Political Analysis: SF Mayor Sets Up a Class Fight
I've been on a political journey since coming out at 18 over 30 years ago. At 21, I moved to San Francisco to work with children in a locked mental health facility. I became the Education Director at the OMI/Excelsior Beacon Center in 2000, which connected me to community organizers, youth development workers, and born-and-raised San Franciscans. This is the beginning of an over three decade journey of deep introspection of the ways the personal is political and how politics shape our everyday lives.
Now, I am organizing at the intersections of city budgets, arts and culture, trans and queer rights, housing justice, and liberatory praxis. These intersections provide a unique perspective regarding this particular political moment. It is one that strives to weave past and presence to reveal possibilities.
In this video, I dig into how current California Governor Newsom's signature policy Care Not Cash as District 2 Supervisor and his same sex marriages as Mayor connect to our current San Francisco Mayor Lurie's rental and homeless policies. Both set up a fight between classes, one that only benefits the Billionaire-Epstein Class.
TRANSCRIPT
Good morning Queers and Comrades.This is Jason Wyman aka Queerly Complex and I am coming to you this very early morning with a little bit of political analysis around a fight that's coming up, or the way that a fight is being positioned within San Francisco. But first, a couple of things.
One, this is going to be a slightly messy video. I do not have a script. I just roll off the cuff. All of my videos do not have scripts. I actually just talk directly to camera. That's one of the ways that I do my work.
The second thing is, can you lend a hand to the 465 collective rent party that's happening right now? Go to Really complex com and click on to hand and you can contribute to our read party. We are trying to raise money in order to keep four six, five collective open to our trans and queer communities. We need the support of our community right now in order to show that it is a viable space. We do not charge a rental fee to any of the different organizations or formations that move in our space, and we offer free programing and exhibitions to our trans and queer community. It is an incredibly crucial third space, one that is in dear and near to my heart. So go over to Queerly complex and lend a hand and contribute to our rent party.
And now, about a local political fight. One of the things that is coming up right now, or brewing in San Francisco, is the age old class war between the middle class and the unhoused populations. This is something that in the almost 30 years of living here, I have seen weaponized time and time and time again by mayoral candidates, by mayors, by supervisors, and by our current sitting governor of California, Gavin Newsom. Way back in 2002, there was an initiative, Proposition N by our mayor or our supervisor at the time, Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom was representing the Marina district, which is a wealthy district here in San Francisco, and his signature legislation that catapulted him into running for mayor in 2003 was something called Care Not Cash.
Care Not Cash was reallocation of state assistance towards our unhoused neighbors, towards services. So it was basically the city taking over state funds that were being administered or given out to our unhoused populations. It reduced the cash assistance that unhoused people were able to receive in the city of San Francisco, and it had a significant impact on the material conditions of our unhoused population.
It was done in a way, and promoted in a way in which it started pitting the middle class against our unhoused population, because why should we be giving away money to our unhoused population when you are struggling to be in San Francisco? It was a narrative that made a lot of sense in 2002, because rent prices were increasing throughout the city of San Francisco, tech was everywhere, and gentrification was massive.
It was not only massive, but it was brutal for a lot of folks in San Francisco who were born and raised and trying to stay here. Karen Cash offered legislation that people that felt incredibly precarious, being here in San Francisco to vote against their own interests and by against their own interest here, I mean, is that those precarious middle were more likely to end up on the streets for a variety of economic reasons, because they were one paycheck away from not being able to afford rent or their bills, or do any of the other things that contribute to the economic hardship that creates the conditions for becoming unhoused. So he riled up that base in order to vote against an unused population, basically saying, look, they don't deserve the money because you can't afford to live here. That was the essential argument that was going on within care, not cash. And just a few years later, after Newsom became a governor or became mayor of San Francisco. He further entrenched the assault, actually, of the middle class, against the unhoused through his championing of same sex marriage in San Francisco, knowing full well at the moment that it was illegal.
Now, I say this because there was a growing movement in response to Care Not Cash that was fighting back. They did not like what was happening with Newsom, what Newsom stood for as mayor, which was executive control during a time of an affordability crisis in which Mayor Newsom was doing absolutely nothing to address the affordability crisis.
So what does he do? He turns to the LGBT community and champions same sex marriage, which on the surface sounds great, but without the state and the federal government, support behind that initiative actually means very little in terms of material condition. Now, how do I know this? Because I know this because I was married in 2008, a few years later, when there wasn't federal protections. And I was not I did not have federal protections even though I was married. I actually incredibly felt in some ways duped to be real. I want to be honest about this. I don't know that my husband and I would have legally gotten married if I knew what came after legal marriage to be my own assessment, real right now.
But back in 2004, when Newsom did this stunt. It wasn't not just legal at the state level, it was or federal level. It was not legal at the state level as well. So there was no financial benefit whatsoever to his move for same sex marriage. It was a PR stunt by the mayor in order to curry up favor with in a lgbtqia class that the middle class of our community to be able to throw them a superficial carrot to say, look, I Mayor Newsom care.
And it worked. It worked. It worked in shoring that up because during that same time period, Newsom was pretty brutal when it came to homeless services and specifically when it came to homeless youth services. And in that very specific arena of homeless youth services, we know that LGBTQ youth who are refugees in San Francisco make up a much higher percentage of that population than any other demographic.
And because we know that that is a higher percentage, we know that more of our young people are folks. Our young folks are disproportionately impacted by the economic realities of poverty and of being unhoused. And if that's the case, you cannot not see Mayor Newsom's PR stunt of same sex marriage, which has absolutely no financial, economic or material benefit within the lives of the QIA community in the year 2004 as nothing but class warfare.
I bring all of this up because right now we are in the exact same position with our mayor in San Francisco. He is trying to curry up favor with a middle class and economically precarious middle class in San Francisco, and he's doing a lot of this through superficial legislation and policies and PR that make it sound good, that make it sound like he's actually doing something.
But in reality, the economic and material conditions during this affordability crisis mean nary a thing at the same time that he is, rhetorically and PR wise, doubling down on all of these things that sound good, like rent relief, if you fall behind by less than one month. But that's again, if you fall behind by less than one month. Who falls behind less than one month's worth of rent? Either you fall a full month behind on rent or more, most likely. Very few people are following less than one month behind on rent. It's a very specific economic population that only falls behind less than one month's worth of friend.
He also does all of his PR videos. He likes to focus on small businesses as a means to again, curry favor with those who perceive themselves to be within a middle class and a middle class that is incredibly economically precarious. So he aligned himself with small business as a means, as a means to curry favor with that very specific class. He is also attacking our unhoused populations. He is reorganizing all of the homeless services. And the person that's helping reorganize all of the homeless services is the same person that was in charge of care, not cash, or of taking away the material benefits that we're going to our unhoused population and siphoning them off into the same system that everyone now in the mayor's office who controls everything says is corrupt.
He is also behind a series of propositions A, D, E, and F this November. November 4th is our election day, and you want to actually turn in your ballots this year. Don't mail in your ballots. Turn your ballots. There's so much happening with the US Postal Service and the federal blah, blah blah that you actually want to make sure that you turn in your ballots this year.
If you have an absentee one, don't just throw it in the mail, throw it in a ballot box, or actually show up on Election Day and hand it in at your polling place.
But A, D, E, and F all seek to centralize the power into the mayor's hands. That's what's going on this November. This is again a ruse. It is being set up as cleaning up City Hall, which again speaks very well to a precarious middle that doesn't like to see the economic reality of our unhoused population living and struggling to survive on our streets.
Past is prologue to what is in the present moment, and what is in the present moment portends what is to come. What's been a thing in the past in San Francisco is a class war that is set up by City Hall through the mayor's office, pitting the middle class, the very real and precarious middle class, at times of great economic instability and unaffordable against an unhoused population in order to pass legislation that does not work in the middle classes favor. That happened through the early 2000 and was led by Newsom, who is now the governor of California. And it is currently being done right now by Mayor Laurie, who is attacking our unhoused population and our on housed services and everything that surrounds everything that surrounds the support system that currently exists. Even if it does actually need reform, the reforms that he is proposing necessary will disproportionately harm our current unhoused population. That is a truth. While he is advancing legislation that consolidates power into his hands so that he can further economic precarity in the end because he wants economical precarity and his backers want a precarity for San Francisco because it keeps us compliant and complacent and pliant.
So this is an incredibly long video, and I might have to break it up into two in order to make this all work. But it is also an edited. As you can see, it is all done in one take and it is not done with a script. So thank you for tuning in and for listening.
My name is Jason Wyman. I'm also known as Queerly Complex, and this has just been a little bit of political education because I want a place to point. I just want a place to point so that I know that my thoughts are up there and succinct, and I stand behind this analysis. Anyway, again, you can find out more QueerlyComplex.com. And if you're feeling generous, or even if you only have a few bucks to spare, please lend a hand in order to keep 465 collective going. Go to QueerlyComplex.com and just click lend a hand.
Thank you so much. Ciao!
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