Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, in a recent San Francisco Chronicle column, likened the school board supporters’ and tactics to the worst of Trump‘s backers. | Jeff Chiu/AP Photo California Move to erase George Washington mural sparks firestorm among Dems

SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco school board decision to spend $600,000 to paint over a New Deal-era mural of George Washington as a slave owner is fueling a family feud among Democrats — with a growing chorus protesting that the controversial move may hand Donald Trump potent ammunition in his re-election bid.

“I think of myself as liberal, progressive, and have been all my life — but I’m just sort of stunned by this,’’ veteran Democratic strategist Bob Shrum said Sunday. “We have a little more important things to do — like defeating Donald Trump — than to whitewash a mural.”


Shrum, who today directs the Center for the Political Future and Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, set off a round of heated social media commentary Sunday when he tweeted: “I am a progressive Democrat, but this is nuts. Just because others are nuts, doesn’t mean we have to be.”

The San Francisco Board of Education voted unanimously last month to paint over all 13 panels of the 1600 sq. ft. mural “Life of Washington,’’ a historic work commissioned during the New Deal that depicts George Washington as a slave owner. The move came after several vocal protesters demanded the move at a public meeting, saying their children were “traumatized” by depictions of the nation’s first president standing over the images of dead Native Americans.

The mural at San Francisco’s George Washington High School was created in 1936 by Russian-American artist and Stanford University art professor Victor Arnautoff, a committed Communist and a painter in the school of social realism that also included his contemporary, the renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

School board commissioner Mark Sanchez appeared to dismiss the estimated $600,000 cost for the covering, and insisted the school board retains the option of covering the mural temporarily with paneling. "This is reparations," Sanchez told KQED radio.

Democratic strategist Mike Semler — who has advised Senator Dianne Feinstein and who has taught public policy at Cal State University Sacramento — this weekend sent out an emergency email alert seeking support for an effort to back a ballot measure to save the mural. He said the effort, dubbed the Coalition to Protect Public Art, aims to solicit funds to initiate a ballot measure designed to protect this art, “and perhaps other New Deal art in San Francisco’’ which may also be targeted.

With their move, the school board is “saying we’re all going to jump in this ship together and paddle left,’’ says Semler. “This is Nancy Pelosi’s district. This is where Kamala Harris is from. Clearly, this is not San Francisco values.”

The presidential campaign of Senator Harris, and the Speaker‘s press office, did not respond to requests for comment Sunday.

The school board vote in June has set off a growing chorus of protest from Democrats — many in the political establishment — who say that the move to erase history is not only expensive folly, but could hand Trump fodder to suggest Democrats are out of touch with the mainstream headed toward 2020.

Republican National Committee member Harmeet Dhillon, the former head of the San Francisco Republican Party and now a national commentator on Fox News, said in an interview that the issue represents a political disaster for Democrats, who appear eager to squash history — and “a disaster on multiple levels; it’s un-American.”

Attorney Dhillon, who has represented a growing number of conservative commentators and figures who say their First Amendment rights have been violated by social media — and whom Trump recently introduced and praised at the White House social media conference — said that the move underscores an effort by progressives to tamp down competing points of view. “We’ve seen the negative impacts of that in universities,’’ where she said conservative commentators have had trouble gaining access to speak to students.

Some leading Democrats and progressives agree that the move to paint over the historic mural is outrageous.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, in a recent San Francisco Chronicle column, likened the school board supporters’ and tactics to the worst of Trump‘s backers. He noted the vocal group seeking to destroy the painting did so by bullying the recent school board meeting with a claim to be “traumatized by the mural.”

“They’re clearly traumatized by something,’’ he wrote. “They’d be horrified by the comparison, but they’re really no different from the most boorish of President Trump’s supporters.”

Brown said that his own daughter, Sydney, a Washington High graduate “was never traumatized by Arnautoff’s painting — as a matter of fact, it generated conversations at home that otherwise would not have occurred. It was a learning experience for her, and for me.”

Progressive former board president Matt Gonzalez, the chief attorney for the San Francisco Public Defenders Office, noted in an op-ed for the San Francisco Examiner, that Arnautoff, a committed leftist, was once subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee to answer for his political views. “Rather than attack a mural painted by an ally of theirs, opponents should focus on real villains — those who whitewash history by pretending terrible things didn’t once happen.”

Semler, who attended George Washington High, agrees that “The “Life of George Washington” was designed “to inform and educate students of Washington’s entire legacy; the noble and ignoble, his leadership in war and peace and his holding of slaves. It also tells students our country’s manifest destiny was built on conquering the frontier.”

“Was Washington a slave owner? Yes. Did he command troops that killed Native Americans? Yes,’’ says Shrum. “But George Washington — it seems stupid to have to say it — performed an incredible service for this country. We wouldn’t be here without him.’’

