<\/p>\n
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaks to thousands at the Moscone South Hall during Dreamforce 2024 in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Bront\u00eb Wittpenn\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Like a lot of Bay Area residents who live or work in San Francisco, I\u2019ve spent the weekend in a stupor, mumbling, \u201cWhat the hell happened to Marc Benioff?\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking by phone from his private plane<\/a> to a New York Times reporter Friday, he pledged \u201cI fully support\u201d President Donald Trump and said he thought National Guard troops should be deployed in San Francisco. One of our city\u2019s great benefactors, coming up with the worst idea.<\/p>\n \u2022 CEO\u2019s sentiments: Marc Benioff says Trump should send National Guard to San Francisco Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But I\u2019m especially stunned based on what I\u2019ve found in the Chronicle archive. His family\u2019s San Francisco ties go back generations. And he was deeply inspired by his grandfather, Marvin Lewis, a civic leader who made sure he never lost the pulse of San Francisco.<\/p>\n Each morning beginning in the 1940s, the San Francisco supervisor (and \u201cfather of Bay Area Rapid Transit\u201d<\/a>) would meet his friend and business leader Cyril Magnin near their Sea Cliff homes at the corner of 29th Avenue and California Street, and walk more than 5 miles to work in the Financial District.<\/p>\n They passed through Pacific Heights and by Grace Cathedral, but also near casual diners and working-class dives, where they\u2019d stop in and strike up conversations with strangers.<\/p>\n Feb. 6, 1986: Former San Francisco Supervisor Marvin Lewis, standing second from right, is honored for his pioneering work for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. His grandson Marc Benioff, seated at right, looks on.<\/p>\n Mike Maloney\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n When I shared this story with Benioff in 2019<\/a>, bringing Chronicle clippings and photos to his own Sea Cliff residence, the Salesforce founder already knew the details. Lewis, a trial lawyer and man-of-the-people politician<\/a> who died in 1991, had chaperoned his grandson Benioff through the streets of San Francisco too.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cA local leader was someone who had their career, but also had their civic interests, their spiritual interests,\u201d Benioff told me. \u201cI think this is a big message that we can\u2019t really silo ourselves. And, you know, that\u2019s very much what CEOs do. They focus on their shareholders. But you can\u2019t. You have to focus on your stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n How did the city\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d billionaire, who personally and through business has donated more money to San Francisco causes than anyone in history, go full Trump, openly supporting a military incursion in the city?\u00a0<\/p>\n I can\u2019t answer that question. One clue might lie in Prop C<\/a>, a 2018 city ballot measure supported by Benioff to steeply tax businesses to help unhoused residents. As the city\u2019s largest private employer, he stood to lose the most financially, but called it the right thing to do. And seven years later, he sees little visible change, this week assembling his own security force of off-duty police officers to patrol the blocks around his Dreamforce mega-conference at Moscone Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u2019s an incredible leap from \u201cSan Francisco is squandering an opportunity\u201d to \u201cWe need the military on our streets.\u201d What would be the best-case scenario of these military forces? Moving the homeless at gunpoint where Benioff\u2019s guests don\u2019t have to see them? Intimidating our least fortunate neighbors so they\u2019re afraid to leave their homes?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n We are as far away from a need for military intervention as we were in the 1970s, when the homicide rate was more than four times higher than the current modern low<\/a>. Or the 1940s, when the city\u2019s Skid Row rested in the exact spot where Dreamforce attendees are arriving now. Troops are a means to stoke fear and violent confrontation in the name of a \u201cliberal cities are violent hellholes\u201d crisis that simply doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n My full-time job since 2020 has involved exploring San Francisco and passing on my finds to Chronicle readers, but it also serves as a\u00a0Lewis-style health check on the city. My last three San Francisco assignments sent me biking 38 miles around the perimeter of the city<\/a>, visiting random block parties<\/a> in four neighborhoods, and following a Tenderloin artist and marathon runner<\/a> who lives in supportive housing.<\/p>\n While downtown remains in need of a reinvention and the drug crisis continues, the neighborhoods are thriving. The city is teeming with new parks, public art and good people who are willing to fight to make our next chapter even better.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lewis never lost touch with San Francisco\u2019s streets. Herb\u00a0Caen wrote in 1945 about Lewis and Magnin stopping in Gene Compton\u2019s Cafeteria\u00a0\u2014 future home of a transgender rights milestone<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and running into California Gov. Earl Warren. (\u201cEverybody\u2019s nuts around here this morning,\u201d a confused cafeteria regular quipped.)<\/p>\n Lewis altered our transit future. Magnin\u2019s philanthropy changed the city\u2019s art scene. How many of their best ideas came walking and talking as they crossed the city, running into fellow citizens and allowing themselves to fall in love with San Francisco a little more every day?<\/p>\n Which brings us to my solution. Let\u2019s call it the Marc Benioff come-back-to-your-senses challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Take that same walk your grandfather did. Do it once a month with a different San Franciscan, starting with Mayor Daniel Lurie, who since his 2024 election appears to have been walking the streets of the city (and posting on social media<\/a>) day and night nonstop.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t look for easy answers. Don\u2019t stop mingling with the stakeholders. And keep looking to the example of Lewis. This city is a complicated place, but I\u2019ve found two truths: The Golden Age is a myth<\/a> and San Francisco is never \u201cover.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n The city\u2019s future improves through hard work at street level, not through troops and the whims of Trump.<\/p>\n
<\/a>\u2022 \u2018The only solution\u2019: Elon Musk backs call to deploy federal troops to San Francisco<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n