View the San Francisco for Sunday, April 13, 2025
Fractured nationally and locally, the San Francisco Democratic Party has a new plan to attract voters: listen to them. The San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee announced plans last week to bring its monthly meetings and its voter-outreach efforts to neighborhoods across San Francisco in coming months — including those where voters drifted most heavily toward the political right in the 2024 elections.
DCCC Chair Nancy Tung told The Examiner “this is one of the ways we can try to bring value to the Democratic brand and show people that we are here,” and that “we understand what everyday people want out of political parties.”The announcement comes as disconcerted Democrats look to party leaders to build a path forward after President Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024 — and are often comingThere is also a range of opinions about the role local Democrats should play in the response to Trump, a Republican, with some some pushing for the party to be more loudly and outwardly anti-Trump.— opted not to recharter under the party’s umbrella this year, with each citing its own list of grievances with party leadership. The extent of division at the local level is in the eye of the beholder. While the decision by the two clubs to ditch the party raised eyebrows, there are 21 Democratic clubs that remain chartered by the DCCC. Leaders of the clubs that have left said they’ve received sympathy from leaders of clubs still chartered; DCCC leaders said new clubs are interested in forming or joining. In many ways, the fallout follows a shift in the balance of political power. Though there has long been a tug-of-war between moderates and progressives in the San Francisco Democratic Party, moderates gained the edge last year after a carefully orchestrated,John Avalos, a progressive former supervisor who has been on the DCCC for five years, described the last year as a “total s--- show” in which party leaders have cut down on debate between committee members. But disunity within the party locally has “nothing to do with anything that’s indicative of San Francisco,” Avalos said. Former Supervisor John Avalos, the executive director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, speaks about tenant displacement pressures and development to protect tenants, during a press conference at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025. “If the party really meant something to people across the country and in San Francisco, the election wouldn’t have been so close, nor would the Democratic Party have lost votes in every county in the nation as it did,” Avalos said. “Here in San Francisco, we’re dealing with that kind of as a microcosm of the whole country.”“If people actually had the ability to have a voice in the party, we would probably elect someone like Bernie Sanders, who is pretty much like a Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrat,” Avalos said. But other party leaders said they view the 2024 election results as a call to focus on the basics, not get mired in broader policy debates. Tung said, for example, that the percentage of school-age kids in San Francisco who attend private schools is “ want a government that works and that is the basic and core principle of how our Democratic cities should be run,” Tung said. “Democrats should be able to run our cities — not just run them, but run them well.” Democrats widely agree that the 2024 election results demand a reckoning within the party. But what that looks like, particularly on the local level and amid a Trump administration antithetical to its values, has to be hashed out. “There’s a lot of self-reflection that needs to happen on the national level, with our national leaders,” Tung said. “It comes down to, you’re not connecting with people where they are, you’re not connecting with working-class people, you’re not showing value in the Democratic Party in your actions or ideals — even if they are better for working class people or families.” Tung said the local party can inform national leaders what the conversation is in San Francisco, but “for us to make changes on the national level and come out with a coherent national strategy requires national leaders to do that.” San Francisco Democrats haven’t rested on their laurels, according to Emma Hare, a party vice chair. She noted that San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu has played a prominent role in fighting the“I think we’re doing a ‘yes, and,’” Hare said of local Democrats’ strategy. San Francisco Democrats who are unsatisfied with the results of the 2024 election and the local party’s direction in its aftermath face a choice: fight to change it from within, or ditch it altogether.In the eyes of some, it’s too late for local Democrats to repair their image. Jeremy Lee, president of the Rose Pak Democratic Club, recalled meeting monolingual seniors in Chinatown while running for a seat on the DCCC in 2024. He said he found them to often be skeptical at bestof the Democratic Party, asking “why should I care about uplifting this party?” “Some people were just point blank like ‘I like you. I don’t like the Democratic Party,’” Lee told The Examiner.for District 11 supervisor in the November election. Just as in Chinatown, Chen’s district has neighborhoods with high concentrations of Asian and Pacific Islander voters. Some residents were voting for Chen — a progressive — for supervisor, but Republican mayoral candidate Ellen Lee Zhou and Trump for president. To Lee, that ideological dissonance was explained by the way each of these candidates made people feel seen. “The Democratic brand is toxic right now,” Lee said. “No one thinks they’re doing a great job. For me personally, I’m a Bernie Sanders, -type person. They’re just very slow to change.” The Rose Pak Democratic Club and Latinx Democratic Club are both traditionally to the political left of the party’s moderate leadership. But those party leaders might point out that the voters these groups are concerned about connecting with drifted to the right — not the left — in last year’s elections. Kevin Ortiz, president of the Latinx Democratic Club, says he views the issue as “top-down,” not left or right. “It’s easy for us, in San Francisco especially, to call out this influx of tech money,” Ortiz said. “Locally, our own San Francisco Democratic Party is OK with taking money from these folks and being beholden to these interests.” The Latinx Democratic Club decried the lack of Latino representation at the DCCC, arguing that 16% of San Franciscans are Latino but just one of 23 SFDCCC members is Latino. In its statement announcing its decision to not recharter, it noted that both it and the Rose Pak Democratic Club both serve communities of color. “We can be more effective from the outside,” Ortiz told The Examiner. He also said the club is looking to be chartered outside of the DCCC. Ortiz denied that the departure from the DCCC was related to his resuming the role of president of the club after its internal investigation cleared him of sexual-assault allegations. The two women who made the claims both said they did not participate in the probe, with one saying it would be “biased” and would “trivialize my own experience coming forward,” according to Mission Local.in December. If the club were still chartered, an inquiry conducted by the local party could have resulted in Ortiz’sThose unsatisfied with the local party’s direction face the choice between fighting to change it from within or ditching it altogether. The Rose Pak Democratic Club and Latinx Democratic Club chose the latter. With Trump’s arrival in office and its consequences — for immigrants, to take one example — “we were like, ‘OK, we need to find a way to build bridges within our community, because building bridges through the Democratic Party is not going to work,’” Lee said. Avalos remains on the DCCC and sees his role as “to help broaden what we’re about so that we can be more inclusive and to get people who represent the wealthy part and corporate side of San Francisco to understand they have a social contract with everyone.”“We really need to be engaging with people all the time,” Tung said. “We need to show our value, we need to be not just talking about lofty goals and things a little bit more abstract.”Some leaders are “really, really good at identifying problems and saying no to things and it’s harder to say what is the solution,” she said.Apr 11, 2025 Cut down trees are visible at the site of a timber sale in the Tahoe National Forest, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. State experts said they’re dubious about President Donald Trump’s claims that his directive opening up well over half of the country’s forests to logging will reduce wildfire risk and “save American lives.” Some, such as University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources climate-change scientist Daniel Swain, flatly called the administration’s rhetoric disingenuous and misleading. “It’s B.S., frankly,” Swain told The Examiner. “Are we going to try and justify logging forests commercially under the guise of wildfire-risk reduction? Because if that’s the case, even a whiff of that, it’s just simply false,”on April 3 that pulls back environmental safeguards and opens up roughly 60% of all federally protected forests — around 112 million acres — to logging practices, which is the process of cutting down and converting trees into timber.entitled “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production,” which Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Christopher French cited April 3 in directing the agency to increase production by 25% within the next five years. The Trump administration says the benefits of these actions are largely twofold: It will reinvigorate the economy by boosting a stagnant timber industry and significantly mitigate wildfires tearing through the West. The issue hits close to home for California, which contains 11% of the 193 million acres of forests and grasslands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the second highest statewide total in the country behind Alaska. UC Berkeley wildfire researcher Scott Stephens stressed the urgency of the state’s fire-prevention needs as climate change continues to heat up the atmosphere.“The issues that we have seen in the last 10 years, it’s a little bit off the charts, even for me,” Stephens said. “We have to do work at a pace and scale that we have not done in California, otherwise we’re gonna be chasing our tails forever.”that found that a combination of mechanical thinning — forest management, including logging, which reduces wildfire fuel — and the manmade restorative wildfires known as prescribed burns that burn off vegetation can significantly limit wildfire hazards. Stephens said federally mandated logging policies which encourage wide-scale logging can be “very positive” for the environment.Stephens said that logging can be a viable way to mitigate fire risk, as long as it’s done sustainably and arborists are strategic about what trees they’re chopping down. But Swain said there’s an important distinction, one that he’s on a mission to clear up: Not all logging is created equal. There’s the logging Stephens advocates for — which is for ecologically restorative purposes — and there’s commercial logging, which is done purely to sell off the timber for profit.“These are, in fact, almost diametrically opposed goals, in the sense that the kinds of longing that you would do to produce saleable timber preferentially selects for the most mature, largest trees,” Swain said. Commercial loggers seek the tallest and broadest trees which yield the most wood. But those are also the most fire-resilient, Swain said. Because they are the highest above ground and the wettest, he said, such trees prevent fires from spreading. The most susceptible natural wildfire fuels are saplings — younger, smaller trees — and the twigs, branches and dead debris that pile up at the forest floor. Those, Swain said, are not valuable to commercial loggers. What’s more, if larger trees are cut down en masse, Swain said they will likely be replaced by smaller, like-sized trees. Those increase wildfire risk even more, essentially creating a “tinder box,” Swain said. “This is just a lumber grab,” Swain said of Trump’s policies. “It’s going to have severe adverse consequences for forest health and, probably, if it were to happen at a large scale, increase wildfire risk.” Stephens maintained it’s still not clear exactly what the order calls for, including exactly where, how much and what kind of trees will be targeted. He said commercial logging can be done sustainably — but it would have to be severely regulated.. Rollins did not mention climate change in her directive, though she did call for staff to speed up environmental reviews. “Someone with a background that actually has this information and this expertise needs to say ‘This is what we hope to achieve. This is what we’re going to do,’” Stephens said. “And right now, it’s unknown.”Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. If you forget it, you'll be able to recover it using your email address.Forgot Password An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
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