Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Fein Slams Wiener's Proposed
Anti-Occupy Regs for Castro's Plazas

Over at the New Civil Rights Movement, my good buddy Clinton Fein, a longtime First Amendment advocate and artist, has unpacked the latest conservative proposal from Supervisor Wiener related to quality of life issues in the Castro gayborhood.

As with his unnecessary and useless ordinance regarding nudity in restaurants and cafes, that was supposed to address complaints over naked men on the streets, Wiener has failed to hold a single community meeting about his proposed new law. Is Wiener, like his mentor state Sen. Mark Leno, so scared of hearing directly from constituents who are not donors that he will never hold any town halls in his district?

Wiener, who is not even trying to live up to Harvey Milk's ideals as a supervisor, was elected a year ago and he's not held a single open forum. Sure, he's attended meetings civic groups have put on, but that is not the same as organizing his own town halls as many members of Congress and President Obama do.


And speaking of nudity in the Castro, Wiener's towel law has had no impact on naked people in the area. Indeed, on Saturday afternoon I saw something new: a woman without any clothes on posing for an art class. Many gay men walked past the scene above and paid the naked woman and the sketchers no mind, so did practically everyone else. Nice to see an expansion of nudity to now include women.

Here are excerpts from Fein's essay and I encourage you to read the entire piece here:

Against this backdrop [of Occupy raids and crackdowns], San Francisco District 8, Castro Supervisor, Scott Wiener, perhaps the most insipid and uninspiring in the colorful seat’s history, is proposing an ordinance that would have Mike Bloomberg wet-​dreaming, were he to get his hands on it. Wiener’s biggest claim to fame, to date, has been to save San Francisco from nudists without towels to place between their butts and public seating. Seriously.

His latest attempt, however, is a lot more alarming. A stupefying, muddled, impossible to follow or enforce, unconstitutionally vague piece of garbage that hands over any control over, or responsibility for the district he was elected to serve, and gives it to to the Director of the Department of Public Works. ...

A local fight over control of the giant rainbow flag that flies over the Castro, located in Harvey Milk Plaza, has been simmering for ten months between activists and the politically powerful Merchants of Upper Market and Castro (MUMC), over an alleged “agreement” with the city’s DPW, unable to be produced by either party in spite of he city’s powerful Sunshine laws. A meeting between activists and DPW scheduled for October 26, 2011 at City Hall was abruptly cancelled at Wiener’s behest. What seems local and petty on the surface offers a sobering view of what happens when representation of corporate interests trumps the desire of citizens to express themselves legally.

Wiener’s behavior, and bizarre release of an ordinance in search of a problem has done little other than actually precipitate an Occupy Castro demonstration. ...

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