Editor:
In mid-February, a young man knocked at the door of my home in San Francisco’s Sunset District. He was handing out flyers for one of the supervisorial candidates for the District 4 seat, following the recall of Joel Engardio last November. The community activist referred to just one issue: His candidate’s proposed “compromise” for the still controversial Sunset Dunes Park. The “compromise” would essentially eliminate the new park by opening it to four lanes of automobile traffic, five days a week.
This young campaigner’s referring to a likely doomed political issue got me to thinking: What if the citizen energy out here in the Sunset could be harnessed to promote beneficial community efforts and help mold policies?
The Sunset District does not differ from other San Francisco communities in that we face multiple challenges and opportunities, along with looming potential threats – among them SFMTA’s projected $300 million-plus annual public transit deficit beginning this July. Perhaps the Sunset’s community activism groups can energize the citizenry to join our neighbors throughout the Bay Area to campaign and provide financial support for November’s transit sales tax measure.
Another pressing issue is housing development. New housing can be problematic. Working within the state mandates will not be simple. Disruption is inevitable. But the extent of the disruption can be mitigated by an energized community providing functional input.
On the bright side, positive community activism can be found in the Sunset. Over the past decade, volunteers have done a tremendous job enhancing public green spaces by preparing the multiple groundwater recharges along Sunset Boulevard and maintaining community gardens by St. Ignatius High School and along the foot of Judah Street.
Change is inevitable. The Sunset will continue to evolve. The challenge for the residents lies in campaigning to advance positive evolution, such that the neighborhood is not dethroned from its standing as among the finest of San Francisco. Citizen outrage can and should be channeled positively with eyes upon the future, as opposed to clinging to the past.
Christopher Donnelly, Sunset District resident since 1980.
Categories: letter to the editor
Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon 
This sounds reasonable on the surface, but let’s be honest about what it’s really saying:
“Stop focusing on the Upper Great Highway and move on.”
No.
The closure of a major north-south artery isn’t some niche obsession. It directly affects how people get to work, school, medical appointments, and how local businesses survive. That is a core community issue.
Calling it a “likely doomed political issue” doesn’t make the concerns go away. It just dismisses the people still living with the consequences every day.
And framing this as “clinging to the past” is a nice rhetorical trick, but wanting functional infrastructure and reasonable access isn’t nostalgia. It’s basic livability.
If anything, real community engagement means being able to push back when a major decision doesn’t work. Not being told to redirect our energy into something more convenient or politically preferred.
You don’t get to redefine “positive activism” as only the kind that agrees with you.
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I find it odd that the author of this article singled out a young activist neighbor who knocked on his door with a flyer for someone running for D4 Supervisor and criticized the person for verbally mentioning only the issue of the Great Highway compromise when, no doubt, the flyer he was handed addressed the candidate’s position on several other issues and referred anyone interested to a place where they could obtain more information.
The author artfully neglects to mention that but for one candidate running for D4 Supervisor, ALL the other candidates strongly support the compromise, which he refers to as “likely a doomed political issue.” He’s entitled to his belief but not everyone agrees. Additionally, he failed to acknowledge the political efforts of supporters of a 24/7 car free Great Highway, who are also actively campaigning for their desired result.
The author asked, “What if the citizen energy out here in the Sunset could be harnessed to promote beneficial community efforts and help mold policies?” What does he think we’re doing by volunteering to go door-to-door with advertising we financed with donations to promote our chosen candidate for D4 Supervisor?
If the author wanted to know the candidate’s position on other issues, he could have asked the person at his door, read the flyer, gone to the candidate’s website, watched reels and whatever other information is on line or in the papers, called the campaign office of any candidate and request the candidate to call or meet with him to clarify what and why they support various issues.
Finally, he acknowledged a couple of accomplishments achieved by community activist volunteers, but he closes claiming the citizen outrage is only coming from one side of the Great Highway/Sunset Dunes issue instead of from both. We’re each entitled to our opinion, but this one is presented in a way that is one-sided and biased.
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C. Donnelly muses what if we channeled our majority D4 energy into positive change? We have already done that, in spades. We spoke loudly against Prop K. We we accomplished the hecurlean task of Gathering 10,000 signatures to put the recall of a deceitful con artist pretending to be our duly elected representative on the ballot and then delivering and undeniably strong message that the people of D4 will not allow someone of his lack of character to ignore and dismiss us. We are working together and we are establishing a positive strong and honest group of people to fight against big money who would like to do what they wish with our home. This was a thinly veiled screed to whip us into submission and it won’t work. As Albert Chow said recently, the people of the sunset have spoken. We will decide the direction of this District, not high-tech big money or real estate developers. So his wish that we all work together has already been realized in a beautiful way. Mr. Donnelly fails to see or accept that.
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Some have said that feminism failed. These commenters always prove that is far from the case. Thanks for always providing a highly detailed rebuttal to the ‘highway-crackpots’ hyperbole.
One thing I have noticed since January is the sheer amount of new residents riding their bikes on Sunset sidewalks. From entire families on cargo bikes to preteens on scooters and e-bikes, to pairs riding side-by-side on mountain bikes, all of them are remarkably blasé and engaged only with each other, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to ride wherever they want whenever they want.
There seems to be no understanding of, or care for, the concept that a sidewalk is a ‘safe space’ for pedestrians. I’ve watched bicyclists weave in and out of pedestrians *on the sidewalk at 23rd and Irving — heading into the busiest part of the strip — and a young mother and father riding their cargo bikes at probably 10 mph on a Lawton Street sidewalk heading toward the ocean. I’ve lived in San Francisco for almost my entire life and have never seen anything like this.
This lack of care seems to be at the root of the Great Highway issue. I’ve talked with people whose only reason for their support of closing the GH permanently is that they never used it. The fact that the GH is a major traffic artery and outlet, a vital fire exit for the entire West Side, and an access point for multiple communities of Chinese Americans and U.S. veterans does not seem to matter to them one bit.
For the author to use the word “compromise” in quotation marks, as if it were some sort of crackpot theory dreamed up by “tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists” (to use Sam Singer’s favorite phrase) is disingenuous and disrespectful to those who are working on bringing it back. The compromise was an actual agreement between the Sunset District and Mayor London Breed, and was supposed to be in place until December 2025 — until former Supervisor Engardio got together with his wealthy friends and engineered the flip from a neighborhood’s good faith to self-serving political arrogance.
I can only think that the reason why the Sunset Dunes folks spend so much time talking is because someone is paying them to do it. It’s easy to think you’re king of the world when you’re drinking from the venture-capital money hose. If anything, all of this has made it clearer how San Francisco is truly run–through full-on corruption and graft–which will make it easier to focus on when the proletariats clean house.
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