As San Francisco emerged as the hub of counterculture pilgrimage routes in the late-1960s, radical politics and social change galvanized design ideals in Berkeley. The East Bay became the site of bold experiments in graphic arts, environmental activism, handcraft pedagogy, and self-build technologies. Fast forward to 2011 and the creation of the local hub PLACE for Sustainable Living in Oakland, a center linking our radical past to the resilient future, as it fosters many of the same ideals. ...
Topics: architecture, design, ecology, emergence, integration, holism, urban nature, geodesic domes, Sym...
In a world where every inch has been impacted—directly or indirectly—by industrial society, what does it mean to “preserve nature”? How does the idea of adaptation shape our responses to extinction, climate chaos, and nature? How does our sense of “history” shape our ideas about nature, evolution, and conservation? How should we understand and value natural processes, wildness, and human technologies? With Peter S. Alagona, Annalee Newitz , and Noah Greenwald . Co-hosted by Wild...
Topics: anthropocene, habitat, endangered species, adaptation, technology, future, civilization, grizzly...
Foraging is a fantastic way to learn about the urban natural habitat and cultivate our local food sources. It is also becoming a fashionable urban treasure hunt. Artist and Guerrilla Grafter Margaretha Haughwout shares some simple gestures that can generate as well as preserve the urban commons, urban agriculturalist Antonio Roman-Alcalá takes a critical look at privatization of the urban wild and the groundwork laid by grassroots activists.
Topics: foraging, forage, urban wild, urban food, urban agriculture, nature, boundaries, non-nature, wild...
Felicia Elizondo Flames recounts her experiences in the Tenderloin when trans women erupted on a late August night in 1966 and rebuked police harassment with an epic mini-riot at Compton’s Cafeteria at Turk and Taylor. The audience joins the conversation to help illuminate the long path over the decades to today’s high profile trans activism, still beset by obstacles and conflict within the gay community as well as the larger surrounding culture.
Topics: Trans, gay, LGBTQI, Trans women, hair fairy, jota, queer, lesbian, Tenderloin, 1960s
Songs of Freedom is the name of the songbook edited by James Connolly and published in 1907. Connolly's introduction is better known than the collection for which it was written, containing his oft-quoted maxim: “Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement, it is the dogma of a few and not the faith of the multitude.” Though most of the songs were of Irish derivation, the...
Topics: Ireland, Scotland, England, New York, revolutionary songs, Irish socialism, Scottish socialism,...
The Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park recently underwent extensive renovation, bringing to public view murals and sculptures from the WPA that have long been hidden and overlooked. Other beautiful artworks grace public buildings throughout the East Bay and San Francisco, including Coit Tower, and on Treasure Island, where Maritime Museum artists went on to create work for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. Join Richard Everett (Maritime Museum), Anne Schnoebelen (Treasure...
Topics: New Deal, art, architecture, WPA, PWA, murals, Diego Rivera, SF Arts Association, San Francisco Art...
We present another night of Conscious Youth Media Crew's latest collection of films by youth, "Reel Hood Heroes", chronicles the lives of everyday heroes who work to create a brighter future for the young people in our San Francisco and Bay Area communities. Conscious Youth Media Crew encourages youth to become life-long learners and positive, productive community members. Through our unique San Francisco-based digital multimedia training program, youth participants learn multimedia...
Topics: Mission, youth, video, Hunter's Point, Bayview, South of Market, United Playaz, Carecen, Violence...
Musician and author Mat Callahan presents the James Connolly-Songs of Freedom project. "Songs of Freedom" is a collection of lyrics edited by Irish revolutionary, James Connolly, and published in New York in 1907. Its rediscovery and revival is a project undertaken by Callahan and a group of Irish, American and Swiss musicians. Tonight's event will include an account of how this project began as well as a performance of some of the songs. Callahan will discuss Connolly's contribution...
Topics: Ireland, James Connolly, 1916, Easter Rising, music, revolution, politics, Irish nationalism,...
This is an excerpt from a 2 hour interview, part of the Shaping San Francisco "Ecology Emerges" oral history collection, with long-time San Francisco environmental writer Harold Gilliam. In this short clip he tells how he was lured to Washington DC to work for the Stewart Udall Interior Dept. under LBJ, where he was able to help derail plans to run a northern Bay Bridge from apx. Telegraph Hill to Angel Island to a new freeway up the Tiburon Peninsula.
Topics: Freeways, bridges, San Francisco, US Dept. of Interior, Stewart Udall, Angel Island
One of the emerging zeitgeists of our era is the rediscovery of the water beneath our cities, and redefining the places we are in through awareness of our watersheds. Derek Hitchcock of the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL), Joel Pomerantz, a San Francisco water historian, and Sarah Kelly and Arthur Richards, co-directors of Adapting to Scarcity, will share their knowledge and find the common streams uniting their work around indigenous communities reliant on waterways, and the...
Topics: watersheds, creeks, rivers, dams, pollution, silt, contamination, sedimentation, salmon, sea,...
Cris Benton has used kite photography to document the surprisingly beautiful “saltscapes” of the South Bay, while Matthew Booker ’s Down By the Bay is one of the best recent histories of the long, complicated, and contradictory relationship of urbanizing humans and the amazing inland estuary we enjoy as the Bay.
Topics: Bay, San Francisco Bay, Bay Area, shorelines, salt ponds, reclamation, marshes, wetlands, salt...
Excerpted from Peter Wiley and Stephen Rees's essay "Up Against the Bulkhead" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Antiwar, Vietnam, GI organizing, Up Against the Bulkhead, underground press
Imagine a time when the land that we know as the Franciscan Peninsula extended out to the Farallones and mastodons and tigers roamed freely. Imagine small seasonal villages along waterways engaged in trading across the bay, and tule canoes making the journey. Park Historian Breck Parkman will share his extensive research into the prehistory of the Bay Area, and Malcolm Margolin (Heyday Books, The Ohlone Way ) joins in with his years of exploring the indigenous history of the region. ...
Topics: indigenous, ohlone, Bay Area, pre-urban, pre-Spanish, prehistory
Excerpted from Jason Ferreira's essay "'With the Soul of a Human Rainbow' : Los Siete, Black Panthers, and Third Worldism in San Francisco" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Los Siete, Mission politics, San Francisco police, racism, repression, Third Worldism
"Money: A Comedy with Music" is a satiric portrayal of an economically troubled society in which an American banker tries to explain how money works. The new play written in 2010 in San Francisco moves from Brazil to New York, from scenes of wealth to scenes of bankruptcy, accompanied by cabaret songs, chicanery and financial chaos. Developed this year, but indebted to the Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project from the 1930s, "Money" incorporates puppetry, film...
Topics: 1937, money, economics, comedy, musical, Federal Theater Project, WPA, Depression, derivatives
Shaping San Francisco's Chris Carlsson provides an historic tour of the eastern shoreline from its days as tidal mudflats and open sewers crisscrossed by piers and wharves to its new incarnation as a site of ecological restoration and recreation. Anthony Khalil of Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ ) offers a special look at creating a revitalized Candlestick shoreline including habitat restoration and community engagement, while interpreting the wonders of the Franciscan...
Topics: shoreline, landfill, hills, mudflats, wetlands, swamps, San Francisco, Telegraph Hill, Mission Bay,...
Everyone is invited to come to an open discussion about the Occupy movement that started in September in the U.S. and has spread across the country, with dramatic events in Oakland, San Francisco, and other locales. What are the politics of this moment? How shall we understand our own activity, how does it fit into a longer historical perspective? Is this really so new? If so, what next? Come and participate in a civil and lively discussion.
Topics: Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, politics, history, direct action, banks, foreclosures, taxes
buchla box sound
Topics: electronic music, buchla box, buchla
Art & Politics: Seth Eisen "OUT of Site" Seth Eisen and James Metzger and collaborators Colin Creveling, Rayan Hayes, Mary Vice, and Diego Gomez bring to life research and performance excerpts from Eye Zen Presents's newest project (a collaboration with Shaping SF)—a series of queer history performance-driven walking tours through the streets of San Francisco. This performative talk explores the ways that queer people have historically created community, how our...
Topics: queer, gay, homosexual, history, historiography, assimiliationism, essentialism, Cockettes, Charles...
A discussion of African liberation movements and decolonialization from 1945 to the present, of political problems of the post-independence periodâcoups, civil wars, struggles against oppressive regimes, economic problems of post-independence, of cultural renaissance, and of links to movements in diaspora. Immanuel Wallerstein, Walter Turner and Will Grant. Recorded Sept. 24, 2008 at CounterPULSE, part of the ongoing Shaping San Francisco Talks series.
Topics: Africa, colonialism, decolonization, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Congo, independence,...
Part of the ongoing Shaping San Francisco Talks series at CounterPULSE. San Francisco California State Park at Candlestick, an urban shoreline park used by bird watchers, picnickers, and fishermen, is being ecologically transformed for the benefit of the Bayview community and local critters. Alan Hopkins, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Patrick Rump, Literacy for Environmental Justice, Claude Everhart, Friends of Candlestick. Oct. 29, 2008
Topics: nature in the city, ecology, urban parks, shoreline, wetlands, birds, state parks, fishermen,...
Shaping SF co-director Chris Carlsson gives a multi-layered tour through the FoundSF.org collection, focusing on the theme of dissent. Labor history in the 19th century, antebellum anti-slavery efforts, women's suffrage, the 1934 Big Strike, the rise of gay liberation, anti-nuclear and anti-war politics in the 1970s and 80s, the 1991 Gulf War, and 2003 anti-war efforts to prevent the invasion of Iraq... and much more!
Topics: dissent, antiwar, anti-nuclear, occupy
What are the historic roots of our current ecological politics, how have they shaped todayâs environment and the questions we face now? Open space, biodiversity, global warming, fresh water, street design and transit choices, urban farming... local historian Dick Walker (âThe City in the Countryâ), Kearstin Krehbiel (SF Parks Trust), Peter Brastow (Nature in the City), Keirstin Dischinger (Bike Kitchen). Recorded Oct. 24, 2007 as part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series at CounterPULSE...
Topics: Open space, biodiversity, global warming, fresh water, street design, transit choices, urban farming
The eerie, unforgettable sound of Laughing Sal, fixture at Playland for decades, now at the Musee Mecanique.
Topics: Laughing Sal, doll, Playland
Claude Everhart of Friends of Candlestick, Alan Hopkins, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Patrick Rump, Literacy for Environmental Justice talk about the unusual history and present of the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. It's an open bayshore park built on landfill and trash, a product of a deliberate community-driven process that chose open space and natural qualities over the usual city-style parks and recreation facilities. It's now home to many returning species of birds and wildlife....
Topics: Candlestick Point, State Park, urban park, bayshore, redevelopment, endemic species, birds,...
Economic meltdown? Recession? Depression? What are we to do? With the bailout benefiting Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, many are expect the new Obama administration to champion a New New Deal. But how will working people fare? Will the catalyst for change come from above or below? What lessons can we learn from the past and what are âurban homesteadersâ already doing to localize the economy at the neighborhood level? Featuring working class historian Gifford Hartman, who will...
Topics: Economic crisis, Depression, urban homesteaders, self-reliance, localization, 1930s anti-eviction,...
What role do nontraditional archives play in the preservation and interpretation of peoples' history? This open discussion will explore some of the opportunities and challenges of radical repositories. Some of the issues that will be addressed include: What defines a radical archive? What can be productive relations between community-based or independent archives and more established (and establishment) institutions? What tools and processes are making it easier to document, catalog, and share...
Topics: archives, history, historiography, silence, digital media, paper, books, newspapers, formats,...
Developing Reciprocal Bio-Regional Culture from the Bay Area to the Mountains of California Join a dynamic panel to discuss the historical and emerging relationships among humans, and between humans and the waterways on which they live. The indigenous peoples who formed bio-regional culture-sheds aligned with natural watersheds in California start our eco-historyâwith particular focus on the Bay Area and delta areas. It continues with a short history of the California gold mining...
Topics: Watersheds, Culture Sheds, culture, art, cultural politics, restoration, ecology, rivers, riparian,...
Hank Chapot will present his work on the 1937 Atherton Report: "In 1935 San Franciscans were shocked, shocked, to hear reports of ordinary police officers with extraordinary wealth. Mayor Angelo Rossi and the Board of Supervisors put up $75,000 dollars to fund an independent investigation of the SFPD and it's crooked cops, hiring the private investigation firm Atherton & Dunn. The investigation and grand jury testimony pointed directly at bail bondsman Pete McDonough, San Francisco's...
Topics: crime, police, San Francisco, 1930s, Dolly Fine, SFPD, Joe Alioto, Police Officers' Association
Recording of notes scribbled in margins of Haskell's notebooks in 1880s.
Topics: Haskell, real estate, Hall of Records, radicals
Claude Everhart, a founder of Friends of Candlestick, describes the public process that led to the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area as a natural park on the bayshore, built on landfill, created by community input and control.
Topics: Candlestick Point, San Francisco, state parks, public participation, community input
A discussion about the future of Market Street is taking place in many forums in the City, preparing the way for a new boulevard in 2015. The history of Market Street is peppered with architectural and social solutions that have not worked out as planned. We'll take a look at the long history of Market Street as a public arena in San Francisco, some of the redesigns that have happened over the decades, question the assumptions about urban design that underly the current municipal discussions,...
Topics: Planning, Urbanism, Market Street, Livable City, BART, MUNI, San Francisco, plazas
Harry Hay was a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, participant in the San Francisco General Strike of 1934, organizer of the first Radical Faerie Gathering. Harry Hay was at the heart of arts, activism, spirituality and sexual identities in the 20th century. Learn about this amazing man and discuss his legacies today. With Will Roscoe, editor of "Radically Gay: Gay Liberation in the Words of its Founder--Harry Hay" (Beacon Press: 1996), and Joey Cain, curator of the new exhibit on...
Topics: homosexual, gay, gay rights, queer, gender, theater, Maritime strike 1934, Communist Party
A Shaping San Francisco Talk held at CounterPULSE in San Francisco, January 27, 2010. Not only are trees and "urban forests" the most prominent features of the city's "natural" landscape, they are the cityâs biggest biomass. Tree choices influence habitat resources for countless less obvious, but no less important species of flora and fauna. What are the facts about trees, "forests" and woodlands in San Francisco? A debate on the benefits and drawbacks of specific...
Topics: trees, urban forest, ecology, reinhabitation, street trees, bioregion
Learn about the âColony Collapse Disorderâ afflicting commercial beekeepers and the threat to agribusiness, in juxtaposition to the dozens of native bees flourishing in Californiaâs urban environments, which reinforce local biodiversity and provide another important link to growing our own food in cities. K. Ruby and Philip Gerrie
Topics: bees, urban agriculture, biodiversity, agribusiness, Colony Collapse Disorder
Founded in 1886 by Unitarian (who moved rapidly leftwards!) Charles H. Kerr, the Charles H Kerr Publishing Co. has been a mainstay of non-sectarian left publishing, and culture since its inception. The first to publish Marx's Capital in English, and the pre-eminent publisher of the IWW for the last century, please join Kerr Co. biographer Allen Ruff in interrogating, analyzing and celebrating the previous 115, and looking forward to the next. Allen Ruff is an independent writer, and researcher....
Topics: Charles H. Kerr publishing, Midwest radicalism, Wisconsin, Madison, public workers, occupations
Mark Twain once quipped, "I never let school get in the way of my education!" This panel of educators will share how they live that idea working in school systems. All three educators have successfully co-created programs with their communities that are progressive, develop student leadership, and empower communities to address social justice issues. Their work ranges from recreating schools as centers for social research and action in Berkeley and New Mexico to shifting the dialog...
Topics: education, charter schools, Africa, poverty, community, adult education, student led curriculum
"Crime fiction is almost like a product of capitalism. It's about social inequality" --Ian Rankin, best-selling crime novelist Join four of the finest exponents of crime and noir as they discuss how fiction is not just a mirror to the seamier sides of life, but the proverbial hammer with which to shape it. Owen Hill is the author of two novels and many books of poetry. Of his latest, The Incredible Double, David Ulin of the Los Angeles Times said,"...here we have the essence of...
Topics: Noir, Crime, Fiction, politics, history, urban life, cities, San Francisco, work, day jobs
with Glenn Lym. It is a common assumption that street grids were imposed easily on San Franciscoâs original landscape, resulting in the cityâs photogenic hillside streets that poke up from otherwise large flat planes. We assume that the imposition of these grids was benign. But it was not benign. Digging under the streets of early San Francisco, we will find that much of San Franciscoâs flatland was created from land forms that were quite different from what we know today.
Topics: ecology, landscapes, sand dunes, wetlands, landfill, hills, CAD, terrain
Selma James speaks on her new book "Sex, Race and Class--The Perspective of Winning; A Selection of Writings 1952-2011." James discusses the class divide in feminism, the anti-capitalism of the social wage, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Haiti: Black Jacobins then and now and much more! With her was George Katsiaficas, author of the just-released "Asia's Unknown Uprisings: South Korean Social Movements in the 20th Century," and he gave an account of the...
Topics: Feminism, unwaged, wages for housework, prostitutes union, England, South Korea, Gwangju, Tibet,...
A zany and surprising look at a history of beer from Sean Levon Nash and John Jota Leaños, as fun in audio as it was with slides. The opening event of the Fall 2009 Shaping San Francisco Talks series, held at CounterPULSE on Wed. Sept. 9, 2009.
Topics: beer, mesoamerican, egypt, ancient history, breweries, local microbrews, corporate beer
Co-editor J. Smith of the three-volume documentary history of the emblematic urban guerrillas will be in town to discuss his work, the life, times and enduring relevance of the RAF. "A fascinating history of the German revolutionary left in the 1970s and 1980s. It powerfully situates the RAF within a broader orbit of revolutionary politics and world events. It gives us the inside story of how militants did and might engage with police, prisons, informants, media and one another in the...
Topics: RAF, Red Army Faction, Revolutionary Cells, Carlos, PFLP, terrorism, 1970s, Germany, 1980s, Red...
Amy Franceschini is a pollinator who creates formats for exchange and production that question and challenge the social, cultural and environmental systems that surround her. An overarching theme in her work is a perceived conflict between humans and nature. Her projects reveal the ways that local politics are affected by globalization. In 1995, Amy founded Futurefarmers, an international collective of artists. In 2004, Amy co-founded Free Soil, an international collective of artists,...
Topics: art, farm, agriculture, urban, food, politics, commodity, whimsy
Chris Carlsson and LisaRuth Elliott will give a wide survey of the politics of 1968-78 by going through the forthcoming book "Ten Years That Shook the City: 1968-78," covering everything from Los Siete de la Raza to the housing and redevelopment politics of the era, the San Francisco State Strike to the lesser known strikes among rank-and-file activists in the local labor movement. Posters, lost murals, unknown ecological treasures, the Farm, and much more! The book won't be out until...
Topics: 1960s, 1970s, San Francisco, politics, Third Worldism, SF State Strike, Los Siete de la Raza, Black...
small clip of Kerouac describing San Francisco.
Topics: Kerouac, beats, San Francisco
Today Mission Bay is the moniker for a new UCSF biomedical campus. Some urban explorers know there is a Mission Creek with a houseboat community, too. In conjunction with the 2nd edition of the book Vanished Waters, weâll take a visual cruise through the industrial and watery past of this former tidal bay, fed by the fresh waters of several local creeks and streams. With Shaping San Francisco's Chris Carlsson and Bob Isaacson and Ginny Stearns from the Mission Creek Conservancy.
Topics: Mission Bay, wetlands, landfill, shoreline, Mission District, South of Market, SOMA, Yelamu,...
Chris Carlsson introduces his new book at CounterPULSE, April 9, 2009: "Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today"... this is a bit over an hour, and it's entirely a reading from the contents of the book to an audience of about 80 friends.
Topics: Nowtopia, gardening, utopia, bicycling, programming, biofuels, Burning Man
Sirron Norris has been splashing his satirical cartoon characters around the Mission and San Francisco for years. From biting social commentary to whimsical commercial art, his work spans a range that challenges the boundaries of art and politics.
Topics: art, murals, cartoons, cartoon literalism, tagging, graffiti, Mission District, commercial art,...
Schoultzâs distinctive murals full of strange animals, twisting buildings and floating birdhouses caught the angst of modern life. Lately heâs gone to a surrealistic sea and weâll get a full look at his work and hear what he says about it tonight. Recorded January 16, 2008, one of Shaping San Francisco's Talks at CounterPULSE.
Topics: art, politics, murals, community
Members of Bay Area worker cooperatives will share their thoughts on the history and practice of democratic organization, decision making, equitable employment, and the effects that these organizations have had on the local economy (Rainbow, Inkworks, Box Dog Bikes, Design Action, NoBAWC).
Topics: Cooperatives, collectives, self-management, self-employment, democracy, economic democracy
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area sustains more federally threatened and endangered species than Yosemite, Yellowstone, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks combined. The San Francisco Bay Area is considered the 6th most important biological diversity hotspot in the United States by the Nature Conservancy. UNESCO has even granted the GGNRA âBiosphere Reserveâ status, the same status granted to the Central Amazon rainforests. Come and learn about the amazing biodiversity in your own...
Topics: biodiversity, endangered species, Presidio, Golden Gate National Recreation Area
Hugh will present a slideshow of his diverse body of work, ranging from rock posters to anti-war flyers to original paintings, and talk about the ways his politics have informed his artâand vice versa. Recorded October 17, 2007 as part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series at CounterPULSE in San Francisco.
Topics: art, politics, bicycling, copyright, copyleft, commons, illustration
Enrique Reynoso of Mexico City’s Organización Popular Francisco Villa de Izquierda Independiente (OPFVII), also known as “los Panchos,” reports how tens of thousands of people occupy land and build thriving, autonomous communities in the heart of one of the world’s grittiest cities. Outside of political parties they promote urban self-government, community safety, and autonomous education, culture, and health. Bárbara Suárez Galeano joins him. Co-presented by The Mexico...
Topics: Housing, Mexico City, left politics, autonomy, cooperatives, squatting, land occupations, occupy,...
The largest living Ohlone tribe began a migration from San Francisco's Mission Dolores in 1834 and now lives in Pomona, CA. From June 2012 to November 2013 the Ohlone Profiles Project is bringing this peninsula's original inhabitants back to this land where they will be holding community meetings, healing ceremonies, and other gatherings to begin a Truth and Reconciliation process between the City and the Tribe. Fresh from a Big Time Gathering on Indigenous Peoples' Day (October 6) at the...
Topics: Ohlone, indigenous, indian, San Francisco, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Federal recognition, Pomona,...
A conversation about network forms of work and their relationship to capitalism, business, and alternative ways of producing our world. Panel Moderator is Michael Whitson Panel: Shereef Bishay of Better Means, Chris Carlsson of Nowtopia, Gordon Edgar (Life on the Wedge), member of Rainbow Grocery Workers' Cooperative.
Topics: Work, networks, open source, internet, Nowtopia, coops, collectives, markets, money, incentives,...
A dramatic visual presentation of the lost murals, forgotten political posters, and underground comix made in San Francisco during the 1970s, based on visual essays in Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78 book, with Lincoln Cushing, Tim Drescher, and Jay Kinney.
Topics: murals, 1970s, political posters, public art, comics, underground comix
Jared Farmer presents his book Trees in Paradise , reading California history through Redwoods/Sequoias, Palms, Citrus, and Eucalyptus. He is joined by Craig Dawson of the Sutro Stewards , a group dedicated to untangling San Francisco’s most fraught forest atop Mt. Sutro.
Topics: Eucalyptus, Sutro Forest, Adolph Sutro, endangered species, invasive species, conservation biology,...
The Franciscan Bioregion is the unique ecological area of Planet Earth and the area of our keen interest, north of the San Francisco airport, from San Bruno Mountain to the Golden Gate. In the heart of the city is a series of hilltops, e.g., Mt. Davidson, Tank Hill, Corona Heights, as well as Glen Canyon, that are still rich with natural areas, wildlife habitats, and indigenous biodiversity. This âTwin Peaks Bioregionâ is severely threatened by noxious weeds and insensitive uses of our local...
Topics: Twin Peaks, hilltops, open spaces, biodiversity
Excerpted from a longer essay in "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78" this tells about a Gay Liberation Front protest in front of the Examiner building in 1969.
Topics: Gay, gay liberation, Gay Liberation Front, Society for Individual Rights, San Francisco Examiner,...
audio of street noise during 1991 State Building mini-riot in San Francisco.
Topics: riot, police, violence, 1991, gay, State Building
More of our lives are being tightly integrated through the commercial social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, private corporations that are monetizing the enormous creative and cooperative activity that takes place there. A movement among tech workers and cooperative activists to create real alternatives through building self-managed platform cooperatives is taking shape. Yes, Virginia, there IS an alternative! The micro-rental economy masquerading as "sharing" is...
Topics: Cooperatives, Platforms, software, applications, technology, DARPA, Internet, freelancers, gig...
The (in)famous satirical news coverage by Wes "Scoop" Nisker on KSAN-FM radio in the mid-1970s was issued on an LP in 1977 and this is Side B... B1 I'm A Turkey, Not A Ford B2 Tantric Boogie B3 Kissinger My Brezhnev B4 Natural Calamities and Unnatural Acts B5 The Double-Breasted Sutra B6 The Apocalyptic Bicentennial Conspiracy Show B6 Kundalini Cowboy Lead Vocals – Phil Marsh (2)
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Topics: Gerald Ford, 1970s, Henry Kissinger, Cold War, comedy, satire, Scoop Nisker, Last News Show, oil...
Bending Over Backwards Audio Tour: Stop 6, The Gartland Pit
Topics: arson, fire, gentrification, 1970s, Misson, Valencia, Gartland Pit
Bending Over Backwards Audio Tour Stop 4: Komotion International, an underground music and performance space at 2779 16th Street, c. 1986-97.
Topics: punk, performance, Mission District, San Francisco, 1980s, 1990s, Robin Ballinger, Sasha Lilly
Few San Francisco neighborhoods have gone through as dramatic a change as Dogpatch. East of Potrero Hill, once an industrial neighborhood making warships, steel, sugar, rope, and more, where flimsy wooden structures teetered on long-gone hills, the area has had an arts renaissance that is now giving way to high-end condos, the encroaching medical/biotech industry, and even more grandiose plans for highrise development. A microcosm of San Francisco’s history from the 1860s to the present....
Topics: Dogpatch, Irish Hill, Dutchman's Flat, Potrero, Tubbs Cordage, Chinese, railroad, Union Iron Works,...
Moments of hysteria in history have shaped our feelings toward immigration—either on a local or global scale—from anti-Chinese sentiments leading to decades of the Exclusion Act to events like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, to witnessing thousands of unaccompanied children arriving from Central America, we discuss the increase in security and scapegoating within our borders toward immigrant groups who become associated with these events. Lara Kiswani ( Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC)...
Topics: Immigration, scapegoating, organizing, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Arab, Punjabi, Sikh, Muslim,...
Willy Lizárraga gives an incredible one-man performance of the history of San Francisco's Carnaval. Fast-changing hats and voices, accompanied by a slide show of historic images from Lou Dematteis and others of those early days.
Topics: Carnaval, Mission Distrct, 1979, festival, public space
Yolanda Lopez, Judy Drummond and Donna Amador cover the dynamic history of Los Siete de la Raza and Mission District politics of the 1970s. Yolanda dissects the popular iconography of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the context of racially exploitative advertising over the past few decades, to reveal her own creative processes that have produced beautiful "Virgin"-inspired representations of working Chicana women and more.
Topics: Los Siete, Mission District, 1960s, Third World, San Francisco State, Basta Ya!, Centro de Salud,...
40+ minutes of live sound recorded in the Gartland Pit, 16th and Valencia, San Francisco's Mission District, Sept. 1987. Tom Jennings and Shred of Dignity are featured, and many anonymous commenters over the punk show in the background.
Topics: Gartland pit, landlord arson, Mission District, 16th and Valencia, police, punks, music, 1987
Rejecting the paradigms of capitalist San Francisco, let’s look at a radically expanded Common Wealth, starting here, but with implications for our entire society: A public bank, free broadband internet, a low-cost public electricity system, dense community gardens and public orchards, widespread high-quality social housing, expanded land trusts, bicycles and free public transit, free innovative childcare (actually a whole new approach to integrating play into everyday life!), a renovated...
Topics: commons, play, trauma, public bank, vernacular architecture
I n a recent Earth Island Journal interview, Michael Pollan notes a question underlying his work, "How do you think through this relationship in the messy places where nature and culture have to engage with one another?" As urban dwellers, how do we decide what to do with our open spaces, our sidewalks, our schoolyards, our vacant lots? Do we use them to grow food, tend natives, allow wild spaces to exist? These choices require different skill bases (growing soil vs. tending...
Topics: urban agriculture, farming, community gardens, horticulture, habitat, urban permaculture,...
Sirron Norris has been splashing his satirical cartoon characters around the Mission and San Francisco for years. From biting social commentary to whimsical commercial art, his work spans a range that challenges the boundaries of art and politics.
Topics: cartoons, art, commercial art, Art and Politics, murals, Mission District, tagging, graffiti, day...
250 years ago, life along the edges of what we now know as San Francisco Bay changed forever when the Portola Expedition came upon this hidden magnificent body of water. The Spaniards couldn’t quite understand it when they saw this marvelous sight for the first time on November 2, 1769, but this confluence of many rivers was a thriving home to thousands of people, not to mention an abundance of species of water, land, and sky. Join us to talk with Gregg Castro , t’rowt’raahl...
Topics: shellmounds, per-European Bay Area, Ohlone, Portola, grizzly bears, wetlands, swamplands
Excerpted from Tomas Sandoval's essay "All Those Who Care About the Mission, Stand Up With Me!" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation. This excerpt is read by Adriana Camarena.
Topics: Mission, MCO, Mission Coalition Organization, latino, latinidad, Hispanic
An evening of stories and discussion about the impact of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (which wasn’t rescinded until 1943!) on the Chinese American community in San Francisco. This infamous legacy was both subtly woven into community cultural life, and overtly demarcated social and geographical boundaries. Chinese Whispers , a research and storytelling project about the Chinese who helped build the American West, will present excerpted stories from the Bay Area which reveal the deep impact...
Topics: Chinese, Chinatown, Exclusion Act, racism, community, borders, identity, language
We bring together story shapers, story sharers, and story collectors for this evening taking a close look at oral histories and memory keeping. Susan Schwartzenberg hosts a discussion series at the Bay Observatory at the Exploratorium intertwining personal stories and scientific study to understand climate change, Brandi Howell and Mary Franklin Harvin of Tales from North Beach are currently producing a podcast series to document the aging, forgotten, and hidden people and places of North...
Topics: storytelling, stories, oral history, digital archiving, archives, digital history, truth, memory,...
Excerpted from Harvey Dong's essay "Jung Sai Garment Workers Strike of 1974: 'An Earth-Shattering and Heaven-Startling Event'" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Labor, strike, Chinatown, sweatshops, garment workers, ILGWU
Doug Minkler was one of the first political artists to embrace the Mac and heâs been making scathing collages and edgy, often hilarious posters for several decades. See his solo show and find out how heâs kept himself going all these years!
Topics: Art, politics, labor, movements, left wing, social services, social movements, expressionism,...
A Shaping San Francisco talk held on January 13, 2010: Comparing the alcohol Prohibition of the 1920s-30s to the contemporary prohibition on marijuana. With Dick Boyd, author of "Broadway, North Beach, The Golden Years: A Saloon Keeper's Tales" and former owner of Pierre's, a bar in North Beach from 1960-65, Sean Lavon Nash, and Michael Whitson, a marijuana prohibition expert.
Topics: prohibition, alcohol, temperance, drugs, marijuana, pot, medical marijuana, medicalization,...
The largest coastal lagoon between Point Reyes and Pescadero, Lake Merced is an incomparable natural resource for San Francisco. A controversial preserve has been proposed for East Lake and some intact habitats, to protect wildlife and threatened species. Dan Murphy GG Audubon Society, David Behar, SF Public Utilities Commission. A Nature in the City co-production (www.natureinthecity.org)
Topics: Lake Merced, aquifer, golf courses, habitat, species, wildlife, birds, Audubon, southwest San...
In 1849 San Francisco was surrounded by wild animals and a flourishing sea and bay, from which most early food was taken. But what is our “wild menu” now? How do foraging, fishing, hunting, and gathering fit into modern life? What role does conservation and ecology play in a contemporary and future wild menu? With Mark Heath, Kirk Lombard , and Chris Carlsson . Co-hosted by Wild Equity Institute and Nature in the City .
Topics: Seafood, fish, herring, sea bass, salmon, sturgeon, perch, hunting, wild boar, deer, geese, ducks,...
Decades after the Alaska oil pipeline began, we’ve gone through repeated booms and busts in oil production and prices. Antonia Juhasz has studied the history of the oil business and is one of the world’s best-informed critics of the industry. She is joined by Leila Salazar-Lopez of Amazon Watch, a group confronting oil giants in the Amazon, and by Joshua Kahn-Russell , author of A Line in the Tar Sands . All three explain the current balance of forces, and the prospects for keeping the...
Topics: Oil, petroleum, fossil fuels, climate change, climate chaos, burnout, Amazon, Ecuador, Peru,...
Clif Ross and Marcy Rein , editors of Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements present a broad overview of the social movements that have pressured one regime after another in Latin America, changing the political calculations for everyone from right to left, from Venezuela to Argentina, Mexico to Chile and more.
Topics: Mexico, Zapatistas, MST, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador, Peru,...
Christina Gerhardt , author of The Atlas of (Remote) Islands and Sea Level Rise , explores the effects and responses to climate-warming on low-lying Pacific Ocean islands. Urbanist Laura Tam addresses sea level rise on vulnerable shorelines around the Bay Area. Learn about indigenous inhabitants’ adaptive solutions in the South Seas and local grassroots efforts to prepare our bay shore.
Topics: Sea Level Rise, Climate Change, ocean heat, thermal expansion, coastal erosion, drowning islands,...
Roger Wilson of the Bristol Radical History group gives a wide-ranging Talk covering 17th and 18th century history around Bristol, England, including a debunking of the common narrative of the anti-slavery movement, putting the working people of England back into the saga. He also gives a fresh look of the mass riots of 1831, and brings the interventions of the Bristol Radical History Group in our era into the unfolding of "history from below." If you want to find out what unites a...
Topics: History from below, riots, England, Britain, anti-slavery
âCorporate Personhoodâ is being widely discussed after a couple of decades of slowly growing awareness of the creeping expansion of corporate legal rights since the late 19th century. After the Civil War in the 1860s corporations took on new forms, new legal rights, and new power. David Cobb, Phillip Pierce, Jed Holtzman, and Chris Carlsson will talk about the origins and and describe the evolution over time.
Topics: Corporate Personhood, charters, states, sovereignty, rights, duties, Move to Amend
Janet Delaney has been documenting the changing South of Market since its days as a recently deindustrialized district in the early 1970s to its present boom in luxury residential towers. Our Art & Politics series invites solo artists to talk about their work and share a bit about their process and the relationship of art to politics and vice versa in their work.
Topics: SOMA, redevelopment, Moscone Center, Project One, warehouses, gay leather, SRO, residential hotels,...
Excerpted from Alejandro Murguia's essay "Poetry and Solidarity in the Mission" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Sandinistas, newspapers, Gaceta Sandinista, Mission
Christopher Richard, aquatic biologist at the Oakland Museum of California, has deciphered the earliest accounts of the water features of the San Francisco peninsula... working with maps, original Spanish diary entries, and a clear understanding of Mission settlement patterns, Richard builds his argument that the century-old myth of a freshwater lake in the Mission is unsustainable.
Topics: water, lakes, ecology, Mission period, Spanish colonization, San Francisco, Mission Dolores,...
Last year we embarked on a grand collaborative journey through the under-recognized LGBTQ+ history of North Beach with Seth Eisen’s OUT of Site performative walking tours. Seth returns with a look at his new SOMA tours coming in June and September, bringing forgotten queer histories and sites to life and exploring the intersections of labor history, the leather scene, bars, nightlife, and the immigrant experience. This is part of a series of solo artists giving a behind-the-scenes and...
Topics: Queer history, homophile, SOMA, Happy Valley, Waterfront, City Front, YMCA, The Stud, Boot Camp,...
One of the two major bookstore chains in the US is on the verge of collapse, even as authors are being abandoned by publishers to go "indie" via Kindle and iPad. The ebook (r)evolution is here, but its course is not yet chartedâwill the dinosaurs of New York's publishing industry go extinct, and what new species of publication and publisher will emerge? And will writers be able to make a living...not that most of them are doing that even now! Join science fiction writers Terry...
Topics: E-book, pdf, Kindle, Amazon, publishing, books, self-publishing, New York publishing, agents
Dancer, Choreographer, and Director, Jess Curtis is interviewed by celebrated Bay Area choreographer Joanna Haigood. Together they will explore Jess' nearly three decades of body-based experiments through peformance and teaching. Like Jess' dancing this will be a night investigating the 'embodied intellect'. Short video clips will be interspersed with smart conversation about the theory and practice of Curtis' Body of Work. As always, there will be a lengthy Q & A so all will have a chance...
Topics: Dance, body, embodiment, communication, politics, art, performance, circus, gesture
Bending Over Backwards Audio Tour: Stop 5: The Redstone Building, former Labor Temple.
Topics: labor, Labor Temple, Redstone Building, Painters Union, Dow Wilson, CAMP, murals
After more than 150 years, finally historians—and perhaps Californians—are facing up to the horrifying truth that the Indians of California were subjected to a vicious and genocidal campaign of extermination from the beginning of U.S. control in 1846 until after the Civil War. New scholarship shows that Indian slavery was the key source of labor that helped create the early "economy" of California and enrich its first settlers. Explore complicated stories of cultural, religious,...
Topics: Indians, indigenous, slavery, missions, Spanish, Mexican, colonialism, Amah Mutsun, Ohlone,...
Today’s San Francisco and our village-like neighborhoods, charming architecture, and quality of life is indebted to the Freeway Revolt that shocked the nation between 1956 and 1965. Most histories have focused on the politicians and city leaders who argued and voted in those years, overlooking the vital role of the emergent middle-class women who spearheaded the Revolt, and kept it going against overwhelming odds. Decades later, a second Freeway Revolt helped reclaim the Embarcadero and Hayes...
Topics: Freeways, Freeway Revolt, Glen Park, Bay Bridge, Southern Crossing, bridges, highways, Panhandle,...
Jon Christensen hosts a conversation with Richard Walker, Rebecca Solnit, and Antonio Roman-Alcalá, growing out of the oral history project "Ecology Emerges" by Shaping San Francisco's Chris Carlsson and LisaRuth Elliott. The discussion was held at SPUR, May 17, 2010, and includes a lively discussion with the audience.
Topics: Natural capitalism, externalities, prices, markets, ecology
Missing Pieces: Remembering Elements of a Gone City Geographer Dick Walker looks at the formative politics of the region in his new book, Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area , and takes us through the overheated bubbles and spectacular crashes, inequality, and delusion of the current moment. Arthur O’Donnell has methodically documented parts of the City slated for demolition or redevelopment from 2010–2018 in his Bound to...
Topics: Bay Area, destruction, rebuilding, gentrification, construction, new buildings, The Suppository,...
What actually happened to Darling Clementine? Historian Joel Pomerantz explores the California floods of 1862. Learn how this historic storm, which killed thousands and caused a number of San Francisco houses to collapse, can be an example for what a really extreme weather event could be like in our future.
Topics: storms, weather, rain, 1861, 1862, Sacramento, Sacramento River, delta, San Francisco floods,...
Universal Basic Income, Is It time? Touted by the tech industry as a way to preserve livelihoods in a time of automation replacing workers, Universal Basic Income (UBI) is not a new concept. As a poverty alleviation idea, it has resonance in the EPIC program of 1930s California, and similar ideas were floated by leaders of social movements of the 1960s, including MLK, Jr. and the Black Panthers in their Ten Point Program. Through a discussion of UBI we take a look at the nature of work and...
Topics: Universal Basic Income, Negative Income Tax, redistribution, taxes, income, free money, welfare,...
The fight against the Reagan administration’s war build-up, emergency response against Central American wars, birth of the Peace Navy, stopping the USS Missouri, creating sanctuary cities, AIDS and Anti-Nuclear activism. We bring it up to climate justice & no nukes today. With activists and archivists Marcy Darnovsky , Steve Stallone , Lincoln Cushing, and Roberto Lovato. .
Topics: anti-nuclear, anti-war, Reagan, Thatcher, neoliberalism, New Deal, safety net, nuclear war, nuclear...
