Week in Clubhouse – 1.15.21
Tech Twitter v. Chesa, missing native SF voices, the first sponsored Clubhouse room
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Future of SF ft. Chesa Boudin
Evening of 1/14/21
Room started by Mike Solana and Michelle Tandler – intended as an informal chat about the future of San Francisco.
Things got heated when Chesa Boudin (current DA of SF) joined the room, claiming the group was trashing and spreading lies about him.
Specifically, claims from Wikipedia that he had met and worked for Hugo Chavez.
After Delian Asparouhov pressed for details, Chesa stated he was never actually employed by the Venezuelan government but rather served as a translator for an American publishing company and may have translated a few of Hugo Chavez’s speeches or interviews.
The conversation moves on to crime in SF.
For the large majority of questions, Chesa’s response was that the situation was much more nuanced than the room understood, stating that many of the cases were outside of his control and that we shouldn’t determine policy based on anecdotes or on unusual cases.
Specifically, Chesa listed the ineffectiveness of California’s correctional facilities in effectively rehabbing, antiquated DOS mainframes preventing court data from being utilized as well as Covid-19 halting jury trials as to some of the reasons why many of San Francisco’s perceived crime problems were outside of his responsibility.
@balajis joins and asks about a specific case from an SF Chronicle article, pressing Chesa to list a punishment for the alleged crime described. Chesa responds that it’s impossible to talk about punishments for an abstract crime and that he needs significantly more details than the article alone.
Chesa leaves since the discussion is now about hypotheticals
Discussion after focuses on solutions (at which point Balaji leaves the room as he believes that SF seems unfixable)
Jason Calacanis joins to reaffirm belief in funding a serious journalist to investigate.
Jason believes that Chesa is on Clubhouse since he is afraid of being recalled
Marc Andreesen says he is in favor of Jason’s idea and has donated to the fundraiser
Nancy Tung offers to be a resource to anyone interested in getting involved in city politics and running for elected positions.
Cyan Banister laments how there are so many smart people in tech and that we can contribute to fixing the city.
Editor’s commentary: Politics aside, there’s no doubt that the accessibility and real-time nature of CH creates a special environment for important civic discourse between community leaders and their constituents. The question is whether CH will fall prey to the same echo chamber dynamics of other social media giants like Twitter and Facebook.
Community highlights:
Listening to Chesa Boudin on Clubhouse. He's smart, articulate, and way more competent than Twitter portrays him. SF is fucked...
The worst thing about Chesa Boudin on stage here is that a/ infinite talking points on why he is doing a great job and b/ infinite talking points about how it’s not his responsibility. Parole, police, it’s everyone else’s problem.
“Future of SF” really means “Make SF more white”
Evening of 1/14/21
Room started by @DNas in reaction to the lack of diversity in speakers and opinions in the “Future of SF” room
Difficult to make San Francisco actually safer, the average police officer costs $171,000
Every time we ask about hiring more officers, we have to ask what the opportunity cost is to invest in our most vulnerable families in SF
The conversation in the other room [Future of SF] is “incredibly limited”.
“Future of SF” discussion was largely centered on whiteness. Black and brown voices were virtually non-existent who are the people the most marginalized by the tech industry.
Minorities have not been included in the massive wealth generation from the technology industry in the past 20 years.
Tiffany Carter (CH: @mamastunna):
A call to not leave San Francisco
Her parents own a home in the city, and she is a small business owner
Black people need equity in the city of San Francisco. We need black leaders, home ownerships, and black businesses.
Compared to Canada, the US has a human rights issue.
People can’t get basic things like health care; minorities and poor communities are dispositionally affected by this.
The other room [Future of SF] is not solution-oriented, just complaints and finger-pointing.
A white man claiming Walgreens being robbed all the time is not representative of San Francisco as a whole.
Editor’s commentary: Although it was encouraging to see the DA engage in discourse and have a tough but open conversation, there was other parties, namely minorities and native San Franciscans, that were entirely left out – underscoring how far SF is from being fixed
Community highlights:
Yesterday’s conversation made me realize I’m not as tapped in with SF as I thought. Definitely more conversations about other cities around the bay are needed, the history, the present, the future. I been so Oakland-only my whole life, time to learn about everyone else too
there were no Black people in that clubhouse conversation about the “future of SF” and nobody speaking in the conversation said a word about it. y’all, i beg of you, please stop accepting no Black people as the norm. please stop leaving it to Black people to point it out.
VCs trying to be armchair criminal lawyers with no prior prep telling @chesaboudin to “just read the news articles” 🤦🏻♀️
GOOD TIME
Coverage on our Twitter:
I AM WOW $
A Trivia room hosted by Justin Kan, Alex Fox, Andrew Lee, Noah Lichtenstein, Josh Harris, Aaron Batalion, Ed Nusbaum and guest judge Julie Wenah.
Originally started as an impromptu trivia night to give away an instant pot
Rules: Judges provide a prompt (e.g. name three things that are the color orange). Participants have 5 seconds to name three examples described by the judge’s prompt. Every round you have the option to cash out or answer another question for double the money.
Julie Wenah joined as a guest judge (@wenah on CH). She’s the creator of The Remix Club on Clubhouse and formerly featured as the app’s icon
This week’s I AM WOW $ event was sponsored by Cash App. This was one of the first (if not the first) officially sponsored Clubhouse rooms.
When asked about the legality of having a sponsored club, Paul Davison (the co-founder of Clubhouse) didn’t provide a direct answer.
Editor’s commentary: It will be interesting to see how sponsored content on Clubhouse will evolve and what Clubhouse’s policies will be.
Community highlights:
Upcoming coverage
GOOD TIME hosted by Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy
We’re just getting started, Tweet at us which other clubs you’d like us to cover!
Hmm black population is 5% of SF. What is a right number for you on The Future of sf?
Why is your twitter account suspended?