Civic

While California is set to fully reopen on June 15, the unemployment rate appears to be holding steady. Businesses are opening positions, but residents are also dropping out of the workforce entirely. And the state’s Employment Development Department, which handles unemployment claims, is still working to resolve thousands of backlogged cases and battling fraud. Emily Hoeven, who writes the daily WhatMatters newsletter for the nonprofit newsroom CalMatters, returns with an update on what's happening at EDD.

Every city is special in some way to the people who call it home, but as author Gary Kamiya writes, San Francisco is a more potent touchstone than most thanks to the unique place it occupies in the American imagination. In the new anthology “The End of the Golden Gate,” writers including W. Kamau Bell, Margaret Cho and Michelle Tea reflect on a city in flux. Kamiya and writer and artist John Law talk about gentrification, rents and the message newcomers often hear that San Francisco peaked just before their arrival.

City College’s Board of Trustees recently voted on a plan to reduce teacher pay instead of laying teachers off, a plan that members of the teachers union had also voted on and approved. But this is only a short-term fix to one of the college’s financial problems. Alan Wong, a member of the Board of Trustees and a legislative aide to Supervisor Gordon Mar, shares his take on the bigger picture.

Aging is often obscured from movies, or portrayed in ways that perpetuate stereotypes about what aging is. The films at thetheLegacy Film Festival on Aging counter that by exploring more fully what it means to get older. The festival will showcase films about themes often associated with aging, like memory, disability and caring, but also includes stories about how people have shown and still show courage in the face of hate or how they have advanced civil rights. Arlene Reiff, film curator for the festival, talked with “Civic” about representation of seniors in cinema and how she helped select works to screen.

Janitors have been taking to the streets in San Francisco for weeks to advocate for better working conditions during the pandemic, even going on a three-day strike in mid-March. They’ve advocated for improvements like better ventilation in buildings, better protective gear for workers, health insurance coverage, and a wage increase. Juan Hernandez, a janitor with decades of experience who works at an office tower, gives a sense of the day-to-day reality of this work during the pandemic.

Before coronavirus cases were confirmed in San Francisco, paramedic Alfredo Banuelos and his colleagues were watching case numbers in other cities, still at a distance. Then he got his first patient. When the virus arrived in San Francisco and the city locked down and everything changed, procedures on the ambulance changed too. He reflects on how the pandemic unfolded for emergency medical responders.

"Sky Blossom" screens at CAAMFest on May 18 at 6 p.m.

San Francisco’s school district and board of education have been in the spotlight for a variety of controversies. Those include school reopening, a member of the board suing the district, an effort to recall some members, and an initiative to rename certain schools. Putting the controversies aside, two education reporters — Jill Tucker with the San Francisco Chronicle and Ida Mojadad with the San Francisco Examiner — give an overview of the responsibilities of the school board as a body and the process of electing its members.

Under a new health order, San Franciscans no longer need to wear a mask while doing outdoor activities like walking or biking when they’re alone or with members of their household. Unvaccinated people should wear a mask if social distancing can’t be maintained. Fully vaccinated people can almost entirely forgo masks outdoors, with some specific exceptions. Dr. Susan Philip, San Francisco's health officer, explains the details of the new order and how these decisions are made.

Listen to more of our conversations about school reopening with students, parents, teachers and the school district here.

Read Joe Eskenazi's special reports here and here.

Some students in the San Francisco Unified School District are back in classrooms — as of April 26, more than 19,000 of them. But there are tens of thousands more students in the district. The school board has resolved to give all students the option to return to in-person instruction in the fall. Gentle Blythe, deputy superintendent of strategic partnerships and communications with the district, discusses the impacts of distance learning and next steps for reopening schools.

On February 1, after a democratic election, the Burmese military seized control of the government and declared a year-long state of emergency. Burmese people have been protesting that takeover, and the military has cracked down with deadly use of force, killing hundreds including children. Demonstrations in solidarity have also been held around the world, including in San Francisco. Ko Ko Lay, co-founder of Free Burma Action Committee, and Jane Pak, adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, both of whom are board members of Refugee and Immigrant Transitions, talk about how these events have affected people living in Burma and the Bay Area.

More information about Mourning is an Act of Love here.

In 2009, BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, later claiming he had meant to use his Taser and not his gun. In April 2021, Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter shot and killed Daunte Wright — and police say this, too, was due to getting the less-lethal weapon and the gun confused. To get a better sense of how much these two shootings blamed on Taser confusion more than a decade apart have in common, and how the trial of Derek Chauvin is changing the conversation about killings by law enforcement, we hear from journalist Demian Bulwa, now director of news at the San Francisco Chronicle, who covered Oscar Grant’s death and Johannes Mehserle’s trial extensively.

Many people are unsure how to respond when they find themselves observing a conflict, or when someone might be bothering, harassing or even about to attack another person. In response to a wave of violent attacks against Asian-Americans, two organizations have partnered to offer an adapted bystander intervention training, which has been in very high demand. Paul Ocampo, development director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Asian Law Caucus, and Dax Valdes, a senior trainer with Hollaback, share their experiences with and strategies for safely de-escalating tense situations.

Members of San Francisco's Homeless Outreach Team — also known as the “HOT team” — walk neighborhood beats to offer support, information, and referrals to services for people living on the streets. During the pandemic, the resources available, particularly shelters, changed significantly. Meanwhile, our collective understanding of what would work best to contain the spread was changing too. Mark Mazza, outreach manager for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, shares how those changes have affected members of this team.

A youth-led, youth-run initiative called San Francisco Communities who Help Advance the New Generation of Education — or SFCHANGE — is offering workshops to young people on topics that might not be taught in their classrooms otherwise, from organizing their finances to organizing around climate change. Adrianna Zhang, founder and executive director of operations for SFCHANGE, and Samantha Chu, an 8th grader who has attended one of the workshops, share their experiences.

Redistricting, the process by which electoral districts are drawn, will happen locally as well as at the state and federal levels. San Francisco will use Census data but also, crucially, resident input, to redraw its supervisorial districts. Alison Goh, president of the League of Women Voters of San Francisco, explains how the process will work and outlines the transparency and outreach the League wants to see from the city.

At the uprisings sparked by the killing of George Floyd last year, demonstrators all over the country were calling on their municipalities to “defund the police.” In Oakland, a Reimagining Public Safety Task Force in March approved a long list of recommendations, many of them made by the Anti Police Terror Project, an organization that has been calling for reducing police budgets in order to fund alternatives to law enforcement for years. As former police officer Derek Chauvin, accused of murdering Floyd, is tried, we hear from James Burch, policy director for the Anti Police-Terror Project and the Justice Teams Network and president of the National Lawyers Guild Bay Area.

Under California's Proposition 22, passed last year, companies whose apps dispatch gig workers aren’t considered those workers' employers, so they are exempt from providing benefits for them like unemployment protections, minimum wage, and sick leave. The proposition did provide for a minimum earnings guarantee and some health care benefits like stipends and insurance for on-the-job injuries. Still, drivers and labor organizers have said that they’re left choosing between paying the bills and managing their coronavirus exposure risk, because they lack full employee protections. Cherri Murphy, a lead organizer for Gig Workers Rising who has also worked as a Lyft driver, explains.

Violence against Asian-Americans has sparked discussions about the racist policies, animus and attacks that have been part of US history for a long time, from exclusionary and segregationist policies to harmful myths and stereotypes about Asian people. Author Jeff Chang has written extensively about this history, and politics and race in America, and unpacks the ways in which white supremacy influences narratives about recent anti-Asian violence.

Nearly 4,000 attacks on Asian-Americans — including verbal and physical assaults — were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a national tracking project launched by a coalition of activist groups last year, as of late February 2021. Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, one of the founding partners of Stop AAPI Hate, reflects on the increase and how this violence can be addressed.

San Francisco based community newspaper the "Bay Area Reporter" began publishing on April 1st, 1971 chronicling the earliest days of Queer activism. On this episode we speak with the publisher and news editor about the history covered in its pages and the challenges of running a commercial newspaper amid a pandemic in the digital age.

Pandemic or no, sanitation workers are still collecting the city's waste material. Civic hitches an early morning ride with Recology recycling driver Gareth Willey to get a sense for how the pandemic has changed his work. While the decreased traffic has made the streets a little less crowded, the bins he empties are now piled high with cardboard boxes from mail orders, which poses a challenge.

Volunteers are calling seniors to make sure they know how to get vaccine appointments if they want them. Former state Senate candidate and public bank advocate Jackie Fielder recently launched a political action committee, Daybreak PAC, and has shifted some campaign organizing infrastructure toward a vaccine access effort. Phone bank volunteers now reach out to seniors living in neighborhoods like the Bayview, to ask if they would like to get vaccinated but face any barriers to doing so. Fielder and a phone banker, Sayuri Falconer, talk about the initiative.

Former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial in Minneapolis, charged with the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, when Chauvin was an officer. Charging decisions are made by district attorneys, and San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin says if the Minneapolis incident had occurred locally, he would have brought criminal charges against Chauvin. He also discusses recent cases in which local law enforcement officers have killed or seriously injured people and why he did or did not bring criminal charges against those officers.

Roger Marenco, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 250 A, says hundreds of Muni workers have been infected with the coronavirus and two have died from complications of COVID-19. For others, he said, the pressures of the job coupled with the additional dangers posed by a global pandemic have taken a psychological toll. We talked about how operators are handling this and what changes he would like to see, including actions passengers could take.

Hear Part 1 of this series here and Part 2 here.

Hear Part 1 of this series here.

Editor's note: This podcast was updated on 3/30/21 to remove an outdated reference to a commercial eviction moratorium.

The continued rise in violence against Asian-Americans, in particular against elders, has spurred communities into action. In Chinatown, a few different groups of volunteers can regularly be seen patrolling the street, keeping an eye out for potential problems. This week, Civic walked along with the Chinatown Safety Patrol.

Do you have a perspective to add to the conversation about schools reopening? Leave us a message via SpeakPipe.

In late February, the City College Board of Trustees voted to approve sending notices of potential layoffs that, if implemented, would be a 30% cut to salaried expenditures. CCSF says the existence of the college is at stake, and it’s facing a projected budget shortfall of $33 million. Eira Kien, a student, Vick Van Chung, the student trustee, and Mary Bravewoman, a faculty member, have been trying to prevent these cuts and talk about the impact they expect they would have on students and the broader community.

Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced after the prime minister of Ethiopia launched a military offensive in Ethiopia's Tigray region last November. Mellay Menelik, a San Franciscan who was in Tigray when fighting began, and Henock Woldu, who has been organizing with the Bay Area Tigrayan community to call for action to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis, share their experiences.

From early on, the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare stark health inequities through infection and death rates. Testing access quickly became a concern, and now, so has vaccine access — state health department data indicate that Black and Latino Californians are under-represented among people getting vaccinated. Dr. Kim Rhoads and Dr. Carina Marquez, who have been working on community-driven initiatives to address those inequities, talk about the importance of prevention and community engagement to public health.

Have something to add to the conversation about schools reopening? Leave us a message via SpeakPipe.

At the beginning of the year, a tenant attorney predicted an “avalanche” of evictions unless California legislators reached a deal to extend tenant protections. They did, and applications recently opened for a support program designed to help both low-income tenants and their landlords with growing rent debt. Shanti Singh, legislative and communications director for Tenants Together, a coalition of 50 renters rights organizations in California, gives an overview of the protections and what tenants and landlords must do to access support funds.

Reporters Nuala Bishari and Brian Howey reflect on covering homelessness policy in San Francisco over a year of pandemic health measures. They have broken stories on hygiene stations, testing, unused RVs, encampment 'sweeps,' shelter-in-place hotels and vacancies in supportive housing.

A year into the COVID-19 pandemic we speak with a therapist about the challenges his clients have faced dealing with the stress and trauma of one of the most turbulent times in American history.

Advocates for residents of long term care facilities like nursing homes have been pushing for San Francisco to ease pandemic-related restrictions on people visiting their loved ones for weeks. Just a day before, the city health department had issued an order expanding visitation by removing strict local guidelines and aligning with state policy that allows for indoor, in-person visits when they can be done safely. Two advocates with the San Francisco Long Term Care Ombudsman program explain why visitation is so important to facility residents.

Limiting social interaction to be almost entirely online has had serious mental health consequences, particularly for young people who would otherwise be in school. But the pandemic means that help in any form, from new friendships to sessions with a professional therapist, must also take place primarily online. High school sophomore Sadie Crawford and Dr. Martha Merchant, a clinical psychologist, share how they are building those highly personal connections virtually.

Youth mental health was a growing concern even before the pandemic, but the isolation of sheltering in place has come with an increase in depression and unhappiness among young people. San Francisco high school students have been reaching out to one another despite schools being closed to offer some support. Alan Wang, Joyce Truong and Abigail Ault, who have been active in peer wellness programs, share their perspectives.

If you are affected by the decisions about school reopening, we want to hear from you. Leave us a message via SpeakPipe or at (415) 495-7377, and we may air it on a future show.

Language barriers and a largely online scheduling system make it difficult for monolingual non-English speakers and people who aren’t digital natives, often seniors, to access the vaccines that they’re eligible for. So a local organization serving primarily Asian American seniors is advocating for improved access to vaccines, and bringing doctors who can administer vaccines to the seniors who need them. Anni Chung, CEO and president of Self-Help for the Elderly, explains how they're getting seniors vaccinated.

While attention has shifted to mass vaccinations, the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco remain focused on finding therapies to treat COVID-19 and defeat future Coronaviruses.

If you are affected by the decisions about school reopening, we want to hear from you. Leave us a message via SpeakPipe or at (415) 495-7377, and we may air it on a future show.

Grocery store workers are the latest to be eligible for vaccination. As part of our “Essential Worker” series we spoke with Jim Araby, director of strategic campaigns for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 about how they are trying to get their 28,000 members vaccinated and why they are fighting for hazard pay during the remaining days of the pandemic.

In addition to mass vaccination sites and pharmacy megachains, coronavirus vaccine is being distributed by community clinics that serve populations where they’ve built strong connections and trust — through language and cultural competency or by serving low-income families. North East Medical Services has multiple clinics in San Francisco and around the Bay Area, serving some 70,000 patients, many of whom are low-income Chinese speakers. Dr. Kenneth Tai, chief health officer, and Jessica Ho, government affairs and community liaison, talk about NEMS' vaccine distribution strategy.

Even for those eligible, it has been difficult to navigate the various coronavirus vaccine sign-up, notification, and appointment systems. In response to the disjointed publication of information from various clinics, providers, and governments, a group of volunteers with some technical know-how got together to build a statewide resource for finding vaccine appointments. What began as a spreadsheet is now a website, VaccinateCA. Zoelle Egner, one of the co-organizers of VaccinateCA, and Carroll Lachnit, a phone banker for the project, talk about how it works and how it's unfolded.