UPDATE 6/25/21 1:40 p.m.: Derek Chauvin was sentenced today in Minneapolis to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd.

The tiers in San Quentin State Prison were filled with the sounds of bars rattling, joyful shouts and whistles when Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd last month, but in the weeks following the verdict, the excitement has given way to skepticism.

As eyes across the nation turn to Chauvin’s scheduled sentencing June 25, many of us serving time have little faith that his verdict will be upheld by higher courts. Even if he is sentenced to prison, we fear his incarceration could both quell the recent uprising and have little impact on the nation’s larger systemic problem of police brutality.

“America always takes revenge for acts and ignores the cause,” said Arthur Jackson, a resident at San Quentin. “That which gave rise to Derek Chauvin still lies beneath the surface, festering, affecting our society every day.”

If the structural issues underlying police violence aren’t addressed, those of us who expect to exit prison one day see a future that looks a lot like the past.

“What I fear most upon my release from prison is that I’ll be pulled over by police and murdered,” said Roosevelt Johnson, a San Quentin resident recently found suitable for parole. Johnson, who is African American, said his status as a parolee will put him at an even greater risk of being killed because he will be treated with suspicion. And he believes people in society may not be as outraged by a Black parolee’s death.

The problem isn’t just that some cops are racist. Many are afraid of Black people and approach us using a whole different standard of policing. A University of Texas at Austin professor who conducts de-escalation training for police described this year how senior officers often undermined his work by advising rookies that it was safer to get aggressive early. His conclusion: Police training should be changed to focus on “the reprogramming of the automatic fear response that some police officers may have toward Black men.”

I was pulled over by police in the 1990s. It was on a dark and isolated street. Two white officers pulled me out of my car, pushed me aggressively up against it and held me there.

“Is this your car?” one of them asked. Was I in a gang? Did I live in the area? As he fired the questions at me rapidly, he twisted my right hand painfully behind my back.

I knew they were trying to provoke me into a struggle. They wanted me to give them a reason to unleash their violence. But I didn’t want to die that day, so I accepted the pain of having my hand almost broken.

That’s a common experience for many people of color. The police killed 2.8 people a day between 2012 and 2018, and Black and Latino men are at higher risk for death than white men, according to an American Journal of Public Health study.

Many incarcerated people believe keeping the public safe from police requires more transparency inside prison as well as in society.

Earlier this year, men incarcerated at a Soledad, Calif. prison sued the state for a 3 a.m. raid on July 20, 2020 that allegedly targeted Black people, forcing them to cram into a chow hall maskless at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there was little news coverage of the raid or the lawsuit.

Incidents like that lead us to believe that every law enforcement officer needs to wear a body camera, even those in prisons. Police also need more training in how to de-escalate situations — and departmental support for such efforts. We need independent civilian oversight committees disconnected from police departments and correctional facilities as well.

“As long as the blue wall or green wall gets to investigate their own complaints, there won’t be any accountability,” said Jackson, referring to the codes of silence among the police and prison guards.

The George Floyd incident demonstrated the power of video footage, but most situations like that go unfilmed and unreported every day.

In San Quentin, there is still hope that Chauvin’s guilty verdict will result in a police officer finally facing the consequences of his crime, but the thought of his imprisonment brings mixed emotions. Some of us would be outraged if he didn’t serve time. However, given our personal experiences with the horrors of incarceration, wishing prison on anyone is a hard thing.

I’m in the camp that doesn’t want to see others locked up. I like seeing people go home and hope to go home one day myself. But you learn a lot in prison. We get an opportunity to examine ourselves and see who we truly are as people — and that can often lead us to change.

If Chauvin goes to prison, I hope he uses the time to understand the trauma of the people in the communities he used to police. Once he gets a taste of the dehumanizing experience of prison life, he may perceive the world much differently. Whether or not he is ultimately incarcerated, he also needs to apologize to Floyd’s family and accept responsibility for what he has done.

Chauvin could still save his legacy if he developed some empathy and joined the movement against bad policing in America. He could, for example, show some support for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which seeks to establish a framework to prevent racial profiling by law enforcement.

That could go a long way in not only rebuilding Chauvin’s character but getting to the root of the problem of bad policing in America.

The post Inmates Fear Chauvin Conviction Could Mark an End to Outrage Over Police Brutality appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

At the San Francisco Public Press, we had started transitioning to remote work two weeks prior, taking cues from tech companies that made early calls for employees to stay home.

We ran our first articles about the pandemic on March 11. Brian Howey had been reporting for weeks about the city confiscating homeless people’s belongings. As the novel coronavirus began to dominate national headlines, his reporting took a dramatic turn: “During Coronavirus Outbreak S.F. Will Continue to Seize Homeless People’s Property.”

By the time the mayor issued an emergency order calling for San Franciscans to begin sheltering in place on March 17, our news team had adapted to windowpane Zoom meetings. We congratulated ourselves for being so nimble. We had no idea then how challenging the coming year would be for us professionally and personally, and for the whole world.

Adrenaline drove us to publish at a pace we had not previously attempted; the Public Press was mostly known for long-form investigative projects. Our audio team, six months into producing the “Civic” podcast and broadcasting on KSFP, repurposed studio equipment to record interviews from kitchens and bedrooms using makeshift baffles for better acoustics.

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Health care: While the federal government downplayed the crisis, Dr. Monica Bhargava, a pulmonary and critical care physician treating COVID-19 patients in Oakland, presciently told “Civic” that “this virus could have a significant presence in our health care system for anywhere from six months to a year.” Nurses sounded the alarm about workplace guidelines, saying they did not have the personal protective equipment they needed to do their jobs safely.

Education: Students in dorms at San Francisco State University said they were confused by conflicting messages: Should they shelter in place or go home to their families? The San Francisco Unified School District administrators closed schools for three weeks, not knowing classrooms would not open again for more than a year.

Homelessness: Guidance for people living on the street was contradictory and confusing. San Francisco officials advised homeless people to sleep one to a tent. Emergency handwashing stations were installed, with many soon found to be broken or missing. Some without housing sheltered in cars. The city began securing hotel rooms for some people sleeping in shelters or outside. Over the next year, officials debated whether to expand or wind down the hotel program, with some suggesting federal funding could be used to address challenges that predated the pandemic. As of mid-February, nearly 10% of the city’s permanent supportive housing units meant for homeless people sat vacant.

Mutual aid: With so much uncertainty, limited mobility and voracious appetite for news, readers and listeners returned to our reporting day after day, and our website traffic tripled. Many readers were drawn to stories about regular people taking action — building hand sanitizer mini-factories and mobilizing mutual aid societies to help their neighbors. Some delighted in reports that animal shelters had emptied as the newly homebound clamored to adopt dogs.

Racism: But too often, grim news eclipsed bright spots. Racism against Asian Americans emerged early in the pandemic with misplaced blame for the virus, which was first detected in Wuhan, China, but already spreading fast in Europe and the U.S. Community leaders worried the Trump administration was stoking xenophobia, and that attacks would get worse. Advocates reported that those attacks on Asian Americans have continued apace, totaling about 3,800 since the pandemic began.

Activism: In May, people flooded streets in cities nationwide to decry police brutality and demand policy change following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The movement gained momentum. Youth organizers led a protest that drew 10,000 people to San Francisco’s Mission District. Members of the Black Panther Party reflected on the echoes of their effort decades ago in the initiatives of Black Lives Matter.

Continuing storylines: As journalists in a small newsroom, our greatest contributions come from following a few topics intensely. We double down on local elections with our nonpartisan voter guide. We report on the vulnerability of homeless people living in tents, the looming threat of evictions, the military’s toxic environmental legacy and efforts to reduce the use of harmful chemicals in public spaces. Our “Civic” team plumbs history for context — asking what we can learn from the AIDS epidemic both in terms of studying viruses and social activism. And they continue to build on series about essential workers, vaccine distribution and reopening schools. Someday we will refer to the pandemic in past tense and shift our reporting to other matters. Many storylines that emerged long before COVID-19 will surely outlast it, similar to multi-year FBI corruption investigations like the one currently unfolding in San Francisco.

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The pandemic is far from over. Most of us are still waiting for vaccines. But the Public Press will keep following important local stories as we roll past this anniversary.

The post How This Pandemic Year Has Changed Us appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

AIDS2020: Virtual, the biennial conference of the International AIDS Society, held in early July, marked a turning point for long-term HIV/AIDS survivors — and not a good one.  

Five of us in San Francisco — Paul Aguilar, Harry Breaux, Vince Crisostomo, Michael Rouppet and I — who have been on the front lines of the fight for our LGBTQ and HIV communities from the very beginning, left the event feeling sidelined and fed up. So, we met to discuss the myriad issues confronted by us long-term survivors.

Over the course of our talks, the need to take concrete action to address the concerns of this group of people, the first to face the ravages of aging with HIV, became clear.

Inspired by the Denver Principles promulgated in 1983, through which people living with HIV demanded self-empowerment and self-determination in all aspects of HIV/AIDS research and treatment (“Nothing about us without us”), the five of us composed the San Francisco Principles 2020. This statement outlines the challenges long-term survivors face and our demands for inclusion, resources and treatment that addresses our specific needs.

We define long-term survivors as men and women who were diagnosed between 1981 and 1996, before the advent of antiretroviral cocktails. We bore the brunt of the AIDS pandemic from the very first. That included multiple traumas, such as:

• suffering the first diagnoses and the unrelenting fear of catching or unknowingly spreading the disease;
• burying our friends, lovers and family members after watching them slowly, hopelessly disintegrate;
• being ignored by public health officials, laughed at by politicians, condemned by religious leaders and ostracized by stigma, even in our own communities;
• putting our bodies on the line as unpaid guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies and submitting to the first toxic medicine trials and AIDS research programs.

We still live with a form of PTSD (“AIDS Survivor Syndrome”) from all the losses and chaos of the horrendous early days of this pandemic. And we are the ones who set the global standard for compassionate caring for the HIV community. We hope to do the same for the long-term survivor community.

Although people over 50 make up more than half the 36.2 million adults living with HIV worldwide, we are routinely excluded from (or at best, given token representation at) national and international AIDS conferences, and we are nowhere to be found in state, national and international AIDS policies.

While some AIDS service providers, including the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Shanti, offer programs and services tailored to meet the physical and mental health needs of long-term survivors, those services and programs are scarce and reach only a tiny fraction of long-term survivors. Survivors in rural areas, racial and ethnic minorities, and transgender women and men are especially hard-hit by this lack of services. From the beginning of the pandemic, we have suffered racism, homophobia and transphobia.

Now we are in our 50s, 60s and beyond, living lives we never expected to have. But these lives are riddled with isolation and loneliness, the expense of medications and health care visits, declining physical health, untreated substance use and mental health problems, poverty and unstable housing.

As we age with HIV, we face debilitating physical and mental health effects of aging at an accelerated rate compared to HIV-negative people. We live with an infuriating sense of having been forgotten, shoved to the side by AIDS researchers and service providers, unknown to geriatricians and other health care providers.

The vast majority of AIDS funding is consumed by prevention resources and programs. While we heartily support efforts to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we insist that prevention not drain resources for caring for those of us who have lived with HIV for 25, 30, 35 or more years.

We are the AIDS Generation. Nearly everything the world knows about HIV/AIDS has been learned on the backs of us long-term survivors.

And we are determined to be ignored no longer.

With that in mind, we offer the San Francisco Principles 2020 as a starting point. We hope our statement can spark a national and international conversation that effects real, concrete, positive changes in the lives of long-term HIV/AIDS survivors.

Although the Principles have been available online for less than a week, we have already garnered many dozens of supportive signatures from other long-term HIV/AIDS survivors, allies, researchers, service organizations and health care providers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Soon we will send the Principles to AIDS service organizations, government agencies involved with HIV, elected representatives, and national and international AIDS organizations, demanding implementation of and funding for these principles.

Our movement is young, and our determination is rock-solid.

This Friday, Sept. 18, at noon, we composers of the San Francisco Principles 2020 will be joined in the plaza opposite City Hall by other long-term survivors, health care professionals and members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at a press conference officially launching the Principles.

SAN FRANCISCO PRINCIPLES 2020

• There are severe shortages of HIV/AIDS specialists and geriatricians in the US. Given the escalating costs of medical education, the lack of government subsidization for medical education, the lack of respect for and prestige often associated with these specialties by the American healthcare system, and the time and physical demands required by the practice of these specialties, the majority of medical students have gravitated away from these specialties. Therefore, all medical professionals serving long-term survivors and/or older adults living with HIV must be trained in the proper care and to ensure state-of-the-art geriatric healthcare specific to their needs. Providers, especially non-HIV-expert ones, must be made cognizant of the physical, mental, and psychosocial indignities faced by aging long-term survivors.

• Mental health services for older people living with HIV must be provided on demand, at a reasonable cost and free and without judgment and stigma.

• Mental health professionals serving older people living with HIV MUST be trained to address issues of the psychosocial damage suffered by long-term survivors, primarily but not limited to isolation and loneliness, depression, and alcohol and substance use, including psychological services and harm reduction services.

• Long-term HIV/AIDS survivors MUST be included in the planning and implementation of any programs and services offered to them. Again, Nothing About Us Without Us.

• Long-term HIV/AIDS survivors MUST be given a prominent seat at the table in planning all national and international AIDS conferences to ensure that we are not the “forgotten majority.”

• Resources must be allocated to programs and services grounded in the information and data gathered in HIV and aging studies.

• We must align the fight for long-term HIV/AIDS survivors with other social and healthcare justice movements, such as Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights movement, the women’s movement, the Native Americans’ movement, and all other movements and organizations working to end racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, and transphobia around the world.

The post Long-Term AIDS Survivors Launch Advocacy Movement appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Nonetheless, the infection is here in San Quentin and people are dying. I hear the words ‘man down’ every 20 to 30 minutes. As a 48-year-old, high-risk African-American man with asthma, watching men around me fall ill is scary. You feel helpless and all you can do is pray as illnesses and death overload your senses.

It didn’t have to be this way. We had zero infections inside San Quentin since the lockdown was implemented. We thought we’d be going back to school soon, attending college classes, self-help and enjoying contact visits with family. But, on May 30, buses pulled up from a Chino prison where COVID-19 had run rampant. One hundred and twenty-one men exited those buses, some showing symptoms of COVID-19, according to medical personnel working in the prisons receiving area.

Within weeks, the rate of infections inside exploded. Troy Dunmore, who has been incarcerated 25 years, came down with COVID-19 in late June.

“I was so hurt and sore I could barely get out of bed,” said Dunmore. “One night I urinated on myself. After a couple weeks I tried to work out and lost consciousness.”

To date more than 2,460 incarcerated men and over 260 prison staffers have contracted the virus. A correctional officer is dead. Twenty-six incarcerated people are dead. One man, who was released early due to the outbreak, died while quarantined at a motel in Novato. Some incarcerated people are on ventilators or gravely ill. These are not just mild cases.

Since the outbreak, emergency vehicles have repeatedly entered the gates of San Quentin and rushed people to Bay Area hospitals. This is currently the deadliest prison outbreak in the nation and many of us fear what will happen if a second wave hits.

Troubling response

What’s alarming is we barely knew what was happening before we experienced this sudden spike in cases. Without warning, the infection spread like wildfire and San Quentin began quarantining infected people inside punishment units, chapels, tents and the Prison Industry Authorities warehouse, where workers normally assemble desks and chairs. They also built a 160-bed makeshift tent with double- glass doors on the prison’s baseball field to house some people indefinitely.

“We need your assistance to control the spread of the virus. We need you to accept testing to identify new cases,” San Quentin’s Health Care Team eventually wrote in a memo.

While these measures are meant to save lives, for many of us inside, the testing and quarantine process has been traumatizing. Arthur Jackson was exposed to COVID-19 in June. He was quarantined in Carson Section, a punishment unit where he felt like he was being treated like he did something wrong.

“We can’t buy soap powder or dish soap or pouch foods or spend over $50,” Jackson wrote to me in a letter. Even though we were in the same prison, we couldn’t see each other because he was being kept isolated.  “I am handcuffed whenever I leave my cell.”

Dunmore said he was moved from his cell in North block to the Badger section, one of four administrative segregation units in the South block, also known as “the hole.”

“The cells are so dirty they need a deep cleaning,” he said. “The supplies they give us do very little to help. It’s noisy and crowded there.”

It’s not just the punishment of quarantine that makes life difficult. When we’re moved to be quarantined, we also fear losing our personal property or being paired with a bad cellmate upon our return to the regular housing units. And we are worried because the cells themselves aren’t being cleaned properly after infected people are removed from them and quarantined elsewhere.

Vincent O’Bannon, a contributing writer for San Quentin News, said he believes he caught COVID-19 from his asymptomatic cellmate. “I spent 21 days quarantined in a tent on the yard,” he said. “Afterwards, they put me back in the same cell.”

Rushing to normalize

Incarcerated people who are no longer required to be quarantined have been put back in double cells under the belief that COVID-19 survivors develop immunity to the virus. But nobody knows that for sure and many of us fear that prison staff may be playing Russian roulette with our lives amid so much uncertainty.

Officials are rushing to get incarcerated men who have critical jobs back to work as shuttle drivers; in food service, the canteen, Receiving and Release; and on housing unit clean-up and hospital facility maintenance crews. Prison staff was handling most of this workload during the outbreak.

But now, in an effort to free up more prison staff for other duties, officials are providing incarcerated workers they refer to as “COVID resolved” with 10 hours of instruction on occupational health and safety standards in response to COVID-19. Incarcerated people are being trained how to properly put on and wear N-95 masks and computers are being used to ensure these masks fit properly.

 But the measures are being met with some skepticism among the incarcerated population. “They’re trying to get us to help them keep us locked up in this death trap,” said one incarcerated critical worker who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation.

News normally travels fast through San Quentin. Incarcerated people hear about what’s happening through word of mouth, phone calls, television, newspapers and memorandums. Some of us are in contact with prison advocacy groups fighting to reduce overcrowded conditions at San Quentin. But the volume and uncertainty of the information we’re provided makes everything even more overwhelming.

These are stressful times at San Quentin. We are plagued by anxiety, nightmares and sleepless nights. None of us trust prison officials to keep us safe or provide us with proper medical care. Many of us are sad we lost friends and frustrated by the lack of compassion from prison staff for our situation. Some of us are mentally and physically deteriorating.

And all of us are still reeling from the shock of how COVID-19 got to San Quentin — how it quickly spread, sickened, hospitalized and killed so many people. We haven’t had time to process this trauma yet, and the reality is that we may have to endure another outbreak of COVID-19 before healing can actually begin.

The post On the Inside of an Outbreak: How COVID-19 Spread in San Quentin appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” While the remark may or may not have been made by Mark Twain, it certainly rings true as we compare the 1980s with 2020, when an incompetent response to a pandemic and a minority’s call for justice brought people to the streets.

The callous eight minute long killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in the midst of a pandemic has been the catalyst for a worldwide demand for police accountability and long denied racial justice.

The events have a certain rhyme with the 1980s. The callous disregard for an epidemic that was initially killing despised minorities spurred the LGBTQ community and its allies to action, with street protests by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) and the half a million person Lesbian and Gay March on Washington in 1987.  

As a young man I volunteered with the media relations department. Three days of protest that October included a march from the White House to the Capitol, a marriage ceremony for lesbian and gay couples and mass arrests at the Supreme Court which had just ruled sodomy laws — which punished LGBTQ people — were constitutional. We were effectively criminals in most U.S. states.

The most powerful demonstration was the silent witness of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, begun by activists in San Francisco in 1985. By 1987, it filled the Washington Mall with thousands of 6 foot by 3 foot panels bearing the names of those who had died from AIDS. It was a rebuke to the Reagan Administration which had first ignored and then underfunded HIV prevention and treatment.

When I passed near the quilt I had wondered what my panel would look like, assuming (rightly) that I too had been infected and would likely die well before I was 30. Due to luck and medical advances I have lived to see another era of protest and pandemic.

Today COVID-19 is disproportionately taking the lives of minorities. The economic and social dislocation has once again created a wave of demand for change and an end to police brutality against African Americans.

In February, the AIDS Memorial Quilt returned to the Bay Area after being moved to an Atlanta warehouse in 2001. At the time, It seemed likely to be little more than a historic footnote, a reminder of a darker time. It was again to be unfurled, this time in Golden Gate Park in April, but the arrival of the coronavirus changed everything.

At the quilt warehouse in San Leandro in February, I interviewed John Cunningham, executive director of the National AIDS Memorial Grove which cares for the quilt. He explained why he believes the AIDS Memorial Quilt speaks to the current generation.

“I think it’s important to remember that the AIDS crisis was the intersection for many different social movements, whether it be individuals of color, whether it be access to health care, whether it be poverty, whether it be LGBT, whether it be substance abuse, all of those different movements intersected in this one particular epidemic. And with that being the case, we feel that it is appropriate to take into leverage the lessons of the epidemic, and to be able to identify the best practices of social movements. So that, in the future, social movements will not have to go through the painful and arduous process that we did, which was trying to figure out how to get the attention of a nation and how to start to save people’s lives.” — John Cunningham

The post Pandemic and Protest: How AIDS and LGBTQ Activism in the ’80s Informs the Present appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

On February 29, I was flying home from the Berlin International Film Festival and European Film Market after two weeks of meetings and pitches for the 2020 slate of films and projects at my San Francisco based independent film company – 13th Gen. This was my seventh time attending this event, and I was ready to dive back into my work with energy, laser focus and momentum the following Monday. I told myself, “Absolutely no jet lag postponements this time around.” Sadly, jet lag would turn out to be the least of my worries.

My team was busy putting the final touches on a long-planned week of filming and public fundraisers for a new feature documentary that would have taken us to the greater Seattle area starting March 9. By March 4, we were forced to cancel those events as Washington emerged as one of the nation’s hot spots for the novel coronavirus.

Two days later, the annual SXSW festival in Austin, Texas announced it would be cancelling its 2020 event just days before its scheduled opening. This announcement set off an avalanche of cancellations the following week that touched every aspect of public life, the kind that told every American that this crisis was unlike anything we had seen in our lifetimes.

One of the more critical aspects of my company’s year-round work is handling worldwide film festivals for the films we produce. Over the arc of my 30-year career, I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the world’s top festivals to premiere films, while further monetizing a global circuit of some 200-plus festivals on five continents as a sub-distribution marketplace – one that has become a steady and reliable revenue stream for us. Spring 2020 was meant to be no different. We had six films in our slate this season and were gearing up for a lively and exciting few months.

Four of these films had no distribution commitments in place, so we were following our trusted playbook: Use strong festival placements to help advance the sales and distribution prospects of our films. By March 19, over 150 spring festivals around the world had either cancelled or postponed their 2020 editions, with several March festivals being forced to call off public events mid-way through the event.

Quarantine and filmmakers’ livelihoods

At my company, plans for our slate were upended entirely as the public exhibition of movies came to a painful and grinding halt everywhere. The only consolation: We were not alone. Thousands of films and filmmakers had their lifelines to the public cut as the larger entertainment industry tried to make sense of what it means to be non-essential during a global pandemic. I started calling it “The Lost Spring of 2020.”

Since then, I have done what I always work to do during a crisis: Get out ahead of it as much as possible and try to take a useful leadership role. With these two guideposts driving me, my first urgent concern came in the form of an e-blast from a March festival with which I have previously done business. Unlike other festivals that had taken a different approach, this one announced they had quickly pivoted into all online and virtual offerings that were free and available everywhere. A sudden and consistent emphasis on the word free in connection with independent film content online became an alarming trend as stay-at-home orders proliferated.

Hastily, some festivals were making moves to remain relevant to their audiences and sponsors without contemplating the deeper possible impacts on the overall film economy on the back end of this crisis. More specifically, if we give our content away for free and without a measured strategy, how will we make sure that audiences are willing to re-enter a paid economy for films once that is possible for us again? My other main concern was to make sure that filmmakers and, in particular, producers like myself, were at the table to help shape these important industry discussions that clearly need to involve us.

Suddenly, I discovered where I could be most useful to my industry during the coronavirus crisis. I could help by gathering the San Francisco Bay Area film community virtually to discuss our experiences of the pandemic and form our own collective sense of what solutions might look like.

In that process, I could help illustrate how “The Lost Spring of 2020” has touched so many of us economically, personally, creatively and otherwise. While this crisis has shown us that we are clearly non-essential workers, filmmakers and storytellers have also gradually started to affirm our future roles in helping humanity make sense of this crisis when it is over.

Emerging from the crisis

To that end, here are two conversations – an episode of the Civic podcast and a recorded Zoom conversation – featuring a range of Bay Area talents and voices who have felt the direct effects of this season’s cancelled film festival circuit. Some were headed to the most beloved of spring industry events – SXSW, SF Film, Tribeca and Hot Docs – while still others were entering the circuit for the first time and with very high hopes.

Whether emerging, established or somewhere in between, each filmmaker represents the faces of many more like them who help make this region’s film and media culture one of the most vibrant on the planet. This is just a snapshot. Get to know them through our Civic podcast, a Zoom conversation between several Bay Area filmmakers and at their showcase websites:

• Vincent Cortez
• Anne Flatte
• Tony Gapastione
• Sean Gillane
• Abby Ginzberg
• Comika Hartford
• Leo Herrera
• Alexandra Lexton
• Rodrigo Reyes

In a business where coming together physically is a requirement to make the work, and coming together physically has been our most coveted way of experiencing the work, each passing day in this pandemic story shows us that there are deep and insidious cracks in our larger film systems and economies.

However, the independent film world has done an incredible job of organizing itself in response to the coronavirus pandemic over these last six unprecedented weeks. Our tent pole institutions have rallied to help filmmakers who are largely freelancers find safety nets, while a range of the field’s most active philanthropies has also come together to create funds for the industry’s most vulnerable.

Where does all of this leave us? In my view, in a decidedly hopeful place holding on to the firm belief that many of you out there will join us at the cinema once again in 2021 and thereafter. Our San Francisco Bay Area film community is here to make sure it will be well worth the wait.

The post Independent Filmmakers, Coronavirus and the Lost Spring of 2020 appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Oakland announced Thursday a plan to shut down 74 miles of roadways to through traffic, creating a network of “slow streets” to provide residents a reliable and safe way to practice social distancing while walking or biking. It joins a growing list of cities, from Bogota to Denver, where cycling and walking are prioritized through creating car-free and car-limited spaces. It’s good policy and should be part of the COVID-19 pandemic response in cities everywhere.

Mysteriously, San Francisco stands out as a laggard. When advocates pleaded weeks ago for the City to make John F. Kennedy Drive car free, the city was dismissive, arguing that it would encourage people to gather in Golden Gate Park. So, the street remains dominated by through traffic and parked cars, with people crowding on narrow bike lanes and sidewalks. It’s shameful.

San Francisco’s rejection of a car-free JFK exposes narrow thinking at City Hall. If JFK attracts crowds, this shows us that we need more space for safe and reliable social distancing – not less.  To discourage people from concentrating together, the city should implement a comprehensive, connected, citywide network of social distancing routes so that people can spread out when making essential trips, exercising and walking their dogs. With deep cuts to Muni, this system of social distancing routes is even more necessary.

Page Street in Hayes Valley is an excellent example of what can be done quickly. This neighborhood street, popular for cyclists and pleasant to walk with safe distancing, was once choking on chronic congestion, with drivers using the street as an on-ramp to the Central Freeway via Octavia Boulevard. In February, just before the state of emergency, the city deployed flexible “soft hit” posts, a few gallons of fresh paint and new signs to transform four blocks of Page into a safe cycling and walking street. Car-owning residents on Page still have access, so it is car-light, not car-free.

The kind of nimble and quick improvements deployed on Page can be replicated throughout the city to create a connected network of social distancing roadways. For an obvious start, the Page Street model should be extended westward along the full length of the street, providing a straight route from Market Street to Golden Gate Park.

In this kind of configuration, cyclists can keep safe distances when passing, and with fewer cars and a slower pace, pedestrians can take to the street to allow others safe passage on sidewalks. Removing some on-street parking and using cones, soft-hit posts and other tools could allocate more of the street to safe social distancing. Temporary diverters, such as the ones at Page and Laguna and Page at Webster, can be erected to restrict through traffic and high speeds.

There are many suitable candidates for a network of social distancing routes modeled on Page Street, and ideally a grid crisscrossing the city ought to be created. The famous “Wiggle” route from the Mission to the Lower Haight will be important. We’ll need east-west routes like Grove, Post and 22nd in the Mission connecting medical centers, or Valencia and Laguna as north-south connectors. The city’s map for the bicycle network can be a guide. Grove stands out as an obvious candidate in Hayes Valley and Civic Center and 34th and 20th avenues stand out in the Sunset.  

We should also commandeer lanes on wide arterial streets for safe social distancing. In the Sunset, there’s already political support to make the Great Highway car free. Lanes on the Embarcadero through North Beach and to SOMA can be made car free. Car-free lanes can be allocated on Third Street from downtown to the Bayview. The same can be done for Stockton and Columbus in North Beach and Chinatown, and Folsom Street in SOMA. Upper Market Street should have wide social distancing lanes into the Castro.

The city can relieve crowding on the Panhandle with separated cycle tracks on Fell and Oak, and if the concern about gathering on JFK is sincere, put social distancing lanes on Lincoln and Fulton along both sides of the park. Arguello, spanning Golden Gate Park to the Presidio, is prime for social distancing lanes.

On the south side, social distancing routes should pivot from the Balboa Park BART station and connect to City College and San Francisco State University. Ocean and Holloway avenues are candidates, and Geneva Avenue should be repurposed eastbound to Bayshore Boulevard. Cayuga Avenue in Mission Terrace would provide part of a north-south social distancing route.

No one knows how long this pandemic will last, but there will be no abrupt return to normal. During a slow recovery, blindly jamming the city with private cars is foolish. San Francisco could not physically absorb hundreds of thousands of cars before the pandemic. Now, it can and must act boldly and decisively to reclaim the streets – at least some of them – for the people. There has never been a more urgent or opportune time to reimagine our public streets and provide for public health.

The post S.F. Needs to Shut Down Streets During Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Low-income San Francisco seniors are facing a connectivity crisis as well as a health crisis.

For most Bay Area residents coping with the mandate to shelter in place as the coronavirus spreads, home internet access, devices and software platforms enable us to work from home, communicate with family and friends, use telehealth services and stay informed.

But for seniors lacking home internet, a device or the skills to access the internet, the resulting isolation is not merely an inconvenience but a potentially life-threatening situation. Seniors suffering from loneliness, fear and depression may fail to follow their medication regimen and eat regular, healthy meals.

This is where the technology industry can help. Even as stocks have plunged, the top 10 Bay Area technology companies are still collectively valued at more than $2.5 trillion. They have both the money and the expertise to help solve this crisis.

Almost one in four San Francisco residents is over the age of 60, with 14% living in poverty. If close to half of low-income seniors lack connectivity, as Pew Research data indicates is likely, we can safely say that over 13,000 older San Francisco adults are not connected to the internet at home.

That means none of them has access to online supportive social services. Nor can they easily order groceries for delivery, video chat with their family or doctor or research health issues. A connected person at home for an extended time can keep in touch with colleagues at work and interact with family and friends via email and many other platforms. They can follow the news about the health crisis through a variety of media, visit health-related web sites and contact their doctor electronically if they feel ill. Many low-income seniors, in contrast, are left in the digital darkness.

This is a critical gap right now. The fatality rate from the COVID-19 virus rises dramatically with age. Data from China show that fatality rates for those who contract the coronavirus, while below 1% for those under age 50, rise to 3.6% for people in their 60s, 8% for those aged 70-79 and 14.8% for those over 80. More importantly, the fatality rate for critically ill adults is 45%. This illustrates the importance of protecting older adults from the initial transmission and getting them into the health care system as soon as possible should they become infected. This is something telehealth services can help with — for those who have access to them.

For decades, local nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies have helped seniors cross the digital divide by providing free training and information about low-cost internet options and digital devices. This connectivity, taken for granted by most of us, helps older adults live comfortably and safely in a digital world. Historically, this work has happened in a variety of public settings, such as libraries, senior centers, public housing complexes and other places where seniors congregate. But, with a mandate for all San Francisco residents to shelter in place, these services and public internet access centers are no longer available.

We at Community Tech Network and our colleagues in the digital training community have developed safe, efficient, effective and convenient systems to serve older adults. We have developed a diverse network of trainers (many of them volunteers) supported by a curriculum designed for our targeted older adult community. We have a proven track record of changing lives through digital literacy. Our websites contain a myriad of stories about older adult learners and how access to the digital world has changed their lives.

Now COVID-19 has required groups providing digital skills training to make significant adjustments to how they reach and interact with seniors. Previously, seniors attended training in person, but now that training needs to happen online and is only accessible by those who are fully connected.

The building blocks for success are all in place. We know the older adults who have demonstrated their desire to be connected and the capacity to learn. We have a dedicated network of digital trainers who want to help, and a structure for safe and effective delivery. The missing component is funding sufficient to tie all of the pieces together and deploy at scale.

We need the help of the local tech companies and philanthropists to support getting all isolated seniors connected immediately. We are calling for their financial assistance to provide internet access, devices and online training.

It is time for the tech companies who built an amazing digital community and economy, as well as local philanthropists, to come together and support our isolated seniors. There is the capacity to provide funding for this. Internet access and training needs to be treated as a top priority. It’s critical to protecting our older San Francisco neighbors, some of the most vulnerable people in our community — and the time to act is now.

The post Tech Firms Could Keep Seniors Safe in Coronavirus Lockdown by Funding Connectivity appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.