San Francisco has a real bad rep in the national imagination these days. If you follow the news it can feel like this place is melting — nonstop crime, homelessness, hardened villains roaming the streets, Walgreens stores under siege, citizens cowering in fear. It’s like there’s a big media psyop being run to make it seem like even the tiniest decent left-leaning policy is leading to ruin and destruction. Even New Yorkers are afraid of San Francisco now.
Evgenia and I have wanted to focus more on local politics ever since we moved here a year ago. So to kick it off we decided talk with Misha Steier, a SF native who’s been involved with the DSA and the left scene. Misha and I first bonded over the Shahid Buttar fiasco, which the left in SF helped prop up and which I helped bring down — to everyone’s benefit but Shahid’s.
We talk about SF’s long-gone radical cred, people’s ignorance of local politics, ways to combat moneyed interests electorally, and the importance of journalism for democracy. Check it out.
—Yasha Levine
Want to know more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians.
Talking SF politics w/Misha Steier