Legends of the 94110 expressing our well considered sentiments about the regime of cruelty and plunder being constructed by the Boy King Mayor Lurie. (With Dr Bunny McFadden, awesome candidate for City College Board.)

Strong use of community notes over on threads.

Everyone who works in the field knew and said at the beginning that bringing back the war on drugs wouldn’t work, but were ignored by ideologues like Lurie.

Man it feels fucking bleak today. Find some joy wherever you can.

I never read it but I loved the Anarchist’s Convention.

I'm up to 54,220 words. Next draft shipped to my editor last night...

If the building trades unions think it will work somehow for their members for them to palpate the Mayor's taint, they're wrong but I guess they can give it a shot. They just discredit themselves by retreading garbage arguments like this. I can't take them seriously on other matters either.

"Neverending flow of money with no accountability..." as opposed to the famously accountable market rate developers? How much accountability is there for how the City spends money on police? What are we even talking about?

"Doesn't require a single unit to be built." Perhaps, but is that bad? If the money is used to buy existing buildings to make them permanently affordable, that is good for increasing access to affordable housing. The money would actually go further & cover more units this way than new construction.

Drawing the distinction between "nonprofit clients" and "everyday San Franciscans" is a racist dog whistle. It implies that poor people are not ALSO San Franciscans. I guess the Building Trades think the only legitimate housing is by capitalists for capitalists.

You have a Hanlon’s razor problem.

Yes of course. That's literally necessary to build sectoral bargaining power. The union has to engage in collective bargaining at the scale of the employer to be able to win.

Yeah it’s certainly true that we can be reluctant to pull punches with politicians we endorsed. Like right now we’re wrestling with striking Oakland when we just elected Barbara Lee the Mayor.

I'm head of collective bargaining for a large municipal union in Northern California. I think unions in general mirror their industries, so public sector unions unthinkingly ingest a host of dysfunctional traits from the civil service itself.

I'm not saying my experience is universal, but that this dynamic can only arise under certain conditions and isn't inherent to all unions. Yes there is a baked in tendency towards being risk-averse, but I think that's more inherent to institutions than unions per se.

As a 30 year union organizer, I disagree with this. I have never encountered a boss that wanted to suppress rival slates or that bosses give sweetheart contracts to protect incumbent union leadership. Never.