Sad Francisco
The neoliberal nightmares born in the Bay, and the people trying to stop them. sadfrancis.co
Episodes
Part 2 of the conversation with Deeg, with more on LAGAI-Queer Insurrection (formerly Lesbians And Gays Against Intervention), the Bay Area collective that started organizing in 1983 in response to the US war machine meddling overseas.
Deeg is back for some oral history lessons about LAGAI-Queer Insurrection (formerly Lesbians And Gays Against Intervention), a radical collective that started organizing in 1983 in response to the US war machine meddling overseas.
Some of the same members from forty years ago continue to meet, plan direct actions, and send thousands of copies of their zine UltraViolet into prisons for free, with no 501(c)3 and next to no funding. W...
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 ...
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.
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 pa...
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.
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.
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.
In other news:
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.
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.
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 recorded in early February, shortl...
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 s...
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.
Sad Francisco is produced by To...
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 breaks it down.
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 new artists' collective!
- Quee...
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 history from 1970s SF in Christina 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.
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