2,017 research outputs found
Simi, Larry: 1975 Mayoral Candidates
No full textLarry Simi: It was interesting. I thought a lot about Dianne Feinstein as a potential mayor of San Francisco particularly in light of today’s controversy of ranked-choice. Dianne probably might have been elected in 1971 or 1975 under a ranked-choice system. She was kinda everybody’s second choice, but there wasn’t a lot of passion around Dianne in either ’71 or ’75. In ’71, basically the Left was looking for a candidate. Morrison didn’t run; Phil didn’t have any horse in the race. So she essentially jumped in and was supported by the Left, but there was no real passion on the Left for her, but she was an alternative to Mayor Alioto. In the 1975 election, the Left was just passionate about George Moscone. The far-Right was passionate about John Barbagelata, and there was an old-school group that was very supportive of Ertola. That kinda left Dianne and to a lesser extent Milton Marks as kinda [ ], but Dianne could probably be the second choice of any of them at that point. But Barbagelata had a wonderful, wonderful grassroots committed group to volunteers because they were determined to hold the city as it was and it was evolving away from
Simi, Larry: Moscone\u27s legacy
No full textLarry Simi: There was a personal legacy and a political legacy that he left. His personal legacy to me was one of sweetness and kindness. One of the most decent men I’ve ever known, and a politician totally without ego. Joe Alioto didn’t flaunt his ego, but it was part of him; he was bigger than life. To work for a boss like George Moscone; he was interested in your input, he was kind, he was decent. You’d have an event on a Saturday morning, he’d call you up wanting briefings “Oh I’m sorry to bother ya.” He was just kind and decent. Almost like a big brother to me. We had relationship on a lot of different levels: political level, employer/employee relationship level, athletic level, the Irish Italian Catholic San Francisco native level, and he was just very, very special; very, very warm and decent, and a politician without ego which is rare. George Moscone’s political legacy to San Francisco? Just tremendous. San Francisco for what it is today is a direct outgrowth of George Moscone. It is one of the most diverse cities in the country and somehow we manage to get along. We have our moments. I think there’s a craziness around City Hall that I don’t think has to do with George Moscone, but there is a network of social services, a political culture in this city that relates directly back to him, and to him kinda successfully bringing us through a trying period not only in San Francisco, but also in American history
Simi, Larry: Reactions to changes
No full textLarry Simi: George Moscone was the one man who could cross the borders between old and new San Francisco. Here’s this kid who goes to Saint Brigid Grammar School, Saint Ignatius, All-City basketball player, yet the product of a single mother, Hasting Law School. He just has all the credentials of the classic San Francisco leader, yet he’s born with this compassion – or he grew up with or because of his circumstances growing up – had this unbelievable sensitivity and compassion to the oppressed and underserved. So what was amazing was we had this man who could really bridge the gap, who could have one leg in east of Twin Peaks and one foot left of Twin Peaks. There was really nobody that could pull that off. And he was equally comfortable in either place. But that was kind of dangerous because in the end it ultimately cost him his life because of the just vitriol that you would hear. “He’s giving the city away to the Ns. He’s giving the city away to the…” use your favorite pejorative for Gays. “He’s giving the city away to…” whomever. And they would use the n-word, and they would use whatever the pejorative for gays and lesbians was at the time, and none of that stuff would be sanitized the way it is today in those conversations. At the time that I worked for George Moscone, I lived on [Ulloa] Street – right down the street from Saint Brendan’s Church – I remember some of the people in the neighborhood knew what I did for a living, others didn’t, and this woman came up in 1977; there was this thinly disguised recall called Proposition A and Proposition B. It didn’t formally recall the Mayor and the District Attorney and the Sheriff, but it essentially shortened George Moscone and District Attorney Freitas and Sheriff Hongisto’s term, and basically stopped the term and then scheduled a new election the following November two years into their term. And I remember this woman – a neighbor – coming to my door saying “Would you sign this petition”, and I said “No, I really can’t.” I got an earful from that lady, and it’s the kinds of things I alluded to before of just the pejoratives she used for African Americans and Gays/Lesbians, and any other. Pick your minority group
Simi, Larry: Consent Decree
No full textLarry Simi: In the mid 70’s, the San Francisco Police Department had a sprinkling of African-American, Asian officers, a few Latinos. But there were a whole bunch of pieces in the selection process that made it inherently difficult to join either the police or the fire department because the written tests were exactly the same. First and foremost, relative to Asians, there was a height requirement to get into the police and fire department. You had to be 5’7” or more, and a lot of Asians weren’t 5’7”. Well what does 5’7” have to do with being a good cop or not, I don’t know. There were also written tests that were basically general information exams. They were like an SAT test or something. They had very little to do with the specifics of being a cop or a fire fighter. In fact one of the questions was a civics question. “How many members were on the Board of Supervisors?” They were questions like that. If you had studied hard in history, civics, and math in school you would have done well, but there was not much about identification for example, or investigative type stuff. There just wasn’t very much that was relative to being a cop or a fire fighter. So what that effectively did was kind of kept the club pretty select and pretty white. There were lawsuits around that, and lawsuits around the suitability of the test and the job-relatedness to the test. Eventually in federal court a group by the name of Public Advocates, Bob Gnaizda – there was another lawyer whose name I don’t remember but Gnaizda is the one that I do remember – essentially drove with Moscone a Consent Decree that essentially require San Francisco to change the way they selected police officers and fire fighters, change the testing process, make it more relevant to doing the job. It opened it up not only to minorities, but women. It was quite a significant thing. That Consent Decree was something that city attorney and the mayor presented to the Board of Supervisors and it require a vote of the Board of Supervisors to be ratified and for the city to consent to it along with the plaintiff, Public Advocates. I think the formal complaints were the Officers for Justice and minority police and fire organizations. So essentially there was a very close split on the Board of Supervisors at that time. There was a Kopp/Barbagelata group that was very, very conservative. And there was the kind of Gordon Lau/Jack Molinari group that was on the other side that was very supportive of the Mayor. Then there was a group in-between every vote especially after District Elections. Every vote became very close and very tenacious in terms of the fights that went on. And at that point, the Police Officers Association was very worried about that balance of power because it felt that they had their sixth vote with Dan White. So when Dan decided to leave – he probably hadn’t thought about that but – in the ten days between when he walked in on a Friday afternoon to talk to Mayor Moscone I remember him walking into the office, and I actually walked out of the building with him that evening, and he told me “It’s just too much. I can’t support my family.” The ten days later, he was under tremendous pressure by the Police Officers Association. He asked to be reappointed. The City Attorney had said “no” once he resigned, but that Moscone could reappoint him, but I think Moscone essentially decided he hadn’t been an effective supervisor, wasn’t a stable vote, and it was an opportunity to move the city in the direction he wanted to take it
Simi, Larry: Building Labor Craft Strike
No full textLarry Simi: George Moscone immediate on taking office was confronted with a strike by the building trades and the crafts against the city. The plumbers, carpenters, all those groups basically had been – I’ll use the word victimized – by legislation that Kopp and Barbagelata had put in that was very, very restrictive on public employees, and it was a reaction to the police/fire strike of the previous year. So basically there was no collective bargaining. Everything was a formula. So this strike came about, and George made the decision – and probably not a good one – to essentially camp out in City Hall. It was sort of reminiscent of Jimmy Carter during a lot of the things that he did. The Mayor just seemed totally impotent because he had no power to do any of this stuff. The law said that essentially everything had to be done by formula. In the meantime there was an awful lot of stuff that went on; a lot of labor hijinks that went on. The Gardeners flooding Golden Gate Park. Just doing a lot of kind of guerilla warfare. That ultimately resulted in Joe Mazzola being… I think there was some sort of trial at the Board of Supervisors. I think he was impeached from his position at the Airport Commission because of his complicity of all this stuff, and there was a trial before the Board of Supervisors. It was just an ugly scene. It really cost George dearly amongst the building trades, and labor was at a weak point in that period of time
Larry O. Spencer, Conference Author Presentation
No full textGen. Larry O. Spencer, USAF (Ret.), author of Dark Horse: A Journey from the Horseshoe to the Pentago
Larry Gragg
No full textAudio of the 2/23/2014 UNLV Libraries Author Event featuring Larry Gragg, author of Bright Light City: Las Vegas in Popular Culture. Remarks by CGR Director Dave Schwartz and historian Michael Green. Dr. Gragg\u27s talk is about the interactions between Benjamin Bugsy Siegel and the Las Vegas community
Larry Ruttman papers, undated, 1997-2015.
No full textLawrence A. (Larry) Ruttman is an attorney and author. This collection contains drafts, manuscripts, notes, research, correspondence, interviews, photographs, news clippings, book reviews, and VHS tapes documenting the research, writing, publication, and promotion of Ruttman’s two books, Voices of Brookline and American Jews and America's Game, as well as other work in the field of biographical cultural history.Donated by Larry Ruttman,Larry RuttmanBSLW RDA ENRICHEDBSLW Authority Control Project - 04-06-2017
Excerpt from broadcast by Larry Smith
No full textBroadcast excerpt from Larry Smith, Station KFI, discussing Japanese American's loyalty to the United States.The Bishop James Chamberlain Baker Collection includes letters, documents, and articles about Japanese Americans during World War II. Subjects in the collection include Japanese Americans mass removal, Pearl Harbor and the aftermath, religion, and support from the non-Japanese American community. The collection was digitized and made accessible online by CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections
A reading and discussion with poet Larry Schug
No full textThe author of Obsessed with Mud (1997), Caution: Thin Ice (1993), Scales Out of Balance (1990), and the forthcoming volume The Turning of Wheels, Larry Schug’s poetry seeks to capture and keep alive the passing moments we live in. Join us Friday for a reading of his work followed by a discussion of the art and process of poetry
- …
