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Liberal Place: Hayward, CA
These are comments on Hayward, submitted by other Turn Left visitors. They do not necessarily represent the opinion of the webmaster. You may add a comment on Hayward if you want.
This is a small city in the Bay Area of California. It is considered a suburb of San Francisco, and is very liberal-friendly. The city government is responsive, and the local school district even sponsors a gay prom! Of course, this is still a burb, so it isn't as cool as San Francisco, but it is still pretty nice.

...and another comment...

While I realize that Hayward is generally thought of as a liberal city, I attended an event there that made me seriously reconsider. Senator Barbara Boxer, gearing up for her re-election bid, came to hold a town meeting at Hayward High School. The entire event was disrupted by a bunch of right-wing nuts.

First, when Boxer opened the floor to questions, this religious right guy comes up with a Bible and starts saying "There have been many sins committed today and I'm here to tell them. Barbara Boxer, ARE YOU JEWISH???" When she replied that her religion was irrelevant, he continued to shout "ARE YOU JEWISH? ARE YOU JEWISH??"

Second, a Vietnamese man came up and began telling Boxer how his daughter had been a victim of a hate crime. Boxer sympathized with his plight, and pointed out that it was a good thing that he was speaking up about such an awful event, because many hate crime victims never do. Immediately afterwards, this guy comes up to the mike and asks Boxer: "Why didn't you tell that guy to buy a gun so he can defend his family?"

But worst of all was this one man attending the event dressed up like a stereotypical Chinese person with a very racist mask and a coolie hat that said "Charlie Money Tree" on it, referring to Charlie Trie, a Chinese businessman who allegedly laundered money to Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign. During the entire event, he was waving these dollar bills and mimicking Asian-Americans. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen.

...and another comment...

While I can't comment one way or the other on Hayward's liberalism or conservatism (since I've never been there), I'm willing to give the town the benefit of the doubt despite the above comment. The reason is that we don't know that the above "disrupters" at the Boxer event were from Hayward. At political functions such as these, opposition hecklers may not be from the local community. At worst it's probably that they were just a couple of bad apples. Besides, as far as I know most if not all of the Bay Area is liberal-friendly (at least to differing degrees). Sponsoring a gay prom sounds pretty liberal-friendly to me! And I can only assume that Hayward's Cal State University campus helps in making the town at least liberal-leaning if anything else.

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