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
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,...
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
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 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,...
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
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
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,...
Why has the Bay Area been such a cauldron for the melding of art and politics? And what did a period of heightened gentrification do to San Francisco's radical culture? Komotion International, the legendary artist collective and performance, music, and art space -- which nurtured musicians like Michael Franti, Consolidated, and Primus -- epitomized the spirt of rebellion and creativity, leaving a deep mark. Collective co-founders Robin Ballinger and Mat Callahan discuss Komotion's glory years...
Topics: Music, punk, underground, San Francisco, 1980s, 1990s, Komotion, world music
Miranda Bergman , a Mission District resident for many decades and local icon, has been painting public murals since the 1970s when she started as a member of the Haight Ashbury muralists. Her involvement in Central America, Palestine, and women’s politics has shaped her participation in epic works such as Maestrapeace , a Placa mural in Balmy Alley, and many others around the Bay Area and the world.
Topics: Art, politics, communism, San Francisco, 1960s, murals, public art, community murals, Palestine,...
A deeply informed, irreverent tour through San Francisco before the automobile took over half the City’s physical terrain. Historic photos illustrate many stories, including how Haight Street was named, the City was dominated by steam-powered rail, and San Franciscans lived before parking was an issue! with Angus Macfarlane, Emiliano Echeverria , and David Gallagher .
Topics: Haight Street, Western Addition, 1851 Dexter map, streetcars, steam trains, cable cars,...
Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore perform their James Connolly-Easter Rising Tour 2016 singing Connolly’s songs along with others made famous in Ireland’s fight for independence. Elizabeth Creely adds stories of Irish Republicanism in San Francisco during that crucial period a century ago.
Topics: Irish, Ireland, Easter Rising, Easter Rebellion, Dublin, GPO, James Connolly, Irish Home Rule,...
Dramatized excerpt of Father Yorke speech during 1901 City Front Federation strike in San Francisco. Originally produced by Haight Ashbury Community Radio Project in 1980.
Topics: labor, capital, irish, Yorke
Part two of a four-part public discussion program based on 23 oral history interviews with local ecological activists. with Sam Schuchat (California Coastal Conservancy), Kirsten Schwind (Bay Localize), Harold Gilliam (SF Chronicle, SF Examiner) at Koret Auditorium, SF Main Library, 100 Larkin St, SF co-sponsored by the SF History Center Examining the Bay Area as a demonstration area and incubator of experiments that shaped the national and international ecological movements. What is the...
Topics: Ecology, Bay Area, San Francisco, conservation, environmentalism, urbanism, regionalism
a 1988/89 performance by Keith Hennessy. Twenty years ago Keith Hennessy created Saliva, an interdisciplinary dance-performance-ritual under a freeway in downtown San Francisco. Deep within the rage and grief of the AIDS crisis, Hennessy performed a ritualistic reclamation of the body, the queer male body, as holy. Video excerpts, live performance, historical context, and audience discussion combine to recreate this AIDS-era work of queer performance. Kirk Read and Philip Huang join the...
Topics: performance, AIDS, 1980s, Keith Hennessy, interdisciplinary, dance, ritual, San Francisco, gay,...
Public Knowledge artists-in-residence Bik Van der Pol have pulled a New Deal scale model of the City—based on 1938 aerial photographs—out of storage crates and into the light. Inspired by the Halprins’ 1970s collective creativity and community planning efforts, their project, “Take Part” will explore local histories with City neighborhood residents as library branches display relevant sections of the model beginning in early 2019. Creators of a 2017 cultural map of southeast San...
Topics: Maps, cartography, Southeast San Francisco, Public Library, WPA, 1938 map, wooden map, San...
APEN organizer Vivian Chang describes political organizing among the Laotian communities in Richmond and Oakland.
Topics: APEN, organizing, Laotian, Oakland, Richmond, environmental justice
Friends and neighbors from the Mission District, including Mission Archives and Conscious Youth Media Crew folks, came together at CounterPULSE as part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series on April 11, 2007, to screen raw footage of low-riders on Mission and other lost footage of the 1970s and 1980s. Ray Balbaran, Vero Majana, Roberto Hernandez, and dozens of others... Back in the late 1970s and early â80s Mission St. was home to a wild scene of lowriders every weekend. Bouncing,...
Topics: Mission District, Latino, Low riders, La Raza, The Lot, El Tecolote, Mission Archives, Conscious...
The Diggers served free food in an effort to address a massive influx of young people to the Haight during the Summer of Love and the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast Program for youth began soon after. Drawing from this same desire to reimagine food systems, food conspiracies flourished in communes in the early 1970s and the People’s Food System built a network of stores and distributors out of this collective framework. Three worker-owned cooperatives survive—including Other Avenues...
Topics: Cooperatives, co-ops, collectives, food systems, urban agriculture, food security, food...
From the book "Ten Years that Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78" author Alejandro Murguia reads an excerpt describing the weekly occupations of the Nicaraguan consulate in the Flood Building in the late 1970s.
Topics: Nicaragua, Sandinistas, consulate, Flood Building
50 years after the arrest of seven young men from the Mission District galvanized a movement, women gather who were active in creating the multi-faceted community response that grew out of the Los Siete Defense Committee. From Basta Ya! —the newspaper—to Centro de Salud and La Raza Information Center and a free breakfast program, explore a lasting legacy in this plática including Donna James Amador, Yolanda M. Lopez, Judy Drummond, and author Marjorie Heins ( Strictly Ghetto...
Topics: Los Siete de la Raza, latino, Mission District, Health clinic, Centro de Salud, Basta Ya!,...
The Jazz of Modern Basketball: Racism and Virtuosity at the Roots of the Golden State Warriors Shaping San Francisco’s Chris Carlsson digs into the long history of basketball as another season begins. The first African-American players entered the NBA in 1950, while black college stars led the USF Dons to consecutive national championships in 1955 and 1956, inventing a new style of aggressive defensive basketball. Today’s outspoken Warriors embody the decades-long Heritage in which...
Topics: Golden State Warriors, USF Dons, Adolph Rupp, racism, basketball, NBA, NCAA, WNBA, protest, Jim...
With translator Donald Nicholson-Smith. There is a grain of truth in the stereotypical view that Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, as two leading lights of the Situationist International, stood for two opposite poles of the movement: the objective Debord versus the subjective Vaneigem: Marxism versus anarchism: icy cerebrality versus sensualism: and, of course, The Society of the Spectacle versus The Revolution of Everyday Life --the two major programmatic books of the Situationist International,...
Topics: Situationists, Raoul Vaneigem, Donald Nicholson-Smith, France, radicalism, Debord, Society of the...
Amidst a general enthusiasm and push for a ânew Green economyâ weâll take a look at both the kinds of work that get labeled green, and how the logic of capitalism impedes a deeper ecological transformation. Jason Mark ("Building the Green Economy," Alemany Farm), Chris Carlsson ("Nowtopia," Shaping San Francisco), and Mary Rick (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies).
Topics: Green Jobs, Green New Deal, Green Economy, Sustainability, small business, government, regulation,...
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,...
Josh Switzky, Steve Wertheim, John Elberling and others look at the effort to redesign and rethink the 4th Street corridor as it becomes the new north-south subway route. New public spaces are being opened in the many underutilized alleys, while the demographic shifts of SOMA continue apace.
Topics: planning, SOMA, tech economy, jobs, upzoning, subway, 4th Street
The common wild species in cities—pigeons, dandelions, snails—are at best unloved. But writer Nathanael Johnson and artist Mona Caron ask us to give our attention to the urban wilderness. Learning to truly see our nonhuman neighbors can make life richer, and might just be the first step in more complex understandings of the wild and of ourselves in nature. Jason Mark ( Sierra editor) moderates. Co-hosted by Nature in the City
Topics: Weeds, public art, species, habitats, crows, pigeons, ants, gingkos, wild, wilderness, wild...
The seven young men who became iconic heroes of San Francisco's left and Latino political ferment in the 1970s were eventually acquitted of murder. While the campaign to defend them led to an explosion of social organizing, we know little about how these men's lives developed in the years that followed, losing track of real people in the mists of political legitimacy and hero-worship. Vero Majano takes a look at what happened to Los Siete in the decades since the famous trial, and gives us a...
Topics: Los Siete, La Raza, Latino, San Francisco, Mission, 1970s, New Left, brown power, daily life,...
Endangered Buses is an artwork that wrapped four San Francisco Muni buses in images of locally endangered species. Reintroducing these animals into the urban scene that displaced them, the project dramatizes the priorities and conflicts which shape habitat for both humans and animals. Endangered Buses emerges from a vision of engaged and interdependent beings. Reports on the Tuolomne River Trust and SalmonAID, as well as a case study of Sharp Park Golf Course... With Endangerbuses' Todd Gilens,...
Topics: Endangered species, Endangerbus, Salmon, San Francisco garter snake, California red-legged frog,...
What is the general situation in post-earthquake Haiti? How does disaster particularly affect women and girls, gender issues, and culture? What are the courses of action for victims of gender-based violence in temporary encampments for over a million people left homeless by the earthquake. With so many schools destroyed, how do students get access to education? With Nadege Clitandre, founder and director of Haiti Soleil, which focuses on youth development and empowerment through the creation of...
Topics: Haiti, Disaster, Feminism, Women, UN, NGOs, violence, self-direction, self-organization, art,...
What does âclassâ or âcommunityâ mean? How does the newbie Midwesterner serving burgers at a Castro street diner relate to the landlord and shop owner âGay Communityâ spokesmen? How do the schisms between different classes of women, whether lesbian or bi or undefined, show up in daily life and local politics (or not)? How does fear of gender bending impact trans and intersexed people when it comes to paying the rent? Solidad de Costa, Keith Hennessy, and Michelle Tea.
Topics: class, community, gender, transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, worker, labor, economy, housing
Join us for a moderated panel about the issues associated with human density and respectful dog ownership in San Francisco. After decades of looking the other way, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area is proposing to limit off-leash activity to select portions of its lands. Commercial dog walkers and some animal rights groups are opposing this change, and have threatened the extreme measure of dismantling the national park altogether. In 1977/8, Harvey Milk put forth a city ordinance dubbed...
Topics: dogs, habitat, species, leashes, off-leash, GGNRA, National Areas, Recreation and Park Department,...
A Shaping San Francisco Talk held on Wed. Oct. 14, 2009 at CounterPULSE in San Francisco. Co-Sponsored by Global Commons Foundation Michelle Dizon, Filipino-American artist from LA, screens her installation video comparing the 2005 riots in France and the 1992 riots in LA, illuminating political issues of marginal citizenships, migration and exile, media and the erasure of memories of historical violence. The discussion will be centered around a criticism of the current predominance of video...
Topics: video, realism, representation, memory, history, post-colonialism, migration, citizenship, 1992 Los...
Does voting matter? Do you urge everyone around you to vote? What kinds of power do we gain or lose by participating in elections? What else can we do? Weâll hear from folks who believe in representative democracy, those who propose reforms, and those who reject it outright. Michael Med-o Whitson, Natasha Marsh (Calif League of Young Voters), James Rucker (colorofchange.org). Recorded Oct. 10, 2007 at CounterPULSE, part of the Shaping SF Talks series.
Topics: voting, elections, representative democracy, direct democracy, reforms
In Adriana Camarena's new work the most precarious residents of the Mission are the central storytellers. Theirs are 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 poverty by working hard, with the result that their dutifulness sometimes translates into absence for their kids. Lost in plain sight, young kids in gangs...
Topics: Mission District, gentrification, displacement, Homies, Migrants, immigration, mothers, sorrows,...
A 3-part radio program based on a Public Talk at CounterPULSE on March 8, 2006, under the Shaping San Francisco Spring Talks series. A historical look at how San Franciscans have fought for a human-centered city. From saving Telegraph Hill, stopping freeways, and resisting redevelopment, the corporate agenda has been thwarted again and again. Today new movements are again contesting the direction of the city. We'll have a look at the historic Burnham Plan and other ideas for reshaping the city....
Topics: anti-highrise, freeway revolt, citizens movements, saving Telegraph Hill, redevelopment
“Grange Future” celebrates the history and contemporary expression of ‘the grange idea.’ From the 19th century populist movement that backed the early campaign for an “information commons” in the form of Rural Free Mail delivery, to public banking and Farmers co-op banks, this vital movement is re-emerging to confront information and agricultural monopolists of our own era. Severine Fleming of Greenhorns leads a panel discussion with the Internet Archive 's Brewster...
Topics: Commons, internet, property, intellectual property, farming, grange, populism, Omni Commons,...
Join us for an information and strategies session on the subject of the upcoming US Social Forum, to be held in Detroit in June. Discussion will include a brief history of the Social Forums and a discussion of the role and uses of the US Social Forum in particular by members of groups from the Bay Area planning to participate. California Student Movement politics will also be in the mix. Moderator: Kathy Wallerstein. Student Movement: Zhivka Valiavicharska; Friendly Fire Collective: David...
Topics: Social Forum, World Social Forum, Detroit, student movement, UC, CSU, Community Colleges,...
Lou Dematteis is an extraordinary social documentarian, photographer and filmmaker. He has been taking photographs of the Mission District since the 1970s, capturing the low-rider scene of that era, and being at the first Carnavals and leaving us a stunning visual record. He has also covered the Nicaraguan Revolution into the mid-1980s, the depradations of the multinational oil industry in the Amazon, and more recently has been making movies, with his “The Other Barrio” capturing the...
Topics: Art and Politics, Low riders, Sandinistas, Nicaragua, Italy, Italians, photographer, documentary...
Kent Minault tells of the explosive first six months of the San Francisco Diggers. Featuring stories of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Tim Leary, Huey Newton, Emmett Grogan, Lenore Kandel, Richard Brautigan, and Gary Snyder. His chronicle charts the first Digger free food in the park, tense encounters with the police, the opening of the Digger Free Store, and the Invisible Circus at Glide Memorial Church. Accompanied by photos by Chuck Gould, and music by Peter Coyote. The evening chronicles...
Topics: Diggers, Summer of Love, Free, Free store, Free love, Free food, Glide Memorial Church, Invisible...
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
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
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
Traditional tune of the late 19th century that accompanied the bicycling boom of that era.
Topics: Bicycle, 19th century, traditional
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
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,...
The 2nd volume of George Katsiaficas's monumental study of Asian Revolutions, this provides a unique perspective on uprisings in nine places in East Asia over the past five decades. While the 2011 Arab Spring is well known, the wave of uprisings that swept East Asia in the 1980s became hardly visible. Katsiaficas relates Asian uprisings to predecessors in 1968 and shows their subsequent influence on the wave of uprisings that swept Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s. By empirically...
Topics: People Power, Uprisings, Asia, Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Tienamen Square, Taiwan,...
Mary Jean Robertson ("Voice of the Native Nations" KPOO-FM radio, 34d, 4th and 5th Wednesdays from 6-8 pm) and Tony Gonzalez (AIM-West, International Indian Treaty Council) speak about the importance of the Alcatraz occupation in 1969-70, and the many initiatives galvanized by the audacity of that event. The first part of the audio is the soundtrack from a movie "Alcatraz Is Not an Island" by Jim Fortier.
Topics: Alcatraz, 1969, 1970, Native Americans, Indians, Indigenous, AIM, American Indian Movement,...
Doing science and making culture are increasingly intertwined as more and more amateur naturalists crowdsource the multi-layered experience of life on this planet. Authors of two new books Mary Ellen Hannibal ( Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction ) and Ursula Heise ( Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species ) illuminate the tangled, dynamic processes of thinking and doing that help us understand where we are and what we...
Topics: Citizen Science, scientist, amateur, natural selection, Darwinism, cooperation, species, habitat,...
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
From free food to free stores, free money, and free communication, the Diggers defined a politics a half century ago that continues to exert a powerful influence on radicals today. Original participants in the Digger movement, Judy Goldhaft, Jane Lapiner, and David Simposon , describe the interventions, confrontations, and celebrations that ushered in the Death of Money, and later the Death of the Hippie. Eric Noble , Digger archivist, will show how archiving itself is a form of making history,...
Topics: Diggers, free, Haight-Ashbury, Death of Money, hippies, hip, beats, San Francisco Mime Troupe,...
A Shaping San Francisco Talk held at CounterPULSE, January 26, 2011: Golden Gate Park is a beautiful and complex landscape with a great diversity of natural, historic and recreational features. It is a much different place from, not only what it was before the city of San Francisco, but, increasingly, what John McLaren, it's visionary 19th century superintendent, envisioned for it as a sylvan retreat from urban life. We'll explore the natural history, the natural landscape, and the natural...
Topics: Golden Gate Park, environmental history, parks, parking, Frederick Law Olmsted, William Hammond...
Episode 1: "Attitude Adjustment Seminar" 30 minutes. :16 Introduction by Terry Hawkins 1:08 "Bad Attitude" theme written and performed by Janice Leiber :15 Introduction by Terry Hawkins 1:16 Sorry I'm Late by Pam Tranfield, voice Janice Leiber 2:24 Manuscript Found in a Typewriter by Christopher Winks, voice Terry Hawkins 1:05 Keep Jane's Fingers Dancing! by Adam Cornford, voices Adam and Janice 1:30 Letter: Bosso in The Can by R.M.-Atlanta, voice Karen Balke :20 Letter: Out...
Topics: work, wage-slavery, typing, offices, satire, humor
Peoples Food System, The Farm, and Saving San Bruno Mountain, Ecology Emerges-- Travel back in time to hear of urban farms, collectives distributing organic foods, the fight to save the mountain (San Bruno), and how the anti-war movement galvanized a movement to save the earth. Authors will read from essays in the book Ten Years That Shook the City: San Francisco 1968-78. With Pam Peirce, Jana Blankenship, David Schooley, and Chris Carlsson
Topics: Ecology, The Farm, San Bruno Mountain, People's Food System, Environmentalism, conservation, Save...
Shaping San Francisco Talk featuring K. Ruby Blume of the Institute for Urban Homesteading in Oakland, Esperanza Pallana of pluckandfeather.com and the East Bay Urban Agriculture Alliance, and Melinda Stone from Howtohomestead.org. A wide ranging discussion on what urban homesteading is, how one gets started, what some of the principles and philosophies underlying it are, and much more.
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Topics: urban homesteading, urban agriculture, food, urban game, rabbits, bees, food security, food...
Overcoming Work and Sacrifice Surprising numbers of people too often accept or encourage a âcollapse of civilizationâ as a necessary precondition for radical change. Come and discuss the 19th century visionary Paul LaFargueâs re-issued book âThe Right to Be Lazyâ along with our visions of a post-capitalist life that imagines a life of abundance, generosity, and cooperation. Editor Bernard Marszalek and Chris Carlsson (Nowtopia) discuss with the audience.
Topics: Work, Laziness, Wage-labor, consumption, economy, coops, sacrifice, volunteerism, business,...
Not long after the transit tunnels of Muni and Bart went in below Market Street in the '70s, a San Franciscan butterfly â the Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) discovered an ecosystem freshly lined with one of its larval food, or host trees: the London Plane sycamore (Plantanus acerifolia). Males fly among the treetops, females lay eggs on the leaves, caterpillars feed and pupate, and adult butterflies emerge. This creature's entire lifecycle has played out for years unheralded by...
Topics: butterflies, Tiger Swallowtail, London Plane trees, Sycamores, riparian corridors, canyons, urban...
Redesigning urban life off the grid. How can urban dwellers begin immediately to move towards self-sufficiency? Weâll have several permaculture practitioners presenting step-by-step recommendations for the next six months, a 1-year and a 3-5 year transitionâ¦K. Ruby (Inst. Of Urban Homesteading), Novella Carpenter (Ghost Town Farm), Kevin Bayuk (SF Permaculture Guild), Laura Allen (Greywater Guerrillas)
Topics: permaculture, graywater, rain catchment, ecology, urban agriculture, urban livestock, farming,...
With dynamically illustrated perspectives across the art form, hundreds of photographs and numerous essays have been curated by StencilArchive.orgâs founder, Russell Howze. Stencil Nation builds upon published works to give the most extensive and up-to-date history of stencil art, as well as how-to tips from the artists. Recorded April 15, 2009 at CounterPULSE, part of Shaping San Francisco's ongoing Art & Politics Talks series.
Topics: art, politics, stencils, graffiti, murals, urban art, street art
Local historian, geographer and author Gray Brechin ("Imperial San Francisco") gives an opinionated and sharp tour through the hidden legacy of the New Deal in San Francisco and California. He looks at buildings, murals, and more, with a clear exposition of the different agencies that organized the work: CCC, WPA, PWA, etc. Held at CounterPULSE, Nov. 12, 2008, as part of the ongoing Shaping San Francisco Talks series.
Topics: New Deal, WPA, Depression, 1930s, San Francisco, CCC, PWA, public works, FDR, Franklin Roosevelt
Prisoners and Politics: from the San Quentin Six to Pelican Bay California holds more prisoners than any other state while the U.S. incarcerates far more people than anywhere else on earth. During the 1960s and 1970s a political movement erupted among the imprisoned— Dan Berger ’s new book Captive Nation takes us through that political history. We welcome Luis “Bato” Talamantez and David Johnson — both original members of the San Quentin Six, and Caitlin Kelly Henry —...
Topics: prisons, prisoners, California Department of Corrections, injustice, San Quentin, San Quentin Six,...
Starhawk, Doug Bevington ("The Rebirth of Environmentalism"), Jay Rosenberg, Chris Carlsson. An open discussion with veterans of numerous political and ecological campaigns, in a broad attempt to think strategically about how to go beyond the narrow agendas of so many organizations, and the myopia that afflicts all too many eco-activists. From permaculture activism to eco-justice campaigns in Oakland and San Francisco, to a wider look at the deep incompatibility of capitalism and...
Topics: ecology, politics, ecopolitics, permaculture, urban farming, agriculture, gardening, community...
A critique of the idea of a global commons, the history and context of the commons under feudalism, demonstrating the boundary between 'commons' and 'commodity'. Also how Via Campesina is using the commons in "food sovereignty" politics âhow seed politics offers a model for international decommodification. Iain Boal and Raj Patel, part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series at CounterPULSE, recorded April 22, 2009.
Topics: commons, global, food security, food sovereignty, globalization, anti-globalization
What history teaches us about San Francisco and the Bay-Delta Estuary Ruth Askevold and Robin Grossinger from the San Francisco Estuary Institute present their amazing historical maps and discuss their groundbreaking work in "forensic ecology," which is contributing to restoration efforts and galvanizing public attitudes around the Bay. Derek Hitchcock also joins the conversation to discuss current restoration efforts he is engaged in on the Napa River, as well as contextualizing the...
Topics: San Francisco Bay, coastline, landfill, shellmounds, dikes, berms, riparian corridors, restoration,...
San Francisco-based muralist Jet Martinez talks about Art & Politics as part of the ongoing Shaping San Francisco Talks series at CounterPULSE. Martinez hails from Mexico originally, and he paints magical realist images of nature, incorporating metallic paints and repetitive geometric patterns (that in turn evoke both pre-industrial textiles and industrially homogenous designs) with natural forms from trees, leaves, and more.
Topics: art, politics, Shaping San Francisco, Talks, murals, magic realism
The S.F. Print Collective has been postering striking silk-screened images on the cityâs walls for years, speaking to politics, police, immigration, and much more. Slides and discussion from several of the Collectivistas... http://www.sfprintcollective.com/ Recorded Oct. 8, 2008 at CounterPULSE, part of the Shaping San Francisco Talks series.
Topics: art, politics, anti-eviction, housing, social movements, immigration, police
The Twin Peaks Bioregion is the hilly heart of San Franciscoâthe top of the city's watershedsâfrom the oak woodlands of Golden Gate Park to Glen Canyon, and from Hawk Hill to Buena Vista Park. Nature in the City has been talking for a couple of years about the heart of the city as a special place to which we should pay attention. Our vision for a Twin Peaks Bioregional Park would consolidate 10-12 different City jurisdictions into one management entity for the protection, restoration and...
Topics: Restoration, Nature, Cities, habitat, butterflies, wild corridors, native plants
A rumination on the last space for punks in San Francisco.
Topics: punks, epicenter, Mission, San Francisco
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,...
Join queer organizers from Pride at Work/HAVOQ and other community organizations to discuss gentrification, how the economy affects queer workers, and redefining the gay agenda. This recording was primarily of the Queer Agenda discussion, but also has the report-backs from the other groups at theend of the night. Reexamine what is seen as a queer issue in San Francisco, as we dig into our ongoing struggles for justice around issues that daily affect our lives and those in our communities. In a...
Topics: Queer, agenda, workers' rights, gentrification, class, rich and poor, unions, labor, human rights,...
In November 1938, California elected its first-ever liberal Democratic governor Culbert Olson, supported by a state-wide Popular Front coalition of liberals, unionists, communists, and other radicals. But by 1940 the Popular Front forces were already fracturing and from its wreckage emerged key elements of the Cold War. How did Communists help build this social movement, and how did the Communist Party undercut its own principles during WWII? And where did that leave California politics at the...
Topics: Cold war, communists, Communist Party USA, liberal democrats, Sam Yorty, John Tenney, HUAC, little...
Bending Over Backwards Audio Tour: Stop 4: Komotion International, an underground music and performance space at 2779 16th Street, 1986-1997.
Topics: music, punk, world beat, Robin Ballinger, Sasha Lilly, Komotion, 1980s, 1990s, San Francisco
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,...
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
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
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
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 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, Health Care, Women's Health Care
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,...
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,
Fred Glass ( From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement ), takes a long look at the labor history of California with Chris Carlsson ( Foundsf.org ), who focuses on the ebb and flow of class war in San Francisco.
Topics: Labor, unions, strikes, general strikes, San Francisco, California, Oakland, solidarity, mutual...
New Ways of Making History How do we “hold” (record/store) history now compared to the past? How do we “tell” history now, and has the relationship between archival sources and narrative arcs/presentation changed with digitalization? What do we learn from narration-free archival materials (a la Prelinger home movies, foundsf photo pages, etc.)? And popular attitudes towards history: who cares about footnotes? How are archivists beginning to shape new ways of making history public? Film...
Topics: History, Memory, Historiography, archives, archival, records, libraries, storage, media, abundance,...
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,...
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
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,...
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...
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,...
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,...
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,...
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
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,...
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,...
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
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
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 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
