Most people take measures to make their homes look presentable when having company over, right? So what do you do if you are a public official preparing to host a summit with China’s President Xi Jinping? “Cleaning house” takes on a whole new meaning in San Francisco, CA, where it involves sweeping the drug addicts under the rug and hiding evidence of the City by the Bay’s overwhelming homelessness and crime. Democrat policymakers are being dubbed hypocritical for temporarily sprucing up the city, as well as building fences to protect those attending the Asia-Pacific-Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference this week.
California Lawmakers Criticized for Double Standards
(Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
California Governor Gavin Newsom surprised many by openly admitting the scrubbing was done to impress the out-of-towners. During a press conference, he said, “I know folks say, ‘Oh they’re just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town.’ That’s true, because it’s true.”
“The sidewalks in the APEC zone, including sticky and urine-perfumed Van Ness Avenue, have been silver polished on the Eve of APEC,” Sebastian, a San Francisco resident, told California Globe. “Walking along Van Ness Ave today was like walking along twice-a-day-mobbed Orchard Road in Singapore.”
The End Wokeness account on the social media platform X has 1.8 million followers and wrote, “San Francisco’s homeless population was entirely cleared out for Xi Jinping. The Government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to.”
Of course, while San Francisco officials may try to hide behind street-sweepers and fences, they can’t escape from the crime-ridden morass they’ve created. Local news outlet SFist has already run the headline “First Crime-Related Embarrassment of APEC: Czech News Crew Robbed.” In a poignant illustration of how far the city has fallen, the site reported, “Czech newsman Bohumil Vostal was shooting outside City Lights Bookstore in North Beach when he and his crew were approached by three masked suspects with guns … Sadly, Vostal says he was trying to shoot a segment that would portray San Francisco in a positive light, adding, ‘I’m one of those many people who used to read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and I was so much looking forward to visit your city.'”
Black metal fenced barricades have been constructed outside the Moscone Center, where the conference will take place. In a city already choked with traffic, streets will be closed, some buses won’t be running, and parking is eliminated within the area. Residents in the APEC security zone must pass through security checks from Nov. 14 – 18 just to go home, according to Sebastian. He added:
“They are essentially locking the dignitaries up to keep them from discovering just how bad and dangerous the town is. And these are the Democrats who say that border fencing doesn’t work. The same leftists that claim that fences and walls do not work and are inhumane are the same leftists that live behind fences and walls.
Asians Against Wokeness posted on X about the city’s wall, saying, “Woke liberals fear/respect Xi Daddy more than their fellow Americans. Soft core authoritarians fear/respect hardcore authoritarians.”
Another X account, Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng, who writes about China and has 244,300 followers, posted, “U.S. taxpayers’ money is being used to protect the ‘safety’ of a communist dictator, suppressing the voices of the public living in America.”
Meetings with Chinese President
President Joe Biden will be meeting with Xi on Wednesday, Nov. 15, to discuss “issues in the U.S.-PRC [People’s Republic of China] bilateral relationship, the continued importance of maintaining open lines of communication, and a range of regional and global issues,” the White House announced. “[T]he Leaders will also discuss how the United States and the PRC can continue to responsibly manage competition and work together where our interests align, particularly on transnational challenges that affect the international community.”
Newsom also met with Xi recently, traveling to China in October to discuss matters of climate control and a shared partnership. The governor’s office wrote on X at the time:
“The only way we can solve the climate crisis is to continue our long-standing cooperation with China. As two of the world’s largest economies, the work we do together is felt in countless communities on both sides of the Pacific.
“Despite major differences, we share our humanity – our desire to feel protected, connected and respected is universal – and that humanity is what should drive us to work together to stop the greatest existential threat our planet has ever known.”
(Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Despite Newsom’s evident hopes when it comes to building relations with China, APEC has angered a broad swath of political activists – for all sorts of reasons.
A protest on Sunday, Nov. 12, had thousands of people demonstrating against the conference. Those in attendance included Palestinian liberation advocates, climate change activists, and anti-capitalist organizations, who packed the Embarcadero Plaza and marched up Market Street toward the Moscone Center.
“The U.S. is attempting to push free trade policies in the Asia Pacific Rim. And we see a history of those policies being detrimental to workers’ rights and the environment,” said Narissa Lee, representative of the No to APEC Coalition.
California lawmakers such as Newsom and Nancy Pelosi have been strong advocates against a border wall, calling it inhumane and ineffective, yet when it comes to protecting themselves, dignitaries, and most importantly, their carefully cultivated facade of competence and good governance, those barriers become the most necessary of evils.
