I called the Dream Keeper Initiative a vehicle for grift and cronyism

A year later, it’s yet another corruption scandal for Mayor London Breed

Left to right: Shamann Walton, Sheryl Davis, Cornel West, and London Breed at the Human Rights Commission 25th Anniversary party.

In my Gotham by the Bay November 2023 newsletter, I brought attention to a program called the Dream Keeper Initiative (DKI) as ripe for grift and cronyism. Nearly a year later, it turns out I was correct. Not only that, but it’s turned into yet another City Hall corruption nightmare for its cosponsor, Mayor London Breed, less than two months from a tough reelection bid. 

One of the DKI recipients I called attention to in that 2023 post, the shadowy SF Black Wall Street — which according to their flashy but thin website “promotes Black entrepreneurship” — spent $700,000 on two Juneteenth parties, eclipsing the $660,000 they spent on grants for Black small businesses. Tinisch Hollins, director of the entrepreneurship program, also redirected tens of thousands of dollars in administrative fees to a shell company she created. 

As I pointed out in 2023, SF Black Wall Street filed a 990EZ form with the IRS in 2021 “with just over $115,000 in revenue and little to show for it (except a connection to Breed and Walton), yet they received nearly seven times that ($735,112) from DKI.” I also warned that DKI was nothing more than a way to funnel millions of dollars to friends of Mayor London Breed and District 10 supervisor Shamann Walton. 

At an Oct. 30, 2023, hearing of the Board of Supervisors’ Rules Committee regarding bringing the San Francisco Police Department to full staffing, San Francisco resident Alan Burradell put Walton on blast as one of the officials who supported defunding the San Francisco Police Department in 2020. Walton dismissed Burradell’s comments as “political rhetoric,” saying adamantly, “We never defunded the police department” — but that’s a lie. In a Feb. 25, 2021, press release, Mayor Breed and Supervisor Walton announced the creation of The Dream Keeper Initiative, a citywide plan for “reinvesting” $120 million in San Francisco’s African American community over the next two years. The release claimed DKI followed “months of community engagement and outreach led by the Human Rights Commission,” and an “extensive community and stakeholder engagement process” to become part of “Mayor Breed’s roadmap for reforming public safety and addressing structural inequities in San Francisco.”

And where was that $120 million coming from? The press release addressed that, too: “In June 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, Mayor Breed and Supervisor Walton announced a plan to prioritize the redirection of resources from law enforcement to support the African American community … As part of the budget process, Mayor Breed redirected $120 million from law enforcement for investments in the African American community for Fiscal Years 2020-21 and 2021-22.” In other words, Breed and Walton set up a sort of prereparations fund from which their nonprofit cronies are already getting huge payouts. At the time, the DKI website’s interactive funding toolshowed that between 2021 and 2023 DKI spent $107.24 million of the “redirected” law enforcement dollars on 165 awards, including over 30 new city and county hires (despite Breed asking departments to cut back as she desperately tried to stretch her scant $15 billion budget). A quick glance at the beneficiaries brought up numerous “nonprofits” with ties to Breed and Walton, including organizations involved with the SFPUC Community Benefits pay-to-play scheme. 

For example, the infamous Young Community Developers (YCD) got nearly $4 million. Remember, longtime City Family member Dwayne Jones, who was arrested this summer on 59 fraud charges, was YCD’s executive director from 1998 to 2003. His mentee Walton held the six-figure position from 2010 until he joined the Board of Supervisors in January 2019 — handpicked, of course, by disgraced former SFPUC head Harlan Kelly, currently serving a six-year prison sentence after a jury convicted him on eight of 10 fraud charges, to head up District 10, where all those Community Benefits supposedly go (but not according to residents, who say the money doesn’t reach them). 

In October 2023, I wrote about YCD’s $5 million grant from the San Francisco Human Services Agency Department of Benefits and Family Support to oversee the street violence prevention program called “Interrupt, Predict, and Organize,” or IPO. On Sept. 27, 2023, two San Francisco Department of Public Works employees hired through IPO were involved in a high-speed police chase and crash that resulted in the driver’s death and the passenger’s hospitalization and eventual arrest. Both were part of a prolific car burglary and armed robbery crew.

As I pointed out in 2023, SF Black Wall Street filed a 990EZ form with the IRS in 2021 “with just over $115,000 in revenue and little to show for it (except a connection to Breed and Walton), yet they received nearly seven times that ($735,112) from Dream Keeper Initiative.”

Other familiar DKI beneficiaries include Booker T. Washington Community Center ($250,000), where Breed’s friend and political funder Farah Makras — wife of real estate agent and convicted bank fraudster, Victor Makras — serves as vice president, and where Breed tried to bring close friend Brenda Wright on board as a high-paid consultant. Controversial harm reduction purveyors HealthRIGHT 360 — infamous for turning the $22 million Tenderloin Linkage Center into a drug den, fudging failed figures, and spending $500,000 on a self-serving study — received $1,250,000. And perennial “friend with community benefits” Bayview Opera House received $1,400,000. 

The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development received the lion’s share ($20,770,000), and of course the Human Rights Commissionwhich, according to the press release, “designed and lead the community engagement process,” was handsomely rewarded with a $8,103,440 grant. Right away, I saw a conflict of interest: Sheryl Davis, who is the executive director of the Human Rights Commission, was also selected to oversee the DKI program.

That’s how the City Family rolls

According to a January 2021 interview with San Francisco Bayview, Davis was volunteering at different community centers around the city when she met London Breed, then the executive director of the African American Art & Culture Complex. Breed took the job in 2002 at the “request” of then-mayor and City Family patriarch Willie Brown. The relationship between Breed and Brown goes way back: according to a mutual friend, Breed was Brown’s babysitter, and he helped pay for her college education through one of his charitable foundations. Prior to her job at the African American Art & Culture Complex, Breed worked on Brown’s 1999 reelection campaign and was hired after that at the Treasure Island Development Authority, first as an office manager, and then as a development specialist working on lease negotiations. “Mayor Breed and I knew each other before Mo’MAGIC, but that is another story,” Davis told San Francisco Bayview. Mo’MAGIC(Mobilization for Adolescent Growth In Our Communities), a nonprofit focused on the historically Black Fillmore District, was conceived and sponsored by the Public Defender’s Office under the late Jeff Adachi. 

When Breed was District 5 supervisor, she asked Mayor Ed Lee to allow Davis to run programming at the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. After a few years there, Davis was asked to be interim director of the Human Rights Commission, and soon after that she became the director. That may seem like a lightning speed ascension to a very powerful position, but that’s how the City Family rolls.

Davis also spoke about the work she was doing then with the Human Rights Commission at the time. “We are working on amplifying the voices of those in our community. I know what it’s like to have people speak on our behalf and get it wrong. Everybody that sits on our commission is supposed to be representing a base and we want that base heard. We want to make sure that there are investments and support for community-led efforts,” she said. “We are proud to be helping to advance the work of Mayor Breed and Supervisor Walton in regard to the push for reparations and we are monitoring the allocation of the funds that we got from the police department.” It was all quite prophetic, particularly what she said about Breed: “I know from the work that London and I did in the community that her commitment has been to fix what she knew was wrong when she was growing up … She knows about who is locked out of internships and job opportunities, she knows who is getting grants and who is not, and she knows where the system is broken. Part of what she has been focused on is trying to fix that …” 

Dwayne Jones company Urban Ed Academy Gets $1.2 Million

Fast forward to 2024, and Davis is the subject of a whistleblower complaint alleging 20 incidents of impropriety. In an interview with the San Francisco Standard, Davis was cavalier, defiant, even arrogant. “It’s probably somebody who’s not going to get funding. We’re not going to be bullied. I do think people have exaggerated the truth to some degree. People see something and make up their story.” 

While Davis tried to shrug it off, her friends Mayor Breed and Supervisor Walton — who gave her the job and the millions of dollars — remained silent, despite damning evidence. Along with SF Black Wall Street’s questionable use of funds, the nonprofit J&J Community Resource Center charged the city for bourbon, motorcycle rentals, and cigars under a DKI contract it received to run an antiviolence program. Then there’s Urban Ed Academy, founded by Walton’s mentor Dwayne Jones, long before his arrest on those 59 counts of fraud, which always took in a generous amount of SFPUC Community Benefits. With DKI, they received a $1.2 million contract under their sponsor, Mayor Breed’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) — against the recommendation of the scoring panel. After three years, Urban Ed secured teaching jobs for just five people in San Francisco, with most jobs going to nonprofits or schools in Oakland. Despite their total incompetence, OEWD tripled Urban Ed’s contract before abruptly canceling it at the end of the fiscal year due to “budget issues.”

Unable to ignore the problems any longer but still unwilling to give up control, Davis asked San Francisco Controller Greg Wagner to investigate “spending across all city departments that manage Dream Keeper Initiative money and report on the program’s funds, operations, and performance.” According to Davis, the organization wants to do their own audit “just to know what works and where there are challenges.” 

Then on Sept. 12, Davis took a leave of absence.

In 2019, I wrote a column for the Marina Times newspaper titled “It’s time for Mayor Breed to sweep DPW boss to the curb,” in which I detailed the many reasons Breed should fire then director of the San Francisco Department Works Mohammed Nuru, who had been plagued by corruption and scandal for decades. “It seems all of this would have Breed looking for a new DPW leader,” I wrote. “Not only would it benefit San Francisco to have fresh, creative eyes on the problem, it might boost Breed’s approval rating with her understandably disgruntled constituents. As she faces another election in 2020, this would be a good thing.” 

Clearly Breed didn’t take my advice, remaining silent even when Nuru was arrested less than a year later by the FBI for fraud including “corruption, bribery, kickbacks, and side deals.” As the mayor faces yet another election in November, this one with some tough competition, perhaps she will take my advice this time, so here it is: With Supervisor Walton by your side, take the fox out of the henhouse by firing your friend Sheryl Davis, offer a sincere mea culpa for your part in creating the grift machine that is the Dream Keeper Initiative, and request an independent audit.

Better yet — call in the feds.