One man does not a movement make

Chris Nolan often publishes some interesting stuff, but her insistence on conflating San Francisco's Progressive movement with Matt Gonzalez is at best unhelpful for understanding SF's politics.

This week Nolan points out that Joe O'Donoghue is a sleazeball.

No shit.

Like many of the people who have been active in the community-driven planning and anti-gentrification movements, we here at LeftinSF have been fighting O'Donoghue and his slash-and-burn approach to loft development since before Matt Gonzalez had won an election.

See, for example, Tom Wetzel's article on luxury lofts. (Make sure you have images turned on to catch the SF Print Collective's take on O'Donoghue)

Nolan's implication is that those of us who worked on Gonzalez's campaign are guilty by association with O'Donoghue, as he also supported Gonzalez. As is often the case, the truth is somewhat more complex than that.

The nature of the runoff electoral system is that the race comes down to a choice between two candidates. It may surprise Nolan that there was serious discussion among anti-displacement activists of sitting out the runoff precisely because of O'Donoghue's involvement. In the end, however, we became involved in the campaign because the issues are too important to let people like O'Donoghue be unchecked.

And, frankly, the list of contributors to Newsom's campaign was a lot more scary.

So, should Gonzalez be taken to task for taking money from an ethically-challenged source? Yes. In the mayor's race, however, his contribution list had a lot fewer red flags than Newsom's.

But more to the point, to describe SF's progressives as

a movement – actually, it's a fashion statement – run by hypocrites who tailor their politics to suit their needs all the while claiming higher moral ground because, well, because they're good people.

is, frankly, unfair, unhelpful, and just plain wrong.