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Mayor Daniel Lurie vows to clean up S.F., street crisis on display Mayor Daniel Lurie vows to clean up S.F., street crisis on display
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Bay Area//San Francisco
New Mayor Daniel Lurie vows to clean up S.F., with homeless and drug crises on display blocks away
By Maggie Angst, J.D. MorrisJan 8, 2025
Sixth Street has become troubling hot spot for drug use in San Francisco. The newly inaugurated mayor, Daniel Lurie, is vowing to clear the streets of drug dealing and homelessness. BrontA+ Wittpenn/The Chronicle
Andrea Halvorson, 58, sits outside City Hall in San Francisco during the inauguration of the city's new mayor, Daniel Lurie. Halvorson said she became homeless after fleeing domestic violence and has been living in a women's shelter for more than a year. Lurie is promising to move people off the street, improve services and build more housing.BrontA+ Wittpenn/The Chronicle
As San Francisco's new mayor Daniel Lurie vowed during his swearing in ceremony Wednesday to "treat the fentanyl crisis as the emergency that it is," the scene playing out a few blocks away on Sixth Street in the South of Market neighborhood plainly illustrated the challenges ahead for him.
A group of men sitting in folding chairs were passing out drugs in exchange for money and food. At least two people were experiencing a mental health crisis as they yelled into the abyss. Down a side street, groups of people stood together, smoking fentanyl and cocaine. Others were sleeping in doorways, passed out on the sidewalk with limbs dangling into the street or bent over in extreme positions known as the "fentanyl fold."
"This is what happens when they've pushed everyone off of every other street and funneled it all into one place," said Caleb Smeltzer, a 28-year-old fentanyl user who has lived on the streets of San Francisco off and on for five years.
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Lurie said Wednesday that he was going to "send a clear message to the city and the country that you do not come to San Francisco to deal drugs or do drugs on our streets."
Barricades are set up around City Hall during Daniel Lurie's inauguration as the city's new mayor on Wednesday.BrontA+ Wittpenn/The Chronicle
To do so, he plans to create a dedicated police unit focused on the areas around Union Square and the Moscone Center and open a 24-hour drop-off center this spring where police officers can take people struggling with addiction or mental illness. He's also seeking legislative approval to cut through red tape and expedite his plans to tackle open-air drug use and dealing.
And regarding Sixth Street specifically, Lurie is instructing police to expand operations from a unified command center that former Mayor London Breed established to coordinate law enforcement agencies' response to open-air drug dealing.
As a mayoral candidate, Lurie also promised to create 1,500 emergency shelter beds in his first six months in office, in part with the help of private donors.
"Good luck," Smeltzer said with a smirk when told about Lurie's proposals to tackle the city's drug crisis.
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Nearby, Ronnie White, 32, sat on the sidewalk, eating a sandwich with packets of the opioid antidote Narcan scattered around him. White said he used fentanyl for the first time after moving to San Francisco a couple of years ago and was living on the streets in the wintertime. Fentanyl, he said, helped him stay warm and allowed him to fall asleep amid the cold and rain. He has been hooked ever since.
When asked what he thought of Lurie's proposals, White had one suggestion: Open a site where people can use drugs under supervision and get connected to resources, such as housing and treatment.
Ronnie White, 32, sits near Sixth Street in San Francisco. White said he moved to the city a couple of years ago and began using fentanyl, which helped him stay warm and allowed him to fall asleep amid the cold and rain while living on the streets.BrontA+ Wittpenn/The Chronicle
"You don't really get change from coercion," White said. "You need to work with them where they are instead of expecting that they should have already been somewhere else."
The Tenderloin Center, an experiment set up during the pandemic by Breed, briefly served this purpose but shuttered after about a year. Although center staff reversed more than 300 overdoses, fewer than 1% of visits resulted in linkages to mental health or drug treatment.
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Johnny Kingbee Chavez, 73, who lives in the Tenderloin and voted for Lurie, said he's eager to see the city's new mayor make more progress on the street conditions in the area, especially reducing the number of people using drugs in public.
"Even though they did clean it up quite a bit, there's still way too many people on the streets," he said while retrieving his food stamps at the farmers market across from Civic Center Plaza before Lurie gave his speech.
Johnny Kingbee Chavez, 73, visits the farmers market during the inauguration of San Francisco's new mayor, Daniel Lurie, outside City Hall. Chavez, who was homeless for 17 years, voted for Lurie and lives in the Tenderloin. BrontA+ Wittpenn/The Chronicle
Chavez, who was homeless for 17 years and shot up heroin for decades, has been housed and in recovery for his addiction for several years. But he said he has seen too many friends and both of his sisters die of drug overdoses.
"This city needs some help bad," he said.
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In the hours before his inauguration, Lurie got an early taste of the pressure to promptly address disorder, homelessness and drug use in the most challenged parts of San Francisco. After starting his day serving breakfast to those in need at St. Anthony's in the Tenderloin, Lurie was stopped by Markus Darkraven, who said he was housed for 22 years until being kicked out of a building plagued by mold and infestations.
Darkraven asked Lurie about his homeless policies, and Lurie told him he would work hard to move people off the street, improve services and build more housing.
Darkraven seemed skeptical.
"We need to know who he is and what he's about. And we need to know if he's going to bring any fresh ideas or anything that's going to bring real change, because what we have is not working," Darkraven said.
Afterward, as Lurie walked around the streets of the Tenderloin, he was repeatedly stopped by people who wanted to wish him well or introduce him to their children on their way to school. Others lobbed calls for action at him.
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"Clean up this mess!" a Tesla driver screamed. "We need help in this neighborhood! Clean up the city!" another woman shouted toward Lurie as she crossed Eddy Street.
Lurie told reporters he would endeavor to make city departments work closely together -- and said he would often walk the streets to track his administration's progress.
"I'm going to commit myself every single day to be tireless in getting people the help that they need, whether it's into a mental health bed or a drug treatment bed or into a shelter bed," he said hours before the inauguration. "Tomorrow, there won't be any cameras and you'll hear about me walking down the streets of San Francisco."
Reach Maggie Angst: maggie.angst@sfchronicle.com. Reach J.D. Morris: jd.morris@sfchronicle.com
Jan 8, 2025
Maggie Angst
Reporter
Maggie Angst covers homelessness, addiction and mental health for the San Francisco Chronicle's city hall team.
Before joining the Chronicle in late 2023, she reported on California state politics for the Sacramento Bee. Maggie previously wrote for the Mercury News and East Bay Times, where she covered San Jose City Hall, reported from the front lines of California wildfires and exposed systemic deficiencies within an East Bay child welfare agency. She was awarded first place in local government reporting from the California News Publishers Association in 2021.
Maggie was born and raised outside of Chicago and earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.
J.D. Morris
City Hall Reporter
J.D. Morris covers San Francisco City Hall, focused on Mayor Daniel Lurie. He joined the Chronicle in 2018 to cover energy and spent three years writing mostly about PG&E and California wildfires.
Before coming to the Chronicle, he reported on local government for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, where he was among the journalists awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the 2017 North Bay wildfires.
He was previously the casino industry reporter for the Las Vegas Sun. Raised in Monterey County and Bakersfield, he has a bachelor's degree in rhetoric from UC Berkeley.
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analysis of article text
propaganda analysis
| concept | evidence | hits | links |
|---|
| | drug of abuse implied / mentioned
drug related
[news] [concept] | illegal drugs | | |
 | propaganda
drugwar propaganda 95%
[news] [concept] | propaganda theme1 propaganda theme2 propaganda theme3 propaganda theme5 propaganda theme6 celebrity scapegoat propaganda theme4 | | •Why Are Americans So Easy to Manipulate? (Bruce E Levine, 2012)
•Classic Modern Drug Propaganda
•Themes in Chemical Prohibition
•Drug War Propaganda (kindle edition)
|
 | hated group
propaganda theme1 50%
[news] [concept] | "immigrants" "user" | 2 | •Hated Groups (propaganda theme 1)
•drugwarfacts.org/druguse.htm
•drugwarfacts.org/racepris.htm
•America's Racist Drug laws
•narcoterror.org/
•Labeling theory
•Transfer (propaganda)
|
| | addiction 60%
[news] [concept] | "addiction" "hooked" | 4 | •Twelve-Step Snake Oil (2012)
•Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers (Thomas Szasz)
•Rat Park
•substance.com/stop-nora-volkow-l...
•iboga-experience.nl/
•lewrockwell.com/2013/08/stephen-...
•wakingtimes.com/2014/03/12/canna...
•Most People With Addiction Simply Grow Out of It: Why Is This Widely Denied? (2014)
|
 | madness, violence, illness
propaganda theme2 95%
[news] [concept] | "violence" "drug overdoses" "overdoses" "criminal" "death" "damage" "mental illness" addiction | 8 | •Madness Crime Violence Illness (propaganda theme 2)
•drugwarfacts.org/crime.htm
•drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm
•Distortion 18: Cannabis and Mental Illness
•No, marijuana use doesn't lower your IQ (10/2014)
|
 | survival of society
propaganda theme3 75%
[news] [concept] | "neighborhood" "the country" "our streets" | 4 | •Survival of Society (propaganda theme 3)
•The "Nation" as a Device To Create a Psychological Crowd
|
| | use is abuse
use is abuse 60%
[news] [concept] | "drug use" "using drugs" | 4 | •Use is Abuse (propaganda theme 4)
•drugwarfacts.org/addictiv.htm
|
 | gateway, use is abuse
propaganda theme4 60%
[news] [concept] | use is abuse | | •Use is Abuse, Gateway (propaganda theme 4)
|
 | children
propaganda theme5 60%
[news] [concept] | "child" "children" "message" | 3 | •Children Corrupted (propaganda theme 5)
•drugwarfacts.org/adolesce.htm
•Think of the children
|
 | demonize, war, epidemic
propaganda theme6 65%
[news] [concept] | "pandemic" "plagued" | 2 | •Demonize, War (propaganda theme 6)
•List of Wars on Concepts
•Perpetual war
•The Failed War on Drugs (2012)
|
| | celebrity scapegoat 50%
[news] [concept] | "Elon Musk" | 1 | •zombielogicblog.blogspot.com/201...
•google.com/search?q=celebrity%20...
•Scapegoat Ritual; Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers (Thomas Szasz)
|
| | drug of abuse
illegal drugs
[news] [concept] | various illegal drugs addiction stimulant narcotic | | |
| | drugs 95%
[news] [concept] | various drugs | | |
| | psychoactive chemical
chemicals
[news] [concept] | cocaine heroin opiate | | •erowid.org/chemicals/chemicals.s...
|
| | psychoactive pharmaceutical
pharms
[news] [concept] | fentanyl naloxone | | •erowid.org/pharms/pharms.shtml
|
| | euphoric depressant
[news] [concept] | heroin opiate | | |
| | euphoric stimulant
[news] [concept] | cocaine | | |
| | analgesic
[news] [concept] | fentanyl heroin opiate | | |
| | anesthetic
[news] [concept] | fentanyl | | |
 | opioid
opioid
[news] [concept] | "opioid" | 1 | •Managing Pain
|
| | stimulant
[news] [concept] | cocaine | | |
| | narcotic
[news] [concept] | opioid opiate | | •Managing Pain
|
 | opiate
[news] [concept] | heroin | | •Managing Pain
|
| | naloxone - opioid overdose antidote
naloxone
[news] [concept] | "Narcan" | 1 | •drugs.com/pdr/narcan injection.html
|
 | cocaine
[news] [concept] | "cocaine" | 1 | •mapinc.org/coke.htm
•drugwarfacts.org/cocaine.htm
•erowid.org/chemicals/cocaine/
|
| | heroin
[news] [concept] | "heroin" | 1 | •google.com/search?q=Alfred+McCoy...
•mapinc.org/heroin.htm
•drugwarfacts.org/heroin.htm
•Managing Pain
|
| | Fentanyl
fentanyl
[news] [concept] | "fentanyl" | 8 | •erowid.org/pharms/fentanyl/
|
| | various drugs 95%
[news] [concept] | "drug" "drugs" | 20 | |
| | various illegal drugs
[news] [concept] | "drug dealing" "drug overdoses" | 3 | •mapinc.org
•drugwarfacts.org
•DEA's Drugs of Abuse booklet
•drugwarfacts.org/drugtest.htm
|
| | youth 60%
[news] [concept] | propaganda theme5 | | •ssdp.org/
•mapinc.org/youth.htm
|
| | school
[news] [concept] | "school" "University" | 2 | •ssdp.org/
|
| st:0.01 fo:0 s:0.01 d:0 c:0.03 db:0.358 a:0.76 m:0.35 t:1.75 (f) |
text of article used for CRITICAL ANALYSIS, under FAIR USE provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107, et al.
| 
(video)
EXP - explicit prohibition propaganda (explicit_propaganda)
GRP - hated group (propaganda_theme1)
MAD - madness, violence, illness (propaganda_theme2)
SOC - survival of society (propaganda_theme3)
USE - gateway, use is abuse (propaganda_theme4)
KID - children (propaganda_theme5)
WAR - demonize, war, epidemic (propaganda_theme6)
TOT - total prohibition (propaganda_theme7)
DIS - dissent opposed (propaganda_theme8)
