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Clean For Xi but Not for Thee: Democrats Hastily Clean Up San Francisco Ahead of Chinese Visit


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | NOVEMBER 13, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/13/clean-for-xi-but-not-for-thee-democrats-hastily-clean-up-san-francisco-ahead-of-chinese-visit/

San Francisco

California Democrats hastily cleaned up San Francisco last week ahead of the upcoming state visit between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. On Friday, The New York Times described the scene in the city as one of “teenagers frantically cleaning up after a house party with their parents on the way home.”

“On Market Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, maintenance workers resurfaced uneven sidewalks and installed plywood over empty tree wells,” the Times reported. “Nearby, a crew gave a long-derelict plaza a makeover by turning it into a skateboard park and outdoor cafe with pingpong tables, chess boards and scores of potted plants. Elsewhere, workers painted decorative crosswalks and new murals, wiped away graffiti, picked up piles of trash and removed scaffolding to show off a refurbished clock tower at the Ferry Building.”

Why the sudden clean up after years of decay? Xi will be arriving Wednesday. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, which began Saturday, will draw 21 world leaders from Pacific nations along with 30,000 people to the Golden City. Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted last week the quick cleanup effort was provoked by “fancy leaders” who are “coming to town.”

“That’s true,” Newsom said.

As government officials work to power wash transit stations and clear homeless encampments in major areas, residents openly wondered what took leaders so long to clean up one of California’s largest cities.

“What about the people who are here year-round?” Marc Savino asked a local Fox affiliate.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed pledged cleanup efforts will continue even after the conference closes.

“We will continue to do everything we can to maintain cleanliness in our streets,” Breed said at a press conference.

For years, deteriorating health and safety conditions in California’s fourth-largest city have made San Francisco an emblem of American decline. Rampant crime and homelessness have left residents exposed to safety hazards while the jewel city of the West Coast remains prohibitively expensive to live in. Instead of implementing aggressive efforts to clean up, as residents saw last week ahead of visits from foreign leaders, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors prioritized leftist activism. In March, San Francisco leadership moved forward with a plan to hand out slavery reparations for $5 million per person to people who never were slaves, paid for by residents who never owned slaves.

In August, The Wall Street Journal published a feature on San Francisco’s downward spiral, openly wondering in the headline, “Can San Francisco Save Itself From the Doom Loop?”

“Downtown San Francisco now trails nearly every other major urban center in economic health,” the paper reported. “Retailers like Nordstrom and Banana Republic have announced in the past few months that they are closing their downtown San Francisco stores. The owner of the city’s biggest mall, located downtown, is handing it back to the lender rather than continue to make debt payments.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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SF Mayor Says Her City Is Drowning In Poop: ‘There’s More Feces … Than I’ve Ever Seen’


Reported by Andrew Kerr | Investigative Reporter |

8:09 PM 07/15/2018

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the streets of her city are flooded with the excrement of the homeless in an interview Friday. Breed, a Democrat who was inaugurated as San Francisco’s mayor Wednesday, urged homeless advocacy groups that receive money from the city to teach homeless people to “clean up after themselves.”

“There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here,” Breed told KNTV. “That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we’re talking about from humans.”

The streets of San Francisco are littered with a “dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces”, KNTV’s investigative team reported in February after surveying the city’s streets.

“We see poop, we see pee, we see needles, and we see trash,” preschool teacher Adelita Orellana told KNTV. “Sometimes they ask what is it, and that’s a conversation that’s a little difficult to have with a 2-year old, but we just let them know that those things are full of germs, that they are dangerous, and they should never be touched.”

There are about 7,500 homeless people living in San Francisco according to the city, which will spend nearly $280 million this year on housing services for the homeless. Breed said San Francisco’s high cost of living cast the city’s homeless onto the streets.

“About 70 percent of the people estimated to be homeless in San Francisco were actually housed in San Francisco before they became homeless,” she said. “We have to make sure people who live here, [and] sadly, people who are homeless here, that they are also held accountable for taking care of our streets.”

It’s unclear how Breed will hold public defecators accountable. She said Friday that harsher penalties for offenders are not on the table. Instead, she directed her criticism towards homeless advocacy groups, who she said aren’t doing a good enough job teaching their clients how to keep the streets clean.

“I work hard to make sure your programs are funded for the purposes of trying to get these individuals help, and what I am asking you to do is work with your clients and ask them to at least have respect for the community — at least, clean up after themselves and show respect to one another and people in the neighborhood,” she said.

Breed promised to address the homeless problem in San Francisco, but some residents don’t have faith she can steer the ship in the right direction.

“Watch your backs — nobody else is,” The Fed Up Populace Campaign told the city’s residents in a full-page ad Friday.

The ad was signed by an “anonymous disgusted female San Francisco resident (for now).”

Follow Andrew on Twitter. Send tips to akerr@dailycallernewsfoundation.org

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