Sad Francisco

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...

A GAY SHAME podcast. Emmanuel Yekutiel is a marketing associate for conservative causes and Israel who in 2018, opened a gentrification cafe in the Mission that he named after himself. Since then, Manny's has been a safe space for neoliberal figures to gather, including Dr. Jill Biden, Matt Yglesias, Nancy Pelosi, Sam Bankman-Fried, SFPD chief Bill Scott, and the trio of local politicians Manny du...

Kansas City, Olympia, and parts of Boston and DC now have fare-free public transportation. Yet BART and MUNI fares keep going up. Aditya, of the copwatching project Unfare SF, on moving the Bay toward no-ticket public transit. Unfare SF on Mastodon Unfare SF on Twitter Bikehopper Segregation by Design The Bay Area's Lost Streetcars (Chris Arvin) Shaping SF: The Freeway Revolt (Chris Carlsson) Supp...

In 2017, City College of SF became one of only a few colleges in the US with free tuition for locals. One of the organizers behind Free City was James Tracy, an author, organizer and teacher at City College in the Department of Labor and Community Studies. He describes the organizing strategy behind a successful campaign where the Left went on the offensive. 'Free City' by Marcy Rein, Mickey Ellin...

The self-appointed voice of techbros and "effective accelerationism," Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan is a prime example of a common archetype in Bay Area tech - a libertarian who wants socialism, but only for corporations. Emily Mills (@sf_mills on Twitter/X) does the undervalued job of keeping track of some of the richest people in the Bay, and which politicians and campaigns they're spending their m...

Nestor Castillo lays out the recent racist media tropes around Honduras, and why they're especially dangerous for immigrants. Nestor's El Tecolote column, "Dear SF Chronicle: No, Hondurans aren't responsible for the City's fentanyl crisis": eltecolote.org/content/en/dear-sf-chronicle-no-hondurans-arent-responsible-for-the-citys-fentanyl-crisis/ Nestor on Twitter: twitter.com/ProfeNessC "The Contra...

Silicon Valley scions tried to sell Appalachia on how crypto would bring every out-of-work coal miner a job. Locals got nothing, but the scheme worked for a few tech entrepreneurs, who were showered with government subsidies and tax breaks. With Tom Sexton of the Trillbilly Workers' Party. Trillbilly Workers' Party: soundcloud.com/user-972848621-463073718/tracks

City College of San Francisco is one of the only remaining public colleges in the US where the tuition is free for locals. CCSF professor and AFT 2121 member Adele Failes-Carpenter talks about why City College presents a threat to the forces that want to completely privatize higher education, and ongoing battles over one of the remaining free spaces where people can still come together, in-person,...

The War on Drugs doesn't save lives, but it brings in huge profits for anyone who works for the police, in all of policing's forms.   While rich people can microdose LSD at the office or Burning Man without any worries of getting arrested, the War on Drugs is fought against poor, often nonwhite queer and trans people, in what local media loves to call 'open-air drug markets'. Sara Shortt ( @Shortt...

"This land is too valuable to let poor people park on it," said SF Redevelopment Agency head Justin Herman, about Asian and Black people living in Central San Francisco. Today many politicians are acting like it's the 1950s all over again. Niccolo Calderaro, professor of anthropology at SF State, speaks on resistance then and now. Niccolo Calderaro's article in Progressive City: "Community Mobiliz...

The local politics around kink culture, and how the same bureaucracy put in place to preserve it is helping to undermine that culture. With Cole Clark. Previous episode mentioned: "Is the Transgender District a force for gentrification or liberation?" w/ Jemma DeCristo: sites.libsyn.com/445824/is-the-transgender-district-a-force-for-gentrification-or-liberation-w-jemma-decristo "How Gentrification...