Civic

This is part of a series of shows that collect perspectives from demonstrators. Listen to a previous episode here .

After George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis, protestors have been taking to the streets to demand justice and end police violence against black people and other people of color. We collected some demonstrators' thoughts on what moved them to participate. This is part of a series that includes voices from protests early in the week. Hear more perspectives soon.

San Francisco remains under an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in the wake of a nationwide civil uprising over the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. During a Monday morning press conference, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he is cautioning Mayor London Breed not to end the curfew too soon. Hear the press briefing with this and other...

Read more at sfpublicpress.org.

Muni is running only a core system of buses with no rail lines in service. But around 100,000 people still ride every day. Cat Carter, interim executive director of the San Francisco Transit Riders, hasn’t been on Muni in months, but she and others in the organization have kept busy, distributing masks and thinking about the future of Muni as budget cuts and the return of traffic congestion loom.

The San Francisco Unified School District has announced that fall classes will begin on Aug. 17, and administrators are in the process of planning how campuses will function as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. We heard directly from students about what life has been like for them under the shelter-in-place order. Abigail Ault, a junior at Lincoln High School, and La’Jaya Smith, a senior at Life Le...

The shelter-in-place order that has directed San Francisco residents to stay home except to conduct essential business will be in effect indefinitely, though with significant modifications to allow certain previously restricted businesses to re-open. Meanwhile, the city’s mask order will be expanded, now requiring everyone to cover their noses and mouths within 30 feet of another person. Hear thes...

Every year, San Francisco Pride events bring hundreds of thousands of people to the city during the last week of June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in New York City, which kicked-off the modern LGBTQ movement. This year was expected to be larger than ever, marking the 50th anniversary of San Francisco’s first march, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced its abrupt cancellation on April 14, 2020. P...

The Camp Fire grew to disastrous proportions faster than some fire experts thought possible, and ultimately destroyed the town of Paradise and devastated several nearby communities. At least 85 people were killed, and tens of thousands were displaced. In the new book “Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy,” two journalists with the Guardian US, Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano, tell the stories of t...

In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: City departments told to cut budgets, transportation agency braces for gridlock, some hygiene stations found to be missing essentials. Coming up: Transit directors to meet, library will conduct summer learning online, collect COVID-19 time capsule material...

The coronavirus pandemic has cost millions their jobs, and that means many tenants haven’t been able to pay rent, landlords have had trouble making mortgage payments and other bills are also stacking up. Sarah “Fred” Sherburn-Zimmer, director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, and Katrina Logan, director of the economic advancement program at Community Legal Services in East Palo Al...

Read Joe's story here .

Read Chris Roberts' story here .

Some two weeks after a universal coronavirus testing mandate for nursing facilities was announced, 40% of the city’s nursing patients and staff have been tested, according to San Francisco health director Dr. Grant Colfax. Hear this and other updates from today's press briefing on the city's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

In What's New & What's Next, the Civic team offers a roundup of San Francisco news and a look at what's ahead on the city's calendar. The news: CA faces deep budget cuts, shelter-in-place restrictions on retail ease slightly, needs for rental assistance exceed available funds, drive-through food bank opens. Coming up: Planning Commission to weigh plans for The Hub, Muni slightly increases service...

Youth aged 16 and 17 could gain the right to vote in municipal elections if existing voters approve a charter amendment in November. City supervisors have introduced that amendment, and if it continues to see widespread support from the board, the measure will go to the ballot. This will be San Francisco’s second time voting on such an expansion of voting rights — a similar 2016 measure failed wit...

Read Gosia Wozniacka's reporting at Civil Eats .

Mayor London Breed announced Wednesday that up to 95% of retail businesses should be able to reopen for limited curbside service starting on Monday, May 18th. Many warehouses and factories should also be able to resume operations. Hear this and other coronavirus update from today's city press briefing.

How to best support the thousands of people who are homeless in San Francisco, and prevent the spread of the new coronavirus among them, during this pandemic has been a point of contention for months. San Francisco Public Press reporter Brian Howey has been covering everything from a scuttled initiative to test everyone in the shelter system to how the city would use RVs it had secured for people...

Some nonessential businesses will be able to resume limited operations starting May 18 if the rate of coronavirus-related hospitalizations in San Francisco does not increase in the next week, Mayor London Breed said Monday. “The curve is indeed flat,” said Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the city’s Department of Public Health, referring to the hospitalization rate in the last month. Hear this and ot...

Under shelter-in-place orders, the Public Press staff has been producing the local current affairs program “Civic” from home, conducting interviews remotely and managing a radio station at a distance. The team has also turned its focus almost exclusively to covering the local effects of the coronavirus pandemic through in-depth interviews, complete press briefing coverage and San Francisco specifi...

A Mission District coronavirus testing initiative has shown stark disparities in who has been getting sick — 95% of those who tested positive in this initiative identified as Hispanic or Latinx. Among all those tested, less than 2% tested positive. Among people who worked in the testing area, that figure was 6.1%. Dr. Carina Marquez, assistant professor of medicine at UCSF and an infectious diseas...

In late April, a coalition of medical, community and government organizations called Unidos En Salud tested nearly 3,000 people in one Mission District census tract for the new coronavirus. Among those testing positive, 95% identified as Hispanic or Latinx, though they made up only 44% of those tested. Jon Jacobo with the Latino Task Force on Covid-19 and the UCSF Study Committee says the dispropo...

In response to an increase in tent encampments in the city’s Tenderloin neighborhood, city officials will target 13 blocks with outreach, services, cleaning and enforcement. People living in some encampments will be asked to relocate to permitted sites, and the city will open one such site with 50 spaces on Fulton Street between Larkin and Hyde streets. Hear this and other updates from the most re...

Last Friday, two homeless women, Couper Orona and Jess Gonzalez, briefly occupied a long-vacant home in the Castro before police removed them. They are part of Reclaim SF, an organization inspired by Moms4Housing, a group of mothers who took over a vacant house in Oakland last year to protest real estate speculation. Quiver Watts, an organizer with Reclaim SF and editor of the Street Sheet, outlin...