Monthly Newsletter of the Alice B. Toklas Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club
June 2007

Table of Contents

• Dates With Alice


• Co-Chairs' Report: "Shades and Colors of Pride"


• Reese's World: Perspectives from the Editor: "Friendly Fire"


• Theresa Sparks on Police Commission Presidency


• Thank You from Sheriff Michael Hennessey


• Reducing our Exposure to Toxic Chemicals by Assemblyman Mark Leno


• Speaker Pelosi on Cuts in San Francisco AIDS Funding


• Alice Membership Form

Dates With Alice

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June Co-Chairs' Report
Shades and Colors of Pride

As we prepare for members of the worldwide LGBT community to descend upon the capital city of San Francisco for PRIDE, I am struck by the awesome accomplishments that we have made as a people, since last June. Alice and its extended family have played a significant role in our collective community achievements. It is more than just a co-chair’s boast to conclude that this year’s PRIDE Celebration is accented by the rich and immense contribution of the diverse Alice membership.

When the PRIDE parade makes its way down Market Street on June 24, Alice’s Board Directors and members will be prominently featured. Long-time Alice member, Pat Norman, and current Alice Board members, John Newsome and Robert Haaland will be recognized as Grand Marshals for their activism and service to a grateful San Francisco. Their work around the issues of race, inclusiveness, transgender rights, AIDS and social reform are to be admired. With two of these honorees being African American and the other a transgender person, the cultural diversity of Alice’s membership, as well as its depth of knowledge and wisdom brings true PRIDE to the celebration.

Next, as we look across the Atlantic to proclaim the election of first ever transgender Mayor (Jenny Bailey of Cambridge, England), we can look closer to home to see the seeds of a similar career path taking shape. Alice member and former club co-chair, Theresa Sparks, was recently elected President of the San Francisco Police Commission. (See her comments about the new position further in this newsletter.) Theresa is the first transgender person to hold this post. On May 7th, Theresa, along with fellow commissioner and Alice member, David Campos, attended the Alice general membership meeting to inform the Club about reforms to the police department that they would undertake over the next year. Theresa and David, a transgendered person and a Latino are yet another example of Alice members from varied backgrounds and a desire to serve.

But taking pride is not only about gains, but a time to remember the issues that threaten our community. The number of hate crimes against LGBT persons fell in 2006, but it rose against LGBT persons in Northern California. Half of the victims in Northern California were transgender women of color. These figures cry out for Alice’s assistance in bringing media attention and justice to those who have suffered. Alice’s members are encouraged to contact Community United Against Violence to find out what personal effort we can make to stem the rise of violence in our own community.

Finally, let’s use PRIDE as a means to redouble our efforts to help our own in the struggle against HIV/AIDS. The Bush administration’s re-authorization of the Ryan White Care Act, carried with it a reduction of 9 million dollars to the overall funds for the Bay Area, including a direct 7 million dollars cut to treatment and assistance within the city and county of San Francisco. Alice Board member, Brett Andrews of Positive Resource Center, and Alice members, Mike Smith of AIDS Emergency Fund/Breast Cancer Emergency Fund, and Bill Hirsch of AIDS Legal Referral Panel, are among the Executive Directors who must now grapple with the challenge of how to continue to provide the necessary level of care and services to people living with HIV/AIDS. I ask of each of you who gather for PRIDE to do so by writing a check to one of these agencies. Let’s all do our part to in the every day battle to give care, hope and PRIDE to the need those in need.

When we gather to celebrate, let us honor those who have given of their time, talents and their energies. Let us also remember that although the accomplishments are great, the hurdles are still many. It is our role and our duty to reach out to our community, during PRIDE and beyond, to let them know you are not alone, we stand with you and we care. We still need each other; we still need community; and we still need Alice. Happy PRIDE!!!

Rebecca Prozan and Julius Turman
Alice B. Toklas Co-Chairs

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Reese's World: Perspectives from the Editor
Friendly Fire
by Reese Aaron Isbell, M.P.P.

Recently my friend and I had a terrible fight. Well, less of a fight and more of a difficult dialogue. Words were said that may or may not have been what each of us meant. Thoughts were shared that were deep and painful and overly truthful. Feelings were hurt. And the relationship seemed at an impasse.

I hate it when this happens.

To me, in a simplified form of hope, friendships symbolize getting beyond the difficulties of life and finding comfort between others. And we all are others to everyone. As much as we may be tied to one another in family, friendship, work, community, and other forms of relationships, we are all someone other to someone else. Relationships therefore are built upon, and sometimes rendered apart, by allowing ourselves to communicate beyond the most simplistic of communications and delve deeper into each others' humanity.

So when a friendship, or other type of relationship, becomes difficult, it can cut deep into our everyday soul. When my friend and I were arguing back and forth and neither was really hearing the other, try as we might, my soul was breaking. There were parts of me that wanted to retaliate in negative ways; there were other parts of me that wanted to walk away and never have contact again; and there were others parts of me that wanted to make an effort that went beyond what I might think I would do for or with anyone else. To keep this friendship I was going to have to let down my secure walls, let my friend inside my soul even more than ever, allow myself to be completely vulnerable, and trust that this friendship was worth more to me than petty differences of the day.

This wasn't easy. And it never is. What I've learned over the years is that friendships come and go. Although when I was younger I used to believe in friendships that lasted all of my life, the reality is that most of them do have a beginning, middle, and an end. People move away; they change; they grow; sometimes they die; sometimes they live differently than could have been imagined. And so it comes with experience that I've learned that friendships really only continue when we work on them. Not just working on the friendship itself, or trying to get the other person to understand or change behaviors, but also by working on ourselves and offering more to the other and the friendship than previously thought possible.

After much heated discussion, my friend and I took some important time out and then planned to meet up. When we did, we were each ready to confront the friendship's problems head on, while also each acknowledging that we had work to do. We laid our souls barer than each thought we could or would. We didn't necessarily resolve all of our differences; and, frankly, we can't because we will always be different people, just like we all are an other to one another. But we worked on overcoming those differences, and each decided that our friendship was important enough to keep it going and to keep working on it and see it through.

In politics, we often have situations that arise where we end up fighting among friends and colleagues. This can occur even when we each have the same goal in the long run. There is always an election around every corner, or an issue at City Hall, or a controversy in a community; and we will never have the same response or attitude or thoughts towards the best outcome and the easiest way to get there. Democracy is all about recognizing that there are differences of opinion and finding the resolution that suits the most of the full group. Our American democracy also takes great strides to hear from those who don't have the majority thought in popularity, but who still have important thoughts to share. It's all very hard to do, and takes a great deal of work, compromise, hope, civility, and many difficult dialogues.

We can all get very angry and upset over our differences of opinion. We can fight hard for our beliefs and often end up saying things that we may have not meant or mean things that we didn't say. As with friendships, politics itself is full of complications and decisions on whether to keep working on our relationships with each other. We can try our best to delve deep into ourselves and bring out the best in us and each other; or we can do something inherently different. There is no particular right answer for what comes next in friendship or politics. But the path we lead, and the growth we strive for, as individuals and a community, serve as a model for how we deal with the difficulties associated with bridging the differences between each other.

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On the Presidency of the Police Commission
by former Alice Co-Chair Theresa Sparks

To all my friends in Alice,

When I was honored by my colleagues a few weeks ago by being elected president of the San Francisco Police Commission, I was a bit taken aback by the level of attention it created, both locally and nationwide. Obviously, I knew that being the first openly transgender individual to head a Commission in a major urban area in the United States wouldn’t go unnoticed, although we tend to do those sorts of things here in San Francisco. I also anticipated that being the CEO of a well known “sex-toy company” would add to the drama, even though Good Vibrations is equally known for its commitment to education around positive, non-judgmental sexual relations and human sexuality. Locally, it also made sense that becoming the first transgender to head any City Commission, particularly the Police Commission, could possibly be of interest to the local media. Of course, the way it unfolded, with Louise Renne storming out of the meeting and then abruptly resigning and Joe Alioto Veronese not supporting the mayor’s candidate, made it nearly irresistible to even the likes of Phil Matier. What I didn’t expect though was the dialogue it created around progressive politics in San Francisco.

When Proposition H, the Police Reform Act, was approved by the voters in 2003, it was written to do a very few things, although some were definitely significant. It set a new method by which Commissioners are appointed and distributed that responsibility between the Board and the Mayor, compared to the way it had been for nearly 100 years with all members being selected by the Mayor. It also created term limits and made the Board the final authority for both appointing and removing all Commissioners; the Mayor could no longer do so unilaterally. And, probably the most significant change it made was that the Office of Citizens Complaints could now file charges of alleged police misconduct directly with the Commission, as opposed to the former method in which there had to be an agreement between the OCC and the Chief of Police before charges could be filed. The unintended consequence though was that it set up a whole new set of overarching expectations around civilian oversight of the SFPD. Now, the proponents boasted, we the people are going to finally be able to monitor police activities and identify possible incidents of malfeasance and deal with them directly and openly. While the structural changes mandated by Prop H did, for the most part, occur, the public expectations of true civilian oversight never quite materialized, at least not to the extent anticipated.

The reasons changes didn’t occur as quickly as the framers of Prop H wanted are varied. Some have to do with the unfamiliarity of the duties and responsibilities of being a Police Commissioner, since the entire former Commission was replaced. Another was the realization of just how much work there is to do and the tremendous amount of time it takes to do it. There is also the issue of what it takes to have a meaningful impact on a bureaucracy with the institutional inertia of the SFPD. In addition, there was never a philosophical agreement among all Commissioners as to what the actual role of the Commission should be, and how our oversight responsibilities should interact with those of the Mayor. In many ways, this split was defined by differences of opinion between Commissioners appointed by the Mayor and those appointed by the Board of Supervisors. And, since the president of the Commission was a mayoral appointee, Louise Renne, the direction and agenda was set by those who, for the most part, were satisfied with the status quo and really didn’t want meaningful change in civilian oversight of the department. By the end of the second year though, one of the Mayors appointees, Joe Veronese, started expressing frustration that nothing was changing and started voting more and more often with the minority Board appointed Commissioners. It was, in fact, Commissioner Veronese’s vote that gave me the 4 to 3 victory in this most recent election for president.

In the days immediately following the election, I started seeing comments about how a “progressive” was the new president of the Police Commission and that “progressives” throughout the City now had hope for a new era in civilian oversight. At first, I wondered if there had been a second election of which I wasn’t aware. But then, it started to sink in that they were talking about me. Oh my God, how did I ever get to be a progressive? It must have been the soy milk I’d been drinking when I recently gave up dairy. I had never thought of myself as a progressive, more a Mark Leno liberal. You know the type, a gay, Jewish San Francisco elected official who advocates for transgender rights, medical cannabis, solar energy and gay marriage. Of course, I’m not Jewish or gay actually, but you get the picture.

All I want is the for the San Francisco Police Department to be accountable to the people of San Francisco, nothing more, nothing less and nothing really radical. I want allegations of police misconduct to be investigated expeditiously and fairly. I believe it is the right of all San Franciscans to know what crimes are being committed in their own neighborhoods and what the police department is doing about it. I don’t think it is asking too much for the public to know if citizens’ complaints of police misconduct have been sustained and what discipline, if any, has been administered. I think it’s only right for all Commissioners, most notably the president of the Commission, to report to the public on non-personnel or litigation related discussions they have had regarding Commission business. I think it’s important for Commissioners to have honest dialogue about important issues that come before the Commission in open session, in front of the public; and allow that public to weigh in on the issues as well. I also think it’s critical that individual Commissioners, and the Commission as a body, recognize the extraordinary job that the vast majority of officers of the SFPD perform every single day of the year. I think it’s possible for members of the San Francisco Police Department to treat all citizens of San Francisco with an equal level of respect, without regard for race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic position, medical illness or mental state. And, I want it to be possible that all members of our elected and appointed family work together to solve the very difficult problems of violent crime, educational disparity and economic displacement in San Francisco.

Have I somehow become a progressive? Not really. I’ve always been an Alice B. Toklas, Martha Knutzen, Fran Kipnis, Denny Edelman, Dean Goodwin, Anna Damiani, Rich Kowalewski, Carol Cullum, Jerry Fuller, Jim Illig, Tom Runge and Andrew Bryant (etc, etc, etc) Progressive Democrat. And, that’s the type of president of the San Francisco Police Commission I intend to be.

Theresa Sparks
President
San Francisco Police Commission

P.S. Stop by Rm 400, City Hall, June 6th, for my first meeting as the new president. It should be fun.

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Thank You from Sheriff Michael Hennessey

Dear Alice Members:

My sincere thanks for your early endorsement of my re-election campaign. Your endorsement is particularly meaningful to me since it is my first organizational endorsement this year -- and Alice was the very first organization to endorse my original campaign in 1979! That's a 28 year history of support and I truly appreciate Alice's friendship over the years.

From my very first campaign and term in office, I have worked to eliminate homophobia and discrimination from the criminal justice system in general and the San Francisco Sheriff's Department in particular. I have developed jail classification systems that have virtually eliminated sexual assaults from our jails; I have hired and promoted more gay men and lesbians than any other law enforcement leader in the country; I was the first sheriff anywhere to establish training and protocols regarding HIV issues for prisoners and staff who work in the jails. I have also created the first Charter High School in a jail or prison anywhere, which works in conjunction with other unique rehabilitation programs.

I still greatly enjoy the challenges of serving as your sheriff and as part of our city government. Your support is a great first step in my campaign for reelection.

With all best wishes,

Sheriff Michael Hennessey

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Reducing our Exposure to Toxic Chemicals
by Assemblyman Mark Leno

Dear Alice Friends,

Over the last 50 years, chemicals have come to play a role in all aspects of our lives. They make our clothes brighter, keep insects out of our fruits and vegetables and protect us from fires. But they come at a cost. Many of us assume that the chemicals in the products sold to us have gone through testing to ensure their safety. In fact, only a small number of the 80,000 chemicals registered with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been tested for harmful effects. Each of us have some degree of chemical contamination in our bodies, and scientists are only now learning how they can have a profound affect on our health and the Earth.

This year, I have authored Assembly Bill 706 which will ban the use of two classes of toxic fire retardants— brominated and chlorinated fire retardants—in upholstered furniture and bedding products such as pillows, comforters and mattresses.

For all the right public safety reasons, California has some of the toughest fire retardance standards on the books. These standards, passed in the 1970’s are the reason why California became the first and only state that adds chemical fire retardants to our sofas, chairs, and mattresses. Not surprisingly, over the past 20 years, the toxic chemicals used as fire retardants have been measured at increasing and alarming rates in humans. Brominated fire retardants are found at the highest levels in babies, toddlers, and women. Because these chemicals bioaccumulate in fatty tissues, they are passed to babies when they are breast fed by their mothers. In fact, PBDE’s, a subcategory of brominated fire retardants, have increased forty-fold in human breast milk since the 1970’s. Even so, it’s important to note that the benefits of breastfeeding far outweigh the chemical exposure risks and is still strongly recommended by the medical community.

So, now that we know these chemicals are in us, what will they do to us? Unfortunately the growing body of research is chilling, to say the least. Studies link exposure to low concentrations of certain fire retardants to cancer and birth defects. Additionally, they can cause reproductive problems, disrupt thyroid hormone balance and contribute to a variety of neurological and developmental deficits, including low intelligence and learning disabilities. All of which is particularly frightening considering exposure to these chemicals begins in the womb, then through breast milk, and continually thereafter through dust from our upholstered furniture and other sources.

Firefighters are also disproportionately affected. As the fire retardants in furniture burn, they convert into even more toxic chemicals such as dioxin that are released into smoke and soot. Recently, our own San Francisco Firefighters held a press conference to increase public awareness of their many firefighter colleagues whose lives have been cut short due to cancer. Of the 35 San Francisco active duty firefighters that have contracted job-related cancers in the last eight years, 15 of them have died. Also, in the last ten years, 215 of our retired San Francisco firefighters have contracted cancer and 25 of them have died.

When the State Legislature banned two brominated fire retardant chemicals in 2003, the chemical industry response was to replace them with chlorinated tris in our furniture. This is the same chemical that was banned from children’s pajamas over 30 years ago. With safer alternatives already on the market that meet our fire safety standards and create new economic opportunities for green chemistry, it’s clear we can do better. In fact, AB 706 may become a strong tool in increasing the fire safety of our furniture.

While reducing our exposure to chemicals used as fire retardants requires a change in state law, you can make simple changes around your home to help avoid other kinds of toxic chemicals. To learn more about safe substitutes to consumer products such as laundry detergent, air fresheners and pesticides in your home you can go to this website: http://es.epa.gov/techinfo/facts/safe-fs.html.

Because most chemicals are presumed safe until proven otherwise, it’s our job to take the scientists and the studies seriously when they warn us of the risks that may be associated with them. Study after study show the dangers of brominated and chlorinated fire retardants. We can’t wait any longer to protect our kids and our workers from potentially dangerous exposure to toxic chemicals.

If you would like more information about my work in creating a safer environment for each of us, and in particular supporting our brave men and women in the firefighting community, please feel free to contact my office here in San Francisco, 415-557-3013, email me directly at Assemblymember.Leno@asm.ca.gov, or visit my website at http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a13/.

Mark Leno
www.MarkLeno.com

P.S. I hope you'll join me following the Alice Pride Breakfast and walk down Market Street as part of our Pride contingent. Each year I have been proud to include Alice members and the Alice banner alongside mine, and I look forward to continuing that tradition this year. To RSVP for the parade, please call my office at 415-557-3013 or email Leno_Pride2007@yahoo.com. Happy Pride!

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Speaker Pelosi Expresses Concern to HHS Secretary Over Cuts in San Francisco AIDS Funding

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Alice Membership Form

Alice B Toklas LGBT Democratic Club
1800 Market Street PMB#18
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel: 415-707-2010
www.alicebtoklas.org
Alice Reports Editor: Reese Aaron Isbell, M.P.P.

Month of May: Membership Meeting, June 11

You can now join online www.alicebtoklas.org/abt/joinonline.asp, or fill out the application below

Membership Application

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Please send checks payable to “Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club” and mail to:

Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club
1800 Market Street, PMB#18
San Francisco, CA 94102

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