Muni's Mack Daddy

This time when Robinson met with Brown, the mayor recommended him for a seat on the executive board of the Bayview Hope Homeless Resource Center, a small mobile food bank run by a local Samaritan named Barbara "Mother" Brown. It was the first time Robinson had been an executive of anything -- at least anything legal. He helped recruit Muni drivers to give away food baskets at the center's first Christmas party.

"He's a bright young man," said Mother Brown. "He's definitely a humanitarian at heart."

Paolo Vescia

Pimping in the 1970s, Jimi Starr was captain of The Game.

Paolo Vescia

King Jimi on his throne, at home in Antioch.

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More About

• Rosalind Robinson
• James Robinson
• Rescue Muni
• Politics
• Local Politics

Robinson's stream of ideas and confabs with the mayor began to attract attention. Within Muni, he developed a reputation as a rabble-rouser, and was sought out by a husband-and-wife pair of radicals active in the union -- drivers John and Ellen Murray.

The Murrays are outspoken communists. A middle-aged white man with a brush-cut and an earring in each ear, John Murray is popular among the rank and file for his firebrand style of attacking management and defending workers no matter what the circumstances. Murray (who refused to comment for this story) took Robinson under his wing and crash-educated him in far-left politics. He gave him copies of Challenge, the Progressive Labor Party's newspaper, and became -- in Robinson's words -- his "Marxist mentor."

"John Murray is a hero in Local 250," Robinson enthused. "He's like the last word in unionism." He was also, Robinson noted, only the "second Caucasian guy I could ever just sit down with and converse." (The first was a white pimp.)

The radical labor organizer told Robinson that even his macking was a form of communism. As a pimp, Robinson took all the prostitutes' money and doled out exactly what they needed for living expenses. Likewise under communism, Murray told him, "the people have three pairs of socks, a pair of boots, a jacket -- everything that they need, dictated from the top."

The analogy made sense to Robinson, with one big exception.

Communists, he said with a smile, "believe that the money should be handled by a group at the top, and everything goes back to the people. The difference [in pimping] being, everything goes back to me!"

Murray's influence on his protégé is obvious in a short but prescient article Robinson wrote (under the nom de plume "Forever Redd") about Iraq for Challenge in 2000.

The notorious Rockefeller-wing capitalists' ongoing manipulations of the cost of oil and their control over the fascist governments will ultimately culminate in bombs over Baghdad. ... Comrades, if you listen closely, you can hear the return of the thunderous winds of war ....

With Muni under heavy political fire, the late '90s were a perfect time to become a revolutionary bus driver. In 1999, Mayor Brown appointed a new Muni executive director named Michael Burns, who hailed from Philadelphia and had a reputation for being tough on labor. Two local public interest groups -- San Francisco Planning and Urban Research and Rescue Muni -- were conducting an aggressive signature campaign to pressure city officials to reform Muni.

Local 250-A meetings, which Robinson began attending with the Murrays, became a nexus for enraged drivers who felt they were getting a bad shake. Many feared they were in danger of losing perks and benefits. Some, including Robinson, believed Muni was being unfairly targeted because of its high percentage of black operators. (The Muni work force is 83 percent minority, and about half of the minorities are African-Americans.)

In November 1999, the drivers' fears became a reality. Voters passed Proposition E -- the Muni Reform Charter Amendment -- which banned miss-outs and set tough, on-time performance standards enforced through a system of merit pay. It also reduced the influence of the mayor (who had a close relationship with the transit union) and other city officials by creating a new agency to run Muni.

Needless to say, Proposition E didn't please most drivers, including Robinson.

"The drivers don't run Muni, City Hall does!" he fumed. "Politicians who are lobbied by big business run Muni, and they run the City and County of San Francisco. A driver is simply employed by the city, and the drivers are really just wage slaves."

Not long after Robinson lost his first bid for Woods chairman, Muni chief Michael Burns began pushing hard on Local 250-A's leaders to implement Proposition E. The union and the city later arrived at a proposed contract that dramatically changed operators' lives. It ended miss-outs, offered performance-based bonuses, reduced sick leave and holiday pay, and abolished overtime for operators who hadn't already put in 40 hours. Additionally, it tightened disciplinary procedures.

Despite the urging of union leaders, Local 250-A members overwhelmingly rejected the pact. Then, in an unprecedented move, they rejected a sweetened version of the contract. Mayor Brown stepped in to resolve the crisis, and the contract was finally approved that fall.

But resentment ran deep among operators, who felt their union had rolled over.

"Every time they were at the negotiating table, they came back with less," said Leon Burleson. "They went into a room with Brown and Michael Burns, and they flip-flopped."

Things got no better with time. New, more bureaucratic disciplinary procedures and greater pressure to stay on schedule made many operators' jobs more stressful.