KQED's Forum

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday that the Biden Administration will seek to reunite hundreds of migrant children with their families -- either in the United States or in their country of origin -- who were separated under Trump-era zero tolerance policies. The pledge comes as officials undertake a massive overhaul of the nation’s border policies, including the elimination...

Writer and cultural critic Rebecca Carroll grew up in an idyllic New England town where no one wanted to talk about race or even see it. She's Black. Her parents were white. Adopted as a baby, Carroll never met another Black person in real life until she was 6. Her new memoir, “Surviving the White Gaze”, recounts episodes from her childhood and adolescence in which the people who love her most fai...

The New York Times Opinion’s weekly podcast “The Argument” -- a place for “Strongly-held opinions. Open-minded debates. Only occasional yelling” -- has a new host in politics journalist Jane Coaston. Coaston, who previously reported for Vox and has covered conservatism and the American right for years, writes “things on the program might get awkward, and that’s the whole point.” For her debut epis...

Many found having a pet to be a lifesaver during the pandemic. As pet adoptions skyrocketed, dogs, cats and other pets became hard to find. One animal adoption agency recorded a 900% increase in requests to foster a dog in the early days of the pandemic. And on the other end of the spectrum, the American Humane Society estimates that up to 10 million pets may be surrendered because of the economic...

During a time of stress and great suffering -- such as a global pandemic -- experiencing joy may seem impossible, and even naive or callous. Experts argue, however, that joy is essential even during hard times, even when it feels like the world is on fire or in the face of longstanding problems such as systemic racism. For many people, the pandemic has redefined joy and how they experience it such...

It's been almost a year since Mayor London Breed has been on Forum. But what a year it's been. She and San Francisco's public health leadership were credited with implementing a shutdown that slowed the progress of the pandemic here. But eventually the virus caught up with us, and measures to control it have decimated small businesses especially downtown, the tourism and restaurant industries, and...

Reports continue to surface this week of vaccine line-jumpers -- people who, knowingly or not, take advantage of loopholes that enable them to get a coveted COVID shot ahead of those who need one more urgently. In the Bay Area and in Los Angeles, vaccine access codes meant for vulnerable communities of color circulated by text message to some ineligible Californians, who used them at mass vaccinat...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet, writer, publisher and founder of City Lights Books, died on Monday at the age of 101. "I really believe that art is capable of the total transformation of the world, and of life itself,” Ferlinghetti once said, and his multifaceted career bore that out. As a poet, Ferlinghetti offered what one critic called, a “plain-spoken, often wry critique of American culture.” A...

With the installation of a new police chief: Leronne Armstrong, the city of Oakland is hoping to end the musical chairs game at the top of the police department. Armstrong is an insider, a 22-year veteran of the department, born and bred in West Oakland, and a proud alumnus of McClymonds High School. The city is facing a spike in homicide rates, a rash of crime against seniors and businesses in Ch...

Youth who age out of the foster care system often lose access to housing and services and are at increased risk of homelessness, food insecurity and incarceration. The pandemic has caused even greater instability, with 55% of transitioning foster youth citing food insecurity as a result of COVID-19 in a national study. A new bill in the California legislature aims to establish a safety net to yout...

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo spoke earlier this week at a state senate hearing in support of reforming the California Environmental Quality Act. He says changing these regulations will lead to more affordable housing, transit and  jobs. We'll talk with Liccardo about CEQA reforms, San Jose's housing goals, the urgency of reopening schools, and removing regulatory barriers in order to create jobs. A...

On Tuesday, Senate confirmation hearings for the Health and Human Services Secretary nominee, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, begin in Washington. Accused of being "famously partisan" by Mitch McConnell, Becerra faces intense Republican opposition for his stances on abortion and Medicare for All. Democrats remain largely in favor of his appointment, citing his long legislative tenure a...

For the last two years, David Anderson has served as the top federal prosecutor in the Bay Area. During his tenure, he’s seen a side of the Bay Area that few people see. He’s led major criminal investigations into drug trafficking, pandemic-related fraud, and a wide-ranging corruption scandal involving San Francisco’s Department of Public Works. Anderson announced his resignation last month. We’ll...

Facebook cannot keep itself out of the headlines. On Monday, the social media company reached a deal to restore the news content it had banned from its Australian domain last week. This removal was in response to a proposed Australian law which would require social media sites and search engines to pay publishers for their content. And back in the U.S., in an ongoing 2018 class action lawsuit that...

 The California Department of Public Health on Friday released updated guidelines for organized youth and adult sports. Outdoor high and moderate contact sports such as football and water polo may resume in counties with low coronavirus infection rates, which includes the entire Bay Area. In this hour, Scott Shafer talks to Dr. Nirav Pandya and Joe Bates about the updated guidelines and what safet...

Over six years after a state audit found that college campuses in California lacked transparency in how they handled cases of sexual assault, big gaps in services and support persist. The audit largely targeted San Diego State University, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Chico State University and recommended yearly training of university employees. Rachael Myrow talks to KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez ab...

Singing can lift our spirits, and according to medical experts, because of the way COVID is spread, singing can also kill you. Its a dire, and unexpected, dichotomy and one that singers have grappled with during the pandemic. Rachael Myrow talks to KQED's Chloe Veltman and some Bay Area singers who are finding safe ways to bring live singing to audiences, big and small. Learn more about your ad ch...

More than 30 California legislators sent a letter to Governor Gavin Newsom this week, urging him to allow museums to reopen indoors in the state. Nationwide more than 70% of museums are open in some capacity, according to the American Alliance of Museums, but, except for a short period starting in October, museums in California have remained closed throughout the pandemic. We'el talk with a panel...

Atmospheric warming, catastrophic sea level rise and mass extinction are just some of the monumental harms humans have inflicted on the planet. Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Elizabeth Kolbert points out that while it might be prudent to scale back our polluting activities, we've become so numerous, and the damage so extensive, that we may need to do more. In her new book, “Under a White Sk...

Many see Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna as a rising star in the Democratic party. He co-chaired Bernie Sanders’ national campaign, and is a big advocate for progressive causes like raising the minimum wage and Medicare for All. Congressman Khanna joins KQED's Scott Schafer to discuss the recent turmoil in Washington, including the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, and what’s ahead for 2021....

Amidst mounting pressure from parents, health experts and politicians in the Bay Area to reopen schools for in-person learning, the Berkeley Unified School District this week announced a plan to vaccinate all teachers and start getting most students back into class in mid April. On Wednesday, San Francisco's superintendent of schools said the district is gearing up to reopen but didn't offer speci...

In the 1950s and 60s, when some towns faced integrating their “whites only” public pools, they drained the pools instead so nobody could use them. Economic and social policy expert Heather McGhee says this zero-sum thinking has impacted the U.S. economy and the public for the worse--and racism is at the root of it. For her new book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Us and How We Can Prosper Toget...

California agencies serving the homeless do not keep track of where billions of dollars are going, fail to follow federal guidelines and are so fragmented that they lose opportunities to people into stable housing. That’s according to a report by the state auditor’s office earlier this month on how state and regional housing agencies are handling the homelessness crisis. We’ll hear about the repor...

Katherine Seligman's debut novel, "At the Edge of the Haight" tells the story of Maddy, a young homeless woman living in San Francisco who is caught up in a murder mystery. As a journalist and a long-time resident of Haight-Ashbury, Seligman has witnessed the dehumanizing effects of homelessness up close. Her book, which is the winner of the PEN/Bellwether prize, has been praised as a work that "m...

Latinos in California have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic with a disproportionately high number of infections and deaths -- a situation that state officials have been well aware of since last year. As the state rolls out the COVID-19 vaccine, Latino advocates, leaders and healthcare providers say officials have not made Latinos -- the state’s largest demographic group -- enough of a pri...