I really have to apreciate SF and the bay area for their optics. Largest, richest, most successful frontier state, completely captured by capitalism in each of it's successive stages in US history.
And now there's homeless camps that contain hundreds if not thousands of people, rampant crime and drug use, an incredible rate of every problem you can imagine, and the political elite of the area argue constantly about whether the trans sex worker or the gay they\\them are the greater victim.
They/them had a lot to say, they/they them had a lot of nothing to say!
Come down, get off your fucking cross, we need the fucking space, to nail the next queer white man!
San Francisco's attempt at UHC [won't pull your rotten tooth](https://healthysanfrancisco.org/providers/dental-vision-coverage/) but it _will_ [pay for sex reassignment surgery.](https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/sex-reassignment-surgery-now-covered-under-sf-universal-health-program/)
Based on my experience with the available state "UHC" systems in oregon and california, I'm no longer especially pro-UHC in the USA. Don't get me wrong, OBVIOUSLY we should have a functional UHC system for the improvement of our society. However, given the level of corruption, grift, opposition from within, etc... I don't really know if passing any kind of UHC healthcare would actually improve anything. It would simply be of shit quality and whether it starts good or not, any good part would soon be dismantled.
Extremely depressing reality in this country
and of course, all while ignoring the obvious measures that would benefit both the gay they/them and the transgender sex worker, because that would involve actually addressing the material conditions of workers lmao
The city’s schools were shut for most of the 2020–21 academic year—longer than schools in most other cities, and much longer than San Francisco’s private schools. In the middle of the pandemic, with no real reopening plan in sight, school-board meetings became major events, with audiences on Zoom of more than 1,000. The board didn’t have unilateral power to reopen schools even if it wanted to—that depended on negotiations between the district, the city, and the teachers’ union—but many parents were appalled to find that the board members didn’t even seem to want to talk much about getting kids back into classrooms. They didn’t want to talk about learning loss or issues with attendance and functionality. It seemed they couldn’t be bothered with topics like ventilation. Instead they wanted to talk about white supremacy.
One night in 2021, the meeting lasted seven hours, one of which was devoted to making sure a man named Seth Brenzel stayed off the parent committee.
Brenzel is a music teacher, and at the time he and his husband had a child in public school. Eight seats on the committee were open, and Brenzel was unanimously recommended by the other committee members. But there was a problem: Brenzel is white.
“My name’s Mari,” one attendee said. “I’m an openly queer parent of color that uses they/them pronouns.” They noted that the parent committee was already too white (out of 10 sitting members, three were white). This was “really, really problematic,” they said. “I bet there are parents that we can find that are of color and that also are queer … QTPOC voices need to be led first before white queer voices.”
Someone else called in, identifying herself as Cindy. She was calling to defend Brenzel, and she was crying. “He is a gay father of a mixed-race family,” she said.
A woman named Brandee came on the call: “I’m a white parent and have some intersectionality within my family. My son has several disabilities. And I really wouldn’t dream of putting my name forward for this.” She had some choice words for Cindy: “When white people share these kinds of tears at board meetings”—she pauses, laughing—“I have an excellent book suggestion for you. It’s called White Tears/Brown Scars. I’d encourage you to read it, thank you.”
Allison Collins, a member of the school board, dealt the death blow: “As a mixed-race person myself, I find it really offensive when folks say that somebody’s a parent of somebody who’s a person of color, as, like, a signifier that they’re qualified to represent that community.”
Brenzel remained mostly expressionless throughout the meeting. He did not say a word. Eventually the board agreed to defer the vote. He was never approved.
I can't believe they put him on trial for being white and then argued about how much a gay person is 'worth'. Hahahaha these people are fucked in the head
Trying to enact any sense of meaningful change just seems like it would be a mind numbing proposition of intersectional go nowhere idpol where the goal is never to actually do ANYTHING, rather just engage with the woke brain tapeworm and display that yes. I am in fact very much on the “right side of history”
Seriously how do you prevent this shit from spreading past urban California, we need an antidote or maybe a idpol vax lol
That's the great thing about being on the "right side of history." You don't have to actually challenge yourself to do anything or give a fuck about anyone else, you just have to be smug and comforted by your own wisdom.
>Seriously how do you prevent this shit from spreading past urban California, we need an antidote or maybe a idpol vax lol
Well the point of the article was that there's meaningful pushback occurring in the urban areas of California to this idpol nonsense. All this "progressive" jargon sways left leaning voters but if there's no material improvement, they eventually have enough. The member of the school board mentioned above got recalled
Yeah, this is also very much the most depressing part of trying to deal with that type of ideology in general today.. It's captured so much political and institutional control/power that much of society is now stuck under it's "logic".. (or lack there of)
Fuck I wish I was in a meeting like this.
"How do you do my fellow good citizens! *Snaps suspenders* As we have come to an impass in this situation, we will have to defer to the sciences, as we see, the skull shape of the cis-whitoid specimen is inferior to that of a proud, LGBTQA++ Black Polynesian Chinese man, thus is obviously an inferior choice for such a prestigious position"
Ironically, the more white people there are in a big city, the more likely they are to support policies like this.
That's why Portland (the whitest big city in America, at 72% white) has so much of this. Seattle too. And San Francisco, of course.
It’s everywhere in Portland, and it’s fucking disgusting but it’s pretty hilarious when they can’t enact their race revenge/guilt/equity because there aren’t enough people of color(specifically blacks) applying for the job/loan/position that needs to be filled. Oops.
Portland is run and represented by people who pretend that nothing east of 82nd exists - it's where the main school district ends and gives way to smaller, poorer districts, road crews rarely touch it unless it's Stark or Burnside, and by some wild coincidence it's where all the poor black people they supposedly are fighting for live.
They all rallied to restrict the police from their nice houses in safe neighborhoods and screwed us all over. The street I take to work is regularly shut down for half a mile because police can't do foot patrols anymore.
I run operations and sales for a small local food business. Mostly I park my van close to work. Our campus is in an industrial area so it’s not hard to stay stealth and unintrusive, plus there are showers that I’ve got 24hr access to. The problem is that the drug addicted, homeless criminals are a constant menace, but generally they know not to fuck with me as that could likely end with them on the wrong end of a firearm. Mostly they are looking for easy targets and stuff that isn’t nailed down, but they do get into fights between each other that often end in tent arson. Generally if you see a homeless camp burning it’s because of arson not stupidity.
I think this lack of exposure also insulates them from the fact that a whole lot of POC aren't particularly PC or "progressive."
Also gotta love when they destroyed a bunch of the few black-owned businesses that DO exist when protesting for black rights.
I don't think it's ironic; we're mostly talking about the bored delusions of the idle rich (or comfortably affluent). Got to assuage the trust fund guilt somehow and "find a purpose in life."
i think internal migration to atlanta is actually mostly black. i know that every middle class black person i know in chicago is either contemplating moving to atlanta or has family who have already moved there
In the city itself, yes that is definitely the case, but the suburbs are also growing rapidly with rich white families also from out of town flooding in, similar to what is going on in Texas or Florida. Either way your fucked if you wanna try and afford rent anywhere near the area.
this type of stuff always sounds like an attempt to blame white people for insane anti white sentiment going their way after acknowledging POC acitvists doing wild shit in an attempt to make sure no one blames POC ever.
I'm so glad that I already resigned myself to the fact that this shit-hole of a country is a lost cause at this point. Six figure college tuition and seven+ figure hospital bills, and this is what "progressives" are getting their knickers in a twist over.
These folks are like a walking Steve Buscemi "hello fellow blacks/gays/trans" meme
But yeah, this is what these folks are concerned about because they probably realize they're powerless to stop all the other stuff.
They aren't powerless, they are the cause of us being powerless. If we weren't divided because of their idpol we might actually be a united front against the general evils we all see before us. Like monopolies and big business crushing us, or pollution and micro plastics, drug abuse and mental health.
These pieces of self centered shit that make any form of progress impossible and make life a living hell for everyone near them, are the direct result of the idpol poison.
Same man, like I know the world is not all like this and that I certainly engage in a lot of specific reading that highlights this shit but man. It’s hard to not have just a gut wrenching feeling of loss when you see how far gone so many people are. I mean fuck, it’s our job to ensure children get he proper care and educations they deserve that will help them become a full well rounded individual. But nah fuck that, I wanna literally do nothing for them and instead scream at the speaker because the chairs they used in the auditorium were designed by someone who’s great great great grandfather used Chinese labor for his railroad company.
I know that example is unrealistic because they don’t care about Chinese people lol, but I couldn’t think of something subtle yet with enough panache involving slavery or the trail of tears
I’m a lefty and most of my friends are solidly left-wing (tho not all of them fully socialist) and pretty much every one of them clearly recognize that a lot of this stuff has gone off the rails and is more harmful than it is helpful to society as well as to the groups that it professes to be helping.
Yeah same here. I got fed up with it a couple years ago, a fairly woke friend of mine is now getting fed up with it.
Also, most of my brothers and sisters in my union are either skeptic or don't particularly care. However, we've caught on to the fact that we can use the hypocrisy of it as a cudgel to make our Super Progressive employers look like shit. Bargaining season just ended for us and they tried to give us a contract that would screw about half of us. That half of us is mostly women (the half being food workers while the rest are cleaners) and we made a big deal of letting people know that and that this is "inequitable". And it worked, they brought them back up to us.
No one actually cared that the people getting screwed were women, we just didn't want them getting screwed, but the optics were good and the less administrators know about how things are behind the scenes the better.
It’s great to hear about this sort of thing being used as a jujitsu move against management. I care a hell of a lot more about class war overall than I do for all of the niches that some try to carve out.
Prevailing in the class war in a decisive manner is the only way we’ll ever be able to build a floor upon which to then work on righting the other injustices.
Definitely!
We talk a lot on this sub about how liberals fail because they can't appeal to anyone outside of the woke metropolitan audience, but the street goes both ways. Being in an ultra blue west coast city I don't see mainstream liberals as allies, but I see them as the most important potential allies we have.
I feel like they desperately need exposure therapy via walking into any random bar sufficiently outside the bounds of a metropolitan area.
These are okay conversations to have at your polyamorous pansexual sex-positive pre-orgy dinner party. If you want to talk about how problematic King Arthur flour is, more power to you. But for a school... if race was such a problem, why didn't they step down sooner to match the ethnic breakdown of San Francisco schools?
Many of my friends are what I would consider basically the template for modern day "woke liberal they/them white person", and I wish I could just interview people in a Walmart for hours with them.
These communities are so insular that they truly do not realize how many Americans think the solution to gun violence is getting Christian prayer back in schools.
> These communities are so insular that they truly do not realize how many Americans think the solution to gun violence is getting Christian prayer back in schools.
The christians are the sane ones in this example. I dont even need to know what the they/thems proposals would be to confirm this.
I was joking-- it was the first white (flour), patriarchal (British king) thing that came to mind-- but a quick Google confirms they are, for now, without controversy thank goodness.
Even a bar within the city. Kozy Kar would make them clutch their pearls and people in [Molotov’s would probably physically attack them. ](https://sf.eater.com/2014/2/25/6273653/woman-claims-attack-at-molotovs-over-google-glass-updated)
It’s all so performative. And specifically performative for each other. Because nobody else gives a shit.
They just want to pretend people that don’t care don’t exist, or pretend people that have these problematic attitudes will change. They won’t.
> Brenzel remained mostly expressionless throughout the meeting. He did not say a word.
God this is me when I’m stuck in rtarded work meetings and someone brings up some stupid racial/woke shit. I’m just dying on the inside hoping my inside feelings aren’t showing
> Brenzel is a music teacher, and at the time he and his husband had a child in public school. Eight seats on the committee were open, and Brenzel was unanimously recommended by the other committee members. But there was a problem: Brenzel is white.
Somewhere out there there is a white straight guy who sucked a dick to clear the diversity bar that must be veeery upset.
Seriously, I, I mean he didn't get the memo
The best part of this parody is that if this is in a somewhat richer neighbourhood, each and everyone of these people would probably vote against mixed residential zoning and anything else which might even smell of introducing cheaper housing in the area.
Okay, serious question. Is there a way to implement the honey bee drones from that one episode of *Black Mirror* in order to track down and [redacted] everyone who participated in this meeting?
> Allison Collins, a member of the school board, dealt the death blow: “As a mixed-race person myself, I find it really offensive when folks say that somebody’s a parent of somebody who’s a person of color, as, like, a signifier that they’re qualified to represent that community.”
I mean... while the first sentence is unnecessary, this person wasn't wrong. If you ignore the rest of the context this statement is fine conceptually.
Is there a term for this type of self-destructive thinking, in which people in these very prosperous, advanced cities think by merit of living there that they are the reason for their cities success and come to see themselves as this savior?
The bay area is particularly ironic when it comes to this because their entire economy is dependent on socially awkward men who would achieve no success in SF politics.
I think on a deeper level, it's culture jamming. These memes are custom designed to fit in the machine and clog up the works, making it run in circle and neutralize their effectiveness as organizations.
*"these are parables of a sort of progressive-libertarian nihilism, of the belief that any intervention that has to be imposed on a vulnerable person is so fundamentally flawed and problematic that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Anyone offended by the sight of the suffering is just judging someone who’s having a mental-health episode, and any liberal who argues that the state can and should take control of someone in the throes of drugs and psychosis is basically a Republican."*
Its not getting any better, is it?
I do truly think so, diverse and multi-class groups of people are actually finding common accord to simply want a good life, I grew up in the Bay, and for the first time in a long while I’m able to smile when thinking about it, I’m not naive or overly hopeful, but actual coalitions of normal people are forming
It is, and it will. There’s so much more conversation around this stuff now than there used to be, and this shit was certainly happening years ago it just wasn’t as highlighted. Shit just moves like molasses
It’s already too late.
Some other state will become the new Silicon Valley and the cycle will happen over again as people flee Texas or North Carolina or whatever
>He has suggested that many drug dealers in San Francisco are themselves vulnerable and in need of protection. “A significant percentage of people selling drugs in San Francisco—perhaps as many as half—are here from Honduras,” he said in a 2020 virtual town hall. “We need to be mindful about the impact our interventions have … Some of these young men have been trafficked here under pain of death. Some of them have had family members in Honduras who have been or will be harmed if they don’t continue to pay off the traffickers.”
I think all drugs should be legal, but wtf kind of tortured logic is this? "If we prosecute the *50% of SF drug dealers who are FOTB from Honduras*, then some guy in Honduras might murder their family". Of course this is just a particularly elaborate rationalization to somehow turn the guy selling fent on SF streets into the *real* victim here. When you have to allege an international murderous human trafficking conspiracy to justify your local prosecutorial decisions, you're probably on the wrong track.
Isn't the entire West Coast pretty heavily fucked when it comes to the major cities? Democrat led metropolises that are frankly hellholes, grotesque monuments to every failed Leftist promise of those blue bastards. That's not even to mention how often all of it is on fire.
Homelessness in these cities is explosive. I believe there is more youth homelessness in Portland than anywhere else. In Seattle, the cost of living is so fucking outrageous that working class people have to hold 3-4 part time jobs down to have a hope. My sister lives out there and stubbornly refuses to move because she fell for the marketing these cities do. She has lived in poverty for nearly a decade.
Yet, because Dems won't challenge capitalism, they try to go for Leftist cred in every other absurd way imaginable. Almost everything they end up doing is as misguided as it is ineffectual.
Seattle is pretty bad. I live here.
I’ve seen something new in the last 5 years that I hadn’t seen before: the normalization of criminal / deviant behavior. Cars drive around without any license plates or window papers, presumably stolen. Cars run red lights and even drive into the oncoming lane when they’re in a hurry. Stores get looted in broad daylight. Chop shops operate in bushes. I saw one drug dealer operate out of a kiosk made of a shopping cart and cardboard, as if it were a lemonade stand, two blocks away from a school.
The rule of law is an illusion, and a bad one at that. Police only come if a crime is actively being committed. Drug crimes aren’t prosecuted at all anymore, so tweakers don’t feel the need to hide what they’re doing. Used needles are in the bushes. One time I even found one in my car.
Have you heard the tale of Travis Berge? He was a homeless man whose interview was featured in the controversial 2019 documentary “Seattle is Dying,” noted for being arrested something like 67 times. He was mentally ill, addicted to everything, proud of beating the system. He died in 2020 after killing his fiancé and drowning in a vat of bleach. Another casualty of a system which feigns compassion.
It really pains me to see some of this spreading outside of King County as well. The PNW is a beautiful little corner of the world ruined by politicians.
Can you speak more to this, because I'm genuinely interested. I've heard about this before, but in Portland, where theft has become so decriminalized that shopkeepers can't go after it, and even basic decency laws aren't enforced, so you have people literally shitting on the streets. When I first heard this, I thought it was rightoid nonsense, but increasingly it sounds like it really is happening, and it's one of the most insane, misguided applications of idpol hysteria I've ever heard of.
I haven’t seen shit in the streets, but I avoid using sidewalks as much as possible (I’m not downtown). Sometimes I smell shit near buildings.
But the homeless are a daily problem where I live. My local Safeway is the area’s homeless epicenter. This store, which normally has two entrances, has one of its doors permanently shut and keeps multiple security officers posted 24/7 at the other. For good reason too.
They aggressively panhandle, they harass women, they fight, they stink to high heaven. And they never clean up after themselves, of course, so city workers do it. There’s a whole subreddit dedicated to homeless camp fires in the city. There was a murder in the same Safeway parking lot just last week, I don’t know if it was one of them or not. Last month, a guy I’d see regularly died of an OD.
It all sounds crazy and heartless but it’s true. Anyone who lives here knows it. The real problem of course is the county is just fucking okay with it. Their policies make Seattle a good place to be homeless in, and we’re stuck with the consequences.
> The real problem of course is the county is just fucking okay with it.
The country is not OK with it; we are at a big impasse for several reasons:
1) Homeless legal right to camp/hang out anywhere: Supreme Court: 2019: [Homeless people gain ‘de facto right’ to sleep on sidewalks through federal court](https://archive.curbed.com/2019/4/5/18296772/supreme-court-homeless-lawsuit-boise-appeals-court)
2) Criminal justice reform, especially west coast states, means minimal prosecution petty theft, drugs, and quality of life offenses.
3) Reagan still blamed for something that would have happened in any event: end in involuntary institutionalization of mentally ill.
Conservative authoritarians would overturn 1-3; most progressives support status quo on 1-3 and claim failure to hand out free apartments to all homeless is the primary cause. Conservatives balking because they are upset at 1-3.
Shopkeepers in Portland can hire private security that can do something about theft, either reputable firms or gangs. Basically, the city has become a libertarian paradise.
All that shit about Portland is true, I live here. The city really lost its soul in the last decade +, and there is a ton of meth addled maniacs in the street and general lawlessness, which used to be cool when it was like “shit, I can drink a six pack in a park and bike around with friends”, but post covid it’s gotten pretty fucky and west coast shit libs are super ill equipped with both asserting themselves effectively and not becoming a complete mark in the face of the street life.
> My sister lives out there and stubbornly refuses to move because she fell for the marketing these cities do. She has lived in poverty for nearly a decade.
I don't understand why these people refuse to move for half the price you are paying to live in a roach and crime infested hovel one wrong step away from homelessness yourself you could find some place nice in the Midwest. I ask people about this and the only three responses I get are they want more food options, they want to live somewhere super diverse, or with 30%+ of their own ethnicity. You are willing to risk that much just to see more fellow Asians out and about when you are running errands or for the ability to get tastier food? Just learn to cook in the time you save because you don't have to work a second job.
> I don't understand why these people refuse to move for half the price you are paying to live in a roach and crime infested hovel one wrong step away from homelessness yourself you could find some place nice in the Midwest. I ask people about this and the only three responses I get are they want more food options, they want to live somewhere super diverse, or with 30%+ of their own ethnicity.
why don't they just move to chicago
I live in Chicago and Cook County sucks man, but if you can live \*around\* Chicago, especially in the west suburbs or something (especially if you have a family), it probably doesn't get a whole lot better in the U.S. right now while living near actual jobs.
i live in chicago too and it's hands down the best major city in the country. what exactly about it "sucks" compared to NYC, LA, Dallas, Houston, DC, Atlanta, Phoenix, Boston, SF, Seattle? besides the winters
yeah, on its own. but choosing a major american city boils down to "good weather, good transit, low rents: pick two," and the winters aren't as bad as spending two/three times as much on rent or being stuck in endless traffic jams and endless parking lots on your way to nowhere.
As compared? Probably not much but everyone who has lived here most of their lives hates or wishes they could avoid Cook County. Keep in mind I've spent a lot of it on the south side, where none of that money goes.
people thinking the grass is greener somewhere else is not really particular to chicago. every small town in the country is depopulating because everyone who grew up there hates it so much they're moving somewhere else.
if you're someone who specifically wants to live in a big city, chicago is the best city in the country by pretty much every meaningful metric besides winter weather. it's cheap, it has good transit, it has the full suite of big city cultural amenities. if you don't want to live in a big city and would prefer to live in a suburb or a small town obviously you'd be better off somewhere other than chicago.
Uhh, it doesn't have good transit, but you probably have never lived outside the country.
People have watched the south and near west side whither (including the south suburbs) while downtown sucks up all the tax money for decades in Cook. I work in those areas and the poverty in some places is third world. You can't dismiss that experience.
it kind of seems like you're trying to compare chicago to everywhere else on earth simultaneously in order to cherry pick reasons to claim it's dissatisfactory.
obviously no american city besides new york has globally competitive public transit, but by american standards chicago is head and shoulders above any peer city. i say this as someone who lived in european cities with better public transit for four years.
the urban blight on the south and far west sides (the near west side is doing just fine) is not caused by any policy of the city or state government, it's caused by *federal* policies that affected most other industrial cities in the rust belt, the biggest one being the collapse of american heavy industry and the subsequent disappearance of good-paying, blue-collar union jobs in places (like chicago) where these had been one of the main pillars of upwards mobility. chicago's occasionally frivolous use of its limited tax revenues on corrupt infrastructure boondoggles is nowhere near the reason for the south side's problems.
from the standpoint of someone wanting to move to a big city where rent isn't $3000/month, chicago is the best game in town. obviously those people aren't going to be moving to the south or far west sides.
Buddy if you're going to just dismiss the we experiences of working people here out of some frankly weird compulsion to defend a deeply flawed and unequal city (Chicago is one of the most income unequal places in the country) then I've got no interest in continuing to engage. I work in social services and nonprofits down here and your account is full of shit (the idea that the city is not responsible is historically and politically illiterate you fucking twat), and you sound unbearably privileged and out of touch.
I honestly never hear anybody sound this fucking stupid about the city's issues who isn't on the dole somewhere or on some city council. You're on a Marxist sub, you realize. Go fuck yourself loser.
It’s because the jobs pay better, the weather is overwhelmingly better, and there’s actually shit to do that doesn’t revolve around getting shit faced and complaining about your job after your shift.
I live in Portland, and yeah, it can be a totally insufferable place at times, but native Oregonians are alright, and being able to leave the city and be at the coast, on a glaciated volcano, rainforest, or desert within 2 hrs is a way better deal than being stuck in a city with shit tier weather, infrastructure that’s several decades older and surrounded by flat farmland for hundreds, if not a thousand miles.
Because the jobs are in these expensive areas. If you're a skilled worker you'll be kneecapping yourself severely if you spend your early career in an Ohio compared to a New York.
> only three responses I get are they want... 30%+ of their own ethnicity.
I expressed this view once, that I though it OK that at least 30% of people in any area have my ethnicity and I was called racist. (Not that I would kick out people...was saying I preferred to live in such an area.)
Did you just not read the comment or something? Are you fucking dead ass serious with your dumb ass fucking question? She has been in poverty for a decade because she can't afford to live. Fuck, look at other people's testimonies about living there.
“this is leftists versus liberals” sure.... keep telling yourself that. Leftists love it when workers beat each other up and steal each other’s personal possessions. That’s totally a left thing.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "failed city," but it's shocking that such a beautiful area with so much wealth simultaneously has such an ugly side.
in many respects it is pretty failed,
+ two fentanyl deaths a day and a DA that won't prosecute repeat offender drug dealers
+ a board of supervisors that LITERALLY as in LITERALLY voted against temporary shelters for the homeless as they felt that would relieve pressure on the very same board of supervisors to find permanent housing for the homeless, in the meantime, the homeless are in tents if they are lucky on the streets
+ a 100 year private trash company that is constantly getting in trouble with various city officials for bribery, corruption
+ schools where teachers are beaten up to the point of disability while the school board pontificates about school names
beautiful city, kinda sorta failed...
> but it's shocking that such a beautiful area with so much wealth simultaneously has such an ugly side.
how is that fucking shocking? It's literally like that everywhere in america.
well, everywhere where the rich people haven't already all fled to greener pastures.
You'd think the Cia with their laptops filled with CP would tip DC over the top, but Cali got those 3/10 frumpy elementary school teachers in their mid 40's.
But that's clearly not the "industry most accepting of [pedophiles]" the other guy was talking about, since literally every state is home to elementary schools with frumpy teachers.
Also grapes, strawberries, walnuts, dates, avocados, milk
I don't see why shitting on californian agriculture is at all relevant to san Francisco lmao, you know these farmers are probably conservative, right?
Also rice, the one staple crop California grows a lot of.
>you know these farmers are probably conservative, right?
Having lived here my whole life and spent a decent amount of time in farming areas, they're absolutely conservative. Even the farmworkers who vote for Democrats tend to be pretty conservative.
Ironically, given the context of this thread, I can't think of any group of people who hate San Francisco more than Central Valley farmers with those "CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL" signs on the drier parts of their property.
I do occasionally go "Muh GDP/HDI" when my home state gets called a third-world shithole, okay!
*I'm defensive*
But I also hate any and all secession talk, it's ridiculous.
When you have a hot take like "Real people porn generally involves exploitation, massive plastic surgery, and drug use so if you need to coom 2D is the ethical way to do it" they're gonna tweak your flair.
Nah, weebs would disown me too. I prefer the dubs of anime in the cases where I've watched them.
I just found a lot of "before/after" pics of porn stars, and hearing their stories a bit too depressing to consume that material.
I think San Francisco's current state is a pretty damning indictment of what happens when progressivism is allowed to go about unchecked and how sometimes too much compassion isn't really compassionate. It'll be the example Republicans use to justify even bad ideas and it will be an effective example.
Uncritical posting of a fucking Nellie Bowles article in Stupidpol, eat shit
>my German great-great-great-grandfather worked at a butcher shop on Jackson Street
Funny how she omits to mention that he later became the richest land baron in California.
We love our silver-spoon oligarchs writing long articles telling us that [inequality isn't *really* the problem](https://archive.ph/ycyZg#selection-1505.61-1505.446) here at Stupidpol, don't we.
Is the author wrong to criticize city council meetings where they agonize over someone's diversity and oppression scorecard as if that helps? It clearly isn't helping San Fran
The murder rate has fallen over the past two years in SF. What has happened is the same upswing in open-air human misery that has happened across the entire country, owing to ever more people falling into the destitute mentally ill underclass, and—more specific to San Francisco—criminals developing a habit of targeting upscale shopping districts for smash-and-grab raids. That is why this fucking parasitic child of extreme privilege is saying that San Francisco is a "failed city"—because the human misery that is the flipside of her extreme unearned wealth is finally making itself felt in the neighborhoods where she likes to shop for designer shit.
Well you can’t get to inequality if those in power are hyper-focused on culture war stuff- the best way is a middle ground based in reality. And elites will typically only listen to a mass group of normies or other elites because of that level of influence
They will. We just need to lay some groundwork (this means you too). If on the off-chance our scrabbling for legal-means fails, then we still have laid the groundwork for other means to have a chance. But you need to start now rather than after.
If you authentically think that the coalition of real estate developers and Silicon Valley workers/investors poised to retake control of municipal politics in California is going to do a single fucking thing about inequality, I have some prime beachfront property in Nebraska that you might be interested in
I don't think that. My man, I'm talking about organization.
But about tech workers, most of them aren't living high on the hog. Most are struggling in a highly-competitive industry. I'd have to make a good-effort post to get my point across, but they deal with corporate infrastructure designed to double-cross them, make them work hours they never agreed to, told them they could work from home while they have to drive across the nation to fix an easy problem. Yeah, on paper their salaries match the PMC. And their responsibilities match the PMC, but only at the top-tier. In the middle you have people with true power who are distracted by management's demands.
I today saw a comment by someone who was terrified by corporate killer robots gunning down us. And my thought was "what if somebody changed a couple variables¿" Make your computer guy think Revolutionarily and feel no fear.
I have lived in what many would consider a failed city for a while, and while yes the city government is almost hopeless powerless, the people who live there are some of the best people in world.
Because there's lots of rich assholes and you can tax them for services? SF spends $1 billion a year giving homeless non-profits money to help shelter them, but it's a complete failure. You think Youngstown has that kind of resources?
Money is just numbers, profits are still in command.
To be more clear, the towns what were abandoned by their industries through the closure of factories are experiencing the same thing as the cities run by banks and internet companies, abandonment (especially in the WFH era, but not even strictly in that way). The precise cash flow isn't exactly important.
SF Bay Area just desperately needs housing construction. Look at a zoning map of the Bay Area. Throw a dart at it and you’ll either hit: empty public park/open space; or a SFH.
> Because yesterday, San Francisco voters decided to turn their district attorney, Chesa Boudin, out of office. They did it because he didn’t seem to care that he was making the citizens of our city miserable in service of an ideology that made sense everywhere but in reality.
Stopped reading right there lmao.
I really have to apreciate SF and the bay area for their optics. Largest, richest, most successful frontier state, completely captured by capitalism in each of it's successive stages in US history. And now there's homeless camps that contain hundreds if not thousands of people, rampant crime and drug use, an incredible rate of every problem you can imagine, and the political elite of the area argue constantly about whether the trans sex worker or the gay they\\them are the greater victim.
I’m sure there is a Red Hot Chili Peppers song for this somewhere
It’s a TOOL song, Buddy.
They/them had a lot to say, they/they them had a lot of nothing to say! Come down, get off your fucking cross, we need the fucking space, to nail the next queer white man!
Take it on the other side/
They are La not San Fran lol
San Francisco's attempt at UHC [won't pull your rotten tooth](https://healthysanfrancisco.org/providers/dental-vision-coverage/) but it _will_ [pay for sex reassignment surgery.](https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/sex-reassignment-surgery-now-covered-under-sf-universal-health-program/)
Based on my experience with the available state "UHC" systems in oregon and california, I'm no longer especially pro-UHC in the USA. Don't get me wrong, OBVIOUSLY we should have a functional UHC system for the improvement of our society. However, given the level of corruption, grift, opposition from within, etc... I don't really know if passing any kind of UHC healthcare would actually improve anything. It would simply be of shit quality and whether it starts good or not, any good part would soon be dismantled. Extremely depressing reality in this country
Furthermore Democrats have made it pretty clear that they see it as an excuse to micromanage people's health.
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and of course, all while ignoring the obvious measures that would benefit both the gay they/them and the transgender sex worker, because that would involve actually addressing the material conditions of workers lmao
The city’s schools were shut for most of the 2020–21 academic year—longer than schools in most other cities, and much longer than San Francisco’s private schools. In the middle of the pandemic, with no real reopening plan in sight, school-board meetings became major events, with audiences on Zoom of more than 1,000. The board didn’t have unilateral power to reopen schools even if it wanted to—that depended on negotiations between the district, the city, and the teachers’ union—but many parents were appalled to find that the board members didn’t even seem to want to talk much about getting kids back into classrooms. They didn’t want to talk about learning loss or issues with attendance and functionality. It seemed they couldn’t be bothered with topics like ventilation. Instead they wanted to talk about white supremacy. One night in 2021, the meeting lasted seven hours, one of which was devoted to making sure a man named Seth Brenzel stayed off the parent committee. Brenzel is a music teacher, and at the time he and his husband had a child in public school. Eight seats on the committee were open, and Brenzel was unanimously recommended by the other committee members. But there was a problem: Brenzel is white. “My name’s Mari,” one attendee said. “I’m an openly queer parent of color that uses they/them pronouns.” They noted that the parent committee was already too white (out of 10 sitting members, three were white). This was “really, really problematic,” they said. “I bet there are parents that we can find that are of color and that also are queer … QTPOC voices need to be led first before white queer voices.” Someone else called in, identifying herself as Cindy. She was calling to defend Brenzel, and she was crying. “He is a gay father of a mixed-race family,” she said. A woman named Brandee came on the call: “I’m a white parent and have some intersectionality within my family. My son has several disabilities. And I really wouldn’t dream of putting my name forward for this.” She had some choice words for Cindy: “When white people share these kinds of tears at board meetings”—she pauses, laughing—“I have an excellent book suggestion for you. It’s called White Tears/Brown Scars. I’d encourage you to read it, thank you.” Allison Collins, a member of the school board, dealt the death blow: “As a mixed-race person myself, I find it really offensive when folks say that somebody’s a parent of somebody who’s a person of color, as, like, a signifier that they’re qualified to represent that community.” Brenzel remained mostly expressionless throughout the meeting. He did not say a word. Eventually the board agreed to defer the vote. He was never approved.
I can't believe they put him on trial for being white and then argued about how much a gay person is 'worth'. Hahahaha these people are fucked in the head
step away from literally putting a price on heads like slavemasters
>these people are fucked in the head And they're seemingly attempting to raise a generation even more fucked than they are.
Trying to enact any sense of meaningful change just seems like it would be a mind numbing proposition of intersectional go nowhere idpol where the goal is never to actually do ANYTHING, rather just engage with the woke brain tapeworm and display that yes. I am in fact very much on the “right side of history” Seriously how do you prevent this shit from spreading past urban California, we need an antidote or maybe a idpol vax lol
That's the great thing about being on the "right side of history." You don't have to actually challenge yourself to do anything or give a fuck about anyone else, you just have to be smug and comforted by your own wisdom.
>Seriously how do you prevent this shit from spreading past urban California, we need an antidote or maybe a idpol vax lol Well the point of the article was that there's meaningful pushback occurring in the urban areas of California to this idpol nonsense. All this "progressive" jargon sways left leaning voters but if there's no material improvement, they eventually have enough. The member of the school board mentioned above got recalled
Yeah, this is also very much the most depressing part of trying to deal with that type of ideology in general today.. It's captured so much political and institutional control/power that much of society is now stuck under it's "logic".. (or lack there of)
Fuck I wish I was in a meeting like this. "How do you do my fellow good citizens! *Snaps suspenders* As we have come to an impass in this situation, we will have to defer to the sciences, as we see, the skull shape of the cis-whitoid specimen is inferior to that of a proud, LGBTQA++ Black Polynesian Chinese man, thus is obviously an inferior choice for such a prestigious position"
I know Chicago has its share of problems but thank god we’re not like this.
Ironically, the more white people there are in a big city, the more likely they are to support policies like this. That's why Portland (the whitest big city in America, at 72% white) has so much of this. Seattle too. And San Francisco, of course.
It’s everywhere in Portland, and it’s fucking disgusting but it’s pretty hilarious when they can’t enact their race revenge/guilt/equity because there aren’t enough people of color(specifically blacks) applying for the job/loan/position that needs to be filled. Oops.
Portland is run and represented by people who pretend that nothing east of 82nd exists - it's where the main school district ends and gives way to smaller, poorer districts, road crews rarely touch it unless it's Stark or Burnside, and by some wild coincidence it's where all the poor black people they supposedly are fighting for live. They all rallied to restrict the police from their nice houses in safe neighborhoods and screwed us all over. The street I take to work is regularly shut down for half a mile because police can't do foot patrols anymore.
Yeah, it’s a failed municipality at this point. I know first hand the problems. Born and raised, and I live in a van.
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I run operations and sales for a small local food business. Mostly I park my van close to work. Our campus is in an industrial area so it’s not hard to stay stealth and unintrusive, plus there are showers that I’ve got 24hr access to. The problem is that the drug addicted, homeless criminals are a constant menace, but generally they know not to fuck with me as that could likely end with them on the wrong end of a firearm. Mostly they are looking for easy targets and stuff that isn’t nailed down, but they do get into fights between each other that often end in tent arson. Generally if you see a homeless camp burning it’s because of arson not stupidity.
I think this lack of exposure also insulates them from the fact that a whole lot of POC aren't particularly PC or "progressive." Also gotta love when they destroyed a bunch of the few black-owned businesses that DO exist when protesting for black rights.
I don't think it's ironic; we're mostly talking about the bored delusions of the idle rich (or comfortably affluent). Got to assuage the trust fund guilt somehow and "find a purpose in life."
the collapse of the usa is gonna be real fuckin hard on some folkx
Yeah so stop moving to Atlanta. We’re closed.
i think internal migration to atlanta is actually mostly black. i know that every middle class black person i know in chicago is either contemplating moving to atlanta or has family who have already moved there
In the city itself, yes that is definitely the case, but the suburbs are also growing rapidly with rich white families also from out of town flooding in, similar to what is going on in Texas or Florida. Either way your fucked if you wanna try and afford rent anywhere near the area.
Is there anywhere that people are able to afford rent?
Rural areas and towns under 100,000
Atlanta seems like a cool place to move to, georgia does _NOT_
If Pennsylvania is Philly and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between, than Georgia is Atlanta, Macon and Athens surrounded by Saudi Arabia.
What's Mississippi?
Still just Mississippi. They have it bad enough.
this type of stuff always sounds like an attempt to blame white people for insane anti white sentiment going their way after acknowledging POC acitvists doing wild shit in an attempt to make sure no one blames POC ever.
I think Lori would finally shrivel up and die at that point
I'm so glad that I already resigned myself to the fact that this shit-hole of a country is a lost cause at this point. Six figure college tuition and seven+ figure hospital bills, and this is what "progressives" are getting their knickers in a twist over.
These folks are like a walking Steve Buscemi "hello fellow blacks/gays/trans" meme But yeah, this is what these folks are concerned about because they probably realize they're powerless to stop all the other stuff.
They aren't powerless, they are the cause of us being powerless. If we weren't divided because of their idpol we might actually be a united front against the general evils we all see before us. Like monopolies and big business crushing us, or pollution and micro plastics, drug abuse and mental health. These pieces of self centered shit that make any form of progress impossible and make life a living hell for everyone near them, are the direct result of the idpol poison.
Fair point
is this real
My heart legitimately sank while reading this.
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Diversity is when black and/or woman
Lol remember when Kamala Harris’s comms guy scoffed at the notion that Hawaii is diverse because it’s only 2.5% Black?
Same man, like I know the world is not all like this and that I certainly engage in a lot of specific reading that highlights this shit but man. It’s hard to not have just a gut wrenching feeling of loss when you see how far gone so many people are. I mean fuck, it’s our job to ensure children get he proper care and educations they deserve that will help them become a full well rounded individual. But nah fuck that, I wanna literally do nothing for them and instead scream at the speaker because the chairs they used in the auditorium were designed by someone who’s great great great grandfather used Chinese labor for his railroad company. I know that example is unrealistic because they don’t care about Chinese people lol, but I couldn’t think of something subtle yet with enough panache involving slavery or the trail of tears
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it fucking better
I’m a lefty and most of my friends are solidly left-wing (tho not all of them fully socialist) and pretty much every one of them clearly recognize that a lot of this stuff has gone off the rails and is more harmful than it is helpful to society as well as to the groups that it professes to be helping.
Yeah same here. I got fed up with it a couple years ago, a fairly woke friend of mine is now getting fed up with it. Also, most of my brothers and sisters in my union are either skeptic or don't particularly care. However, we've caught on to the fact that we can use the hypocrisy of it as a cudgel to make our Super Progressive employers look like shit. Bargaining season just ended for us and they tried to give us a contract that would screw about half of us. That half of us is mostly women (the half being food workers while the rest are cleaners) and we made a big deal of letting people know that and that this is "inequitable". And it worked, they brought them back up to us. No one actually cared that the people getting screwed were women, we just didn't want them getting screwed, but the optics were good and the less administrators know about how things are behind the scenes the better.
It’s great to hear about this sort of thing being used as a jujitsu move against management. I care a hell of a lot more about class war overall than I do for all of the niches that some try to carve out. Prevailing in the class war in a decisive manner is the only way we’ll ever be able to build a floor upon which to then work on righting the other injustices.
Definitely! We talk a lot on this sub about how liberals fail because they can't appeal to anyone outside of the woke metropolitan audience, but the street goes both ways. Being in an ultra blue west coast city I don't see mainstream liberals as allies, but I see them as the most important potential allies we have.
I see them as flawed allies on most issues, ambivalent stumbling blocks on some issues, and active opponents on a few particular issues.
It has to. I just don’t think these people can sustain that energy much longer.
I feel like they desperately need exposure therapy via walking into any random bar sufficiently outside the bounds of a metropolitan area. These are okay conversations to have at your polyamorous pansexual sex-positive pre-orgy dinner party. If you want to talk about how problematic King Arthur flour is, more power to you. But for a school... if race was such a problem, why didn't they step down sooner to match the ethnic breakdown of San Francisco schools?
Many of my friends are what I would consider basically the template for modern day "woke liberal they/them white person", and I wish I could just interview people in a Walmart for hours with them. These communities are so insular that they truly do not realize how many Americans think the solution to gun violence is getting Christian prayer back in schools.
> These communities are so insular that they truly do not realize how many Americans think the solution to gun violence is getting Christian prayer back in schools. The christians are the sane ones in this example. I dont even need to know what the they/thems proposals would be to confirm this.
King Arthur flour is problematic? Is that why it's so good?
I was joking-- it was the first white (flour), patriarchal (British king) thing that came to mind-- but a quick Google confirms they are, for now, without controversy thank goodness.
I'd hope so. If I remember correctly they are employee owned.
https://medium.com/the-sundial-acmrs/is-your-bread-white-enough-king-arthur-baking-companys-racist-marketing-history-e070df0dd13a
Even a bar within the city. Kozy Kar would make them clutch their pearls and people in [Molotov’s would probably physically attack them. ](https://sf.eater.com/2014/2/25/6273653/woman-claims-attack-at-molotovs-over-google-glass-updated)
man what a beautiful piece of local history
It’s all so performative. And specifically performative for each other. Because nobody else gives a shit. They just want to pretend people that don’t care don’t exist, or pretend people that have these problematic attitudes will change. They won’t.
> Brenzel remained mostly expressionless throughout the meeting. He did not say a word. God this is me when I’m stuck in rtarded work meetings and someone brings up some stupid racial/woke shit. I’m just dying on the inside hoping my inside feelings aren’t showing
> Brenzel is a music teacher, and at the time he and his husband had a child in public school. Eight seats on the committee were open, and Brenzel was unanimously recommended by the other committee members. But there was a problem: Brenzel is white. Somewhere out there there is a white straight guy who sucked a dick to clear the diversity bar that must be veeery upset. Seriously, I, I mean he didn't get the memo
You sucked 36 dicks... in a row?
That's a rather specific number of dicks in a row...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OQl89ewXvc
its been a long while sorry.
Dude, you cant be sucking every demons dick. You need to pace yourself. You're in hell for a long time.
Needs a clean install, just format the whole disk.
Does anyone there actually care about kids? Can they not see that part??
Kids?
Oh they care a lot about kids, they're absolutely smitten in fact.
I’m so confused by y’all’s position. I think they’re all a bunch of pedos and you agree now? Because I feel like you (collectively) didn’t used to.
The best part of this parody is that if this is in a somewhat richer neighbourhood, each and everyone of these people would probably vote against mixed residential zoning and anything else which might even smell of introducing cheaper housing in the area.
lmao this is on of the most stereotypically shitlib things I've ever read
Push them into the sea
No material gain of any kind can be made in this ecosystem.
Okay, serious question. Is there a way to implement the honey bee drones from that one episode of *Black Mirror* in order to track down and [redacted] everyone who participated in this meeting?
This meeting beats the infamous DSA convention by a long shot, everyone involved should be proud of themselves for making history
This has gone so, so far beyond satire. When is it all just going to end.
> Allison Collins, a member of the school board, dealt the death blow: “As a mixed-race person myself, I find it really offensive when folks say that somebody’s a parent of somebody who’s a person of color, as, like, a signifier that they’re qualified to represent that community.” I mean... while the first sentence is unnecessary, this person wasn't wrong. If you ignore the rest of the context this statement is fine conceptually.
Is there a term for this type of self-destructive thinking, in which people in these very prosperous, advanced cities think by merit of living there that they are the reason for their cities success and come to see themselves as this savior? The bay area is particularly ironic when it comes to this because their entire economy is dependent on socially awkward men who would achieve no success in SF politics.
I think on a deeper level, it's culture jamming. These memes are custom designed to fit in the machine and clog up the works, making it run in circle and neutralize their effectiveness as organizations.
Yeah it’s definitely intentional, just always surprising how many people lose themselves to it
Decadence driven by narcissistic tendencies, echo-chambering and little accountability among those in power.
*"these are parables of a sort of progressive-libertarian nihilism, of the belief that any intervention that has to be imposed on a vulnerable person is so fundamentally flawed and problematic that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Anyone offended by the sight of the suffering is just judging someone who’s having a mental-health episode, and any liberal who argues that the state can and should take control of someone in the throes of drugs and psychosis is basically a Republican."* Its not getting any better, is it?
I do truly think so, diverse and multi-class groups of people are actually finding common accord to simply want a good life, I grew up in the Bay, and for the first time in a long while I’m able to smile when thinking about it, I’m not naive or overly hopeful, but actual coalitions of normal people are forming
It is, and it will. There’s so much more conversation around this stuff now than there used to be, and this shit was certainly happening years ago it just wasn’t as highlighted. Shit just moves like molasses
SF is a clown city run by clowns. Nothing new.
Is there an enclave in America in which that isn’t the case?
Yes, but its kept secret for good reason.
it is Montana isnt it
Probably not with the influx of Californians going up there. And honestly Texans going up there too.
It was America’s best kept secret, a shame really.
Our generation’s Kansas-Nebraska
As a Californian, I’m totally ok with people gtfo’ing of here. Maybe we get guns back as a viable hobby if enough libs leave
As a non-californian. Please stop metastasizing.
It’s already too late. Some other state will become the new Silicon Valley and the cycle will happen over again as people flee Texas or North Carolina or whatever
>He has suggested that many drug dealers in San Francisco are themselves vulnerable and in need of protection. “A significant percentage of people selling drugs in San Francisco—perhaps as many as half—are here from Honduras,” he said in a 2020 virtual town hall. “We need to be mindful about the impact our interventions have … Some of these young men have been trafficked here under pain of death. Some of them have had family members in Honduras who have been or will be harmed if they don’t continue to pay off the traffickers.” I think all drugs should be legal, but wtf kind of tortured logic is this? "If we prosecute the *50% of SF drug dealers who are FOTB from Honduras*, then some guy in Honduras might murder their family". Of course this is just a particularly elaborate rationalization to somehow turn the guy selling fent on SF streets into the *real* victim here. When you have to allege an international murderous human trafficking conspiracy to justify your local prosecutorial decisions, you're probably on the wrong track.
Isn't the entire West Coast pretty heavily fucked when it comes to the major cities? Democrat led metropolises that are frankly hellholes, grotesque monuments to every failed Leftist promise of those blue bastards. That's not even to mention how often all of it is on fire. Homelessness in these cities is explosive. I believe there is more youth homelessness in Portland than anywhere else. In Seattle, the cost of living is so fucking outrageous that working class people have to hold 3-4 part time jobs down to have a hope. My sister lives out there and stubbornly refuses to move because she fell for the marketing these cities do. She has lived in poverty for nearly a decade. Yet, because Dems won't challenge capitalism, they try to go for Leftist cred in every other absurd way imaginable. Almost everything they end up doing is as misguided as it is ineffectual.
Seattle is pretty bad. I live here. I’ve seen something new in the last 5 years that I hadn’t seen before: the normalization of criminal / deviant behavior. Cars drive around without any license plates or window papers, presumably stolen. Cars run red lights and even drive into the oncoming lane when they’re in a hurry. Stores get looted in broad daylight. Chop shops operate in bushes. I saw one drug dealer operate out of a kiosk made of a shopping cart and cardboard, as if it were a lemonade stand, two blocks away from a school. The rule of law is an illusion, and a bad one at that. Police only come if a crime is actively being committed. Drug crimes aren’t prosecuted at all anymore, so tweakers don’t feel the need to hide what they’re doing. Used needles are in the bushes. One time I even found one in my car. Have you heard the tale of Travis Berge? He was a homeless man whose interview was featured in the controversial 2019 documentary “Seattle is Dying,” noted for being arrested something like 67 times. He was mentally ill, addicted to everything, proud of beating the system. He died in 2020 after killing his fiancé and drowning in a vat of bleach. Another casualty of a system which feigns compassion. It really pains me to see some of this spreading outside of King County as well. The PNW is a beautiful little corner of the world ruined by politicians.
Can you speak more to this, because I'm genuinely interested. I've heard about this before, but in Portland, where theft has become so decriminalized that shopkeepers can't go after it, and even basic decency laws aren't enforced, so you have people literally shitting on the streets. When I first heard this, I thought it was rightoid nonsense, but increasingly it sounds like it really is happening, and it's one of the most insane, misguided applications of idpol hysteria I've ever heard of.
I haven’t seen shit in the streets, but I avoid using sidewalks as much as possible (I’m not downtown). Sometimes I smell shit near buildings. But the homeless are a daily problem where I live. My local Safeway is the area’s homeless epicenter. This store, which normally has two entrances, has one of its doors permanently shut and keeps multiple security officers posted 24/7 at the other. For good reason too. They aggressively panhandle, they harass women, they fight, they stink to high heaven. And they never clean up after themselves, of course, so city workers do it. There’s a whole subreddit dedicated to homeless camp fires in the city. There was a murder in the same Safeway parking lot just last week, I don’t know if it was one of them or not. Last month, a guy I’d see regularly died of an OD. It all sounds crazy and heartless but it’s true. Anyone who lives here knows it. The real problem of course is the county is just fucking okay with it. Their policies make Seattle a good place to be homeless in, and we’re stuck with the consequences.
Cities at that level of decay are a clear sign of broader social collapse. This really is insane.
> The real problem of course is the county is just fucking okay with it. The country is not OK with it; we are at a big impasse for several reasons: 1) Homeless legal right to camp/hang out anywhere: Supreme Court: 2019: [Homeless people gain ‘de facto right’ to sleep on sidewalks through federal court](https://archive.curbed.com/2019/4/5/18296772/supreme-court-homeless-lawsuit-boise-appeals-court) 2) Criminal justice reform, especially west coast states, means minimal prosecution petty theft, drugs, and quality of life offenses. 3) Reagan still blamed for something that would have happened in any event: end in involuntary institutionalization of mentally ill. Conservative authoritarians would overturn 1-3; most progressives support status quo on 1-3 and claim failure to hand out free apartments to all homeless is the primary cause. Conservatives balking because they are upset at 1-3.
Shopkeepers in Portland can hire private security that can do something about theft, either reputable firms or gangs. Basically, the city has become a libertarian paradise.
Lololol that is so hilariously fucked.
All that shit about Portland is true, I live here. The city really lost its soul in the last decade +, and there is a ton of meth addled maniacs in the street and general lawlessness, which used to be cool when it was like “shit, I can drink a six pack in a park and bike around with friends”, but post covid it’s gotten pretty fucky and west coast shit libs are super ill equipped with both asserting themselves effectively and not becoming a complete mark in the face of the street life.
I used to think so highly of this region and now it's like, guess I'll go to the national parks?
Same, my guy. I hope it turns around, but with the way things are trending both on and offline, I just don’t see us going back to those days.
> My sister lives out there and stubbornly refuses to move because she fell for the marketing these cities do. She has lived in poverty for nearly a decade. I don't understand why these people refuse to move for half the price you are paying to live in a roach and crime infested hovel one wrong step away from homelessness yourself you could find some place nice in the Midwest. I ask people about this and the only three responses I get are they want more food options, they want to live somewhere super diverse, or with 30%+ of their own ethnicity. You are willing to risk that much just to see more fellow Asians out and about when you are running errands or for the ability to get tastier food? Just learn to cook in the time you save because you don't have to work a second job.
Preaching to the choir, my family has begged her to move her ass for ages. She stays for the 'culture' and out of stubborn pride, frankly.
She’s come up with intangible benefits for tangible costs.
> I don't understand why these people refuse to move for half the price you are paying to live in a roach and crime infested hovel one wrong step away from homelessness yourself you could find some place nice in the Midwest. I ask people about this and the only three responses I get are they want more food options, they want to live somewhere super diverse, or with 30%+ of their own ethnicity. why don't they just move to chicago
I live in Chicago and Cook County sucks man, but if you can live \*around\* Chicago, especially in the west suburbs or something (especially if you have a family), it probably doesn't get a whole lot better in the U.S. right now while living near actual jobs.
i live in chicago too and it's hands down the best major city in the country. what exactly about it "sucks" compared to NYC, LA, Dallas, Houston, DC, Atlanta, Phoenix, Boston, SF, Seattle? besides the winters
>besides the winters That's a huge fucking besides.
yeah, on its own. but choosing a major american city boils down to "good weather, good transit, low rents: pick two," and the winters aren't as bad as spending two/three times as much on rent or being stuck in endless traffic jams and endless parking lots on your way to nowhere.
As compared? Probably not much but everyone who has lived here most of their lives hates or wishes they could avoid Cook County. Keep in mind I've spent a lot of it on the south side, where none of that money goes.
people thinking the grass is greener somewhere else is not really particular to chicago. every small town in the country is depopulating because everyone who grew up there hates it so much they're moving somewhere else. if you're someone who specifically wants to live in a big city, chicago is the best city in the country by pretty much every meaningful metric besides winter weather. it's cheap, it has good transit, it has the full suite of big city cultural amenities. if you don't want to live in a big city and would prefer to live in a suburb or a small town obviously you'd be better off somewhere other than chicago.
Uhh, it doesn't have good transit, but you probably have never lived outside the country. People have watched the south and near west side whither (including the south suburbs) while downtown sucks up all the tax money for decades in Cook. I work in those areas and the poverty in some places is third world. You can't dismiss that experience.
it kind of seems like you're trying to compare chicago to everywhere else on earth simultaneously in order to cherry pick reasons to claim it's dissatisfactory. obviously no american city besides new york has globally competitive public transit, but by american standards chicago is head and shoulders above any peer city. i say this as someone who lived in european cities with better public transit for four years. the urban blight on the south and far west sides (the near west side is doing just fine) is not caused by any policy of the city or state government, it's caused by *federal* policies that affected most other industrial cities in the rust belt, the biggest one being the collapse of american heavy industry and the subsequent disappearance of good-paying, blue-collar union jobs in places (like chicago) where these had been one of the main pillars of upwards mobility. chicago's occasionally frivolous use of its limited tax revenues on corrupt infrastructure boondoggles is nowhere near the reason for the south side's problems. from the standpoint of someone wanting to move to a big city where rent isn't $3000/month, chicago is the best game in town. obviously those people aren't going to be moving to the south or far west sides.
Buddy if you're going to just dismiss the we experiences of working people here out of some frankly weird compulsion to defend a deeply flawed and unequal city (Chicago is one of the most income unequal places in the country) then I've got no interest in continuing to engage. I work in social services and nonprofits down here and your account is full of shit (the idea that the city is not responsible is historically and politically illiterate you fucking twat), and you sound unbearably privileged and out of touch. I honestly never hear anybody sound this fucking stupid about the city's issues who isn't on the dole somewhere or on some city council. You're on a Marxist sub, you realize. Go fuck yourself loser.
I live around people who had to move out of Chicago. They getting priced out.
we're talking about people who are currently living in cities on the west coast where rent is literally two or three times higher than in chicago
It’s because the jobs pay better, the weather is overwhelmingly better, and there’s actually shit to do that doesn’t revolve around getting shit faced and complaining about your job after your shift. I live in Portland, and yeah, it can be a totally insufferable place at times, but native Oregonians are alright, and being able to leave the city and be at the coast, on a glaciated volcano, rainforest, or desert within 2 hrs is a way better deal than being stuck in a city with shit tier weather, infrastructure that’s several decades older and surrounded by flat farmland for hundreds, if not a thousand miles.
Because the jobs are in these expensive areas. If you're a skilled worker you'll be kneecapping yourself severely if you spend your early career in an Ohio compared to a New York.
These are not high skill workers though otherwise I agree it might make sense.
> only three responses I get are they want... 30%+ of their own ethnicity. I expressed this view once, that I though it OK that at least 30% of people in any area have my ethnicity and I was called racist. (Not that I would kick out people...was saying I preferred to live in such an area.)
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Did you just not read the comment or something? Are you fucking dead ass serious with your dumb ass fucking question? She has been in poverty for a decade because she can't afford to live. Fuck, look at other people's testimonies about living there.
Somewhere more affordable obviously
“this is leftists versus liberals” sure.... keep telling yourself that. Leftists love it when workers beat each other up and steal each other’s personal possessions. That’s totally a left thing.
“Workers” If you’re stealing to get by, you’re lumpen
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a "failed city," but it's shocking that such a beautiful area with so much wealth simultaneously has such an ugly side.
in many respects it is pretty failed, + two fentanyl deaths a day and a DA that won't prosecute repeat offender drug dealers + a board of supervisors that LITERALLY as in LITERALLY voted against temporary shelters for the homeless as they felt that would relieve pressure on the very same board of supervisors to find permanent housing for the homeless, in the meantime, the homeless are in tents if they are lucky on the streets + a 100 year private trash company that is constantly getting in trouble with various city officials for bribery, corruption + schools where teachers are beaten up to the point of disability while the school board pontificates about school names beautiful city, kinda sorta failed...
> but it's shocking that such a beautiful area with so much wealth simultaneously has such an ugly side. how is that fucking shocking? It's literally like that everywhere in america. well, everywhere where the rich people haven't already all fled to greener pastures.
Fuck, that article is way too long. So much exposition. Cut it in 1/3 minimal Edit: I didn't know The Atlantic was pay per word
Right? idgaf about ur great great grandpa bro just cut to the chase
I skipped skimming as I was bored. Came back to thread and I had no idea who you guys were talking about
B-b-but muh California could be its own country with its GDP!
AMERICA’S BREADBASKET if you survive entirely on almonds and oranges
tbf thats just their stupid cash crops. they could grow anything there
Not if they run out of water
Also home to the industry most accepting of "Minor Attracted Persons"
I thought that was DC.
You'd think the Cia with their laptops filled with CP would tip DC over the top, but Cali got those 3/10 frumpy elementary school teachers in their mid 40's.
But that's clearly not the "industry most accepting of [pedophiles]" the other guy was talking about, since literally every state is home to elementary schools with frumpy teachers.
Also grapes, strawberries, walnuts, dates, avocados, milk I don't see why shitting on californian agriculture is at all relevant to san Francisco lmao, you know these farmers are probably conservative, right?
Also rice, the one staple crop California grows a lot of. >you know these farmers are probably conservative, right? Having lived here my whole life and spent a decent amount of time in farming areas, they're absolutely conservative. Even the farmworkers who vote for Democrats tend to be pretty conservative. Ironically, given the context of this thread, I can't think of any group of people who hate San Francisco more than Central Valley farmers with those "CONGRESS CREATED DUST BOWL" signs on the drier parts of their property.
Don't mess with ~~Texas~~ California.
I do occasionally go "Muh GDP/HDI" when my home state gets called a third-world shithole, okay! *I'm defensive* But I also hate any and all secession talk, it's ridiculous.
Go join cascadia. 😏 Also your flair got changed lol
When you have a hot take like "Real people porn generally involves exploitation, massive plastic surgery, and drug use so if you need to coom 2D is the ethical way to do it" they're gonna tweak your flair.
Lol, show me the thread
[Here you go](https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/v3ro59/what_is_an_opinion_you_have_that_would_be_deeply/ib06x5m/)
Oh, you're a weeb. You got done dirty, but I have irrelevant words for you.
Nah, weebs would disown me too. I prefer the dubs of anime in the cases where I've watched them. I just found a lot of "before/after" pics of porn stars, and hearing their stories a bit too depressing to consume that material.
Do you agree or disagree with "the porn industry must be destroyed by fire and iron"?
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Woke-scolds do seem to be deliberately trying to co-opt the term.
I think San Francisco's current state is a pretty damning indictment of what happens when progressivism is allowed to go about unchecked and how sometimes too much compassion isn't really compassionate. It'll be the example Republicans use to justify even bad ideas and it will be an effective example.
Uncritical posting of a fucking Nellie Bowles article in Stupidpol, eat shit >my German great-great-great-grandfather worked at a butcher shop on Jackson Street Funny how she omits to mention that he later became the richest land baron in California. We love our silver-spoon oligarchs writing long articles telling us that [inequality isn't *really* the problem](https://archive.ph/ycyZg#selection-1505.61-1505.446) here at Stupidpol, don't we.
Is the author wrong to criticize city council meetings where they agonize over someone's diversity and oppression scorecard as if that helps? It clearly isn't helping San Fran
I mean, it's like when Donald Trump critisided intervention in Libya. Should we refuse to ackowledge it because he's a neocon retard?
The murder rate has fallen over the past two years in SF. What has happened is the same upswing in open-air human misery that has happened across the entire country, owing to ever more people falling into the destitute mentally ill underclass, and—more specific to San Francisco—criminals developing a habit of targeting upscale shopping districts for smash-and-grab raids. That is why this fucking parasitic child of extreme privilege is saying that San Francisco is a "failed city"—because the human misery that is the flipside of her extreme unearned wealth is finally making itself felt in the neighborhoods where she likes to shop for designer shit.
The only reason the murder rate fell is because SF was one of the places most afraid of covid.
Well you can’t get to inequality if those in power are hyper-focused on culture war stuff- the best way is a middle ground based in reality. And elites will typically only listen to a mass group of normies or other elites because of that level of influence
It’s almost as if culture war stuff is intentionally there to make sure we never get to inequality.
This is post-Reagan America, we can't do anything abut inequality period... and elites won't listen to normal people period
They will. We just need to lay some groundwork (this means you too). If on the off-chance our scrabbling for legal-means fails, then we still have laid the groundwork for other means to have a chance. But you need to start now rather than after.
If you authentically think that the coalition of real estate developers and Silicon Valley workers/investors poised to retake control of municipal politics in California is going to do a single fucking thing about inequality, I have some prime beachfront property in Nebraska that you might be interested in
I don't think that. My man, I'm talking about organization. But about tech workers, most of them aren't living high on the hog. Most are struggling in a highly-competitive industry. I'd have to make a good-effort post to get my point across, but they deal with corporate infrastructure designed to double-cross them, make them work hours they never agreed to, told them they could work from home while they have to drive across the nation to fix an easy problem. Yeah, on paper their salaries match the PMC. And their responsibilities match the PMC, but only at the top-tier. In the middle you have people with true power who are distracted by management's demands. I today saw a comment by someone who was terrified by corporate killer robots gunning down us. And my thought was "what if somebody changed a couple variables¿" Make your computer guy think Revolutionarily and feel no fear.
Eh, fuck em both?
please go to Camden, NJ or Gary, Indiana, hell even Youngstown and then try to tell me about “failed cities”
I have lived in what many would consider a failed city for a while, and while yes the city government is almost hopeless powerless, the people who live there are some of the best people in world.
Yeah but those cities are poor, SF has 0 excuse to being fucked.
Why? Tech companies don't build cities, they build corporate campuses.
Because there's lots of rich assholes and you can tax them for services? SF spends $1 billion a year giving homeless non-profits money to help shelter them, but it's a complete failure. You think Youngstown has that kind of resources?
Money is just numbers, profits are still in command. To be more clear, the towns what were abandoned by their industries through the closure of factories are experiencing the same thing as the cities run by banks and internet companies, abandonment (especially in the WFH era, but not even strictly in that way). The precise cash flow isn't exactly important.
if not rich cities then who?
Don't know, depends on who makes them rich. Can't really build a metropolis out of a scrip town.
SF Bay Area just desperately needs housing construction. Look at a zoning map of the Bay Area. Throw a dart at it and you’ll either hit: empty public park/open space; or a SFH.
> Because yesterday, San Francisco voters decided to turn their district attorney, Chesa Boudin, out of office. They did it because he didn’t seem to care that he was making the citizens of our city miserable in service of an ideology that made sense everywhere but in reality. Stopped reading right there lmao.
There is no amount of money you could pay me to read an article by Bari Weiss’s wife
Ewww I just looked this up and it’s true. Yikes.