Attorney Randy Shaw, founder of the nonprofit Tenderloin Housing Clinic, told us he thinks Pride’s stance is misinterpretation of the law: “Clearly, no public funds can go toward sponsoring a political activity. But funds are sponsoring security, bathrooms, publicity, insurance etc.— participants are not being “subsidized.”
In fact, he said, “event organizers have no ability to enforce such a restriction, so it clearly is not covered by city restrictions on the use of public funds.” from The Bay Guardian blog
another quote “As a nonprofit education group with a 501 c tax exemption, Pride can spend a tiny fraction of its budget on lobbying or campaigning. The city’s rules also prohibit allowing unequal access to any one party or lobbying group.”
Houston, we have a problem, because this is Randy Shaws own staff, paid for with your tax money
this is the exact same campaign freely admitted to in Randy Shaws own Beyondchron.org
Now, it might not be strictly illegal and here’s why. About this time, the staff of Tenderloin Housing Clinic had joined the SEIU union, which is mentioned in the article. The management is not union, but all the other staff is, including the person in the video. So this campaign was done under the umbrella of the SEIU, which is not publicly funded, but the staff member is still doing this on Tenderloin Housing Clinic time, which IS publicly funded, so there could be a potentially serious legal conflict here. It would not surprise me at all if Randy Shaw made a cynical move to encourage the staff to join the union just so he could campaign under the SEIU protection.
Also in the Beyondchron article, the author freely admits to having conducted a campaign for Chris Daly and even mentions the Seneca Hotel with stats, which is exactly where that video was taken. This IS favoring one candidate over another, because I have never once seen any other candidate allowed into any THC building. In fact, the ONLY political posters I’ve ever seen in a THC building are those that are trumpeted on Beyondchron, and nothing else
It might upset people to learn that in fact Chris Daly won by only a few hundred votes, which happens to be well within the size of the THC population that voted. Under THC’s own rules, in order to get housing at any THC building, one must stay at a homeless shelter for 30 days, so the entire THC population is supposed to be coming from a shelter, and ironically, Care not Cash is a large part of it
Don’t laugh, it’s bodies, and those bodies vote, because Randy Shaw makes sure they vote by actually requiring the managers to ask all the tenants if they voted, no matter how whacked out on crack they are
Regardless of my own political views, it seems pretty slimy, if not outright illegal. Call it fascism, call it a feifdom, just don’t call it democracy, because it’s exclusive control over 15 buildings in San Francisco for the candidates and political issues of Randy Shaws choice