A Funny Thing Happened on the Way…
A few months ago, we started planning our annual panel discussion, which we usually hold sometime in April to coincide with Tax Day. Early on we decided it would be on Sanctuary Cities, a nice meaty and timely topic. We expected that in a well-known Sanctuary City like San Francisco, it would be a cinch to locate a prominent proponent and we would be hard-pressed to find any prominent person to take the contrarian position publicly in a panel. But a funny thing happened on the way to organizing this panel: we could not secure even one prominent politician, public official, or journalist willing to defend their public stance in a serious, balanced panel discussion on the issue.
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Is there no limit to the hypocrisy spouted by our local politicians? Did you read about the recent resolutions introduced by Supervisor Aaron Peskin at both the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), which he chairs, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors calling on state legislators to give government officials the right to review the confidential business data of Uber and Lyft? The reason for this nosiness is because the rideshare companies are allegedly causing traffic congestion in The City.
City Hall, aka "The Man", never had the warmest relationship with the hippies who were questioning their authority, violating their rules, etc., and this fact was demonstrated again yesterday. Political appointees on SF's Recreation and Parks Commission backed the decision of department staff to deny a permit to a promoter seeking to hold a free festival in Golden Gate Park to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the legendary "Summer of Love", the 1967 apex in San Francisco of the mid-1960s to early 1970s countercultural revolution.