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
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...
Peoples from the Arab World have been migrating to San Francisco for over a hundred years. The earliest were mostly from the Levant: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine; and also Yemen. Most recent immigrants coming from North Africaâs Magrib region (Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) and Iraq since the first Gulf War. Why did they come here? How have they affected SF life? What are their ongoing connections to âhomelandsâ across the world? San Francisco, being a liberal progressive oasis,...
Topics: Arab, Middle East, immigration, San Francisco, Gay, Lesbian, conservatism
Favianna Rodriguez has been making art to make change for years. She will present remarkable posters, illustrations, stickers and more, and talk about art and politics, in the concluding event of our solo artist shows this season.
Topics: art, activism, Latina, illustrations, posters, social movements
Melanie Cervantes is an artist trained by library books, family, peers and experimentation. She produces her work in various mediums including pen and ink, acrylic, screenprinting, embroidery, fiber arts, and spraypainted stencils. Melanie infuses her indigenous internationalist worldview, spirituality and politic into all her art. Following the tradition of such artists as Juana Alicia, Malaquias Montoya, Judy Baca, Emory Douglas, La Mujeres Muralistas and Diego Rivera- Melanie has made a...
Topics: art, politics, zapatismo, community, third world, indigenismo, chicanismo
Bricks give literal structure to a history of place. Bricks produced around the Bay were a fire proof building material in early years of a city often engulfed by fire. Archeology work at the Presidio reveals plant time capsules embedded in recovered bricks that help us understand pre-settler ecology. And bricks increasingly confront our current landscape of evictions and displacement. Featuring Ruth Askevold, Lew Stringer, and LisaRuth Elliott . Co-hosted by Wild Equity Institute.
Topics: bricks, seeds, Presidio, bayshore, mud, rubble, earthquakes, ballast
At the outset of the LGBTQ History Month of October, a group of distinguished historians come together to orient us to queer historic sites and events in the city. They reflect on those that have been torn down and what it means that these centers of community are missing, and present a sampling of the many still extant social, cultural, and sexual spaces, and why these places are critical components of LGBTQ history. Please note that the presenters retain their rights to their presentations...
Topics: public space, social amnesia, redevelopment, place, forgetting, gay history, GLBTQ history,...
Newsrooms are hamstrung by the business practices of Wall Street and Big Media, even as newspaper circulation declines and TV news continues the race to the bottom. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News recently laid off large portions of their newsroom staff. The Internet is vulnerable to the same marketplace compromises. Explore alternative business models to ensure journalism remains a lively piece of our civic life. Barry Parr (Coastsider.com, Mercury Center founder),...
Topics: media, journalism, newspapers, radio, newsrooms, resources, Wall Street, corporatization
Shaping San Francisco Talks series, Oct 14 2010: Kim Stanley Robinson, Terry Bisson, Gary Phillips. It's only a story; or is it? Fantasy, Science Fiction and Noir conspire as three of PM Press's Outspoken Authors series discuss the problems, pitfalls and possibilities of writing fiction from a revolutionary perspective. Kim Stanley Robinson is the Hugo-winning author of Red Mars and Galileoâs Dream. Terry Bisson is an award winning short story writer and the biographer of Mumia Abu Jamal and...
Topics: Writing, novels, politics, revolution, noir, crime, science fiction, genre, science
continuing the conversation about the category of "natural disaster" and how many things taken for granted as normal or natural are actually artifacts of human culture. This episode features Chris Carlsson and Peter Davidson.
Topics: public health, heroin overdose, natural disaster
Weâll take a look back at military resistance to the Vietnam War, including the mutiny of sailors on the Coral Sea, the anti-nuclear and anti-Central American War movements of the 1980s and hear from Iraq vets about the state of anti-war activities in the current conflict. David Solnit, Paul Cox and Sarah Lazare.
Topics: Anti-war, Vietnam, Iraq, veterans, organizing, El Salvador, Nicaragua, resistance, GIs
Established in 1992 by a volunteer collective of North Mission residents, the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) was directly inspired by the mural cluster in Balmy Alley focused on Central American social struggles. Over the past two decades artists of all ages and levels of experience representing every social and ethnic group have created over 350 pieces on this one block street. Fresh from celebrating 20 years at the Clarion Alley Block Party on October 20th, CAMP collective members will...
Topics: alleys, murals, art, politics, volunteerism, gentrification, cooptation
Community based public art spaces are stuck between business-like survival and serving their communities. Hear veterans of San Franciscoâs Space Wars discuss how theyâve navigated the repressive dynamics of real estate, money, and power to hold open spaces for diverse communities to meet, talk, make art, and shape life. Jonathan Youtt (Cellspace), Robin Balliger (Komotion), Michael Med-o Whitson (848 and CounterPULSE). Recorded February 13, 2008 as part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks...
Topics: real estate, community spaces, evictions, performance venues
Education Crisis/Radical Responses Shaping San Franciscio Talk series, Sept. 29, 2010. From the crisis in the California universities to the steady destruction of public schools, weâre in the epicenter of a storm that spans the globe as neoliberalist politicians and the interests they serve seem determined to make education a precious commodity that is no longer a bedrock of democratic society. Come and discuss radical responses to this crisis, leading to the big October 7 Day of Action, with...
Topics: education, university, debt, college, occupation, strike, classrooms, teaching, students, crisis
Longtime environmental writer and journalist Harold Gilliam sits down for an Ecology Emerges interview conducted by Chris Carlsson, Nov. 2 2009, covering his life from childhood in Los Angeles to his time at the Interior Dept. in Washington during the early 1960s, to his many years at the SF Chronicle. Gilliam was a witness to the founding of Save the Bay, he was a reporter on the freeway revolt, and helped prevent a bridge being built from Telegraph Hill to Angel Island.
Topics: ecology, journalism, Save the Bay, Interior Department
Our food system is being refashioned by new urban farmers, farmers markets and community-supported agriculture, and importantly, by savvy shoppers who demand local, organic and safe food. Still, food security is tenuous for too many of our neighbors. Amy Franceschini (Victory Gardens, past and present), Willow Rosenthal (City Slicker Farms), Jason Mark (Alemany Farm, and editor of Earth Island Journal). Recorded as part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series on Novermber 28, 2007 at...
Topics: localize, urban agriculture, food security, organic, fresh, local, gleaning, backyard, victory...
Governor Jerry Brown is determined to build the Delta Tunnels through the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta. The once-and-future Peripheral Canal is the latest plumbing scheme to follow the damming and diking of rivers and swamps which began with intensive Chinese manual labor in the 19th century. California has already radically altered its plumbing, but we’ll also look to future efforts at riparian restoration, dam deconstruction, and maintaining or altering our massive hydrological...
Topics: rivers, water, plumbing, maps, dams, delta, tunnels, agriculture, arable soil, rainfall, sewage
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
Peter Cole ’s new book Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area uniquely compares and contrasts the radical activism of dockworkers on opposite sides of the planet. The San Francisco-based ILWU took direct action to block apartheid-era cargoes, while their counterparts in Durban, South Africa were on the front lines confronting the racist South African government. ILWU Local 10 (ret.) Jack Heyman introduces the evening. Co-hosted by Freedom Archives
Topics: ports, containers, automation, solidarity, hiring hall, steady men, ILWU, Durban, cultural...
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
The housing crisis continues to wreak havoc across the Bay Area. Political leaders and planners all agree—growth is inevitable, and to many, desirable. We bring together three sharp critics of the local political establishment and its loony-tune fantasies of endless growth and trickle-down solutions. The hidden power grab in the consolidation of regional government—and the endless manipulations by the banking sector and local zoning rules—continue to throw thousands into penury and...
Topics: Housing, Plan Bay Area, ABAG, MTC, PDR, South of Market, Eastern Neighborhoods, Mission,...
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
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
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
With urban homesteading all the rage and backyard and vacant lot food production on the rise it appears we're taking big steps toward encouraging self-sufficiency in the Bay Area. For sure people's requirements for connection to their food has changed. But how much do the popular local underground food movements fit within a concept of food security, within a drive to control one's own food sources as in food sovereignty? How much are they used as a stepping stone into the market for...
Topics: urban agriculture, food, farmers markets, food justice, food security, food sovereignty,...
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...
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,...
Superfund sites in San Francisco? Come find out whether people and nature are being treated appropriately and fairly in these two well known but very different communities and environments. Is the Presidio Trust fulfilling its commitment to protect and restore the natural resources of this great urban National Park? Are the Navy and the City of San Francisco taking the best care of the residents and their environment at Hunter's Point Shipyard? San Francisco is blessed with significant...
Topics: Toxic waste, superfund, Bayview Hunter's Point, Presidio, Tennessee Hollow, Candlestick Point State...
Bending Over Backwards Audio Walking Tour Stop 3: The Vats, breweries, Hostess Bakery and more...
Topics: The Vats, punk, beer, breweries, Hostess Twinkies
On the 100th anniversary of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), Gray Brechin and Chris Carlsson discuss the PPIE and the relationship of world’s fairs to the idea of progress over time. How did the presentations at PPIE in their early 20th century context boost now long-held assumptions about progress and development through technological innovation and economic growth?
Topics: World's Fairs, Chicago World's Fair 1893, St. Louis World's Fair 1904, Midwinter Fair 1894, Panama...
Ina Coolbrith, California’s first Poet Laureate (1915), was a contemporary of many male writers we count on for our understanding of what is meant by the American West. She was also a frequent contributor to The Overland Monthly which acted as a vehicle for showcasing poets and authors exploring and constructing ideas of liberal selfhood as the United States moved westward. Biographer Aleta George and author Stephen Mexal provide a look at the literary landscape of the West and its...
Topics: liberalism, poetry, Overland Monthly, selfhood, public space, restaurants, gardens, parks,...
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,...
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,...
San Francisco artist and muralist Brian Barneclo is all about making connections. In his Systems and Foodchain murals, bold images in motion - almost like stills from a film - link natural and creative processes to show complex processes of interconnectivity. From Nopa to Shotwell to Mission Bay to iPad cases, Brian's quick and direct strokes amplify the cityscape with one of his own creation. Come have a conversation with Brian as he shows and talks about his work with us.
Topics: art, murals, public space
Join a challenging conversation some have dubbed "environmental communications in the Anthropocene" to discuss the problems with presenting complex ecological information publicly. Rose Aguilar from KALW's Your Call radio , Brent Plater of the Wild Equity Institute , and environmental scientist and climate change activist Azibuike Akaba discuss and debate issues of scientific literacy, critical thinking, basic education, attention spans, buzzwords, guest selection, framing and...
Topics: Environmentalism, ecology, anthropocene, communications, meaning, language, memes, propaganda,...
Bureaucratic labor unions, long besieged, seem incapable of defending, let alone advancing, workers’ interests. In Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, workers are rejecting leaders and forming authentic class-struggle unions rooted in sabotage, direct action, and striking to achieve concrete gains. Manny Ness , editor of New Forms Of Worker Organization , and Steve Early , contributor to Continental Crucible: Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America...
Topics: unions, labor, syndicalism, trade unionism, AFT, CWA, Labor Notes, South Africa, Argentina,...
A Slide Lecture by Eric Drooker, who designed animation for the recent film, "Howl," and the new book, "Howl: A Graphic Novel," written by Alan Ginbserg. (Accompanied by the artist on a variety of musical instruments.) A visual and musical tour through Eric's years of graphic work for the New Yorker, street protests, and Alan Ginsberg, including a visit to the West Bank.
Topics: art, politics, HOWL, Alan Ginsberg, Beats, New Yorker, street protest, West Bank, apartheid wall,...
Pamela Chang discusses Laotian community and APEN organizing.
Topics: APEN, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, environmental justice, Laotian community, Richmond
How the Non-Aligned Movement founded at the 1961 Belgrade Conference in Yugoslavia challenged the post-WWII world system based on the bipolar US-USSR Cold War. Yugoslavia, Indonesia, African decolonization struggles, Indian independence and partition, nationalism, third world socialism, and Third Worldism in the U.S. left with Eddie Yuen , Andrej Grubacic , and Walter Turner .
Topics: Non-Aligned Movement, Third World, Third Worldism, Yugoslavia, Africa, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice...
A collaborative effort of the San Francisco Department of Memory , this project digitally preserves and promotes San Francisco community newspapers. Over 1,600 issues generated in eight neighborhoods dating back to the 1960s are now available online. Collection Project Manager LisaRuth Elliott, along with Elizabeth Creely, present highlights along with collection project manager .
Topics: newspapers, neighborhoods, community, communities, community groups, Department of Memory,...
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
In Adriana Camarena's new work the most precarious residents of the Mission are the central storytellers. In this, the latest presentation of her ongoing work-in-progress, she tells the story of El Cabe, accompanied by Los Alegres del Bajio. Her project covers a range of historic tales of Californian daily life: Indigenous migrants on their day off from construction or cooking on the line, watch movies inside their shared group apartments. Parents, raising children in the Mission, fend off...
Topics: migration, border, desert crossing, Guadalajara, Los Angeles, Mexico, Cesar Chavez, trust,...
If there were a single event of the 20th century that we could magically undo, would it not be the war of 1914-1918? It led to some 20 million military and civilian deaths, the rise of Nazism, the Russian Revolution, and another even more destructive world war. On the centennial of WWI, the “War to End All Wars,” eminent historian Adam Hochschild revisits that pivotal epoch. His 2011 book To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 reminds us of the shock provoked...
Topics: World War I, trenches, infantry, cavalry, machine guns, peace, fraternization, truce, revolution,...
Vietnam War, Dissent, and the U.S. Military A half-century after the Vietnam War officially began, we’ll look back at military mutinies, the rise of the volunteer army in response to the “Vietnam Syndrome,” and situate the Vietnam War in the long history of U.S. military aggression, even pre-dating the founding of the United States. Paul Cox, Deni Leonard, Michael Blecker
Topics: Presidio stockade, Presidio mutiny, anti-war GI newspapers, anti-war coffeehouses, FTA, FTA tour,...
Owen Hill, Summer Brenner, Barry Eisler, and Michael Harris. Co-Presented by PM Press "Crime fiction is almost like a product of capitalism. It's about social inequality" --Ian Rankin, best-selling crime novelist Join some 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...
Topics: Crime, fiction, novels, writing, politics, revolution, noir
Weâll look the possibilities of a radically different relationship to our local water supplies, including our aquifer, creeks and rainfall. But most of San Franciscoâs water is supplied by the Tuolumne River, which flows through a series of reservoirs, aqueducts and tunnels to our taps. These facilities are being rebuilt now, along with yet another massively expensive sewer system overhaul. Joel Pomerantz, Spreck Rosenkrans (Environmental Defense Fund), Ruth Gravanis.
Topics: water, aquifer, aqueducts, creeks, landfilll, sewers, reservoirs, public utility
Emerging visions for public thoroughfares challenge the 20th century paradigm of automobile-centric streets. Pedestrians, bicyclists, and wild critters are all demanding their own ways to cross the city. San Francisco's "Green Connections" project seeks to integrate these new visions into San Francisco's urban grid. Join Andy Thornley (SF Bike Coalition), Peter Brastow (Nature in the City), Elizabeth Stampe (Walk SF), and the SF Planning Dept.'s Kearstin Dischinger to critically...
Topics: Streets, public space, thoroughfares, green connections, wildlife corridors, bikeways, bike...
From H.G. Wells to Octavia Butler, from New Wave to Cyberpunk to the Slipstream of today, SF has been a tool to agitate, organize speculate and explore utopian alternatives. Join a panel of working SF pros in a lively discussion of the perils and possibilities-- JOHN SHIRLEY Bram Stoker award winner, cyberpunk pioneer, author of Bleak History , Black Glass ... LISA GOLDSTEIN, American Book Award winner, charter member of SF's"Shameless Hussies," author of The Red Magician, The Divided...
Topics: science fiction, writing, fantasy, utopia, dystopia, publishing, cyberpunk, space opera, e-books
Vandana Makker Interview Part II
Topics: Yoni Ki Baat, Vagina Monologues, South Asian, Queer, Omsri Bharat
Conversation with Vandana Makker
Topics: Yoni Ki Baat Performance, South Asian, Queer, Culture
Inaugurating a new âthird Wednesdaysâ series at CounterPULSE, Mona Caron will present a slide show of her famous murals and many other works, talking about the politics of her art, and her ideas about the relationship of art and politics.
Topics: murals, art, politics, painting, Switzerland, Intragna, Mona Caron
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
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
Excerpt from an 1850s song popular in San Francisco, having to do with the freeing of Archy Lee from jail. He had been seized by fugitive slave bounty hunters but a mob set him free. This rendition by Blackberry, recorded in 1980 for the Haight Ashbury Community Radio project.
Topics: slavery, song, 1850s, San Francisco
1:12 Twist of Fate by Jonathan Leake, voice D.S. Black :27 To NASA with Love by Linda Thomas, voice Janice 1:29 Opinions by Adam Cornford, voice Adam :35 Missing Work by William Talcott, voice Terry 1:20 Why I Can't Work by Bridget Reilly, voice Michelle
Topics: work, wage-slavery, typing, offices, satire, humor
Will Grant researches successes in global movements on climate change and environmental solutions. His work is creating understandable paths to an economy that is sustainable and even environmentally regenerative. Meanwhile, Tom Athanasiou directs EcoEquity.org, a small but vital contributor to the global negotiations over climate change. Enthusiastic hope and acerbic realism meet head-to-head in this panorama of environmentalist politics and practice.
Topics: Climate Change, Paris, Resilience, Renewal, Redistribution, Drawdown, permaculture, restoration,...
A vivid account of how San Franciscans moved around this peninsula through time: walking through the sand, horse-drawn stagecoaches, Clipper Ships and Shanghaiing, cable cars, ghosts of train routes and former freeways, plus the role of mass bicycle rides in both the 19th and 20th centuries. Presented by Chris Carlsson
Topics: transit, transportation, wind power, horsecars, cable cars, streetcars, Key System, trains,...
As Biophilic Cities are becoming a part of international consciousness, urban spaces are adding green roofs and elevated walking paths that traverse urban canopies, even daylighting creeks. How does San Francisco fit into all this? Could San Francisco could become a City of Biodiversity? Do we use the great work done by other cities as inspiration to celebrate our relationship with the natural world, or in friendly competition with them to become the “greenest”? How can San Franciscans...
Topics: biodiversity, species, habitats, nature, nature in the city, urban nature, flowers, butterflies,...
Doesn't European and American history in San Francisco begin with genocide? What does this mean in practice? Today, we have the chance to talk with people who descend from some of those who lived here before 1775, when Europeans arrived. We can't change what happened, but history is ongoing, including assumptions we hold today. What can we learn about San Francisco, the US, Europe, the Ohlone and Native America from this dialogue? Can "we" change who "we" are? The Ohlone...
Topics: Ohlone, Native Americans, genocide, survival, Alcatraz, American Indians, Indian peoples,...
Gopal Dayaneni (Movement Generation) and Jason Mark (editor, Sierra Magazine ) discuss urbanity and ecological crisis from their ultra-local, regional, and national perspectives of environmental and ecological justice.
Topics: devolution, democratization, resources, localization, distribution, justice, ecological justice,...
Lauren Coodley ’s new biography of Sinclair dubs him a “California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual”. She sheds light on his remarkable life as the writer who exposed the meatpacking industry in The Jungle , the depradations of the oil industry, the wrongful prosecutions of Sacco and Vanzetti as well as the Wobblies, but Coodley reveals a previously under-appreciated side of Sinclair: his feminism. Jay Martin joins the discussion to focus on Sinclair’s momentous 1934 California...
Topics: Upton Sinclair, feminism, EPIC, End Poverty in California, 1934 Governor's race, California...
Art & Politics: Chris “L7” Cuadrado Few local artists have combined the refined skills of a fine artist with the blistering edge of anti-colonial and liberationist critique that L7 has. He has an incredible body of work and offers a show-and-tell about how his politics have shaped his stunning productions. This is part of a series of solo artists giving a behind-the-scenes and indepth look at what inspires them in the interrelationship between art and politics.
Topics: Art, politics, UC Santa Cruz, Ricardo Flores Magon, Zapatistas, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism,...
Gretchen Hildebrand reminisces about her experiences in and around South Park during the dotcom bubble and beyond.
Topics: South Park, SOMA, San Francisco, 1990s, dotcom
A discussion among adjunct faculty (aka temp teachers), City College of San Francisco advocates and defenders, and Student Debt activists—how to understand the current neoliberal-imposed crisis in higher education, and what is a future worth fighting for? With Joe Berry of COCAL , Christian Nagler from the recent unionizing success at the San Francisco Art Institute, Wendy Kaufmyn and Lalo Gonzalez from CCSF.
Topics: adjuncts, temporary teaching, visiting faculty, City College of San Francisco, ACCJC, student debt,...
Public Art and Murals: Controversy, Neglect, Restoration Not always seen by all as a public benefit, public art faces sometimes quiet neglect, sometimes outrage and controversy. Earlier this year, San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck brought attention to the appeal to remove the Pioneer Monument’s “Early Days” statue of a subjugated and emaciated indigenous figure in Civic Center. Calling for a rehearing, she wrote a poem each day—55 in all—until the Board of Appeals granted one...
Topics: murals, statues, public art, tagging, vandalism, racism, zionism, poetry, Indigenous San Francisco,...
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...
For the Record: Eyewitness Testimonies of the police murder of Luis Gongora Pat Luis Góngora Pat was a Mayan indigenous man, murdered by San Francisco police officers on April 7, 2016 on Shotwell Street near 19th Street in the Mission. His killing came in the wake of other homicides by police of Black and Brown communities members. His family pursued every legal avenue available, including a civil case which was settled in January 2019. Three and a half years later, the story of this brutal...
Topics: Police shootings, police murder, police killings, homeless, Mayan, indigenous, day laborer, Mission...
Haight Ashbury Community Radio dramatization of water lot speculation in early San Francisco.
Topics: real estate, water lots, speculation
satirical advertisement for the May 12, 1984 End of the World's Fair held in San Francisco.
Topics: satire, Reagan, subversive culture, humor
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,...
Decades of displacement and eviction have reached another crescendo during 2013-14. Key activists from the 1990s to the present will share tactics and strategies as the war enters its latest stages. With James Tracy with his new book Dispatches Against Displacement , Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project and Maria Zamudio of Causa Justa .
Topics: housing, evictons, anti-eviction mapping project, Causa Justa, Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition,...
In recent years, much has made about the opposition between urban strategies and urban tactics. One is supposedly rooted in technocratic control of the city by a planning elite, the other is the response of artists and activists determined to reclaim the right to an environment generated by, and for, citizens themselves. Rebar has explored this territory through tactical urban interventions -- both sactioned and unsanctioned -- but is also interested in going beyond the simple opposition...
Topics: design, tactical urbanism, urbanism, public space, park(ing) day, intervention, art, commons,...
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 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
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
Rigo 95, Rigo 23, Rigo Rigo Rigo! Heâll be here to give us a taste of his amazing work, from huge mosaics and building-size murals, street sign satires, and commemorative sculptures. Come and meet one of the giants of our local scene, who also happens to be an international star too, and yet is one of the most relaxed people youâll ever meet.
Topics: murals, sculpture, public art
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...
Mat Callahan and Lincoln Cushing present an incredible slide show of dozens of rock and political posters from the 1960s and1970s, discussing the role of music and art in the politics of the era, and the way the commercial culture worked to co-opt and reintegrate that burst of creativity into the demands of consumer capitalism.
Topics: Rock, posters, art, Bill Graham, KMPX, KSAN, politics, festival, rock concerts, capitalism
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
Foxconn, the world's biggest contract manufacturer, employs more than one million people in China alone, working for Apple and many other brands. Foxconn's workers, the iSlaves, face horrendous working conditions while producing iPhones and iPads. In 2010 a series of worker suicides at Chinese Foxconn factories drew world-wide attention. The situation has not changed much since: instead of improving conditions, Foxconn accelerated the relocation of factories to the Chinese hinterland, and still...
Topics: China, Foxconn, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iSlave, iPod, working class, class struggle, strikes, riots,...
Before San Francisco: Spanish and Mexican Peninsula From the original encounters between local indigenous peoples and the first Spanish arrivals, to the spread of the disruptive Mission cattle-based economy, Mexican independence, and eventual abolition of Indian slavery, the peninsula that became San Francisco had a fascinating and overlooked pre-urban history. Author Adriana Camarena discusses the fragility of Mexico after its independence from Spain, the multiple efforts to secede, and the...
Topics: Mission Dolores, Mission economy, Mexico, Mexican independence, Spanish empire, secession,...
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
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
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
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
Music, Art, & Politics of 1967: Was it all peace and love or did the anti-war movement really define the era? A conversational antidote to the narrow interpretation of a memorable summer in the City. With Calvin Welch ( author , activist, and USF Faculty), original Digger Judy Goldhaft ( Planet Drum Foundation ), Mat Callahan ( The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in SF, 1965-75 ), and Pam Brennan ( Haight Ashbury Flower Power Walking...
Topics: Haight-Ashbury, Freaks, Hippies, Summer of Love, Vietnam, Vietnam War, anti-war, diggers, free,...
The City and Lennar Corporation are promulgating a redevelopment plan, but what about ecology, wildlife and the human community? Come learn about ArcEcology's recent report that illustrates brand new and exciting alternatives for the Bayview-Hunter's Point Redevelopment. How is Candlestick Point State Recreation Area affected? Isn't Bayview-Hunter's Point entitled to its own Crissy Field? How can (re)development benefit the current residents and be driven by their needs and wants? (Saul Bloom,...
Topics: redevelopment, toxic waste, Yosemite slough, Candlestick Point, Hunter's Point, Navy Base,...
(This Talk's recording started about 5 minutes in, after the introduction. The first voice is Sin Sirocco.) A panel of ex-cons discussing the myriad ways resistance continues and perseveres behind bars, and how such herstories are, or are not, recorded and celebrated. Featuring: Ida McCray, former black conscious feminist prisoner. Supporter of love and life for all: present educator; lifetime involvement to make a better world gang; Rita Bo Brown has been a prison abolitionist for 40 years. An...
Topics: jail, prisons, Prison-Industrial Complex, women, feminism, Black Panthers, Hunters Point Riot,...
Crossing centuries and social mores, editors Ivy Anderson and Devon Angus ( Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute ) and author Clare Sears ( Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco ) take us into 19th Century San Francisco’s underworld of prostitutes, cross dressers, and others who transgressed the strict gender norms of the time. We look at how normative gender and sexuality were policed and created by widespread mid-1800s...
Topics: gender, sexuality, sex work, transgender, cross-dressing, crime, punishment, normative, Barbary...
Ellen Ullman writes in her new book Life in Code “The penetration of technology into the interstices of human existence is nearly complete,” and then demystifes how humans turn their intentions and ideas into the computer codes that are the language of computers. Katja Schwaller puts “Twitterlandia” under the microscope of her critical gaze, showing how the reconfiguration of mid-Market embodies a larger capture and repurposing of public space by private interests. And ...
Topics: software, coding, commons, Twitterlandia, tech tax, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, programming,...
A talk on the coloniality of power and knowledge, transmodernity, border knowledge, indigenous socialism and the socialization of power, solidarity economies, and other contemporary practices, theories and radical political alternatives emerging from the Global South. The panelists will discuss autonomous self-activity in Venezuela, Amazonian social forums, poly-culturality, global indigenous movements, the conditions and politics of knowledge production during the early colonization of the...
Topics: Indigenous movements, theory, exteriority, mestizo, anti-colonialism, socialism, modernism
How Can Making Products Locally From Recyclables Solve Local Economic Challenges? "We need to make products locally from local recyclables." said Peter Berg. "Remanufacturing provides meaningful work, closes the energy loop, and stimulates creativity. It is a practical response to the economic slump that builds on our physical and human resources." Featuring: Neil Seldman, President of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute For Local Self-Reliance, Peter Berg, Planet Drum...
Topics: Recycling, waste, remanufacturing, materials, sustainability, green jobs, work
Susan Greene is a public artist, activist, educator and clinical psychologist. Her practice straddles a range of cultural arenas, focusing on borders, migrations, decolonization and memory. Greene is one of four Jewish American women artists who in 1989 founded the ongoing âBreak the Silence Mural Projectâ in solidarity with Palestine. This was part of the ongoing Shaping San Francisco Talks series at CounterPULSE, held May 27, 2009.
Topics: Art, politics, murals, borders, migrations, decolonization, Palestine, Israel
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
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,...
