Both sides claim win after SF fight that roped in even Elon Musk. What happened? |
San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder, who represents the Mission, is shown during a Board of Supervisors meeting at City Hall in San Francisco, Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
A seemingly mundane piece of San Francisco legislation prompted a mud-slinging saga this week, with the Mission’s Supervisor Jackie Fielder facing off against the ire of local tech investors — and even a drive-by comment from Elon Musk.
The fight saw Fielder, elected in District 9 last year on a Democratic Socialist platform by a 19-percentage point margin, blast tech billionaires and call her detractors “technofascists.” Tech investors from the city’s moderate wing rallied anger about the supervisor on X, skewering her and calling the proposed legislation “Luddite.” Now, with both sides claiming victory, city residents would be excused for not knowing what’s exactly going on.
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The basics are this. Last month, Fielder and Supervisor Shamann Walton proposed legislation that would’ve required an additional permit for companies opening up any kind of laboratory space in certain zones of San Francisco set aside for “production, distribution and repair” use. This week, amid the brouhaha between Fielder and the tech commentators, the Board of Supervisors passed the legislation, but in a very different form: Now it imposes the additional permitting step only on labs operating outdoors and launches a Planning Department study of lab use in the zones.
“End of Year Win,” Fielder wrote in her Instagram post about the passage,........