San Francisco Revolts

San Francisco saw a different kind of earthquake Tuesday: a public revolt against wokeness as voters passed four ballot proposals restoring common sense in policing, welfare benefits, government ethics and education.

In a rebuke to the #Defund crew, one measure sets a minimum size for police staffing, lets cops chase suspects even without an immediate threat to public safety — and even OKs police drones and publicsafety cameras with facial-recognition tech.

Another requires drug testing of those who get city help on housing, utility bills, food or finding employment. A third tightens rules on when city employees can accept gifts; the fourth guarantees the offering of Algebra I in eighth grade — overruling a woke ban in the name of racial “equity.”

Mayor London Breed, once a police-defunder, backed the cop-empowerment measure and the drug-testing one, which both passed with more than 60% support.

San Francisco feels mugged by progressive excesses. As Breed explained in turning her back on the left’s favored approach to drug abuse: “Harm reduction from my perspective is not reducing the harm.”

New York City could benefit from a similar explosion of common sense: Mayor Adams should find a way to let the public vote on, for example, his call for modification of New York’s “sanctuary city” policies to let the NYPD talk to ICE about migrants who commit crimes here.

San Francisco’s revolt shows a broad appetite for common sense, even though the winners of lower-level elections keep imposing progressive lunacy. If ’Frisco can beat back suicidal wokeness, Gotham can, too.