Techrooted Groups Seek To Shake Up San Francisco Politics

Olga R. RODRIGUEZ - Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The tech entrepreneurs who flocked to San Francisco two decades ago, bringing jobs and wealth, driving up house prices and flourishing, they say, becoming the city's rising political force, are hopelessly lost.

They have formed advocacy organizations—TogetherSF Action, Abundant SF, and Grow SF—including by pressuring officials to address rising housing costs, drug trafficking, and other issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.19.

Although organizational priorities differed, they all said that a small group of powerful people, many of them progressive, had prevented them from addressing some of the city's most pressing problems. The group highlighted divisions among Democrats in the liberal camp who are struggling to recover from the pandemic.

“San Francisco has a lot of political ideology that doesn’t allow people to work together on what they really agree on,” said Kanishka Cheng, who founded TogetherSF Action in 2020 with billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz. He was an early investor in the San Francisco Standard and Google news sites.

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This year's TogetherSF raised awareness of the city's drug problem and encouraged a stronger police presence to bring traffickers to justice, as well as promoting treatment options to help people recover from addiction. Like many other cities, San Francisco is battling a fentanyl crisis, with nearly two people dying from overdoses every day.

Another tech entrepreneur looking to influence change is Zach Rosen, co-founder and CEO of web platform Pantheon, who helped found YIMBY California, a development advocacy group fighting statewide zoning reform.

Rosen said he was motivated by his and his wife's desire to start their family in San Francisco. He was frustrated by the lack of affordable housing after the workers at his bike shop were laid off and he wanted to get rid of the bureaucracy and bureaucracy that prevented new construction.

Now Rosen, his wife and another couple of techies are the driving force behind Abundant SF, which plans to spend millions on candidate support and voting to create safe and affordable public spaces and increase housing stock for all income levels.

“There were a lot of complaints on Twitter and little action,” Rosen said. "We want to be part of the solution."

Technology has had a strong presence in San Francisco since the early 2000s, when big companies like Google, Twitter, and Uber began renting downtown office space as Silicon Valley expanded northward.

Only recently have industry leaders sought to openly influence politics and elections. Some rejoiced last year after attempts to nominate a moderate candidate led to the defeat at the polls of several progressive officials: a school principal, three school board members and District Attorney Chesa Budin.

From activists with a history of influencing urban and rural politics to high-profile and arrogant figures like Elon Musk who criticize officials on social media.

Earlier this month, Musk joined the backlash against Twitter, which he bought last year for $44 billion and is trying to explain the death of Cash App founder Bob Lee from street stabbings. control. crime in San Francisco is on the decline.

In fact, according to the FBI, San Francisco has the lowest violent crime rate of the 23 largest cities in the country. And the acquaintance was eventually arrested in connection with Lee's death, which authorities say was the result of an altercation between men rather than random street violence.

However, many residents feel insecure due to an increase in property crime, including burglary, shoplifting, food theft, and burglary. Many are fed up with scenes in which drug dealers and mentally ill people go about their business in public or pass out on the strewn sidewalks in the city center.

Only a third of San Francisco residents say they feel safe going out at night, up from 53% in 2019 when officials last polled the city in April. When asked to rate the government and the police, residents gave them a C and a C+, respectively.

With these issues in mind, GrowSF, founded in 2020 by two retired tech software engineers, focuses on public safety and helps elected officials fight outdoor property crime and drug traffickers.

“People have been frustrated with this for years,” said co-founder Sachin Agarwal, who worked at Twitter and later at Lyft.

GrowSF, which has over 15,000 Twitter followers, has also released a voter guide backing the so-called "healthy" candidates and backing his bid to defeat progressive chief executive Dean Preston for re-election next year. He also opposes plans to turn the famous Castro Theatre, a century-old movie theater in the heart of the Castro gay district, into an event venue.

“There is a very small minority that wants to freeze the city and leave it, who hate change,” Agarwal said. "But most people here want to see growth and progress."

Preston, who won his seat in 2019 after running as a Democratic Socialist, dismissed such talk, saying he wants progress too, but it must include the working class and the poor.

The Controller says he has been targeted by many tech entrepreneur groups because he supports things like tenant rights, affordable housing for low-income residents, anti-displacement initiatives and taxing the wealthy. In 2020, he sponsored a voter-approved bill to increase property sales taxes by more than $10 million.

Preston is skeptical of the new political activists in the tech world, saying he doesn't see them as true advocates for ordinary San Francisco residents.

“I don't think they are interested in solving problems together. "They will prioritize public debate and try to use these issues to win elections."

Emily Lee, co-director of the nonprofit San Francisco Rising, is also skeptical of tech groups, saying they don't work with those most affected by homelessness and addiction to understand the root causes. The city is unable to make real progress due to a lack of compromise between warring elected officials, he said.

“The mayor and the boss have not been able to work together for a long time,” Li said. “We need all these politicians to stop being petty, stop fighting each other and really do something to solve the problems of society.”

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