No matter what your opinion of Senator Feinstein, she has to be given a lot of respect for her endurance as a politician. I think she was gifted.
I want to tell the story of how I happened to meet her, just as her political career began to blossom.
I'd been a pseudo hippy carpenter in Oakland, California for the first three years out of college (1967), but I eventually moved to San Francisco and got a job working for Mission Coalition Organization. MCO was a coalition of 53 organizations from the Mission. Labor unions, churches, business groups, Latino non-profits, etc. I was the staff person for the Planning Committee and for Public Works.
In 1971, we got involved in an attempt to limit where high rise buildings could be built. A business person, Alvin Duskin, led a grassroots effort to put the issue on the ballot. I collected signatures on a few weekends and eventually helped get MCO involved.
I was learning how effective organizing could be and the height limits issue was a perfect issue to organize around. Saul Alinsky, who was an inspiration for MCO, said an issue had to be immediate, specific, and realizable to be useful for organizing. I thought this one was, and that turned out to be true.
After bringing the issue to the MCO Planning Committee, I got permission to try to bring in other neighborhood organizations who shared our concern. I spent two weeks on the phone and meeting people in person. One of the people I reached was Diane Feinstein. She was the president of the Pacific Heights neighborhood organization. She was immediately helpful and articulate, so I suggested that we hold a city wide meeting of representatives from neighborhood organizations and that she act as the temporary chair. She agreed.
We held the meeting on the top floor of her house, in a big room, probably an attic. She was brilliant. She listened well and steered the meeting skillfully. I was really proud of her work. Many years later, I discovered that, at the time, she was a newly elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Apparently, I hadn't discovered her.
The city took the subsequent community feedback seriously enough that they did a thorough analysis and proposed limits that are the basis of what they are today.
So thank you, Senator Feinstein. Well done.
