By James Sword, HANC Board
Our November general meeting was well attended by those logging on, calling in, and following a live twitter account of the meeting – which has become the norm. We’re repeating a couple of announcements from the meeting: 1) if you are calling in to attend our meetings, please recheck your call-in number, so you can avoid possible high charges; 2) The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council is very sad to learn about the passing of former board member, and long-time Haight Ashbury merchant, Dave Groeschel of Mom's Body Shop. Dave embodied the Haight-Ashbury in many ways and was a good soul.
Even though we had chosen the topic a month before the meeting, it turned out that dark money was a hot topic – local news outlets (Mission Local, 48 Hills) carried stories about dark money both the week leading up to our meeting and the week after. We were fortunate to have both Brandon Harami and Jim Stearns present on the topic and discuss the November election. Supervisor Dean Preston and Jen Snyder were also in attendance and provided Preston’s vision for D5 now that he has an additional 4 years after a fairly decisive victory.
Jim Stearns has led dozens of successful campaigns for statewide and local offices, ballot measures and grassroots issues, and was able to provide a high level view of the various propositions and how money was being pumped into SF, CA, and D5. Jim has been involved in SF politics for decades and has a good handle on the influence of dark money and strategies to combat it.
Brandon Harami presented after Jim and took a deeper dive into the dark money pumped into D5. As Co-Chair of the San Francisco Berniecrats and a lead for Our Revolution California, Brandon is deeply involved in many political topics in D5 (and beyond). Brandon helped connect many of the dots between the money being pumped into the election. He used the SF Berniecrat dark money chart to provide context and background into why YIMBYSF/SFHAC were creating so many fake organizations and what they had to gain. Brandon also shed light on how members and board members of these organizations are also deeply involved in Haight Ashbury Neighbors for Density, Nextdoor, and the United Democratic Club. As most people know, SF politics is an incestuous community.
We are lucky so much had been done prior to the election and dark money efforts were exposed so people could make educated decisions. The results of the election, at least locally, really showed how many people in SF and D5 are educated on political topics and are skeptical of dark money influence and are interested in learning what people pushing dark money Astroturf organizations have to gain. In the coming weeks there will be deeper dives into why UCSF benefactors were so involved in trying to get Preston defeated. Please join us for the next HANC general meeting where we will take a deeper dive into the election results.