Sad Francisco

In the US, traditional media censorship of pro-Palestinian voices didn't start October 2023. A new report on Zionism's chilling effect on journalists is out this week, spotlighting how some reporters and editors self-censor, and corporate outlets keep Palestinian stories from being published. With Tiana Reid ( @tianareid | tianareid.com 
) of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Proje...

Dylan Rodriguez is back to talk about his new piece: "How the Stop Asian Hate Movement Became Entwined with Zionism, Policing, and Counterinsurgency." Launching off the murders of Asian sex workers in Atlanta in 2021, The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) raised over $1 billion in six months. How was the rage over those deaths transformed into liberal, reformist solutions to violence, plus a TAAF b...

Erin McElroy is back to talk about fresh release "Silicon Valley Imperialism." Starting in the 2010s, the post-socialist Romanian government created special visas to attract tech corporations and digital nomads. They hoped to create a mini-San Francisco; the book looks at how that materialized. Silicon Valley Imperialism (Duke) Anti-Eviction Lab Previous Erin episode: Landlord Tech Watch Silicon H...

Nonprofits could never: Three members of the autonomous West Side Tenants Association/WSTA discuss the evergreen problem of charity; what movements gain by putting collectivism before individualism; how knowing your neighbors is the most effective and meaningful survival tactic; and the inspiration we all get from past solidarity work in the Bay, like the thousands of people who came together arou...

Politics have turned COVID into a dirty word, but Jillian Crochet , a Senior and Disability Action member, is working to get the San Francisco Department of Public Health to keep masking requirements in medical facilities and jails beyond April 30, when they're set to expire. Letter to SFDPH to keep masks in healthcare April 16 Action (IndyBay) Senior and Disability Action  ( Instagram  | Twitter...

Well-known drag artists have been using their platforms to combat the genocide in Gaza since last October. In part two, Lady Bunny takes on virtue signaling politicians, and describes her suspicions around the viral photo with her name written on an IDF missile . Check part one for Nicki Jizz, host of locally beloved drag night Reparations, who explains how politics and drag mix. And our recent ep...

Well-known drag artists have been using their platforms to combat the genocide in Gaza since last October. In this first part, Nicki Jizz, host of locally beloved drag night Reparations, explains how politics and drag mix. Check part two for Lady Bunny, who talks about virtue signaling politicians, and describes her suspicions around the viral photo with her name written on an IDF missile . And ou...

Instead of demanding free housing or health care, some people think the answer to homelessness is to build "mental health" jails and forced "rehab" centers to stow unhoused people, indefinitely. With Clio/Thatcher Sady and Tory Becker, from Gay Shame. "Cities Across the US Are Stripping Homeless People of Their Autonomy," by Tory and Toshio, for Truthout In other news: April 5 at Bluestockings in...

On February 15, eight artists altered their works at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in solidarity with Palestine. Ralowe Ampu is on to talk about the YBCA's neoliberal nothingspeak response to the artists' - and now many staffmembers' - demands of a museum that claims to be centered on diversity and community. **The museum remains closed as of March 7. Love Letter to Gaza, Open Letter...

Pierre Labossiere and Charlie Hinton (Haiti Action Committee) speak on common threads between Haiti and Palestine, and how US-enabled death squads are creating chaos in the first country to come out of a successful slave uprising. Haiti Action Committee HAC: Haiti Ten Years After the Earthquake HAC: 'From Haiti to Palestine: One Struggle/One Fight' on Antoine and Georges Izméry, Palestinian-Haitia...

GrowSF, TogetherSF and other benign-sounding local political organizations are more rightwing innovations from rich tech barons like David Sacks and Michael Moritz. Julie Pitta, a journalist previously at the LA Times, Forbes, and the SF Richmond Review, talks about the newly launched Phoenix Project, which looks at how dark money flows in California politics. (FYI: The conversation with Julie was...

Chris Vargas, on the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (MOTHA), a project with no real estate that is "forever under construction," and its Bay Area connections. MOTHA Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects Our episode with Susan Stryker (director of Screaming Queens ), on the Tenderloin's Compton's Cafeteria   Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas . Support the show an...

In 2021, Lakeside Investment Company bought the Redstone Labor Temple in the Mission. Poor Magazine's tiny gray-garcia (aka povertyskola), and Rick Gerharter, a movement photographer who's had an office in the Redstone for decades, talk about the significance of the building, as the new landlord drops a gentrification bomb in the form of massive rent increases. Poor Magazine Rick Gerharter Sad Fra...

Soleil Ho is an opinion editor at the San Francisco Chronicle  who recently covered the Berkeley-based writer and wannabe California governor Michael Shellenberger. In Shellenberger's last book,  San Fransicko , he says rising homelessness rates in West Coast cities comes from us "loving victims" too much. Shellenberger's latest escapade: positioning himself as an expert on trans people. Soleil br...

Mama Ganuush is an African Palestinian American drag artist living in San Francisco. Right now, they're combining direct action, performances, and Bay solidarity to combat Israel's campaign of cultural erasure and colonization - a campaign led locally by gay Israel subs Matt Dorsey, Rafael Mandelman, and Scott Wiener. Mama Ganuush on Instagram Heritage Anti-Racist Liberation Artists (HALA) - their...

BAGL (Bay Area Gay Liberation) was a major force in 1970s San Francisco labor activism on many fronts, supporting farm workers and gay teachers, and thwarting the Coors beer dynasty's polygraph tests to weed out gays. The group gave BAGL member Charlie Hinton purpose; he describes its ascent and eventual dissolution that resulted over plans to host a gay air force officer.  Read more about queer h...

Offensively bland art results from the tyrrany of homeowners with too much time on their hands. Two recent cases where Nextdoor.com creeps and gentrifiers at community benefits district meetings made decisions that censored murals and the like, discussed with Christen Cioffi . Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon .

Politicians always warn that there's never enough funding to pay for the basic things people need to live. Reporting from Northwest Arkansas, Gracie Fuhrman ( Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition ) and (Sad Francisco's editor) Caitlin Wood describe how politicians wasted federal COVID relief on cops and jails.

Sad Francisco is one year old. Listed in no particular order, our five most downloaded episodes: Queers for a free Palestine, with Kate Raphael   Should social movement work be paid? with Dean Spade  Is the transgender district a force for gentrification or liberation? with Jemma DeCristo  APEC: SF bends over for Asian dictators and Biden, with CCSF Anakbayan Urban Alchemy: a new layer of police i...

Gavin Newsom is soft-launching his presidential campaign with his "California model" of prisons as a centerpiece. Emile Suotonye DeWeaver on how Newsom's attempt to mimic the "Norway model" of imprisonment will affect the biggest single prison system in the world. Re:Frame | Emile Suotonye DeWeaver Gavin Newsom's Prison Reform Isn't Progress - It's a 'Near Enemy' (The Appeal) Californians United f...

Gaslighting and double-standards are all over the media and at schools, where Zionists often get put on pedestals, while pro-Palestinian voices get silenced. A discussion of how censorship works on and off college campuses, featuring: Dylan Rodriguez, co-founder of  Critical Resistance and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association , and professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside Loubna...

Ahead of 'Giving Tuesday,' it's our episode from the archives featuring Dean Spade, on the nonprofit industrial complex. Next week: a brand-new episode with Dylan Rodriguez and Loubna Qutami, on the Zionist censorship campaign. Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon .

Jan Tokumaru and Kimi Maru (Nikkei Progressives) describe mutual aid projects that connect Japanese American internment camps to today's ICE detention centers. Nikkei Progressives   Nikkei Resisters   Shut Down Adelanto   Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon .  

Kate Raphael co-founded Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) in the Bay back in 2001. She talks about getting arrested in Israel for taping IDF harassment of Palestinians, why Palestinian liberation is a queer issue, and how Israel hired an SF-based PR firm to pinkwash Israel's genocide. Also check the archives for the recent episode with another QUIT! Member, Deeg, who speaks on the anti-...

Biden, Bongbong Marcos and dozens of billionaires will be shaking hands and making deals at the APEC conference downtown in November. Malaya and Mara (Anakbayan CCSF) explain how a locked-down meeting of free trade-loving elites from Asia and North America will hurt the working class, and why protesters might want to ruin their party. no2apec Anakbayan CCSF Support Sad Francisco and find links to...