I’m team Autumn Looijen.

In a bizarre but reasonable chain of events, I have decided to support Autumn Looijen for D-5 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Here’s why.

I was initially hesitant to announce my full support of Autumn Looijen for Dean Preston’s D-5 Board of Supervisors seat in San Francisco. In this piece, I want to tell the story of how I evolved to this decision in case it is helpful to others and to combat what I am sure will be disinformation about me.

Autumn Looijen is a mom challenging Dean Preston for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She has recently won two elections in San Francisco — to recall three school board members and to bring algebra back to schools.

The School Board Recall

In 2022, I didn’t support the school board recall and certainly didn’t support District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s recall. I actively tried to show up to work against it. And that effort was genuine.

I entered San Francisco politics through my national Bernie Sanders movement work, drawing me to the candidate Shahid Buttar and the SF Berniecrats to keep Bernie’s message going after he exited the 2020 Presidential election.

I am politically aligned with Bernie Sanders. I have worked with many of our country’s top racial justice organizations on Supreme Court cases, equal access to education, voting rights, and criminal justice reform. My record speaks for itself.

When I got involved, I was much more interested in preventing the recall of Chesa Boudin, the District Attorney, who was on the ballot simultaneously. I genuinely believe in defunding the police, focusing on mental health, and reforming our criminal justice system.

This election at the local level was going to affect the national narrative on the issues I care about deeply. I did everything possible to volunteer to keep Chesa Boudin in office as the District Attorney because that is my main issue, my passion, and my life’s work.

When the school board recall was announced simultaneously, I didn’t get what it was about other than opening the schools in the aftermath of the pandemic. Frankly, I was diagnosed with agoraphobia during the pandemic due to my extreme caution about social distancing. I was on the team to stay home and safe. So, I supported the idea of not opening the schools.

However, I don’t have children. (Anyone who dares mommy-shame me for not having kids is a gross person, so don’t even try it.) Since I didn’t have personal experience with this, I relied on those around me who did. My personal opinion on this wasn’t relevant.

Brandee Marckmann, at the time, the head of the San Francisco Berniecrats, had been telling people that the same people behind the recall of Chesa Boudin were behind the recall of the school board. I am not sure that is the case, but I didn’t know.

Yet, I have a public relations background, so I showed up and offered those working on both recalls some materials for running grassroots media strategies. I offered to help them get national media attention to combat the harmful narratives, which I do for a living. I did a lot of research to prepare them for crisis campaign attacks and disinformation in the media at the local and national levels. I was well-informed and ready to help them win. When I did this research, there was no indication that Moms for Liberty was a part of the picture regarding their opponents.

Having spent time with the SF Berniecrats against the recall of Chesa Boudin, my head swelled with lies about Autumn Looijen and what she represents. As I post this, I saw some of the same people telling lies and disinformation again today, calling Autumn a Republican.

To my dismay, they didn’t want to take the suggestions to run a grassroots media effort to demonstrate their case or talk to people to back up their claims. They insisted I did not know the market.

Instead, the members of the SF Berniecrats took a strategy to go on Twitter with fake and anonymous accounts and:

· Call anyone who disagreed with them racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.

· Lie, gaslight, bully, doxx, and smear people.

· Block or mean girls attacked anyone who questioned them.

· Create weird charts of conspiracy theories about the right wing, Donald Trump, Moms for Liberty, Garry Tan, Elon Musk, etc., that no one read or understood.

· Spent most of their meetings arguing about signs and their distribution.

· Repeatedly went to the same places to campaign, refusing to leave their bubble of people who agreed with them and have a genuine conversation.

I told them these are ineffective strategies in elections like this one.

I serve as a national consultant, helping local campaigns like this across the country all the time. There is a scientific process for doing this — how to take local input to run a public relations campaign. I am trained in this process. The process is always the same, involves a lot of listening and discovery, and works in any market. So that is what I did. I listened to HUNDREDS of people, including Autumn, who seemed quite reasonable when I spoke with her. I didn’t turn down anyone for a call.

My job as a professional public relations person is to present information based on my unbiased and outsider listening and let people make their own choices. The SF Berniecrats would not listen to me when I explained the research, insisting they knew best about their community, so I decided to let them lead their movement rather than tell them best practices. I do not tell people what to do, even when they make huge mistakes. I was just a volunteer anyway, so I knew my role. I am well-known for being very cooperative and easy to work with in groups. I pride myself on listening and researching. I was trying to help the local Bernie community tell their message.

I want to be very clear. This was not a white woman coming in and telling people of color what to do. Despite what lies they want to tell, the movement here was primarily white, upper-class, and often male. I was in the meetings and saw them. When I observed their own racist behavior, namely of Brandee Marckmann of the SF Berniecrats, they threatened in writing to sue me if I told journalists, so their moral high ground on racism wasn’t resonating with me. I told journalists anyway. And they did not sue me because no lies were detected.

In hindsight, I should have tried harder to get them to change their ways because they lost their vote by more than 70 percent. Their own bias ultimately caused them to fail. It didn’t just hurt the people of San Francisco. It hurt the national movement — from a narrative and individual perspective. The most marginalized will suffer as a result, and it makes me angry.

I read Alison Collins’ Medium post one year later, recapping what happened to her. I expected her to rely on academic research and to somehow explain to me why this was racist because I am still confused.

Instead, Collins quotes two white women on Twitter whom I have come across before. These women are not experts in education in any way, shape, or form. These are people who bully people online and spread disinformation and conspiracy theories through anonymous online accounts — and I know because I was one of their targets.

One woman is Darcie Bell, who goes by Jerque Cousteau ░P░U░P░P░Y░ ░I░N░ ░B░I░O░ @neo_antiquarian on twitter. (SEE END OF PIECE FOR AN UPDATE)

I saw these women online with Brandee Marckmann of the SF Berniecrats trying to dig up details about where I lived to dox me. They got it wrong, and not only that, they quoted a Trump-supporting business owner who was sued for not paying her employees who tried to smear me at a voting rights protest to do it. This is what they do. I am not the only one. I would have told them where I lived if they asked. They wasted time googling it to expose me when they should have been campaigning.

For two decades, I have studied and dealt with the actual types of campaigns that Alison claims to be a target of, and that is not what happened here. Those around Collins were running amateur versions of the same thing she says she was a target of on social media. She is simply spinning a narrative to overcome her election loss. Those around her are now trying to tie her election loss into a national narrative about Moms for Liberty, which doesn’t seem to have any link to this situation. They went down that path while ignoring the real infiltrators inside their campaign.

Dean Preston is deliberately spinning a dark money right-wing narrative to smear these people who disagree with him now. The Phoenix Project was started to expose dark money, but it is a dark money group that appears to be aligned with Dean Preston. It’s more spin. They are the problem.

Long story short, people were frustrated that their kids were not in school during the pandemic. They voted out the school board members who seemed more focused on performative actions about race than opening the schools and getting back to learning. Parents overwhelmingly voted that they saw their kids suffering.

The right-wing duped no one. It had nothing to do with that. These were people who wanted their kids to learn.

The SF Berniecrats and Collins’ and Dean supporters’ evidence for calling Looijen right wing was that she went on conservative Fox News. Bernie Sanders went on Fox News. I have done public relations for just about every mainstream and radical progressive voice; they all do Fox News. The general rule of thumb in my field is never to turn down Fox News. They have a large audience, and not all of them are Republican.

Alison Collins talks about Tucker Carlson and Fox News when Tucker used to be at MSNBC, and I can tell you he was a vehicle for many of the top progressive and most radical voices we have today. During the Iraq War, believe it or not, Tucker was one of the few allowing peace rights activists a platform.

Using “willingness to speak on Fox News” as a litmus test for partisanship is a failed method of evaluating candidates.

Many of the most progressive voices I know were first recognized by appearing on Fox News. I know because I booked it. I could have booked the Berniecrats on Fox News. And I would have trained them to get their message across and not get smeared, as I did other Bernie Sanders advocates. But they refused.

Most of these people have no idea that Fox News and the local KTVU station are not connected and are not the same thing. Many of them also think KQED is the same as NPR, which is also untrue. Having worked at the NPR national headquarters, I can tell you KQED is not NPR. NPR is a content provider that sends it out to many member stations, but KQED takes content from many places. Sometimes, it is content produced by NPR, but it is also content produced in many other places.

The amount of inaccurate information about the media that I am getting from the SF Berniecrats makes me sick. Their entire understanding of media literacy is at disturbing levels, so it is no wonder they got smeared. That’s why I started writing a Substack on it because it is disturbing the levels of media illiteracy. I sent it to them in hopes that they would read it.

In the meantime, Dean Preston used his club to publish an undisclosed fake news website to write lies; they don’t see a problem with this. I am deeply disturbed. Even Donald Trump doesn’t stoop that low. Historically, those sorts of efforts have led us down many wrong paths.

Unfortunately, Collins’ investigation and current narrative of what happened to her doesn’t make any sense of what I saw happen when I was there. I really wanted to believe her, but what she says is inconsistent with what I saw with my own eyes. It’s hard to describe to those outside of what I do, but I saw her online talking about how the other side won because of free media. First, it’s called earned media. Second, that’s how campaigns work. I showed up and offered to help with earned media, but the SF Berniecrats didn’t want to do it. There was nothing sinister about what Autumn did. It’s called running a campaign. I could have taught her a set of skills to prevent this situation, but no one wanted to take them.

When the other recalled Board member, Gabriela López, decided to run again and lost again, solidifying it further, I contacted her on Facebook and said you need a crisis plan this time, so you don’t get smeared. I offered to do it for free and have a lot of experience. She liked my comment. But she never reached out to me to ask me to do it. They made the same mistake again. They didn’t learn from the first time.

It’s hard to know to what extent Alison Collins knows what she is doing versus taking absurd guidance from wealthy white women like Brandee Marckmann, the former head of the SF Berniecrats, and Emily Mills, who, last I checked, have no career in this field. Like Dean Preston, Collins comes from a lot of wealth, and I do not buy the solidarity with people experiencing poverty here. Her actions show me she is more aligned with her reputation and wealth. All these people have extreme levels of wealth.

If anyone can show me that Autumn Looijen is aligned with Moms for Liberty, I will gladly say I no longer support her. But that’s not what this is! I have seen the people in the SF Berniecrats tell many lies, and this just looked like the latest.

The last thing I will say on this issue is regarding some disturbing tweets that Alison Collins, as a Black woman, made about Asian people. When I first saw the tweets, I admit I thought they were racist. Then I listened to other Black people in SF explain the context behind them, and I saw a different perspective. All I can say is that I am a white woman — and I don’t know about this debate between the Black and Asian communities. I am not going to weigh in on that.

Yet, when I first entered college, I thought I would be a teacher. While taking classes to become a teacher, I learned that someone who wants to be a teacher, like most public professionals, needs to be diplomatic in what they say online and do in the community. Whether you believe the tweets were racist or not, they were in poor taste for a professional to post online about a racial group. People have gotten fired for far less severe offenses.

My sister did get a teaching degree, and I have many relatives who are teachers now. My husband got his master’s in education policy while married to me, so these are topics of discussion in my home. We care about equal access to education. I can’t imagine anyone in my family posting something like that.

Collins sued for $80 million, alleging a free speech violation for posting the tweets. The case did not gain traction. She was not prevented from making the tweets. You can say anything you want in this country, but that doesn’t mean that there are no consequences for your free speech. Sometimes, free speech means you can get fired.

Bringing Algebra Back to Public Schools

When the Algebra resolution came up two years later in the most recent election, I didn’t quite understand why Algebra was a problem in middle schools in the first place. Honestly, I am very supportive of Algebra in middle school. But I kept silent and observed.

Once again, the SF Berniecrats told me Algebra was racist, so I listened. I understand my whiteness might be preventing me from seeing another side, but I still can’t figure out how Algebra in schools is particularly racist. It doesn’t seem like primarily a race issue that they are talking about. It seems like a socioeconomic one instead. They are talking about low-income, Black and Hispanic kids struggling more with Algebra as the reason for the delay in teaching it. The assumption in itself seems racist and classist to me in so many ways.

My views on Algebra are based on the following experiences. I talk about my personal experiences quite a bit. Why? Not because I have a huge ego. Personal stories work far better than research or other tactics to get people to understand. I am exactly the type of person who this rule would have been meant to help, but I don’t think it would have helped me.

I grew up in an area where many people were very privileged, and there was some wealth inequality. My parents, who worked at a nearby factory and were not wealthy, moved to this community to get my siblings and me into the public schools. Before then, my parents had taken part in a program with the Catholic church to send me to private school, multiple cities over on a bus with high school students, because the public schools where I lived were not safe.

When I moved to this wealthier community, I was in second grade. My younger sister had just started kindergarten. As we were moving, which took some time, my mom enrolled us in school. One day, my sister and I were called out of class — a five-year-old and a seven-year-old — the principal had called my mom in and accused her, in front of us, of trying to sneak ghetto kids into the schools. I have never seen my mom so mad in my life. After a lot of proof and paperwork, my sister and I were eventually allowed back into the school system.

So, that was my first welcome to the school system I had attended my entire life. Wealth disparity was a constant issue for my family. Despite all that, I was smart and got into advanced placement classes and track. That didn’t make my life easier. It meant that children of very wealthy backgrounds usually surrounded me.

In seventh grade, I was placed in Algebra Honors. That meant I was in a class with many very wealthy people’s kids. I can testify that most of them were intolerable and made my life miserable. I was often made fun of and called poor. I struggled socially to fit in with these privileged children.

It was a challenging year for me.

Beyond the social issues, that class was more complicated than some of the courses I took in college. The teacher graded it on a curve. Yet, one student was brilliant and constantly messed up the curve. I was failing, but so was most of the class. The wealthy children’s parents complained that the teacher taught us from a college-level book and seemed to cater to one student who outperformed us all. They wanted the class to be made easier, so that their kids could get As, and get into college. My family didn’t care about college, and simply told me, you better learn your math.

But that class was not good for me. I wanted to be in math class with friends like me. From then on, I pretended not to be smart in math, so I would be downgraded and not have to take advanced math ever again. I became embarrassed of being smart and looked at it as a negative.

I took on the facade that girls shouldn’t be good at math and that it was uncool. I would often lie and tell people that I was better at arts than math when I knew deep down that math was what I was good at and even liked. This breaks my heart thirty years later as an adult, looking back on that, especially as we don’t have enough girls going into STEM career fields. I did this to align with my other female friends of the same socioeconomic status and not placed in advanced math.

Looking back on it, I wish it had been different. My school experiences often reflected the same disparity. I recall once falling behind in typing class, and the teacher called my parents in and suggested they buy me a computer because I was the only student who did not have one. Ha! My parents got a good laugh out of that one. I went to the library to use the computer for free.

Can you imagine if the teacher said this teen is falling behind in typing, so we will not teach it anymore? Not all students can afford a computer, and that is particularly true of the Black students, so is teaching typing racist now?

No! I needed to learn how to type, or I would never be able to make it in this world in 2024.

Despite the hardships, the schools prepared me for the future. I had a tremendous education. I started taking honors philosophy classes at public schools when I was 15. There were so many opportunities for me to thrive. Everyone should have that, not just people who got lucky like me.

To this day, I am angered by the downgrading of education. For instance, during a Republican debate, they frowned on teaching philosophy to working-class kids. Philosophy is a subject that teaches people how to think, and it’s a critical skill for life. I use my philosophy and algebra in my life daily.

I’m also not too fond of memes that circulate; instead of teaching me Algebra, they should have taught me things like taxes and other essential life skills. If you know Algebra, you know all the other essential life skills. Those are tools to do the taxes. You learned how to think. When you deny these skills to students because of their socioeconomic background, you keep them in that same background.

Many have argued that the wealthy can afford to send their kids to private schools if the public schools do not offer these classes, further driving inequality.

Worse yet, recent coverage has shown that the entire evidence for Algebra being racist is based on faulty research by a wealthy white woman from Stanford University. Data has not shown that this gap in Algebra helped poor, Hispanic or Black students.

Dean Preston’s Movement Is A Cult

When I got involved in the SF Berniecrats and DSA SF, I learned they were not for what Bernie Sanders supported and were not Democratic Socialists. A cult might be a better description. If you do not follow what they want, they will attack you.

For four years, since I got involved in the Shahid Buttar campaign in 2020 and observed how they acted — it’s been one lie after another to the point where my head is spinning.

I have already written about why I don’t support Dean Preston and documented some past lies. But having spent a lot of time with the SF Berniecrats, I believed many lies about Autumn too. I was starting to be conflicted because nothing that SF Berniecrats were saying seemed to be true.

It finally hit me: In the four years you have known them, these people have lied about and threatened and gaslit just about everything and everyone I know, including myself, family, and friends. Could it be possible they are lying about Autumn, too?

When I tell this to people, they tell me all politicians lie. No, this is different. This is a whole new level — that I feel is very much like Donald Trump. But worse, because at least Donald Trump is transparent.

This is straight out of a textbook of abusive gaslighting. They project everything they do onto you and try to make you think you are crazy. If they are being racist, they call you racist. These people even tried to tell me they knew where I lived more than I did. I should believe them about where I live.

For these people in the Dean Preston cult to claim a moral high ground on race or income inequality is just ridiculous. Most of them are white or wealthy — to the tune of multi-millions. I have been bullied, threatened, mocked, and harassed by Dean Preston supporters. They are some of the most racist, classist, disgusting, and sexist people I have ever met.

This is the type of gaslighting and smearing they do repeatedly if you don’t follow their agenda. People are afraid to fall out of line because they will get smeared as racist, etc. That’s a cult. And Dean Preston pays a lot of people in that area through jobs. He’s a multi-millionaire claiming to be a socialist. He’s lying. He’s a fraud. He hasn’t done a thing.

They make stuff up to see what sticks. I have been in meetings with these people over the years. I saw Brandee at the Berniecrats even lie about Shahid Buttar, saying he supported the recall. Shahid Buttar never endorsed the recall. I know what Shahid thought because I worked with him on his press releases. Yet, lies spread. They told people Shahid is part of the right wing now.

Every time I say something, they call me brainwashed by Shahid Buttar. I can’t think of a more sexist thing to say, but I have no idea where Buttar stands on this race. He doesn’t speak for me, and I don’t speak for him. I can’t imagine he is a fan of Dean Preston after the man ran the campaign to run him out of town by smearing him as a sexist. If these people wanted to take the high ground on racism, they shouldn’t have run a racist campaign on Shahid Buttar.

However, it is even more revealing of their background because Dean Preston is the brainwashing one.

Additionally, just this past week they went out of their way to disparage Bilal Mahmood’s claims that he is not a neuroscientist. I mean okay, he studied the field. It’s slightly over-exaggerated maybe, but now they are full out calling him George Santos. That’s a bit much.

I had one person I trust very much say she supported Dean Preston because of his work on housing and that she had experienced housing issues in the past. Yet, when you look at Dean’s record, he hasn’t done anything on housing to benefit the issue since he went into office. Homelessness stayed the same while he was in office. It’s all spin. There is no way to point me to evidence on how he has made any change except performative nonsense.

Why am I not running myself?

People think I was joking or lying when I said I was considering going there to run to challenge either Dean Preston for D-5 or Jane Kim for Nancy Pelosi’s seat. I was not.

Right now, my mom is very ill, and I am spending a lot of time taking care of her. It is also very costly.

The timing right now is not suitable for me.

I feel that Autumn is a better-suited candidate. I am committed to doing everything I can to help her win.

Why not Bilal Mahmood?

I have tried to show up for Bilal many times and even warn him of my past experiences working with these people, but he hasn’t responded. I am sure this is because of the rumors made up about me.

If I am stained for telling the truth, I don’t care; I am not trying for a political career. I am just doing what is right.

But one thing is sure: I am not lying. I can make mistakes, and I try to correct them when I do.

Why do I support Autumn Looijen?

Autumn is reasonable, honest, and caring. She listens, thinks, and is open to different solutions. She wants solutions that work. How she runs her campaign is how I would have run one. She listens to people in the community to develop solutions based on their needs and form collaborations, not wedges. That is the approach she is taking. I feel like it is a very female-oriented approach to running government, and I like that.

Am I making a mistake? I make plenty in my life. I learn daily. Tell me. I will fix it. People know how to reach me — patricia@matchmapmedia.com or 202–351–1757.

UPDATE: Upon posting my piece, exactly what I predicted happened. As mentioned above Darcie Bell, the person who Alison Collins quotes in her Medium piece continued to tell lies about me thus underscoring the exact point. This is the kind of person that Alison Collins and Dean Preston are taking guidance from? They have been bullying me for years now. They seem very educated and professional. She deleted it now, but I already took a photo. This woman is bold enough to sit here and lie to me about where I live. How can I take her seriously on anything else she has to say? And this is the person that Alison Collins wants me to use as my source of information? She constantly lies.

Alison Collins quotes Darcie Bell in her Medium piece about proof where Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen live. I wonder if it is the same “proof” she has that I live in my parents’ basement in Buffalo. WTH? My dad died almost twenty years ago, and my mom has end-stage Alzheimers, and could pass away any minute. We lost the childhood home I described above decades ago. I am not living in a basement and have supported myself and others financially for decades. I have never lived in Buffalo. My “parents” don’t own a home. LOL.

This type of lying is just insane. They make up something different about me every day. I don’t even know how they have the energy. Do something productive.

It’s exactly what pushed me away from this movement and drove me to Autumn. Proof of me terrorizing people? Just another thing they made up when they are ones stalking me and my elderly mother for that matter. This is precisely what I am talking about. Not to mention the ableist and uninformed comments about mental health. This seems really like someone we need informing our education system. Yikes. This is such an embarrassing shame. Who would want to let someone like this know where they actually live?

I will let you all in on a secret. I actually have multiple homes in San Francisco, in addition to my own living quarters. In fact, I live rent-free in the minds of Darcie Bell and all the other Dean Preston cult members. They constantly act like I am not relevant, but they seem to spend a lot of time making things up about me.

As mentioned above, whatever they call me is what they are. I have noticed that Darcie’s stories about me always involve living in my parent’s basement with a mental health condition and terrorizing people all day long. So I would put money on the fact that it resembles more of Darcie’s lifestyle than mine. Maybe she is talking about her own son living in her basement and projecting that on to me.

Either way, these people didn’t lose because of the right wing or whatever latest conspiracy theory they make up, they lost because they act like this. I have never seen anything so weird.