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(photo: Stuck in Customs via Flickr)
A dispatch from the Department of Unintended Benefits, via TPM:
California Tea Party groups are calling San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s boycott and raising him a … boycott.
The mayor raised the ire of California Tea Partiers this week when, in response to Arizona’s passage of a controversial immigration law, he announced a boycott of the state, barring San Francisco city employees from entering Arizona and threatening to cut off economic ties. Local Tea Partiers who support the Arizona legislation answered his actions with a boycott of their own — on the city of San Francisco.
“We are just tired of our representatives not representing our wishes,” said Bridget Melson, president of the group Pleasanton/NorCal TEA Party, which called for the boycott on Wednesday. . . .
The group has encouraged its members not to patronize local businesses. . . . “Spend your money anywhere else…vacation elsewhere, dine elsewhere — if you protest here, bring your own food, coffee and water,” Melson writes in the boycott’s official call to arms.
As it happens, I live in the Bay Area. I know San Francisco quite well, and have been to Pleasanton more than a few times. Suffice it to say that Pleasanton is, um, not San Francisco — it’s more than 45 minutes’ driving time away across a bridge and through hills and valleys (not counting traffic), and in cultural terms the distance is probably measured in light years.
So I think I can say with some confidence that a threat by a Pleasanton-based group to stop spending their money in San Francisco most likely isn’t causing The City’s businesses to tremble with fear. Especially given the propensity by members of this particular movement to be less than flush with cash and not exactly swift to embrace the diversity for which S.F. is famous.
In fact, for folks like me, the news that a bunch of intolerant, obstreperous suburbanites are doing their best to steer clear of San Francisco makes it seem that much more appealing as a place to spend my liberal, big-government-loving money. Heck, if you ask me, whoever’s in charge of tourism for San Francisco should make an ad to make sure everybody knows about the boycott.
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OK, I was a bit curious at first how folks who lived in SF could boycott themselves – thanks for explaining this.
Isn’t that part of the bay area known to be involved with the KKK? Or is that just Castro Valley or Walnut Creek? Just saying…..
This defines at least one Tea Party group that puts race, racial profiling and police state (but not bigger government) above the Constitution, individual liberty and privacy. I think the rank and file of most Tea baggers think the same, as long as the targets are other than white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.
IIRC Pleasanton is about 30 miles from SanFran (at least via BART). It’s the train I’ve taken often when I visit my sister in Castro Valley. As you say, light years from San Francisco.
My sister lives in Castro Valley, and she’s never mentioned the KKK….although they don’t live actually in Castro Valley, just up in the hills behind it.
EDIT: Haven’t heard that about Walnut Creek, either. But visiting and living there are quite different.
EDIT #2: Google “Castro Valley KKK” and there are some interesting hits…
Pleasanton [sic] is a bit more than over the river and through the woods. It’s a step out of time compared to SFO. A national teaparty boycott of SFO might cost the city a few dollars. Apart from many of its citizens enjoying a respite from visits by a bunch of extremists, the beneficial PR accruing to SFO from it would probably more than offset any losses. The teaputtiers are welcome to spend their money at a more family-oriented, freedom of information loving, surveillance-free place like Las Vegas.
As you say. Comparing SFO to Pleasanton is to compare muesli to cocoa puffs.
“Tea Partiers Offer to Reward SF …”
And the downside is? Seems like a win / win to me.
“…San Francisco should make an ad to make sure everybody knows about the boycott.”
How about a contest for the best slogan and or jingle?
Maybe if the City Council and Newsom just begged the baggers…(like they’d want them anywhere near SF!)
This introduction from your link says it all. First, contact your government representative to get government health care. Then yell about smaller government. And these people don’t see the contradiction at all.
LOL
I agree with you 100%. The quote above from TPM stuck out in the piece cited by Swopa. This issue highlights what everyone already knew: many of these self-styled Tea Partiers use the argument that the movement is about standing up for principles as a facade to cover their racism and hatred.
LOL. Two worlds, fer sure.
Close enough Senator… They are very “conservative over THERE in Pleasanton, ie a bunch of BIGOTS… but not all of the people just those who say “I got mine and fuck you to the rest of ya…Die baby die… That is just their mindset..
(cue Tony Bennett) “I left my teabags….in San Francisco…”
And dateline South Bend, IN. As a resident, this does NOT surprise me.
A Tea-Bag free city?
Actually, the place was named (but misspelled) for General Pleasonton. We generally called it P-town, but then they were the next town over ….
As a kid, we thought going to SF was a treat – it was the Big City, after all. Clearly these teaparty types didn’t get that message when they were young.
Book Salon a couple of flights upstairs with Amanda Marcotte’s Get Opinionated: A Progressive’s Guide to Finding Your Voice (and Taking a Little Action) hosted by sharkfu
So a few thousand teaklanners won’t go to a city they wouldn’t have gone to anyway.
Please don’t throw me in that briar patch, Mr. Teabagger! Please don’t do that! Hehehehehe!
Boycotts of AZ. Now that’s a BRILLIANT FUCKIN’ IDEA!
AZ has one of the country’s highest uemployment rates and even in good times mostly low paying, unskilled labor jobs. And who’s gonna bear the brunt of an even deeper economic slowdown due to the AZ boycotts? Why it’s the brown people who we progressives claim to “support” in their cause.
And how do we progressives show our “support” to the ALL the people of AZ, brown, black, red and white alike? Why we work to take jobs away from them of course. That’ll show them crackers running AZ a thing or two about looking out for your fellow Americans that’s “fer sure”.
Like I said, BRILLIANT, FUCKIN’ BRILLIANT.
If you really give a shit about the real plight of illegals in this country try sending some ideas on how legally and compassionately slow down the ILLEGAL immigration disaster AZ is suffering. That’s what’s needed, not some campy, spur of the moment to get attention on how much “we care” pop culture gesture. AZ has enough of that already from the Talibangelicals on the right, it doesn’t need the same kind of reverse trash from those pandering politicos and “sunshine libs” that are more or less clueless to the prediciment that is AZ.
Tell ya what, come live here in AZ for awhile, you know “walk in our shoes” and see if you don’t begin to think the same about outsiders opinions as I do…
PS: No, I’m not a teabagger, rethugliCANT or racist so don’t bother flaming me on those grounds…
No dice.
Have you seen the Sheriff of Pima County weigh in on this? Sheriff Dupnik?
Now, read the law again, and explain how it’s not over-broad, unconstitutional, heinous.
Check splc.org for details and map of activity. Dublin is a ‘burb’ of ‘Pleasant’ton, aka p-town. P-town is predominantly white and wealthy. Klan activity surfaces occassionally by outlaw biker gangs, usually busted selling meth.
Contra Costa County, north of Pleasanton, is where Klan or aryan related activity tends to infrequently show up in SF Bay Area.
I have read it. Yeah, some of it’s a piece of shit but for part SB 1070 just added some onerous clauses to the federal governments bill on immigration enforcement.
Where’s your outrage on the federal legislation that this bill mirrors there cowboy? Don’t see you gettin’ all self-rightuous about it being “racist”.
And here’s one for ya there hotshot – There has already been 3 changes to the bill’s language to repair the items that’s getting everybody’s knickers in a knot.
How about your input on fixing the language? Without it you’re nothing really more that a left wing version of a tea bagger. Bitch, bitch, bitch but no ideas. Or is your contribution to the immigration problem to boycott AZ and starve those that are already hurtin’?
If boycotts are your one and only response than that’s the kind of American style problem solving we all can (NOT) be proud of that’s “fer shure”….
First off, where in my comment, or anywhere, have I ever mentioned a boycott?
And second, do you suggest that signing the bill in the first place was a good move? Jan Brewer is not responsible for her signature or the law that signature enacted?
I saw her presser – I grieve for Arizona.
And third – I trust the Sheriff of Pima County a helluva lot more that that asshole Arpaio, who thinks this law is the hidden Eleventh Commandment.
Bigots come is all flavors…
Swopa,
As a native of Pleasanton, I’m truly embarrassed by this group of Tea Party morons trying to boycott San Francisco. While agree that there are some significant cultural differences between San Francisco and Pleasanton, you seem to be jumping to the conclusion that a group of 20 or so Tea Party bigots speaks for all of Pleasanton. You seem to want to take a very superficial look at the city and simply conclude that is some redneck backwater, which simply isn’t the case. Pleasanton has more registered democrats than republicans and has become less and less conservative over the last 10 years. In addition, the city has a fairly large Asian-American population so the “whitebred” image isn’t exactly true. As much as I hate the liberal elitist label, you sure sound like one with broad generalization about Pleasanton culture.
In a word No, I lived in the bay area for over 30 year. I grew up in Silicon Valley. I know no one area that is like the hillbilly hell you find in northern Ca. That would be areas north of Chico.
With housing and property at such a premium, No one cares what your politics are as long as you can pay. I can go on and on about the diversity and the fact That I found while spending my life there the people are better educated and better informed. I am sure the the faux newsies and teabaggers are more in the minority than the teabaggers are in the nation or the Republican party. It is only because the of media’s disingenuous reporting that these people think they are in the majority. 18% of anything is not a majority.
I would also like to add that Pleasanton has a fairly liberal mayor (Jennifer Hosterman), overwhelmingly voted for Obama (check the Alameda Country Register of Voters if you don’t believe me), and is also home to liberal groups such as Pleasantonians 4 Peace, an ant-war group. So before you make drive-by conclusions about Pleasanton with your hipster friends at the Le Elitist Coffee Shop, you might want to get your facts straight.
“You can plan your San Francisco getaway knowing that it won’t be marred by racist bigots who want to cut government because it sometimes does nice things for poor people….”
hahahahahha
Pleasanton is a liberal town. It votes Dem but won’t put up the affordable housing required. It is a textbook NIMBY operation. Housing prices make it the modern version of a ‘sundown town.’