One doesn't have to try very hard these days, you know. At the last place where I worked, we were asked to open a large meeting one day by giving our name, agency, and "something that gives us hope." I said the main thing that gave me hope was that more and more people were coming to realize just how bad things really are. I'm feeling less optimistic now.
Update on Louie: It seems to me that Cisneros looks doubly foolish now, having beaten Louie by a 40-point margin (as of last night, with 98% in). How could he have felt so threatened? Given the range of Louie's support--all the way from Barbara Meskunas and Tony Hall to Matt Gonzales--I was a little surprised myself by the lopsidedness of the outcome. (I'm assuming San Francisco voting machines are nothing like those in Ohio.) One of Louie's staffers told me he was pretty sure who had ordered the sign removal, on the basis of the answers (nonanswers, actually) he got to his questions; but he wasn't going to pursue it because he had to work with those people. The sign removal episode got little publicity outside the Asian community (the _Chronicle_, supporting Cisneros, buried it on p. B7, with a pull quote from the DPW saying it was probably just a "bonehead mistake"), or it could have made some difference; Louie already had the support of the Asian community. I said in my invited remarks at Louie headquarters last night, in a pitch for anarchy, that, whenever you set up one institution with decisive power over everything else in a society--the definition of government--there will be people who will do almost anything to get control of it, and that's what we saw last Thursday; that Louie, on the other hand, has struck me as a very decent man, so it's hard to imagine him being successful in politics.
[mailto:lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Derek Jensen