San Francisco Bay Guardian

"We're doing this to help give the community a choice," Ayr told me, sweeping his arm out. "Everyone should have a voice when it comes to issues of land use and green space, which is rapidly disappearing in the city. That's why we're inviting the community to meet here tonight [Tue/4 at 6:30pm, also Sat/8 at 3pm] and see what we're about. This is a land liberation concept, we're calling it Free the Land, or Liberate the Land."

Ayr was leading me around the former site of Hayes Valley Farm, the lauded public experiment in urban farming on an undulating patch that used to be a freeway entrance, which has now been cleared to make way for a 185-unit development on half the the lot (low-income housing is slated eventually for the other half). 

Well, not quite cleared. Ayr was showing me around an Occupy-like scene, with an agricultural twist. 

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The "Wikileaks court-martial" of Bradley Manning began yesterday -- as predicted, it opened "with dueling portrayals of a traitor who endangered the lives of his fellow soldiers [the government's characterization] and of a principled protester motivated by a desire to help society who carefully selected which documents to release [Manning's defense]," writes Charlie Savage in the New York Times. 

As that was happening, the SF Trans March stated on its Facebook page, "The San Francisco Trans March will be honoring Bradley Manning on June 28th at the opening of the 2013 PRIDE weekend!!" Manning has identified as transgender; the Trans March organizers stated that they are "retaining Manning's male name and pronoun at the request of his people." (If Manning's attorneys do indeed introduce gender dysphoria as a defense strategy, as they have stated, it will certainly add another layer to this complex story.) 

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We’ve long been skeptical of the overblown and self-interested claims by tech titans and their political allies that this dot-com boom changes everything and that it could never go bust, like last time. Read more »

The state Assembly and Senate passed the usual flurry of bills on May 31, the last day for initial-house approval, with some unusual drama that temporarily sidelined a medical-marijuana bill by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano.

By the time it was all over, several other Ammiano bills passed, a measure by Assemblymember Phil Ting to ease the way for a Warriors arena on the waterfront won approval, and state Sen. Mark Leno got most of his major legislation through.Read more »