A giant has fallen, and the city of San Francisco gathered Wednesday at her wake.
The casket of Dianne Feinstein, the longtime U.S. Senator and former San Francisco mayor, was placed at City Hall Wednesday in a public reception that saw thousands of locals lining up to pay their respects.
Feinstein died on Friday, leaving the city to mourn the space she left, one she had occupied for generations.
In the center of the rotunda, her casket lay in a pool of light, draped in flags, officers at each end. They hung their heads the entire time.
Visitors inched up the stairs, through the metal detectors and alongside the red ropes that kept the line orderly.
Hundreds of people waited in the line that spilled onto the steps of City Hall and down Van Ness Avenue. Some were dressed head to toe in black, others in floral prints and glittery jackets.
Artists covered in piercings and tattoos, politicians in crisp navy suits, even a nun in her coif, all awaited their chance to pay their respects to a woman who dominated the political scene in their city for more than five decades.
“She worked until she dropped,” said Tisha Kenny, a local artist based in the Mission, waiting her turn in line. “And she just loved San Francisco.” Kenny wore a white dress patterned with blue flowers, her hands clasped in anticipation.
When time came for Kenny to pay her respects, she pressed her palms together as though she was about to bow in prayer, her head slightly hung.
Some cried, others gripped the hands of those beside them.
“When I heard that Dianne had died, I grieved hard, and immediately,” said Susan Claypool, a former midwife. She wore a pink mask as tears welled from her deep blue eyes.
“She carried us through political assassinations, the AIDS crisis … she was just a great human kindness.”
Dozens of officers lined each corner of the room, and the pedestals alongside City Hall’s stairways were dressed in flower arrangements of hues both red and white.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stepped before Feinstein’s casket, standing silently with his aides for a few moments, before swiveling and exiting. A violinist played somberly beside the flags draped over Feinstein’s coffin.
Those who remembered her said that Feinstein had an unwavering commitment to her city that did not falter until after her last vote, on her last day.
“She voted, and then left on her own terms,” said former supervisor Jim Gonzalez, one of Mayor Feinstein’s former chief aides, speaking the day before the ceremony. “Not because anyone told her to leave.”
Gonzalez recalled one of Feinstein’s favorite terminologies: “intestinal fortitude — you’ve got to have guts.”
He said that every time he came to her with a public works initiative for the Mission, she said yes, without hesitation.
“She felt that the Mission wasn’t being paid its due,” Gonzalez explained.
He also said that, on the day of her passing, Roberto Hernandez, the longtime Mission activist and organizer of Carnaval, called him to pay his respects. “The Mission had no better friend than Dianne Feinstein,” Hernandez told him.
Hernandez, better known as “the mayor of the Mission,” had a longtime, complicated relationship with Feinstein. Anti-cruising policies in the early 1980s presented great difficulties for low-riders, and the two would often correspond over issues plaguing the Mission.
“It became very clear that, during her time, she had to move real quick to make some decisions,” Hernandez said, referencing the months following her appointment to mayor in 1978.
When low-riders and police clashed at 24th and Mission streets in the 1980s, he said, Feinstein decided to visit the McDonalds directly facing that turbulent corner, and supervise the action herself.
“We can say a lot of things about Dianne, but I never found her to bullshit me, or go behind my back,” Hernandez explained. “I respected that; I knew where I stood.”
When confrontations between the police and low-riders escalated, Hernandez and his community took the city of San Francisco to court, Feinstein included.
“We won the right to cruise on Mission Street,” he said.
One of Hernandez’s fondest memories of Feinstein was when she helped establish the Mission Neighborhood Recreation Center, the first gym in the area.
“I had never owned a suit before the ribbon ceremony for the rec center,” Hernandez said. “My friend told me, ‘Diane’s coming! You gotta wear a suit!’”
“She really paid attention, and she really listened,” Hernandez said. “I’ve been around politicians that really don’t listen, and get you out of their door.”
Some leaders had their own bones to pick with Feinstein. Ray Balberan, a community leader in violence intervention, said that her administration “never forgave us” for the spotlight that his group shined on mistreatment facing juveniles in the justice system.
When Balberan and his peers reported the city for not providing juveniles with blankets or adequate facilities with which to relieve themselves, among other transgressions, the city ceased to provide referrals for the task force to continue receiving funding and supporting juveniles in the system.
“The city government, the department, the mayor, they never forgave us,” Balberan explained.
“But when I thought of her passing,” Balberan said, “I thought to myself: Maybe it’s important to grieve first.”
Gonzalez said that Feinstein was under immense pressure from all sides, but nonetheless, “her humanity was profound.”
“Despite the setbacks, I celebrate her for her many accomplishments. And she’s well deserving of that,” Hernandez said.
Less than 100 feet away from Feinstein’s casket, a newlywed bride stood with her groom. Death and a new life, hand in hand, filled the air of the marbled interior walls.
The violinist played on, hands steady, her music lingering throughout the corridors of City Hall.
Are we talking about the Dianne Feinstein, who oversaw the defunding and degrading of city services by “contracting out” to private (un-unionized) firms, who ignored AIDS and homelessness until it was no longer possible (thanks to “Act Out” and others) or she was replaced? Just because a second or third rate politician dies, there is no need for over-the-top hagiography.