SAN FRANCISCO — An anti-abortion activist has been charged with stalking and harassing a San Francisco doctor, including barging into his workplace and leaving messages on his and his neighbors’ homes with false and inflammatory messages, the district attorney’s office said Thursday.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said Aaron Jonathan Hurley was part of a group of four people that invaded a health care clinic on March 14 and confronted the doctor, filming patients and staff and attempting to enter operating rooms.

Later that night, Hurley and others allegedly went to the doctor’s home and placed permanent stickers saying, “a killer lives in your neighborhood” at neighbors’ houses and on the doctor’s front door. Flyers were also scattered which displayed a QR code that led to a website that provided false claims about abortion procedures and attacked the doctor for providing abortion services.

Hurley and others are also accused of defacing and damaging a bronze statue of the Madonna and Child at San Francisco General Hospital, adding fake blood and stickers with the doctor’s name on it. Other handwritten notes were added that said “harvested” and “sold $500.”

Hurley, a Los Angeles resident, is a member of the activist group PAAU (Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising), Boudin said in a press statement.

“Reproductive rights are under attack across the country and here in San Francisco. Right here in our city, doctors who provide critical health care along with vulnerable patients are being stalked at their homes and places of work,” said Boudin. “My office will unconditionally protect all medical providers and women who exercise their constitutional right to seek abortion or other reproductive health care. Make no mistake: anyone who harasses, threatens or interferes in any way with the constitutionally protected work of doctors and staff – who heroically provide care – will be held accountable. We will ensure that all patients and medical providers are safe.”

A second suspect, identified as Kristen Turner, was cited and released. An arrest warrant was pending for a third suspect identified as Lauren Brice Handy.

Hurley faces charges of felony stalking, as well as misdemeanor charges of obstructing access to a clinic, vandalism, tresspassing, and interfering with a business.

His initial arrangement was scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

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Cleve Jones, the LGBTQ activist whose possible eviction from his rent-controlled Castro apartment became a symbol of San Francisco’s housing issues, said he has decided to move out of the flat he’s called home for 12 years by the end of April.

“My physician, my family, my friends all said to me that this is not worth it, this fight to hang onto a place that … doesn’t feel safe” because of a contentious relationship with the new landlord, who will be living upstairs, Jones, 67, said. “I have limited energy and important work that brings me joy. I’m not going to spend the next, who knows how many months, fighting against this woman.”

The situation began when a new owner, Lily Pao Kue, 30, bought the Castro duplex in February for $1,585,000. After installing security cameras, Kue said she had determined that Jones no longer lived there as a primary dwelling because he only showed up briefly over the course of a month. She said Jones’ flatmate Brenden Chadwick appeared to be the sole occupant and termed him an illegal subletter.

Kue invoked the state’s Costa-Hawkins law, which lets landlords raise rent on vacant units to market rate, and notified Jones that she was more than doubling his $2,393 rent to $5,200 as of July 1.

Jones, who is HIV-positive, said he had been protecting his health by spending time in isolation during the pandemic at a house he owns in Guerneville.

San Francisco remains the center of his work, medical care and community, Jones said.

After moving out of the disputed duplex, he will continue to live with Chadwick in the city, Jones said. Chadwick, who shared the Castro apartment with Jones for the past 3½ years, has already found another place.

“He and his dog are my family,” Jones said.

Jones and Kue each accuse the other of harassment, and each said they thought they would prevail if the case went before the San Francisco Rent Board.

Kue, who came to the US as a toddler when her Hmong family was admitted as refugees, said she’s dismayed as being perceived as a rich, entitled real estate speculator, noting that she worked hard to get where she is. She said she wants to live in the upstairs unit and move her mother and grandmother into the downstairs one.

Kue said she is both “mistrustful” and “hopeful” after receiving Jones’ notice to move out, noting that he had previously changed his mind about whether or not to stay.

“I will only be relieved when I’ve gotten my key back without damage done to property,” she said in an email.

Kue says her claim that Jones had already vacated the flat is backed up by Jones’ social media posts about Guerneville and mortgage refinance documents signed in March 2021 in which Jones committed to occupy the Guerneville house as his “principal residence” for at least one year .

Jones said the refi document’s intent was to ensure that he would not rent the Guerneville house to others or list it on Airbnb. He said he has satisfied those conditions while maintaining his residence in the Castro, where he votes, pays utilities and keeps his furniture and possessions. He recently started moving out some items of archival importance to gay history because he feared they could be damaged by construction work Kue is having done upstairs.

Sonoma County property tax records reviewed by The Chronicle show that Jones has never claimed a homeowners exemption on the Guerneville property.

Jones said that he’s among many San Franciscans who cannot afford to purchase in the city, so he turned to a less-expensive area to accumulate some housing security and build some equity. He bought the house in 2018 for $500,000, per public records. He said a little bit of money he made from his memoir, When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, enabled him to do so.

Jones’ situation became a cause celebre, attracting more than 200 supporters, including many well-known politicians, to a rally in his support late last month at Harvey Milk Plaza.

As an organizer with Unite Here Local 2, Jones said he now has additional empathy for the members of the hotel and restaurant workers’ union, who are largely women of color and immigrants, if they were to experience the catastrophe of eviction.

“The only real thing that’s important about my story is not me, it’s not even her (Kue), it’s the reality that with all my unearned advantages of race, gender, the fact that I am politically connected and I do have access to good legal advice, none of that is sufficient to protect me” from the prospect of eviction, Jones said.

As pandemic protections expire, “we’re going to see a small tsunami of evictions coming up,” he said. “Most of those people do not have the resources or support that I have.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid

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A prominent San Francisco LGBTQ+ rights activist is being uprooted from his home in the Castro neighborhood after the new owner of the property nearly doubled his rent to $5,200.

Cleve Jones, 67, who moved to San Francisco in 1973 and first conceived of the Aids Memorial Quit, is reportedly moving out of his rent-controlled, one-bedroom apartment this week. The move comes after he was notified of a significant price increase from the property’s new owner, who claims that the apartment is not Jones’ primary residence.

The situation has been described as “heartbreaking” by a local supervisor and is seen by many as emblematic of the increasing unaffordability of a city that was once a haven for bohemians and social activists. The median house price in the Castro, the historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood that helped birth the modern gay rights movement, now stands at over $1.5m, according to Redfin.

The new owner, Lily Pao Kue, is a 30-year-old self-described stock market investor who, according to Zillow records reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle, purchased the property in February for $1,585,000.

According to the Chronicle, Kue has installed security cameras around the property, begun construction work in the building and had a car that belonged to Jones’ friend and roommate removed from the property.

In a letter Kue sent to Jones on 18 March, she stated that she assessed he had vacated the property and she would be increasing the current rent – ​​$2,393 – to $5,200 as of 1 July, invoking a Costa-Hawkins petition.

Costa-Hawkins is a state law that sets certain requirements for cities with rent control. Under the law, landlords are allowed to raise rent to market rate once a tenant moves out.

Jones in 2017. He said he had not moved out of his home but was spending more time outside the city during the pandemic. Photographer: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images

Jones told the Chronicle he had not moved out but had been spending more time out of the city during the pandemic because he is immunocompromised. Instead of dealing with a court battle, however, Jones said he and his roommate would move out of the property this weekend and search for a new place to live.

“If I were a younger man, I would fill the sandbags and I’d batten down the hatches and would drag this out for as long as possible,” Jones told the Chronicle.

“Part of me feels quite guilty that I don’t have it in me to do it. I am not in good health, I’m HIV-positive and one of the longest-living HIV survivors … And I’m old,” he added.

Kue has said that she is seeking a hearing regarding her petition from the San Francisco rent board.

“I want Cleve to continue the tenancy and let the judge determine the petition,” Kue said in an email to the Chronicle. “I will be gracious and accepting of law.”

Since the property dispute became public, Kue said that she had seen online harassment from Jones’ social media followers and had filed a police report.

In a statement to the Chronicle, the district supervisor, Rafael Mandelman, said: “Cleve recognizes that this is happening and has happened to so many other folks … But he is such an iconic figure and so associated with that neighborhood. It’s heartbreaking.”

On Sunday, Jones’ supporters will rally at Harvey Milk Plaza in the morning to shed light on his situation and those of others who have faced similar issues in the neighborhood.

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Cleve Jones has called the Castro neighborhood his home for five decades. The gay activist first moved to the city in 1973 from Arizona as a 19-year-old and was quickly swept up in the burgeoning LGBTQ political movement of the era, becoming a protege of pioneering gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and a community organizer in his own right.

In 1987, the neighborhood was also where Jones founded the Names Project, the organization behind the AIDS Memorial Quilt. When Jones published “When We Rise: My Life in the Movement” in 2016, the book chronicled the evolution of the Castro as an LGBTQ neighborhood as much as it told his own story.

“Even during those times when I was away from the city, I was never really away,” Jones, 67, said recently. “I was always coming back. That’s my hood.”

But this week, Jones is moving out of the rent-controlled, one-bedroom flat in an 18th Street duplex he’s lived in since 2010. The move comes after he received notice of a significant rent increase from the building’s new owner, who argues that the unit is not his primary residence. Jones denies that is the case, but has decided he does not have the stamina to fight what would likely be a protracted legal battle to remain there.

For those familiar with San Francisco’s often volatile real estate and rental issues, the dispute between Jones and his new landlord is probably not surprising. What is unusual in this case is the high profile of the tenant in question.

The new owner of the duplex is San Francisco resident Lily Pao Kue, 30. Zillow shows that she purchased the property on Feb. 18 for $1,585,000. Since making the purchase, Kue has initiated some construction work on the building, installed new security cameras, had a car belonging to Jones’ friend and roommate towed from in front of the property, and notified Jones that she planned to more than double the rent .

Jones showed The Chronicle a letter he received from Kue on March 18 informing him that she had determined he had vacated the unit and was invoking a Costa-Hawkins petition, which would allow her to raise the rent from $2,393 to $5,200 as of July 1. Costa-Hawkins is a state law that sets some requirements for cities with rent control, including allowing a landlord to raise rent to market rate once a tenant moves out.

Kue says that she is seeking a hearing on her petition with the San Francisco Rent Board, but is waiting for a staff member to be assigned to the case.

“I want Cleve to continue the tenancy and let the judge determine the petition,” Kue said in an email. “I will be gracious and accepting of law.”

The San Francisco Rent Board did not immediately respond to questions about the case.

Experts say there are a few ways to prove residency in a property. According to Janan New, the executive director of the San Francisco Apartment Association, a driver’s license address and utility bills are among the documents that can be used as proof. The San Francisco Tenants Union also lists numerous factors, including the presence of personal possessions and that the tenant resides there except for “reasonable temporary periods of absence.” Jones said he believes he meets these requirements.

Jones said he feels that he and his roommate, Brenden Chadwick, have been harassed by Kue, citing her towing away Chadwick’s car without notice and installing the security cameras that allow her to monitor their comings and goings. He also is concerned that the construction work on the property could endanger archival materials from the LGBTQ movement he has kept there. She denies that she has harassed Jones and Chadwick.

Kue, who described herself as a stock market investor who previously worked as a janitor and as a farm laborer after immigrating to the United States from Thailand, calls the duplex her “dream home.” She said that since the dispute over the duplex became public, she is worried about harassment from Jones’ social media followers. She said she has filed a police report after comments she’s seen in response to Jones’ post about the situation on Facebook.

Rather than further contest Kue’s plans, though, Jones and Chadwick plan to move out this weekend and look for a new home in the Castro, which means they would lose any potential relocation payments if Kue were to lose her Costa-Hawkins petition and choose to pursue eviction.

“If I were a younger man, I would fill the sandbags and I’d batten down the hatches and would drag this out for as long as possible,” Jones said. “Part of me feels quite guilty that I don’t have it in me to do it. I am not in good health, I’m HIV-positive and one of the longest-living HIV survivors. … and I’m old.”

Still, Jones is not going quietly. On Sunday, supporters of Jones plan to take part in a rally at 11 am at Harvey Milk Plaza focusing on his situation and similar issues facing other renters in the neighborhood. A 2021 story in The Chronicle reported that since 2009, there have been 614 no-fault evictions in District Eight, where the Castro is located, and that most are either because of owner move-ins or Ellis Act evictions, where the owner decides to stop renting altogether.

While Jones said he expects to survive financially, “It is very clear how an event like this could be truly catastrophic for so many others.”

“Cleve recognizes that this is happening and has happened to so many other folks,” said District Eight Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who will be at the rally. “But he is such an iconic figure and so associated with that neighborhood. It’s heartbreaking.”

Tina Aguirre, the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District manager, told The Chronicle that housing security in the neighborhood is especially important for older residents and people living with HIV, and that the district is “saddened” by what Jones is experiencing.

“The fact that he is a community icon, organizer, and AIDS activist underscores that this can happen to any of us,” Aguirre said.

Kue said that she installed security cameras on the property to monitor construction workers. But in checking the comings and goings from the building, and seeing that many of Jones’ posts on Facebook indicated that he had been staying in Guerneville, she said she determined that the unit on 18th Street was not his primary address, and that there was “overwhelming proof” that Chadwick was living there alone.

Jones said he was told by Kue that she planned to move into the vacant unit above his after construction on the property was completed, and that she planned to move her mother and grandmother into the unit he and Chadwick occupied.

Jones said Kue began discussing buyout options with him, but said she did not want to involve attorneys. Kue said she still does not have an attorney representing her. Jones, though, hired Dave Crow of the tenants rights firm Crow & Rose.

Crow said he believes the rent increase notice was not legal because Jones had not moved out of the property.

Jones denies that he ever vacated his unit, but says that, for his health, he has spent time during the two years of the pandemic at a “fairly primitive” cabin he owns in Guerneville.

“When COVID happened, of course, that became my refuge,” Jones said of the cabin. “I’m 67, I’m immunocompromised. So I’m guessing that that’s her reference to me vacating the unit. But of course it’s a lie. I never vacated. I never moved my stuff out and continued to spend time there.”

Among that “stuff,” Jones said, are materials from the LGBTQ movement going back to the 1970s, including Milk’s famous bullhorn, the quilt his great-grandmother made that inspired the creation of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and items connected to the filming of the 2008 biopic “Milk,” in which Jones was a central character.

To protect them from possible damage, Jones has given the National AIDS Memorial some of the materials related to the Names Project while the GLBT Historical Society Museum now has Milk’s bullhorn.

“My office is right there on Castro Street, my doctor is right there on Castro Street. The hospital is right down the street. … Guerneville is lovely, but it doesn’t have the kind of specialized health care that’s necessary for people in my circumstance.”

Jones said he needs to remain in the city for his work as a community and political coordinator at Unite Here, the North American Hospitality Workers Union.

Jones said he, like many longtime survivors of HIV, cannot afford to retire because many of his potential earning years were spent battling serious health complications from the virus instead of working.

Still, Jones said he’s turned down requests to create crowdfunding campaigns to assist him. He said he’s also received offers of legal help and housing, but has not felt at risk enough to accept help that others in the community likely need more.

“I’m going to be just fine, but she’s going to do this to someone else,” Jones said. “This old gay guy is being forced out of his home, but the real issue is one more gay elder has been lost and one more rental unit has been lost.”

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TonyBravoSF

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There’s a crisis in San Francisco. Homelessness has skyrocketed and drug use is rampant. 

Michael Shellenberger moved to San Francisco in 1993 to work on liberal causes, and even spent time working for George Soros’ foundation. He advocated the decriminalization of drugs and promoted drug treatment programs. But, Shellenberger says, he began to worry when he saw the number of drug overdose deaths in America rise from 17,000 in 2000 to more than 70,000 by 2017. 

“Clearly, we are in the midst of a massive drug crisis,” Shellenberger says, “and it felt like nobody was offering a particularly clear explanation of it or offering very good solutions.” 

Out of frustration over the problems he was seeing in San Francisco and other liberal cities, Shellenberger became determined to diagnose the problems driving the homeless crisis and find solutions. He presents the result of his research and investigation in his new book “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” 

Shellenberger joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how the left’s “victim” ideology has harmed West Coast cities and what can be done to save those communities from complete ruin. 

We also cover these stories: 

• The Ohio School Boards Association ends its formal relationship with the National School Boards Association over the national group’s letter associating irate activist parents with “domestic terrorism.” 
• Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee ask Attorney General Merrick Garland to withdraw his memo directing the FBI and Justice Department to investigate incidents involving aggrieved parents and local school boards.
• Biological males no longer are allowed to compete on women’s scholastic sports teams in Texas.

Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript.

Virginia Allen: I am so pleased to welcome Michael Shellenberger to “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Michael is the author of the new book “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” Michael, thanks so much for being here, and congratulations on the new book.

Michael Shellenberger: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Allen: Now, you have lived and worked in San Francisco for a really long time. Explain why you wrote this book. You do not mince words in the title, “San Fransicko.” What is the mission behind this book?

Shellenberger: Sure. Well, I wrote this book because I love San Francisco. I moved to San Francisco in 1993 after graduating from college. I moved to San Francisco to work on progressive causes, radical left causes. I’m best known for my work on the environment, in particular around nuclear energy, which I’ve been focused on for the last 20 years.

But in the late 1990s, I worked for a number of George Soros-funded nonprofits. I worked for George Soros’ foundation to advocate to decriminalize drugs, promote drug treatment, promote harm reduction, including the exchange of clean needles for dirty ones, worked with Maxine Waters from Los Angeles to organize civil rights leaders in support of needle exchange. And as drug overdose deaths rose from 17,000 in the year 2000 to over 70,000 by 2017, I started to worry.

This is an issue that I have always cared a lot about, even if I hadn’t worked on it very much in the last couple decades. My aunt had schizophrenia. My parents are psychologists. I live in the Bay Area. I live in Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco. I’m still, in many ways, a bleeding-heart liberal. I’m a very sensitive person, really bothers me to see the suffering of people that are obviously suffering from drug addiction or mental illness or some combination of the two.

I wrote a couple of pieces for Forbes in 2019. The first one I wrote was around the contribution of housing to homelessness, but then after I wrote that, a number of friends were like, “Look, you have to consider drug addiction and mental illness.” I was like, “Yeah, of course.” I knew that was a big part of it. And I read a lot more about it and learned that a lot of the things I believed were wrong.

One of the things, when you interview progressives still to this day, and I discovered this quite a bit in my research, they blame [Ronald] Reagan, first as governor in the 1960s and then as president, for the homeless crisis, even though progressives have controlled California for decades. Democrats have a supermajority in Congress. We spend more than any other state per capita on homelessness and mental illness, and we have the worst outcomes.

So I wanted to write “San Fransicko” to both get to the bottom of what’s really going on and also figure out what the solutions are because, obviously, we’re dealing with a catastrophe. I mentioned drug overdose deaths rose from 17,000 to 70,000 by 2017. Last year, drug deaths were 93,000, which is almost three times as many people than die from car accidents and four times as many people as die from homicide. Clearly, we are in the midst of a massive drug crisis, and it felt like nobody was offering a particularly clear explanation of it or offering very good solutions.

Allen: I love that curiosity and that drive to say, “OK, there’s obviously an issue here, and we actually need to find a solution.” You’re asking the hard questions. That’s something we really need more of. Now, Michael, for those who have not been to San Francisco, for those who are not too familiar maybe with the situation there, if you were to leave your house, cross the bay, and walk through the streets of San Francisco, give us a picture of what we would see.

Shellenberger: Sure. San Francisco remains one of the most spectacularly beautiful cities in the world. Just driving across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, its skyline is stunning; three major bridges into San Francisco, incredible skyline, beautiful, surrounded by water, humpback whales not far from the coast.

But as soon as you drive downtown, you see tents. You see what are euphemistically called homeless encampments, but they are more accurately described as open drug scenes. That’s the expression that’s used by European researchers. I point out that the Europeans dealt with this exact same problem in the 1980s in places like Zurich, Switzerland; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Lisbon, Portugal; Frankfurt, Germany.

What you find is just these are people that are living on the street. They’re living on the street because … almost all of them, if not really all of them, are suffering from severe drug addiction, severe drug and alcohol addiction.

In the 1980s, what we called homelessness—I point out in the book that homelessness is a propaganda word. It was designed to mislead people about what’s really going on. It was designed by progressives to mislead people into thinking that people live on the street because they can’t afford the rent. That’s not the case. The people on the street, we know, are there because of addiction and untreated mental illness.

Look, there’s some people that think that all addiction is a consequence of untreated mental illness. I’m not sure I would go that far, but clearly a significant percentage of people on the street are suffering from some sort of mental illness, whether severe, like schizophrenia, or just untreated depression.

You see people openly using drugs, smoking fentanyl, which is responsible for about half of the drug deaths, people defecating in public. It’s very common to see that. You see just a lot of tents, hundreds of people.

San Francisco officially has about 5,000 unsheltered homeless, meaning people that are not in shelters. But on the streets are actually thousands more because a lot of the people on the streets using drugs are people that may have a shelter. They may have an apartment or a single-resident occupancy room, but are still living on the streets.

So that’s what you see. It looks like what we think a Third World country looks like. I’m somebody that’s spent a fair amount of time in Brazil, in Africa, in India. I go to slums every time I go to developing and poor countries. This is different in the sense that, obviously, San Francisco is one of the richest cities in the world. The number of billionaires per capita is huge. It’s obviously the center of much of our technology boom.

The drug crisis is the result of deliberate policies that are imposed by progressives, demanded by progressives, to not treat addiction, not treat mental illness, and to basically defend the right of people to sleep anywhere, defecate anywhere, and not be arrested, not be mandated treatment.

Allen: OK. So I know you dive really deeply into this in the book, in “San Fransicko.” I’ll hold it up. Excellent read.

Shellenberger: Thank you.

Allen: Encourage all of our listeners to pick up a copy—Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

But talk a little bit more about the policies. What do you mean by policies led to this? How have we gotten to this moment in San Francisco where there are literally, like you say, now these encampments and individuals openly using drugs, and no one is stepping in to stop them?

Shellenberger: Yeah. There’s so many levels to pick on. This is why I really required a whole book. I told people, even after three hours with Joe Rogan, it still didn’t cover all of it. But at the very simplest level, you do not need to have anybody living on the street if you just build enough shelters and require people to use them. That’s what most developed and civilized cities around the world have done. Before the pandemic, New York basically sheltered 99% of its homeless.

The reason that we have so many people unsheltered living on the street in California is because the progressives have opposed building sufficient shelters and requiring people to use them.

So at the simplest level, it’s just that. It’s just that we have had what’s called a “housing first” policy rather than a “shelter first” policy. Housing first, of course, meaning this idea that anybody who wants their own apartment should be able to get one. It’s completely ludicrous. Even if you are a socialist, even if you’re radical left, it doesn’t make any sense. You can’t provide that much apartments and housing for people.

First of all, you just can’t build it in San Francisco because there’s so much NIMBYism, and the regulations are so strict against building housing. But also, there’s just not the money for it. You can’t just provide free apartments for everybody. That may seem more obvious to listeners of Heritage Foundation than listeners to MSNBC, but it’s just the fact of the matter.

Then you go back further and you go, what is the history of untreated mental illness and addiction? San Francisco is a city that has always tolerated much more extensive alcohol and drug use than other cities, more bars than churches for its entire founding. It was the last city to ban opium dens in the 19th century. It obviously was the epicenter of the new drug culture in the 1960s, which introduced, most famously, marijuana and psychedelics, but much more insidiously, heroin and amphetamines. Those things have only gotten worse.

The deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals, the closure of psychiatric hospitals begins after World War II. It accelerates under President John Kennedy. … It was progressives who led the charge to empty the mental hospitals. The promise was we would have community-based care. That was never built.

It’s something that progressives blame Reagan for as governor, but the truth is that half of the people in psychiatric hospitals had already been released by the time Reagan became governor. It’s one of the many things I debunk in the book. I also debunked the claim that Reagan slashed the federal budget for housing. In fact, the federal budget for housing was basically steady during Reagan’s years in office.

At the same time, by the way, I should add, I do make a critique of Republicans and conservatives in the book. At the end, I argue that Republicans and conservatives have not offered a proper urban policy. … Republicans and conservatives tend to be more suburban and rural, and they don’t care as much about the cities. They tend to look down on the cities, so they haven’t engaged in the cities. I extend that criticism at the end. But nonetheless, it’s wrong to blame Reagan and Republicans for what’s happened in San Francisco.

What you basically have is massive untreated mental illness, including severe mental illness. You have the ACLU, which I think in many other contexts has done good things, I have been a longtime supporter of ACLU, but in this case, we have the ACLU irrationally defending leaving people with schizophrenia on the street, in states of psychosis, using hard drugs, living in totally unsafe, unsanitary conditions; having a complete double standard when it comes to requiring people with dementia, for example, our grandparents who suffer from dementia, either from Alzheimer’s or something else, we don’t let grandma and grandpa wander onto the streets, and yet we allow people in psychotic states to do that. They use a double standard to justify it.

What I get at, the bottom line here, is that this is a victim ideology, meaning that there’s an ideology here. And it’s just as dumb as it sounds, unfortunately. It’s the idea that you can classify certain groups of people as victims.

The racist aspect of this is that progressives classify all African Americans, all people of color, except for Asians, as victims. But they also classify people with mental illness as victims. They classify children. They classify women, gays and lesbians, people suffering addiction are all classified as victims. That’s the first thing they do.

The second thing they do, which is as insidious, is that they believe that, to victims, everything should be given and nothing demanded. This is terrible for raising kids. It’s also terrible for dealing with people suffering from addiction and mental illness.

The fact of the matter is a fair number of the people on the street have been victimized. It’s true. There’s a higher percentage of people on the street that were abused, foster kids, and were physically or sexually or emotionally abused, and that’s terrible, but that does not merit giving people the cash to use drugs, giving them hotel rooms in which to use drugs, giving people the paraphernalia in which to use drugs.

During the pandemic, the city of San Francisco … the social workers for the city were actually buying people alcohol and delivering alcohol and drugs to people’s hotel rooms. It’s so bonkers that when I describe it, it sounds like I’m describing a fictional dystopian film, but this is actually what’s happening in San Francisco.

The San Fransickness that the title refers to, yes, it’s referring to the folks that are living in squalor on the streets, but it also is referring to a kind of compassion sickness, a compassion unchecked by discipline, by reciprocity, by personal responsibility, by the things that people need in order to improve their lives.

Allen: Yeah. You talked a lot about that kind of victim mentality, victim mindset during your conversation with Joe Rogan, like you mentioned. Excellent conversation. So how does that translate? You referred to it with Joe Rogan as a coddling mindset. How does that translate to policy? What’s the line of thinking that we’re seeing from politicians going from, “OK, these people are victims. We need to care for them,” but how has that translated in policy to, “We do nothing to stop them from openly using drugs as much as they want, living wherever they want, doing whatever they want”?

Shellenberger: Yeah. You just said it. The coddling that has been increasing, really, for 150 years is now extended to people on the street, so we’re coddling the people on the street. We’re coddling addicts, we’re coddling criminals, we’re coddling would-be murderers, rather than providing them with the discipline and the rules that they need in order to live happy and healthy lives.

Look, to some extent, what we call coddling started out as kind of positive. Let’s face it, life on the farm was pretty rough. Kids were beaten with sticks and rods. … We know that coddling was already increasing when you started hearing people say things like, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

There’s always been a recognition that as we go from farm to city kids, to some extent, this is a process that’s been really wonderful for children. They can be children. They don’t have to be little workers or little adults, which is how we used to see kids. But obviously, it’s gotten way too far. We see the rise of participation trophies for kids that don’t succeed in sports, basically a shielding of children from adversity. Yet we know that overcoming adversity is what builds strength and resilience.

One of the questions I had is there’s a lot of upper-middle-class parents or middle-class parents that are very progressive and liberal in the Bay Area who, yeah, they coddle their kids to some extent, but they also require their kids to do their homework. They require their kids to do chores. They require their kids to do sports. They require some amount of adversity of their kids. But then when it comes to their politics, they’ll say things like you shouldn’t require abstinence, for example, before giving people housing, because that would be blaming the victim. So there’s a bit of a double standard here.

One of the most interesting things I discovered is that the drug rehab centers in Malibu—which is this very rich coastal community north of Los Angeles, the thing that rock stars and celebrities go to, $50,000 a month—they’re very strict in drug rehab for rich people. They’re very strict. They’re hard on you. That’s what you pay for.

Yet for the poor on Skid Row in Los Angeles, which is just a devastating area, thousands of people addicted to hard drugs dying on the streets … it sounds bizarre to describe it. Literally, when I visited Skid Row last time, there were just people passed out on the sidewalk, on fentanyl, on heroin. That’s it, just in the sunlight, lying on the ground. There was too many people to even check to see if they were alive. So the coddling is now part of our policy response.

As I point out, I had this very revelatory trip to Amsterdam, which in every respect is a very liberal city. You can smoke marijuana in these coffee shops they have. Psychedelics are very in fashion. Sex work is kind of decriminalized, regulated. They’re not a bunch of Puritans in Amsterdam, but there’s nobody on the streets. There’s no so-called homeless people. There’s nobody on the streets using drugs. They make people stay in shelter, and they enforce their laws.

What we have in San Francisco, it’s a more radical … In Boston and New York, we are now starting to see open drug scenes. There’s now a big open drug scene in Boston, but it’s nothing like the West Coast. It’s really the combination of a Wild West libertarianism and libertinism with a progressive victimology that’s been what’s been so toxic and devastating for people suffering from addiction and mental illness.

Allen: Yeah. Now, I know in writing the book, you kind of went on a search to see, OK, who is actually addressing this correctly? Who’s doing this well? Like you said, you went to Amsterdam. You spent time in the Netherlands. You talked to leaders. What did you discover that the Dutch are doing really well, and what are some of the principles that you learned from them that you’re trying to convince individuals in America, “Hey, we could actually do this here”?

Shellenberger: Yeah. What I discovered ought to be great news for both reasonable liberals and reasonable conservatives. The first thing is that in Amsterdam, they have the back-end services, so they have shelter for everybody that needs shelter. They have housing for the people that really do need subsidized housing. They have psychiatric beds and psychiatric care for the people that need that. They have the police working with the social workers. It’s both/and.

… There’s a lot of fake bipartisanship right now. There’s a lot of fake efforts at it, but this is really, truly, a both/and approach. You need police and you need social workers. They’re not the same thing, but they need to work together. So you get these buddy stories of police and social workers that have been working together in Netherlands that are really important. We’re starting to see some of that in the United States, but not nearly enough.

One question is, do you need to have single-payer health care? That’s what the left has long wanted. They want socialized medicine. Amsterdam does not have socialized medicine, but they do have universal coverage. They actually have a private insurance model like we have in the United States, but you make sure that everybody’s covered. That is something that we need to do. That’s something that I think reasonable conservatives and liberals would agree on. To some extent, we have that with Medicaid, but you can’t be in situations where we don’t have insurance to cover people’s psychiatric care.

The other thing is, there’s some amount of discernment. My aunt had schizophrenia. She had a pretty good life for a person with schizophrenia, which is a very serious mental illness. She lived in a group home, as we call it, residential care. She had her own room. She shared a house and a kitchen and a living space with other people. But she didn’t work. She couldn’t work. Some people with schizophrenia can work, but she wasn’t able to. I think most conservatives understand that there’s a certain number of people in our society with mental disabilities like schizophrenia who, if they can work, it’s great for them and it’s great for everybody else, but some of them can’t.

But that’s different from a 25-year-old guy who’s addicted to heroin, who probably just needed an antidepressant and some purpose in life and some Jordan Peterson lectures in order to be on the straight and narrow.

That young man needs to get his life in order, and that means that he needs to be, after he breaks the law—if you’re a street addict, you’re breaking the law every day, usually, including theft to sustain your drug habit. He needs to be offered the choice of, when arrested, offered the choice of jail or drug rehab, and then he needs a personal plan. He needs an assertive case worker. … He needs to know what he’s going to do when he gets out of rehab. He needs to have a job. He needs to have a place he’s going to live, preferably living somewhere far away from open drug scenes.

And the drug scenes need to be shut down. You can’t allow open-air drug dealing in a city. It’s absurd. We have literally two dozen drug dealers selling you any amount of drugs in, not just San Francisco, but other major cities in the United States. We have to shut that down. This is not rocket science. You can’t allow open drug dealing.

Does that mean that you’re going to eliminate drug dealing? No. But I’ll tell you, it’s interesting, if you’re an addict and there’s no open drug dealing, you often have to spend a bunch of your day finding your drugs, buying them, and that means you end up doing less drugs. So it’s not great. I’d love to see fentanyl eliminated and meth, but these are highly-concentrated drugs. We haven’t been able to get rid of them.

I think the idea that we can stop China or Mexico from getting them over the border is a fantasy. You can mail enough fentanyl to somebody through FedEx to supply an entire city. But you can shut down the open drug dealing. That’s easy. Shut it down. The addicts will end up using less. Right now, it’s too easy. The open drug scenes are addicts living in open drug markets, and they’re just ending up using hard drugs every four hours. It’s barbaric, and it makes them sick and they die. You can’t allow that.

… I think the message for conservatives is that, and the liberals too, but I think in the sense that you do need to fix our psychiatric and addiction care system. It’s just not working. And I think that is something that I did find some agreement among conservatives with. …

There’s just not a free market—there’s not a market among schizophrenics to pay for their mental health care. They just don’t have the money and they can’t do it. Even addicts are people that have spent basically all their resources and stolen, usually, from family and friends to sustain their habit. That’s just not something that’s going to be served by free markets.

There’s got to be some amount of government involvement, and it just should be smart and it should be efficient. There should be a hierarchy, and there should be accountability and responsibility. So I do think there’s plenty in the proposal that I’m making for Cal-Psych to centralize addiction and psychiatric care to appeal to both reasonable Republicans and to reasonable Democrats.

Allen: And it goes with the analogy that you have given, I know, in the past of the carrot and the stick, of, OK, we need to make sure that we’re actually motivating individuals who are on drugs to make changes in their life, and then there have to be consequences when proper action isn’t taken.

Shellenberger: It seems so basic, doesn’t it? … When I asked the character in the book—terrific character, his name is Rene. He’s Dutch. He’s actually a nurse who was a former professional soccer player, very charismatic, very blunt. He and his wife, who’s a member of Parliament, they love to travel, so they love San Francisco. I was like, “What is going on in my hometown? What are we doing wrong?” He was like, “Look.” He goes, “Look, dude, you need carrots and sticks. You got to have carrots and sticks.”

You got to have consequences for bad behavior. You got to enforce the law. At the same time, you should reward people. What’s happening, we now know, at the brain chemistry level, although, honestly, addiction science hasn’t progressed that much, but we know that addicts are seeking rewards, so you want to provide some other reward as a dopamine high for addicts when they perform well. So if you pass your drug test, you should get something, a gift card. You should get your own private room. Something should be done as a carrot for you.

It seems so basic. But basically, what we’ve done in progressive cities, out of this softening, this coddling in the culture, is we’ve removed all the sticks. We’ve actually removed the carrots too, because … when you give somebody something that they have not earned, it’s not actually a carrot. It’s an entitlement at that point. So for it to be a true reward, you have to earn it.

That’s why participation trophies are so terrible. Kids know, “Why am I getting a participation trophy? I lost.” It’s supposed to feel bad to lose. You should feel good to play the game. You should just have fun playing the game, but you shouldn’t get a trophy for playing the game. Similarly, you should not give people housing for being a drug addict. If you’re down on your luck and you quit drugs, then maybe you do get some housing or some subsidized housing or some reward, but not for your bad habits.

Allen: Now, I know that you have spoken with leaders in California and other West Coast cities that are experiencing these issues. Do they recognize that there is an issue? And if so, why aren’t they taking steps to actually bring change?

Shellenberger: This is the craziest thing. I found a lot of agreement from both liberals and conservatives for the program that I’m advocating, which is just a modified Dutch model, a modified European model.

I interviewed California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s top adviser on mental health, homelessness, and addiction. His name is Thomas Insel. He worked at the National Institute of Mental Health for 12 years. He was the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. The man and I had a Zoom conversation for over an hour. He’s got his own book coming out. And we were finishing each other’s sentences. We didn’t disagree on anything, literally zero. We had zero disagreements.

And I just asked him, I was like, “Tom, can you go talk to the governor? What’s going on? Why is this not happening?” He just was like, “Well, the people in Sacramento, they say you have to modify the Constitution.” OK, so let’s modify the Constitution. That’s actually not as hard as it may sound. We pass ballot initiatives all the time in California to modify the Constitution. We love to do that in California.

He finally said, and he said it six times in our interview, “It’s a leadership problem. It’s a leadership problem. It’s a leadership problem,” which is as close as he would come to basically saying Gavin Newsom is not the leader that we need, because obviously Tom Insel has to be a political person. He’s a very good person, by the way. It’s not a criticism at all.

We’ve got a problem with our political leadership. Obviously, I think you need new leadership in California. Can someone beat Gavin Newsom next year in the run for governor? Very hard. Gavin Newsom has so much money. So to some extent, what I’m talking about here is the need for significant political change. I think that Democrats certainly need to change, but I think Republicans need to contest Democrats and Democratic rule on these issues.

I’ll tell you something that really I found inspiring, is that the way that in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, it took political change, it took, really, a political revolution whereby the center-right defeated the left-wing parties on this issue, on this issue of open drug scenes, and that is why … the Dutch government has been a center-right government. If it were translated into American context, it might be more like center-left. I don’t know. But in the Netherlands, it was center-right. They defeated the left on this issue.

So what I would say to my Republican friends, and I’m an independent, is, I would say, start competing with Democrats on this issue. Have a proper agenda. I think that that’s not just what it’s been to date. I think what it’s been to date is, I hear Republicans and conservatives talk a lot about the need for the churches and the charities and private-sector solutions. That’s not good enough. There has to be a governmental response.

For me, if the center-right is going to be the change that we need in the world, then they need to change, I think, the agenda that they’re offering. And we’re starting to see some of that.

I did see Republican candidates in the recall that just failed attempt to offer that. But I think much more should be done both at the state and the federal level by conservatives and Republicans to offer a proper agenda to deal with this problem, because in California it’s the No. 1 issue. It’s not the No. 1 issue nationwide, but it’s the No. 1 issue in California. And it’s also now a big issue in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, other big cities where conservatives, Republicans, center-right candidates want to start contesting Democratic rule.

Allen: In the model that you have created, taking pieces from the Netherlands, what they do there, and how to address homelessness, drug addiction, mental health, what is step one? What is the action that progressive cities need to take today to start fixing this problem?

Shellenberger: Yeah, the first thing is, shut down the open-air drug dealing. There’s no need for that. Build emergency shelters. Require people to use them. Do triage. If you want to earn housing, then make progress on your personal plan. I think the issue needs to be handled statewide so that people that are arrested in the open drug scene in San Francisco can get treatment in Fresno, can get treatment a couple hundred miles away, away from where the temptations of drugs are.

I’m completely practical when it comes to dealing with addiction. Some addicts need opioid substitutes. They might need methadone or Suboxone as a substitute. That’s fine. I think that there’s something more heroic about becoming completely sober and abstinent, but I think we’re dealing with a massive drug epidemic and we can’t be perfectionist about this or we can’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

So shelter first, treatment first, housing earned, make psychiatric and addiction care a statewide function, create Cal-Psych, and then we probably need to—I’m not totally sure. It was funny, because I would get to this place with this book where I go, “Gosh, is the problem the liberal laws, is it the liberal judges, or is it the politicians and the public?” It’s kind of all three.

One question is, how much can be done under existing laws? The short answer is a lot. Do we need to change some of the laws too? Probably, but again, that’s what you have leadership for. …

For example, if we had a truly great governor, the governor would come in and would do as much as you could through executive order. You would then put forward a big legislative package or separate legislative vehicles, it depends, in front of the legislature, and then you would also put a bunch of initiatives on the ballot.

The thing is, the great thing about having an emergency, a true crisis like this one, is that you have the will of the people to want to solve this. The public in California are just—we’re fed up. People are fleeing the state. We’re desperate. Honestly, it’s gotten so bad that the real issue, I think, is just the cynicism, that people believe that nothing can be done, and we ended up losing some of our best and brightest people to New York and Miami and other states.

Allen: Yeah. Well, you’ve been living in this world for so long. Are you able to kind of walk out the other side of all this research optimistic? Do you think that there can actually be real change?

Shellenberger: I do. I find hope in a couple of different areas. First of all, I think that the culture is changing. I think that we are in the midst or we’re at the beginning of a backlash against cancel culture, against woke religion and woke ideology.

It’s interesting, there are even some liberals and leftists that are expressing support for my position on drugs as well as on energy. They’re starting to do so on Twitter. They get shouted down by other progressives, but they’re starting to kind of poke their head up out of the tunnels to say, “Hey, I think Shellenberger is making a good point about this. It’s not moral to have people with schizophrenia on the street.” So that’s starting to happen in the culture.

I love these long-form podcasts because one of the problems that this issue has had is that people go, “Well, it’s really complex,” and that’s been a way to dismiss having the conversation about what to do about it. Long-form podcasts are a way to talk about the complexity in a way that it’s just much harder to do on television and sound bites. So I’m excited about what’s happening in the culture.

Then I just think there is a big opportunity politically for somebody to offer—honestly, I genuinely believe it could come from either the center-right or the center-left. California has an open primary system, so you could have a Democrat run on this agenda against Gavin Newsom next year, you could have a Republican run, or you could have an independent run. It seems to me that there’s a big amount of space for some political entrepreneur who picks up this agenda.

I and my organization have helped to create a new statewide coalition called the California Peace Coalition, because we don’t have peace in the streets, we don’t have peace in people’s minds. And we’ve attracted support from parents of kids killed by fentanyl, parents of kids addicted to fentanyl, recovering addicts, community leaders, and just interested citizens like myself. I do think that it’s created a kind of opportunity for a different approach than the one that’s been pursued either by the left or the right on these questions for the last 30 years.

Allen: The book is “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” You can follow Michael on Twitter, @ShellenbergerMD. You can get a copy of the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. You can listen to it on Audible.

Michael, we could keep going, but want to let you go. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate your insight.

Shellenberger: It was a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks for having me on.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email [email protected]ignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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Jack Hirschman, a former poet, activist, and famous beat generation proponent from San Francisco, died on Sunday at his home in the city, said the organization where he was co-founder and director. He was 87 years old.

On behalf of the World Poetry Movement, Ataol Behramoglu said the organization learned of Hirschman’s death just minutes before his scheduled speech in the last of its regular online interviews as WPM board coordinator.

“[It] is a big shock for us close friends and colleagues, ”wrote Behramoglu. “It was a great loss to American and world poetry.”

City Lights Books, Green Apple Books, and many others in San Francisco paid tribute to Hirschman on Twitter when they heard the news.

“Jack was regularly visiting our store and publishing office prior to the pandemic and brightening our day with a joke or story,” tweeted City Lights. “His presence in North Beach is so much missed. To this day, he was constantly reading poetry at various virtual events. We love you, Jack. “

Born in New York City, Hirschman started as an editor at Associated Press and later taught at UCLA in the 1970s before being fired for encouraging his students to resist drafting during the Vietnam War. Shortly thereafter, he moved to North Beach, where he wrote and published his first volume of poetry, “A Correspondence of Americans”, and studied the literary scene at Caffe Trieste and City Lights.

Hirschman was deputy editor of the left-wing literary magazine “Left Curve”, founded the Union of Left Writers of San Francisco and, in addition to his own extensive poetry, translated dozens of international works into English, in particular the poems of a young Joseph Stalin.

will miss Jack Hirschman’s presence in the world. My condolences to my dear wife. https://t.co/VlybMoAFDp

– Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) August 22, 2021

In 2006 he was named a Poet Prize Winner and in the same year launched the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. Three years later he became a poet in residence at the San Francisco Public Library.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Janice Mirikitani – co-founder, activist, poet and wife of the Glide Memorial Church, Rev. Cecil Williams – died Thursday morning, according to a church announcement. She was 80 years old.

The post on the Glide website said Mirikitani died with family and friends by her side.

CONTINUE READING: Business owners in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley say crime is driving them to shutdown

Janice Mirikitani (Glide.org)

“Our hearts are full of sadness and the tremendous love that it embodied. Janice accompanied everything she did with wild courage and willpower, ”the statement said. “She told her truth and inspired others to accept and celebrate themselves, each other and all of our differences.”

Mirikitani was born on February 4, 1941 in Stockton, California, to a Japanese immigrant couple in the San Joaquin Valley. During World War II, she and her family were interned at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas.

She studied English and creative writing, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA and worked intermittently as a teacher in Contra Costa County before finding her calling at Glide Memorial Church in Tenderloin in the late 1960s.

Mirikitani went from being an administrative assistant in the church to being a program director, and through her work with the church she began a lifetime of activism and advocacy for marginalized people and communities.

“Janice helped shape so much of the early vision and roots of GLIDE’s impact,” the Church’s statement read. “Your work touched many areas, both in church and on the street in Tenderloin and in San Francisco.”

Mirikitani married the co-founder of Glide, Rev. Cecil Williams, in 1982, and became president of the Glide Foundation that same year. She also continued her work as a writer, poet, and editor, wrote a number of books, and became San Francisco’s second prize-winner in 2000.

Several San Francisco officials issued public statements after news of Mirikitani’s death became known.

“Jan Mirikitani was one of the real lights of our city. She was a visionary, a revolutionary artist and the embodiment of the compassionate spirit of San Francisco, ”read a statement from SF Mayor London Breed. “As a poet, also as Poet Laureate of this City from 2000 to 2002, she used the power of her words to advance the fight for equality and to call for a more just and peaceful world. Through her work at Glide Memorial Church, she and her husband, Reverend Cecil Williams, served our most vulnerable residents for decades and offered everyone a place of refuge and love. “

San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener posted a memorial service on Twitter with the words: “I am heartbroken that our beloved Janice Mirikitani has passed away. Jan was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met, he combined strength and love like no other. “

It breaks my heart that our beloved Janice Mirikitani has passed away. Jan was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met and combined strength and love like no other.

My condolences to the love of their lives Cecil Williams, the entire @GLIDEsf community and all of San Francisco.

– Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) July 29, 2021

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San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin posted a short clip of Mirikitani reading a poem during a recent online summit on hate crimes and the safety of the AAPI community.

It’s heartbroken to hear about the death of Janice Mirikitani, SF Poet Prize Winner, Glide Co-Founder and a visionary, influential person.

She read a poem at our last summit on hate crime and the safety of the AAPI community and moved us all with the power of her words.

Rest in power. pic.twitter.com/YJNRE4tXzv

– Chesa Boudin 博彻思 (@chesabudin) July 29, 2021

SF overseer Matt Haney also posted on Twitter.

We lost a legend today, the First Lady of the Tenderloin, a poet, someone who loved people, all people and had endless compassion, grace and vision. Rest in power, Dr. Janice Mirikitani.

I grieve for the glide community and the countless people whose lives they have touched.

– Matt Haney (@MattHaneySF) July 29, 2021

MORE NEWS: San Jose Unified Schools are reopening for full classroom teaching

A monument to Mirikitani is arranged. No cause of death was disclosed.

The post Glide Church Co-Founder, Poet and San Francisco Activist Janice Mirikitani Dies at Age 80 – CBS San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Raised on the Mohawk reservation in Akwesasne on the border between New York and Canada, Richard Oakes learned at a young age the respect that his Native Americans had. When he was old enough to do something about it, he became a key figure in the American Indian rights movement – largely through the occupation of the dormant Alcatraz prison. Take a look at five things you might not know about Oakes and his tragically brief struggle to recapture his culture.

1. HE WAS A KEY FIGURE IN CREATING NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES IN COLLEGES.

Born in 1942, Oakes moved to San Francisco in his late twenties to study at San Francisco State University. As a student, he found that the lethargic curriculum neglected the Native American contribution. Working with the faculty, he helped develop and launch one of the first Native American Studies departments in the country. Oakes and fellow students also encouraged Native American elders in the ward to take classes.

2. ASSISTANCE IN OUR OCCUPATION OF ALCATRAZ ISLAND.

At SFSU, Oakes appeared to have found his calling in gathering both students and members of the Native American community. To draw attention to the need for further education and awareness of their forgotten history, Oakes and several others traveled to Alcatraz Island in November 1969 to symbolically claim it as Indian land.

3. HE BECAME “MAYOR OF ALCATRAZ”.

Though originally intended as a brief statement, Oakes realized that the dormant federal prison location might actually support long-term occupation. UCLA students helped educate the 100 or so Indians who settled on the island. After people settled in, an elected council was set up and inmates took on a variety of jobs in the abandoned prison facility: cooking, hygiene, teaching, housing, and childcare. Oakes, a charismatic leader, was appointed chief or mayor of the occupation and demanded the charter for the island. Federal agencies didn’t give in: the occupation ended in 1971 after police evicted the country’s remaining residents. (Oakes, whose 13 year old step daughter died there after falling)he stairs 1970, was already gone.)

4. HE Suffered VIOLENCE AS A RESULT OF HIS FAITH.

After leaving Alcatraz, Oakes joined other American Indians in their struggle for equality. He allied with the Pit River Tribe in California and turned against utility companies who claimed their land for their own purposes. Oakes fell victim to tear gas and truncheons. When he returned to San Francisco, he was involved in a bar fight that had rushed him to the hospital.

5. HE WAS GOT SHOT AND KILLED AT THE AGE OF 30.

Oakes undoubtedly had decades of activism and education ahead of him, but he never had the opportunity to experience them. On September 20, 1972, Oakes got into a confrontation with Michael Morgan, a YMCA official whom Oakes alleged abused the young Native American contestants for whom Morgan was responsible. During the argument, Morgan drew a gun and shot Oakes, killing him. A jury later ruled that Morgan had acted in self-defense. He was acquitted.

Despite the tragic end of his life, Richard Oakes achieved a great deal for the Native American people. While he failed to take Alcatraz, the occupation brought new attention to the matter: hundreds more protests were staged, and then President Richard Nixon returned 48,000 acres of land to the Taos Indians. Today, the Richard Oakes Multicultural Center at San Francisco State University is dedicated to Oakes, who dedicated his life to spreading the idea that Native American people determine their own destiny.

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