This whole interview sounds like a bunch of old guys just chewing the fat. Go into this thing like you are a bunch of Mike Wallaces or fire-breathing drill sergeants or something. Regardless of their proclaimed (and especially unproclaimed) ideology, you should get rough with the candidates and test them in order to see how they react under pressure. Make them get as specific as humanly possible when they dole out their pretty-sounding proposals. For instance, if I were in the room I would have asked Rafael straight up, "Do you plan on becoming another David Chiu?", before he even got a chance to sit down. If you guys don't give a shit, why should anyone else?

He's spouting the same crap the rest of the "progressives" have been spouting for 30+ years and look where it's got us? Just another paid whore of Non Profit Inc.

Lucretia and Matlock remind me of Chronicle commentators - angry and ignorant.

Whatever one may think about Rafael's politics (I'm supporting Rebecca in this election), he's a genuinely nice and thoughtful guy. He does listen to all sides of an issue and gives people a fair hearing. I'd like to hope that the majority of San Franciscans value that in our candidates. We have good candidates in district 8. Candidates who all care about their neighborhood. These sorts of personal attacks won't fly in this election.

This excellent response letter was published in a local paper this week:

Economic disparity to blame

Arthur Evans recently blamed violent crime on Tommi Avicolli Mecca and his allies [Mailstrom, August 19]. This personal attack on a longtime community activist exceeds the boundaries of civil discourse and has no place in a community newspaper. Moreover, the Examiner article to which Evans refers ("Crime spike has Castro district wary," August 21)) says nothing about people who are homeless. To the contrary, the article quotes LGBT community liaison, Sergeant Chuck Limbert: "There has been an alarming spike in the number of calls police have been receiving from partygoers who say they have been drugged, robbed, or raped by people they met out at neighborhood clubs, bars, or on the Internet."

Evans unconvincingly tries to connect an increase in violent crime to people who are homeless. This baseless charge is not supported by Police Department crime reports, as indicated by Limbert's comments in the Examiner . There is no empirical data to substantiate Evans's claims. Moreover, associating social justice activists with robberies and stabbings is pretty low, even for Evans.

As the Coalition on Homelessness has concluded: "So much for the addressing of real crimes. It is clear that a great many sit/lie proponents – perhaps the majority of the most vocal proponents – are bothered not by real crimes, but by the very presence of homeless people in public view in San Francisco. ... In a democracy, we cannot purge our society of those we find distasteful as totalitarian and ethnic nationalist regimes have seen fit to do. Any of us should be ashamed to consider the idea in public."

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeal, in Edward Jones et al. v. City of Los Angeles, noted, "Whether sitting, lying, and sleeping are defined as acts or conditions, they are universal and unavoidable consequences of being human." As efforts to criminalize sitting down continue, there is a waitlist for every city-funded service in San Francisco. The city's shelter system has only one shelter bed for every six officially recognized homeless people.

The problem is increasing economic disparity and demonizing the poorest of the poor while shredding the social safety net. Many young queer people from across the country who've been kicked out of their homes come to the Castro seeking love and acceptance. These people need hope, not citations.

Harvey Milk opposed a similar sit/lie law over 30 years ago because such laws are used to target and intimidate people who some view as socially undesirable (e.g., queers). Sit/lie represents the opposite of San Francisco values. It's unfair, unkind, and unconstitutional. As Milk said over 30 yeas ago, "You gotta give 'em hope." Sit/lie is the opposite of hope. Please vote no on Prop L.

David Waggoner and Denise DeAnne
Co-Presidents, Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club
Reverend Dr. Lea D. Brown
Senior Pastor, MCC San Francisco
Joey Cain
Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Tab Buckner
Alan Collins
Hyde E. Beck

As noted above, Rafael Mandelman is an intelligent, principled person.

I wonder, though, whether his fellow Milk Clubbers will undermine his bid for office as they did when Gabriel Haaland and Eileen Hansen ran for supe, the former in district five, the latter in district eight.

Both Haaland and Hansen clammed up and looked the other way when voters asked them questions about public safety and public sanitation. At the same time, their surrogates, the Milk Clubbers, launched personal attacks that were slanderous and diversionary against the questioners.

The tactics backfired. Both Haaland and Hansen went down to defeat. The defeat was especially bitter for Haaland. He started out as the front-runner in terms of money and endorsements. But he ended up losing by a 22% margin.

There's a message here for the Milk Clubbers:

Voters do not like to see politicians have their operatives attack voters when voters ask politicians questions. The politicians who promote this practice come across as viewing public office as a personal entitlement. In fact, however, public office is a public trust that has to be earned and re-earned.

By the way, I was a member of the Milk Club in the 1970s when it was known as the SF Gay Democratic Club, and I knew Harvey Milk.

It saddens me to see how the club has degenerated over the years. The Milk Clubbers of today dishonor Harvey's memory with their cheesy ploys.