CannabiNotes

O'Shaughnessy's / Presidio Hospital / Hunters Point

by Fred Gardner

The New O'Shaughnessy's

The Spring 2004 O'Shaughnessy's — the journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group — is out. It's aimed at doctors who are open-minded about the clinical applications of cannabis and want to stay abreast of the relevant studies and legal developments. The editor (your correspondent) hopes the material will also be of interest to patients, caregivers and concerned citizens, too.

The CCRMG mailing address is PO box 90143 Berkeley CA 94709. Subscriptions are $12 for four issues. Single issues, by mail, are $4.

O'Shaughnessy's estimates that about 100,000 Californians have obtained physician approval to medicate with cannabis since Prop 215 passed in 1996. The figure is based on an extrapolation from the number of physician approvals issued in Oregon, which maintains a registry of medical marijuana users.

Hospitals Into Condos

"The Presidio Trust chose a Cleveland-based developer Monday to convert the Presidio's historic Public Health Service Hospital into an apartment complex with as many as 350 units..." So began a story by Katia Hetter in the S.F. Chronicle April 13. "The trust expects Forest City to pay at least $1 million a year under a long-term lease to renovate the hospital building and run the residential development."

The director of the Presidio Trust, Craig Middleton, is assuring the neighbors that the chosen developers are committed to "historic preservation" — as if that's the big looming danger as our public health infrastructure gets slid into private hands! What a slick misdirection play.

The Presidio's Public Health Service Hospital, which closed as a hospital in 1981 and has stood vacant since 1988, is a U-shaped 7-story complex with a central structure built in the 1930s and two wings built in the '50s. The driveway to the main entrance is at 14th Ave., west of Lake Street (a classy neighborhood).

When the AIDS epidemic was escalating in the early 1980s, some sensible citizens suggested that the USPHS Hospital should be used to care for AIDS patients and to conduct related research. The classy neighbors opposed the idea and — conveniently — the building was found to be seismically unsound. Decision-makers at UCSF also ruled out AIDS wards at the two hospitals on Parnassus Heights, and so the dying gay men were shuttled off to General Hospital in the Mission, a working class neighborhood, where the weather happens to be better.

The Presidio USPHS Hospital was a factor in my one serious confrontation with Mayor Willie Brown, which took place in late 2001. At the time some powerful figures in the city, including Brown, had it in for my boss, District Attorney Terence Hallinan. After KRON-TV ran a highly publicized hit piece in which SFPD narcotics officers accused Hallinan of failing to prosecute crack-dealing on Sixth Street, Brown called a meeting of all city department heads to review the tape and discuss the implications. Hallinan sensed a trap and sent me and his chief assistant, Paul Cummins, to represent the office.

The meeting was held in the mayor's spacious, high-ceilinged conference room. The mayor himself was all smiles, having just come from a meeting with the son of the President of China. He had invited reporter Vic Lee and producer Robbie Peele to show their slanted footage and to film the response of the department heads, about 20 of whom were seated around a magnificent oak table.

The KRON tape rolled, the lights came back on, and the denunciations of Hallinan began. Public Defender Jeff Brown (of all people), Presiding Superior Court Judge Alfred Chiantelli, and a politico whom I can't recall, each expressed variations on the theme: if only the DA would charge crack sales more harshly, life on Sixth Street would soon be civilized.

I said something like: "If you think all you're seeing when you look at those desperate people on Sixth Street is the effects of crack cocaine, you're kidding yourselves. You're looking at mental illness, poverty, alcoholism, malnutrition, unemployment, homelessness, HIV, hepatitis C... "

It was enough to break the momentum of the attack. To my surprise, the mayor looked at me earnestly and said, "What would you do?" I said that for openers there needed to be an accurate census of who was on the street and why. Obviously there would be two broad categories: people who could care for themselves and needed housing and work, and those who couldn't and needed residential treatment. Then I said, "There's a US Public Health Service hospital standing unused in the Presidio, off 14th and Lake..." As soon as I mentioned the location, the Mayor lost interest. I could see it in his eyes.

Willie Brown knows that God doesn't like seeing people dying on the streets while the public hospital stands empty — but He doesn't have as much clout as the bourgeoisie of Presidio Heights.

After the USPHS Hospital withstood the 1989 earthquake, I figured the "seismically unsound" label was a shuck. (I'd seen UCSF administrators use it to red-tag solid old buildings they wanted to remove or replace.) And sure enough, in due course I heard from another Presidio Trust tenant — a master printer and publisher of fine editions — that the engineer in charge of the hospital confided that it was very solid, in need of only minor structural repairs.

And they shall turn their hospitals into condos for a lousy $1 million a year... As if there's never going to be another earthquake or epidemic or unexpected catastrophe!

The Future of Hunters Point

The transfer of the decommissioned military bases to real estate developers in our time is comparable to the giveaway of public lands to the railroad barons in the 19th century. The developers already control the Presidio (the deal was facilitated by Nancy Pelosi) and Treasure Island (deal facilitated by Willie Brown). They will get Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, too, unless the community makes an 11th-hour demand to control its development — starting with the clean-up. ("Toxic waste" serves the same purpose as "seismic problems" when the elites don't want working people or students to use a given piece of real property.)

African Americans were drawn to San Francisco in large numbers because the shipyard provided decent jobs. Ever since it closed, the economic and social well-being of the community has deteriorated. At the start of the '60s, 17 percent of San Francisco voters were African-American. By 2001 it was nine percent and falling. Urban renewal in the Fillmore turned out to be "Negro removal," just like the radical city planners said.

Now that the yard is being transferred by the Navy to the city, its development should be controlled by the community. A community-based corporation should be formed to evaluate the pollution problem and the various clean-up technologies, including bio-remediation (using plants to leach out the toxins). By taking control of the clean-up, the residents of Hunters Point would guarantee (1) that the job gets done thoroughly and correctly; and (2) that their company gets the experience, the credit, and the money (which the feds acknowledge they owe).

This week a 29-year old SFPD officer — working undercover in the Bay View district for the gang task force — was shot to death in the passenger seat of a squad car as he began to question a 21-year-old black man. Mayor Newsom promptly vowed to send more cops into the community "to show how much we care." No way is the presence of more cops going to change the basic dynamic. Only by recognizing and starting to pursue their common interests will the so-called gangs — "Big Block" and "Westmob" — make peace. The leadership has to come from within the black community, it can't be imposed by an occupying force, no matter how humanely they're trying to operate. The unifying demand has to be: Hunters Point is ours to develop.

The cops and DAs used to say that the ongoing conflict between Big Block and Westmob was over drug-sale revenues, which both factions used to purchase recording-studio time. If the lads got it together to take control of the shipyard, they could have a state-of-the-art studio that would be the envy of the whole HipHop world.

Another useful business that would be appropriate for Hunters Point would be a farm. There are several acres with deep topsoil, and the climate is the warmest and sunniest in the city... But you know, dear reader, and even I know, that it's only a matter of time before the Stewart Group or the Shorenstein Group or some other developer seals the deal to pave it over.