Those banners flying along Market Street to promote reproductive rights – sporting slogans including “U.S. Out of My Uterus” – sure are eye-catching. They’ve even caught the eye of an antiabortion group called Life Legal Defense Foundation that is demanding their removal.
The banners are the brainchild of the Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women, which was founded by two local women who believe reproductive rights are in jeopardy at the state and federal level. They’re intended to get the city’s pro-choice community to speak out more effectively for a woman’s right to choose.
But the Life Legal Defense Foundation has complained to the Department of Public Works that the banners are illegal because they’re not promoting a particular event, as required by city code. The code states that banners can be hung in conjunction with an “event or series of events of interest to a significant portion of the residents of San Francisco” and that organizers must “reasonably expect an in-person attendance of 500 or more people for a single event or 1,000 or more people for a series of events.”
A spokeswoman for DPW told us the department issued a banner permit on Dec. 20 for the “Walk for Trust Women/Silver Ribbon Campaign” event, a “parade/walk on a portion of Market Street” from 6-8 p.m. on Friday. The group also applied for and received a parade/walk permit from the police department in November. The police permit, according to DPW, also includes an event at Justin Herman Plaza on Saturday from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. called “Celebration to Trust Women.”
Turns out, none of that’s quite right.
The Silver Ribbon Campaign said Monday that “its walk for Choice SF” will “commemorate and admire the pro-choice banners on Market Street” and will be held Sunday at 1 p.m. in Justin Herman Plaza. So the banners are promoting an event to admire the banners. And they’re not for the day or time listed on the event permits. Oh, and the campaign is expecting “a couple hundred people,” at the event, according to Ellen Shaffer, co-founder of the campaign.
Katie Short, legal counsel for Life Legal Defense Foundation, said it begs the question of whether an antiabortion group would so easily have received the go-ahead to place controversial banners along the liberal city’s main drag.
Short’s group wants the banners removed, but it sounds like other forces are taking care of that already. Shaffer said that of the original 72 banners, just 45 remain flying. Vandals have ripped down the rest.
– Heather Knight
The fiery mayor: Mayor Ed Lee said during his inauguration: “I don’t mind being called boring.”
Don’t you believe it.
Lee, who was praised as a kind of “Steady Eddie” when he filled in for now-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, is actually a dragon, of sorts.
“I was born in the year of the dragon,” Lee told us recently, referring to the Chinese zodiac. And you guessed it – we’re about to enter the year of the dragon with the Lunar New Year on Monday.
“That’s why this year I am going to be taking some risks, embracing innovation,” he said.
Lee sounded particularly pleased with the idea.
Dragon traits include being fiery, passionate, decisive, pioneering and artistic. That’s not exactly what comes do mind when you consider the 59-year-old Lee, who made his mark in Room 200 by seeking consensus on nearly everything; taking three-and-a-half months to pick the police chief that was, you guessed it, the consensus choice; and who counted a pension reform deal with public sector unions as one of his top accomplishments in his first year.
So what risky, innovative ideas does Lee have up his sleeve? He’s not saying just yet.
Certainly Lee has been thrown a curveball with the criminal prosecution of newly elected Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi on three misdemeanor counts stemming from an alleged domestic violence incident involving Mirkarimi’s wife.
The district attorney had said Mirkarimi would be arraigned today however, his attorney, Robert Waggener, said his client has been told that he is due back in court on Thursday.
But don’t look for Lee to take any risky action on that front. The mayor can suspend an elected official for misconduct and seek their removal from office, but when asked Monday if he had a timetable for making that decision, Lee wouldn’t say and some people close to Lee said he likely wouldn’t make a decision for a few months.
When asked if he thought Mirkarimi should step down from his job during the legal case, Lee replied: “No comment.”
How’s that for risky?
– John Coté and Jaxon Van Derbeken
E-mail the City Insider team at cityinsider@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page C – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle