OMG? Did we REALLY vote to support Mirkarimi? Silence on that topic might be the best way to go.
Françoise
Subject: [lpsf-activists] ROSS MIRKARIMI FOR SHERIFF - ARTICLE FOR
LPSF.ORG <— Attn: Marcy! [1 Attachment]
From: “Starchild sfdreamer@earthlink.net [lpsf-activists]”
<lpsf-activists@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Mon, November 02, 2015 5:24 am
To: LPSF Discussion List <lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com>, LPSF Activist
List <lpsf-activists@yahoogroups.com>, LPSF Meetup
<libertarian-370@meetup.com>[Attachment(s) from Starchild included below]
I see that in the meantime as I’ve been preoccupied with other matters, our website STILL has no mention of our vote to recommend voters reelect Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, as my last message below on this topic [in conversation with Marcy on the LPSF-discuss list over a week ago] appears to have gone unanswered.
I just went ahead and stayed up most of the night writing a longer article, which I went in to try to post, and could not. I’m getting a weird error message. Not sure whether the settings have been changed, or it’s my browser or what.
MARCY, AS OUR WEBMASTER, PLEASE POST THE ARTICLE AND PHOTO/CAPTION BELOW TO THE TOP OF THE MAIN PAGE, ASAP!
It is very regrettable that we have not had anything on the site about our recommendation for sheriff sooner than the day before the election!
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi – a voice for civil liberties and immigrant and transgender rights.EDITOR’S NOTE: Although the Libertarian Party of San Francisco decided at our last meeting to recommend a vote to reelect Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, this decision unfortunately did not make it onto the elections recommendations page on our website.
=========================================================================
The LPSF’s support has been called “hard to get” (by a former member of the Board of Supervisors, no less!) with good reason. Per Libertarian Party state bylaws, we only formally endorse Libertarian candidates, and while we do sometimes issue a lighter “recommendation” to vote for one candidate or another, if no candidate seems to be further enough along the path toward freedom than others in the race to merit even this lesser nod of support, we will readily withhold it.
Although there are candidates running for mayor, supervisor, community college board in the current race (along with incumbents unfortunately running unopposed for city attorney, district attorney, and treasurer – a sad reflection of the pathetic state of what passes for democracy hereabouts), we are not recommending a vote for any of these candidates.
We are, however, recommending that voters give Ross Mirkarimi a second term as sheriff. While we would be unlikely to support a progressive like Mirkarimi for a position such as Board of Supervisors, on which he once served, a law enforcement post is a different matter. Mirkarimi, a co-founder of the Green Party, has shown a greater respect for civil liberties and human rights during his first term than we could probably expect from most members of the local political establishment.
Most notably, the sheriff has not only strongly supported San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” status of protecting undocumented migrants, but has refused to collaborate with the Feds in violating their rights by turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation even when they are accused of serious crimes. He has stood by his guns even in the face of intense public pressure following the tragic but apparently accidental shooting by one such migrant of a woman at Fisherman’s Wharf, which ignited a firestorm of outraged bigotry far beyond the City’s borders that almost assuredly would not have been on display had the suspect been a U.S. citizen.
But this has not been the only issue on which the sheriff has taken a commendable stance. Mirkarimi has urged reform of the abominable and sadly much less well publicized practice of “pretrial detention” in which individuals who have not been convicted of any crime are sitting in county jail because they are too poor to afford bail. As SF Weekly reported in a Dec. 5, 2012 cover story
by Albert Samaha:
“It’s the filthy secret of the American judicial system: A majority of county jail inmates have not been convicted of any crime. They sleep and eat among the proven criminals, and are treated as such, packed in crowded barracks and transported in chains, because they did not have enough money.”In keeping with his desire to see fewer people incarcerated, Mirkarimi has also questioned the need for building a new county jail. And the sheriff has moved to end in SF’s existing county jails the inhumane and hopefully soon anachronistic practice of categorizing transgender inmates according to their legal gender, putting female-identified inmates at greater risk by inceracerating them with the male inmate population.
Meanwhile his most formidable opponent, Vicki Hennessey, has outspent him considerably (with the backing of the police and sheriff’s department unions, never a good sign), and has promised to work more closely with the Feds. While Mirkarimi has been clear in his support for decriminalizing prostitution and backed Prop. K on the 2008 ballot, Hennessey (no relation to former long-time sheriff Mike Hennessey, who is supporting Mirkarimi), gave an equivocal statement even when asked point-blank about the issue at a Sex Workers Outreach Project booth at the Castro Street fair. Her aide also attempted to prevent us from taking a photo of her talking with activists at the booth. The third candidate, John Robinson, seems fairly decent on the issues, but has not articulated what seemed to us a strong reason for running against Mirkarimi, either in his vaguely worded ballot statement nor in personal conversation when spoken to by phone.
If you understand the importance of protecting those who are most at the mercy of the State’s unjust laws and fearful power to destroy lives – which we certainly hope you do – or even if you simply want to keep a leftist politician in an office mainly focused on civil liberties rather than economic issues as a matter of harm reduction lest he, if ousted, seek another job in which his ideology might do more damage, we believe this is the one race on this year’s SF ballot in which a non-Libertarian is definitely worth voting for.
Well Marcy, one problem is that I can’t find the sheet you gave me about the way to post stuff and get it to show up where and how it’s supposed to (if that sheet even included posting to the page where the ballot stuff is). At least if you’re asking me to post what I wrote myself. I’m not quite clear if that’s what you’re asking. If you can post it, you already have the text from the postcard.
I’ve been communicating with the guy from the Crowdpac site, and he updated our page. The headline looks funny due to some auto-fill mechanism they have that automatically adds “'s ballot” after each group name, but he did add the word “recommendations”:
https://www.crowdpac.com/ballot/J20
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))The discussion at the meeting was quite clear. I was not going to write the recommendation for Mirkarimi on the website, you were. At the time of that discussion, there was no idea in our minds about any postcard. You are a publisher on our website. What is the problem here?
Marcy
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2015 22:42:34 -0700
Subject: Re: P.S. - Re: [lpsf-discuss] Interesting website with LPSF’s recommendations
Marcy,
I wrote a blurb for the postcard, and am asking you to use that.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Nope. He is strictly your baby. I voted against recommending him. We agreed you would write the blurb.
Marcy
P.S. - This reminds me, I never wrote up a formal blurb for out Mirkarimi recommendation specifically for the website. Marcy, please go ahead and use the language on the postcard for that purpose. I notice that the page listing our recommendations (http://www.lpsf.org/elections-campaigns/915-local-ballot-measure-recommendations.html) does not mention the sheriff at all.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Posted by: francoise@thefieldingcompanies.com
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