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B6? You Sunk My Battleship!
By
Joshua Citrak
Their pettiness is only outdone by their arrogance. The past fiscal year, which has seen the San Francisco deficit balloon to $100 million, taxpayers have had to suffer through the meddling ideologues on the Board of Supervisors debate such important matters as: the size of a dog’s water bowl, whether allowing smoking on city owned golf courses is elitist, if graffiti belongs on the walls of city hall offices and if
Chris Daly
is a violent threat to the public at large. I’ve been hoping that they just misunderstood the urgency of their task - to give us a balanced budget and a clear direction towards a growing economy. Unfortunately, as Supervisor President Aaron Peskin puts it,
“We’re just not numbers people.”
So, it’s been business as usual this fiscal year, which ended July 1st, and none of the economical/social issues that face San Francisco have been solved, much less addressed.
Certainly, the Supes pay lip service to popular progressive ideas, see how hard they
‘fight’
against a MUNI fare increase, even though MUNI’s budget shortfall makes up half of the overall city deficit (if the city didn’t have MUNI in red, it would have more money for the real progressive projects such as education and social welfare programs).
See, the thing is, our Supervisors have a modus operandi - whenever an issue creeps up that is beyond their intellect and above their balls - they have no idea what to do about it- so, they politicize it. Take for example the benign issue of the battleship Iowa.
Tuesday, July 12th
they voted against bringing the World War II battleship Iowa, now housed in Suisun Bay, to San Francisco as a waterfront museum. The Iowa fought in the Pacific theater and was decommissioned in 1990.
The Supervisors cited three main reasons for not wanting to bring the ship to San Francisco, which would come with free federal grant money for its maintenance: widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, the unequal treatment of gays and lesbians and the city’s reputation as the home of the peace movement.
Nice. But none of those reasons have anything to do with the Iowa. The Iowa didn’t declare war on Iraq. The Iowa didn’t mistreat gays and lesbians and since we’ve established that the Iowa cannot declare war on anything, how can it have a negative affect on the home of the peace sign?
Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who begins each board meeting by reiterating the fact that he and Tom Ammiano are
gay,
was quoted as saying,
“For Tom and I it’s very difficult to advocate for some military honor thing when people are being harassed and even killed and are unable to serve in the military because they are gay and lesbian.”
Again I say, what does one thing have to do with the other? Instead of Dufty saying, ‘You know what? We don’t want the damn ship, send it to Stockton’, which I could respect, he, for some reason, has to give these idiotic quotations about the supposed oppression of gays and lesbians. If gays and lesbians in the military are being killed because they are gay, then something should be done - to the
people in charge. It’s disgusting that someone like Dufty would use the struggles of the gay and lesbian community, like Jesse Jackson and Farrakhan use the black community, for their own personal/political benefit.
If Dufty really cared about gays and lesbians he would bring the ship here, recommission it with an all gay crew and sail it around the world on wonderful, completely San Franciscan, gay missions of peace and love. Imagine that thing floating down Market Street on Pride day! Check out the big gun on that dude!
But, suddenly, this silly issue of an old ass ship has become a major rallying point, not only for gays and lesbians, either. Supervisor McGoldrick also used this as an opportunity to wave his flag.
“It’s important that we have for our children, for those who come here, a vision that is uniquely San Francisco in terms of what, for decades, has been a city represented again and again in the foremost positions of the peace movements.”
What a quote. McGoldrick must have fumbled through English class at the erudite San Francisco Public School system.
Seriously, though, I’m all for peace. We need a government that seeks out nonviolent solutions to global crisis. But that is the responsibility of the
national government. How the country’s war translates to our local Supervisors, I haven’t the slightest. These egotistical fools should be concentrating on making the busses run on time, making sure the schools have enough books and teachers and that the streets aren’t rife with
potholes,
not on commenting on the national military situation. Haven’t we had enough of the Board passing meaningless resolutions against the war in Iraq? So you hate George Bush, we get it already, meanwhile the stop sign at the end of my street has been missing for nearly a year, can you fix something that’s actually within your stupid power?
Which is what it’s really all about - power. Somehow we’ve forgotten that we’re all basically on the same side and have taken to fighting foolish battles for minority constituencies. Before we add more parks for dogs to run leash-less, do you think we can conjure some affordable housing? (Hint: those $650,000 condo’s going up around Rincon Hill aren’t affordable) We’ve divided San Francisco along district lines and each district stands for something pointless in the overall health of communal San Francisco.
Therefore, the only solution and hope for maintaining a working, cohesive San Francisco is to undo that disastrous law that allowed Supervisors to run within a district and not citywide. By electing a Board in citywide elections we are guaranteed of getting a more universalist view of the San Francisco landscape than the short-sighted, close minded, isolationist viewpoints that people like Dufty and Daly and McGoldrick spout.
Let’s remember that we’re a community of San Franciscans first, before race, creed, gender and orientation. We all have something in common, something we love. By cutting the political bullshit, we can work together for the betterment of all. That’s the kind of
peace
I want San Francisco to be known for.
Copyright © 2005 Joshua Citrak
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