Dramatized rendition of speech by Denis Kearny in 1877, denouncing Chinese workers and capitalists in equal parts. Recorded by Haight Ashbury Community Radio Project, 1980.
Topics: Denis Kearny, Workingmen's Party, 1877, riots, racism
The eerie, unforgettable sound of Laughing Sal, fixture at Playland for decades, now at the Musee Mecanique.
Topics: Laughing Sal, doll, Playland
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
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...
Patricia Rodriguez reading an excerpt from her article "Mujeres Muralistas" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78", edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation, 2011.
Topics: Murals, public art, latino, women, Mujeres Muralistas, Mission
Bending Over Backwards Audio Walking Tour Stop 3: The Vats, breweries, Hostess Bakery and more...
Topics: The Vats, punk, beer, breweries, Hostess Twinkies
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
Sarolta Jane C. gives an audio memory of Woodward's Gardens, one of San Francisco most storied amusement parks in the 19th century. Situated between Guerrero and Valencia, 14th and 15th, it featured a small zoo, beer garden, and much more. Originally on "Long Ago and Right Now" an Audiozine about San Francisco, produced by Sara Jaffe and Melissa Klein in Spring 2004.
Topics: Woodward's Gardens, 19th century San Francisco, amusement parks, zoo, beer gardens
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...
Excerpted from "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78", Jesse Drew describes the blue-collar industrial life in the Norheast Mission District, when beer was brewed, bread baked, and trains rolled through in the dark of night.
Topics: labor, work, factories, blue-collar, beer, bread, Twinkies, mayonnaise, trains, Mission District,...
Martha Senger, a Goodman Building stalwart, describes briefly the history of small artist residential hotels in San Francisco.
Topics: Goodman Group, Goodman Building, Hotaling, residential hotels
From AM radio (the first mass media) before WWII and how it shaped San Francisco, Auto Row AM-radio to the 1960s underground FM radio to the present era of podcasting, we will trace the paths of media, technology, audience and producers. Joe Lerer (KFRC and KSAN), Monkey (PirateCat Radio), George Epileptic (KUSF) and Chris Carlsson (Shaping San Francisco. Recorded January 14, 2009 at CounterPULSE, part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series).
Topics: radio, AM, FM, web, broadcast, community, media, underground
small clip of Kerouac describing San Francisco.
Topics: Kerouac, beats, San Francisco
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
Elizabeth Creely describes the semi-magical spot known as Kite Hill, with its amazing views, its surprising surroundings, and its role in San Francisco.
Topics: Kite Hill, hills, San Francisco
Pam Peirce, author of "A Personal History of the People's Food System" in 'Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78' reads an excerpt from her essay.
Topics: People's Food System, food, 1970s
A four-part radio series based on the Public Talk at CounterPULSE in April 2006, featuring Kevin Epps, Alicia Schwartz of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), and Espanola Jackson of Bayview-Hunters Point.
Topic: gentrification, African-American, San Francisco, redevelopment, Bayview-Hunter's Point,
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
North Beach hair stylist Joe Jachetta, interviewed by Audrey Tomaselli of the Telegraph Hill Dwellers oral history project, talks about how folks in his building kept things cold before refrigerators.
Topics: cooling, North Beach, Italians, before refrigerators
Excerpted from Jay Kinney's essay "The Rise and Fall of the Underground Comix Movement in San Francisco and Beyond" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Comix, Mission District, politics, art
excerpt from Malvina Reynolds song, composed about the houses lining the slopes of San Bruno Mountain near Daly City and San Francisco.
Topics: Little boxes, suburbs, housing
Dramatization of Irish couple arguing over the anti-Chinese agitation in San Francisco in 1877. Original recording by Haight Ashbury Community Radio project, 1980.
Topics: Irish, Chinese, labor, capitalists, racism
Kat Case, a short clip from the album " Long Ago And Right Now: An Audiozine About San Francisco" on the Epicenter Zone on Valencia near 16th...
Topics: punk, store, epicenter zone, 1990s
Haight Ashbury Community Radio dramatizes the women's suffrage movement in this short clip.
Topics: Suffrage, Women's Vote, temperance
Excerpted from Mary Jean Robertson's essay "Reflections from Occupied Ohlone Territory" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Ohlone, American Indian Center, Alcatraz, Indian rights
Hidden San Francisco : Book Release and Birthday! Join Shaping San Francisco’s Chris Carlsson on his 63rd birthday as he presents his new book, Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories . After a quarter century of curating the digital archive at foundsf.org , and conducting bike and walking tours, this book captures the unique and serendipitous connections that course through Shaping San Francisco’s ongoing work.
Topics: San Francisco history, Shaping San Francisco, grassroots, nonlinear, hyperlinks, narrative,...
Haight Ashbury Community Radio dramatization of water lot speculation in early San Francisco.
Topics: real estate, water lots, speculation
Part of the "Imagining Post-Capitalism" festival, cohosted by Shaping San Francisco and the ProArts Gallery in downtown Oakland. Are There Marxist Robots?!? Kal Spelletich , robot-maker and long-time artist, professor, actor, and all around raconteur of machinic chaos and dissent combines with Chris Carlsson , a persistent critic of the Planetary Work Society, to confront our collective anxiety. As Nick Dyer-Witheford ably puts it: "Digital capital [is] making a planetary working...
Topics: robots, androids, robot industry, automobiles, artistic production, cultural dissent
Bending Over Backwards Audio Tour: Stop 2: Leathermen in SOMA
Topics: gay, homosexual, leather, leathermen, Stud, leather bars
Phoned-in first-hand account broadcast on KPFA during the May 5, 1971 Mayday riot in downtown San Francisco. Digitized from reel-to-reel tape recorded by H.K. Yuen.
Topics: riot, police, violence, 1971, May Day, radio, KPFA, Vietnam
A discussion of our changing relationship with medical care from medieval times to today. Including long-term care at Laguna Honda, a pop-up clinic based on DIY herbalism, nutrition and self-care for Tenderloin seniors, and a small Mission District clinic serving the undocumented. with Ivy McClelland , author of God’s Hotel Dr. Victoria Sweet , Dr. Rupa Marya , and Marina Lazzara .
Topics: Medicine, herbs, herbalism, medieval, Hildegaard, tradition, slow medicine, fast medicine,...
Excerpted from Matthew Roth's essay "Coming Together: The Communal Option" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: communes, Kaliflower, coops, underground press
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
audio of street noise during 1991 State Building mini-riot in San Francisco.
Topics: riot, police, violence, 1991, gay, State Building
Chris Carlsson reads an excerpt from his essay "Ecology Emerges" in the City Lights Foundation book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78".
Topics: ecology, open space, environmentalism, property taxes
Dramatized account of land theft by newly arriving Americans, as told by a female member of the De Haro clan, originally recorded by Haight Ashbury Community Radio project, 1980.
Topics: land grabs, Spanish Land Grants, Mexican period, ranchos
Satirical radio advertisement for "Le Tank Solaire", the solar-powered defense strategy for the 1970s and 1980s, prepared by members of the Union of Concerned Commies.
Topics: tank, solar, Chrys-is-ler Corp., satire
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...
Efforts to integrate history and ecological restoration can be found tucked away in most San Francisco neighborhoods. Neighborhood greenways and corridors are most often the result of initial community-based activism to beautify an urban space, and end up becoming much more complex projects. Sophie Constantinou shares stories of creating the Buchanan Street Mall project and a newly accessible open space along the Bernal Cut, and how the different neighborhoods shaped these similar projects....
Topics: Corridors, greenways, sidewalks, gardens, Buchanan Mall, Bernal Cut, Visitacion Valley Greenway,...
Osento Bathhouse. Amelia’s. Artemis Cafe. Old Wives Tales. Modern Times Bookstore. Names and functions of these venues have changed, but they are part of the living memory of Valencia Street. Long before it descended into the white tablecloth, boutique-filled, gentrified peculiarity of today, the Valencia Street corridor was a hotbed of radical feminism and lesbian culture. LisaRuth Elliott moderates a conversation with some of the women who helped create the important sites and undergirded...
Topics: Valencia Street, Mission District, 1970s, 1980s, bars, cafes, weight training, bookstores, gyms,...
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
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
The Enola Gay Faggot Affinity Group emerged in 1983 during direct action protests against nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. About a year later they were the very first group to publicly engage in nonviolent direct action to dramatize the AIDS crisis. The "Money for AIDS, Not for War" ritual/protest was held on September 23, 1984, by Enola Gay, a self proclaimed faggot affinity group, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 50 miles east of San...
Topics: HIV/AIDS, Direct Action, affinity groups, Lawrence Livermore Lab, anti-nuclear, nuclear weapons,...
Excerpted from Deborah Gerson's essay "Making Sexism Visible: Private Troubles Made Public" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Women, Women's Liberation, 1970s, Valencia
buchla box sound
Topics: electronic music, buchla box, buchla
A different look at the Lyon Steps.
Topics: Steps, skateboards, bikers, punks
The “Language of Water” is a vision to retrofit strategic locations of the Islais Creek Watershed to reduce flood risk and invest in real resiliency from sea level rise, drought, flooding and demonstrating the state of the art practices available to the agency or the cities. This proposal includes plans to create multi-purpose, distributed infrastructure for water supply, wastewater and stormwater treatment and the incorporation of creek daylighting and floodable spaces that make room for...
Topics: sea level rise, coast, flood, planning, urban design, landscape design, resilience, Islais Creek,...
Celebrating the release of a new map of San Francisco, "Nature in the City" reflects a rich and fairly recent understanding of what comprises a place. An update of an original 2006 map, the rework includes a total of five maps, highlighting species that live alongside Homo sapiens, geology, gardening, restoration, and connections within the Bay-Delta. Mary Ellen Hannibal (author of Citizen Scientist ), Rebecca Johnso n (Academy of Sciences), and map artist Jane Kim...
Topics: maps, cartography, science, iNaturalist, nature, urban habitat, species, San Francisco, Bay,...
In this majestic tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, polluters of the seas, ravagers of the forests, despoilers of rivers, and removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has existed on the face of the earth that has not had commoning at its heart. "Neither the state nor the market," say the planetary commoners. Linebaugh kindles the embers of memory like few other historians of our time to ignite our future commons. Linebaugh...
Topics: commons, enclosures, England, 1790s, Ned Ludd, Queen Mab, industrialization, wage-slavery,...
Few events in the past century equal the importance of the Russian Revolution. And yet we only know it through the fog of propaganda and fear, and the actual events of 1917 are long forgotten in the mists of time. Find out what actually happened in that fabled year, and how it fit together with the world events of that epoch. Longtime Russian scholar Anthony D’Agostino (SF State) joins Anarchist scholar from socialist Yugoslavia Andrej Grubacic (CIIS) to unpack some of those tangled...
Topics: Russian Revolution, Soviet Union, USSR, 1917, WWI, WWII, pacifist putsch, anarchism,...
Mirjana Blanksneship reads from her article "The Farm by the Freeway" in the book 'Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78" edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: ecology, The Farm, urban agriculture, art
Nicole Gluckstern and Burrito Justice trace the lines of their literary history mapping project ( Bikes to Books ) and map-making, and are joined by historical geographer Dick Walker co-author of the fantastic project The Atlas of California: Mapping the Challenge of a New Era .
Topics: maps, literary history, writers, bikes to books, Atlas of California, cartography, mapmaking
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,...
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,...
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,...
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
Mission District legend Roberto Vargas reads his epic poem "My World Incomplete/To Complete My World" which traces the Sandinista movement in the Mission in the 1970s. It is from the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78" edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation, 2011.
Topics: Mission, Sandinistas, FSLN, Nicaragua, Roberto Vargas
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
Tim Stroshane ( Restore the Delta ) and Brenda Goeden ( San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission ) discuss the politics and prospects of facing our rapidly changing future around and health of the bayshore. Wetlands restoration, Sea Level Rise, Delta Tunnels, Clean Water Act, future of EPA, and more.
Topics: Delta, Tunnels, Bayshore, sediment, rock, sand, sand budget, levees, salination, agriculture,...
What can sounds tell us about the geography, people, and politics of a particular place? This panel explores the role sounds play in our everyday lives as well as how they can attune us to below-the-radar experiences and often “off the map” histories of the urban. Discover the intersection between sound and history with Jeremiah Moore and Sound Mappers Bruno Ruviaro and Christina Zanfagna .
Topics: Sound, audible cities, acoustic ecology, sound environment, streetscape
With the twang of a steel guitar, the whine of a fiddle and the plunk of a banjo comes an instant association; the pick-up truck, the cowboy boots, the rolling hills, dusty fields, lonesome highways and the flag. For many, it has also come to signify conservatism, “traditional values,” American chauvinism, and even racism, bigotry and the confederate flag. Although one wouldn’t realize it from listening to today’s pop Country radio stations, Country music has been anything but a...
Topics: Country, folk, coal miners, hobos, transients, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Irish, Scottish, English,...
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: poetry, Third World Communications, literary underground
The Mission District's incomparable Guillermo Gomez-Peña performs his latest screed, “Notes from Technotopia: On the Cruelty of Indifference” along with a brief retrospective of his work, followed by an open conversation with the audience traversing the complicated borders in which his work resides.
Topics: Gender, Borders, frontiers, gentrification, art, politics, spanglish, Mission District, San...
While squatting a South Park Gulch apartment in the 1990s and experimenting with urban guerrilla art, at some point Argentinian-born artist Mauro Ffortissimo began collecting pianos. He took them apart, pushed them off rooftops, and set one ablaze on the bluffs of Half Moon Bay after a series of sunset performances. Together, Mauro and Dean Mermell now bring pianos to the streets and gardens of San Francisco. Including an excerpt of Twelve Pianos .
Topics: piano, public space, public pianos, Sunset Piano, Flower Piano, San Mateo coast, free pianos
Patricia Rodriguez reading an excerpt from her article "Mujeres Muralistas" in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78", edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation, 2011.
Topics: Murals, public art, latino, women, Mujeres Muralistas, Mission
The boundary-pushing, "wickedly funny" comedian and formidable foe Nato Green gives a stand-up performance, preceded by opener Irene Tu. A free show, followed by conversation... Get your brain stimulated while laughing your head off...
Topics: comedy, stand-up, Irene Tu, Nato Green, sexuality, raunchy, gender, gay
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,...
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
Ilana Crispi is a Mission District ceramicist with a curiosity of what makes up a place. In her recent projects MISSION DIRT and TENDERLOIN DIRT she literally digs in to the earth to extract the soil and transform it, inviting residents to take a look at an invisible past and consider its future. Dirt taken from an excavated Boeddeker Park in 2013 became furniture and vessels to eat out of and created to give Tenderloin residents a direct connection to the soil under their feet. MISSION DIRT...
Topics: Tenderloin, Mission, dirt, clay, sand, ceramics, pottery, pinch pots, Barcelona, glaze, art,...
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,...
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...
Vivian Chang narrates how the Asian Pacific Environmental Network was founded after activists attended the first Environmental Justice conference in the early 1990s.
Topics: APEN, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, environmental justice
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
Considering urbanization as a global crisis/an opportunity. Understanding the restorative, regenerative, and imaginative possibilities of a new integration of urban and rural through local agriculture, human-powered transport (e.g. walking, biking), etc. Wednesday, April 28, 7:30 with Peter Berg (Planet Drum Foundation), Miya Yoshitani (Asian Pacific Environmental Network), Jason Mark (Earth Island Journal, Alemany Farm) at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St (at 9th), SF part of the Shaping San...
Topics: Nature, Cities, urban, rural, native species, habitat, restoration, balance
Haight Ashbury Community Radio Project dramatizes the sensibilities of the turn of the 19th-to-20th century Employers' Association, an organization bent on destroying labor unions.
Topics: Employers Association, class war, 19th century
From editor Sasha Lilley's essay: "By its very nature, capitalism is catastrophic. There should be no doubt that the multiple social, and especially ecological, crises of our time are genuine and cataclysmic. We are suggesting, however, that politics embedded within the logic of catastrophe â that the catastrophe will deliver a new world, or that it will create the conditions under which people automatically take action â do not serve the left and environmental movement. An awareness of...
Topics: Catastrophism, catastrophe, apocalypse, end times, doom and gloom, fear, politics, right-wing,...
Rene Yañez has been at the epicenter of the Mission’s multiple art movements going back to the 1970s. Our Art & Politics series puts him in the spotlight for a retrospective of his life’s work, a free-ranging discussion of the politics that informed his work, and how his work has shaped the neighborhood and the City to which he has contributed so much.
Topics: Day of the Dead, Frieda Kahlo, Galeria de la Raza, Neighborhood Art Centers, La Raza Park, Great...
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,...
Jenny Odell brings us an update on her ongoing project, the Bureau of Suspended Objects , which seeks an archaeological approach to the present by researching and archiving everyday discarded (or about-to-be-discarded) objects. First displayed at the dump, the objects are seen as true artifacts: crystallizations of a whole set of desires, economic contingencies, material availabilities, and abstract valuations that are more specific to their time than we could possibly realize now. As a result,...
Topics: Trash, garbage, found objects, objectification, research, factories, supply chain, reuse, Recology,...
An excerpt from "Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A View from the Street in Bernal Heights" read by author Peter Booth Wiley in the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Bernal Heights, 1970s, housing, segregation, hippies, communes
Chris Carlsson presents a historic look at the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, how it has changed over time, going from two-way traffic on the top deck (3 lanes in each direction) with trains and trucks on the lower deck, to today's new span. The history of automobility surrounding the bridge, and the many other schemes to build more bridges and crisscross San Francisco with high-speed freeways shows the context of the Bridge... The new Bike Pier (not quite halfway-across-the-bay bike lane)...
Topics: Bay Bridge, freeways, Freeway Revolt, Southern Crossing, infrastructure
The San Francisco Poster Syndicate has been creating inspiring silkscreen posters at protests, demonstrations, street fairs, art events, and parties for the past decade or more. A steady stream of new participants has kept it fresh, and tonight we’ll hear from veterans and newbies alike. Art Hazelwood, Jos Sances, Lucia Ippolito, Christopher Statton, Joanna Ruckman, and more!
Topics: posters, politics, wallposters, free, gratis, public space, decommodified art, free posters,...
From the weird madness of the Reber Plan to dam both ends of the Bay into freshwater lakes in the 1950s to the Save the Bay movement of the early 1960s that helped create the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, we’ve come a long way in a half century. Today’s open shorelines, closed trash dumps, and returning wetlands honor and preserve our greatest public resource. Historian Chuck Wollenberg and Steve Goldbeck from BCDC.
Topics: Reber Plan, Bay, Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, fresh water, dams, locks, earthen dams, Bay...
Progress to Poverty: Land and Rents On the 140th anniversary of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, his land tax and radical reform of land use are worth a critical re-examination. Geographers F.T.C. Manning and Richard Walker , along with Ted Gwartney of the California chapter of Common Ground USA, untangle what George proposed, what happened as a result of his ideas, and what the future holds. In conjunction with the San Francisco Public Library exhibit Who Owns the Earth? Henry George’s...
Topics: Single Tax, Land Tax, taxes, wealth, monopoly, Henry George, Georgist, Workingmen's Party of...
Alejandro Murguia reads more from his essay "Poetry and Solidarity in the Mission" from the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78", edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: Mission, poetry, cafes, 1970s
Tim Drescher reads more from his essay "Lost Murals of the 1970s" from the book "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78", edited by Chris Carlsson and published by City Lights Foundation.
Topics: murals, public art, San Francisco, 1970s
A discussion of Missoin District politics in the 1970s based on three contributions to the anthology "Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78," featuring edtiro Chris Carlsson, and authors Alejandro Murguia, Patricia Rodriguez, and Dr. Jason Ferreira.
Topics: Mission, Sandinistas, Murals, Mujeres Muralistas, Los Siete, Black Panthers, Third Worldism
A discussion of the west side tunnels and MUNI expansion in the 1910s, simultaneous to the building of the Hetch Hetchy water and power system by Elizabeth Creely and Catherine Powell , with Tim Redmond to compare today’s infrastructure build-out (Central Subway, sewers, and rebuilding Hetch Hetchy aqueduct).
Topics: Twin Peaks Tunnel, West Portal, Hetch Hetchy, M.M. O'Shaughnessy, "Sunny Jim" Rolph,...
Ralph Wilson, Jasper Rubin, and artist Wendy MacNaughton in a wide-ranging critical look at the history and plans for the oldest industrial buildings west of the Mississippi River, the launchpad for much of the U.S.'s imperial fleet in the late 19th and early 20th century. Increasingly derelict over the past few decades, but still home to the last drydock in San Francisco, big plans are afoot. Join critics, analysts, and artists for a closer look.
Topics: Pier 70, San Francisco, waterfront, shoreline, Union Iron Works, Bethlehem Steel, shipyards, docks
Chuck Wollenberg presents his new book Rebel Lawyer about Wayne Collins and his defense of Japanese-American rights during and after WWII. Novelist and essayist Karen Tei Yamashita shares her introduction to John Okada’s No-No Boy , the only 1950s novel to reflect on the post-Internment experience among Japanese-American families.
Topics: Internment, Wayne Collins, Fred Korematsu, renunciants, Tule Lake, concentration camps,...
If we're to believe the mainstream media, the Occupy movement came out of nowhere and represents a new kind of politics. But we should be skeptical of such claims. Social movements scholar Barbara Epstein was a participant in the nonviolent direct action movements of the 1970s and '80s. She describes how they incorporated consensus-based decision-making, radical egalitarianism, and prefigurative politics. And she examines how their strengths and weaknesses have been passed down to Occupy....
Topics: anti-nuclear, anti-war, Livermore Action Group, Abalone Alliance, Occupy, Direct Action, blockade,...
Latin American migrants have been part of San Francisco’s story since its beginning. Charting the development of a hybrid Latino identity forged through struggle--latinidad--from the Gold Rush through the civil rights era, Tomás Summers Sandoval describes the rise of San Francisco’s diverse community of Latin American migrants, giving a panoramic pespective on the transformation of a multinational, multi-generational population that is today a visible, cohesive, and politically active...
Topics: Latino, Latina, Chicano, Chicana, Hispanic, San Francisco, North Beach, Mission, MCO,...
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
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
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...
Bending Over Backwards Audio Tour: Stop 6, The Gartland Pit
Topics: arson, fire, gentrification, 1970s, Misson, Valencia, Gartland Pit
In 1913, students, farmers, and roaming revolutionaries working to free India from British colonial rule came together to form the Ghadar Party, to organize mutiny in India and work towards a secular world of economic and social justice. The party, headquartered in San Francisco collaborated with a variety of Bay Area based freethinkers, labor activists, anarchists, and expats of colonized nations. Though formally dissolved in 1948, the work of Ghadar offers potent lessons for political...
Topics: India, British empire, Ghadar, colonialism, networked movements, Irish liberation, IWW, Punjabi, UC...
"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
Visual and conceptual artist Packard Jennings talks about his work, through which he has reimagined and revisualized the world around us, shaking up our concepts and assumptions of how things are through humor and the reappropriation of pop culture imagery. Packard talks about his work which ranges from digital subversions to quiet mail-in actions to large scale, space interventions on billboards. He also speaks about work that gets made and that which doesn’t. This is part of a series...
Topics: tactical urbanism, adbusting, satire, irony, intervention, subversion, billboard alteration, fake...
