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Feb. 5, 2024 - Viva & Barnes
01:29:07
The Failed City of San Fransisco - With Independent Journalist Erica Sandberg! Viva Frei Live
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Time Text
I voted for the people that run this place.
Everyone who has anything to do with it should be ashamed and embarrassed and stepped down.
There's homeless people and drug people everywhere.
There's nothing going on.
Here, let me just try to find a human.
I'm just going to walk for a little bit.
There's no humans.
There's two people in masks coming up this way.
Let's see.
There's just...
I've seen more people smoking crack today than...
You know, last time I was here.
Because that's the last time I saw someone smoke crack.
There's just no humans.
There's no light.
Everything is closed and boarded up.
Here's a store, actually.
This looks like a store.
That's exciting.
It's just an unbelievable shithole.
Anyway, hope you're having a great night.
Ruben is not mincing his words there.
That wasn't the worst video that I had seen.
I mean, we've all seen the...
It looks like zombie apocalypse videos.
Look, I said the headline of this livestream is the failed city of San Francisco, but it's not only San Francisco, so it's mean or unfair to pin it only on San Francisco.
Where is it?
It's in Philadelphia?
It's like a zombie apocalypse.
I was in L.A. for...
What the heck was I down there for?
I went down.
Oh, for the RNC debate.
And I go to fill up my car with gas, you know, bringing it back to the airport, 8.30 in the morning.
Like, it's not to say it judgmentally, just zombie-like drug addicts approaching me at the gas station while I'm struggling to open up the gas cap of a rental car and I don't know how to do it.
I have to get back into the car and drive off, look at a video to see how to unpop the cap on a Hyundai, whatever the hell car I had.
Then I see a guy, butt naked.
Tweaked off his ass, running down the street.
So, in fairness, it's not only San Francisco.
In reality, it's the policy, the policies of the people, of the political orientation that are running cities like San Francisco.
Now, this stream goes back a while.
Should have probably just checked that we're live everywhere.
This stream goes back a while because people are saying, you gotta get...
A journalist named Erica Sandbergon.
You'd love her.
She's amazing.
She's covering this stuff.
She lives there.
She has not fled what Dave Rubin refers to as a zombie-like shithole.
She hasn't fled.
And not only has she not fled, she has remained one of...
I don't think I'm seeing much more of a vocal advocate to save the city that she loves.
I'm going to find out her history.
I think she's connected to the city.
Going back her whole life?
We'll find out because we are going into childhood just a little bit.
Everyone says, get Erica Sandberg on.
We make the connection on Twitter and now it's happening.
So, so everyone, eh?
About this thing, click the link and share the link around.
It's on Twitter.
Share the link so we can get as many people in here as possible.
What's going to happen is we're going to end it on YouTube in about 15 minutes.
I'm having my problems with YouTube.
Or as I like to call them, Commitube.
The little bastards...
Age-restricted my Elon Musk video.
The Elon Musk video where I break down his tweet, you know, basically show that what people call the vile conspiracy theory is actually pretty much like they've been telegraphing it for years.
They age-restricted.
Why, you might ask?
Because of a clip that I showed of John Miller on CNN.
They age-restricted my video because I showed a clip from an interview on CNN where the guy John Miller was explaining...
Why these migrants steal in New York and spend in Florida?
And he says, well, because in Florida you go to jail.
They age-restrict my video for including a clip from a CNN interview.
They cannot...
I have two fingers for them, which I will not be showing right now because I have a guest in the backdrop whom I'm going to be bringing in right now, Erica Sandberg.
We're going to get to know her.
If you don't know her, you're going to get to know her, but I think a lot of people already do know her.
So, Erica, three, two, one.
Erica, how goes the battle?
Oh, it's a battle.
It's fighting tooth and nail, feet, you name it, we're fighting.
So, by the way, you're in San Francisco right now, correct?
Yes.
So we're going to have a bit of a lag.
I'm going to make sure to stop at my sentences and make sure you're done before because the audio might get overlaid otherwise.
Erica, for those who don't know who you are, I get the 30,000-foot overview.
And then I'll ask you some, like, upbringing questions.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, I'm a San Francisco-based journalist.
I've been here almost all my life.
Incredibly, incredibly passionate about this city.
I am not leaving.
You can't scare me out.
You can't fight me out.
And you know what's really cool is I am not alone.
We are a force.
There are so many people who are behind me, in front of me, to the side of me.
So I'm just one of many.
But I'm also very vocal.
I have zero problem getting in front and screaming what needs to be screamed.
And getting the attention, which is really important.
Because if we let this go, the other team wins.
And I cannot have that.
That will not happen.
NUT!
Not while I'm here.
And since I'm not leaving, then that's not going to happen.
Now, your shirt says Sandberg Power.
That is merchandise, correct?
That you make available to the public?
Or did someone give that to you?
No, no.
Actually, this is kind of funny.
A few Christmases ago, I have a huge family.
There are nine people in my family.
And we're all really different.
Very different politically.
Very different socially.
And I made these up for all of us.
Because we all need to come together.
And I swear, if I can get with my family...
And all of us in the same room, and all with extremely different points of view, and that we all end up laughing together, it's the same thing in San Francisco.
So for me, this is sort of a microcosm.
It is a powerful thing to really kind of come together and not tear each other's faces off.
Now, you said nine people.
I presume two parents and seven kids?
Correct.
Yes.
Where were you born and where were you raised?
Second, I'm second oldest.
I was born in New Jersey and we left for California when I was 14 and have been here pretty much ever since.
I spent two years in London and went to school there.
But other than that, I'm in San Francisco.
I finished up my college here.
Your parents moved down for work, I presume?
No, get this.
Here's something that's very exciting to me.
The California schools were so good that they said, you know what?
We're going to put the entire family into New Jersey, which had good schools.
And we're going to go to the better schools in California.
That was back when California schools were number one in the nation.
You know where they are now?
I think they're in like the 30th.
So it took a huge dive.
But they did it because they had seven kids that they wanted to educate.
And it just made sense.
So what do or did your parents do?
My dad was a hairdresser.
My mom was a stay-at-home mom.
She had seven kids within nine years.
I have one sister who's 10 months younger than me.
So they lived a basic middle-class lifestyle.
And when my parents divorced, my mom descended into some pretty bad poverty.
So I've sort of experienced it all, the middle class.
Kind of nightmare of poverty and struggling out of it.
Now we're all pretty successful, I think.
I've been known to ask the TMI questions, but I'm going to ask it anyhow.
So you said seven kids in nine years from the same woman, right?
And no twins?
Nope.
That's actually technically outrageous.
My wife made me...
Mathematically, my wife made me wait enough time after one of our kids that we couldn't have had another one within 10 months.
And they say you're supposed to wait, like, I don't know, two months after delivery to do another one.
How do you do that?
I, you know, I remember being in the station wagon.
Yes, the station wagon.
And people would kind of poke their heads in and they would count.
And then they would look at my parents and look at my mom and they would go, Catholic?
And my mom would go, are you kidding?
That is wild.
And your dad was a hairdresser, so it's not to be judgmental.
I don't know if he was like a scrappy cocoa out of...
I was just watching You Don't Mess With The Zohan, so that's scrappy cocoa.
I don't know how the life of a hairdresser, but seven kids for a freaking senior partner at a law firm is a lot.
Exactly, exactly.
So for sure.
I mean, my dad definitely did not make a lot of money.
The other side of my dad was that he was a gambler and kind of did some stuff on the side.
So he's passed away a couple of years ago.
But yeah, it was very tough.
If people don't know what government cheese is, I can welcome you to the beauty of handouts and what we did.
When you say he was a gambler, and I'm not trying to be funny, was he a successful one or an unsuccessful one?
You know, in the beginning, I would say it was successful.
At the end, he was also an alcoholic.
And so you can't really be both.
You can't do both well.
You can either be a really good alcoholic or a really good gambler.
But together, they're sort of a toxic combination.
He lost it.
He lost everything, you say?
Everything.
Everything and then some.
But he was, you know, it was funny.
Here I am in this room right now.
We had a poker game here last night and we were talking about my dad.
He was an incredible poker player.
Incredible.
So, you know, there's pros and cons with people.
I don't believe anything is black and white.
We're all gray.
And so the seven siblings grew up in California.
So what is life?
Well, first of all, I don't know, when did your parents get divorced and how did that affect your life growing up with seven kids?
Do you go all with your mother or was there like joint custody?
Yeah, it's a great question.
So when I was just starting college, I left because my parents were in just the divorce took.
Forever.
It was like a years-long strife.
And I was like, I'm a good-time gal.
I just like to laugh and have fun and enjoy life.
And it was dark.
It was so dark and gloomy.
So when I had the chance to go to England, I did.
I took off.
As soon as I did, everything just blew up.
Or actually, I say, fell to the bottom.
I'm not revealing too much.
I'm pretty open about it.
My mom descended into pretty extreme poverty, ended up living in her car with a couple of my siblings.
It was really hard.
It was really hard to get those phone calls and to know that that was what was happening.
And she didn't want to burden me.
She didn't want to burden anybody else.
But it was some really dark, horrible times.
And because of that, I feel very...
My heart opens up.
To people in desperate circumstances because it was quite desperate.
It was quite desperate.
Thankfully, my mom is a really social person.
She had friends.
She had networks.
She is very gregarious and got back on her feet not too long.
But there were the projects.
Oh, yeah, there were projects.
There was handouts.
There was pretty wild.
And, you know, I was far away.
I kind of didn't want to hear in many ways because I was very young.
And you say it's London, England, not London, Ontario, right?
Correct.
Okay, and what are you studying out there?
I studied art history.
Okay.
Study art history, two years in London, England.
This is, I presume also, you know, I don't know how long ago, and I won't ask, but this is when London was a different city than what it is today.
London back then, and God, what year?
It was in the late 80s.
It was interesting because...
The unemployment was so high.
I knew so many people who could not get a job, who were not working, who wanted to work, who were scraping by.
I was scraping by.
You know, I remember this.
I was kind of cute back then.
And dating for money.
Or not dating for money.
Dating for food.
I'm like, yeah, you want to take me out for a date?
I get a meal out of this?
I'm in.
That's as far as I went.
But I can tell you.
It was that bad.
I did not have cash.
I did not have money and there was no means to get it.
So, sorry all you guys who took me out.
Oh, never mind.
There's internet jokes in there.
So, you studied two years art history in London and then you eventually come back to California.
Yeah, I finished up at San Francisco State.
What did you study at San Francisco State?
Art history as well or journalism?
I graduated with.
Yeah, and it was funny because I minored in women's studies, which was, you know, really, you know, boy, can you sure get a job with that.
I'll make the obvious joke, but I studied philosophy, which is another one of the things you don't get jobs with out of school, but that's why you go on to study law afterwards.
No, you should study what you love.
I mean, I really loved it.
It was erudite.
I loved reading.
Different points of view.
I loved digging into the extreme, and it was very extreme.
And I think I benefited from it.
I became successful in other ways.
So I thought I was going to become an art, a work in a museum, whatever, doing some sort of management there, and that was a joke.
What's the word for the person who managed?
It's not a curator.
The person who managed...
Say that again?
I wanted to be a curator.
A curator, okay.
Okay, well now, I guess what we're going to do here, Erica, it doesn't change anything from our end.
I'm going to end this on YouTube, those commie bastards, and we're going to take it over to Rumble.
Doesn't change anything on our end.
Did I put the link up there?
Hold on one second.
Did I put the link up?
I did.
The pinned link is there.
Anybody who wants to come watch this on Locals, I'll give that link as well.
And we're going to end transmission on YouTube, those bastards.
Okay.
Rumble, here we come.
Three, two, one.
Okay.
Change is nothing here.
We continue.
So, Erica, so, I mean, So you're finishing your art degree and women's studies at San Francisco U, which I presume is in San Francisco or the outskirts.
And then what happens?
Like, what happens with the rest of your life?
How do you get into journalism?
Oh, gosh.
So I actually ended up being a budget and debt counselor.
Which was the perfect, there was no jobs in, you know, art.
That just did not exist.
So I thought, well, what am I going to do?
Long story short, I ended up as a budget and debt counselor for a nonprofit organization, which was perfect for me because I can live on just about nothing.
And I learned, because I learned, I learned how to do it just by doing it.
And that worked really well.
I wrote a book, personal finance book, got my certificate in personal finance, a degree in that, or certificate in that.
And after a while, I still live in San Francisco, and I saw my city take a turn for the worse.
It got grim.
It was such a beautiful, vibrant, positive city with a lot going on, where everybody wanted to be.
I would walk around going, "Yeah, I'm from San Francisco." The pride was just through the roof.
I was always, always so thrilled to be able to say...
I am from San Francisco.
This is my city.
And people go, oh my gosh, I love your city.
I love it so much.
I wish I could live there.
Even my daughter, who was very young at the time, when she was in third grade, all the school kids in third grade, they would do a project called Tell Us, Write a Poem About Your City.
And it was this ode to the magnificence.
I'm not sure they do that anymore, because what are they going to write about?
I'm not asking this to date you or age you.
I was just thinking, and I was talking in our locals community, I was in San Francisco, I think for an afternoon in 2001.
I think I remember seeing the steep hills with the trolley cars, and we drove in, we drove out, it was with my girlfriend, now wife.
What decade was San Francisco the mecca or one of the seven wonders of the world city?
Because I don't remember it in my lifetime.
Really?
Oh my God.
I guess perspective counts, right?
So the 90s, I think, were spectacular.
It was a time of hope.
It was a time of people were flooding into the city.
You know, good luck trying to get an apartment.
But it was just packed.
The energy was palpable.
The intensity, the excitement.
And it was definitely a...
A wild time to be here.
But on into the early 2000s, into the 20th, as we moved out of the 90s, it was the same.
It really started to get bad, I would say, about eight years ago.
I've always documented the issue on our streets.
I can't help it.
I just want to see.
I want to tell the truth.
And there were always people on the streets.
In fact, it was funny.
I remember...
When I first moved to San Francisco, a guy from London met me here.
And he said, "Meet me at Civic Center, BART station." And I didn't even know what that was.
I'm like, "Yeah, okay." I was 20 minutes late.
He said, "Don't you ever do that to me again." Because I looked around and there were bodies all over.
And that was my first real experience with it.
So that has always been.
But over...
It's not the whole city.
It's certain pockets.
These are areas.
That's why when...
Dave Rubin made that video.
I kind of laughed.
I'm like, it's not the whole city, my dear.
Please come, come join me because I wouldn't be here if that was the case.
Okay, so actually before we get into the, you know, not the downfall, but the degradation of San Francisco, you are working for a not-for-profit.
And hold on one second, let me just see.
Have I pulled up the right book in the backdrop?
Amazon, is it called Expecting Money?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, then that's it right here.
I'm going to share the link with everybody.
So you write a book.
Very cool.
And so when do you end up and how do you end up getting into journalism?
Pretty easy.
I left my job the day that book hit the shelves.
Like, bye!
I was done.
It was a non-profit organization.
I wasn't making very much money.
So I thought, I'm just going to go launch my own business, which I did.
Started writing as a personal finance writer.
Columnist.
Advice columnist.
Did a lot of stories.
I became a journalist for the banking industry.
That's what I did.
But concurrently, that's when San Francisco started to fall.
That was 2008, 2010, and it got ugly fast.
But what angered me was that nobody was telling the truth.
The media was not reporting exactly what was happening and who was to blame.
And that really made me angry because if you don't put your finger on it, if you don't identify who, what, where, when, why, how, you fail.
And that made me really angry because...
It was like this big joke.
Nobody was telling the truth.
And so I thought, well, I'm going to start.
And I think I started my very first was when I wrote a story for National Review.
At that time, I wouldn't even define, I was a Democrat, had always been a Democrat.
They were willing to publish my story on Proposition 47, which was that horrible law that made shoplifting practically legal.
And that was it.
That was the beginning of my real career as a journalist, focusing on San Francisco, focusing on crime, safety, homelessness, drugs, you name it.
Let me bring this up here.
I think this is it.
Proposition 47. Hold on.
Hey, where am I?
I have this in the backdrop.
Hold on.
Where the heck?
I have the link.
Okay, hold on a second.
I'll remove that.
Where's the link?
Oh, it's right there.
I'm an idiot.
Add to stage.
Proposition 47. Prop 47 was a ballot measure passed by California voters on November 5, 2014.
The law made some non-violent property crimes where the value does not exceed $950 into misdemeanors.
It also made the simple drug possession offenses into misdemeanors.
It also provides that past convictions for these charges may be reduced to misdemeanor by a court.
Under Prop 47, you may qualify for a deduction from a felony, yada, yada, yada.
Okay.
So basically, decriminalizing crime.
So let's, I mean, everyone always understood the West Coast always had more homelessness simply because of the weather.
I remember going, like, I've been to San Diego a number of times.
My wife has these neural conferences there.
British Columbia always had more homelessness, but Canada's still colder than the South.
That's one obvious reason for the homelessness.
When you start talking about passing bills like this, which basically, I don't know, what is the rationale?
What's the justification?
How are they cloaked at the time?
In terms of enacting such idiotic policy.
Yeah, that was a George Gascon nightmare.
He really kind of ushered this whole idea in of emptying the jails, justice, not incarcerating people, having some other way of dealing with crime, which ended up being what this is, which is crime is not prosecuted.
Our jails are emptier.
There is no school to prison pipeline.
Don't give me that nonsense.
It does not exist.
There is no carcerelle state.
It does not exist.
And I kind of hear this nonsense over and over again.
But Proposition 47 is a California law.
It completely changed the way we, excuse me, a San Francisco law.
It changed the way we deal with it.
With shoplifting, but also drug possession.
You can steal from a store $950 worth of merchandise, just under, right?
And you can do it not just once a day.
You can do it multiple times a day at different stores because it's per incident.
So it really opened the door to chaos.
And how it links to San Francisco is look around our city.
We have empty stores.
We have empty storefronts.
We have blight.
And the reason that we do primarily is because of uplifting.
And it is a complete lie to say that it has not impacted our retail environment.
It has.
So there's a saying, I don't even know where I got it, but don't blow air up my skirt.
I know the don't blow smoke up my ass one, but that's just from a movie.
I don't remember what movie it's from.
When people say like, oh, it doesn't have an impact, I'm like, don't blow air up my skirt.
I can tell you it does.
It's idiotic.
Well, we're going to get into whether or not it's by design, but it's true.
$950 per infraction.
So instead of stealing $5,000 from one store and instead of decriminalizing, I don't know what the rationale is to make theft a lesser crime.
Okay, fine.
You want to empty out the jails.
That's almost like incentivizing.
More shoplifting at smaller levels across various stores.
Sorry.
It's so brazen.
It is so brazen.
I can walk into my local, and in fact I just did, into my local Walgreens and watch, with my own eyes, watch.
People shoveling stuff into bags, people walking out, just simply treating a Walgreens or Safeway like it's their kitchen.
So that's 2014.
San Francisco has always been sort of the mecca of tech in America, or at least since tech has been a thing.
It's been the hubs for three decades, right?
Correct.
And when they say it's one of the richest cities, that is because of this...
Call it the 1%, but that's because of this tech elite, entrepreneurial elite that make a lot of money and it balances out for those who don't?
Yes and no.
I mean, I think they're a big element.
The other element is old school San Franciscans.
People who have been here for generations.
This is generational wealth.
And it's something that I actually approve of.
I love it.
I'm like, yes, we've got these families with deep ties to the city.
They're the ones who have the houses.
That are magnificent in Pacific Heights and Laurel Village and Seacliff and these just stunning.
So it's not just tech money.
It's also people have been here for a long, long time and are not leaving.
All right.
So let's say we can track the downfall to if Gascon has had some other issues.
I know we've talked about him many times on this channel.
Prop 47. And so you write an article for the National Review and it goes back in the age of this is.
It goes viral.
Yeah.
Back then, it was probably not the word viral back then, but it did very well.
And I was invited to write for many other publications.
City Journal is one of my all-time favorite publications.
I do a lot of work for them on these subjects.
But, you know, the New York Post, love them.
I actually love the sort of salaciousness.
It just fits my personality, too.
Yeah, I mean, I'll write for anybody.
I'll go, I'll appear anywhere.
Fox News, CNN, I don't really care.
I'll go anywhere.
Because I want to tell.
I want to tell that story.
And I'm honored to be able to tell that story.
Well, the thing is, there's not many people doing it, honestly.
And I would say there's not many people crazy enough to do it.
Because even when I look at Ruben walking the streets, I'm like, dude...
Part of me wants to go do it, and the other part of me says I'm a neurotic kid.
I'm not doing it.
I don't like seeing vomit.
I don't like seeing any of this stuff.
And enough people do it that I don't have to do it.
So not a lot of people are doing it.
So you write this article, 2014.
And then what are the other, like, if you can put bookmarks, it's like, oh, we've just reached the next...
The next level of the Heideggerian ladder, whatever it is.
We've reached the next level of the debauchery.
What was the next step after Prop 47?
The drug issue really spiraled out of control.
It was fentanyl that really hit the scene.
And the drug dealing that came with that was, it just, it changed.
It changed the topography of the city.
It changed it.
We've always had people doing drugs on the street.
Usually heroin.
Usually meth.
But when fentanyl came along and people were making money hand over fist, then you saw the total change in our communities.
And I mean dramatic.
The dealers were thick on the streets.
I could go down not too many blocks from my home and be shoulder to shoulder with these young guys from Honduras.
Selling fentanyl, making money like you have never...
I mean, I don't even know how much money they made.
I know that they funded a lot of their homes in Honduras.
That's where the money went.
Even the Chronicle published that.
But yeah, the extraordinary revenue that they managed to scrape up by doing that just changed everything.
And it killed people.
And on top of that, then you had...
We had a Department of Public Health who refused, absolutely refused to acknowledge that we have an addiction problem and that people were coming into the city to buy drugs, do drugs, and then die.
So you had this confluence of events.
It got crazy.
When you say thick on the street in terms of drugs, you mean a lot of them?
A lot.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Yes.
And not to be, if I ever ask racial type questions, it's controversial.
You say they're from Honduras, from South America?
Yeah, yeah.
These are cartels.
So it is a highly organized network.
The ingredients are created in China.
The fentanyl, the illegal fentanyl, is created in Mexico.
And then it transports into San Francisco via Honduran, mostly Sinaloa.
Gangs.
And they are here on the streets.
Now, they're being broken up right now, which is really cool.
But at the moment, I mean, just before this, seconds ago, it was pretty crazy.
Well, we're going to get into...
This is now 2015-ish.
Is this before Trump comes into office or right at the same time?
Or after he's already in office?
My question is this.
Trump comes in and says, we're going to build the wall, they're sending rapists, criminals, murderers, and I'm paraphrasing the way it was misquoted in the media, but he comes in with this policy that seemingly everybody understands is necessary, at least they do now eight years later.
They paint it as racist at the time, but you're sitting there living through the consequences of not implementing this policy.
My question is, what is going on in the minds of the people who see it on a day-to-day but nonetheless want to come out and call Trump racist and extremist?
Yeah, for a long time it was this.
I don't want to see it.
I don't want to hear it.
I don't want to speak of it.
For a long time.
Now, when you have that situation going on, then the whole thing festers.
It gets worse, which is what we had.
Trump...
You know, this is an extremely liberal city.
I can't even imagine that there's more than a handful of people who voted for Trump.
And I mean, I think really this was just, this happens, it just happened despite him.
There was no real impact on the city with that.
It's unbelievable.
All right.
So, well, I say South American, and are these like what are known as MS-13 gangs?
Yeah, and I have to tell you, you know, they left me alone.
I would take, this was like during the pandemic, which really, really had the major impact on the city.
The 2020, the riots, it was infuriating.
I mean, this is where I get really angry because we really almost encouraged the nightmare on our street.
But I would take people down.
For tours.
I'm like, let's go.
I will take you to the Tenderloin.
I will take you exactly where Dave Rubin went, which, by the way, was Union Square.
Not too bad.
But I can take you down to the worst of the worst.
And I was giving people tours.
I'm like, come with me.
Let's go.
You need to see this.
You need to see this.
If you're game, I'm game.
Let's go.
So we would walk down, and I'm like, don't say a word.
Just observe.
Observe.
Then we're going to come back.
We're going to have a drink, and we're going to talk about what we saw.
That went through the roof.
I must have done that, gosh, probably 15 times with journalists, politicians, regular people, shopkeepers, kids.
I wanted everyone to see it.
But the people who were on the street and were selling drugs or doing drugs, it was like you're going through a dream.
They're in their own world.
They're focused on what they're doing.
They're not focused on you.
If you've got no business there, they leave you alone.
And if I'm there by myself, very often the dealers are super sweet.
I usually wear my fedora and they wear their hats and I tip mine and they tip theirs.
I get left alone.
Overall, it's not a dangerous situation for just regular people.
I think you're nuts.
I remember one time when I lived in Paris in 1999 to 2000, and one night I said, I forget the name of the place, but I'll find it.
Notoriously dangerous.
I was like, I want to walk through the park at night and see how bad it is.
I stepped 20 feet into the park, and literally people started chasing, started following me, kicking cans, throwing stuff at me, and then I ended up darting out because it's just objectively dangerous.
Go down there.
I mean, I'm taking Krav Maga classes right now.
And so, in fact, I just did a weapons class on Saturday.
And we learned how to, if somebody puts a gun to your head, about what to do.
I'm covered in bruises right now.
But yeah, I mean, be prepared.
I'll be prepared by avoiding it altogether.
But, all right, so the pandemic hits, but...
This is the thing, like, okay, so, you know, Trump wants to implement policies, and this is not to cheerlead on Trump.
It's just that this, the problem is as bad as, if not worse than Trump had been warning the world.
They say manufactured in China for the fentanyl, part of its, or do they bring in the chemicals and make it in South America?
Make it in Mexico, primarily.
And then smuggle it across the open border that is just leaking people at $300,000 a month.
Correct.
Correct.
And this is where I start to hyperventilate because it has resulted in the worst devastation on the streets of San Francisco that I couldn't even imagine before this point.
806 people died in San Francisco of drug poisonings and overdoses.
And where did those drugs come from?
What you just said.
It comes straight through the border.
That's where it comes.
These are not Americans selling to Americans.
These are people who've got, you know, they sensed an opportunity.
These are good old-fashioned capitalists.
I've got to pull this up just so you can see this here, because when I said this is not going to be only about San Francisco, let's just say this is liberal policy, West Coast policy.
In 2023, British Columbia sets a grim record with 2,511 toxic drug deaths.
And I think that's the new, like, confusing term for overdoses.
British Columbia, which has gone through a similar transformation, decriminalized crime, decriminalized hard drugs, open up your booths where they give it out, where they give, you know, safe sites, and it turns to shit, literally.
And we're going to get to all of this.
When you do these walkabouts, are you recording it or you don't dare record it?
No, no.
I mean, I'll record it.
I'll take up my phone.
I had one bad incident where I was recording and I had it in front of me and I was filming.
And a guy behind me, I didn't even realize he was behind me, he starts yelling to the people in front of me.
And in Spanish, he said, she's got a camera, she's got a camera.
And then I hear him get really close.
And it was scary.
I was on my own.
I wouldn't do it.
When I had other people with me, because I don't want to put them in danger.
But, yeah.
Kate, you're nuts.
I don't know if someone's got to do it, Erica.
That's the problem.
Anyhow, you've done it, and you've got this stuff, and you're the only one reporting on this.
All right, now, so some of the other things that you've exposed through your reporting.
I mean, I know that you've gone, I say, undercover of sorts into these safe sites.
Actually, let's just back it up.
So you got your Prop 47 back in 2014.
At what point do they start...
I guess that decriminalizes drugs as well to some extent, but at what point do they start decriminalizing narcotics?
Yeah, I mean, that came with the Prop 47, where personal use of having enough for personal...
Instead of a felony, it turns into a misdemeanor, which is basically just a slap on the wrist, if that.
I mean, everything.
I used to do ride-alongs, so I did the ride-along with a police officer, and I remember we stopped.
And he said, he turned to this guy who's using on the street, and he goes, I can't do that here.
And that was years ago.
Now, we're going to stop every three seconds?
It doesn't work.
We've let it magnify to such a degree that it's taken over.
So now we have to do a lot just to get back to the point where we were.
So it's tough.
We've got a lot ahead of us.
When did they start with the safe injection sites?
Okay.
Harm reduction has been the term du jour, the modality of...
How, you know, these so-called experts say that they're dealing with this drug problem.
And I just want to scream F you.
How dare you?
Because what they did is that they shifted away from treatment and recovery for people who are desperate, suffering, sick, dying.
And they said...
We're not going to judge you for being a drug addict.
What we will do instead is that we will hand you everything that you need to use so-called safely.
That has led to the worst massacre on our streets, in our communities, that I couldn't even imagine beforehand.
So that needs to be rolled back.
And it is being rolled back.
I mean, I think that the harm reduction activists are now on.
They've got their back up.
Like, oh, great, you know.
I love the euphemisms like harm reduction, like medical assistance in dying.
It's just like, give it a cutesy name for what they're doing.
I'm going to pull up the San Francisco or California when they decriminalize, but I don't know if you knew this.
And this explains the progression.
As of January 31st, 2023, this is in British Columbia, and lasting for a three-year period of time, possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs, such as opioids and cocaine, will be decriminalized in British Columbia.
When you say, I'm going to Google this because I suspect it's been decriminalized small, not just misdemeanor, but decriminalized outright.
They make these safe injection sites.
They basically throw gasoline on the fire of drug addiction.
They basically...
Create breeding ground for the clients of the cartel.
And you went undercover into one of those to expose what's going on there?
I sure as hell did.
Yeah, so you know Michael Schellenberger?
Yep, absolutely.
Great activist.
Obviously a brilliant man, but we worked pretty closely together during the time when San Francisco put up what we call the Linkage Center.
Another great euphemism.
We're just going to link people.
Link them to what?
People came in droves to the UN Plaza where this was set up.
It was initially...
Put up as a way for people to get connected to necessary services from mental health care to housing to substance use.
It turned into the most disastrous, disgusting, vile cesspool of a place to use drugs.
So I went in, I went in a couple times undercover.
Back then, you know, everybody was wearing masks.
That was in 2021, which I cannot stand a mask.
I'm half deaf, but for me, everything was a freaking nightmare.
But, you know, I put on my raddiest clothes and a hat and a mask, and I went in, and my heart sunk.
It was vile.
It was disgusting.
It was filthy.
Everybody was high as a kite, dying, in my opinion.
They looked like they were dying.
And this went on for almost a year.
It was on for almost a year.
Where in the beginning, the city denied it.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
This isn't a safe injection site.
This isn't a safe use site.
This is a health care.
I was just there.
I was just there.
I saw with my own eyes.
I took pictures.
Mike took pictures.
The whole thing.
And then it just imploded.
It was so bad that the city just kind of...
Almost like quietly went, okay, we're just going to stop this whole thing and throw it out, which is what they did.
But it was too late.
It was too late.
Because what happened, it destroyed the community.
The Whole Foods Market, which opened up across the street, had only been open for about a year.
The crime, overdoses in that place were so high, they said, we're out of here.
They closed.
It was a ripple effect.
So the city did so many things wrong, so many things wrong, that now, as I say, we have to go back.
We have to go back to the beginning and say that did not work and admit failure.
That's why...
I say good luck with...
I don't want to make this too politically oriented, but good luck with that with certain ends of the spectrum because it seems to be double down, triple down, quadruple down.
And then, you know...
Oh, let me bring this up here.
Add to stage.
Is this it?
No, that's the Canadian one.
So apparently, if I'm just looking at...
What's...
Okay, I've lost it here.
Here.
No, out of San Francisco, it says...
California's Prop 47 did not technically decriminalize drugs.
This is according to the New York Times, you know, fact check.
Leaving possession as a misdemeanor, but the police do not stop or otherwise intervene with drug users, even as they use in public view, and prosecutors rarely file charges for drug possession or use.
So, tacit legalization.
Who supports these policies in the city?
Do individuals on the street?
Or do people just not care so long as it's not in their front yard?
Yeah, I think it's just an old-school mentality now.
People have woken up to it.
The word woke is so overused, right?
But, you know, I think people are now seeing...
You see it with your own eyes too often.
It is still isolated into certain areas where if you want to avoid the worst of the worst, oh, sure, of course you can.
But it has saturated into other neighborhoods.
And so now people are seeing it for what it is.
The way the city has created policies ostensibly to help has hurt.
And there's no denying it now.
There is no denying it.
Now, some politicians and some advocates can pretend that everything is going swimmingly.
And we just need a little bit more time.
Oh, by the way, how about a lot more money?
We could just keep on going with the money.
We just need more money.
We just need more time.
We need to go dig deeper into this.
But most people are just turning their back on it and just going, you failed.
You failed.
This is wrong.
I had interviewed a street pastor named Artur Pawlowski out of Canada.
And he came up with a very critical observation position against the war on the homeless, which...
And you'll tell me, I suspect it's the same in San Francisco, California.
There's no incentive to resolve the problem because the more homeless people there are, the bigger the budget, the more work there is for people to do with centers, etc., etc.
So is there that level of corruption in terms of resolving problems that the administrators, the bureaucrats behind resolving those problems don't want to resolve?
Yeah, I hate to use an overused term, which is the homeless industrial complex.
It's a cliche by now, but that's kind of what it is, right?
There are people who are...
They profit from the process.
This is their life.
Their life is the world of homelessness, where if it was solved, they'd be out of a job.
That's a problem, right?
And that's what we have in the city, certainly, whether it's people whose job it is to hand out materials, whose job it is to advocate for their rights to stay on the street.
Right?
That's their job.
It's not to help people out and lift them up.
That's the problem.
One of the rumors or one of the talking points we hear out, I'll call it out east, is that people actually are not recruited to but flock to San Francisco, flock to because of the drug policies.
The people that you see on the streets, I say demographically.
Do you know where they come from?
Are they out-of-staters?
Are they mentally ill to begin with and fall into drugs?
Do they become mentally ill because of addiction?
What is the demographic makeup of the people who are suffering on the streets?
Great question.
It depends on where you are, but we have a lot of drug tourism.
It's extraordinarily cheap to purchase fentanyl in San Francisco.
I think we've got some of the best prices in town.
But because of that word has gotten out, this is where you can come.
This is where you can purchase at the lowest rock bottom prices.
Oh, and we're going to leave you alone, right?
We're not going to bother you if you do it on the street.
We get a lot of young people.
This is one of the saddest things that I've been experiencing is people who are in their teens.
I see them on our street corners.
I've seen them.
I remember one time I was walking downtown.
And I saw this person sitting in an office chair that looked like something had thrown out, head down, like this long, long blonde hair.
And I kind of got underneath her hair and I looked at her and I'm like, good God, this woman's like 13 or 14 years old.
She's not a woman, she's a kid.
Clearly high on either some sort of opioid, I'm assuming fentanyl, because that's what we have.
People are coming here for that.
That's a fact.
That is an absolute fact.
Now, there is another element.
You see a lot of our African-American community members who are on the streets in the Tenderloin.
We've left...
I mean, if you want to lift people up, focus on that.
They're suffering.
You're going to have to clarify.
I don't know the districts of San Francisco.
What is the Tenderloin?
Yeah, the Tenderloin is an area that's long been known as the epicenter of...
The lowest income, rock bottom place to live.
It's blighted.
It's dirty.
It's a large area.
It's a wonderful area, too.
It's got really great restaurants.
It's a lot of Asian community that's there.
It's actually the highest concentration of families with children, of immigrants, of low-income seniors.
But it's where...
The vast majority of the drug dealing and drug use is, and crime.
It kind of looks like the San Francisco version of Skid Row, but smaller.
It is.
Thank you.
That's exactly what it is.
Okay, so you got the Tenderloin, and it's not a small area.
What are the other areas of San Francisco that are basically no-go zones now?
The Mission District, which used to be so vibrant.
I mean, the mission district has also been kind of, I mean, like, it's the mission.
The mission has always been a little bit gritty, which I kind of love.
But now it's descended into kind of hellacious conditions.
The city, in its infinite moronic attitudes about cars, have decided that they're going to put a center lane for bikes in the middle of this area called the Valencia Corridor.
Now people, they can't even...
They can't park, they can't go to the restaurants, and they can't go to the shops.
It's insane.
You guys sound like you're governed by the same idiots that we're governed by in Canada.
Except we're like one step worse.
I don't know if you know this, Erica.
I'll put it on blast every chance I get.
They decriminalize hard drugs in British Columbia.
They start opening up.
You can even sell them from some rumors, although they say it's not true.
Then they want to expand euthanasia to the mentally ill and drug addicts.
And bringing up a chat from Rumble, it's from Crash Bandit who says, Viva, it cannot be a coincidence that the same people supporting the legalization of drugs are all the same people saying we have too many people on the planet.
If it is not a mistake, it has to be a plan.
But like, it's wild that they implement these policies that have devastating effects.
I don't know what California's euthanasia rules are, but I think that they're not quite as bad as Canada, but pretty liberal nonetheless.
We don't have it, but I do think that you're onto something, which is let them die.
Let them die.
Just let these people die, right?
This is their choice to die.
They're going to die.
We'll just keep on giving them drugs until they die.
And we'll keep lining our pockets because they're not getting rich, but we'll keep lining the pockets of the bureaucracies that facilitate let them die.
Right.
Just let them die.
I mean, that's kind of what it is.
And the more people who die, the better, because then you, you know, it's, then they won't procreate.
I mean, we can go down a rabbit hole with that.
But what I can tell you is that there is a, we're not going to judge somebody for doing these toxic drugs that will kill them, but we will give them Narcon.
Oh, that's a great, that's a great solution.
We'll just kind of keep them on the precipice of life.
On the precipice, barely, barely alive, struggling, sick, dying, until they eventually die, because that's what's happening.
And that's a fact.
I mean, this isn't something that anybody can deny.
This is an undeniable truth.
And so if we go to the Tenderloin District, and I won't say predominantly, but is it statistically overrepresented by black Americans?
No.
I'd say it's a real mix.
It's a bridge mix.
It's a little of this and a little of that.
But I can tell you, most of the people who are on the street, this is what pisses me off.
It's not a homelessness issue.
Chuck the hell up calling this a homelessness issue.
We don't have it.
It's not housing.
It's not income.
It's not income inequality.
It's not any of that.
It's drugs.
The drugs that cause the mental illness or the mental illness that causes the drugs.
Whatever.
That's what it is.
So I'm on a warpath with that because I refuse to let that narrative continue.
If anybody wants to dispute the fact that it is not a drug and slash mental illness issue, come with me.
We will walk together.
We will walk those mean streets together and we'll get a beer afterwards and talk about what you saw because I can tell you not what you think it is.
I'm just looking up here.
I can't rely on the answer, but it says San Francisco real estate hits record high for vacancy rates, which would be very interesting.
If housing is the issue, to explain the homelessness, and yet vacancy rates are high or at the highest, that makes no sense.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Thank you.
Right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Don't lie to me.
Don't blow air up my skirt.
This is not something that we're going to dispute.
We're done with that.
We're done.
And that's why the new crop of politicians and activists are changing.
They're going, you know, we live here, especially the tech community.
You talked in the beginning about the tech community.
Well, they're coming out.
They're coming out swinging.
And so we're going to be seeing some major battles.
Okay, I've got it.
It is in fact confirmed.
It says there's an article from Pacific Research.
Time to ask why so many San Francisco homes are vacant.
I can imagine, I mean, San Francisco population had been on a steady and then more rapid decline up until 2023 when allegedly it's increasing.
But if I'm going to ask how the population is increasing in 2023, I might go with the Canadian immigrant.
Let's just, you know, bring in immigrants because everybody else is leaving and then say that the population is growing.
look, we're a state or we're a city in expansion.
Well, I think worse than the residency, the residents, you know, yes, they're there.
There's a lot of places for lease and for rent, but what's the most egregious is the businesses.
I just did a couple of pieces for Fox and for various other news outlets about the issue with businesses leaving.
Our most beautiful corridor, one of our most beautiful corridors, is you get on the cable car.
The cable car goes right by my house, by the way.
So it gives me joy every time it goes by, sometimes embarrassment.
Because I'm so ashamed as to what our city has become.
But you go down to the cable car turnaround, which is the area where every tourist comes to the city.
Every visitor, every school kid goes down there.
About 70% of the stores are closed.
It is a tragic situation.
Well, it's wild.
Who owns the buildings?
Are they owned by bigger conglomerates or are they individually or privately owned?
Yeah, I mean, some private, some individual, some small businesses, some large, some medium.
It doesn't matter.
The problem was is that the foot traffic wasn't there because people didn't want to go because it was scary and dangerous.
And the city has tried to blame it on the pandemic.
Well, other cities have bounced back and ours hasn't.
Ours has gotten worse.
So it's not the pandemic, right?
This is a matter of it is extraordinarily expensive to open a business here and to run a business here.
That's one problem.
Those taxes need to be lowered.
The other one is that the perception of danger is so strong and people were getting shoplifted so constantly.
So, I know a security guard.
You have a lovely security guard.
Hey, Raphael, if you see this, this shouts out to you.
He's been assaulted.
He's been spat at.
The business where he guards, the window was just smashed recently.
And they don't do, authorities don't do jack squats.
So this guy, if he wants to have a job or he's risking his life, I don't know, say if he's lucky, 30 bucks an hour over retail.
Yeah.
They don't do shit to protect him.
You are correct.
You are correct.
We are down 600 officers.
So we're on a skeletal crew right now.
This is tough.
In fact, I'm in the Community Police Academy right now because I feel like we all need to do our part.
So it's tough.
And now, people are fighting back because we care.
We really do.
We really do care.
But it's a...
You might be at the near event horizon of catastrophic never coming back from the black hole into which that city's falling.
It's a fear.
I don't think it's a legitimate fear because I think the city is too precious to too many people.
They definitely did this, this, and this for too long.
But now they aren't.
Because, okay, here's something.
During the pandemic, which I freaking hate calling it that, but during the pandemic, during those horrible years, A lot of people left.
They went to Nashville and they went to Colorado and they went to various other places.
Well, now that they're gone, the people who are still here are here for a reason.
They either can't leave or they don't want to leave.
That's a toxic combination for the people who have been running the city into the ground.
Think about that.
I'm going to think about that because now when you say can't leave, it's financially unable to tie down with jobs and whatever.
Not happy in the first place.
And don't want to leave.
I'm thinking like ideological political zealots who want more of this.
No, the opposite.
Damn it!
I was trying to think while I was talking too.
Oh, you say don't want to leave because they want to save the city and make it better.
Yeah, I mean, a lot do.
My first thought was not unreasonable, because I'm not thinking as optimistically as you.
I'm thinking there's people out there who are still saying, Whole Foods, you're racist for leaving.
You should just deal with it.
Cost of doing business.
I think one of the squad the other day basically said something to that effect.
And, you know, tax you more because it's America and we can tax you as much as we want and it's the price you have to pay to live here.
Except you don't have to live there.
Okay, so...
But are you regarded as a far-right extremist by your compatriots there?
I am regarded as a probably...
For the people who don't know me and don't like me, they probably call me far-right, which is really funny because I'm no party preference.
I left.
I left the game.
I'm nothing.
I'm everything.
The people who do know me and hopefully love me, I think they know that all I care about is the truth.
This isn't political.
Although, trust me, I dive deep into politics, local politics here, which is supposed to be, by the way, nonpartisan.
Supervisors and mayors, this is neither Democratic nor Republican.
You run as an individual.
But yeah, I mean, I've definitely been called ultra-conservative, ultra-right-wing, and I laugh about that.
I'm like, no!
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
Hold on, if I bring it back to the chat in Rumble.
ThinboySlick says, Erica has a picture of a white-tip reef shark.
She's a good person.
So, our crew is good and smart.
When are you allowed?
And then I'll just read another one while I'm there.
This is from Sammy.
He says, look how fast the NGOs and legislation attacked Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, when he built and paid for 100 water wells and bridges all across Africa last year.
If it's all fixed, then the money stops flowing.
Absolutely.
But now when you say, you know, you delve into the politics, you cannot deny the fact that this is, pick on, you know, red states, although typically the worst cities in red states.
You are absolutely correct.
That is exactly what it is.
It is very, very radical.
Very radical.
It's not mainstream.
This is ultra-progressive.
They call themselves progressive.
But it's gotten so progressive, it's regressive.
It does not reflect the attitudes of most people.
It just doesn't.
These are extreme radicals that are kind of on their last gasp because it's very difficult.
I mean, it's very difficult to deny what you see.
Observational data now is too strong.
It's too intense.
And they've lost the plot.
They know it.
They feel it.
It doesn't mean that they aren't going to struggle with it.
They aren't going to keep trying.
And they are.
But it's, you know, it's gone, it's swung so far into that direction.
We've got a couple of supervisors, board of supervisors, who are so extreme that they're communists.
This is what they are.
Is this what we want?
No, no, it's not.
It's not what we want.
It's not what San Francisco is about.
Are we liberal?
Sure, some people are very, very liberal.
But not that.
We're not communists.
We're not socialists.
Well, I mean, I'd say not on an individual level, but the problem is, like, who was it that said it?
When you don't get involved in politics, you end up getting governed by your inferiors.
And not to judge, I think this is San Francisco, where the city council passed a resolution declaring a ceasefire in Israel.
And I mean, not to say, it is what it looks like.
Am I going to get the audio here?
Where's the cheering?
Not to be judgmental.
When ordinary people don't get involved in politics, you end up being governed by the most radical, regressive, politically motivated, and by and large, I'll also say idiots who have no life experience knowing how things actually work.
And when the shit hits the fan, like, well, we've got to fix the problem that we created, so give us more power to do it.
Oh, girl.
That was an embarrassing moment for the city.
I can't find the actual video.
I'm going to look on Twitter, but I remember having seen that.
It looked like, and I try not to judge, it looked like the patients have taken over the asylum is what it looked like.
One of the most hilarious things to do is to go to a board of supervisors meeting.
And actually, which I do go to, I have to cover it.
And you look around and...
It is a comedy.
If you look at it from that angle, hopefully you will laugh because you look around going, this is lunacy.
It truly is.
But a lot of people aren't from the city anyway.
I mean, it's like a fun thing to do.
It's almost like a little field trip into the city and I'm going to come and I'm going to scream my head off and then I'm going to go back to wherever it is that I came from.
But yeah, we have our share of imbeciles, of lunatics.
No, but here's another, I mean, people might not even appreciate this question if they've never done what you do, but you're a journalist.
You come out with opinions that are unpopular with the people who are governing your city right now.
Then you go to these events.
We've seen how the likes of Antifa work.
If they don't like the journalist, if they don't like what that person's exposing, they chase them out and sometimes worse.
Have you gotten to that point where you can no longer even attend or do what you need to do because of the backlash from the people that you are exposing?
Never.
You cannot scare me.
Never.
Never.
I mean, I've never been frightened.
I would go in the middle of the eye of the storm, for sure.
Not a problem.
I'm fair.
I aim to be fair.
When I say fair, as in, I try really hard to listen to the other side, too.
I really want to know, where are you coming from?
What are you doing?
What do you want?
I'll give you that time.
I will.
I want to know.
As I say, this actually comes from my background.
In my very family, I've got people who are very, very progressive, right?
It's important to listen.
We're not going to come together and we're not going to agree, right?
But listen, give respect, and then, you know, watch a movie.
But the thing is about San Francisco, like my show, The San Francisco Beat, I interview people who are running for office.
They're very different from me, but I want to give them the opportunity.
Tell me what you're going to do.
Tell me what you want.
Be honest.
That's a great opportunity.
Well, it's a great opportunity, presuming they're honest, and if they're not honest, they're going to say, hell, I'm not going on for a long-format discussion with you.
You're going to expose me as a liar.
You know, if they're not honest, it's going to show, right?
So it will be revealed that the honesty was not there.
So that's why it's a great thing to do.
And I'm not here to berate people.
I'm not one of those, you know, get in your face, I'm going to scream at you.
That's just not what I do.
That's not how I function.
My function, I believe my primary reason for doing this is to draw out.
Tell me what's happening.
Be honest.
That's what I want to know.
You know, I'm married, been married for a long time, but one of the things is I remember dating and some guy was cheating on me and it was very hard because they would look at you straight in the face and say, "Sally, no, no, everything is fine." I kind of think, it's the worst feeling to be lied to, right?
You want, just give me the facts, right?
That's what, that's all.
With that, with that?
Then we can move forward.
Then I can either vote for you or not.
I can be in your company or not.
I can, you know, we can have a conversation or not.
Right?
Just be frank.
The problem with the progressives, with the socialists, they will lie to you straight to your face.
They will do it.
They have done it.
Over and over again.
And they will continue to do it.
But I'm there for that too.
Right?
Good.
Great.
Get in front of me.
Let's talk about this.
Let's hear it.
Let's listen really carefully because I want to hear, right?
What are you saying?
And, you know, if it's a lie, it's a lie.
It will show up.
I'm going to bring up your Twitter feed for one second so that people can see it.
I'm going to share it with everybody.
Erica J. Sandberg, San Francisco Beat.
What?
This is not an accusatory question.
I'm actually just curious.
Is this a bilingual thing of San Francisco?
Like in Quebec, we would have the French and English in our profiles?
That is so funny.
A long time ago, there was this big kind of kerfuffle about, oh, you shouldn't put Chinese characters in your name.
And a friend of mine goes, no big deal.
She goes, here's yours.
Here's your name.
That actually directly translates, I think, into old.
Like an older version of Chinese, I don't actually speak Chinese, to Wonder Woman of Gold Mountain.
Gold Mountain is an old term for San Francisco.
And so I just kept it.
I thought it was cute.
It can throw people off.
Some people are going to think you're a Chinese spy until they check out your profile.
Let me just read one more chat here.
It says, the problem with the other side, in quotes.
This is from Finboy Slick.
And I'll get to the Rumble locals in a second.
In this case, is that they might know what they want, but they have no idea what it would take to get there.
I don't know.
If what they want is population reduction, they're really doing a good job at that.
If what they want is basically nationalizing and socializing America, they're going to get there.
There's going to be nobody left in San Francisco to actually pay the bills of the maintenance of the city.
I know they've got a massive budget for San Francisco, but what is the income versus output?
Well, we have a $14.6 billion budget.
We are now underwater.
It is a possibility that we're going to be facing bankruptcy.
Big problem.
Big problem financially.
Rounding up.
$15 billion budget.
And then the expenses, I presume, are more.
This is what angers me.
This is it.
You look at a situation like the Department of Public Health, which...
It has 8,000 people working for them.
8,000.
You want to walk around our street?
We have a tiny little city here.
49 square miles.
Right?
It's small.
It's seven by seven.
It's very small.
Right?
We can't manage to give health care to the people who are literally dying on our street.
On our streets?
This is insane.
It's insane.
Fire them all.
And I'm getting some political hot water here.
Do it.
I don't dislike Javier Mele from Argentina.
I want to rip those signs off the wall.
Afuera!
The Department of Housing and Human Services, gone!
Yeah, I want to do that because it is that kind of anger bubbles up where you think, how dare you, you huge bureaucratic Nightmare organization that is only there existing to pay your employees.
Well, to suck at the government's teat.
And I've talked about this in Canada because I've now lived through it.
You witness it's how they get absolute capture and compliance.
I don't know what percentage of the workforce is government.
It's a lot.
And when they're reliant on the government, they can't speak out.
They can't take politically controversial positions.
And they don't want to shrink the size of the government because the prospect for these government bureaucrat nincompoops to have to go back to the open private market and get jobs on their own merit, it's terrifying.
And so the only thing to do is to continue just to suck at that teeth until it dries up.
And you do it in San Francisco too.
You got it.
We have 36,000 government employees.
36,000.
We have 800,000 people here.
You could do the math there, right?
But it's a high, that is a ridiculously high ratio, right?
For government employees.
Oh, and that doesn't, that's not the end of it.
Because we also contract with non-profit organizations throughout the whole city and Bay Area and pay them billions of dollars.
They're sucking too.
I'm looking up, Canada is 20%.
And that's an, it's a wild underestimate because I don't know how they're measuring it.
One in five government provided jobs.
And I know that it's more than that.
So.
Get out of here.
Sorry.
One dog hears the other dog bark and thinks there's something better going on in the kitchen.
Hold on, before I actually forget.
What were you going to say?
Sorry, I interrupted you.
I was just saying that the outflow...
Remember I started as a budget and debt counselor.
It's got to pencil out.
You cannot spend more than is coming in.
If you do, you're going to be miserable and then you will declare bankruptcy.
Right.
Or you pull a Justin Trudeau, the budget will balance itself.
We'll figure it out.
We'll kick the can down the line.
And then you kick it so far down the line, the people who can leave typically are the ones with the means to leave.
They leave.
And they're typically the biggest contributors to the public system.
It's the downward spiral into the event horizon.
But I did want to ask you more questions about, you go undercover at the Needle site, because I listened to a podcast you did with, I'm going to forget the name now.
And you say, the amazing thing, setting aside, you know, they've pulled back this plan, but you go in there, they're offering, they've got a menu of drugs, needles, they look at you and say, you look small, I'm going to give you a small needle.
And what you noticed was absolutely remarkably absent was how to get better.
Correct.
There was absolutely nothing.
There was no offer.
They didn't offer drugs, but the menu of items that I could get for free...
Yeah, different needle sizes, foil, meth pipes, crack pipes.
Progress.
It's progress.
I couldn't believe it.
I could not believe my eyes.
In fact, I was so nervous, I was shaking.
So I made a really good drug addict.
And I could barely speak because I'm not even due with this.
It was horribly depressing.
The fact that nobody, nobody said, "Honey, down the street there's a hospital.
You could get help right there." Instead, I was given all of this stuff from place to place in the city with a, "Hey!
Happy drug use!" They made you feel sick.
They made you feel sick, you said.
It made me feel sick.
It made me feel sick.
People in my life who are struggling with addiction.
And I would never do that to them.
Ever.
No.
You grab them by the ponytail.
You drag them up.
You make them see their face.
And you say, it is time for help.
That's what you do.
And you do it individually.
And you do it en masse.
That's what you do.
That's the right thing to do.
So, yeah, I'm really, really...
Disgusted by, we even had posters, I don't know if you saw those, I want you to pull them up if you can, of No Overdose, where we had the Public Department of Public Health, the Department of Public Health in San Francisco put up posters saying, use with friends, and it had these happy people in a room who were using, it was, it was...
Let me see, I think...
All of us, we're shaking our heads.
Oh my good God, I got it.
Okay.
Sorry, I don't mean...
Oh my goodness.
Gracious.
Controversial drug overdose billboard in San Francisco.
No overdose.
Do it with friends.
Let me zoom in here.
Look how happy...
Well, first of all, okay, there's so many things wrong with this picture.
Demographically, it almost looks like they are trying to...
Promote this on Blacks.
I'm going to just be blunt.
This looks like they're targeting Blacks.
Say, "Hey, go do your drugs." Oh, just, where did it go?
Go do, they got a kid in there.
No overdose.
And then you got the no, the K. Oh, that's a funny pun.
Do it with friends.
Use with people and take turns.
Try not to use alone or have someone check on you.
And you got a...
If she were pregnant, that would have really been the end of this.
But you got a picture which seems that they are targeting a certain community, which would be more of the same considering the history.
That's out...
Whoever did that, paid for it, approved it, designed it, fired all of them.
You should be out of a job for the rest of your...
Not for the rest of your lives.
That's wild.
It is wild.
And it went on for months.
And we in the community who are looking at this going, we're...
We are facing the worst overdose crisis, and you're putting up pictures saying take turns?
Can I swear on your show?
Please.
Fuck you.
Fuck you for doing that.
How dare you?
How dare you?
The arrogance that was involved in that campaign.
The absolute destruction.
That you are promoting.
Suffering.
Death.
How dare you?
You know, and let's face it, people who are doing drugs, they're not just impacting themselves.
They're not just dying, right?
They're killing the community, and they're hurting their friends and families, right?
So it is an explosion of pain.
So yes, actually...
I do have my swords out for the Department of Public Health because I think they are very much largely responsible for the death of our city, for the destruction of our city.
There is a theory that destroy the city, drive down real estate prices, and it makes it easier for BlackRock-esque to come in and pick it up for cents on the dollar and turn it into whatever vision they have for the future.
Plausible in reality or a conspiracy theory?
I think that it is not implausible, but I think that you're looking at the wrong people who are doing this.
It is the socialists.
What they want is they want public housing for all.
Right?
They want to be able to drive the city into a ditch, have people flee, have buildings vacated, have the city pick up the tab, purchase the buildings, and...
Create a public housing, public bank.
This is going to be a nirvana for...
It'll be a Stalin-esque nirvana, and then you wonder why people die by the millions under socialist regimes.
Oh, totally.
Yeah, I mean, that is what they want.
And I don't think they're being particularly quiet about it.
So this is not a conspiracy.
This is what people do want.
Let's buy as many buildings as we possibly can.
Have it city run and have people live in them.
And this is going to be so-called social housing, which pisses me off because my family did live in AKA social housing.
And I can guarantee you there was nothing positive about it.
It was dangerous, ugly, depressing.
It's going to wear you down.
If you don't get out fast, it is going to be the death of you.
Been there, done that, not happening again.
Now let me, there's some chat, and we're in a locals community as well, and we have a community there who are posting comments and tipped questions, and Bill Brown says, but Walgreens is racist.
That goes back to the discussion earlier.
Leftists dishonest about something?
No way, says Bill Brown.
Bill Brown says, that's the problem with the whole gut we have with the government.
Then we got Master Malrubias.
I'll be heading there next week, San Francisco.
I'll report back on what I find, except the Tenderloin.
Won't be going there likely.
We've got ThisIsCrazy says, I have to wonder if the adrenochrome business is enhanced by drug addicts that suddenly disappear.
I have not fallen down the adrenochrome rabbit hole.
I know I hear a lot about it, especially as it relates to John Podesta and other people.
Jeanette Victoria says, I used to spend all my childhood summers in Hope, BC, Canada.
That, oh, hold on a second.
They just refreshed and I lost all of these.
Hold on.
Just FYI, my parents owned the home that all new doctors rented when they did their obligatory rural service.
USA Now says, since you retweeted IRT yesterday, can you follow me?
And peeps to social media.
Okay, there's an unrelated here.
Well, I'll check on that later.
Do you still do undercover?
Do you still go and try to get original source material when you're reporting on stuff?
Yeah, I do.
I do it as much as I can.
I don't always publish everything that I see.
To me, it's just information that I need from my own perspective because I want to be correct.
It's very important to me not to say something randomly.
I want to know deep down what's happening.
I do have a plan to go tour some what was called SROs.
Do you know when the SRO was?
The letters?
Yeah, SRO.
These are these very small, single-room apartments that homeless people are put into.
So I'm going to be doing a tour of the interior of some of them because apparently they're very, very bad.
So I'm going to be doing that.
I did steal.
I don't know if you ever saw that, but I stole from a store to see what it was like to be a thief.
Hold on.
Let me just go see if I can find that real quick-like.
And what happened?
It was very easy.
I took a coffee maker from Target and I took it from a shelf and I took it outside and then I promptly gave it back.
But the experience really taught me a lot because it showed just how easy it was.
Nobody was going to stop me.
I'll tell you one thing.
In law...
Prank, joke, and doing it for investigative purposes is not a defense to theft.
But nobody's getting charged for it, so you brought it back and they were very thankful.
I brought it back, yeah.
I admit there's that saying, report on the story, don't be the story.
But in that case, I did want to know.
I really wanted to see what it was like.
Was it on the edge?
Yeah, probably.
But at the same time, it gave me perspective.
It really gave me an important sense of what it was like to that person who's taking, right?
Well, you know, the funny thing is, like, don't be the story, but sometimes I say for exposing it, it might be the most useful thing to do.
And Ruben took that picture of the printout at the airport where...
Migrants or illegal immigrants can go through, bypass all security photographs, and they only have to show ID if they want to.
He blew the story up, but he blew the story up because he was the only one getting engaged in the story.
I think it has to be done.
Show the world how absolutely preposterous the policies are.
Right.
You know, we will never stop.
That's the thing.
So, you know, it's interesting.
I'm not the only one doing this.
There's a lot of people out there, friends of mine, just...
People who live here, go, I'm going to take the pictures.
I'm going to take the video.
And you can't stop me.
And there's this kind of element of shame, like, oh, I shouldn't be doing that.
That's just, you know, you're shaming people who are on the street.
And, you know, you're wrong for doing it.
And they're losing, that whole perspective is really evaporating.
People know that that's not the truth.
You know, you can't, we've got to document.
Document, document.
It's very important.
I'm not shaming anybody outside of our politicians.
I've gotten to the point where there's nothing wrong with shaming people who deserve to be shamed.
Filming the homeless, I always feel that's not exploitive, but you're taking a picture of people in their worst state and maybe that is necessary.
And doesn't necessarily make you feel good.
But man, capturing these effing politicians in there, sending their kids to private schools while they tell everyone to go public schools, living behind gated communities when they're saying open borders, having security guards where they want to take away everyone's rights.
Shame them?
Put them on blast.
Internet blast.
100%.
Yeah.
I mean, so the people on the street who are...
I just heard a siren.
What's going on, Erica?
We did actually have a big storm, so there's a lot of, like, flood-related stuff, but who knows what that was?
But, yeah, I want to publicly shame our so-called leaders, right?
Because they're responsible.
They are responsible.
It's not us.
It's them, right?
They need to be shamed.
They do.
I mean, I could name names.
You know, these are people like Dean Preston, like Hillary Ronan.
These are our board of supervisors, right, who have deliberately ignored the people that they are supposed to represent.
And they have gone full-blown, you know, going to just advance their political careers or their dogma.
That's what they want.
They're not representing the people, the businesses, the visitors to the city.
They don't care.
So now we care.
Do you get the impression that you are a silent majority or you're a vocal minority and other people just don't give a sweet bugger all?
I guess I just know so many people here that I feel like our numbers are growing.
I know the players.
I don't think we're in a minority.
I really don't.
I mean, I think what...
I have a big mouth, right?
So people with big mouths are kind of in the minority too because a lot of people don't want to be offensive and they don't want to kind of say what's true because it's nerve-wracking.
I'll say it.
I'll go.
I don't really care.
I don't care.
There's nothing a Twitter person can do to hurt me.
The worst that's going to happen to me is I'm going to be down in the 10-year-old or the Civic Center.
And I'll get caught in the crossfire of a gun shoot-up.
But I tend not to be out there in the middle of the night anyway.
So I'm probably not going to be in that position anyway.
But hence me taking the Krav Maga classes.
Because you do have to be prepared.
But I feel like I get so much great response from people here who say, thank you.
Thank you for saying it.
This is what we need.
I used to be shut down all the time.
I used to have people yell at me online and get death threats.
I almost never do.
Almost never do now.
Almost never.
That says a lot.
I get people thanking me.
I'm in restaurants like, hey, thanks for doing what you're doing.
Brilliant.
That's what we want.
This is a movement.
I'm telling you.
My dear.
Well, I say we're going to wind it up on a white pill of sorts because that's as much of a white pill as anybody could possibly hope to get out of the downfall of San Francisco.
Where can people find you?
I'll share your Twitter, obviously, but where can people find you and how can they support you and the work that you're doing?
Thank you.
Please just keep on coming to Twitter and I encourage discussion.
And I have to say...
I'm sorry if people wanted to hear the worst of the worst, you know, we're never in this as hell on earth kind of thing.
It's not.
San Francisco is a pretty damn cool city.
And if you love, by the way, if you love dynamic change, this is the place to be right now.
I think we're all like electrified.
It's fascinating.
So if you like that kind of stuff, then San Francisco is for you.
But yeah, Twitter is probably the best.
Join me on, you know, I put my show on YouTube.
It's going to be the difference.
So San Francisco, there's a lot going on, but Twitter is the best.
Erica J. Sandberg.
All right, I got your sub stack here, and I'm going to put that in the pinned comments.
I'll share that with everybody.
My name is all in there, so I'll be polite.
Awesome.
Erica, stick around.
We're going to say our proper goodbyes afterwards.
I'm going to refresh one last time in Locals to make sure I didn't miss any.
Tipped questions that people might have for you.
We have to stop.
This is a quote of Brett Weiss.
We have to stop punishing ourselves for considering things we once thought were crazy.
He's not wrong.
Sad to see what the city I was born in has become, says Denise Antu.
Well, you got the white pill because Erica thinks it can be saved.
And it's not just that she thinks it.
She's working towards that and staying there to help it happen.
Whereas other people might have...
Packed up their stuff and left.
Erica, okay, stick around.
This has been amazing.
Everyone out there, I'll see you later this afternoon or tomorrow.
It's been phenomenal, Erica.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much.
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