Rafael Mandelman. Photo by Luke Thomas.
By Luke Thomas
November 10, 2010
Rafael Mandelman today conceded defeat in the race for District 8 Supervisor.
Though the final vote tallies from the ranked-choice race have not been officially certified by the San Francisco Department of Elections, Scott Wiener, a moderate, is the presumed Supervisor-elect for the District.
“I cannot express just how incredibly grateful I am to all of you who have been a part of my campaign for Supervisor,” Mandelman, a progressive, said in an email. “Unfortunately, after two years of dialing for dollars, knocking on doors, chasing after endorsements, and harassing the bejeezus out of every registered voter we could track down in the District, we are firmly in second place. Scott Wiener will be the next Supervisor for District 8 (and a very capable and excellent supervisor he will surely be), but I am so glad and grateful for the opportunity to represent you and your values in this campaign.”
“I will continue to work on the issues that I believe matter to San Franciscans, and I trust that all of you who worked so hard on this campaign will continue to work for a more socially and economically just city and world,” Mandelman added.
Luke Thomas
Luke Thomas is a former software developer and computer consultant who proudly hails from London, England. In 2001, Thomas took a yearlong sabbatical to travel and develop a photographic portfolio. Upon his return to the US, Thomas studied photojournalism to pursue a career in journalism. In 2004, Thomas worked for several neighborhood newspapers in San Francisco before accepting a partnership agreement with the SanFranciscoSentinel.com, a news website formerly covering local, state and national politics. In September 2006, Thomas launched FogCityJournal.com. The BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, New York Times, Der Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Bay Guardian and the San Francisco Weekly, among other publications and news outlets, have published his work. Thomas is a member of the Freelance Unit of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, TNG-CWA Local 39521 and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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November 20, 2010 at 1:08 am
Every time I say Raffi is the spirit of Harvey, I get a little nervous that Sean Elsbernd might take out a hit on “the most dangerous candidate for Supervisor this year,” but I’m sure Raffi knows that leadership has its risks.
November 19, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Fair warning, I’m about to take a week off from ‘seeing (almost) dead people’, hope they’re all still here when i get back. Hope to find time/space/energy/ to write something about what’s going on from my perverted perspective. Thank you for running, I wholeheartedly agree with Annie (that’s two strikes against you) that you are walking in Harvey’s loafers; the policies and positions that Bevan has championed, and that are now being parroted by ‘Dufty-lite’, are not those that Harvey and many others fought, struggled, suffered and died for.
Special shame on those complacent, comfortable, chubbie, c**k s*****s, who having ‘got theirs’, betray their roots and the struggle, and have turned into the same kinda greedy NIMBY’s that Harvey M, Harry H and a host of others wise and winged faeries warned us against.
But frankly my dear, they don’t give a damn. God Damn Them.
November 19, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Though he didn’t win D8, there’s little doubt that Rafael emerged from this campaign wearing Harvey Milk’s mantle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJt5lPyutgM.
I wish I’d had time to do more for the Mandelman campaign and felt sad, on election day, when I saw that only 37 people had watched Rafael’s video about Harvey Milk and the Justice Coalition, made at the Latinos for Mandelman gathering.
But, yesterday I got Rafael on the phone for about half an hour and explained that LGBT rights abuse is escalating in East/Central Africa, that it’s an excuse for wholesale human rights abuse, and that Westerners need to respond to the African context, not just out of their own sense of injury.
We talked for almost 1/2 an hour; and he asked questions that made me feel as though I’d managed to explain a lot of what I’ve been studying for many hours of most days for several years now. I told him that poor Black Africans are slaughtered by the millions, by African armies trained, armed, equipped, advised, and, logistically, diplomatically, and financially supported by the U.S. and its allies, and that Westerners barely blink.
But, that when Africans target a group of people, like LGBT, which includes Westerners, the West suddenly goes into spasms about Africa.
I told him that the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a.k.a, Hang-the-Gays Bill, is back on the table in Uganda, that a Sex Practices Against Nature Bill equating homosexuality and bestiality is on the table in neighboring Congo, that both are excuses to kick Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International out of the country, and that the UN General Assembly, on Wednesday, 11.19, took LGBT off the list of vulnerable populations deserving protection from extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary execution.
I told him that all the Western hysteria about Uganda’s legislation, which included no sensitivity to the African context, had caused more backlash than anything else.
We agreed to coffee with other locals interested in this, to go over a resolution that I volunteered to draft, to ask the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to pass.
The Harvey Milk Justice Coalition is back, led by Rafael Mandelman.