The law of unintended consequences

The law of unintended consequences
Rodel Rodis, Jun 06, 2007

It all began with a column I wrote two months ago criticizing State Sen. Leland Yee (“O Yee of Little Faith”, April 2, 2007) for putting the interest of his financial contributors over that of his own Chinese American community when he opposed the 16-story campus that City College planned to build in San Francisco’s Chinatown because the Justice Investors group, which owns the 27-story Hilton Hotel Chinatown, did not want a campus building that would block its hotel rooms’ view of the San Francisco Bay.

After the column appeared on April 3, 2007, Adam Keigwin of Sen. Yee’s Sacramento office immediately issued an “Asian Press Beware” advisory which he emailed to various Asian community newspapers asking them not to publish my column because it was “filled with several lies and distortions regarding Senator Yee”.

Keigwin then prepared an article called “Shame, Shame, Shame” which accused me of “conducting a ridiculous smear campaign” against Yee, which, the article claimed, was a product of my “twisted world” and my “attitude born of arrogance”.

Knowing of the Filipino crab mentality and of our community’s reputation for putting our leaders down, Keigwin sought a Filipino American to use as a byline. He likely would not have employed this obvious divide-and-conquer tactic with any other ethnic group.

Keigwin needed to find a San Francisco Filipino American leader because the article claimed that “San Francisco voters approved bond funds because we support the mission and purpose of the College”. But because he could not find any FilAm community leader in San Francisco to agree to be its author, Keigwin had to settle for Daly City resident Ademan “Adie” Angeles. To give him some credibility, Keigwin attached the title “President of the FilAm San Mateo Democratic Alliance” under Ademan’s name.

Alice Bulos, the esteemed leader of the FilAm Democratic Caucus of California, notes that Adie’s organization is not recognized by the San Mateo County Democratic Party Central Committee because it only has one member.

After the Keigwin response appeared on the Internet, I called up Adie to ask him why he allowed his name to be used by Keigwin. Adie’s response: “Ah, politics, pare”. It appears he owed Yee big time because Yee had endorsed his campaign for a city council seat in Daly City. With Yee’s endorsement, Ademan avoided the cellar and placed second to last among eight candidates who ran for the city council in the November 2006 elections. (The topnotcher, FilAm Mike Guingona, was not endorsed by Yee.)

To his credit, Adie never claimed to me that he wrote the piece and anyone who knows Adie will readily agree that he is simply not capable of writing that polished an article in English.

On April 12, 2007, Keigwin wrote another hit piece on me but this time he used a San Franciscan in the byline. Learning his lesson from the Ademan Angeles fiasco, Keigwin used the name of “Aaron Peskin, President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.”

The article Keigwin wrote under Peskin’s name carried virtually the same line that he used in the article he wrote for Ademan which charged me with having a “kill the messenger” mentality. In the article for Peskin, Keigwin claims that I have an “attack the messenger” mentality.

The constant barrage of articles directed against me from Leland Yee’s spokesman produced the opposite effect he intended. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT Local 2121) emailed my Philippine News article about Leland Yee to the 1,850 faculty members of City College. World Journal, the largest Chinese daily in San Francisco, reprinted my article in Chinese. My article was all over the Internet.

When I attended a Filipino Bar Association dinner last month, two Chinese American Superior Court judges came to me and thanked me for writing the article about Leland Yee. “Finally, someone had the guts to expose him,” one said.

On May 30, 2007, the SF Weekly published an expose called “Shadow Play” about “who’s getting money from the hotel opposed to the new City College campus in Chinatown.”

The article reported that Leland Yee has “enjoyed financial support from the biggest opponents of the high-rise, the owners of the 31-story Hilton Hotel in the San Francisco Financial District…owned by Justice Investors, a limited partnership formed in 1967. Its point man is attorney Robert McCarthy, who is listed as “counsel” for public affairs firm GCA Strategies.”

“Records show that since 2000, (Yee) has received at least $19,000 in campaign contributions from parties connected with the hotel’s interests. They include $3,300 from Justice Investors; $6,200 from GCA Strategies; $4,750 from McCarthy and/or his wife; $3,450 from Noto, and $1,500 from Debra Stein, GCA’s president.”

On Saturday, June 2, 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle, in the front page of its Metro section (“Chinatown Campus Opponents Criticized”), reported that a coalition of Chinese American community organizations attacked Sen. Leland Yee “in full-page ads that ran Friday in five of the Chinese-language newspapers in the Bay Area for opposing a controversial City College campus proposed for Chinatown.”

“Among the ads’ harsh words for the San Francisco Democrats were: “You dare to rape people’s will, betray us, and threaten the community. Whose interests do you represent anyway?”

“The advertisements were paid for by the Chinese American Association of Commerce and undersigned by 81 community groups, including dozens of prominent Chinese American families and influential regional associations.”

“The fierce criticism directed at Ma and Yee is extremely unusual because Chinese elected officials are typically treated with deference by traditional Chinese community organizations and the ethnic press.”

“It reflects deep anger,” said Ling-chi Wang, a supporter of the City College proposal and the retired chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley. “This has never been done.”

On Monday, June 4, 2007, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “several hundred” members of the Chinese community rallied at Portsmouth Square in Chinatown on Sunday to express their full support for the proposed 16-story City College campus in Chinatown.

“Carrying protest signs that read “Come Home Prodigal Son Leland Yee and Prodigal Daughter Fiona Ma,” the crowd filled the square, signing petitions and listening to speakers demand that the proposed 16-story glass and steel structure be built immediately,” the Chronicle reported.

“We’re putting people before profit,” City Assessor Phil Ting told the crowd. “In our community, education comes first.”

Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com.