Mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, made history by being the first Asian American to be mayor of San Francisco (through appointment) as well as first Asian American to be elected (and re-elected) mayor of the city. San Francisco, having the largest percentage of Asian Americans of any major city in the continental U.S., these were historic milestones.
Before becoming mayor, Lee worked as the City Administrator of San Francisco for many years. Lee came to the Bay Area for law school and afterwards, worked for the Asian Law Caucus where he was an advocate for affordable housing and the rights of immigrants and renters.
But since being appoint mayor, Lee has been moving away from his progressive roots. When being considered for appointment, Lee promised not to run in the special election – but did after he realized he like the job. Since becoming mayor, Lee has seemed to be more on the side of “big business” than for the citizens of San Francisco – and has become especially unpopular by the working class being pushed out by the techies and other highly compensated professionals.
Since the “Twitter tax break” in 2011 and the recent tech boom, Lee has been associated with the gentrification of San Francisco where the cost of living has become unbearable for the working class and even those with high paying professional white collar jobs.
Those not living in San Francisco might not know that the city of San Francisco was giving essentially a $4.8 million subsidy to the NFL for not getting reimbursed for additional security, etc for Super Bowl 50 related events, thus:
“Another day, another Adele cover, amirite? Except this one comes just in time for the fictional-dystopia-in-real-life that is San Francisco during the Super Bowl: backroom deals, taxpayer-funded $4.8 million corporate playgrounds, a police-state atmosphere and dozens of homeless people swept aside for tourists. Go football!
“Hello Ed Lee,” a new video out today by singer-performance artist Candace Roberts, is an open letter to the mayor and an indictment of all of the above — with a touchdown pass of San Francisco’s untenable housing crisis thrown in for good measure.”
If you live in the area, you’ll understand all the references to the Google shuttle buses and gentrification issues. Overall, for a non-commercial Adele cover, I thought the video was well produced, but unfortunately at the time of this writing, only got over 32,000 views on YouTube.
