Civic

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...

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...

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. Stil...

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 influ...

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 add...

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...

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 loc...

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 w...

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 tryin...

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, sha...

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 init...

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 o...

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 ca...

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,...

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,...