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LDF recipient Wolf to run for SF mayor

Josh Wolf, the recipient of the largest Legal Defense Fund grant in history, has announced he is running for mayor of San Francisco.

SPJ gave Wolf, a freelance videographer and blogger, $30,000 in August. Wolf has the record as the journalist who has spent the longest time in jail. He spent 226 days behind bars.

The traditional news outlets don't have a lot on this. The ABC station in San Francisco has this.

Gavin Newsom is the current mayor of San Francisco.

Wolf, 24, does have one interesting plank in his platform for open government types. A pledge to have as much of the city business he conducts open to the public as possible:

  Open Government: As mayor I will wear a mounted streaming camera while working on all official business so that the public can take part in a truly open and transparent government. It may be possible that city codes dictate that certain meetings be confidential, in which case I will have a notice posted explaining why I am offline.

Published Friday, July 06, 2007 5:10 PM by DaveAeikens

Comments

# re: LDF recipient Wolf to run for SF mayor

Saturday, July 14, 2007 8:42 AM by Paul McAfee, SPJ Region 11 director
This news is deeply troubling, and it casts a cloud of suspicion over the motives of Josh Wolf. Wolf claimed that he spent 226 days in federal prison defending the First Amendment rights of journalists. Yet now that he's out of prison, he admits to being an anarchist. (So was he really standing up for journalistic principles by refusing to release his anarchist protest video, or was he really just protecting the identities of his fellow anarchists?) And now he adds insult to injury by making an ill-advised, sophomoric run for San Francisco mayor. Shame on Josh Wolf; he should return the $30,000 SPJ gave him. And SPJ should thoroughly remove itself from any further endorsement of this opportunistic, strange, troubled person.

# re: LDF recipient Wolf to run for SF mayor

Sunday, July 22, 2007 12:06 PM by Steven D. Kalb
Ditto. although I must admit to never understanding why we ran off to support him anyway. something didn't "feel" right then, and now I know why.
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