pi-r-squared

November 8, 2023. The day 3 years ago I took this photograph of Daniel Lurie. Daniel had read my posts on X and reached out to meet. 3 years ago. Just him and me. No PR flaks. No security. We agreed to meet at the old Hibernia Bank building where he was attending a Salvation Army lunch that day. I said, let's walk the Tenderloin. He did not hesitate. Turk, Eddy, Larkin, Leavenworth, Jones. Drug deals in the open. Addicts using in the open. Bodies hunched over and passed out on the sidewalk. I pointed at those bodies and asked him if he would support MANDATED care. Yes, he said. He promised to re-empower the police, build MANDATED recovery beds, and stop handing out pipes and tinfoil that enable addicts. "I'm in it to win it," he told me. I asked him how he'd clean up the Tenderloin and he told me he'd put a cop on every corner in the Tenderloin if he had to. I believed him. I called myself his supporter and his friend. He looked me in the eye and sold me a cleanup story that never came. Politicians lie all the time of course, but I still believe in accountability. Three years later he is not a mayor cleaning up a city. He is a cheerleader with a PR budget, spending his own money to sell himself, showing up for restaurant pop ups on Instagram, and repeating the same tired line over and over and over and over again that we "still have a lot of work to do." That is not leadership. We are still a sanctuary city. Illegal drug dealers still poison our citizens with impunity on the same corners we walked three years ago. Watch JJ's attached video. This is Turk & Jones last week. JJ filmed pipes handed out. No treatment offered. No rescue. No cleanup. Same street we walked. Same poison. Same bodies on the sidewalk. The only thing that changed is Lurie got the power, and we got the lie.