Daniel Lurie, San Francisco, California
I spent the afternoon today photowalking around the most hardcore parts of the Tenderloin (Turk, Eddy, Larkin, Leavenworth, Jones) in San Francisco with San Francisco mayoral candidate
Daniel Lurie.
Lurie is running against incumbent San Francisco Mayor
London Breed and Supervisor Ahsha Safai for next year's mayoral election and is positioned as an outsider reformer who is looking to clean up San Francisco and help bring us back to our glory days.
I knew Daniel a little from X and also from @bettersoma mentioning him to me once, but didn't really know much about his positions or his philosophy for cleaning up our beloved city beyond that.
After spending some one on one time with him today I came away feeling optimistic that we may have a potential mayor who is committed to cleaning up our city and for responsibly dealing with our fentanyl crisis -- which I view as the number one problem in San Francisco today.
I met Daniel as he was leaving a luncheon event for the
Salvation Army at the Hibernia Bank Building and was impressed that it was just him and I and that there were no PR flaks or security personnel. I was also impressed when he didn't hesitate when I suggested we walk the Tenderloin, a place you rarely see politicians willing to go without security.
As we walked through San Francisco's most bleakest neighborhood, walking past drug deals, addicts openly using and bodies hunched over or passed out on the sidewalk we shared our concerns about both what has happened to our city as well as the plight and suffering that was everywhere around us.
I asked my own pointed questions. "Would you support mandating care for these people," pointing to the bodies on the sidewalk. "Yes he said.
He talked about re-empowering the San Francisco police department to deal with the drug epidemic. He talked about our need for more recovery beds, mandated recovery beds, and that we stop handing out needles and tinfoil enabling our addicts. While we might never truly eradicate all drug use in San Francisco, certainly we could clean up the vast majority of it.
My own message was clear. Our number one problem in San Francisco today is drugs. Fix that and you fix San Francisco. Again and again he agreed with me and while it's easy to cynically chalk his agreement up to a politician politicking, I did feel like he was in fact very sincere and committed to cleaning up our city.
We talked about the current Mayor London Breed. Breed has said a lot of the right things, especially more recently, but in my opinion her words have often not come with action. Looking around at the chaos and drug addiction around us, after almost four years it's certainly as bad and probably worse than it's ever been.
It was a good walk today. Perhaps the most hopeful I've felt about San Francisco's future in a while. Lurie's going to have a long year ahead of him as he runs what will undoubtedly be a rough and tumble fight for control of our city, but he is a contender and the one I'm most inclined to support after our walk today. I'm in it to win it he said.
We did touch on all the good things that we both have experienced in San Francisco as well. The great restaurants, cultural institutions, arts, events and people that make San Francisco great. All four of my kids were born at Cal Pacific in San Francisco, so were his two.
I'm sure I won't agree with Daniel on everything. I'm still a progressive he reminded me, just not THAT kind of progressive.
I'm more of a centrist myself, but I think we both agreed that left, center or right, the number one thing we need to fix about San Francisco right now is the drugs. That's not a partisan issue really, in my opinion, it's a human issue, a compassion issue. Instead of letting our addicts die out on our city streets or in our SROs, we need to aggressively deal with this problem as the number one problem facing San Francisco today.
I hope to get to know Daniel better as his campaign unfolds, but for now I consider myself both a supporter and a friend.
Daniel Lurie, San Francisco, California
I spent the afternoon today photowalking around the most hardcore parts of the Tenderloin (Turk, Eddy, Larkin, Leavenworth, Jones) in San Francisco with San Francisco mayoral candidate
Daniel Lurie.
Lurie is running against incumbent San Francisco Mayor
London Breed and Supervisor Ahsha Safai for next year's mayoral election and is positioned as an outsider reformer who is looking to clean up San Francisco and help bring us back to our glory days.
I knew Daniel a little from X and also from @bettersoma mentioning him to me once, but didn't really know much about his positions or his philosophy for cleaning up our beloved city beyond that.
After spending some one on one time with him today I came away feeling optimistic that we may have a potential mayor who is committed to cleaning up our city and for responsibly dealing with our fentanyl crisis -- which I view as the number one problem in San Francisco today.
I met Daniel as he was leaving a luncheon event for the
Salvation Army at the Hibernia Bank Building and was impressed that it was just him and I and that there were no PR flaks or security personnel. I was also impressed when he didn't hesitate when I suggested we walk the Tenderloin, a place you rarely see politicians willing to go without security.
As we walked through San Francisco's most bleakest neighborhood, walking past drug deals, addicts openly using and bodies hunched over or passed out on the sidewalk we shared our concerns about both what has happened to our city as well as the plight and suffering that was everywhere around us.
I asked my own pointed questions. "Would you support mandating care for these people," pointing to the bodies on the sidewalk. "Yes he said.
He talked about re-empowering the San Francisco police department to deal with the drug epidemic. He talked about our need for more recovery beds, mandated recovery beds, and that we stop handing out needles and tinfoil enabling our addicts. While we might never truly eradicate all drug use in San Francisco, certainly we could clean up the vast majority of it.
My own message was clear. Our number one problem in San Francisco today is drugs. Fix that and you fix San Francisco. Again and again he agreed with me and while it's easy to cynically chalk his agreement up to a politician politicking, I did feel like he was in fact very sincere and committed to cleaning up our city.
We talked about the current Mayor London Breed. Breed has said a lot of the right things, especially more recently, but in my opinion her words have often not come with action. Looking around at the chaos and drug addiction around us, after almost four years it's certainly as bad and probably worse than it's ever been.
It was a good walk today. Perhaps the most hopeful I've felt about San Francisco's future in a while. Lurie's going to have a long year ahead of him as he runs what will undoubtedly be a rough and tumble fight for control of our city, but he is a contender and the one I'm most inclined to support after our walk today. I'm in it to win it he said.
We did touch on all the good things that we both have experienced in San Francisco as well. The great restaurants, cultural institutions, arts, events and people that make San Francisco great. All four of my kids were born at Cal Pacific in San Francisco, so were his two.
I'm sure I won't agree with Daniel on everything. I'm still a progressive he reminded me, just not THAT kind of progressive.
I'm more of a centrist myself, but I think we both agreed that left, center or right, the number one thing we need to fix about San Francisco right now is the drugs. That's not a partisan issue really, in my opinion, it's a human issue, a compassion issue. Instead of letting our addicts die out on our city streets or in our SROs, we need to aggressively deal with this problem as the number one problem facing San Francisco today.
I hope to get to know Daniel better as his campaign unfolds, but for now I consider myself both a supporter and a friend.