Civic

As Vice President Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border on Friday to tour a detention facility and meet with people who have made the journey to the United States, we talked with San Francisco resident Soledad Castillo, who left Honduras at age 14. She is one of the narrators in a Voice of Witness oral history collection called “Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America.” She shared some of the hardships she faced and how she was able to pursue her education despite them, and reflected on US immigration policy.

California's remaining restrictions pertain to mega-events, unvaccinated people, healthcare facilities, and settings serving children, and the guidelines say little about social distancing. Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatrics – infectious diseases and of health research and policy at Stanford University, and Dr. Lee Riley, professor of infectious diseases at the School of Public Health in the division of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley discuss the relative benefit of social distancing in concert with other prevention measures and under what circumstances distancing still makes sense.

With the state emerging from a pandemic that prompted emergency action and investment to bring people living on the street indoors, and after recent pledges from state and local officials to invest into solutions to homelessness, local nonprofit leaders discuss what long-lasting solutions might look like. In these highlights from a recent panel discussion hosted by the nonprofit At the Crossroads, Joe Wilson from Hospitality House, Mary Howe from Homeless Youth Alliance, Charles Lerner from At the Crossroads, and Julia Arroyo from the Young Women’s Freedom Center outline the scale of investment that might be needed, and why decisions should be made with input from people with lived experience.

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Local and state officials have been announcing their intentions to invest billions into addressing homelessness, and two reports laying out strategies to bring the majority of unsheltered people in the region indoors have made headlines in recent months. Tomiquia Moss, founder and CEO of AllHome, describes the need for more investment across different interventions to reduce the pressure to prioritize those who have the most complex and chronic needs over those who could exit homelessness with shorter-term help, or over prevention strategies. AllHome’s regional plan for reducing homelessness by 75% over the next three years calls for simultaneous investment in interim housing, permanent placements and prevention strategies.

Alcatraz Island is once again drawing tourists from around the world. Visitors arriving on the island will see signage proclaiming “Indian Land!” as it would have appeared 50 years ago. A reminder that beyond the stories of prison escapes “The Rock” was the place that lit the spark for the native American rights movement in North America. We talked with the daughter of one of those occupiers about that legacy.

More than 20 years ago, a filmmaker documented the lives of a group of people in San Francisco exploring gender and what it means to be transgender, to create a film called "Gendernauts." Now Monika Treut has directed and written a new film, “Genderation,” in which she follows up with these same protagonists to see how shifting social scenes, political climate and individual circumstances of their lives have affected them. Treut and poet and documentary protagonist Max Wolf Valerio reflect on changes in the city and the nation.

Hummingbird Farm provides organic food as well as medicinal plants, and serves as a community and education hub in particular for young people. Tere Almaguer, an environmental justice organizer with PODER, which operates the farm, talked with “Civic” about how the drought has already had an impact, and how the group has adapted to years of inconsistent rainfall.

Freedom of information advocates and journalists have criticized a number of instances in which law enforcement officers arrested, detained, or even injured reporters at work covering protests in California. In response, state Senator Mike McGuire authored SB 98, which aims to codify journalists’ right to access demonstrations. As the proposal makes its way through the legislature, David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, discusses the context for the bill and some of the ways in which current protections for journalists fall short.