Who Wants The National Guard In SF?

We’ve heard it before. San Francisco, that dangerous, depraved city rife with thieves and fentanyl zombies, is out of control. Given such sensationalized imagery, the average viewer may mistake it for truth. The media would have the rest of the nation believe we’re rolling in our own filth over here. Indeed, as signals of the city’s downfall ripple out into the void, waves of trepidation come crashing back. Businesses, restaurants and storefronts have washed away. What circulates as fiction has real-life consequences: recently, Trump’s liberal sprinkling of the National Guard on his least favorite cities. 

San Francisco is no stranger to National Guard deployments. But unlike today, those occasions followed a real emergency. Ezra Wallach of the San Francisco Standard dug up some instances. The California State Militia were summoned in 1877 as Irish immigrants rioted against Chinese laborers willing to work for less. “Right now, 4.3% of San Franciscans are jobless,” Wallach said. “At the time [1877], 20% of all men in the city were unemployed.” 

Four deaths resulted from the Long Depression riots of 1877. Thousands perished when a M7.9 earthquake leveled the West Coast’s largest city. Guardsmen were deployed from the Presidio to help manage the aftermath. Troops had authority to shoot looters on sight. The death toll from the quake and ensuing inferno was initially reported in the low hundreds. On the morning of April 18, 1906, some 3,000 people died.

Wallach found that, besides disasters like 1906 or the ‘89 Loma Prieta earthquake, the National Guard comes for civil uproar. 34 years after the Long Depression, the Guard was ordered to San Francisco to quell another labor strike. “Bloody Thursday” as it came to be known “included tear gas, bullets, and two dead men.” (Wallach) In 1966, a riot erupted at Bayview Opera House when a SFPD officer shot and killed a Black teenager. Soon came the Guardsmen, patrolling our steep streets in military Jeeps armed with machine guns.

These are the conditions in which someone deemed it necessary to deploy the National Guard. Does anyone see anything of that magnitude happening around us? San Francisco is neither a heap of rubble nor on fire with the spirit of revolt, this morning at least. So why is Trump determined to send the Guard into the city? 

Techlord Marc Benioff alienated his hometown of San Francisco last week by telling the NYT he agreed with Trump’s intentions.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” the Salesforce CEO opined just days ahead of his Dreamforce conference downtown. This year’s event was expected to draw up to 50,000 visitors to our allegedly unsafe city. Comedians Ilana Glazer and Kumail Nanjiani were among them until they heard Benioff’s endorsement. Consequently, both comics cancelled their appearances. Meanwhile, Dreamforce came and went with “no notable crime reported.” (CBS)

Benioff’s appeal to Trump’s impulsivity riled up more than two professional comedians. Even our Draconian District Attorney Brooke Jenkins feels sending the Guard to SF is uncalled for. Per the Standard, the controversially installed DA has said “she ‘won’t hesitate’ to press charges against federal troops if they break local laws while stationed here.” Benioff’s remarks also grabbed the attention of San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. The mayor reportedly cancelled an event with the fellow billionaire upon learning his inflammatory support of Trump’s federal spending frenzy. (SF Chronicle) 

Mayor Lurie has only implied disapproval of Trump’s wish to send in the Guard without saying so explicitly. Rather than oppose Trump unequivocally, it seems Lurie would boast the city’s falling crime rates instead. "Crime downtown is down 40%; crime citywide is down 30%," Lurie said in a recent press conference. I’m inclined to think Lurie doesn’t fear Trump directly. Trump’s wealthy supporters however, potentially Lurie’s own ken, may be less inclined to support the mayor going forward. It’s possible he’s trying not to ruffle the wrong feathers.

Benioff later apologized for his remarks after the loud public backlash. He told the NY Times on Friday that he no longer felt troops were necessary. 

Marc Benioff is not the only prominent figure to imply San Francisco’s anarchy by expressing his support for the Guard. Elon Musk, having gutted Twitter to crawl into its Market Street corpse for warmth, also voiced his (unsolicited) support. At a White House dinner for tech moguls, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman called Trump “a very refreshing change.” (NYT)

Lump together SF’s wealthy and associated groups (GrowSF, TogetherSF, Neighbors for a Better San Francisco) and the self-interest is undeniable. They may not walk and talk like MAGA-hatted Montana militiamen, but they too share Trump’s values, like hating homeless people. As part of his “Beautification” of Washington D.C., Trump ordered all homeless people out of the capitol in August. Trump also threatened to seize control from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser if they refused. Neither happened. 

Except for the aforementioned militiamen, most of the people wishing to see SF corralled by the National Guard are rich. Remember how vocally Marc Benioff and Jack Dorsey were against the homeless navigation center on the Embarcadero? The shelter went up anyway and as expected, nothing terrible happened. In fact, the shelter got a two-year lease extension in 2022. Even some San Francisco residents contribute to its negative public image, dissolving the fabric of the city from within. They pass shuttered restaurants and storefronts blaming everyone but themselves.

SF’s character assassination is merely a back door for class hatred. Some people would sooner see the homeless killed outright. A consequence of extreme wealth is extreme poverty. Nobody chooses homelessness unless staying “home” means certain death. As long as someone cures that eyesore of cursed human existence, it seems San Francisco’s richest voters don’t care who does it.