Make Pelosi listen

THE SAN FRANCISCO Democratic Party has a chance to take a strong stand Oct. 26 against the war in Iraq – there's a good chance that it won't happen. That's because an antiwar resolution before the party's County Central Committee (DCCC) tacitly criticizes Rep. Nancy Pelosi – and that's something the local Democratic leadership is appallingly unwilling to do.

The resolution in question, introduced by Tom Gallagher, president of the Bernal Heights Democratic Club, calls on Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos to sign on to Rep. Lynn Woolsey's H.Con. Res. 35, which calls on President Bush to implement plans for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Woolsey's bill is largely symbolic: Bush isn't going to change his policy because some Congressional Democrats urge him to. But at least Woolsey is pushing the cause and trying to force the Democratic Party to take a clearer position on one of the defining issues of our time.

Pelosi has consistently refused to go along with Woolsey's resolution and has been far too weak on the war. She didn't show up or even send a statement in support of the national antiwar rallies in San Francisco and Washington, DC, last month and has been afraid of using her platform to make the war a central partisan campaign.

But the county committee leaders apparently don't want to challenge her. Instead, committee member Scott Wiener has introduced an alternative resolution to compete with Gallagher's. His watered-down measure "calls upon the President and Congress to join House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's efforts to call for an immediate strategy to bring our troops home." In other words: Get behind Pelosi, who is happy to talk about strategies – but no timetables, no direct call for a US withdrawal.

These might seem like silly semantic issues, a time-wasting fight over verbiage in a resolution that won't matter anyway. But there's a much larger issue here: The grassroots Democratic Party, represented by the central committee, has long been nothing more than a tool of party officials like the late Rep. Phil Burton, former mayor Willie Brown, and now Pelosi. The local party's official organ has stood aside and watched (or cheered the machine politicos on) while developers devastated the city, while the Presidio was handed over to private interests, while the worst corruption in modern San Francisco history ran rampant at City Hall. And it was all for a lack of the courage and integrity to say that some of the elected Democrats running this city are acting more like Republicans – and need to be called on it.

This is a litmus-test issue for the committee members. The DCCC should approve Gallagher's resolution and send Pelosi a clear message: She's not representing San Francisco.

The DCCC will meet Oct. 26 at the State Building, 455 Golden Gate. The resolution will come before the Issues Committee at 6 p.m., and the general meeting is scheduled to start at 7.