Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in Twentieth-Century San Francisco

Conclusion: Beyond the New Deal

 CONCLUSION ONCLUSION Beyond the New Deal S an Francisco in the 1980s was significantly different from the “Pacific Coast metropolis” of ninety years earlier. The Spanish–American War, two world wars, and a global Cold War had brought permanent new additions to the built environment and new residents by the thousands. International economic growth and development made the city a node in a globalization process that both enhanced its opportunities and increased its dependence on business decisions beyond the control of city residents. Federal government monies helped build the bridges, interstate highways, and international airport that connected the city to nearby communities and overseas destinations. African American residents were a sizeable presence in several neighborhoods; they and newcomers from Mexico, Central America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands, pushed by revolutions and wars and pulled by the lure of a better life, together made up half of San Francisco’s population. The developments narrated in this book were less visible than, but in many ways as significant as, the more dramatic markers of change because they shaped the character of the debate over how to define the common good, influenced the outcome of the politics of inclusion, and contributed to the evolution and development of San Francisco’s political culture. From the early 1890s through the 1970s, a Catholic faith-based enterprise, fostered by the city’s archbishops and involving both lay activists and diocesan priests, constituted a dynamic element in San Francisco’s political culture. In the years before the Great Depression, in the context of Vatican teachings, natural disaster, and the nation’s first red scare, Catholics challenged the presumptions of organized capital to unilaterally define the public interest. The contests involving 252 CONCLUSION organized business, organized labor, and the Catholic Church were then complicated by transnational rivalries, including the Communist Party’s entry into politics and its competition with Catholic Action. The city’s Catholic business, labor, and civic leaders, in complex relations with the political left and the business right, contributed to the shaping of a local New Deal liberal regime that favored expanded rights for organized labor.1 Organized business, Catholics, and the left, including the Communist Party, also played key roles in redefining the city’s priorities around the importance of fostering future economic growth and human rights. San Francisco did not undergo a wholesale “transformation” as a consequence of World War II.2 But during the war and the subsequent Cold War, the city did experience dramatic population changes, and the newcomers influenced the character and the outcome of contests over how to define the public interest. Important continuities linked post-1945 San Francisco with its prewar history, even as business reoriented its approach to economic development; the labor movement coped with regional, national, and international economic restructuring; the Catholic population dispersed into the metropolitan Bay Area and became a smaller proportion of San Francisco residents; and the Communist Party shrank in numbers and influence. Rivalry between the city’s Catholic Action movement and the Communist Party also contributed to shaping the city’s Cold War political culture. Both men and women participated in the debate over how to define the common good, as illustrated in the work of women in Catholic Action and in the Communist Party, and in the career of Julia Gorman Porter, whose political and policy activism began in the Progressive era and continued to the 1970s. As they debated urban redevelopment, public education, equality in employment , and freeway construction from the late 1930s through the 1960s, San Franciscans were motivated by ideas and ideologies and moved by the impact of demographic changes; local, national, and international economic dynamics; and dramatic and unanticipated national and international events. In the 1960s and 1970s, debates in San Francisco about how to define the common good took place in the context of a national conversation about the constitutional rights of individuals and the duties of government toward groups that historically had been excluded from participation in policymaking. As one leader in redevelopment politics put it, “[The people are] saying to their government: ‘We want a hand in the activities of the Government when we are directly affected.’”3 Joseph L. Alioto’s campaign promise in 1967 that he would assemble a “grand urban coalition” that would succeed in representing all of the city’s diverse interests won him the Mayor’s Office; his administrations demonstrated the continued influence of the Catholic public philosophy that inspired him, as well as growing impatience with the...