Board of Supervisors Candidates on the Issues: San Francisco Fall 2012 Election

Where do they stand? We asked. A nonpartisan guide to the candidates’ political positions
Many observers complain about a lack of attention to the issues in city elections. It can be difficult for journalists, civic organizations and community groups to pin down exactly where the candidates stand on San Francisco policy disputes. Many of the candidate surveys distributed by news organizations and interest groups are limited because the questions permit evasive answers, focus on a narrow range of issues, or the candidates’ responses are not released to the public.
This issue-positions questionnaire for Board of Supervisors candidates in the November 2012 elections is largely based on recent divided votes of the board, covering the full gamut of San Francisco policy disputes, not just issues of concern to one or two groups. 

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S.F. Was Key Juncture for Chinese Immigrants

Conversation with the author of ‘American Chinatown’
In her new book “American Chinatown,” Bonnie Tsui charts the changing landscapes of five American neighborhoods. They are ethnically Chinese, hosting other Asian communities, and often share a tough history of exclusion and poverty, tempered from the beginning with resilience and savvy self-presentation. The five Chinatowns Tsui describes — San Francisco (the oldest), New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Las Vegas (the newest) — have been places of constant reinvention: immigrants coming to build new lives and identities, urban neighborhoods in economic and cultural flux. Today more than ever, they’re a portrait of changing urban dynamics and intergenerational complexity. 

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Pricey recreation center plan splits San Francisco State students

The student paper headline read, “Debate Already Closed.” But elsewhere on the San Francisco State University campus, the debate was just beginning, about a proposed $93 million recreation center whose bottom line seems to loom over the conversation about deep curriculum cutbacks this fall.

Students gathered Thursday in the Cesar Chavez student center for a teach-in organized by the Coalition Against the Rec Center, a group of students opposing the construction of a Recreation and Wellness Center. But the proposal has divided opinion on campus, with the president of the largest student group, which strongly backs the plan, declaring, “The project will never die.”