Get Organized! says Controversial San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener

On Under the Golden Gate LIVE

Regardless of what you think about controversial San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, we give him credit for showing up to the studio and allowing us to peer inside a life in politics. Many people in the audience had a little more understanding and respect for his role when he explained that if you try to create any kind of change, no matter what position you take on an issue, people on both sides are mad at you. The most important takeaway was when we asked him for advice on how the general populace can be more effective in being heard by politicians:

Get Organized!

Seems obvious, but a good reminder, because I’ve found that getting people organized is far easier said than done. Especially in a Facebook world where many people appear to be substituting true activism with just casual posting on social media from the comfort of their chair, sofa, or bed. Scott pointed out to us that HIV activists were always the most organized because it was a matter of life and death.

We also learned that running for local office, is more about knocking on doors than raising money. (He represents 75K people, whereas a Congressperson represents about 10 times that amount — an average of approximately 750K people which requires a considerable amount of money).

VIDEO: Life in politics

More on the Homeless below and the difficulties of having any kind of dialog or understanding of anything complicated in a public forum.

Housing

My co-host DJ Dank, then asked Scott about how do you deal with the dramatically increased cost of living in a city that has always been so appealing for its sparkle of diversity and weirdo’s, but is now being homogenized into lukewarm corporate workers and wealthy people. Scott points out that the problems are mostly changing demographics and that all major cities throughout the country have not been geared for the kind of growth we’ve been seeing in the last few decades.

VIDEO: Housing

I was less satisfied with his answer here, because there doesn’t seem to be any clear effective action we can take other than a little streamlining, which is important but won’t stem the tide. I don’t blame young people for wanting to give up the suburban dream and focus on their lives instead of just making babies…I believe in memes over genes! It seems to be a law of nature that cities will always be overtaken by boring, homogenized money interests that focus on the growth of fancy condos, expensive restaurants and chic shops above all else. It happened to London, it happened to New York, and it’s happening to San Francisco. There doesn’t appear to be anywhere else to go to find a critical mass of weirdos. Have we killed decades of the development of a diverse community in just a few years? Are there any examples of major cities which have effectively stemmed the tide of money and maintained balance?

One can argue that the San Francisco culture is still weird and innovative and morphing into a tech based culture of weirdos. I straddle the two worlds of the Weird Underworld and Tech (in order to pay the rent!), and I believe that the core of the city spirit is still here, but it’s just harder to find. However, I’m constantly disappointed, because I think I expect, or should I say hope, that the workaholic people who live here, will take some time to explore the city they inhabit instead of spending their leisure time in fancy restaurants and in the world of their social media bubble and TV shows. Oh and don’t forget Tinder and Grindr, ugh. So much for an intercourse of personalities in one of the most fascinating cities in the world :(

Perhaps this is just the way of the world. Perhaps all intelligent civilizations throughout the galaxy go through this once they discover their equivalent of the Internet and Social networking. What could the city do to maintain the balance between money and culture (Given that Capitalism is our country’s Religion)? You would think that technology would increase leisure time and thus maintain the balance of diversity and weirdo’s, but has that ever happened? If not, why not? Is workaholism an arms race to be able to get the best stuff before you get old? In the past San Francisco was highly organized when it came to Gay Rights, but not today when it comes to saving our city from the flood of money. I wonder why? Have the regular people been driven out? Are they too busy working in order to pay the rent? It is that Gay Rights seems like an inevitable divine right, but also inevitable is the tide of money destroying the culture and history of every major city?

California and the new Trump World

I wanted to find out if the new world of politics driven by social network driven tabloid memes has affected Scott at the local and state level. (I feel like the next President could be Caesar Flickerman from the Hunger Games…the game show host). Scott reminded us that we do need to make sure Caesar, excuse me Trump doesn’t win. Scott was reminding any Hillary haters that plan to not vote for her to consider voting for her no matter what we think of her in order to stop Caes…oh excuse me Trump. (I personally think we should vote for Hillary to stop Trump, and then immediately start supporting any emerging 3rd parties to severely weaken both of those abominations they called parties.)

Fortunately California, according to Scott, doesn’t appear to be adversely affected by this wild wild west of politics. He describes how California is still a critical progressive trendsetter.

VIDEO: On Political Climate

You can’t stop the tide, you just learn to ride it. I do believe that our beloved progressive and weird San Francisco is still here, but is simply morphing with the influence of tech, money, and power. Well, actually what choice do we have? As Morpheus said, “you must BE-LIEVE!”.

What does it feel like to be hated?

One of the constants in politics and the public forums that go with it is confusion of the facts. My media bubble tells me that most people hate Scott Wiener. Yes Hate. And it got worse with his support of the recently fired Police Chief. Yet Scott got 80% of the vote in the Castro district. So clearly the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty applies here. (More on that another time). DJ Dank asked Scott to give us his perspective on what it’s like to be hated. Scott reminds us (we all need it) that the social media machine amplifies negative sentiment, outshining all else. I didn’t know Scott was a very engaged LGBT activist, and worked to improved public transportation and access to housing for the disadvantaged, among other things. Finally we learned a little bit about how he ended up in politics and his early life.

VIDEO: On Being Scott

So

I felt like I was able to better appreciate how difficult it really is to tell what is real and what is not in a world dominated by our individual social media bubbles. And adding to the frustration, is dealing with people on different sides of an issue who are just shouting out into their personal bubble and hearing reinforcing echos of confirmation without making any real connections to a broader community. Pretty soon they’re addicted (and a few companies are walking off with all the advertising dollars….)

Yea, Scott is a politician and could be feeding us a line of BS. But as the Godfather said, “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”. Regardless of what you think about Scott, there is a lot to take in here.

But there is a bright side to the social media bubble. It can allow us to rally people more easily if we know how to manage the tools. We just have to remember that the government doesn’t set policy for the people. It’s the reverse — the people set policy for the government. And the government serves the people that spend time with it. I.e. Lobbyists! (But also well organized activists). I think we’ll all get smarter as we grow to better use the new tools to connect with each other. We’ll just have to outgrow the advertisers.

…and vote wisely.

Extra: More on the Homeless Problem

What fascinates me the most about the Homeless issue is how difficult it is to have a “discussion” on anything complicated in a public forum. I think it’s because emotions run high in a social media environment, as each of our views are validated by the technologies used by the various social media companies to create our own individual media bubbles. It’s absurd to think that anybody would even think it’s acceptable to have people living in tents in a major city! So then it comes down to the details of how do you manage the problem. And that’s where the devil in the details gets us all fighting each other as the social media environment has “trained” us to argue incessantly online, “screaming at each other” with disinformation blasted back and forth all while the Facebook’s of the world keep ticking up advertising dollars (I think I saw that in a Star Trek episode). Don’t you wish we could all just get into a room and talk about it!… Seems impossible in today’s environment.

Scott goes into some of the details about how San Francisco has dealt with the homeless problem, and how mental illness and drugs are a key driver in the homeless issue and illustrate a breakdown in our system in general. Makes you wonder if the government is doing even close to the best they can. There’s quite a bit of Internet chatter on both sides on this one.

VIDEO: More on the Homeless

Epilogue: And then the Taxi Union Blames Scott for Uber

A few days after the Interview I mentioned to my taxi driver that I had interviewed Scott. Turns out he was a Taxi union representative and started vomiting vitriol about how Scott personally destroyed the the Taxi’s by bringing in Uber (BTW: I hate Uber). I got his business card and asked him for a quote. The information he gave me was complete nonsense. I had to remind him that the Taxi companies brought this upon themselves by not innovating — so don’t just bitch about “the way things are”? What specifically did Scott do that you considered unfair? I wasn’t buying his emotionally driven tabloid mindset, and after several exchanges, he came up blank. I reminded him that it was probably a good idea to focus on the fact that the Rideshare companies aren’t paying the equivalent in taxes and benefits and could thus undercut the cab companies — how do you get politicians and the general public to care about that? He seemed to be at a loss what to do about that. Finally I lost my compassion for him, and I bid him farewell, and told him to get organized!