Dianne Feinstein, San Francisco Supervisor, Mayor and United States Senator from California

for over

will be remembered for more than four decades as a political giant whose calm in a moment of civil unrest soothed a fractured city, and who fearlessly fought against weapons and torture. She was simply an extraordinary American woman.

And yet, when I heard the news that she had died, I surprised myself by silently exclaiming, What a relief!

It has been devastating to watch Feinstein’s all-too-public decline in recent years, her refusal to resign despite her clearly declining cognition and health, and to read about her family’s bloody battles over her late husband’s estate. What a terrible note to end on.

But a merciless ending should not cloud DiFi’s stellar achievements and its place in American history.

I first became aware of Feinstein, like many of my generation, in November 1978, after San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated at City Hall by their former colleague, Supervisor Dan White.

I had just graduated

by

college and still lived in Berkeley.

Years afterwards

S

I thought I had dreamed that the terrible news had broken the same day I saw the Talking Heads play

their goal

Psycho Killer during a free concert at Sproul Plaza. But no, it wasn’t a dream. The Talking Heads had indeed shown up on the UC Berkeley campus on the day of the murders. That always seemed like an ironic coincidence worthy of Joan Didion, another great California woman and contemporary of Feinstein.

During the trial, White’s attorneys introduced the now infamous Twinkie defense, putting a psychiatrist on the witness stand to testify that White’s high consumption of sugary foods led to his diminished capacity. Strangely enough, the gamble worked, as White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served less than five years. He later died by suicide.

Through it all, Feinstein was a pillar of strength and determination for her trembling city.

As her political ambition soared, Feinstein persevered despite both personal and professional losses, eventually taking her seat in the Senate in the momentous Year of the Woman.

Anus

bee

The all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee botched hearings in 1991 for then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who won confirmation despite credible allegations of sexual harassment by law professor Anita Hill. Women were pushed to run for office in unprecedented numbers.

The following year 24

new

women were elected to the House of Representatives and as many as four, including DiFi, an affectionate nickname given by the political press, and Barbara Boxer, were elected to the Senate. California had the distinction of being the first state in American history to have two female senators at the same time.

Feinstein has always been considered a moderate Democrat; one of her Democratic opponents even called her a secret Republican when she sought her party’s nomination for Senate in 1992. She certainly had a set personal style; she never changed her bouffant hairstyle with a flick of the wrist, and to me she always looked like a glamorous version of a 1950s housewife.

However moderate her behavior or politics, she made a deep impression by embracing not-so-moderate causes, especially the ban on assault weapons.

Her baptism by gun violence in 1978 had made her a staunch supporter of the ban, which was enshrined in a 1994 amendment to the Crime Bill. Sadly, that ban expired a decade later, and today we live with its terrible consequences.

Have you read that you doubt the success of the ban; a 2019 study by a group of injury epidemiologists and trauma surgeons found that the number of mass shootings declined over its lifetime. They found an immediate and sharp increase in mass shootings starting in 2004, the year the shooting ended.

It is no exaggeration to say that Feinstein’s dedication to reducing gun violence in this country has saved many, many lives.

But for sheer courage, Feinstein will always be remembered for releasing in 2014 a 525-page excerpt from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s damning report on the CIA’s use of torture during interrogations of suspected terrorists in the years after the September 11 attacks.

As chair of the committee, she resisted heavy pressure to keep the findings secret.

Feinstein felt it was critical that the public know that, contrary to American ideals and values, the CIA tortured suspected terrorists with stress positions, rectal feeding, waterboarding and sleep deprivation. People died and lost the use of limbs. They were driven to hallucinations; they lost their minds. The CIA took prisoners to black sites in countries such as Thailand and Poland, where they were tortured with impunity.

Can you think of anything more disgusting than bringing a prisoner back to life to continue torturing him?

The episode, Feinstein said, was a stain on our values ​​and history.

The report’s most damning conclusion was that enhanced interrogations, as the CIA euphemistically called its torture policy, yielded absolutely no valuable information.

History will judge us, Feinstein said, on our commitment to a just society governed by law and on the willingness to face an ugly truth, and say: Never again.

In some ways, that was as formative for her as her response to the San Francisco crisis nearly four decades earlier.

Dianne Feinstein

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The steep decline and refusal to leave office will be forgotten, but her steady hand and righteous fights will not. What a career. What a life. What an inspiration.

@robinkabcarian