Organizer of Supervisor Joel Engardio recall resigns days before deadline
Vin Budhai said he was stepping down from the recall effort due to 'ongoing creative and strategic differences regarding the direction and execution of the effort.'
Budhai was one of the public faces behind the opposition to Proposition K last fall, which passed, creating the Sunset Dunes Park and permanently closing the Great Highway.
'My commitment to holding Supervisor Engardio accountable remains unchanged,' Budhai said in a statement. 'I continue to believe that a recall is warranted and necessary for the future of our community.'
The recall effort kicked off in February against Engardio for his support of Prop K, which passed with more than 54% of the vote across San Francisco, but was opposed by the majority of residents in the Sunset and Richmond districts, which are closest to the new park.
The 2-mile stretch of the Great Highway was closed to cars on March 14 and the new park — named Sunset Dunes following a namingcontest that included numerous anti-Engardio entries — opened on April 12, when thousands flocked to the oceanside stretch to celebrate the new park.
Budhai's resignation comes only nine days before the May 22 deadline for the recall campaign to submit 10,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot. Budhai previously declined to share how many signatures the campaign had collected.
'I wish the committee and all those involved in the campaign continued success as they carry this effort forward,' Budhai said in a statement.
Other west side residents have been pushing voters to 'Stand with Joel.' Engardio has also received high-profile support from Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who donated $25,000 to the supervisor's cause. Some opponents of the recall have cited the cost of a recall election which they say wastes taxpayer money, and the fact that Engardio is up for reelection in November 2026 as reasons for their opposition.
'Not every Sunset resident is going to agree with me on every issue, but I'm committed to working with residents on issues that make the Sunset a great place to live,' Engardio previously said in response to the recall effort. 'I respect that people are going to disagree on how to use our coast. It's humbling to see a majority of my district opposing the ballot measure, so that's why I'm working so hard to address the core issues people had about the ballot measure.
Sunset Dunes Park has also seen obstacles in court, a lawsuit filed alleges the closure of the Great Highway as unlawful. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit include LivableSF, a nonprofit started by Budhai; Sunset hardware store owner Albert Chow; former District 7 supervisor candidate Matt Borschetto, and Outer Sunset resident Lisa Arjes.
The issue of the park could also be sent back to voters if the recall campaign qualifies for the ballot. In her April 5 column in the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon, Supervisor Connie Chan wrote that the recall would present an opportunity to send a ballot measure to voters to reopen the highway to cars.
But Chan would need six supervisors to make the election citywide, as only District 4 residents would be able to vote on an Engardio recall. She'd further need three more supervisors' signatures for the potential measure to reopen the highway to be placed on the ballot.
Board President Rafael Mandelman said at the time that he does not see the need to revisit the issue of the Upper Great Highway.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Chicago Tribune
2 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Ald. Debra Silverstein: Report shows a stunning rise in antisemitism in Chicago. The mayor needs to do better.
The Chicago Commission on Human Relations, or CCHR, just released its annual report on hate crimes and incidents in Chicago, which showed that anti-Jewish hate crimes rose a stunning 58% last year. Antisemitism accounted for more than 37% of all hate crimes reported to the Chicago Police Department in 2024. Jewish Chicagoans make up only 3% of the city's total population, yet we were the target of more than a third of all the hate crimes reported in the entire city. This isn't a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Anti-Jewish hate crimes are up sharply across the nation. Notable and shocking examples include the killing of a young couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, the firebombing attack on rallygoers in Colorado who were raising awareness about the Israeli hostages and the arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro's residence in Pennsylvania. Chicago was also rocked last year by an antisemitic terrorist attack in my own West Ridge community. An Orthodox man was shot in the shoulder while walking to synagogue on Shabbat. The victim was dressed in traditional Jewish garb, and he was only saved because his attacker's gun jammed. Police investigations revealed the shooter was specifically targeting Jewish individuals and institutions. Other hateful incidents have been happening across the city, including the painting of swastikas in Little Village and antisemitic graffiti in Hyde Park, and the placement of anti-Jewish cards on car windows in multiple wards. The incidents in CCHR's report have affected communities across Chicago. In response to this disturbing report, Mayor Brandon Johnson is finally starting to pay attention. He has authorized CCHR to convene public hearings on the rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes in Chicago, echoing a call I made last month with the support of the majority of the City Council. I fear this is too little, too late. As alderman of the 50th Ward, home to the largest Orthodox Jewish community in the city of Chicago, I have been raising the alarm about rising antisemitism for years. I hear daily from my community about antisemitic graffiti outside synagogues and the harassing of residents who are visibly Jewish on our streets. The response from City Hall has been anemic at best and often openly hostile to the concerns and fears of the Jewish community. Johnson has made it clear that the safety of Chicago's Jews takes a back seat to his progressive goals, and I worry how receptive he will be to making actual changes in response to the findings of these hearings. I am pleased that the hearings, which will be held in September, will be convened by CCHR. Its members have been tremendous allies to the Jewish community and to vulnerable communities across Chicago. I trust Commissioner Nancy Andrade to preside over fair and balanced hearings and to hear from voices that represent the vast majority of Chicago's Jewish community — even from groups that have feuded with Johnson in the past — including the Jewish United Fund, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and Simon Wiesenthal Center. Jay Tcath: The phrase 'Free Palestine' is freeing no one, but it is killing some of usHowever, I have concerns about whether the mayor's office will allow CCHR to develop an accurate report that reflects the genuine fears of Chicago's Jewish community, especially if the hearings reveal that the mayor's progressive allies have contributed to the antisemitic environment in the city. The CCHR hate crimes report indicates that the rise in antisemitism in Chicago is fueled by misguided reactions to the Israel-Hamas war. Antisemitic people around the world have been using the war as a pretext to spew anti-Jewish hate under the cover of anti-Zionism, as if shooting at Jews in Chicago somehow makes Palestinians in Gaza safer. Much of this rhetoric in Chicago has come from the mayor's progressive allies and at events that the mayor has either praised or supported, such as the college encampments, Chicago Public Schools walkouts and protests that call to 'globalize the intifada.' How will City Hall react if Jewish CPS students testify that they were threatened and intimidated during the school protests, when the mayor already praised the students for walking out? How will the mayor respond to Jewish students who were attacked at DePaul University when his closest allies were at the encampments where knives, pellet guns and other improvised weapons were found? These extreme anti-Israel demonstrations hide under the guise of free speech but are really part of a growing movement of unchecked antisemitism masquerading as political activism. Will the mayor allow the CCHR hearings to reveal this fact or are we in for sanitized proceedings that refuse to address the root causes of anti-Jewish hate in Chicago? Can we expect actual change or just more thoughts and prayers from our city leadership? We will wait and see. But I promise that the Jewish community is tired of being silent. You will continue to hear from us as long as antisemitism remains at crisis levels. And I hope that our allies and every person of conscience in Chicago join us.
Los Angeles Times
2 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Chris Newman is at the center of the immigration fight — again
Chris Newman was carrying two bags when we recently sat down for breakfast at Homegirl Café in downtown Los Angeles. One was a newish satchel holding his laptop and papers for the cases he's working on, which happen to involve some of the most infamous moments in the Trump administration's deportation deluge. Newman was co-counsel on a lawsuit that won a temporary restraining order against the indiscriminate immigration raids that have afflicted Southern California since June. He also represents the family of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a day laborer who was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in the spring, then returned on the order of a federal judge. At the Border Patrol's takeover of MacArthur Park earlier this month, Newman was there shooting video and deriding the spectacle as 'a dystopian episode of 'The Apprentice.'' 'If we can litigate the calamity [of Trump] at the local level to the widest degree, that can help democracy survive, dude,' Newman told me as he picked at black beans and two eggs over easy. The other bag, a big straw tote, was filled with anti-Trump and anti-migra T-shirts, posters and stickers. Wherever Newman goes these days, he hands them out like a progressive Santa Claus. 'I want to keep the proper amount of anger to have the fuel to do all this,' he said. 'The pendulum is sweeping so wide and so fast. We need to be ready.' For the past 21 years, Newman has been a pivotal, omnipresent part of Southern California's immigrant rights movement as legal director for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, better known as NDLON. His work takes him from street corners advising jornaleros about their rights to my alma mater, UCLA, where he's on the faculty of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Newman's influence extends far past Los Angeles, however. He's a regular presence on national media outlets, quick and eloquent with insights and righteous anger. Politicians from Sacramento to Washington know he isn't afraid to tear into them if he thinks they're too timid to publicly call out xenophobia or support laws that protect the undocumented. 'He does not mind being the bad cop,' said Angela Chan, assistant chief attorney at the San Francisco public defender's office. In her previous job last decade, she and Newman helped craft a trio of bills that made California a sanctuary state. 'It can make a meeting very uncomfortable, but Chris is cutting all the bulls— so you get much closer to having an honest conversation,' Chan said. 'He does not expect or pursue pomp or circumstance.' Salvador Reza, a longtime organizer in Phoenix, first worked with Newman in the mid-2000s after asking NDLON to help pressure the city to let day laborers seek work. Newman participated in forums, organized rallies and ultimately convinced city officials to lay off by citing a 2006 lawsuit against Redondo Beach that he had worked on. In that case, an ordinance banning day laborers was ruled unconstitutional. Newman and Reza went on to wage many successful campaigns in Arizona, from defeating Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio at the ballot box to fighting local law enforcement agencies partnering with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The two even convinced music legends like Zack de la Rocha, Los Tigres del Norte and the late Jenni Rivera to bypass the Copper State during their tours in 2010 to protest a state bill that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants. 'He cares a lot about people, and he'll go out of his way to help out anyone who needs it who's being abused by the system,' said Reza, who saw Newman earlier this year when the two met with Home Depot managers over allegations that their stores in Phoenix were chasing off day laborers. 'He's super busy over there in California right now, isn't he?' A fast talker who exudes confidence but isn't a braggart, Newman looks far younger than 49. His full head of hair, round-framed glasses and freshly sprouted mustache gives the Chicagoland native the look of a Depression-era do-gooder. 'I'm trying to hold onto the anger stage so I don't get into the sad stage,' he said. 'And I don't want to get there because that'll lead to the acceptance stage, and too much of L.A. is already there.' Newman never planned for a career like this, even though his mother was from Denmark, his father is a Hungarian Jew and his brother is of Salvadoran descent. He attended law school in Denver, set on becoming a death penalty lawyer, until realizing 'it wasn't like I thought it was in the movies.' A mentor suggested that Newman recharge his bleeding heart by volunteering with Minsun Ji, founder of Denver's first day laborers' center. 'I didn't even know day laborers were a thing,' Newman admitted. But he immediately 'loved everything — just hanging out there, chewing the fat and hearing the stories of the jornaleros.' Ji assigned him to help clean the restrooms his first few weeks. Newman eventually graduated to handling wage theft cases and volunteered for whatever was needed, including driving a van full of day laborers to an NDLON conference in suburban Maryland in 2002. There, he heard Thomas Saenz, an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund who led a successful lawsuit against Prop. 187, the 1994 California anti-immigrant ballot initiative. Saenz told the crowd about MALDEF's lawsuits against Southern California cities that were trying to ban day laborers. 'That's when I realized I could use my law degree to do the exact same thing,' Newman said. '[It was] something that I loved in theory, but I didn't realize it was happening in real life.' About a year later, he called NDLON co-founder Pablo Alvarado. 'It was at eight at night, and I was still at the [NDLON] office,' Alvarado said in a phone interview. 'And Chris said, 'I want to do a fellowship with you. The fellowship deadline is at three in the afternoon the next day. Can I go right now so we can write it?'' He began to laugh. 'We didn't sleep all night, but we did it — we finished his application. And Chris never left.' (Newman remembers the moment differently. He said he applied for the fellowship, but Alvarado forgot about it until the day before it was due.) Twenty-one years later, Alvarado says Newman's energy and verisimilitude haven't changed. 'Even though he's a lawyer, his feet are on the ground — he's not an elitist. By 8 in the morning, he will have read every article written that day about immigration. He'll tell me what we need to do, and then he goes out and does it.' Like the Abrego Garcia case. Newman called Abrego Garcia's lawyer to offer help, then connected with the family to organize a GoFundMe campaign through NDLON. Next was enlisting artists in a social media campaign to make Abrego Garcia's predicament go viral. Soon, Newman was on a flight to El Salvador in an unsuccessful bid to visit the imprisoned Abrego Garcia, something he would try two more times. 'It felt like a Venn diagram of everything I've worked for over the past 20 years,' said Newman, who has yet to speak to Abrego Garcia. 'At the time, we had no idea whether he was innocent or guilty. What mattered is that he deserved due process.' Soon after Newman's last visit to El Salvador, L.A.'s summer of deportation raids began. I concluded our breakfast by asking if Newman was optimistic that things might get better. Instead of cowering under Trump's boot, L.A. has stood up. The day we met, the Pentagon announced that half of the 4,000 National Guard members deployed in Southern California in the wake of anti-ICE protests would leave. 'I'm a Cornel West disciple,' Newman responded. 'And he said there's a difference between hope and optimism.' West defined optimism as based on a rational analysis of what's out there, while hope is an act of courage against what seems like impossible odds. 'No one has ever accused me of being an optimist,' Newman said. He kept thinking about it. 'I don't know, but I think the tide will turn. I remember when Arpaio had an 85% approval rating. And he went down.' He got more animated. 'I know people can turn the tide, but they have to do their part.' He reached into his straw tote and brought out his anti-migra swag — a T-shirt emblazoned with 'Arrest Trump, Not Migrants,' bumper stickers reading 'ICE Out of LA!' with the 'LA' in Dodgers style, red-and-white signs declaring 'I.C.E. Off My Property Get A Warrant!' Our waitress came with the bill, then looked at the T-shirt. 'That's really cool!' she exclaimed. 'Want it?' Newman replied as he handed it to her. Other Homegirl staffers grabbed stickers and signs. As we exited the cafe, Newman left a stack on a table next to the door. 'I'm going to go to Highland Park later to ask businesses if they want to post them on their windows,' he said as a customer eyed the signs. 'Go ahead and take it, man,' Newman urged. 'Take a bunch!'
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Ukraine's Zelenskyy promises safeguards after street protests over a new anti-corruption law
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Opponents of a new law they say strips Ukraine's anti-corruption watchdogs of their independence called for a third straight day of street protests across the country Thursday, despite President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's attempts to defuse the tension with promises of legislative safeguards. After meeting with the heads of Ukraine's key anti-corruption and security agencies, Zelenskyy promised to act on their recommendations by presenting a bill to Parliament that strengthens the rule of law. 'And very importantly: all the norms for the independence of anti-corruption institutions will be in place,' Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address late Wednesday. Zelenskyy acknowledged the controversy triggered by the new corruption law, which also drew rebukes from European Union officials and international rights groups. 'It's not falling on deaf ears,' Zelenskyy said of the complaints. 'We've analyzed all the concerns, all the aspects of what needs to be changed and what needs to be stepped up.' However, he didn't promise to revoke the law that he approved. The legislation that was adopted this week, despite pleas for Zelenskyy to veto it, tightened government oversight of two key anti-corruption agencies. Critics said the step could significantly weaken the independence of those agencies and give Zelenskyy's circle greater influence over investigations. The protests haven't called for Zelenskyy's ouster. But the first major anti-government demonstrations since the war began come at a tough time for Ukraine in its three-year battle to thwart Russia's invasion. Russia's bigger army is accelerating its efforts to pierce Ukraine's front-line defenses and is escalating its bombardment of Ukrainian cities. Ukraine is also facing a question mark over whether the United States will provide more military aid and whether European commitments can take up the slack, with no end to the war in sight. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul for a third round of talks in as many months Wednesday. But once again the talks were brief and delivered no major breakthrough. Zelenskyy had insisted earlier Wednesday that the new legal framework was needed to crack down harder on corruption. Fighting entrenched corruption is crucial for Ukraine's aspirations to join the EU and maintain access to billions of dollars in Western aid in the war. 'Criminal cases should not drag on for years without verdicts, and those working against Ukraine must not feel comfortable or immune from punishment,' he said. Meanwhile, Russian planes dropped two powerful glide bombs on the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, on Thursday morning, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. At least 16 people were injured, including a 10-year-old girl who suffered an acute stress reaction, he said. The southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and Cherkasy in central Ukraine were also hit overnight, authorities said. The drone and missile strikes on the cities injured 11 people, including a 9-year-old, and damaged historic landmarks and residential buildings, officials said. Ukraine has sought to step up its own long-range drone attacks on Russia, using domestic technology and manufacturing. An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi killed two women and injured 11 other people, local authorities said Thursday. An oil depot was hit, officials said, without offering details. ___ Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at Illia Novikov, The Associated Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
