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   outside in the neighborhood, and called 911. Paramedics and police   
   arrived and began treating him, but members of a homeless advocacy group   
   noticed and intervened. They told the man that he didn’t have to get   
   into the ambulance, that he had the right to refuse treatment. So that’s   
   what he did. The paramedics left; the activists left. The man sat on the   
   sidewalk alone, still bleeding. A few months later, he died about a   
   block away.   
      
   It was easier to ignore this kind of suffering amid the throngs of   
   workers and tourists. And you could always avert your gaze and look at   
   the beautiful city around you. But in lockdown the beauty became   
   obscene. The city couldn’t get kids back into the classroom; so many   
   people were living on the streets; petty crime was rampant. I used to   
   tell myself that San Francisco’s politics were wacky but the city was   
   trying—really trying—to be good. But the reality is that with the   
   smartest minds and so much money and the very best of intentions, San   
   Francisco became a cruel city. It became so dogmatically progressive   
   that maintaining the purity of the politics required accepting—or at   
   least ignoring—devastating results.   
      
   But this dogmatism may be buckling under pressure from reality. Earlier   
   this year, in a landslide, San Francisco voters recalled the head of the   
   school board and two of her most progressive colleagues. These are the   
   people who also turned out Boudin; early results showed that about 60   
   percent of voters chose to recall him.   
      
   Read: Why California wants to recall its most progressive prosecutors   
      
   Residents had hoped Boudin would reform the criminal-justice system and   
   treat low-level offenders more humanely. Instead, critics argued that   
   his policies victimized victims, allowed criminals to go free to   
   reoffend, and did nothing to help the city’s most vulnerable. To   
   understand just how noteworthy Boudin’s defenestration is, please keep   
   in mind that San Francisco has only a tiny number of Republicans. This   
   fight is about leftists versus liberals. It’s about idealists who think   
   a perfect world is within reach—it’ll only take a little more time, a   
   little more commitment, a little more funding, forever—and those who are   
   fed up.   
      
   If you’re going to die on the street, San Francisco is not a bad place   
   to do it. The fog keeps things temperate. There’s nowhere in the world   
   with more beautiful views. City workers and volunteers bring you food   
   and blankets, needles and tents. Doctors come to see how the fentanyl is   
   progressing, and to make sure the rest of you is all right as you go.   
      
   In February 2021, at a corner in the lovely Japantown neighborhood, just   
   a few feet from a house that would soon sell for $4.8 million, a   
   37-year-old homeless man named Dustin Walker died by the side of the   
   road. His body lay there for at least 11 hours. He wore blue shorts and   
   even in death clutched his backpack.   
      
   I can’t stop thinking about how long he lay there, dead, on that corner,   
   and how normal this was in our putatively gentle city. San Franciscans   
   are careful to use language that centers people’s humanity—you don’t say   
   “a homeless person”; you say “someone experiencing homelessness”—and yet   
   we live in a city where many of those people die on the sidewalk.   
      
   Here is a list of some of the organizations that work with the city to   
   fight overdoses and to generally make life more pleasant for the people   
   on the street: Street Crisis Response Team,  EMS-6, Street Overdose   
   Response Team, San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team, Street Medicine and   
   Shelter Health, DPH Mobile Crisis Team, Street Wellness Response Team,   
   and Compassionate Alternative Response Team. The city also funds   
   thousands of shelter beds and many walk-in clinics.   
      
   The budget to tackle homelessness and provide supportive housing has   
   been growing exponentially for years. In 2021, the city announced that   
   it would pour more than $1 billion into the issue over the next two   
   years. But almost 8,000 people remain on the streets.   
      
   Alison Hawkes, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Health, said   
   money spent on the well-being of the homeless goes to good use: Many   
   people “end up remaining on the street but in a better situation. Their   
   immediate needs are taken care of.”   
      
   But many are clearly in an awful situation. San Francisco saw 92 drug   
   deaths in 2015. There were about 700 in 2020. By way of comparison, that   
   year, 261 San Franciscans died of COVID.   
      
   Read: ‘I don’t know that I would even call it meth anymore’   
      
   Of course, you can’t blame the plague of meth and opioids on my   
   hometown. Fentanyl is a national catastrophe. But people addicted to   
   drugs come from all over the country in part for the services San   
   Francisco provides. In addition to the supervised drug-use facility in   
   the plaza, San Francisco has a specially sanctioned and city-maintained   
   slum a block from City Hall, where food, medical care, and counseling   
   are free, and every tent costs taxpayers roughly $60,000 a year. People   
   addicted to fentanyl come, too, because buying and doing drugs here is   
   so easy. In 2014, Proposition 47, a state law, downgraded drug   
   possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, and one that Boudin said he   
   wouldn’t devote resources to prosecuting.   
      
   This approach to drug use and homelessness is distinctly San Franciscan,   
   blending empathy-driven progressivism with California libertarianism.   
   The roots of this belief system reach back to the ’60s, when hippies   
   filled the streets with tents and weed. The city has always had a soft   
   spot for vagabonds, and an admirable focus on care over punishment.   
   Policy makers and residents largely embraced the exciting idea that   
   people should be able to do whatever they want to do, including live in   
   tent cities and have fun with drugs and make their own medical   
   decisions, even if they are out of their mind sometimes. But then   
   fentanyl arrived, and more and more people started dying in those tents.   
   When the pandemic began, the drug crisis got worse.   
      
   In 2019, someone posted a picture in a Facebook group called B.A.R.T.   
   Rants & Raves, where people complain about the state of the regional   
   transportation system. The photo was of a young man, slumped over on a   
   train. People were chiming in about how gross the city was.   
      
   A woman named Jacqui Berlinn wrote in the comments, simply: “That’s my   
   son.”   
      
   His name is Corey Sylvester and he’s 31 years old. She posted a photo of   
   him when he was sober: “May he return there soon.”   
      
   Berlinn has five children, and is also raising Sylvester’s daughter.   
   Since she posted that comment, she’s become an activist, calling on the   
   city to crack down on drug sales, put dealers in jail, and arrest her   
   son so he’s forced to become sober in jail, which she sees as the only   
   way to save his life. She told me that she feels San Francisco has   
   failed people like him: “Nothing that is being done is improving the   
   situation.” Her work is nonpartisan, she said, but “I’d be lying if I   
   didn’t say I really want to see Boudin recalled.”   
      
   Not long ago, we met on a stoop by the Civic Center, where her son used   
   to hang out. She hadn’t seen him in months, but she spoke with him   
   periodically. She cried as she talked about his journey into drugs. She   
   said he was a heroin addict. He’d get sober after stints in jail, but it   
   wouldn’t last. “I’d see him sometimes, and he didn’t look that bad, and   
   that was how it was for 10 years,” she told me. “But then the dealers   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)