Civic

Public transportation has been transformed by the coronavirus pandemic. Light rail is shut down, and bus service is concentrated on core lines. While the indefinitely extended shelter-in-place order and restrictions that fluctuate with case rates have resulted in service changes, work on major improvement projects is ongoing. For the system as a whole, low ridership means low fare revenues and ser...

San Francisco’s office of the public defender has a unit dedicated to defending immigrants in court. In most states, they often have no representation because there is no right to counsel in immigration cases. Francisco Ugarte, managing attorney of this unit, talked with “Civic” about how handoffs between agencies work and what happens to someone who is arrested by immigration enforcement in San F...

Every odd-numbered San Francisco supervisorial district had an election in November. One race was extremely close and several were targeted by big independent expenditure money. But Joe Eskenazi, managing editor at Mission Local, reports that money was apparently ineffective, failing to propel candidates to victory and failing to dissuade voters from passing new tax measures.

Read Kristi's reporting here .

Read the full series "Driving Home: Surviving the Housing Crisis" here . 

Postal workers nationwide rallied on Tuesday to demand Congress approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the Postal Service to ensure its continued operation, and reverse workflow changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. In San Francisco, members of the American Postal Workers Union San Francisco Local #2 gathered in the rain in front of the Fox Plaza post office to distribute leaflets,...

BART ridership was about 13% of pre-pandemic levels in October, which meant a drop in revenue for the system. Despite taking a financial hit, BART immediately responded to the pandemic with new protocols. The system now boasts a filtration system that replaces the air in each car every 70 seconds. Workers are also making infrastructure improvements while ridership is down. Janice Li, who represent...

More than 61 percent of San Francisco voters approved Proposition B, a charter amendment to split the Department of Public Works in two and add oversight commissions to both departments as part of an effort to address city corruption and get cleaner streets. Matt Haney, District 6 supervisor and author of the measure, said the new department doesn’t need to be created until 2022, but city legislat...

Despite the pandemic shutting down most in-person gatherings and services, staff and volunteers with the veterans services group Swords to Plowshares are still on the ground. In the streets and in drop-in centers, they’ve continued to offer support with housing, employment, mental health and food for local vets. In addition to some 400 veterans it had already housed permanently, the organization h...

Researchers at the Urban Institute have been looking into how effective various responses to homelessness are. In a series of blog posts, they issue a warning against a punitive response to homelessness and recommend other ways to respond to homelessness, especially in the context of the coronavirus pandemic that threatens millions of people’s livelihoods and housing stability. Samantha Batko, a s...

In October, the US government began implementing an expansion of rapid deportations, in which undocumented immigrants may be removed from the country without a hearing before an immigration judge. While such deportations have been conducted for decades, the new policy expands who might be affected, including undocumented immigrants anywhere in the U.S. who cannot prove they have been in the countr...

San Francisco voters have approved a crucial bond measure and several tax measures by wide margins and voted in favor of propositions removing a mandatory minimum staffing level for the police department and adding oversight for the sheriff’s department. Votes remain to be tallied, however, and some contests are close, including a measure that would give 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote in m...

Find Chris Arvin's election maps at electionmapsf.com.

Activist groups have been hosting trainings and developing plans to mobilize residents, elected leaders and businesses to demand the results of the November 3 presidential election be recognized. Demonstrations calling for every vote nationwide to be counted are already planned for Nov. 4 in cities around the Bay Area, including San Francisco and Oakland. The activist network Bay Resistance has be...

San Francisco has faced many scandals in which public officials abused their power for personal, political or organizational gain. On the November, 2020 ballot, Proposition B has been proposed as a way to limit the scope of alleged corruption in the sprawling Department of Public Works, but what other measures could voters use in the future to keep elected and appointed officials accountable in Sa...

The San Francisco Mime Troupe has been performing socially conscious and often very funny productions in Bay Area parks since 1959 but the COVID-19 pandemic forced them to take their plays to the air with a series of ten radio plays. Now that the last episode of the season has aired we wanted to find out how the experiment in going from live to virtual has worked.

During the pandemic, nurses have been given a lot of praise for the vital, frontline work they do, but some nurses working for San Francisco’s Department of Public Health would like to be paid the overtime they have put in.

Proposition 14 asks California voters to approve a $5.5 billion bond to allow the institute to continue to provide grants for stem cell research. Jeff Sheehy has been the lonely voice on the board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where he stands in opposition to the state ballot measure that would fund the organization for years to come.

More information about ensuring voters in care facilities are able to participate in the election are available from Senior and Disability Action.  

Find our summary of Proposition G here and our full voter guide at sfpublicpress.org.

In September, President Trump issued an executive order characterizing trainings about racism, sexism and white privilege as anti-American propaganda. Federal employees and contractors are now prohibited from engaging in that kind of training. Lauren Aguilar, president and founder of the inclusion and diversity practice at the consulting group Forshay, described the language in the executive order...

To read and hear more about the measures and candidates on this November's ballot, find our voter guide here .

As dozens of candidates are running for seats on several local boards, we've reached out to them with a question and asked for 90-second audio responses. Hear statements from candidates for the Board of Education, City College Board of Trustees, BART Board, and Board of Supervisors.

Among more than a dozen measures that voters are deciding on this November, several are taxes, including business taxes, a parcel tax, and a sales tax. Many have components meant to reduce inequality or fund much-needed services. We talked with Donnie Charleston, director of public policy and advocacy for E Pluribus Unum, a nonprofit whose mission is to build a more just, equitable, and inclusive...