50 demands from San Franciscans

On Nov. 15, 2024 I took to the social media platform X with a post for the San Francisco community: What demands do you have for Daniel Lurie when he takes the helm as mayor? 

Applying pressure on politicians is tradition. In the 415, though, the intensity has largely come from fringe activists who have tried to force officials to bend to their will, to the detriment of the city. 

For example, Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness has been making demands for years, impeding city agencies from clearing encampments and increasing the number of people suffering on the streets. With assistance from lobby organs such as 48 Hills, she has managed to influence policy. And just recently, at Lurie’s first press conference as mayor-elect, SEIU’s Olga Miranda— no stranger to issuing demands — attempted to make labor’s implicit control known by taking her place behind him. 

Pet causes from loud radicals are rampant. They’ve been permitted to mob City Hall meetings, scream, insult, and throw temper tantrums. Among their demands: force San Francisco government agencies to pledge support for Palestine and let hill-bombing skaters who vandalized property and committed acts of violence off the legal hook. 

After my X post, a tremendous number of very different demands poured in. Angry and hopeful residents, workers, and business owners responded, sent direct messages, and unleashed via in-person conversations. 

There were substantial duplicates, especially those pertaining to department firings; approaches to crime, drugs, and street problems; and how to make the city more fair and efficient. Some changes are within the direct purview of the mayor and could be implemented swiftly, but others would take time, need legislative action, or require cooperation from the Board of Supervisors. 

In no particular order, here are San Franciscans’ top 50 demands for Mayor-elect Lurie and the new administration.

1. Beef up the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) so it is operating at full capacity. 
2. Reconsider Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s sanctuary city exemption for distribution of fentanyl and equally deadly equivalents.
3. Fire and replace Department of Public Health’s (DPH) Dr. Grant Colfax and Dr. Hillary Kunins, Metropolitan Transit Agency’s Jeffrey Tumlin, and SFPD Chief Bill Scott.
4. Purge Healthright 360 from City Hall, due to poor outcomes, bad management, and overdose deaths. 
5. Send a cease-and-desist letter to Jennifer Friedenbach regarding tent disbursement after the Grants Pass ruling. Fine or arrest her if necessary.
6. Increase the allocation of supportive housing subsidization to sober housing and away from responsibility-free housing.
7. Suspend the Police Commission immediately. Conduct an investigation on certain commissioners for crimes and corruption then transition it into an advisory-only board. 
8. Bring back mugshots. 
9. Require all the supervisors and police commissioners to take the Community Police training course.
10. Cancel all nonprofit contracts and make each reapply, adding a performance objective. If they don’t meet that objective they lose the contract and can’t reapply for five years. 
11. Eliminate restrictions on traffic stops for violations such as expired registrations, broken tail lights, and missing license plates.
12. Give service-resistant addicts who do drugs in public choices: go to shelter/jail, or accept a bus ticket out of the city.
13. Turn the Cow Palace into a drug rehab facility, not neighborhoods. 
14. Defund the Arts Commission and disallow them from removing public art.
15. Eliminate identity politics from city government, including ending DEI requirements, social justice language, the Dream Keeper Initiative, and land acknowledgments before meetings.
16. Organize a team to patrol Union Square and key neighborhoods to tell people who are doing drugs or misbehaving to stop or face arrest. 
17. Hold monthly meetings with the tech community to revitalize downtown.
18. Forbid DPH and nonprofit organizations from distributing most “harm reduction” drug use supplies.
19. Set up MASH-style hospital tents to provide immediate medical and psychological triage.
20. Disallow mentally ill people who clearly can’t take care of themselves to disrupt the public and suffer on the streets. 
21. Remove animals from people living on the streets.
22. Create the fentanyl equivalent of a drunk tank to get sobered up and urge users into treatment.
23. Force taggers to clean off their own graffiti. 
24. Hold concerts and events in Union Square every day.  
25. Stop all unpermitted vending, especially the hot dog sellers.
26. Incentivize health department workers to get drug users into treatment/rehab with bonuses.
27. Remove punishments for small businesses that can’t afford fines associated with vandalism and repairs.
28. Forbid all international affairs resolutions in supervisor meetings; make them focus on local issues only.  
29. Force SFMTA to move capital spending away from traffic experiments, including slow streets and shutting down streets to cars.
30. Focus all traffic and safety spending on making the 20 most dangerous intersections safer, without closing down streets or messing with turns.
31. Allocate more funds for fare inspections and institute a rider safety measure.
32. Create and enforce a civility expectation in public comments at City Hall and in committee meetings. Kick out people who swear and threaten. 
33. Reduce the bureaucracy surrounding below market rate (BMR) property application processes.
34. Have BMR housing in areas where families want to live instead of in dangerous neighborhoods.
35. Fix and repave streets. 
36. Remove barriers that have made building housing too difficult and expensive.
37. Reopen Market Street to private vehicles. 
38. Revamp San Francisco’s theater district, making sure we have the best new plays and shows.
39. Work with stakeholders to quickly fill empty storefronts with retailers in Union Square and the San Francisco Center mall.  
40. Confiscate bikes used by the “dirt bike gangs” and sell them at auction.
41. Expand the cable car lines to new routes, while also protecting cable cars against all closures.
42. Start fresh street-cleaning maps so routes make sense, clean every street twice a month, and add trash bins to every corner in the city. 
43. Kill the Health Care Security Ordinance for lack of use and return the hundreds of millions of unused funds to the small businesses who paid in and whose employees never used the benefit.
44. Ensure juvenile hall’s existence. 
45. Implement fingerprint tracking capability so distributed benefits can be tracked. 
46. Improve judicial case tracking transparency and accessibility, so residents can understand information about charges, diversions, dispositions, convictions, and sentencing, including which judges are involved. 
47. Prohibit endorsements of and donations to judicial candidates by elected officials.
48. Pledge that you [as mayor] will not support a public bank. 
49. Offer special tax incentives to companies with offices in San Francisco that have in-person employees.  
50. Require all elected officials to have social media accounts that they personally run, with which to update the public on exactly what they have done. 

Do I agree with all the demands? Certainly not, nor is it my role or intention. I’m just the messenger. If yours is not on the list and you want to share, email me at erica.sandberg@thevoicesf.org or comment on X: @ericajsandberg.