Olde Writing

Mission statement for Common Assets Defense Fund (CADF)

Who owns the sidewalks? Runners, strollers, hopscotchers, homeless people, dog-walkers, skateboarders? If someone told you that you could walk only on particular areas of the sidewalk, how would you react? What if that someone went one step further and actually began to fence off portions of the sidewalks, sell them to the highest bidders, and pocket the profit?

Crazy, right? That kind of thing would never happen, not here, in the United States. The government wouldn't allow it. The people wouldn't stand for it. The sidewalks are for public use, not private gain. They belong to all of us.

While it's true that our sidewalks aren't being auctioned off to the highest bidders--at least not yet--it's also true that corporations and individuals are routinely selling and squandering assets that belong to all of us. These common assets include the air, the water, the airwaves used by TV and radio, and the Web. Collectively such assets are worth more than all of our privately owned property put together. Worth more in dollars, and worth more in terms of health, happiness, and quality of life. So why is it that corporations and individuals are being allowed to exploit these common assets for personal gain? Why are they being permitted to take what belongs to the public, sell or use it, and then limit our access to what's left?

It's simple, really. They're doing it because they can. Because the government lets them. Because they think there's no one to stop them from kicking common interests to the curb.

That's where they're wrong.

Common Assets Defense Fund is fighting to protect our collective wealth by stopping giveaways of common assets to corporations and individuals. CADF also advocates paying citizens for the use of their share of these assets.

Corporations and individuals who deplete and mismanage our collective resources for their own gain pose clear and present dangers to the health of our economy, our communities, even our bodies. To add insult to injury, the exploiters of common assets not only refuse to share monetary profits with their co-owners but, more often than not, they manage to swing lucrative deals that wind up costing the average citizen in terms of health, time, and quality of life. In other words, they take assets that aren't theirs, profit by selling or otherwise exploiting those assets and, in the process of doing so, create secondary costs borne by the average citizen.

Government gives away our assets, corporations take our assets, and we get taken, period.

Website copy for a project of CADF:

Fire J. Steven Griles

J. Steven Griles is the deputy secretary of the Department of the Interior. The Interior Department is charged with conserving and protecting the nation's land, land that belongs to the people of the United States. But Griles, like many Bush appointees, seems to care more about protecting the interests of private companies than those of ordinary citizens.

Which is only natural, really, given that Griles spent many years as a lobbyist for oil, coal, and mining businesses. Even though Griles recused himself from dealing with issues his former clients have interests in, it appears that he is continuing to lobby on behalf of those "former" clients. This lobbying is informal, of course -- "informal" meaning: Griles hasn't actually told the American people he's giving away and selling public land to private interests.

Why would he? He's doing just fine receiving $284,000 a year from his old company, National Environmental Strategies, an oil and gas industry lobbying firm. And when Griles isn't busy counting his kickbacks, he's meeting with people who could give him even more money. Since taking office, Griles has had 100 or more meetings with people who have financial stakes in the very issues he's supposedly recused himself from.

Maybe he's hoping we won't notice that he's repeatedly violated his recusal agreement. Or that he's selling off public land to private interests. Or that he's meeting regularly with so-called "former" clients.

Maybe he's hoping we'll look the other way.

Well, we did -- for a while, anyway. Or at least our attention was temporarily focused elsewhere -- on the war, for instance, and the dismal economy. So for a while we didn't quite notice, or realize, or believe what the Interior Department was doing. It seemed unreal, after all. Leveling scores of mountaintops in order to extract coal? Pre-empting forest fires by cutting down old-growth trees? Pumping billions of gallons of water into the ground in order to retrieve polluting methane? And then leaving that land soaking in saltwater that poisons area crops and wildlife habitat?

It made no sense.

What is this? James Watt's reign of environmental terror all over again? No. This time it's worse. So bad, in fact, that even mainstream organizations like Republicans for Environmental Protection are unhappy with the Bush Administration's environmental policies, many of which have been engineered and executed by Griles. When the Republican organization graded the Administration on its environmental record in eight issue areas, the Administration received six D's, a B-minus for farm policy and an F for energy policy.

President Reagan fired Watt because he blatantly disregarded the will of the American people and failed to do his job.

During the Reagan administration, Griles was involved in selling 17,000 acres of federal land to a private company for $42,000, well below market value. Several months later, the buyers resold the land, and turned a $37 million profit.

Now Griles is up to his old tricks again.

And guess what?

This time we're looking.

And we won't turn away.

In fact we won't stop looking until Griles gets fired.

OLD ONES ...

Arts and Entertainment write-ups:

Talk is Cheap

Given the incessant chatter of reality-television-show hotties, the boombasticism of self-righteous talk show hosts and the proliferation of muffler-free pimped rides in our neighborhood, we're more than ready for a little peace and quiet. We'd even just settle for the quiet part. Luckily our wish has been granted! In July the 10th Anniversary San Francisco Silent Film Festival will bring its dulcet soundlessness to the Castro Theatre. The festival opens with the screwball comedy For Heaven's Sake, in which a lovestruck millionaire embarks on a series of crazy schemes aimed at winning the affections of a missionary's daughter. The fabulous Clark Wilson will perform live musical accompaniment on the Wurlitzer. Next up is a collection of animated rarities including Felix the Cat Weathers the Weather and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in Sick Cylinders. Other stand-outs include Brazilian director Humberto Mauro's Sangue Mineiro, accompanied by Bay Area composer Mauro Correa performing the original score along with members of the Latin American Chamber Music Society, The Big Parade, one of the most renowned anti-war films ever and Prem Sanyas, an epic Indian movie about the life of Siddartha Gautuma (Buddha). The grand finale will be the Jazz Age comedy IT, starring the cheeky Clara Bow as a shop girl with designs on her rich boss. With plenty of comedy, intrigue, passion and suspense, these films are guaranteed to cause a quietly enthusiastic stir. The festival runs July 8-10 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro Street, Admission from $13-$17; call 777-4908 or visit www.silentfilm.org.

-- Melissa Price

Chocolate, Again?

Despite the fact that Americans seem to prefer vanilla to chocolate ice cream, this summer promises to be one of the chocolatiest in recent memory. With Johnny Depp taking a turn as Willy Wonka, epicureans feasting on truffles infused with everything from faux absinthe to wasabi and some nutritionists touting the flavinoids in certain chocolates as actually good for us, the sweet hardly needs more positive PR. But if you're like us, and keep hoping to score an invitation to some swank event featuring one of those chocolate-spouting fountains, more is always better. That's why we're delighted that the California Academy of Sciences is hosting Chocolate: The Exhibition. The exhibition traces the origins and development of chocolate throughout history. And with everything from industrious Leaf Cutter ants--they harvest cacao leaves in the rainforest--to the chocolate cups of Mayan kings, to tastings, there's something for everyone here. Once you've had your fill of the history-part, you can stock up on everything from chocolate body frosting and incense to cookbooks and, of course, organic and fair trade chocolate. The exhibition runs June 11-September 5 at the California Academy of Sciences, 875 Howard Street, Admission is $7; call 321-8000 or visit www.calacademy.org.

-- Melissa Price

Book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle

Distant Palaces
Abilio Estevez
Arcade Books
268 pps

In Abilio Estevez’s Distant Palaces, chronically poetic Victorio is ousted from his apartment in a soon-to-be-demolished former palace, and forced onto the mean streets of Havana. He roams the city in search of shelter, which he discovers in the camaraderie of fellow disenfranchisees Salma, a prostitute on the lam from her pimp boyfriend, and Don Fuco, an octogenarian clown. The three take up residence in a dilapidated theater and, at Fuco’s urging, become street performers.

Palaces is filled with passionate dialectics that range from the philosophical to the scatological to the horticultural. One minute the middleaged Victorio is waxing mournful about the failures of love, the next he is rhapsodizing about peeing into his grandmother's porcelain chamber pot, at the bottom of which is inscribed a single rose. Estevez has an eye for idiosyncratic detail that can be a joy, but it can also be irritating. His characters are so emphatic, so insistent on investing even their smallest gestures with such potent and meaningful and rebellious whimsy that in the end one comes away feeling a bit battered by it all. It's just that they talk so much. Monologue after monologue about the triumphs and tragedies of the human condition might work onstage, but in the pages of a novel this short on action they ultimately fail to move.

-- Melissa Price

When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School
HarperCollins
318 pages

In When I Was Cool, Sam Kashner describes his tenure as the first student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. The year is 1976, and his professors include Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso. Kashner's first assignment is to finish writing one of Ginsberg's paeans to oral sex. Cribbing from other Ginsberg poems, the inexperienced 18-year-old gets the job done, but starts to worry that he's in over his head.

What was a nice boy from Long Island doing in a place like the Kerouac School, which wasn't even an accredited learning institution? Like a lot of undergraduates, he romanticized the Beats as the epitome of cool, and yearned to be one of them. But instead of settling for reading "Howl" in the campus café, he went straight to the source.

Alas, the blush was no longer on the rose of the Beats, but on gin-blossoming noses instead. And more than a pupil, the Beats needed a caregiver. Enter Kashner, bearing his parents' Diners Club card and a degree of bourgeois decency. Charged with keeping watch over Burroughs' neglected son Billy, steering Corso away from drugs, and doing Ginsberg's laundry, Kashner quickly graduated from child to parent, from student to teacher. Toward the end of his time at the school, Kashner's girlfriend gets pregnant, and he wonders what his parents would think. "They had sent me to Naropa to become a poet, not a father." But as Kashner illustrates in this engaging, illuminating memoir, he had become a father long ago. Whether he liked it or not, by age 18 Kashner -- warmer than cool, wise beyond his years -- had already outgrown the Beats.

-- Melissa Price

URLs for other reviews in the Chronicle:

Babyji review - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/13/RVGD5B1ORG1.DTL&hw=babyji&sn=001&sc=1000

Bitter Fruit review - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/01/RVG6CCCR3C1.DTL&hw=achmat+dangor&sn=001&sc=1000

Year of Fire review - http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/15/RVGTDGI4VQ1.DTL&type=books

Truthy Rebio

Mary Harris Jones, a.k.a. Mother Jones, changed her birthdate from August 1 to May 1 to express solidarity with workers who struck on that day in 1886 to fight for an eight-hour workday.

From an astrological standpoint, this was no small sacrifice for Ms. Jones, who was born a glamorous Leo and reborn a somewhat less glamorous, though stubborn and determined, Taurus.

Through this rebirth she slipped the bonds of time and logic to become the first self-appointed Democratic May Queen. It was an idiosyncratic reign for the Queen Mother, who preferred black dresses and sit-ins to frilly pastel-and-ribbon affairs and dancing ‘round the Maypole.

Though Mother Jones has been dead for 74 years, the activist shows no signs of slowing down and continues to express her opinions on various issues.

In a recent posthumous press conference she advanced the following radical notions:

On homelessness: I believe that homeless people are homeless largely because they lack homes.

On the health-care-less: I believe people lack health care largely because they lack health care.

On the uneducated: I believe the uneducated are uneducated largely because they lack access to decent education.

On joblessness: I believe the jobless lack jobs largely because there are no jobs.

On the subject of May Day, Jones said: It’s time for the United States to rejoin much of the rest of the world to celebrate the date’s fertile labor roots as well as its phallic ones. As a stalwart progressive who welcomes change, it occurs to M.J. that perhaps the time has come to restructure the day altogether—to plant and grow a new hybrid holiday—one that combines the pro-labor activism of the late 1800s with the sensual celebrationism of the Roman goddess Flora of the B.C.’s. If anyone has ideas regarding the restructuring, she is open to suggestions.

Jones warned that the United States’ working class is at serious risk of being pruned and possibly even clear-cut to extinction. An energetic re-greening of the class is in order—both in the leafy-organic-healthy-diet sense and in the fair-wages-and-taxation-accessible-health-care-low-cost-housing-and-quality-education sense.

When asked how she feels about George W. Bush’s corporate cronyism and utter disregard for the working class, not to mention his post-colonial colonialism, his post-priapic priapism, and the vast and convoluted Oedipal issues that he could never in 10,000 years hope to overcome no matter how many potential patricidalists he captures, Jones refused to answer our heavily loaded yet highly accurate question unless we could guarantee her an hour on CNN.

We offered an hour on Air America.

She said she’d have to think about it.

Asked how she felt about “rules” and “logic,” Jones requested more information. We told her that we didn’t have any, but that we’d get back to her once we’d located some.

-- Melissa Price