Mayor Daniel Lurie is on the internet more than cats.
Our avuncular mayor is usually notably anodyne and disciplined, and a stickler for message control. But on Wednesday, he showed shockingly poor online judgment.
The mayor who has made “Let’s Go, San Francisco” his mantra, and improving this city’s reputation and curb appeal his raison d’être, has inflicted a ton of damage on San Francisco.
Yesterday, our mayor gave a free pass to useful idiots and bad-faith trolls to defame and undermine this city. All it took was one ill-advised click of a button.
This didn’t need to happen. It really didn’t.
Yesterday, the mayor and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood held a press conference at a construction site adjacent to the Tenderloin, trumpeting a proposed tax break for sellers of properties of $10 million or more.
Protesters from the Democratic Socialists of America were outside of the construction site; it was fenced off, and the fence was draped with an opaque orange covering so that neither side could see the other. This turned out to be significant.
Following the event, Lurie took to the internet:
At an event this afternoon, a group of individuals that were chanting “tax the rich” began to shout “tax the Jews.” This was an event I put on with Supervisor Mahmood, labor leaders, and dozens of workers to announce a plan that creates more jobs for those workers and housing for San Franciscans.
Suggesting that Jews are wealthy is a tired trope, and targeting our community at an event focused on creating economic opportunity for San Franciscans is decidedly antisemitic. I will never accept hate directed at the Jewish community or any community in our city. Those are not San Francisco values — we’re better than that.
The problem here is that this didn’t happen. There was no “group” chanting antisemitic slogans; this turned out to be a single, uninvited and likely mentally ill woman who crashed the event.
Mission Local’s Joe Rivano Barros quickly and thoroughly quadruple-sourced this in a story published early this morning; the San Francisco Standard’s Gabriel Greschler obtained video that verified this: The strident antisemitic chanting originated from one random individual who wandered into a protest.
What’s more, construction workers onsite told event organizers that they knew this woman from the neighborhood, describing her as abusive and “crazy.”
The mayor and others at the press conference could not see through the fence, and could not identify the source of the shouting. But Lurie went on to make two unfortunate decisions.
First, he posted about this without any corroboration; everyone knows everyone in this town, and one phone call — What the hell was that all about? — would’ve cleared everything up. Second, Lurie erroneously attributed jarring antisemitic invective to “a group” that had organized a demonstration.
This was inaccurate. And most unfortunate: The “Let’s Go, San Francisco” mayor has allowed his city to be portrayed by bad-faith trolls and gullible rubes — worldwide, with many in positions of prominence and power — as a menacing and dangerous place and, worse, a hotbed of organized, political antisemitism.
This is the key phrase here: A not-insignificant subsection of the internet was happy to pick up the ball Lurie tossed them and run with it by claiming that organized, political antisemitism is the inevitable outcome of leftist government in Democrat-run cities.
It’s a bad look, and one that garnered headlines from New York to Jerusalem to all parts in between, with outraged social media posts decrying Lurie’s depiction of the event emanating from politicians, candidates for office and millions of real and imaginary people on the internet.
All of this because of the uninvited outburst of a random and likely mentally ill person — a person who was, subsequently, chased from the scene by members of the Democratic Socialists of America, a group nobody is mistaking for the Green Berets.
As of Thursday afternoon, Lurie’s inaccurate tweet remains online and uncorrected, more than 21 hours after it was published.
His office has not responded to multiple queries regarding whether he will recant or modify his erroneous and damaging statement.
Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness says that Lurie called her at 12:34 on Wednesday afternoon asking about the disturbance.
She was not present, and is unclear why the mayor called her, but she informed him that the antisemitic shouting emanated from “a random individual” with no connection to any organized San Francisco group.
The mayor’s unfortunate statement, followed by radio silence, is poor form. His office has subsequently informed the Chronicle that it will not correct the mayor’s demonstrably incorrect statement.
And the damage is done: The quip about mistruths traveling around the world before the truth has had time to lace up its boots is often attributed to Jonathan Swift, though it could be even older.
Regardless, it was true when mistruths were distributed via a Gutenberg-style press. It’s even truer and more relevant now, in our chaotic and diffracted internet era, when troll accounts, bad-faith partisan tabloids and the requisite gullible rubes amalgamate to spread bullshit through the ether at the speed of light.
Following the antisemitic heckling, the San Francisco Building & Construction Trades Council yesterday put out a statement that was even more inaccurate than the mayor’s, directly attributing the objectionable chanting to the Democratic Socialists of America.
In an addendum on the Building Trades Instagram page six hours later, it belatedly acknowledged this was inaccurate.
Yet nobody said the simple words “I was wrong,” or “I shouldn’t have said that,” or “I’m sorry.” We’re living in different times, it would seem. “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” is no longer a question with the gravitas it once held.
But, truth be told, nobody is hanging on the words of the Building & Construction Trades Council. The mayor of a major city, however — and one with a sizable online following and a predilection for online discourse — is a different thing.
Lurie amplified what appear to be the unhinged rantings of a random person on the street. As a result, the eyes of the world turned to his city and perceived something sinister and organized and dangerous.
To be frank, it all feels a bit like the half-bright, misplaced rage directed at San Francisco in the wake of the killing of tech executive Bob Lee. That crime was blamed on a random street person — and, by proxy, San Francisco itself. The city was portrayed as a dangerous and menacing place, despite record-low crime numbers.
As you may well know, a wealthy fellow tech worker who knew Lee was subsequently found guilty of second-degree murder in his killing. This is not exactly an indictment of San Francisco writ large (and the killer lived in Emeryville).
Now, the actual activities of an apparent random person on the street are again being used to brand all of San Francisco as an unseemly and menacing place. Once again, it’s bogus: There is no organized political antisemitism in San Francisco and antisemitism is not a path to political relevance here.
Lurie, the son of a rabbi, is of course, Jewish. But as recently as 2022, a majority of the members of the Board of Supervisors were Jewish. Every reporter mentioned in this story is Jewish.
It behooves no one to delegitimize the very real issue of antisemitism by conflating the random shoutings of a solitary troubled individual on the street with a broader, organized and relevant movement.
That is a bitter own goal and deeply damaging. The people using this largely imaginary account of San Francisco antisemitism to denigrate this city are not going to change their worldviews based on accurate reporting.
The painful truth is that “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” is not only a question that no longer holds any gravitas. It is a question that no longer holds any relevance.
Thank you, Joe, for following-up on this. It reminds me of London Breed’s perpetuating the “doom loop” nonsense, creating a false image of San Francisco that harmed San Franciscans, and, eventually, Breed herself. If the rantings of every street person struggling with mental issues – or maybe even prejudiced – is going to be the measure of San Francisco, we are in serious trouble.
I’m wondering if this isn’t a “false flag” tactic. Everyone is talking about the perceived antisemitism. Nobody is talking about Lurie, again, working to give money to the wealthy. What happened to his proposal to give a developer $40 million to build a hotel at 3rd and Market?
Supervisor Bilal Mahmood was at the event and posted a message similar to Mayor Lurie’s. Surprised that wasn’t mentioned https://x.com/bilalmahmood/status/2026816462980264275?s=20
Thank you, Joe. Mayor Lurie should be ashamed of himself for bashing SF like that.
Enjoying the “even if it didn’t happen, it happened” comments. We are living in creative times.
Lurie doubles down to the Chronicle in portraying the loudmouth as a group:
“We heard a group of people chanting ‘tax the rich’ and that chant became ‘tax the Jews.’ If that chant doesn’t represent that group of people, I’m glad to hear that.”
Let’s not lose sight how antisemitic groups have showed up in San Francisco, tagging walls and breaking windows of businesses. Not that long ago, and on multiple occasions. Lurie’s post, just a fair reminder what’s right and what’s wrong (and where the hammer hangs).
This. Once again, people trying to minimize, contextualize, and yeah-but antisemitism.
this is like something out of the Trump playbook. One unhinged weirdo starts yelling something hateful, and suddenly the whole crowd is guilty. Denim Dan is clearly out of touch and not cut out to be mayor of this amazing city.
An astounding amount finger-pointing from all parties involved – can I point to an obvious one – a continued and inhumane acceptance of “street loons” in our city.
So if the Mayor had said a “person” rather than a group, would it really have changed anything? Antisemitism exists, in heaps of plenty.
Sir or madam —
The mayor could’ve done this in a way that didn’t enable bad-faith trolls to trash his city.
JE
The Mayor could tell the truth. That was a lie.
In short, yes. Because it changes the meaning of the sentence.
I wonder who organized the brigade of loons commenting on this article.
Lurie’s hatred of socialists led him to smear the city whose interests he’s supposed to be putting first. And to trivialize antisemitism which is, despite all the bullshit from people like him, still a serious issue.
Billionaires have class solidarity — maybe the rest of us should too.
It was a mistake to assume that the “solitary loon” was with the group that was heckling him. I have no strong opinions on Lurie other than one negative one: he flooded the election with his and his mother’s private wealth. I have not spent much time in analyzing his policies.
But in this very specific instance, I can both regret that he allowed himself to be emotionally triggered into lashing out in the general direction of the antisemitic insults and also understand that such things could well be emotionally triggering enough to blur good judgement.
Emotion is emotion. Letting emotion take over is not wise but understandable.
Anyone who will cling to the the stupid idea that San Francisco is inherently antisemitic based on this incident is, well, stupid to being with. I would not be concerned about those people’s thoughts or prejudices.
I hope that Lurie will make or has made a clear and sincere apology to the group that he conflated with an individual acting from their vicinity. And, for me, that would be the end of it.
Hey I know it’s not polite or whatever, but can we please start calling a lie, a lie? I’m so tired of politicians blatantly lying in our faces. The least we can do is directly identify it when it occurs.
Daniel Lurie LIED. Simple as.
The right wing media ecosystem is currently engaged in a campaign to paint big cities run by democrats as lawless cesspools of antisemitism. What do you think the reaction in that crowd would have been if Lurie had paused, and done anything other than immediately issue a statement unequivocally condemning antisemitism? Here’s a sample headline: “In liberal San Francisco, even their Jewish mayor is afraid to speak out against the antisemetic mob!” This might not have been Lurie at his best, but I don’t think he could have gotten a win out of this incident either.
Joe is one of the best writers in SF, but how exactly did he find it appropriate NOT to mention that the crazy lady found herself picking up on a protest led by the DSA, a hotbed of vicious and virulent anti-Zionism that often bleeds into antisemitism. Like that really is part of the story here and Joe, quite consciously obviously, decided not to name the group. That, along with his editors not forcing Joe to name the group, was a serious misleading mistake and shows seriously questionable journalistic judgment….in a piece questioning the Mayor’s judgment, at that. Bad news. Literally.
Hank —
The Democratic Socialists of America are named in the story multiple times. Thanks for the compliment but you appear to have missed something that was hard to miss.
JE
Wasn’t there initially…In any case, you know as well as anyone that the DSA harbors many (not all) individuals who simply hate Jews as much as they hate Israel. That linkage and that history is a critical part of this. It’ wasn’t just a random SF protest group that was being associated with antisemitic chanting. It was a group KNOWN for such activity, a group for whom the destruction of Israel is one of its guiding principles along with its domestic interests. That nuance and explanation is somehow totally missing from your piece when it is a KEY part of the story, which you know well.
Hank —
It was there, initially *and* repeatedly and you managed to miss it. Your claim that an apparently mentally unstable individual with an alleged history of coarse public outbursts was actually channeling the ethos of the DSA is dubious. The attempt to pivot here is weak and has little to do with how this was mishandled in such a way as to enable a disingenuous shit-storm of invective directed at this city.
JE
Yes.
@Hank Essay – It is true that some people associated with the DSA have said things bleeding over into anti-Semitism, particularly after October 7th. That doesn’t seem to have anything to do with this incident, and the DSA promptly and quite rightly tried to discourage the crazy lady and put out a public statement condemning her remarks.
It’s not a stretch to think that an organization that identifies itself as “anti-Zionist” on its webpage would engage in an antisemetic chant, as anti-Zionisim is antisemitisim.
The Mayor it seems was mistaken, but it’s not hard to imagine how, or why, when targeted with hate-speach from behind a curtain he might think it came from members of a group who believe there should be no national homeland for the Jewish people
Frank —
As we all learned from the “Silence of the Lambs” line, “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.”
According to multiple eyewitnesses, the woman who shouted the antisemitic insults is an abrasive and questionably sane person who shouts crazy things in public. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was the Democratic Socialists of America or the Book of the Month Club. You can make plenty of arguments about the dopiness or objectionability of the DSA’s positions, but that’s weak tea in this moment.
This could’ve been handled better. A lot better.
Best,
JE
Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-semitism. There are plenty of Jews who are not advocating for/engaging in the destruction of native communities in the Middle East through inequities of military and political power. There are plenty of Jews who are not shooting or beating unarmed farmers on their farms. But Zionists and their state backers in Israel are doing these things. My father, who’s Jewish parents had roots in middle Europe, lost distant family members to The Holocaust in the 1939s/40s. Historical images of Nazi tanks crushing homes in the Warsaw Ghetto had a powerful impact on me. In the 1970s, as a boy, I revered the IDF and its spectacular successes against Arab aggression.
In the 1980s I changed my mind. The change started with seeing images of IDF tanks crushing Lebanese homes. The rise of rightwing miltancy in Israel has transformed that nation into something I personally deplore. This is the Century Of Bastards, and Netanyahu is right up there with Xi, Putin, Trump, and the rest.
To say my feelings are anti-Semitic is equivalent to saying my hatred of Trumpets is anti-Christian.
To consider anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic is equivalent to saying that being anti-rape is anti men!
My Dad told me how his Grandmother would say “This is bad for The Jews” when she read a news article about gangsters like Bugsy Seigel. Well, 21st Century Israel is “bad for The Jews”.
Do you think the US shouldn’t exist? China? Russia? Or are you able to separate the history of those nations and their right to self determination from their current leadership? And if you are, why can’t you do the same for Israel? That’s exactly how anti Zionism is antisemitism
What if someone said yes, all states and governments are weapons that a tiny sociopathic elite use to inflict violence and oppression on the rest of us? How would you respond?
Castillo, is that an Ashkenazi, Sephardic or Mizrahi surname?
It’s a name that stands for truth and justice, regardless of nationality or origin, you coward
Okay joe, maybe the mayor mischaracterized the incident, but you’re going in the opposite extreme and attempting to minimize any semblance of antisemitism among SFs vast left political scene. There clearly have been numerous and persistent antisemitic incidents, evident in protests and on college campuses. These have existed for decades among the left, but brazenly increased after October 7, 2023 when they went into hyper drive. Not sure why you’re working so hard to minimize this reality.
Sir or madam —
Okay, the triggering incident had no merit, but …
Just stop.
JE