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Activism & Politics Bikelash

Curious George

George Gascón on the campaign trail, describing how he held my balls in a vice

Shortly after George Gascón turned my bicycle accident into the Crime of the Century™, he was run out of San Francisco by BLM activists and Colin Kaepernick for not prosecuting any police murders, including that of Mario Woods, who was executed by what Gascón proudly referred to as “a firing squad.”

Now Gascón is being run out of Los Angeles by victims’ rights activists for being too soft on crime.

My feelings on this are complicated, at best.

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Activism & Politics Bikelash

Boy, this is complicated

San Francisco once had a corrupt, law-enforcement-simping, pro-crime-porn DA (George Gascón) who BLM ran out of town over the Mario Woods murder-by-police (same reason Colin Kaepernick took a knee). Chesa Boudin, a former public defender and *actual genuine criminal justice reformer* replaced Gascón, who pissed off nearly everyone in SF by not being reform-minded enough, and is now currently pissing off nearly everyone in LA by being TOO reform-minded. Now both are facing recall and Chesa is probably going to tell us why that’s a bad idea. I half agree with him! Boy, this is complicated.

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Activism & Politics

Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years in prison

This is an important victory, but real justice is not getting killed by the police for being black in the first place.

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Activism & Politics Bikelash

The Miseducation of George Gascón

I’m not hiding the fact that George Gascón tried to ruin my life, it’s no secret, I wrote a book about it, and I ran political attack ads against him during the primaries. Of course I’m biased beyond belief, but that’s because I had a deeply personal experience with him. He’s literally all over the news every day and I guess I’m just not educated enough to keep my mouth shut. So here goes: this guy is rotten to the core.

With my apologies to the law-and-order cohort, it’s actually not his policies. In addition to lining up with all of the modern criminal justice research, Gascón’s “radical” platform doesn’t seem quite as crazy if you accept the premise that the criminal justice system is little more than the modern extension of slavery, which it unquestionably is. But he’s in a tough spot, because there are a lot of centrists from both parties who are having a hard time parting with their outdated notions that punishment deters crime. (It doesn’t.) In fact, nearly 30,000 of them have already gathered in a “Recall George Gascon” Facebook group, hell of a first week on the job, even by Gascón standards.

But like I said, he’s got the right message. He’s just not the right messenger. And what he lacks in experience, he doesn’t make up with character.

George Gascón shit-talking into a microphone. Good thing he didn’t bring any watermelon.

Why is he mouthing off into a microphone like that at all, and why about, of all things, education? He dropped out of high school, joined the service, then spent a lifetime as a cop—with a brief hiatus spent as a used car salesman. (I can’t make this shit up.) Later kiss ass con moved into “management” by snitching on his Rampart officers, eventually kanoodling his way up to LAPD’s assistant chief, then Mesa, AZ’s, where he basked in the spotlight of a very public pissing match with Sheriff Joe. A lifetime republican, he suddenly renounced the GOP and the death penalty (sort of) when appointed to SFPD’s Chief, and then, to everybody’s surprise, SF’s DA, where he earned the honor of never pressing charges in any of SF’s 24 officer-led shooting deaths, inspiring Colin Kapernack to take a knee and BLM to run him out of town. Weird that I’m still talking about the same guy, right?

Gascón climbed the political and institutional ladders not because of his intelligence, not because of his character, but because he knows how to cozy up to authority and how to put himself in the spotlight. In 2012, Gascón waxed poetic about his supposed arch-rival to Rolling Stone: “Arpaio knows how to move the needle when it comes to appealing to the base. What he did very artfully is piggy-back on this fear of illegal immigration that was becoming so prevalent in border states like Arizona. He was able to capitalize on that and he became the hero, the only guy who would single-handedly go after it.”

This is where the story gets personal, and rare. San Francisco had two bicycle/pedestrian accidents in the span of thirteen months. Both fatal, both times the cyclists lived and the pedestrians died. I was the second cyclist.

George Gascón, clearly seeing another opportunity for the spotlight, turned both cases, in particular mine, into proof of a reckless cycling epidemic, then he “artfully piggy-back[ed]” on this fear of cyclists by spinning a web of lies in the local media to ensure that I could never get a fair trial, and SPOILER ALERT: I never did. Gascón’s lies turned me into the city’s poster child for reckless cycling, and he was “the hero” who saved everyone from me.

So sure, he has no legal experience, that’s established: night school law degree from some unaccredited tier-four college, never tried a case for the prosecution or the defense, ever. He only has negative reviews from everyone in SF who’s ever worked with him.

But here’s the rub: when Gascón turned San Francisco against me, he ignited the ire of a small, vocal minority, a tiny slice of law-and-order supporters who get off on telling the internet that criminals just aren’t getting punished enough and they should get so, so much more. These were the people telling me I should be hanging by my testicles in Union Square. For a bicycle accident. These very same people, or at least their friends in LA, are the same folks tearing Gascón apart right now for being an authoritarian prick, for sounding like the dumb cop that he is and always will be.

Sadly, the law-and-order folk are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Message good, messenger bad, right?

Cops are also notorious liars, and famously good at getting away with it. In this way, however, Gascón is not very gifted. He lies, sure, but bluntly, and he was always easy to catch, again and again. Abusing a position of power to lie to the media? That’s some pro politician shit, and George Gascón is warming the bench in the farm leagues.

We need criminal justice reform, and we need it desperately. But not from this guy.

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Activism & Politics Bikelash Featured Posts

Lacey vs. Gascón: The Devil You Know vs. The Devil You Don’t

As of yesterday, in the race to pick Los Angeles’s next District Attorney, it became mathematically impossible for Jackie Lacey to avoid a runoff with George Gascón. That means they’ll face a runoff in November, if we have a November (but that’s another story).

First, a little history: In 2012, Gascón press released a series of false statements making me seem 100% guilty and turning my fatal bicycle accident into the “crime of the century.” This showed no respect for the accused or for the deceased. Instead, Gascón followed only his own political ambitions by sending a message to the already much-maligned cycling community—turning me into a felon in order to serve as his messenger.

His lack of respect for the law, his willingness to lie to the public repeatedly, and his other moral and ethical failings left me $100,000 in the hole, with a career and reputation in shambles and a felony on my record, all so that he could stand behind a podium and say “the rules of the road apply to everyone.” All to appease the raging bikelash he started because of the lies he spread in the media. And when Gascón’s own video evidence exonerated me in court—instead of letting the truth set me free—he dug in deeper and demanded a felony or a year in jail, strong-arming me into a settlement. I reluctantly accepted, in order to stop the anguish Gascón was causing the victim’s family through his 18 month shitshow and because I knew I could never win against a cheater who was determined to see me punished for a crime he invented—by peddling fake stories about it to the media.

Most defendants don’t speak up when they are falsely accused or convicted. Many can’t because they’re in jail and/or lack the resources to tell their stories. Gascón knows this, which is why he feels empowered to bend and break the law to serve his political ends, without concern for fairness, without concern for justice. I spoke out against Gascón’s malfeasance by publishing a book in 2018, Bikelash: How San Francisco created America’s first bicycle felon and by releasing all of the information about my case—including his exonerating surveillance video evidence—on a public forum.  Also, using my own time and money, I campaigned against Gascón, distributing fliers, running Facebook attack ads and making three trips from SF to LA to encourage voters to stop listening to his snake-charming words and start looking at his record. Although I was not paid or even encouraged by Rachel Rossi’s campaign, when asked, I suggested voting for her, a public defender with a similar reform-minded record—minus all of Gascón’s and Lacey’s baggage.

Rossi did better than I expected, but not well enough to earn a second place spot. And Lacey couldn’t earn 50% +1, so now LA is facing two bad choices: Lacey (the devil you know) and Gascón (the devil you don’t). 

Lacey, an establishment law-and-order Democrat, has sent 22 defendants to death row, all of them people of color. Since 2012, she has charged exactly one cop in over 400 LAPD officer-led shootings. She touted her support for substance abusers and the mentally ill, but only had 80 defendants complete mental health diversion programs—when over 3,000 were eligible. Meanwhile, she refused to prosecute Ed Buck, a prominent white Democratic donor, for two deaths (and one near-death overdose) of young black men he lured into his drug den and injected with meth. On the eve of the election, Lacey’s husband brandished a gun at Black Lives Matter protestors, yelling “I will shoot you.” In spite of all this, she has the nerve to call herself a moderate reformer, a message that fell flat on (slightly) more than half of LA voters

Gascón, a former cop and lifelong Republican who later became a darling of the Democratic Party, carpetbagged his way to LA in an attempt to escape scathing reviews by everyone who worked with him in San Francisco. He has hidden a record similar to Lacey’s under a cloak of progressivism, making him a dangerous District Attorney—and a persistent, unrelenting liar. In the 24 SFPD-led shootings in San Francisco while he was DA, Gascón charged zero cops, claiming in a recent presentation at USC that the “firing squad” who assassinated Mario Woods was just looking out for their “brother officers,” a bizarre reference he learned in the 1990s while a member of one of the most corrupt police forces in history, the LAPD. In another high-profile accidental death, he grossly overcharged Jose Inez Garcia-Zarate with first degree murder, which led to an acquittal. He also talked a big game about mental health treatment but did nothing beyond a series of recommendations. When asked to respond to a series of racist SFPD texts, he convened a “Blue Ribbon Panel” which again gave recommendations, but disciplined no one and again, did nothing. Meanwhile, the POA President gave a sworn deposition calling Gascón a racist since he himself referred to his former LAPD “brother officers” as “dumb black guys” and said that the drug trafficking problem in California was caused by “fucking Mexicans.” This fell right in line with other racist statements he made as SF’s Police Chief, calling Arab Americans terrorists and musing about how they might try “parking a van in front of [The Hall of Justice] and blowing it up.”

This November, if we have an election, Los Angeles will be faced with two bad choices for District Attorney. Although it pains me to ask people not to vote in this race, I would recommend abstaining from voting for either DA as way of sending a message of “no confidence” to both of these deplorable candidates.

If we make it to 2021, one of them will unfortunately become Los Angeles’s DA. And I’m already sorry about that. But please don’t say that I didn’t warn you or try to stop this. I did, and I tried, and it just wasn’t enough.

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Bikelash Featured Posts

Bikelash Trailer

A true story by Chris Bucchere

March 29th, 2012, 8:20am, Castro Street
When he regained consciousness, Chris found himself bloodied and bruised, being loaded into an ambulance. He had no idea that his life had permanently changed. Because, a few days later, an elderly man he had hit with his bicycle would die of injuries sustained in the accident. News would go viral internationally, including articles in the New York Times and Forbes magazine. The District Attorney of San Francisco would see Chris’s case as an opportunity to send a message to the city’s cyclists.

But this isn’t a story about cycling. It’s about criminal justice. It’s about prosecutors manipulating the press in order to deprive defendants of due process, where facts get misconstrued and inaccurate details leaked. It’s about social media whipping public opinion to a frenzy, giving DAs fodder for political gain. It’s about what really happens behind the headlines: who wins, who loses, who plays fair—and who doesn’t.

Bikelash is a story chronicling Chris’s role in a fatal bicycle-pedestrian accident. These 107,000 words are based on court transcripts, emails exchanged with his attorney, and Chris’s in-the-moment journaling from immediately after the accident until he pleaded guilty to felony vehicular manslaughter eighteen months later.

Get the Kindle or print edition of Bikelash: How San Francisco Created America’s First Bicycle Felon

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Business Featured Posts

Was The Facebook Hacker Story Irresponsible Journalism?

This article originally appeared as a guest post on All Facebook.
 
The media scandal du jour relates to how WikiLeaks leaked all this classified information about the war in Afghanistan, but let’s not overlook this extremely irresponsible piece of reporting that MSNC published earlier this week about an alleged Facebook privacy breach.

Why is it irresponsible? Well, before I break it down for you, let’s take a few journalism lessons from Robert Scoble, who explains why Flipboard (an iPad application that turns RSS feeds into a magazine-like layout) is superior to the one-item-after-another streams of information that we’re used to browsing on the Facebook news feed, Twitter, etc. He writes:

“I remember that early eye tracking research showed that pages that had a single headline that was twice as big as any other headline were more likely to be read. Same for pages with photos. If you put two photos of equal size on the page, it would be looked at less often, or less completely, than a page that had a photo that was at least twice as big as any other.
I won a newspaper design contest in college because of this my designs made sure that they included headlines that were twice as big as any other and photos that were twice as big as any other.”

MSNBC used these exact techniques to spin an oh-so-scary story about an alleged Facebook privacy breach.
lies1(2)This first screen shot is what I could see on an average (15″) monitor “above the fold.” (You can click the image to see it in actual size.) Note the massive font used for the headline and the four tiny images. Keep in mind that some internet users don’t know how to scroll (really, I’m not kidding), so by not showing a broken line of text at the bottom of the page, many people won’t know that the rest of the article is even there, let alone how to get to it.

lies3If you endeavor to read past the headline, you’ll notice that they “end” the story with more scary talk from the alleged “hacker” and hide the final three paragraphs behind this completely absurd “Show More Text” link, which serves no purpose other than to obscure the truth, which is in the final (that’s right, the very last) paragraph of the article:

“No private data is available or has been compromised. Similar to a phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook. If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications.”

So, if I were to email MSNBC and tell them that I was “a researcher” or “a white-hat hacker” and I had discovered a huge scam — “You see, these conspirators from Yellow Pages have been collecting and amassing all this private data and delivering it to everyone’s doorstep!” — they would think I was completely insane. Well, change “Yellow Pages” to “Facebook” and “delivering it to everyone’s doorstep” to “making available for download” and I think you see my point.

msnSo how did MSN get away with posting this completely absurd story? To understand that, we need to look at their demographic. I went to Alexa.com to find out. As I had guessed, their readers lean toward females of the Baby Boomer generation and up. The same people who don’t know how to change their default settings in their default browser (IE6) on their default operating system (Windows XP) to anything other than MSN.com. Big suprise? No: MSNBC is preying on innocent victims by using psychological tricks to create phobias for things that they don’t understand. And there’s nothing scarier than the fear of the unknown.

bowling-for-columbineThe premise that the media is out to scare us all into staying home and buying more security systems/guns/etc. is not news; Michael Moore built a really compelling case against Big Media’s fear tactics in Bowling for Columbine in 2002. However, an interesting question to ask in 2010 is:

if Big Media is prone to Big Lies and Misinformation, can social media serve as an antidote?

In other words, can investigative reporting by “citizen journalists” help suss the truth out of all the lies?

To help answer the question, I turned to the 875+ comments on the article. To do some highly unscientific semantic analysis, I read a small sample to look for keywords were common in a neutral-to-favorable comment (information, private/privacy, security, people/friends, public) vs. what keywords where prevalent in a highly negative response (wrong, attention, fame, fraud, scam, boring, crap). Then I ran all the comment text through a histogram tool.

histogramUnfortunately, the results of my study show that most comments were favorable by a ratio of over 5:1. However, it all goes back to to the demographic. After glancing at the TechCrunch coverage on this, it seems about 60-70% of the commenters call bullshit, which seems to be in line with a younger, male-dominated, tech-savvy demographic.

So what do you think? Can commenting/voting/Tweeting uncover the truth obscured though it is by the news outlets that report it? Or will we all just continue to propagate the monkey excrement that the mass media keep throwing at us?

Leave a comment to tell us what you think!

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Crowd Campaign, The Social Contest Builder

(I-Newswire) November 16, 2009 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CC_Glossy_Side2.pdf (1 page)New York, New York – November 16th, 2009 – At Web 2.0 Expo today, Social Collective, Inc., the company behind the hosted social networking and scheduling software that powered SXSW and Oracle OpenWorld, announced the launch of their newest product, Crowd Campaign. Using Crowd Campaign, Twitter users can easily launch cost-effective branded online contests.

With the power of Twitter and the social web, people who enter these contests, vote on entries, or make comments help propagate their viral spread via easy-to-use sharing tools that facilitate posting contest updates to a multitude of different social networking sites.

When setting up a contest, Crowd Campaign offers the ability to customize the contest’s subdomain, upload a logo and background image, write a Terms & Conditions page, set colors and styles, insert Google Analytics tracking code and change all of the contest rules and other marketing copy. Contest winners can be decided by popular vote or by an “expert panel” or some combination of both. Contests can include text entries, photo or video submissions and links to other content such as blog posts or web sites, meaning that Crowd Campaign contests can be used for any type of competition. Crowd Campaign also offers a rich set of entry management tools for removing offensive content, merging duplicate entries and tallying entries, votes and page views. Crowd Campaign offers a free version for contests containing no more than 10 entries and/or 100 votes. To increase these limits, contest managers can pay as little as $95 up to $4,995 for a one-year unlimited-use license.

Crowd Campaign is used by ad agencies, event managers, social media marketers, small business owners, popular authors, independent film makers and musicians – anyone who wants to leverage the power of the social web to build a brand. Any type of contest can be set up in 10-15 minutes, limited only by one’s imagination and federal, state and local laws.

During the private beta period that ended with today’s launch, hundreds of Crowd Campaign sites were created, including these prominent contests:

http://w2e.crowdcampaign.com — Ask Beth Noveck, Deputy CTO of the US Government a Question: Tim O’Reilly will pick from among the top questions and ask Noveck the best one during their Web 2.0 Expo Keynote later this week. The winner will also receive an autographed copy of Noveck’s book, Wiki Government.

http://w2e.crowdcampaign.com — Search for the Best LinkedIn Profile: Mike O’Neil and Lori Ruff will feature the top five vote-getters in O’Neil’s new book, Rock the World with Your Online Presence.

http://expoexpo.crowdcampaign.com — Ask Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Rick Calvert, Ann Hamilton and David Rich a Question — the panel moderator will ask the panel the top question at Expo! Expo! in Atlanta in early December. The winner will also receive an autographed copy of Kawasaki’s book, Reality Check.

http://techcocktail.crowdcampaign.com — Enter a DC-area startup company and Frank Gruber and Eric Olson will give the top vote-getter a free Bronze Sponsorhip at the next TECH Cocktail DC event (a $999 value).

http://digitalmarketingmixer.crowdcampaign.com — Suggest an idea for MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing Mixer: the winner of a random drawing will receive a free registration to MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2010 in Boston, MA (a $695 value).

Mike O’Neil, who launched a Crowd Campaign contest in support of his book, Rock the World with Your Online Presence, said:

“With just weeks from start to finish, we embarked on a partnership with the folks at Crowd Campaign to see how we could find and refine applications for [online contest] technology in social media.”

O’Neil launched a very successful contest centered around finding top LinkedIn profile pages and featuring the winners in his book, which is “something that money can’t buy.” O’Neil remarked on how powerful it was for CrowdCampaign to “create a following around the pop culture image we represent with social media, networking and music.”

About Crowd Campaign

Crowd Campaign is a social tool for building brands. It’s used by ad agencies, event managers, social media marketers – anyone who wants to leverage the power of the social web to build a brand. Easy to customize and manage, you can launch a Twitter-powered contest including a branded promotional site in minutes from your desktop. It’s FREE to get started and there’s no sign up or credit card required. Start a contest today by visiting http://crowdcampaign.com

For more information, contact Clinton Bonner at Social Collective, Inc., [email protected], 860-608-9074

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Featured Posts The Social Collective

Social Collective, Inc. Featured on TechCrunch

techcrunch2Having “graduated” from the LaunchBox Digital program, which culminated with East and West Coast Demo Days last week, TechCrunch ran an article with a description of each of the eight companies. You can also visit our CrunchBase profile for more information about Social Collective, Inc.

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The Social Collective

The Social Collective to Provide Social Media Software for Experient’s e4 Conference

e4-sphere_bigger.gifToday we are pleased to announce that Experient, Inc., a full-service solution provider for conferences and events, has chosen The Social Collective as the social networking platform for Experient’s 2009 e4 Conference. Here at Social Collective, Inc., we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to help Experient fulfill their brand promise of “delivering the total event experience” by adding a social networking component to their wide range of pre-existing services. These services include everything from scalable registration to a suite of event logistics solutions, and on to amenities that make for much happier attendees and much more profitable exhibitors. Experient has been a trailblazer in the events world since its inception. In their quest to be recognized as a thought leader in the events space, Experient continues to seek out and provide its clients with the best event services in the industry.

The Social Collective is a white-label conference social networking suite and social media aggregator which will serve as the event-centric networking community for Experient’s 2009 e4 Conference. The e4 event is the annual gathering of Experient’s clients and select sponsors. The typical attendee of e4 is an association executive or an event management professional. Each year, Experient chooses an overarching theme that is most relevant to the times the industry is facing. This year’s theme is Networking and the Infusion of Social Media into live events and their surrounding communities.

According to Karen Watson, Director of Strategic Events at Experient:

“Our goal is to simplify the social media experience for our e4 attendees and by using the Social Collective white label platform, we should create more opportunity for interaction before, during and after e4. Our ultimate goal is to create a community for our attendees to connect and interact with their peers year-round.”

At Social Collective, Inc., we’re looking forward to this opportunity to serve Experient and their e4 2009 conference. We’re excited about ushering this vibrant community of attendees and sponsors into a new era of inter-connectivity and social networking. The e4 gathering — taking place between August 2nd and 5th in National Harbor, MD — will showcase how physical meetings are evolving through the use of new technologies and techniques. As a result, the meetings industry can continue to grow by enhancing attendees’, sponsors’, and exhibitors’ experiences leading up to, during, and well after the physical event has taken place.

Visit http://www.experient-inc.com for more on their suite of professional services. Visit http://thesocialcollective.com for more information on how to build a thriving year-round community for your next event or follow The Social Collective on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nowgetsocial.