Silver, Carol Ruth: San Francisco politics

Abstract

Carol Ruth Silver: I remember one election season when Philip Burton was running for reelection to the Congress, so I went to one of his parties; one of his events. There, I ran across this older Italian gentleman who said to me, “Oh, I’m the republican running for this seat.” I said, “You’re the republican? What are you doing here at Phil Burton’s event?” He said, “Well there aren’t enough republicans to have our own events so we always go to the ones that are put on by Phil.” That was San Francisco politics. It was all within the Democratic Party, and the democrats had lots of little democratic clubs. There was the Irish-American Democratic Club – I don’t remember an Italian Democratic Club – but there was the Twin Peaks Democratic Club; there were lots of them. But there was also a stirring of environmentalism and other things like that. San Francisco Tomorrow was becoming prominent; trying to stop the wasting of San Francisco’s history and its natural resources. I think the Save the Bay people were very active at that time, and Bay Conservation Development Commission (BCDC) which I afterwards served on as a supervisor was becoming very active and very important. Their jurisdiction was a hundred feet into the city of San Francisco. San Francisco is not very big, and a hundred feet from the shoreline is a lot of territory. There was a lot of rising up of the people, and taking charge of their own political future.

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Type

Interview

Date Original

2010-07-21

Relation

The Moscone oral history interviews are part of the George Moscone Collection, MSS 328.

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections and Archives, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Information

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