The League of Pissed-Off Voters is, well, pissed off about Mayor Ed Lee's lighthearted tone in his "Be Nice, Look Twice" campaign -- his answer to the maiming and killing of San Franciscans by reckless drivers.
In an open letter to Mayor Lee, titled "Don’t be a Zero: We need public service, not lip service," the League -- a non-profit that works to increase young people's involvement in politics -- posited whether the mayor would ever take such an offensively blithe approach in addressing gun violence:
A cute rhyming slogan is not only worthless, it is deeply offensive to the hundreds of victims of traffic violence and shows that the Mayor is clearly not taking this issue seriously. Imagine how the you would react if Mayor Lee proposed a plan to reduce gun violence with a Public Service Campaign called “Give a Hoot, Don’t Shoot.” We need leadership from the Mayor -- not pandering to the vehicular class.
Will you join the rest of the city and call for zero deaths in the next ten years? And will you prioritize the funding in your budget to get the engineering, education and enforcement necessary to save lives? It WOULD be nice, wouldn’t it, to not have to worry about getting killed every time you step into a crosswalk on a green light.
Note the difference between the city's message to drivers and what it tells pedestrians. While drivers are asked to "be nice" and not run people over, pedestrians get flyers from SFPD depicting a body lying on the street, alongside the words, "It's of little comfort to know you had the right of way, while you recover from serious injury in the hospital." How nice.
