history. I'm interested in your perspective as a journalist during this period. First of all, what was it like? What were some of the challenges? And how well do you think the journalists of that era were grasping this incredibly tumultuous period around them? Well, those of us who weren't really sort of bold over by the number of stories, the number of headlines every day that were just popping up from who knows where, and trying to keep that so-called journalistic distance between us, I particularly had a hard time with that, keeping that distance. I'd come out of the black press, black radio, black newspaper writing. Those are advocacy kinds of journalism that you do there, because you're there to represent a certain kind of people. So I had this difficulty separating myself. So I was covering the age story, and then I was asked to record the first instructional about testing by the health department. So I joined Dr. Volmering, and we recorded this. And up to maybe five years ago, I still had people walking up to me in the supermarket saying, thank you very much for saving my life. So you're a journalist, you're trying to cover this story, but you are touched by the human depth of some of the things that you're revealing to people. And I found it interesting to read what my friend here had to say about stories that I was involved in, in addition, to trying to recall it and to write about it. And one of the reasons that I wrote my own book was because as the years were going by, I knew my memory was failing. Details were not always the way I remembered them, because some of them you remember things because of who you are. So that's why I asked for a co-writer to just double check me. I'd write something, and then I'd say to Vicki Haddock, you know, this is chapter blanky blank, go over and find out how much, how grounded we are in some of these things. When I was talking about people's temple, I mean, my housekeeper taking care of my children was a member of people's temple, and it lived with my house and took care of my children, then went off to Guyana, we've never heard. So we assume that she's one of those unidentified bodies here, but yet every day on the new news I had to report that story. So it was a very complicated existence, I knew that my view was going to be different from any other journalist that was interviewing people about it. I knew that Miss Glover was there washing dishes in my kitchen and is now gone. And so there are other stories, you think about the events, and I found myself wrapped up in the events for one reason or the other, and I thought that capturing the personal involvement, the personal involvement, checking against the facts of the story would present a different kind of view. So that's why I chose the title, never in my wildest dreams did I think crossing the racial barrier to become a reporter would put me in the position to have this unique experience as a black woman in America covering some of the top stories that often had a racial double. Louise, for any, this period also coincided with your transition from being an attorney to being a political figure in town. How did that come about? Well, very, in this way, just by way of background, my family and I lived in the Hades-Ashbury during this time, next door to the Grateful Dead. I think Louise probably has her own book to write about that. I think of the word contact high, I think of that. Just very quick story, I was with the state attorney general's office and had a case against some hippies from San Francisco who had gone up there and were dealing drugs and whatnot and had them in court and the judge threw the case out saying illegal search and seizure, and a little later I got a phone call from LA, it turned out they were the Manson Killers. But at any event, my stint with the attorney general really is one reason why I ended up being on the board of supervisors. At that time I was with the environmental unit of the attorney general's office and we were always suing San Francisco. So I obviously had come to Diane Feinstein's attention but then I had ended up running the campaign to retain Chief Justice Rose Bird who for the first time was first woman on the Supreme Court and being challenged. After the assassinations, what Diane Feinstein did was ask the neighborhood and business organizations within district two to interview candidates to be the new supervisor. And so I was called to for an interview and I remember coming home and telling my husband, well that's the end of that, they're not gonna like my answer as much but the next thing I knew I was one of the ones that then Mayor Feinstein interviewed and went over to her house and we had a conversation and the next day she called me and said, would you be the supervisor? So I had never been in the board of supervisors' chambers before then and I remember that the first meeting I didn't say anything and it was Marshall Kildoff in your paper who said, she didn't say a word at which point my father said, huh, well that'll be the last time. And I think it was right. But it was hardly Marshall Kildoff's last right observation, he still works on her head at the roll-up page. Chris Mosconi, obviously in those dark days of 1978 for a lot of folks around San Francisco it felt like the world was unraveling and it was in a very personal way for you and your family. What was your sense of particularly the time leading up to, I mean it had to be a challenging time for your father to be mayor of this city? I think about that a lot because from time to time I do dwell on those days and those times and reading the book and other articles and just certain times it brings me back to that. So I was 16 when that happened and so before that I'm in high school. I'm looking to be my own person in high school find my own way which I think I felt like I had it easy because my dad was the mayor and I felt really, I don't wanna say popular but with a lot of people, a lot of times and I felt very comfortable. And so at the one hand I was finding my way in high school making basketball team or trying to meet girls at other high schools, the usual stuff. But then to your point I remember coming home and my dad who before that when I grew up he was a senator and lived for most of the time. Every week he would come home on the weekends but he had an apartment in Sacramento so didn't see him every day. But now he was in San Francisco, he was home every day and we saw a lot more of him which was great but I did notice things were tense and I remember one time and specifically we were sitting down him and I on the couch. We weren't that close up until he came back to San Francisco because he like I said had been really living most of the time in Sacramento and back and forth. But when he got home and this one night we were watching probably sports on TV and he was shaking his hand and I noticed and he asked me, we had a real conversation right then, how are you doing, how are you doing? And we talked like father and son and I noticed a strain, I noticed a strain and then he would get some phone calls and there was something going on. Obviously there was a lot going on and I didn't know, of course I knew but I didn't know how much of a toll it was taking on him because again I was in my own world a little bit and he wanted that in a sense. My brother and my two sisters, we were all at school and sure we were exposed to politics and what was going on and he wanted us to know a little bit but he also wanted us to have a normal life. So your question is brings me back to that and I do remember him straining and getting these phone calls with staff I'm sure or somebody in hush tones and it was a tight time but it was a special time for me because I felt like he was treating me a little bit like a young man then and we had a little more of a rapport, a lot more and it was really, really special. Belva, is it journalist that you sense that tenseness in the city during that period? Oh my goodness, yes, I mean Randy Schultz is one of the regular reporters on my show and that's why I became involved with the whole AIDS situation so early on because he was out in front of that story way away and then there was a whole thing of people's temple with having this woman who I found out belonged to the temple, taking my garbage, paper garbage out of my house to the temple for examination in hopes of finding something that could help Jim Jones. So I was, I had this odd position of trying to be this person who's standing away from this when it was just reaching out and grabbing me personally so very tight and much of those years were spent in, I don't know what kind of life I was leading that all these stories were creeping into it but it was difficult to say the least it was. To this day, you know, Chris to your point, I hear a lot of politicians in this city talk about Moscone's election and how they were inspired and seemed like almost an era of endless possibilities particularly as the city moved left. I'm interested at least in your impression of how these events, particularly the assassination changed politics in San Francisco, was it almost Kennedy-esque and sort of an end of an era or end of idealism or what do you think? From my point of view, as I said, before I was on the board of supervisors, I was not directly involved in San Francisco politics but obviously fought it and there's no doubt in my mind that the assassinations were cataclysmic. I mean, I think everybody was in a state of shock that this had happened and it really did cause, I think, a tremendous change and then it seemed like there was one thing after the other. I remember being on the board of supervisors to this day, I can remember Harry Britt who was then on the board coming in and talking to me about AIDS and we actually went and directly to talk to Diane, Mayor Feinstein and of course, as we know, the rest evolved. Interesting enough, I mean, I think how San Francisco handled that crisis was amazing, just amazing and I think that's the opinion of everybody today. What's also very interesting to me is that Paul Volberding that you referred to, Belva, who was at San Francisco General at that time and so involved in it, is still involved in many meaningful ways, actually internationally now, he's still at UCSF and he's been doing a tremendous amount of work with veterans and he and his family are still doing lots of good work. So it really, I think, was a monumental time in San Francisco and just in many ways unforgettable. If I could just follow up on the assassination question, how it felt for someone like me who had graduated from UC Santa Cruz and came to San Francisco, the city I'd loved, my dad was an old movie actor and a theater actor and he'd brought us up from LA often when I was a kid growing up, he performed with the Geary and the Curran. So I'd fallen in love with the city early on as I write in the book. But particularly then as an activist, an anti-war activist and a student at Santa Cruz and someone who had been kicked out of a military school over the Vietnam War where I went in Los Angeles, I was very caught up like thousands and thousands of other people with this idea that we were losing our country. This terrible war kept grinding on and on, there's terrible racial problems in the cities. Our government didn't seem to be capable of dealing with it and the leaders who were addressing it in eloquent and beautiful ways, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy Brothers and George Moscone here in San Francisco, one after the other, they were being cut down and killed. And so for a young person, even if you weren't related to one of these leaders, you felt this deep affinity with them because they were your hope. They were our hope, particularly if you were young, if you were looking at going to Vietnam yourself or going to jail, these were the people who we looked to rescue the soul of our nation and the soul of the city. And many of the same tensions that I've studied, as you know, the Kennedy presidency quite a bit and wrote a whole book about it and my new book also touches on that and these terrible tensions that were building within the Kennedy presidency over the Cold War. As JFK, who was terrified of the idea that we would stumble into a nuclear war, tried to establish these peace channels with Moscow and with Havana and the terrible blowback that he got from the hardliners in his administration, from the Pentagon and the CIA. There were those similar tensions here in the city as George Moscone and Harvey Milk and others tried to lead the city forward. And it was kind of an old boys network that ran City Hall for years and George Moscone was really the first mayor who started to open up City Hall to minorities, to women, to gays. And so when he started to feel the blowback and the pressure from the police department, from the old boys network, really it was on a smaller scale those same tensions that JFK had experienced before. And so when he too was then cut down here in San Francisco, the city that we'd all looked to to be kind of our progressive capital, kind of helping lead the country forward, it was really the final blow for a lot of people. And so a lot of the radicalism and the extremism that I think we're starting to bubble up at that point came from this really desperate and dark place, a feeling that the system just could not work. And any time the system produced a great leader who was capable of taking the city or the country forward, they were cut down. But you know, can I add one thing? You know, I agree with you and it's great to hear the perspective of everybody because we're all coming from that, our own personal experiences. San Francisco survived and here we are. And it could have been a really a long time until it did survive. It could have been a lot worse. We all have stories about, I think eventually how the healing began and how people came together. And I just remember my own experience, of course, I won't ever forget some of the things that happened with my family and with our friends and how the healing and our own personal lives began. But San Francisco is a city, you know. I love San Francisco and I hate San Francisco. I mean, truly it's like a relationship. And I mean it, you know. So it's not every day, all the time great. But I guess my point here is we survived. We're moving forward and when there's bumps in the road, but everything happens here, right? And then it goes out to the rest of the world. And sometimes I can't believe the things that happen here. Like really this has happening, but that just means I'm getting older, I think so. It does seem to be interesting in your perspective on this, as a fellow journalist, it seems like whatever is happening here, I just got back from Pueblo, Mexico at a conference. It seems like whatever is happening here, our reputation gets amplified outside the area, whether it's gay rights, whether it's the craziness of the cults. You name it, tech right now is where everybody's talking about, they see this phenomenal prosperity. I'm sure you traveled during that period and people had to shake their heads at San Francisco, what's going on there? Well, you know, there's a resilience somehow built into the era we breathe, because I don't think very many other cities anywhere could have handled as many crises, not connected one with the other, but as many crises that created different kinds of emotional drains on you than this city did. The leadership stepped forward, the communities came around people when it came to the age crisis, the community came around when the people of people's temple were suffering. Even in the worst of times, when it meant that radical seemed in charge, during the whole, I don't know, many of the revolutions that we had, but still there was a spirit of, we're gonna pull out of this, and we did from each of those times. We may still carry some of those scars I feel in myself, but I couldn't think of being anywhere else in having to digest all of that. David, in researching your book, you had to have been thinking, okay, is there a comparable model that I can look at elsewhere? Is there anything even vaguely comparable in any other city of this relatively short time frame to go through so much? Well, there's this new book, City on Fire, have you heard about this book? It's the best seller. Who's read it? No one yet, because it's about New York. Who cares? But New York obviously went through its own traumas and convulsions I think in the 70s as the financial collapse hit the city hard, rising crime, but at the same time, in the midst of all this kind of urban scruff, there was a great kind of Renaissance, cultural Renaissance in New York, Patty Smith and the Lower East Side and all the great bands, Talking Heads and all the clubs and the art scene was exploding. So that seems to go together sometimes and that was true of San Francisco even during those rough years in the 70s, South of Market, which was a leather district then, not a tech district. These hardcore bars and art galleries and so on, a lot of experimental work being done. So in a way I think San Francisco misses some of that now. There's so much wealth and so much misery too on the streets and the gap is wider and wider. And yet artists are being pushed out of course and we don't have the kind of creative base that we did have in the 60s and 70s when you actually could get a place, a shared a place in the hate for 40 bucks a month. Who remembers those days? 40 bucks a month in the hate. And so you had the bands like Janice Joplin, Big Brother, you had the Grateful Dead moving in next door to Louise. Did they practice Louise? We'll get to that later David. Free concerts in the park. So there was this magical, those of you who lived it or who read the book, what a magical time it was. And you need a city that number one respects that and helps create a space for that and is affordable enough for people who aren't engineers or in marketing executives to live in. I'm interested in some of the reactions to the premises of David's book, namely that the period of rallying around the AIDS was really something that brought the city together. Did you see that, Louise? I like that. Absolutely. I mean, when you talk about the rallying around the AIDS, the candle marches down Market Street every year for I don't know how many years and just a lot of effort made, I think, to make the city so that it was calmer, if you will, although I don't know if somebody said earlier, really triggered my memory of that night of the riots after Dan White was acquitted. I will never forget that night. I was in City Hall and with Diane Feinstein and Jack Molinari and we had no idea what was going to happen. It was just so much out of control. And of course, many people remember Calruth Silver going out into the crowd thinking she was gonna calm it down. Well, I think she got something on her head to hit her, but it really was a tense time. But that said, I think people did rally together. As I said, we had the marches. There were just numerous efforts made to bring everybody in and helping to solve the AIDS crisis. And I frankly give great credit to Mayor Diane Feinstein. As I said, I didn't know her really before I became a supervisor, but she genuinely cared about this city and I know how hard she worked in trying to go out in all of the neighborhoods to say, hey, we're a great city and we're always going to be a great city. We will survive and we'll be really on one of the great cities forever. And she was the daughter of a doctor and married to a doctor. And I think she brought a kind of medical protocol to dealing with the disease instead of this irrational fear. I never had, when I was on the board of supervisors, I think as many of you know, Laguna Honda was one of my favorite projects to be involved in. And most people, I won't say most, but many people you say, do you wanna go visit a hospital and see sick people and people in need or say, fine, how about tomorrow? With Diane, it was never a problem. If I said, I think there's a problem out at Laguna Honda about that, let's go see. She was out there and it was handled and San Francisco General, I mean, she really would spend a lot of time making sure that the hospitals and the health system was going to work for everybody. She really felt strongly on that, you're right, David. It was really an isolating time for San Francisco as well, was it not? I mean, here the city is feeling this collective crisis and yet the President of the United States is not even using Ronald Reagan, it's not even using the word AIDS. I mean, that had to have been frustrating for a lot of San Franciscans seeing this epidemic. Well, I seem to be going back to this topic, but it was a very special time in terms of being so close to Randy and getting almost daily bulletins on all these things that were happening. But I think, again, I don't wanna seem pollyannish, but I think when it was time to be concerned and to know how serious this was to respond in a civilized and logical manner as to what do we do next, we had all the ingredients here and somehow or other they managed to come together just at a time when they needed to. So I think being a reporter surrounded by all of this, my salvation came in having faith in the people of the city. But you know, Randy, I'm glad, Belva, that you invoked the name of Randy Schultz. How many people remember that name, Randy Schultz? That's wonderful. That's kind of touching, actually. I knew Randy, not probably as well as you did, but he was a hero of mine. And of course, he was the great writer that was produced by number one, the gay revolution in the city, and then by the AIDS epidemic. And his book and the band played on, I still think stands the test of time as the great chronicle of the plague years. Brilliant book. And as you know, from reading it, he interweave so many stories in this epic tale of what happened not just in San Francisco, but across the country. But you know, Randy was a controversial figure too. It wasn't all sweetness and light. I mean, even within the gay community, the lesbian community, there were very angry debates over how to deal with the AIDS epidemic. Some people over the bathhouse issue, do you shut down the bathhouses or not? You know, Dr. Mervin Silverman was in the middle of that and a lot of people in the gay community felt that this was part of a new crackdown, a new repression that you had to keep the bathhouses open, even if they were vectors for spraying the disease. So, you know, the gay community itself was at war within itself, in some ways, and debating these questions of how you proceed. So, I'd say for the first part of the epidemic, it really was a terrifying time. And you had this hostile national political environment with, you know, right-wing fundamentalist Christians saying this was God's revenge on gays. And these were people who had the eyes and the ears of the, I mean, of the ear of the President of the United States, President Reagan, who basically, you know, fell along similar lines. I interviewed his son, Ron Reagan, and, you know, he was frantically trying to tell his father that he had to evolve on this issue and he had to do the right thing. So there was a battle within the first family. There was a battle in the gay community here. It really was a time of great, you know, uncertainty and fear and rage. And, of course, then the activism that came out of the AIDS epidemic, to act up and all of that. I mean, you know, yes, Diane Feinstein was the mayor, the right mayor at the right time, but a lot of this was bubbling up from the community itself. And the community felt that it had to take care of itself because no one else was going to. And when Mayor Feinstein then stepped in, at least I think the community felt, finally we have somebody, a political leader, who, by the way, would go to the conference of mayors and also argue for a national approach to AIDS. So she tried to play the national role that the President of the United States should have, but was unwilling to. Of all these myriad stories that you have in here, David, which one do you think was either under-reported or under-appreciated at the time for its significance? Wow. Well, I think nationally all the stories that came out of San Francisco were under-reported or badly reported because San Francisco was just seen as this kind of a freakish outpost in America, you know. As Paul Cantner from Jefferson Airplane said, you know, 49 square miles surrounded by reality. And you know, I think we embraced that too. We embraced our exceptionalism here too and how unique we are culturally and politically. So I think these stories were probably fairly well-reported within the city. I think the information was getting out through the city. I mean, there were definitely some dark elements that weren't, you know, fully exposed. I mean, I still don't think we know the full story of the Symbianese Liberation Army, which I know Belva covered, and how this Khan, you know, Sen Q, Donald Freeze was able to get out of Soledad so easily and then establish himself as this revolutionary leader. As I suggest in the book, I think in some ways he was a creation of this repressive police system that was developing, that was infiltrating people into the prison rights movement and so on. He was someone that, you know, that I think the criminal justice system thought they could use and I think he went off the reservation and he really began to believe he was this great revolutionary hero. So, you know, I think some of that could use some more investigative reporting on the people's temple on Jonestown, on some of the people behind Tim Jones or Jim Jones and who were involved in that. I touch on some of it, how Jim Jones actually, you know, I think corrupted the local political leadership to an extent and they played into his hands. But, you know, that wasn't being reported at the time sufficiently and we know why. The Chronicle in some ways was compromised itself. The city editor who was very close to the people's temple. So, but by and large I think this was a story, all these stories that the people of San Francisco knew about and were just reeling from and didn't know how to absorb it. And it took I think a matter of decades before I could write this book and have enough perspective on it to make it make sense. You know, so many, if we could just kind of bring it a little bit to the present day taking the context of these events. So much has happened since that period. We had the Loma Prieta earthquake. We had the same sex marriage revolution. We had, you know, certainly medical marijuana. Sanctuary city has become a big issue. Although, I have to observe the one thing we haven't heard in these Republican debates is the pejorative San Francisco Democrat. I think they might have a hard time comparing supply side with what's happening in this economy. Yeah. But, but I saw, I'm wondering. It's true, we're not the punching bag so much this year are we? Not as much, except for Sanctuary city, certainly. It's an immigration. But I'm wondering, David and others may wanna please chime in to give your thoughts. Do you see a sequel here and what's happening? Maybe you could call it Season of the Rich. I like that, John. Excuse me while I make a phone call to my publisher. Anyway, but it seems like we have an interesting period that could, I don't know. Well, maybe Louise could talk about that since Louise and I are involved in a group called Vision SF that's trying to do something about this exploding wealth gap and how we can manage it better and make sure that all of San Francisco is included. Louise, why don't you take a stab at that? What do I set him up for that or what? I think I was set up. Well, there are a number of us who, first of all, to answer the question, are we today a sequel to what happened back in the 60s? I think everything does evolve, but I think today what we have is a very different kettle of fish than what we had back in the 60s. Back in the 60s, we did have a large group of people who came into San Francisco, for lack of a better word, the hippies into the Haight-Ashbury. And the Haight-Ashbury was changed in many ways. Melville, you can correct me if I am wrong, but I had always thought of the Haight-Ashbury at that time of being one of the more integrated places in San Francisco. And with the invasion, if you will, of the hippies, some of that changed, although not too, too dramatically. But what we have today, at least in my opinion, is obviously a huge influx of techies. I myself hold nothing against techies. I think there are many, many bright people, but I do not believe the situation has been handled properly. At all. I think that the way in which planning has gone forward is with very little thought. There is no urban design plan anymore, and to the extent there is, it's honored in the breach. There is no connection, in my view, anymore between planning and transportation. Today, when I took the Muni Metro over, I was struck by the lines and lines of people waiting to take the trains to get home. Much less I won't talk about the traffic, but in short, I think there are similarities in, as I say, between in the 60s, the invasion of the hippies, today the techies, but the techies are not running things in this city. Others are taking advantage of their being here, and I don't feel the situation is being handled the way it ought to be. It's one reason why we have an affordable living crisis. When I lived in the hate next door, there was a professor at San Francisco State and some from community college. There were a lot of working class people. I doubt they still would be able to live there anymore, and that is not good for a city. So, that's my long way of saying what I think. Well, I've been Miss Sunshine about all of this until Louise said the magic word, and the reason is because I've been unable to do anything about that, and that is the failure of this city to integrate African-Americans into its structure. The population is down less than 5%. Every move that's been made that was supposed to be beneficial has had a weight on it that was so heavy that it drowned or was tripped, and the hope of those of us who thought that as the city moved along and in every case has rolled out the carpet, the red carpet, or its checkbook or whatever it took to change the trend around has not happened even with the best of political intentions, and I gave up some time ago thinking that I would be the one who would discover why that was. What I had to learn to do was to what I would do at the anchor desk. I'd have to say the facts, continue to care, continue to do as much community work as possible, but never even knowing mayors and governors and all of those people having covered planning for years do I feel that even the best of my attempts at reporting this problem have paid off. I worry now that it will ever come to the top of the list because there are so few people who are now here to either vote, sanction, or protest. So if there is an area where the city needs some firm leadership, I'm so afraid of what will happen at the Bayview Hunters Point area by the time the Lenard remake is done. May I just interrupt because you have touched a nerve with me, Belva, on that, and I will tell you, I spend a lot of time in the Bayview these days working with young people. I can't begin to tell you how many families are being evicted and have been evicted with adverse consequences to a lot of people, including a lot of young people and people who are living in fear of being evicted because they know how easy it is to do and how seemingly nobody cares. And in the Western Edition, you may or may not be aware I'm representing working with Reverend Amos Brown, Third Baptist Church, a group that are trying to get rid of all the Section 8 people, which is a housing subsidy, if you will, to build for marketable housing. And fortunately, we are going to stop them. But the others that are being evicted, I think that there really ought to be a revolution because what's happening isn't right. Thank you. I want to make sure, Chris, that you get a chance to weigh in because you've talked about your love, hate relationship with the city. I mean, you think San Francisco's losing its idealism, losing its soul a little bit during this period? I really do. I really do. I echo the worries that we've been talking about up here in the past few minutes and people can see it, you could feel it. I feel like a tourist in parts of this town in my city. Now, don't get me wrong, this city has so much potential and what's going on now? If we harness it the right way, the bell was talking about how we haven't yet used the great wealth and innovation that's happening all around us. It's not touching everybody. I worry, and Louise, you just said it's time for revolution. Those are serious words and I know you mean them. And I'm worried about- My family is probably saying, What is she saying? There's the Grateful Dead influence. But I worry that we're simmering. There's a simmering going on. Okay, I feel a little bit angry. I feel a little bit left out personally and I miss some of the old places. It's not just nostalgia, don't get me wrong. It's all the things that we, I think all of us are feeling and seeing, sensing. And the problem is that if it doesn't, if we don't get some outlet, you were asking is there gonna be another tumultuous time or could this happen again like it did those crazy times back in the 70s? Maybe not the same, but it could. And I'm worried that it will and maybe we need it. I think we have to blow off some steam. We need to do something right here because this last election, there's a lot of signs I think to be taken. A lot of real data that we can take from this election. Sure, Airbnb won and Mission Moratorium lost and stuff like that, but you look at the numbers. Our mayor got, he was unopposed, I think. I mean, there wasn't anybody, maybe someone here ran against him. I honestly don't know. But he didn't get that much of the vote. It's a tough, it's a tough city because we're always moving forward and there's so many different peoples and neighborhoods that you have to take care of and you have to listen to. I think he's trying, but one group is drowning out the rest of us and that's that high tech group and all that. So we need to have some kind of, I guess, referendum or something and people like you too were talking about your vision. Organization, I'd like to hear more about that and I'd like to be part of that, but I just don't want this thing to burst and then trouble and then all of a sudden we have to pick up pieces, right? We've seen that when that anger builds and builds. You're right, Chris and Louise and Belva and just to jump in and reiterate that. I mean, I just wrote an op-ed piece, sorry, John, for the examiner on Sunday. You didn't want anyone to read it, did you? Oh, we have our ways of getting things out, John. It's called social media. No, but I used the old James Baldwin term for my headline, the fire next time because I am feeling this, living in the city and as Belva said, more and more young African-American people feeling like they're not wanted here, they don't belong here. My son is making a movie with his childhood friend called The Last Black Man in San Francisco and that's the way Jimmy fails, who grew up in this city, born in this city, feels. Walking around, may I help you, sir? You know, hassled everywhere he goes because he looks more and more like an endangered species. There's not many of him around anymore. And, you know, this feeling that you never know if you're gonna have the roof over your head as a kid growing up here. As I write in this piece, I talked to a public school teacher in the mission and they've had to now start doing a lot of therapy for the kids who come to this public school in the mission because their families are so distraught as Louise was talking about in the Bay View and not knowing how long they're gonna have a roof over their heads. So, you can't do that again and again. You make people feel that they're unwanted in their own city without having some kind of blowback. You see the crime starting to grow, the shattered windows. There's a cafe in my neighborhood in Bernal Heights that's become sort of the focal point of the new residents moving in. Someone blew its windows out with a gun the other day. You know, cars vandalized and all that. That's not the bad times we wanna go back to, believe me, because that's what I documented and see is in the witch. I don't think it's gonna be the same way. I agree with Louise, but it could be, as Chris said, some kind of form of that. So, I take great also hope from the election despite the losses of the moratoriums because of Aaron Peskin, for one thing. I think what the city needs is a face of progressiveism, someone who's articulate, someone who's willing to work across the aisle with people, someone who knows how to, you know, how power works, frankly. But one thing too, David, can I just interject? The city also needs someone or someones to interject and to object and to raise questions and to stand up and to say, wait a minute, not so fast. Well, here we are, so we're all doing. But you're right, we need, but you shouldn't just put it all in the chronicle. We have to create our own media. We are creating our own media. I think it's time for audience questions. But can I say one last thing about Chris's dad? So Chris's dad, George Moscone, came to office and started Harvey Milk. There was a revolution in local politics, not just because George Moscone happened to be a charismatic legislator and someone who had grown up in the city and had a lot of great local connections. It's also because he had a movement behind him that came from the neighborhoods. People were just as freaked out in those days back in the 70s about real estate values, skyrocketing about evictions and some of these same issues. And so there was a movement of people behind George Moscone. He won narrowly and he couldn't have done it without that people's movement in the streets like this young woman's talking about. So you need both. You need to have candidates who are disciplined and dedicated and willing to work with the people's movement and you need that movement behind them. So Vision SF, one more plug. Come talk to Louise and me and John Gollinger in the back there, I see. If you want to hear more about it, it's an attempt to have a grassroots progressive movement in this city that can once again run people for office, have alternative media that gets the word out and legally challenge some of the worst aspects of what's happening. Great. That's it. It is a sure turn to jump in. Please raise your hand if you have a question and a microphone will be coming your way. Look forward to it. Well, I wanted to thank you all for being up here for both your work and for the struggles that you went through for being part of what you are. I'm a San Franciscan since 1982. I've been able to live on McHondry. Mr. Dada Maupin's sort of lane that he based his book on. I lived next to Massas on Osgoode, which is now Dashel Hammett. I lived 23 years in Hayes Valley as an artist when it was a DMZ and now they're selling $500 T-shirts. The dearth of not having a central newspaper that speaks to the community, I think is a big part of the failings of communication here in the city and social media doesn't cover all that. But I also wanted to, and so I'd be interested in what you have to say about that. I was discouraged by the exam or the Chronicle choosing their mayoral candidate prior to the election, prior to hearing all the candidates when candidates would come in to speak with the Chronicle, they had already chosen Ed Lee. And I find that a great disservice to the city. But I also wanna make sure that Nancy Pelosi's name is mentioned here because she brought home the bacon for AIDS along with people like her AIDS czar, Steve Moran at a time when money wasn't coming in to a lot of places in a lot of these states in this union. And so I wanna make sure that that is mentioned. She saved my life. I left the state bar of California in 96 right before the cocktails came in and I came home to die. And thank God, people like Paul Volberding and Marcus Conant and others furthered their cause. And I'm here and part of the city. And thank you so much for all that you've done. Yeah, I appreciate this too. I thought this was a very elucidating discussion and I came to San Francisco in 1963. I was part of a previous invasion you might say. And so I weathered the strike at San Francisco State but one of the things you didn't mention that was occurring about then, which seems to me to be just so fundamental to this was the destruction of the film war, urban renewal. I mean that was a terrible movement. And certainly that was happening when some of these other things were happening. And the other thing is after I left teaching at San Francisco State, I became a student at City College of San Francisco and just changed my whole focus. And what I found then was City College was under attack as we had been at San Francisco State though, but the situation was really different. But nevertheless it was under attack and because I had had this experience at San Francisco State I joined the faculty group even though I was a student to try to defend. We could get no help from any political actor in this area except Jackie Spear. No one else would say a thing, not a thing. And for a long time now of course the union had fought against the accreditation agency and the faculty group allied with the union did and finally this whole agency has been exposed and I might go so far as to say it's a front group for for-profit colleges that want to sink the community colleges. This is a community college which has carried San Francisco some time. Yeah. Somebody on board with City College, well he should be of course, but they weren't for the longest time and we almost lost that college. I think we really almost did. So that's something to be remembered I believe. Yeah. I agree. Thank you. We have another one. Yes, one. Oh, Belvin wanted to. Just to button down on that. I guess you all found out how I live these two lives, one of optimism and one of absolute panic. But I just want to say that Sunday I was out at San Francisco State where the College of Ethnic Studies was celebrating their 40th year from the strike if you were familiar with that. Danny Glover, right? The fact that it is the only College of Ethnic Studies in the United States and that it's, I heard you say that, that's why I'm commenting. That your legacy lives on. There we were with the president of state saying we need to build a campus at Bayview Hunters Point. My prayer only is that the young man he talked about who he thought he could bring education to will still be there when his college arrives. And that is why I have to learn to speak louder about what is happening with African Americans in this wonderful city. Yes, one of the things that struck me in reading the book was the number, a large number of extremely charismatic people involved. I'm thinking that, you know, where Emmett Grogan, Janice Joplin, whatever you say about Janice Joplin, she was God awful charismatic. Tony Sara, George Moscone, Jim Jones. Charismatic, evil but charismatic. And what do you see, I mean, is that really what it takes to engender a new revolution? Because you could say things about Ed Lee, but charismatic is not one of them. And you can say- I don't think he's ever been accused of that. You can say things about the no on F group and guys like Chris Lahane of Airbnb, but they're not charismatic. They're ruthlessly efficient. And is that what we're fighting against with? But you know, I would say there's no shortage of charismatic leaders that come out of San Francisco. Nancy Pelosi's name was mentioned. You look at how effective leaders who come out of San Francisco have been in Sacramento and Washington. John Burton, certainly Willie Brown. And look at the statewide level where we have Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, not only in statewide offices, but you know, aspiring to hire office. There's something about the politics of this town that breeds very effective people when they go elsewhere. I don't know exactly why that is. Some have suggested because it's such a dog eat dog world here in San Francisco politics. But you know, charismatic leaders don't come out of nowhere, they come out of movements and they come out of urgent times when people desperately need them. And they learn the ropes and they learn how to speak and they learn how to get up and articulate people's needs and passions by being part of these upsurges, these grassroots movements. And that's what San Francisco is lacking at this point. A big cohesive grassroots movement, populist movement, progressive movement, whatever you call it, that engenders that kind of leadership. It's starting, we're starting to see this. I see it, I saw it in the Peskin campaign, there's some young up and coming leaders there and there were the initiative campaigns were starting to see them, but they need to be supported. They need the kind of, you know, attention and political nurturing that helps develop that leadership. It's almost like we're in a food coma or cultural overload, overload some of us. And I know that's not appropriate for a lot of people in this city because there's a lot of needy people, but you're right, leaders come from necessity or they grow up in tough times and they're part of movements and there are plenty of people that are part of these movements in San Francisco now, but I just don't think it's the right time and we're not seeing the maturation of that yet. That's where I think in a few years, unfortunately there's this downswing that I think is gonna happen. I mean, it can't just go up and up and up the economy and maybe that's when we see these people come out but there's still time. So we could still raise our voice, everybody. I think we have time for just one more question because we have a book signing that's going to take place and this gentleman here has been waiting. Hi, thank you. The title season of The Witch is such an inspired title and very apt as well. I think of the play by McBeth or the play by Shakespeare called McBeth which is say double, double, toil and trouble and as Chris was mentioning one of the big groups of one of the large organizations in our city who always seems to be simmering the trouble in our city running from the Moscone administration to today is the San Francisco Police Department and the Police Officers Association and Ms. Rennie was at one time the president of the police commission and I think she did a very poor job at that time and I would like to ask her maybe to address this issue of the problems caused in the police department and particularly the Police Officers Association. I'm supposed to discuss the POAs. I couldn't hear all of your question other than I did a poor job, okay. I'm sorry, I didn't hear all of your question. Getting control of the police department and yeah. Well, gaining control of the police department is, okay. It does take a will to do that, I agree and this may sound unusual but I don't think commissions have much power and in fact, one of the reasons that I left the police commission in a short of time as I did as did John Kecker is because it was very clear commissions have no power, very little. I think it takes a strong mayor to keep the police under control. I think it takes a strong police chief to keep the police under control. I think that the San Francisco Police Department has changed in many ways over the years. I remember when I was first on the board of supervisors you will recall that that is when there was a major lawsuit filed to integrate the police department. There were no women, there were few if any African-Americans or people of color but we did sign a consent decree to try and integrate the department hoping that when that happened there would be a better police department. In defense of my role on the police commission I will say we ended up taking care of all the fajita gate cases. I think that was no small matter believe me because there were stacks and stacks of them. As I recall I was the only police commissioner in modern history to vote to fire a police officer none of the other commissioners would. So I would just say that it takes strong leadership to make sure both the police department and the fire department do the job that they're supposed to do. I have my own problems with the way in which police issues are handled this city. Let me ask you this, how many of you have ever gotten a ticket for jaywalking? Ask how many kids over in the Bayview Hunters Point have gotten tickets for jaywalking. That's ridiculous. I would make a very good public records request, John. No, I always get the best story ideas from Louise. That said, I think many officers in the police department really, really are trying to do a good job. But I also think times have changed and I think that it's important for there be the training and the kind of looking ahead in the criminal justice system that needs to be done. I am very interested in this recent lawsuit. Maybe some of you have read about it where there is a challenge to the bail system in San Francisco. If you take a look at bail and how it is determined in San Francisco, you will see, I believe that it is discriminatory. I know I have some of the youth that I work with and the fees on fees that are put on them is wrong. Now, sometimes they don't do what they should do by showing up because they figure, eh, you know, what difference it is. But I do think that this will be a very, very interesting lawsuit. But since I'm not the city attorney anymore, I don't have to worry. Other than on behalf of my clients. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Let's give them a big round of applause for a wonderful job. Analysts, thank you very much. Just ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us tonight and just a reminder that David will be signing books outside in the foyer of the auditorium. Thank you so much for your engagement and thank you for coming. Good evening. Thank you.