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This is what democracy looks like, in a democratic party machine city

by tkat
Alright so there is this non profit, (san francisco league of urban gardeners) and there is this agency, (Department of Public Works). Together, they conspired to do the democratic party machine's work to elect Gavin Newscum. This is probably just the tip of the iceberge, I wonder how many of the pro-newscum union bosses forced their rank'n file members to work for the campaign. Election fraud has been rampant in this city for the last 9 years, that is how the machine works.
Call SLUG to find out what the hell they are thinking.. 415-285-7584 or call them on their shit
From the chronicle....
Nine members of a city street-cleaning crew say a top official of the San Francisco Department of Public Works and supervisors of a nonprofit organization funded by the city agency pressured them into voting for Gavin Newsom for mayor and walking precincts for his campaign on election day.

The street cleaners told The Chronicle that Mohammed Nuru, the city's deputy director of public works, and Jonathan Gomwalk, executive director of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, or SLUG, had applied pressure to vote and electioneer for Newsom by saying their jobs would be in jeopardy unless Newsom won the mayor's race.

The street cleaners -- part of a 45-member crew employed by SLUG who work under contract with the Public Works Department -- said they had been pulled off the job during the Nov. 4 general election and Dec. 9 runoff and driven to a Newsom campaign office where Nuru assigned them to walk precincts, knock on doors and distribute campaign literature.

In the week before the runoff, during their work shifts, street cleaners were told to appear at, or were given rides to, the Department of Elections at City Hall and were instructed by SLUG crew chiefs to cast absentee ballots for Newsom, according to the nine street cleaners.

"I felt like I was in another country, like it was some kind of dictatorship taking place," said Oscar Hollin, 47, one of the street cleaners. "I read about this kind of thing all the time, but I never thought it would happen to me."

After casting their votes, street cleaners were asked to turn over their voter receipt stubs to their SLUG crew chiefs, Hollin and three of his colleagues said. One of those three, Antonia Perkins, said a crew boss had peered over her shoulder as she marked her ballot.

"It made me really uncomfortable, because I was going to vote for the other guy," Perkins said, referring to Newsom's runoff opponent, Board of Supervisors President Matt Gonzalez.

Nuru and Gomwalk denied any wrongdoing.

Nuru said that he never pressured anybody do anything against his or her will and that he assumed that the SLUG workers who showed up at the campaign office had done so voluntarily.

Gomwalk acknowledged that SLUG had taken employees to vote but said it was part of a legitimate effort to teach political involvement to the street cleaners -- members of a welfare-to-work program.

Repeated attempts to reach the SLUG crew supervisors -- individually and through Gomwalk -- were unsuccessful.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera opened an investigation into the allegations after street cleaners complained to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission last week, according to street cleaners interviewed by investigators and other sources familiar with the investigation.

A city attorney's spokesman declined to comment. But the sources said one area of inquiry is whether the Public Works Department and SLUG violated laws that forbid spending taxpayer dollars on political activity.

Another focus, the sources said, is that Hollin, Perkins and two other street cleaners were laid off on Dec. 31 and whether that was done in retaliation for talking to The Chronicle. The street cleaners contacted the newspaper two days after Newsom's Dec. 9 victory and filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission on Jan 6.

A spokesman for Newsom, who was sworn into office last Thursday, said that Nuru had served as a campaign volunteer but that the new mayor had no knowledge of the allegations or the investigation until being contacted by The Chronicle.

'Zero tolerance'

"There's zero tolerance for anything like that -- there was zero tolerance for that on the campaign, and it will be the same while he is mayor, " said Peter Ragone, Newsom's spokesman. "If there is due cause, there should be a fast and fair investigation."

SLUG's street-cleaning program employs welfare recipients, poor and homeless people, and convicts released on probation or parole to sweep the city's streets. It is funded almost entirely by the city.

According to interviews with Hollin and eight other former and current SLUG street cleaners, Nuru, Gomwalk and SLUG crew chiefs repeatedly told them their jobs and the future of the SLUG organization depended upon Newsom's being elected as Mayor Willie Brown's successor.

Five other members of the SLUG street-cleaning crew interviewed by The Chronicle - none of whom would be quoted by name -- said they hadn't felt pressured and weren't offended by the election-related activities.

Nuru said he did campaign for Newsom as well as for Kamala Harris, who unseated former District Attorney Terence Hallinan on Dec. 9. But he insisted that he had always worked on his own time and had not pressured anyone.

"If anyone felt like that, it needs to be addressed,'' Nuru said. However, he said, "I don't think these men can be forced to do anything -- we can barely get them to get to work and do the things we want them to do.''

Nuru, who was SLUG's executive director from 1991 until 2000 when he was hired by then-Mayor Brown as public works deputy director, added that "there's not a high level of education with SLUG people." He said "it's very possible" remarks he made had been misinterpreted by some of the street cleaners.

Gomwalk, the current SLUG executive director, said the group had urged street cleaners to participate in a Dec. 2 get-out-the-vote event, which Nuru said had been organized by the Harris for district attorney campaign. Gomwalk said SLUG's encouragement to cast votes had been part of a "civics course" to teach important life skills.

"We always try to encourage our people to be aware of the issues -- that is part of what we do, especially if they affect us, you know, like employment,'' he said, though adding that such lessons have never before involved going to vote at City Hall. "It's just part of the general civic awareness.''

A spokeswoman for Harris declined to comment. A campaign aide who the spokeswoman, Debbie Mesloh, said would contact The Chronicle to address the matter did not respond.

SLUG's Gomwalk said his organization didn't pressure employees to vote for any particular candidate but added that because of budget cuts, "we're not able to provide the level of supervision we'd like to."

He also said he didn't know anything about SLUG crew chiefs' requesting voter stub receipts from street cleaners after votes had been cast.

Stories don't jibe

But accounts given by the nine street cleaners interviewed by The Chronicle contradict the statements by Nuru and Gomwalk.

On Nov. 4, the day that Newsom would end up first among nine mayoral candidates, former SLUG street cleaner Freddie Cavitt said Nuru had approached him and two other co-workers and told them to leave their jobs, remove their work vests and go with him to a nearby polling place.

"Mohammed (Nuru) picked me and two other workers up in his van and told us to go to people's doors and ask them if they voted, and if not, to hurry up and vote,'' said Cavitt, who said he had been fired a few weeks later over a nonelection-related disagreement with his supervisor. "I really didn't like the way that went down.''

Nuru said he recalled only driving Newsom campaign volunteers from a Newsom campaign office to a polling place.

Shortly after the general election, Nuru approached a group of street cleaners while they were sitting in a van eating lunch and delivered what amounted to stump speech for Newsom, said crew member Ricky Anderson.

"He (Nuru) told us it was important for us to go vote because if Newsom doesn't win this, I (Nuru) won't have a job, and you guys probably won't have a job, either,'' Anderson said.

On Nov. 28, according to Ali Nasser, another former SLUG worker, Gomwalk called a special meeting at the SLUG headquarters on Oakdale Avenue in the Bayview district to encourage everyone to participate in the vote drive organized by the Harris for district attorney campaign. Nasser said he had told Gomwalk he shouldn't tell people how to vote, but "he just ignored me.''

The next day, Nuru gave another speech instructing a group of SLUG workers to vote for Newsom before they began a Saturday morning clean-up session at a park, said Barie Williams, a former SLUG street cleaner who says he quit the program the next week largely in disgust over the directive.

On Dec. 2, one week before election, Hollin said he had been told by his SLUG crew supervisor to report to City Hall for a "special project.''

Once there, Hollin said he saw about two dozen other SLUG co-workers from across the city who had come in vans provided by the Harris campaign. "He (my supervisor) told me to grab a pen and one of those absentee ballots," Hollin said. "He told me, 'We want you to vote for Newsom, and if you vote for Newsom, we'll keep our jobs.' "

After initially hesitating, Hollin said, another SLUG crew supervisor came over to him and told him that, "We really need to get this vote in.'' Hollin said he resigned himself, grabbed the form and voted for Newsom, fearing his job was suddenly on the line, even though he had planned to vote for Gonzalez.

Perkins and another co-worker, Regina Lewis, said that they had received the same instructions and that afterward a crew supervisor had told them to hand over their voting receipts as they were leaving the voting area. "It was put to us like, nobody's going to get paid if we don't get these stubs,'' Perkins said.

After their votes had been cast, Perkins, Lewis, Hollin and the other SLUG workers were ushered to three chartered vans waiting outside City Hall, Hollin said. The vans drove to Harris' campaign headquarters, where they waited several minutes before they were told to get into SLUG vans that would drive them back downtown so they could "get back to work,'' Hollin said.

Hollin's co-worker Anderson, who wasn't scheduled to work on Dec. 2, said his supervisor had picked him up four days later during his shift and driven him to City Hall in a SLUG van so he could vote, reminding him on the way that a Newsom win was best to safeguard the program and his position.

Anderson said he had planned to vote for Gonzalez and was even wearing his yellow-and-black "Matt Gonzalez for Mayor" button on his vest when he cast his vote for Newsom.

"I felt that I was forced to vote for a candidate I was apprehensive about based on the issues,'' said Anderson, 43. As he left the voting booth, he said, his crew supervisor extended his hand and asked for the stub that had been taken from the ballot.

"He wanted that stub,'' he said. "Why it was so important I don't know, but he told me he was making sure everyone submitted their stub.''

What records say

Elections Department records confirm that Hollin, Perkins and Lewis voted by absentee ballot at City Hall on Dec. 2, as did Anderson on Dec. 6.

A week later, on the rainy Tuesday when thousands of San Franciscans headed to their polling places to cast votes, SLUG workers said they had been told to carry Newsom campaign posters while they walked up and down streets near the SLUG headquarters in the Bayview, when they would have otherwise been tidying up city streets.

Across town, Hollin said his supervisor had picked him and two of his co- workers up from their post in the Tenderloin and driven them in a SLUG van to Newsom's campaign office in the Mission District.

Nuru arrived shortly afterward, Hollin said, and told the SLUG workers to remove their vests with the city's Department of Public Works logo emblazoned on it. Nuru handed them Newsom political advertisements, Hollin said, and told them to go knock on doors in a nearby neighborhood to encourage people to vote for Newsom and hang the advertisements on doorknobs. City payroll records show that Nuru had taken off work on the day of the runoff and was not working on city time.

Nuru, who many at SLUG said they regarded as a de facto boss because of his former ties to the organization and his current role in the city's decision to keep funding the program, said he did not know the affiliations of those who had come in to the Newsom office that day, and assumed they were all volunteering on their own.

"I think I may have seen some of them around, but I don't know what their status at SLUG was -- my job that day was to help get precinct work done,'' he said.

He also said he could not recall telling anyone to remove their SLUG vest that day, but that if he had seen someone wearing such a garment when they arrived to volunteer at the office, Nuru said he would tell them, "Do you realize you have a city seal and nonprofit logo on? We don't want to act like we're stupid.''

Anderson and Hollin, who joined the program within the last year as they struggle to rebuild lives sidetracked by felony convictions, said they were convinced of just the opposite. Anderson served time for a 1994 armed robbery conviction. Hollin is on probation after being jailed for a domestic assault.

They said Nuru is savvy enough to know that most would be uncomfortable declining to do something that they had been directly ordered to do by a high- ranking city official -- even one who was working as a personal volunteer on that particular day.

Hollin said he had taken off his vest and put on a blue rain poncho and climbed into a truck with a supervisor who drove him to various homes. He had walked up to several doors along Geneva Avenue but, he said, he did not actually ring the doorbells or knock as instructed, though he did hang up the flyers.

At 8 p.m., the usual end of their shift, Hollin said, he and the others were driven back downtown and then headed home.

When he saw news reports of Newsom's surprisingly close victory, Hollin said his stomach churned. He started thinking about whether and how to contact a lawyer.

On Dec. 31, Hollin, Anderson, Perkins and Lewis said they had been called to the SLUG headquarters and laid off.

Gromwalk said the job cuts resulted from special Neighborhood Beautification Fund grant money running out. He said those laid-off had been aware of the pending cuts in advance and suggested they had made their allegations against Nuru and SLUG because they are disgruntled.

He said two other workers on the crew had been relocated to other assignments because "some workers are better than others,'' he said.

Wendy Nelder, the director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Beautification, said SLUG had applied for funds to clean Polk Street for the last two years, but that the request had been denied and no grant had been given to the organization.

Hollin and the others said they believed they had been laid off in retaliation for talking to The Chronicle.

The whole experience has left him disgusted and disillusioned with the democratic process, he said.

"I believe that the people who died for this country, for this privilege (of voting freely), to have it snatched it away is a slap in the face to them, '' said Hollin, whose father is a World War II veteran.

"I may not be the most educated man,'' he said, "but I know about my civil rights, and I know that people aren't supposed to do this."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/15/MNGQA4AEV71.DTL
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