A quick preamble: This is a pretty unorganized, largely unedited stream of consciousness post. I’ll try to update it as my thoughts become clearer and change, but I make no promises.
The electorate as a whole swung right, even with pretty high turnout. That represents a significant paradigm shift that requires new ways of thinking about strategy. It seems like being neither more left nor more right would have helped Dems all the much on the national level.
It’s really hard to dismiss local results as the result of an off-year or special election, like it was with the failure of Prop A during the Boudin recalls. The entire country swung right, and turnout has been relatively high. We are seeing a shifting electorate, and we need to take steps to address it.
In San Francisco, things look bad. Prop L, which would have generated ~$30m yearly for Muni operations looks like its fallen victim to the Prop M poison pill. The fact that Prop M stabilizes revenues will eventually be good for Muni, which receives a large fixed percent transfer from the general fund, but Prop M comes with an initial decrease in revenues, meaning Muni both gets hit in the general fund, and doesn’t get the revenue Prop L would have generated. Prop L ran a really good campaign. I think as transportation activists we were largely blind to how big of a threat M was to be. I’m disappointed that we fell for messaging from the business community and business-adjacent orgs like SPUR predicting that L would outperform M, thereby voiding the poison pill. I’m upset and feel stupid in hindsight for listening to proponents of M when they told us that things would be okay.
L also caused an interesting split in the moderate/urbanist sphere, with GrowSF begrudgingly supporting Prop K. It’s worth noting that Grow originally did not want K on the ballot, and was very upset that it caused a split in their conservative base, which heavily relies on West Side conservative voters, who oppose the K most vehemently. These voters are the backbone of GrowSF’s moderate (read: conservative) base. The past couple elections have seen GrowSF become less and less urbanist focused as they become a general dumping grounds for tech and other money looking to control politics. I think this represents the end of a coalition of urbanist-y groups we used to be able to rely on, with them showing their allegiance to the urbanist fight being limited and largely aesthetic. Players were willing to support K, an easy and largely symbolic (and zero-cost) measure, but not L, because it costs money and would get in the way (politically) of their tax-reform measure. When the chips are down, these business aligned groups will not pick our side: money talks, bullshit walks.
Seeing the YIMBY-urbanist coalition break down is interesting, with SF YIMBY quietly distancing itself from GrowSF as Grow moves away from even the illusion of a housing based platform. SF YIMBY has opposed sweeps, and supported props K and L. I have nebulous thoughts about furthering polarizing the west side against the “pro housing” side and what that means for the electorate in the less immediate future. This makes me hopeful that the pro-housing movement can distance itself from its cancerous, conservative spinoffs, which will be essential if we are actually to build new housing. The consequences of not building new housing are becoming increasingly apparent and dire, and in my opinion made especially clear by this last election: if we don’t make housing more accessible in the Bay Area, the electorate will continue to become more conservative.
I think one thing is abundantly clear: we need to eradicate Grow SF. They are an existential threat to everything we care about, are can no longer be relied on even to support housing or transit. They are a cancer on the pro-housing movement, and they threaten hard fought gains like electing Dean Preston as supervisor for District 5.
That being said, SF YIMBY still has problems, and distancing itself from the policies of the people who fund it will be difficult. Something that has been front of mind for me is the notion that we, as the radical streets/transit group may need to get involved in housing politics and fill the role of the progressive part of the housing movement. I don’t think we can afford to ignore housing anymore. I think this warrants a much bigger, hard conversation about how we engage with this sensitive and politically hot issue, but I think the progressive urbanist perspective has a lot to offer, especially in changing the discourse around what types of housing need to be built. We should see getting public and social housing built as a matter of strategic importance to build a stronger, more progressive electorate in addition to its importance as our duty as a less conservative (lol) state to accommodate people fleeing increased persecution and political violence in conservative states.
The obvious question is where do we go from here, and I’m not going to pretend I have answers, but I do have thoughts and some ideas.
Over the past year or so, SSR has begun to rely more on semi-spun off autonomous groups to actions, which has been successful. I think we ought to double down on this, and continue fighting for these small wins. We know that focusing works, and semi-consistent small actions and wins not only sustain and build morale and movement, but pave the way for bigger movements by building capacity and training new and existing organizers. I want to see us build our reputation as the people who get stuff done, build our organizing capacity, and better the city while we’re at it.
My friend pointed out that GrowSF has done a really good job of appealing to the ”pragmatic voter” with “common sense solutions,” and I think we need to fight really hard for those people. Right wing arguments are appealing because of their simplicity, and so that will be an uphill battle for us, but if we continue to show that positive change is possible, that we can do it, and that it works, we can push the window enough that progressive urbanism becomes “common sense.” I think continuing to build these small wins will provide a strong foundation for this.
I think this election has served as a harsh reminder that electoralism is extremely difficult, and often for minimal gain, and so if something can be accomplished with a sustained direct action and pressure campaign, we should absolutely exhaust that option first.
I think as the full NIMBY progressives leave the scene, like Peskin, we’re at a unique and important point. It is absolutely crucial that we bring progressives into the pro housing fold, and bring the pro-housing movement to the left. Again, we can’t accomplish any electoral goals if progressives can’t live here. We need to expand the progressive electorate, and we owe it to marginalized people everywhere to have the capacity to accommodate people fleeing repression.
I really hope we can form a strong alliance between a progressive housing movement and a progressive transportation movement to bring about a progressive urbanist vision for the city, but we’re fighting separately right now, and it’s not working very well. Housing helps transit and transit helps housing, and both are progressive causes. Again, I think the progressive urbanist perspective has a lot to offer, especially in changing the discourse around what types of housing need to be built.
I think labor is incredibly important on both the supply and demand sides of housing and transportation, and bringing labor into the fold will also be hugely important. Labor drives our buses, builds our homes, has to live in our cities and pay the rents. Forming a progressive labor alliance is essential, and I think bringing new workers into that alliance, ie unionizing Uber/delivery drivers will be hugely important. Labor built this country and city and we can’t afford to ignore it.