Bock, Gascón, Onek Square Off at DA Candidates Forum

By Greg Kamin

June 17, 2011

Three candidates for San Francisco District Attorney presented their cases for why each of them should be elected to the job, speaking in a packed room at the LGBT Community Center, Wednesday, to an audience of mostly campaign workers and volunteers, media types, assorted politicos, and members of the sponsoring organizations, including the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, San Francisco Young Democrats, and the City Democratic Club. And, perhaps, a few people like myself who are none of the above, uncommitted to any candidate and just wanted to hear their views on the issues.

But judging strictly by the applause-meter, the clear winner was David Onek , a criminal justice expert and former San Francisco Police Commissioner who is the founding executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. Onek is running as a reformer and an “outsider,” yet he’s no stranger to the halls of power. His father was once senior counsel to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and his father-in-law is Michael Dukakis, the former governor of Massachusetts and the 1988 Democratic nominee for president. He served in Mayor Newsom’s Office of Criminal Justice before being appointed by Newsom to the Police Commission. Still, his message that only an outsider can reform the criminal justice system, seemed to resonate with the audience.

Running against him are current DA George Gascón , and Alameda County Assistant Prosecutor Sharmin Bock .

Gascón is a Republican-turned independent -apparently now turned Democrat (as of 2011) career cop, whose head-spinning party-switching over the course of the last two years is matched only by the swiftness of his promotions by his former boss Gavin Newsom. Gascón is a native of Cuba, having come here on one of the “freedom flights” during the wave of Cuban immigration that would eventually form the backbone of South Florida’s right-wing Cuban American community. Eventually he settled in for a long career in the LAPD before taking a gig as a small-town police chief in Mesa, Arizona. Along the way he picked up a law degree at the non-ABA accredited Western State University School of Law. Then in 2009, his career really took off. Newsom plucked Gascón from obscurity and handed him the reigns of the SFPD, and then after barely a year on the job, appointed him District Attorney in an unexpected move to replace Kamala Harris, who had been elected California Attorney General. Gascón stressed his experience throughout the night. Incidentally, Western State did eventually receive its ABA accreditation in 2009, and Gascón is now in the school’s Hall of Fame as its most famous alumni .

Elected Officials, VIPs And Grassroots Slam Drug War | Cannabis ...

June 17 will mark forty years since President Richard Nixon, citing drug abuse as “public enemy No.  1,” officially declared a “war on drugs.” A trillion dollars and millions of ruined lives later, the war on drugs has proven to be a catastrophic failure.

The Drug Policy Alliance, the nation’s leading organization promoting drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights, will host a press conference at 1pm on Thursday, June 16 at the Newseum in Washington D.C.

Elected officials such as Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin and Congressmembers John Conyers of Michigan, Jared Polis of Colorado and Maxine Waters of California, along with celebrities like Sonja Sohn ( The Wire ), will speak at the event and call for an exit strategy from the failed war on drugs.

The event is free to the public and you can RSVP on our facebook page.  If you can’t make it to the event you can watch it live at the Newseum website.

This meeting will set the stage for the following national day of action.  Dozens of events will be held throughout the country, including major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and New Orleans.

These events come on the heels of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which released a groundbreaking report on June 2 calling for a paradigm shift in how our society deals with drugs, including decriminalization and allowing countries to experiment with models of legal regulation.  The commission is comprised of international dignitaries including Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations; Richard Branson, entrepreneur, founder of the Virgin Group; and the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Switzerland.  George P.  Shultz and Paul Volcker are U.S.  commissioners.

Day of Action events include:

Washington, DC: Leaders from African American and religious communities, including Rev.  Jesse Jackson and Dr.  Ron Daniels, will hold a forum at the National Press Club on June 17th to denounce current drug war policies.  Leaders will call for a new direction in drug policy that reduces the role of the criminal justice system and that addresses the devastating impact of drug policies on black communities.

Chicago: Hundreds of Chicagoans will gather at the James R Thompson Center to rally against the drug policies that have led to injustices such as the extreme racial disparities in Illinois’s prisons and jails.

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