BART strike brings visible face to declining conditions for workers

by Brian Leubitz

The BART strike was certainly preventable, but it was equally certainly no surprise.  Following a long line of government employees facing pay cuts and furloughs, BART workers have the strongest weapon: a transit strike that makes the public sit up and notice.  And unfortunately, that has happened:

The final trains of the Sunday shift will finish up their runs. But there will be no service Monday, with the transit system’s workers and management agreeing only on the fact that the two sides remain far apart in contract negotiations. Instead of reporting to work, BART union employees will carry picket signs and distribute leaflets at most stations. (SF Chronicle)

KQED Forum had an interesting program on the strike this morning, and the number of vociferous anti-union comments were somewhat surprisng. Now, you have to discount for the fact that conservatives always dominate this kind of program, but the angst is real.

For years, workers have been getting the raw deal. But this is universal, both public and private sector workers have seen wages stagnate while productivity is driven to higher and higher levels. However, for whatever reason, labor gets the negative press at every negotiation. The saying goes that workers should be happy to just have a job at all.

However, while the stock market rises and the wealthy grab an ever increasing level of income, how much longer can we continue to think this way? A rising tide, and a more equitable distribution of income is sure to yield better results for economy. But, the rich have the larger megaphones, and so labor frequently gets drowned out. But unless more income trickles down to the middle class, our economy will face some very serious challenges and questions of long-term sustainability.

There will be recriminations in both directions with this strike. And while there may be some uncomfortable moments, we cannot let the media create a false equivalence. We need to stand with BART workers, for worker safety and for living wages for all Californians. But BART workers aren’t the only ones on fighting for fair treatment of workers: AFSCME 3299 workers are fighting the UC system for good patient care and living wages for low-wage workers. Click here to get more information about their actions.

“Super-Pride” celebrates marriages going on now

by Brian Leubitz

In case you haven’t noticed, same-sex weddings began on Friday afternoon with a one sentence order from the 9th circuit lifting the stay. In San Francisco, marriages will be going on at City along side Pride festivities.

I don’t think there’s much more to say than: Happy Pride!

A look at dates

by Brian Leubitz

A few folks have asked the all-important question of when will the weddings start. When, indeed?

It is a relatively simple question with a somewhat complicated response. With some help from the press office of the SF City Attorney’s office, I’ve dug out that information so you don’t have to. To start from the beginning, after any US Supreme Court decision, there is generally a 25-day period for parties to file a petition for rehearing of a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Once that period expires, the high court issues its final judgment.  U.S. Supreme Court Rule 44 provides the following:

Any petition for the rehearing of any judgment or decision of the Court on the merits shall be filed within 25 days after entry of the judgment or decision, unless the Court or a Justice shortens or extends the time.

In this case, the Ninth Circuit has a stay-pending-appeal in place, and traditionally the appellate court will not lift them until the final judgment is entered after the 25 day period. However, a party could still petition the appellate court to vacate its stay, and nothing would prevent the 9th Cir from acting on the petition.  It is tradition to wait for the rehearing period to expire, but it is merely a judicial prerogative. The Ninth Circuit could decide to dissolve its stay even in before the rehearing period elapses, and before the final judgment.  However, that is up to the Ninth Circuit in all their judicial wisdom.

All that being said, in today’s press conference, Attorney General Kamala Harris very politely asked the court to lift the stay.

“There could potentially be that delay of 25 days,” Harris acknowledged. “Our point is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has within its power an ability to lift the stay before the judgment comes down, so what I am asking specifically is that the Ninth Circuit lift its stay.

How that request actually gets handled will be sorted out later this week, and the 9th Circuit will probably consider it shortly. The proponents of Prop 8 will likely be none too pleased, but the ship has sailed at this point. The highest Court in the land has ruled, and Prop 8 is not long for this world.

So, I can’t give an exact date. In a perfect world, the 9th circuit would lift the stay right away and we would be able to start in a few days. But in the “worst case scenario”, we are looking at a delay of 25 days, with weddings beginning in late July. Sounds like a lovely time for a few thousand weddings.

by Brian Leubitz

I’m currently awaiting the decisions that the Supreme Court is going to release. In the meantime, you should check out the websites of Americans for Equal Rights, who supported the Prop 8 case. SCOUTUSBlog will be liveblogging, and will likely have some of solid analysis very quickly. There will be a bunch of press releases and the like, and I’ll try to sort through some of that as well. Stay tuned.

7:03AM: DOMA Went down. Here’s the link to the decision. Here’s a post by Adam Bonin of Daily Kos analyzing the decision.

7:16AM: From the last paragraph of Justice Roberts dissent in the DOMA case, it looks like the Prop 8 case will be dismissed on standing grounds. “We hold today that we lack jurisdiction to consider it in the particular context of Hollingsworth v. Perry.”

7:30AM: Yup, 9th Cir appellate ruling was vacated, meaning Judge Walker’s ruling stands.  From Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog:

Here’s a Plain English take on Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage: After the two same-sex couples filed their challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court in California, the California government officials who would normally have defended the law in court, declined to do so. So the proponents of Proposition 8 stepped in to defend the law, and the California Supreme Court (in response to a request by the lower court) ruled that they could do so under state law. But today the Supreme Court held that the proponents do not have the legal right to defend the law in court. As a result, it held, the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the intermediate appellate court, has no legal force, and it sent the case back to that court with instructions for it to dismiss the case.

UPDATE: Attorney General Kamala Harris is holding a press conference at 10:30 this morning. It will be live-streamed on the AG’s website here. Here’s her June 3 letter to the Governor stating that the Walker decision applies to all 58 counties.

In the press conference, AG Harris called for the 9th Circuit to live the stay, and to apply the permanent injunction against Prop 8. “We cannot delay or deny Californians their civil rights.”

She also strongly supported the Equal Protection decision on DOMA. “We as Californians should be very proud. Californians now support these couples’ right to marry. … Hopefully the children of these couples will understand that they are equal to all, and inferior to none.”

The stay could be as long as 25 days, but she is asking the 9th Circuit to lift the stay early. As soon as the stay is lifted, marriages can begin.

UPDATE: I’m still looking for clarity on when marriages will begin, but Gov. Brown has directed all counties to begin issuing licenses when the court lifts the stay. When that will happen will be up to the 9th Circuit and probably Judge Ware, who last had the case at the District Court level. At 9:40, I got an email from SF Assessor/Recorder that she expects the marriages to begin in mid-to-late July.

CapitolAlert is posting the press statements from California leaders. Read them here.

I’ve just updated the post with a map of events to celebrate tonight. You can see the whole thing from United for Marriage site.View United for Marriage: Decision Day in a larger map.

More from Adam Bonin. Long story short, good result, bad path. The problem with winning on standing means that we get a crappy precedent going forward. Maybe it will never matter in California, but now the Court has said that only the state Executive can defend legislation. And if they fail to do so, then the law just doesn’t get the same protection as laws the Executive likes.

This was the outcome which I wasn’t the only one to predict, but I will confess that while it ends in the right place (Prop 8: dead) I am not at all crazy about the route. As I’ve suggested before, I think there’s something constitutionally hinky about having an initiative system designed to allow The People to bypass elected officials which allows those elected officials to thwart a full airing of the constitutional issues involved in a referendum. I can too-easily imagine a counterexample which a Republican administration would refuse to defend a liberal initiative in court, such as a hypothetical effort to overturn Prop 209 and instead require California’s universities to employ affirmative action practices in admissions, or an initiative imposing new limits on campaign financing, and for which the initiative’s supporters would be similarly out-of-constitutional luck. (Adam Bonin)

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Local outlets face big challenges

by Brian Leubitz

A couple of San Francisco stories over the last week have served to highlight the major obstacles facing local news coverage. First, last week, the saga of the SF Bay Guardian kept the city’s chattering class, well, chattering.

A short summary won’t do it justice, but I’ll try. Longtime editor-in-chief Tim Redmond, who had shepherded the paper from former owner Bruce Brugmann to the new Canadian syndicate that also owns the SF Examiner, and SF Weekly, “resigned” without much notice. He left a notice on a new Blogger blog that he left the paper, and not much else. After a bit of explanation, we learned through a long article from SFBG editors Steven T Jones and Rebecca Bowe that Redmond was under pressure to fire several reporters, possibly even 3 of the 7 staff that the Guardian had.  In the end, Redmond was either pushed out, or walked out, depending on how you see it. But the cuts are moving forward.

The other story of note was a great article about the “merger” of the Bay Citizen into the Center for Investigative Reporting that appears in today’s CalBuzz. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing, as it is an interesting warning/notice about what the future of journalism could look like if we rely solely on philanthropic ventures. The trouble is that if you lose the visionary behind the project, it is very hard to stay true to the vision.  In the case of the Bay Citizen, that has meant the end of the local reporting that it was launched to provide:

A year and a half later, Hellman was dead at age 77, and the board of the Bay Citizen, whose members were handpicked by Hellman, quickly decided to hand control to the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting.

Now, three years later, the vision of the Bay Citizen is gone, its staff enveloped by the growing empire of the CIR, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit news organizations, and its mission of providing local daily news coverage vanished. Along the way, CIR also has shuttered California Watch, which it started in January 2010 with foundation support to specialize in coverage of California news and issues. (Robert B. Gunnison / CalBuzz)

What does that mean for local reporting, and even state based reporting? Unfortunately, it is more than clear that journalism is now transitioning from the good old days to something new. New media presents tremendous opportunities for publishers (you are reading this, right?), but the challenges have just been too much to provide the same level of professional coverage that we once got on a consistent basis. Maybe semi-professional sites (like this one?) can fill in some of the gaps, but we are still facing a big journalistic hole.