The San Francisco Experience

The proximate cause of the riots and looting is the heinous murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin.  But the ensuing civil unrest has been co-opted by a host of bad actors like Antifa who have exploited the tragedy. Weak and uncoordinated responses by the nation's Mayors and Governors has made a bad situation much worse. Tragically, the neighborhoods in Minneapolis that have been looted and torched are predominantly minority.  The chaos seems likely to continue this week.  America's sprawling and decentralized Law Enforcement Infrastructure  is slowing down  a strong and effective response.

Does the Covid 19 pandemic represent an epochal inflection point in American history ?  Will we look back on this time as one of those watershed moments of how things used to be so much better or worse ?  Or will the confinement, shelter in place and the horrific death toll melt away like other national traumas ? These are some of the questions we confront in today's episode.

On September 22, 1975 would be assassin Sara Jane Moore waited outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco's Union Square to kill President Gerald Ford. The first shot missed the President's head by 5 inches. Our 38th President literally and figuratively dodged an assassin's bullet on the streets of San Francisco. I was present at the lunch, met the President, shook his hand and chatted with him before his brush with death. I heard the shots ring out and watched in horror as  the presidential motorcade barrelled down Post Street for SFO and the safety of Air Force One.  September 22 1975 and San Francisco were never seared into the national psyche the way November 22 1963 and Dallas were after the assassination of President Kennedy. But we were 5 inches away from suffering a smililar nightmarish fate.

This is my personal recollection of meeting President Ford on that Friday afternoon and the aftermath.

California began Phase 2 of the Shelter in Place orders which began eight weeks ago. Many of the state's 58 counties entered the early stages of re-opening the California economy - the 7th largest in the world if California were independent - with a series of steps including opening of commerce. But the proposed curbside pick-ups at restaurants, clothing stores and book stores is hardly the jumpstart that Small Business was looking for.  While construction and most manufacturing is coming back, office workers are still subject to teleworking for the most part.

Every Monday The San Francisco Experience does a wrap up podcast of Re-opening news in California and nationally.