Community
A woman with dark shoulder length hair, and wearing a purple pullover and glasses, sits at a small table reviewing a small stack of documents.

Volunteers Race to Preserve Culturally Significant Records in Chinatown

01.12.2024
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A volunteer group led by community historian David Lei and University of California, Berkeley lecturer Anna Eng is working on a week-long project to scan boxes of documents — memos, letters, photos and other archived items.

The scanning project is a collaborative effort between historians striving to increase access to alternative historical sources and community organizations wanting the history to be restored and told.

Social Justice
A woman with a long black ponytail reaches up to straighten the frame of one of many black and white photographs displayed in a closely spaced array on a wall in an art gallery.

SF Reparations Plan Nears Submission, but Funding Not Yet Secure

05.26.2023
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After 2½ years of meetings, community discussions, historical deep dives and policy generation, a panel tasked with proposing how San Francisco might atone for decades of discrimination against Black residents is ready to ask the city to step up and support equity rhetoric with action.

San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee is aiming to submit its final recommendations to the city by June 30, according to Brittni Chicuata, director of economic rights at the city’s Human Rights Commission. In the meantime, the city’s annual budget process is in full swing, which may affect funding and the timeline for whatever reparations policies the board decides to pursue.

City Hall
In this split image, the left side shows a black and white photo of Victorian Era buildings with neon signs installed in the mid-20th century advertising a jazz club, restaurant and other businesses. On the right side is a color photo showing a modern beige bank building with a flat facade and a blue awning.

Housing Program to Redress Urban Renewal Could Get Boost From SF Reparations Plan

02.28.2023
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Urban renewal was a publicly and privately funded effort across the U.S. wherein local governments acquired land in areas deemed “blighted” — often using a racially biased lens — through eminent domain, forcibly displacing residents and demolishing existing buildings with promises to rebuild. In San Francisco, urban renewal targeted Black cultural centers and neighborhoods, uprooting thousands of families and destroying lively, well-established communities.

Now, San Francisco is giving renewed attention to a program that aims to bring displaced residents and their descendants back to the city as the Board of Supervisors prepares to review a draft Reparations Plan to address historic harms against Black San Franciscans at a meeting March 14.

Elections

Proposition F — Library Preservation Fund

10.13.2022
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Proposition F would extend the Library Preservation Fund for another 25 years, to June 2048. The fund currently draws 2.5 cents out of every $100 dollars from existing property taxes — a property tax set-aside — and would continue at this rate with the Proposition F extension. The fund is designated to provide library services and materials, and to operate library facilities.

Government & Politics
A Native American woman in a blue shirt and black jacket sits on a chair in a forested area near a house.

California Indian Tribes Denied Resources for Decades as Federal Acknowledgement Lags

08.11.2022
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In the last 13 years, the U.S. Department of Interior has actively reviewed applications for acknowledgement of only 18 tribes, even as hundreds remain in line. The Public Press has identified more than 400 tribes seeking federal recognition and is working to confirm that 200 others with publicly listed applications are genuine.

Many have been waiting for decades. The Death Valley TimbiSha Shoshone Band is the only California tribe that has been recognized in the 44 years since the federal acknowledgement process was established.

HIV & AIDS
Activists and healthcare providers gather on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall on March 21 during a die-in rally to demand renewed efforts in the public health fight against HIV.

While SF Fought COVID, HIV Prevention Stalled

06.01.2022
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Over the past several months, health care providers have been warning San Francisco officials that while the city was focused on fighting COVID-19, rates of HIV infection and related illnesses were creeping in the wrong direction.

From the very beginning, and throughout the HIV epidemic, which began in 1981, San Francisco led the way in prevention, care and treatment that came to be recognized around the world.

Community
Singer at benefit concert with Ukrainian flags.

Ukrainians in SF Are Anxious and Angry, and Refugees Need Homes

04.08.2022
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Members of the Ukrainian diaspora in San Francisco are angry, anxious and desperate to connect with loved ones in their ancestral homeland. Meanwhile, a local aid agency is asking for help as refugees begin arriving in the Bay Area. On a sunny weekend afternoon in mid-March, hundreds gathered at the bandshell in Golden Gate Park music concourse for a show called Slava Ukraini — or Glory to Ukraine. It was a fundraiser for the World Central Kitchen, which is helping to feed Ukrainian refugees.

Health
hands holding a vial of naloxone

Harm Reduction Critical to Addressing Overdose Crisis, Local Experts Say

04.07.2022
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The key to addressing San Francisco’s overdose crisis, say community activists and medical experts in the city, is harm reduction. That’s an approach that acknowledges not all drug users will achieve abstinence, and that focuses on keeping them safe and alive if they’re not ready or able to quit. Drug overdoses killed more people in San Francisco than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021.

Homelessness
A man in a plaid shirt holds a fire extinguisher.

Grassroots Nonprofits and Homeless Communities Create Their Own Fire Prevention Solutions

03.17.2022
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Encampment fires are a fact of life due to the exposed conditions homeless residents live in, but the 77th Avenue Rangers’ camp demonstrates that there’s hope for controlling these incidents without official intervention.

One key to their success has been fire preparedness, including measures like installing smoke alarms and keeping fire extinguishers on hand.