Monday, September 15
12:00pm - 1:00pm
San Francisco General Hospital, Outside the Main Hospital Building 1001 Potrero Avenue

Join Elected officials, political party leaders, SEIU 1021, doctors and health care workers, and community leaders as we officially kick-off the campaign to pass Prop A and Save San Francisco General Hospital.

SF General Hospital is the only trauma center in San Francisco, which means it is the only hospital staffed and equipped to respond to any multi-casualty event, including a major earthquake.

State law requires that the building housing General Hospital’s emergency, surgery and other acute-care services meet comtemporary seismic safety standards or face closure in 2013. General Hospital has been found to fall well short of those standards.

Budget Rally
Thursday, June 26th
4-6pm, City Hall Steps

Save the Date, Save City Services.

We’ve been big fans of the campaign for paid sick days from back when it was a gleam in the (metaphorical) eye of Young Workers United.

We’re not the only ones. The Drum Major Institute recently featured YWU cofounder Sara Flocks.

Part 2

From today’s SF Bay Guardian

BY ROBERT HAALAND
Wednesday June 4, 2008

OPINION Local government is frozen. The mayor’s office and the Board of Supervisors have been engaged in open warfare for months. This week, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that in order to balance San Francisco’s budget, city services and community-based organizations will have to undergo draconian cuts.

In a preemptive move against embarrassing protests, the mayor’s press office did not reveal the location of the annual budget presentation to the news media until late Friday afternoon. Even the supervisors, who will be debating and voting on the budget during the month of June, were left in the dark until then.

- A $338 Million SF Budget Deficit?!
- Cutting services to seniors, children, the sick and the homeless?!
- Laying off hundreds of workers?!
- What can be done..?

SAN FRANCISCO BUDGET AND REVENUE TOWN HALL
A citywide forum on the Mayor’s proposed budget cuts and strategies for saving the safety net for all vulnerable San Franciscans.

SPECIAL GUESTS: Jean Ross, Executive Director, California Budget Project

MONDAY, JUNE 9TH
2-4pm SF Main Library, Koret Auditorium
100 Larkin St. (at Grove). Koret Auditorium is located on the Library’s lower level. Please enter at 30 Grove St. and then proceed downstairs. (Please note that refreshments are not allowed in the Auditorium.)

I got a mailer this weekend from the Close It Coalition, “with the proud sponsorship of PG&E”. The Close It Coalition is PG&E’s front group arguing against putting new peaker plants in San Francisco.

The mailer’s pretty disingenuous: it implies that the peakers would be built in place of the Hunters Point plant, which has been shut down for more that a year, and is being dismantled as I write this. Its image still graces the Left in SF masthead, though.

An opinion piece from this week’s SF Bay Guardian written by a Public Health Nurse and member of SEIU 1021.

Chop from the top
You might expect that when the mayor proposes an “across the board” budget cut from city departments, almost any position in city government would be on the table.

By Stefan Lynch

OPINION San Francisco officials released two very different documents last week. The first was a list of the 596 city employees making $150,000 a year or more in base salary. The second was a letter to the 334 patients of the Chronic Care Public Health Nursing program informing them that as of April 15 they will no longer have a public-health nurse helping them manage their illnesses.

Today, The Advocate published an article about the transgender man who is having a baby. The original article can be found here. Beatie is to appear on Oprah on Thursday.

An FTM activist responds to the media coverage of Thomas Beatie after his article appeared in The Advocate.

By Robert Haaland

Transgender man Thomas Beatie set off a firestorm in the LGBT population and the world when he announced that he is having a baby and continues to identify as a man. His article in The Advocate, “Labor of Love,” left many, even some transgender people, wondering how someone can identify as male and yet be pregnant. Some have even gone so far to suggest that by bearing the child he is less, or even not, male, despite Beatie’s declaration that he continues to identify as male.

This is mind-bogglingly brilliant:

From The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights

Pics:TerrrieFrye