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      Inside tech billionaires’ push to reshape San Francisco politics: ‘a hostile takeover’

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      In a way, it’s a story as old as time: ultra-wealthy figures pouring a flood of money into city politics in an effort to shape the way it is run.Still, the political-influence machine that tech billionaires and venture capitalists have recently built in San Francisco stands out for its size and ambition. A new analysis of campaign filings, non-profit records and political contributions by the Guardian and Mission Local reveals the extent of this network, which is using its financial and organizational muscle to push the famously progressive city into adopting policies that are tougher on crime and homelessness, and more favorable to business and housing construction.In the past six years, prominent tech and venture capital leaders – including the hedge fund manager William Oberndorf, the billionaire investor Michael Moritz, the cryptocurrency booster Chris Larsen, the PayPal co-founder David Sacks, the Y Combinator CEO, Garry Tan, and the Pantheon CEO, Zachary Rosen – have invested at least $5.7m into reshaping San Francisco’s policies, according to the analysis of public data. Because not all of their donations are publicly disclosed, the sum of their contributions may be far higher.In a solidly Democratic city, they have joined forces with traditional business and real estate elites in an effort to oust some of its most progressive leaders and undo its most progressive policies.To achieve those goals, they have created a loose network of interlocking non-profits, dark money groups and political action committees – a framework colloquially known as a “grey money” network – that allows them to obscure the true scale of their involvement in San Francisco’s municipal politics.View image in fullscreenThe three major groups in this network – NeighborsSF, TogetherSF and GrowSF – have pulled in more than $26m in contributions since 2020, according to campaign finance and tax records, more than $21m of which they have spent on various political issues.“They’re using multiple layers of organizations to hide the sources of their money, and to hide how much they’re spending,” said Jim Stearns, a political consultant with decades of experience in San Francisco politics and a critic of the groups.“This is a $20bn hostile takeover of San Francisco by people with vested real estate and tech interests, and who don’t want anyone else deciding how the city is run,” he said, referring to the combined wealth of the most prolific new donors.Billionaires’ increasing involvementIn its storied history, San Francisco has always seen tycoons seek influence over city business. In the 2010s, the tech investor Ron Conway played a crucial role in the election of the mayor Ed Lee and was a major factor in the ascent of the current mayor, London Breed, after Lee died in office in 2017 . But the entry of a libertarian billionaire class into local politics is new, said political operatives and people who have been targeted by them. So are the vast amounts of wealth created in the most recent tech boom that these figures can tap into.View image in fullscreenPolitical observers trace the newcomers’ involvement to 2018, when a special election brought Breed to power. Their engagement grew as progressive candidates won a number of narrow but surprising victories in 2019, including the district attorney office and several seats in San Francisco’s legislative body, the board of supervisors. But, those observers say, their political participation really intensified during the pandemic, when frustrations over rising visible homelessness, a sharp increase in petty crime and fentanyl-related overdose deaths, and an economic downturn in the city boiled over.“There is a growing sense … that the city’s progressive political class has failed its citizens,” Moritz, the billionaire investor and a former journalist, wrote in a May 2023 feature for the Financial Times. “Online discourse about San Francisco’s ‘doom loop’, a downward economic and social spiral that becomes irreversible, feels less like hyperbole by the day. Even for a city that has always managed to rebuild after flattening financial and geological shocks, San Francisco – emptier, deadlier, more politically dysfunctional – seems closer to the brink than ever.”The priorities of these deep-pocketed figures have varied. Oberndorf, the hedge fund manager, had been a long-time charter school advocate and major Republican party donor. Larsen, the crypto investor, has been a strong backer of expanding police ranks and surveillance capabilities. Tan, the Y Combinator CEO, has pushed for business policies favorable to crypto, artificial intelligence and autonomous cars.Broadly, though, they maintain that San Francisco needs a tougher approach to homelessness and drug problems, a more punitive approach to crime, and a climate more friendly to business and housing construction. Some have called for centralizing more power in the office of the mayor.In past years, several of these operatives have set up organizations to advance policy on those issues – non-profit organizations, so-called dark money groups, political action committees and even media outlets.View image in fullscreenDogged reporting by Bay Area outlets has previously exposed some of the money flowing into these groups. But their structure makes it difficult to easily uncover all sources of donations. Political action committees, or Pacs, are required to name their major donors. But the so-called dark money groups, which are technically civic leagues or social welfare groups, were formed under the 501(c)4 section of the tax code, and do not have to disclose donors or political contributions. Since the 2010 supreme court ruling Citizens United v Federal Election Commission relaxed regulation around political donations, 501(c)4 groups have exponentially increased their involvement in political donations, to the tune of at least $1bn by 2019 nationwide, according to ProPublica reporting.However, the Guardian and Mission Local’s analysis of financial records shows several of the organisations donating money to one another, and several groups sharing personnel, addresses and donors. And it reveals the sheer financial deluge they are spending ahead of the 2024 elections.Complicated contributionsAmong the most prominent and resourced groups in this network is Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Advocacy, which was founded by Oberndorf, and an affiliated 501(c)4 started by the longtime San Francisco real estate lobbyist Mary Jung, among others. Oberndorf sits on the board of directors of the dark money group.NeighborsSF says it is committed to improving public safety, public education and quality of life in the city, backing what it calls “pragmatic” and “responsible” groups and candidates. The group has funded publicity campaigns for moderate candidates and bankrolled other 501(c)4s working to advance related issues.NeighborsSF has been primarily funded by a handful of extremely wealthy donors from the tech and real estate worlds. Campaign contribution data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission and state election disclosures show that Oberndorf has poured more than $900,000 over the years into the 501(c)4s. The group’s biggest donor, Kilroy Realty, a southern California-based firm with major holdings in downtown office property and highly desired parcels in the South of Market district, has given $1.2m since 2020. The dynastic real estate investor Brandon Shorenstein has contributed $899,000 through his family’s real estate firm. Larsen has donated at least $300,000. Moritz donated $300,000 in 2020 alone.View image in fullscreenMoritz is one of the most prominent players in reshaping San Francisco. Since 2020, he has donated more than $336m towards various causes in the city, both social and political, according to a recent Bloomberg report.In addition to his contributions to NeighborsSF, Moritz seeded $3m for TogetherSF Action, a 501(c)4 that is most famously known for a flashy, sarcastic poster campaign decrying the city’s fentanyl crisis and campaigns for expanding the power of the mayor. The group has an affiliated non-profit, TogetherSF, that serves as a volunteering hub. According to incorporation filings with the state of California, Moritz occupies key positions with both organizations, which also share personnel with NeighborsSF. Moritz has also sunk $10m into the San Francisco Standard, a startup news publication in the city run by Griffin Gaffney, a co-founder of TogetherSF.The third big player is GrowSF, a dark money group run by Sachin Agarwal, an alum of Apple, Twitter and Lyft, and Steven Buss, formerly of Google and Amazon. Tan is a member of its board. GrowSF has several affiliated Pacs and says it endorses “common sense” candidates as an alternative to “far-left” elected officials.Campaign contribution filings show that major donors include Agarwal’s father, Aditya Agarwal, as well as Larsen ($100,000), Tan ($25,000) and Pantheon’s Rosen, a tech investor who launched the controversial pro-market-rate development group YIMBY California. GrowSF has received tens of thousands of dollars from NeighborsSF over the years, according to federal tax filings.Follow the moneyThrough varying alliances, the groups have exerted their influence on debates that go to the heart of San Francisco policy. Among the first was the February 2022 recall of three members of the San Francisco school board, whom voters ousted from office over frustrations with the slow reopening of district schools during the pandemic, a controversial proposal to rename school sites, racially charged tweets by one of the members, and changes to the testing requirements for admission to the city’s only selective academic public high school, Lowell.The campaign to unseat the members raised more than $2m, more than 20 times the $86,000 the school board members gathered to fight off the challenge, according to campaign contribution filings.The billionaire charter school backer Arthur Rock was the single largest donor to the SFUSD recalls, giving $500,000. But NeighborsSF Advocacy came in a close second, directing $488,800 into political action committees supporting the recall effort.Separate from NeighborsSF, state disclosures show, Sacks gave $75,000 to Pacs supporting the school board recall, and the Y Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston donated $45,000. Tan, Agarwal and Buss respectively gave $25,000, $10,000 and $5,000 to a cluster of political action committees bankrolling the school board recall efforts for each specific board member.NeighborsSF was also key to the successful recall of the progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022. A former deputy public defender and the son of convicted “new left” militants, Boudin was elected DA in 2019 on a promise to reduce mass incarceration and police misconduct. The pushback against his policies was immediate.Over 15 months, Boudin’s opponents raised $7.2m for the campaign supporting his ouster, more than twice the $2.7m collected by the anti-recall effort, campaign finance data compiled by Mission Local has shown.View image in fullscreenMost of these donations were channelled through NeighborsSF. The group contributed $4m of the $7.2m raised by the campaign, Mission Local reporting established, with the California Association of Realtors coming in a distant second at $458,000 in donations.State campaign finance records also show a $68,000 contribution to the recall campaign by GrowSF’s political action committee.There have been other victories. In 2022, GrowSF backed the successful candidacy of Joel Engardio, a former SF Weekly staff writer and former GrowSF leadership member, for supervisor through its Pac. GrowSF contributed more than $92,000 in support of Engardio’s campaign, per state campaign finance data. Since being elected, Engardio has promoted policies including increased police staffing, harsh penalties for narcotics offenses, building market-rate housing and sweeps of homeless camps.The Pac also spent at least $15,400 supporting the campaign of Matt Dorsey, a former head of communications at the San Francisco police department, for a full term as supervisor. And it spent at least $15,569 supporting Brooke Jenkins, Boudin’s successor and a supporter of the recall campaign, when she ran for re-election.It’s a “longer-term, widespread, deliberate strategy”, said Aaron Peskin, the progressive president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors. “They’re propping up innumerable 501(c)4s that are doing everything from mounting political attack campaigns to infiltrating dozens of long-term neighborhood groups … Why would you say no if someone knocked on your door to organize Saturday neighborhood cleanups?”Towards 2024With key successes under its belt, this network is gearing up to play a major role in the 2024 elections, which will determine control of the San Francisco board of supervisors and the Democratic county central committee.GrowSF is among the main drivers behind aggressive efforts to oust two progressive supervisors: Dean Preston, who represents the Haight, Hayes Valley and the Tenderloin districts, and Connie Chan, whose district includes the Inner and Outer Richmond neighborhoods.The group has set up separate “Dump Dean” and “Clear Out Connie” Pacs targeting the supervisors. GrowSF has raised at least $300,000 for its anti-Preston campaign, which has run attack ads falsely accusing him of opposing affordable housing. Larsen, Tan and a number of Y Combinator partners all have donated to GrowSF’s effort, according to San Francisco ethics commission campaign finance data.View image in fullscreenTan, who is known for his massive Twitter blocklist and recently faced ire for wishing a slow death upon progressive supervisors on the platform, has personally pledged $50,000 to oust Preston. He is publicly soliciting more donations.In addition to the board of supervisors races, GrowSF is backing a slate of moderate Democrats running to replace progressives on the Democratic county central committee, which makes endorsements for the Democratic party. Several of these moderate candidates are also running for supervisor, and while contributions to the supervisorial race are capped, there’s no limit to donations for the DCCC.The moderates have collectively raised about $1.16m, about four times as much as the progressive candidates.In light of the bruising national political landscape in 2024, San Francisco’s proverbial “knife fight in a telephone booth” may seem inconsequential. But the political network erected with the aid of libertarian tech money has already demonstrated its power to chill San Francisco’s progressive politics. So far, not one progressive candidate has thrown their hat in the ring to challenge London Breed.Peskin, who has long been eyed as a potential mayoral candidate, told Politico in January that the tech money backing moderate candidates has made it hard for progressives to fight back. It was one reason, he said, why he is leaning against getting into the race.The success of these political campaigns in one of the US’s most progressive cities could inspire similar efforts in cities around the country, Peskin warned.“There’s a sense by these guys that they are the tip of the spear,” he said. “If you can take on liberal/progressive thought in politics in San Francisco, you can do it anywhere.”This story was published in collaboration with Mission Local, an independent San Francisco non-profit news site More

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      in Elections

      Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro ordered to prison despite contempt appeal

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      A federal judge on Thursday denied Trump White House official Peter Navarro’s bid to remain out of prison while he appeals his contempt of Congress conviction for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Navarro was sentenced last month to four months behind bars after being found guilty of defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House January 6 committee. The former White House trade adviser under President Donald Trump had asked to be free while he fights that conviction and sentence in higher courts.But Judge Amit Mehta said that Navarro must report to serve his sentence when ordered to do so by the Bureau of Prisons, unless Washington’s federal appeals court steps in to block Mehta’s order. The judge said Navarro had not shown that any of the issues he will raise on appeal are “substantial” questions of law.Among other things, Navarro has argued that his prosecution was motivated by political bias, but Mehta said Navarro had offered “no actual proof” to support that claim.“Defendant’s cynical, self-serving claim of political bias poses no question at all, let alone a ‘substantial’ one,” wrote Mehta, who was appointed to the federal court in Washington by President Barack Obama.An attorney for Navarro did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.Navarro has said he could not cooperate with the committee because Trump had invoked executive privilege. The judge barred him from making that argument at trial, however, finding that he did not show Trump had actually invoked it.Navarro told the judge before receiving his punishment in January that the House committee investigating the January 6 attack had led him to believe that it accepted his invocation of executive privilege.Navarro was the second Trump aide convicted of contempt of Congress charges. The former White House adviser Steve Bannon previously received a four-month sentence but is free pending appeal.The House committee spent 18 months investigating the insurrection, interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses, holding 10 hearings and obtaining more than 1m pages of documents. In its final report, the panel ultimately concluded that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the election results and failed to act to stop his supporters from storming the Capitol.Trump, the Republican presidential primary frontrunner, has been criminally charged by special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and says the case is politically motivated. More

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      Stabbing of Palestinian American in Texas a hate crime, police say

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      The recent stabbing of a 23-year-old Palestinian American in Texas meets the standard for a hate crime, police announced on Wednesday.Bert James Baker, 36, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly attacking 23-year-old Zacharia Doar after Doar and friends were returning from a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday near the University of Texas at Austin.In a Wednesday update, the Austin police department said that the Sunday stabbing does “meet the definition of a hate crime”.Information on the case will be provided to the Travis county district attorney’s office, which will then make the final decision on whether to pursue hate crime charges against Baker, according to the police department’s statement posted to Facebook.In an earlier statement, Austin police said they believed the attack was “bias-motivated”.Baker is accused of stabbing Doar after the 23-year-old and his friends were driving back from a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.According to an arrest affidavit detailing the incident obtained by the AP, Doar and three others were riding in a truck when Baker, who was on a bike, opened the doors of the vehicle and began yelling racial slurs at the group.The group then got out of the vehicle and approached Baker, who first punched Doar in the shoulder. After a scuffle, Baker stabbed Doar in the rib.Doar’s father, Nizar Doar, told NBC News that Baker had actually dragged Doar out of the truck and initially charged at Doar’s friend with a knife. Doar was stabbed when he attempted to intervene in the attack.In an earlier statement prior to Wednesday’s update, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) accused Baker of initially attempting to remove a flagpole with a keffiyeh scarf reading “Free Palestine” from the truck Doar was riding in.Doar was also one of four Muslim Americans in the car when Baker allegedly attacked.Doar was hospitalized after the attack with non-life threatening injuries. His father told NBC that Doar was stabbed three inches from his heart and sustained a broken rib from the attack.Baker was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and vehicle. He is being held in jail on $100,000 bail as of Thursday, AP reported.Richard Gentry, Baker’s attorney, was unavailable to provide comment to the Guardian.In a statement to the Guardian, Cair’s deputy executive director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, called Sunday’s stabbing “the latest in a series of violent attacks on Muslim and Palestinian Americans” and praised the Austin police department for “recognizing the hateful motive for this stabbing”.“These attacks, the bigoted rhetoric that inspires them, and the Gaza genocide at the root of this violence, must end,” Mitchell said.The latest attack is the most recent example of violence facing Palestinians in the US since the 7 October attack in Israel by Hamas. Threats of violence against Muslim and Arab Americans have also surged in recent months.In November, three Palestinian college students were shot and injured in Vermont after they say a man specifically targeted them for being Palestinian. More

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      in US Politics

      New Mexico man pleads guilty to drive-bys targeting Democrats’ homes

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      A New Mexico man has said he was hired by a failed Republican candidate for political office to carry out drive-by shootings targeting the homes of Democrats who would not abide by false election-rigging claims.Demetrio Trujillo, 42, indicated in federal court documents filed Friday that he had been hired for the spate of attacks by Solomon Peña, whose run for a seat in the New Mexico state legislature in November 2022 ended in defeat. Trujillo pleaded guilty to charges of election interference, criminal conspiracy and firearms-related offenses, and he could face several years in prison as he awaits a sentencing hearing that wasn’t immediately scheduled, the US attorney’s office in Albuquerque said in a statement.The case followed warnings of escalating political violence in the US, especially after Donald Trump and his supporters widely spread lies that the former president had lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. Peña, 40, stands charged with lying about how the race he lost had been fraudulently stolen from him, which then fueled a plot to shoot up the houses of New Mexico Democrats, among them the state’s House speaker.He has pleaded not guilty and awaits a trial set for June 2024.Peña approached members of the commission that certifies election results, told them the race he had lost by nearly 50 percentage points had been rigged against him, and asked them to reject its results.The drive-by shootings unfolded in December 2022 and January 2023 shortly after officials certified Peña’s electoral loss. No one was wounded in any of the shootings, though authorities have noted that – in one instance – bullets cut through the bedroom of a state senator’s 10-year-old daughter.Trujillo later told investigators that he knew Peña through acquaintances. Peña hired him to fire bullets at three officials’ homes to intimidate them, Trujillo reported. Investigators charged Peña with carrying out the spree’s fourth drive-by shooting by himself.Ultimately, smartphone communications from Peña, including texts, tied him to the attacks, according to prosecutors. The communications not only pinpointed the targeted officials’ homes. They also purportedly spelled out allegations of election-rigging, and plans to “press the attack” and rage over how voters overwhelmingly rejected him for a seat in New Mexico’s statehouse.“We have to act. … The enemy will eventually break,” Peña is charged with saying in a text to a fellow Republican hours before the series of shooting began. He sent a separate message reading: “It is our duty … to stop the oligarchs from taking over our country.”Federal prosecutors in Albuquerque in June obtained an indictment charging Peña, Trujillo and Trujillo’s son in connection with the drive-by shootings.Jose Louise Trujillo, 22, pleaded guilty on 8 January to charges of illegally using a firearm as well as possessing fentanyl with the intent to distribute it. His sentencing is tentatively set for 8 April.Prosecutors’ statements about the Trujillos’ guilty pleas don’t comment on the case beyond its facts. But, at the time the Trujillos and Peña were indicted, Albuquerque’s US attorney, Alexander Uballez, said the prosecution aimed to demonstrate that “in America, voters pick their leaders, and would-be leaders don’t get to pick which voters they heed, which rules apply to them or which laws to follow”.Since the drive-by shootings attributed to Peña and the Trujillos, New Mexico lawmakers passed legislation that makes it a state felony to intimidate election officials. The legislation also allows some elected officials and political candidates to withhold their home addresses from public, government websites. More

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      Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro sentenced to four months in prison

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      Peter Navarro, a top former Trump administration official, was sentenced to four months in federal prison and fined $9,500 after he was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol attack.The sentence imposed by Amit Mehta in federal district court in Washington was lighter than what prosecutors recommended but tracked the four-month jail term handed to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who was similarly convicted for ignoring the panel’s subpoena.“You are not a victim, you are not the object of a political prosecution,” the US district judge said from the bench. “These are circumstances of your own making.”Navarro, 74, was found guilty in September of two counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to produce documents and testimony in the congressional investigation into the Capitol attack, claiming that executive privilege protections meant he did not have to cooperate.The committee took a special interest in Navarro because of his proximity to Trump and his involvement in a series of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including to have members of Congress throw out the results in a plot he named “the Green Bay Sweep”.But Navarro’s subpoena defiance prompted a criminal referral to the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which brought the charges and ultimately asked for six months in jail because he brazenly ignored the subpoena even after being told executive privilege would not apply.“He cloaked his bad-faith strategy of defiance and contempt behind baseless, unfounded invocations of executive privilege and immunity that could not and would never apply to his situation,” prosecutors wrote of Navarro in their sentencing memorandum.Within hours after the judge handed down the sentence, Navarro’s lawyers John Rowley and Stanley Woodward filed a notice of appeal to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit. As with Bannon, Navarro is expected to have his punishment deferred pending appeal.Navarro’s lawyers had asked for probation, saying the judge himself seemed to acknowledge at one point that Navarro genuinely believed Trump had invoked executive privilege, a separation-of-powers protection aimed at ensuring White House deliberations can be shielded from Congress.The privilege, however, is not absolute or all-encompassing. The January 6 committee had sought both White House and non-White House material, the latter of which would not be included, and the judge concluded in any case at a hearing that Trump had never formally invoked the privilege.Regardless of what Navarro may have believed, the judge found, he failed to prove the existence of a conversation or communication from Trump that explicitly instructed Navarro not to cooperate with the January 6 committee’s subpoena specifically.That proved to be the central problem for Navarro.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBefore charging Navarro, prosecutors decided not to bring charges against two other Trump White House officials – Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff , and Dan Scavino, former deputy chief – even though they also did not cooperate with the January 6 committee and were referred for contempt.The difference with Meadows and Scavino, as the record later appeared to show, was that they had received letters from a Trump lawyer directing them not to respond to subpoena requests from the panel on executive privilege grounds.Navarro received a similar letter from Trump directing him not to comply with a subpoena from around the same time issued by the House committee that investigated the Covid pandemic. But he was unable to produce an invocation with respect to the later January 6 committee.“Had the president issued a similar letter to the defendant, the record here would look very different,” the judge said at a hearing last year.The January 6 committee completed its work last January, writing in its final report that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the results of the 2020 election, conspiring to obstruct Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.Last year, the US justice department charged Trump on four criminal counts related to his efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat and impede the transfer of power. Trump was also charged in Georgia for violating the state’s racketeering statute for election interference efforts there. More

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      Palestinian students shot in Vermont speak out: ‘I know that it is a hate crime’

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      Two Palestinian college students who were shot in Vermont said they suspected they were the targets of a hate crime in their most extensive public remarks since the attack.Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad and Kinnan Abdalhamid were shot on 25 November while walking near the home of Awartani’s grandmother in Burlington, Vermont.In an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, Awartani and Abdalhamid – both 20 – said they believe their shooter took aim at them for being Palestinian.“I don’t think too much about if there’s gonna be hate crime charges,” Awartani said to NBC News about the triple shooting. “I just care that, like, justice is served. And to me, that is a part of it. But I know that it is a hate crime.”Awartani added that he wasn’t surprised that he faced violence as a Palestinian, especially having grown up in the occupied West Bank and witnessing Palestinians regularly brutalized by the Israeli army.“It’s odd because it happened in Burlington, Vermont. It’s not odd because it happened, full stop,” Awartani said, referring to the 25 November shooting.“In the West Bank growing up, it’s just something that’s normal. Like, so many unarmed young men getting shot by the Israeli army, and they’re just left to bleed out.“Therefore, when it happened to me, it was like, ‘Oh, this is where it happens. This is it.’”The three friends had come back from a trip to a local bowling alley, a fun activity meant to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday.Awartani and Abdalhamid told NBC they were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs – a traditional headdress that has come to symbolize solidarity with Palestine – when they said they spotted a man waiting on his porch with a loaded firearm.Awartani and Abdalhamid told NBC that they believe the man may have seen the trio before and waited for them to return home.The man then walked down from his porch and began shooting at them, Awartani and Abdalhamid said to NBC.“Tahseen was screaming. He was shot first,” Abdalhamid said to NBC. “Hisham didn’t make a sound. As soon as Tahseen started screaming, I was running.”The shooting left Awartani paralyzed from the chest down. His family has set up a GoFundMe to handle the high costs associated with his care.Awartani and Abdalhamid told NBC that they don’t think about the shooting. Their attention has been with killings in Gaza and in the West Bank by Israeli strikes, with Awartani calling the attack “one drop in the ocean of what’s going on in Palestine”.More than 24,00 people have been killed and 60,000 injured in Gaza due to Israeli airstrikes, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Israel launched the airstrikes in response to the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed about 1,200.“What’s going on in Palestine, it’s still going on,” Awartani said. “And, like, that’s more on my mind right now, how there are still people – like, they’re starving to death. There are still people who are being maimed. There are still people who are – like, you know, don’t have access to clean water. There are still people who are, like, being shot at protests. So that, to me, is far more relevant than what happened to me.”Jason Eaton, 48, was later arrested in connection with the shooting and charged with three counts of attempted second-degree murder. Police have not confirmed if they believe the shooting was premeditated or motivated by hate as an investigation into the attack continues.Awartani attends Brown University. Ahmed and Abadalhamid are students of Haverford and Trinity colleges, respectively.The attack on the three friends took place amid sharp increases in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments since Hamas’s 7 October attack in Israel. Jewish groups have also reported a simultaneous increase in cases of antisemitism. More

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      in Elections

      Florida man who assaulted police in January 6 riots given five-year sentence

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      A Florida man described by prosecutors as one of the most violent rioters who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison, court records show.Kenneth Bonawitz, a member of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group’s Miami chapter, assaulted at least six police officers as he stormed the Capitol with a mob of Donald Trump supporters. He grabbed one of the officers in a chokehold and injured another so severely that the officer had to retire, according to federal prosecutors.Bonawitz, 58, of Pompano Beach, Florida, carried an eight-inch knife in a sheath on his hip. Police seized the knife from him in between his barrage of attacks on officers.“His violent, and repeated, assaults on multiple officers are among the worst attacks that occurred that day,” assistant US attorney Sean McCauley wrote in a court filing.US district judge Jia Cobb sentenced Bonawitz to a five-year term of imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release, court records show.The US justice department recommended a prison sentence of five years and 11 months for Bonawitz, who was arrested last January. He pleaded guilty in August to three felonies – one count of civil disorder and two counts of assaulting police.Bonawitz took an overnight bus to Washington DC on the day of the Capitol attack, chartered for Trump supporters to attend his Stop the Steal rally near the White House.Bonawitz was among the first rioters to enter the upper west plaza once the crowd overran a police line on the north side. He jumped off a stage built for Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration and tackled two Capitol police officers. One of them, Sgt Federico Ruiz, suffered serious injuries to his neck, shoulder, knees and back.“I thought there was a strong chance I could die right there,” Ruiz wrote in a letter addressed to the judge.Ruiz, who retired last month, said the injuries inflicted by Bonawitz prematurely ended his law-enforcement career.“Bonawitz has given me a life sentence of physical pain and discomfort, bodily injury and emotional insecurity as a direct result of his assault on me,” he wrote.After police confiscated his knife and released him, Bonawitz assaulted four more officers in the span of seven seconds. He placed one of the officers in a headlock and lifted her off the ground, choking her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Bonawitz’s attacks did not stop until (police) officers pushed him back into the crowd for a second time and deployed chemical agent to his face,” the prosecutor wrote.More than 100 police officers were injured during the siege. More than 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. About 900 have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials – more than 750 have been sentenced, with nearly 500 receiving a term of imprisonment, according to data compiled by the Associated Press.Dozens of Proud Boys leaders, members and associates have been arrested on January 6 charges. A jury convicted former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and three lieutenants of seditious conspiracy charges for a failed plot to forcibly stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election.Bonawitz isn’t accused of coordinating his actions on January 6 with other Proud Boys. But he “fully embraced and embodied their anti-government, extremist ideology when he assaulted six law enforcement officers who stood between a mob and the democratic process”, the prosecutor wrote.Bonawitz’s lawyers didn’t publicly file a sentencing memo before Wednesday’s hearing. More

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      Crime in the US is once again falling. Can we rethink policing? | Simon Balto

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      Reports on 2023 in the United States are in, and a banner one is this: crime plummeted last year.According to the New York Times, citing FBI data, Detroit recorded its lowest murder figures in roughly half a century; homicides and shootings in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and most other major cities dropped precipitously; and car thefts were the only “serious” criminal category that didn’t see notable drop-offs over the course of the calendar year. In Minneapolis – which, after the police murder of George Floyd, became the epicenter in 2020 of the largest wave against racial injustice since the civil rights movement – homicides reportedly fell by 9% last year, gun violence by roughly a quarter, and carjackings by half.This is, of course, good news.To be frank, I’m skeptical (all of us should be) about the utility of crime statistics. They over-rely on police activity (what police reacted to) rather than victimization (what actually happened to people), meaning that those statistics often don’t reflect harms people experienced that they didn’t report to police (which is the majority of harms).And, for decades, scholars have convincingly questioned the legitimacy of police-reported crime statistics, for many reasons. I’ve seen this in my own research: as I wrote about in my first book, changes to how police in Chicago catalogued crime in the early 1960s provoked an illusory but powerful panic about supposedly spiking crime.Nevertheless, while crime statistics often lie, body counts usually do not, and at the minimum it’s pretty clear that fewer people were murdered in 2023 than in preceding years. Again, that’s a good thing.The question is: why? In a nation overrun with weapons that for years has been lurching evermore toward violence, why did violence decline in 2023?If you were to believe the Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, the drop in crime in that city was singularly a product of the police force he commands. The same of the New York City mayor and former NYPD officer, Eric Adams, who at a press conference last week touted the NYPD as the “finest police department on the globe” in announcing that crime in New York was down year-over-year.Similarly, a press release from the Chicago police department gave some credit for that city’s declining crime to community partnerships, but the majority of its praise on the subject went to, well, itself.Such claims are interesting. Were police just magically better at their job in 2023 than they were in other years? If police do a “good job” and are the sole reason why crime goes down in the years that it goes down, are they doing a “bad job” and are the reason why crime goes up in the years that it goes up?The insanity of trying to discuss policing in this country is that most policymakers, and many citizens, refuse to accept that those two questions are intractably related. It is intellectually incongruent to answer the first in the affirmative and the second in the negative. Year after year, for more than half a century, the United States has poured more and more money into policing and argued that it does so to keep people safe.Even in times of austerity, when funding for pretty much everything else gets slashed, funding for police generally rises. In times of plenty, funding for police rises. It rises when crime is high, and it rises when crime is low. When cities find that they need to trim budgets, the one thing that they almost always won’t meaningfully touch is their police department.While as part of his austerity measures last year, Adams did threaten to delay the induction of new NYPD officers, he also authorized $150m (yes, million) more on overtime in 2023 for police to patrol New York’s subway system than in 2022. That investment paid off with an almost non-noticeable increase in arrests for serious crimes and about $100,000 in fines for fare evasion, largely grifted from poor people, at the same time that Adams divested from other city services while blaming it all on the costs of housing incoming migrants to the city.No one can provide compelling evidence that this makes any sense. For decades, year-over-year crime rates have experienced peaks and valleys. The same is not true for spending on police, which moves ever-upward. Expressed visually, the two lines would look like a series of waves on the one hand (crime), and a straight line upward on the other (police spending).I’m not sure what conclusion people could muster from that besides to say that how much we spend on policing doesn’t actually matter, at least in the socially positive sense. If we spend X billion of dollars on policing when crime is high (or perceived to be high), and if crime rates don’t decline as a result of said investment, then why do we consider that to have been a good investment?And, in the opposite direction, why do we not question our investments when funding for police is at all-time highs and at the same time, said investments don’t precipitate a drop in crime statistics? Even the most ill-informed financial planner would advise against this based on the evidence.Maybe it’s not entirely our fault. On this matter, and as Americans, we are conditioned by blinkered political visions and blinded understandings of history to accept that the way things are are the way that they must be. And perhaps that’s a universal human condition; grasping for what we don’t know (what could be) is much harder than holding on to what we do (what is). But there is a uniqueness, I think, to the political wizardry of US-style policing: it has instantiated itself so firmly as the answer to societal issues that we are left with few obvious off-ramps from it when we witness or experience such societal problems.“Call the police” is what we are taught to do when we sense that we’re in danger, across all the enormous spectrum that “being in danger” entails, from the very real to the very racist. “Call the police” is what we are told to do if we get in a fender-bender because insurance won’t take your call without a police report. “The police” have become the social default if someone has a mental health episode or doesn’t use a turn signal or uses the wrong kind of drug in public or panhandles for loose change in the wrong location or sleeps on the wrong bench when they have nowhere else to go. Ad infinitum.In contrast, the key lesson of recent decades is that how we approach public safety is utterly nonsensical. If investing billions into police every year doesn’t meaningfully influence whether or not people are safer as they go about their lives, would not our investments be better made elsewhere?Chicago, for instance, recently began a guaranteed income pilot program, allotting an unconditional $500 per month to people living in economic precarity, versions of which have been adopted in other cities, too. Why do we not at least try new modes of operating to give people the things they need and that will better ensure they’re shielded from harm: access to both mental and physical health resources, to housing, to domestic abuse protection, and so on?My hope for 2024 is that we start asking better questions about these systems, so that we can find better answers.
      Simon Balto is assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. He is the author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power More