Sad Francisco

Tourmaline's work spotlighting the life of Marsha P. Johnson began with collecting a popular archive online, then a film, and now a biography that's out May 20. In the book, you learn about the notorious Black, trans heroine who moved to New York when she was thirteen, rioted at Stonewall, protected the dolls with Sylvia Rivera and their group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries/STAR, perfo...

Even if you don't use Spotify, the streaming platform's anti-labor orientation means it's affecting musicians and thus, the music you listen to, which Liz Pelly covers in depth in her new book, "Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist." Discussed this episode: Spotify's in-house "fake"/ghost artists, how it uses a "payola-like" system to charge artists to get discov...

CJ Trowbridge discusses his latest land project, the High Desert Institute, and a previous one that was featured on the 2023 reality show "The Garden: Commune or Cult?"--where the founding of an anticapitalist, consensus-based community was chronicled by corporate TV channel producers for a Discovery Channel audience. We also talk about the Cyberpony Express mesh network he's working on (basically...

AI is coming for our jobs, the environment, and is even starting to stand-in for human creativity. Derek Allen, Sam Kirchner and Varvara Pavlova are part of the newly formed direct action group Stop AI, which is particularly concerned about the existential threat of Artificial General Intelligence and the potential for robots to outsmart humans, which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says is coming this...

Erica Meiners and Priya Kandaswamy on how prison guard unions use the valor of labor movement to reinforce the prison industrial complex.  TW: Discussion of brutality, murder, sexual assault and suicide of prisoners at the hands of prison employees. "Prisons Are Anti-Labor Institutions. We Need an Anti-Carceral Labor Movement." (Truthout) https://truthout.org/articles/prisons-are-anti-labor-instit...

Malcolm Harris, on how pragmatism has been monopolized by centrists who fail to take climate change seriously—the same kind of centrists who'd trust tech industrialists to save the human race. We discuss why you need a pharmacist on your apocalypse team, and Malcolm's new book, 'What's Left', which understands how our survival depends on anti-capitalist collectivity, unlike Ezra Klein and Derek Th...

After last November's election, everyone from campaign consultants, to media critics, to Donald Trump himself credited alt-right media and the manosphere for making the US a more welcoming place for repressive, retrograde politics and values.  Ome (@sugarskullangelic on social media) is a sociologist and host of the podcast Liberación Army Radio, who speaks to why it's not just Andrew Tate and Joe...

A quick check-in where we look back at the longest three months in recent memory, with some notes on what's coming up.  Thanks to all our subscribers on Patreon; please join them at patreon.com/sadfrancisco

Live from the Mission! A conversation between Deeg, Deni, Jemma and Lavelle recorded March 13, 2025 at 518 Valencia Street, steps away from the Death Star known as Manny's. A night of "tales of queer insurrection" where the audience heard the short and sweet versions of the histories of three longstanding Bay Area queer movement groups: Gay Shame, LAGAI Queer Insurrection!, and Queers Undermining...

Mario Riveira and Abe Woodliff's first collaborative documentary, The City of Sensitive Frauds, premieres this week. Its topic: gentrifiers and how they homogenize cities. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eCUCI9CpM Abe on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/realbayareamemes/ Tiktok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@abeisabadwriter Twitter: https://x.com/HeLLaTaLL510 Mario on Instagram https://ww...

Stephanie Lumsden is a scholar in Feminist and Native American Studies, currently teaching at UC Davis. She tells the story of a gang of Hupa tribe resistance fighters in 1860s California that included Curly-Headed Tom, who wreaked havoc on the area's settlers. Elsewhere in the conversation: the 'bad' vs. 'good Indian' dichotomy, and the concept of 'revenge' as anti-colonial resistance. stephaniel...

Signal (the phone app) has become an obligatory download for every organizer on the Left in the US. But it was funded through one of the American government's propaganda agencies, and the atmosphere it creates is one of a neverending meeting permeated by paranoia. Epic conversation, care of Jemma DeCristo and Ralowe Ampu.  LAGAI—Queer Insurrection! [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/OTIxNTJmO...

Chris Lee studies the emergent Asian and Asian American rightwing in the US, including forces like the Falun Gong cult. We discuss the FLG and its flagship soft power campaigns that include the Shen Yun dance company and the Epoch Times newspaper—and how it's part of a larger effort to sow anti-communist, anti-trans sentiment in the US.    Support us and find links to our past episodes:  patreon.c...

Margaret Killjoy on coming out as an anarchist, why anarchist history is so hidden, and the importance of deescalating conflict that isn't with the enemy (and more). Margaret's Substack [https://substack.com/@margaretkilljoy] has her essay "The Sky is Falling; We've Got This" [https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/the-sky-is-falling-weve-got-this] Marget on BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/marga...

Two founders of the prison abolition movement—renowned thinkers and doers Craig and Ruth Wilson Gilmore—speak on the prison industrial complex's California roots. Also discussed: Why focusing on closing private prisons is too narrow a vision, and Gavin Newsom's campaign to put a kinder, gentler face on mass incarceration via the medicalization of imprisonment (eg. increasing conservatorship, force...

It started when San Jose State University's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office sponsored a visit from CSU's premier Zionist. Sang Hea Kil describes the repression she experienced as the only faculty member who joined an encampment of Muslim students in solidarity with Palestine last year at the school.  Later in the episode, G, a former worker at GLIDE Church (a San Francisco nonprofit where t...

A crowd of people set fire to a robotaxi last Lunar New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown. Jasmine explains how Asian American influencers and corporate media outlets used the "death" of a Waymo "self-driving" vehicle to stoke fear about anti-Asian violence. Fundraiser for Yazan in Gaza [https://chuffed.org/project/115145-yazan] Write to Casey Goonan [https://www.abcf.net/blog/update-on-casey-goon...

Churches, nonprofits and politicians have turned the anti-sex trafficking movement into a billion-dollar industry. The lives and stories of migrant sex workers get used as an excuse to hire more cops, and criminalize a form of labor that pays better than most. Chanelle and Elene, on their new book featuring the stories of migrant sex workers from across North America. Not Your Rescue Project (Haym...

"Abolish Rent" is a new organizing bible from Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal, laying out the reasons why capitalism will never provide everyone with the basic human need of shelter. They discuss tactics from successful rent strikes, how California's COVID-19 eviction moratorium was both a success and failure of tenant activism, and the attempt by landlords to rebrand as "housing providers."...

Hanin, Mai and Nadina met and became friends through the Palestine solidarity movement in Tokyo a little over a year ago.  We cover some of the recent successes of the movement, including Israeli defense company Elbit Systems losing contracts, and Israel being disinvited from the yearly event in Nagasaki that memorializes the day the US dropped an atomic bomb.  They speak to some of the particular...

Mama Ganuush and Toshio bring you AIPAC Zombies: people in American culture who have been possessed by the worst Zionist brainrot.   Our first episode: California politician Scott Wiener.   More: "Scott Wiener's Appalling Legacy as San Francisco Supervisor" (Patrick Range McDonald, Housing is a Human Right) [ https://www.housingisahumanright.org/scott-wiener-appalling-legacy-san-francisco-supervis...

Join Tofu and Toshio on an end of the year, stream-of-consciousness check-in.  New episode of Sad Francisco on January 3. AIPAC Zombies with Mama Ganuush premieres January 1. Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco  

A check-in with Mama Ganuush where we hear about their recent hunger strike, their visit with family who evacuated Gaza for Egypt, and discuss how US elections are bought and sold by AIPAC.   SF Drag Artist Leads Hunger Strike Against US Funding of Israel (Nastia Voynovskaya, KQED) https://www.kqed.org/arts/13967427/sf-drag-artist-leads-hunger-strike-against-us-funding-of-israel Mama Ganuush on In...

[This episode went up back in September, but it felt OK to put it back on the feed for anyone who might've missed it. New episodes soon.] As liberation movements face intense repression  from CEOs, cops, landlords, politicians, and Zionists, Dean Spade and friends put together a list of questions we can all ask ourselves, so we don't reproduce the logics of the state. Dean is author of the classic...

Lavender Phoenix https://lavenderphoenix.org/   SF People's Budget: https://www.instagram.com/sfpeoplesbudget/   #JusticeForAkaiGurley: AAPI response to people supporting Peter Liang, the NYPD officer who killed Akai Gurley.  https://caaav.org/justiceforakaigurley-national-sign-on-letter Support us and find links to our past episodes:  patreon.com/sadfrancisco *People's Budget Coalition listed for...