Rightnowish

I met Mu'min years ago through creative Bay Area circles, now I count her as a friend, and she's flourished in her craft. From her film, Jinn, winning the SXSW Special Jury Recognition Award for Writing to writing for acclaimed shows, Queen Sugar, the Blindspotting series, Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and Insecure.

But way before all of that, Nijla attended UC Berkeley, where her experiences in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program left an indelible mark. She still writes poetry to this day.

In late April Mu’min shared some of her work with the Bay Podcast's Maria Esquinca in celebration of National Poetry Month.

This week we're sharing that episode with you.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Babette Thomas is searching for artistic Black utopias.

Thomas is the host of the latest season of SFMOMA's Raw Material podcast. In their series, "Visions of Black Futurity," they look at representation, identity and different historical through-lines in Black Art. Woven into the podcast is the story of curator Evangeline "EJ" Montgomery, a major player in the Black Arts scene. And EJ began her storied career in the 60s, right here in California, creating influential exhibits in the East Bay.

This week on Rightnowish, we're featuring an episode that also dives into the stories of the famed Sci-Fi author Octavia Butler, landscape painter Richard Mayhew, and local visual artist Sydney Cain aka Sage Stargate (who has also been featured on Rightnowish). Throughout, Thomas hones in on the question, “Where will we host our Black art spaces of the future?”

Listen to the full series on the "Raw Material" page.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mission District-based muralist Josué Rojas and his mother, Esther García are a dynamic duo.

Josué has painted murals across San Francisco and beyond, often using images that celebrate culture and community. Esther picked up painting during the pandemic, but she's been leaving her mark on the neighborhood for decades.

As she sold small goods on the street, Esther built a reputation for her sage-like presence around the way. Josué remembers times when she'd be asked to pray over people, and she'd kindly oblige.

Her presence is so strong that she got in good with local artists collectives, like the Chulita Vinyl Club. And the artist JR incorporated Esther's image into The Chronicles of San Francisco, a gigantic mural that was in the main entrance to the San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art.

Although Esther didn't understand Josué's art career at first, she watched Josue's journey as he earned a Masters of Fine Arts from Boston University, served as the executive director of Acción Latina and became a well-respected muralists on the streets of his hometown.  

Now, at 75, Esther has been learning how to paint under the tutelage of one very demanding teacher: her son. And she tells me that she doesn't like what they paint-- she loves it.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terisa's poetry emerges from climate change and its impact on marginalized communities. She also writes poems from the perspective of her hyphenated identity: raised in San Francisco with deep Samoan roots.

In our conversation, Terisa looks back at January's underwater eruption that caused massive tsunamis in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and other nations in Oceania. Initially, the disaster made headlines and relief efforts filled social media feeds, but Terisa questions what sustained care looks like for those impacted by a changing global climate.

After speaking on this topic at venues across the country and around the world, even addressing members of the United Nations, Terisa Siagatonu discusses climate justice and how she "languages" her experience.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a sunny afternoon in McLaren Park in San Francisco's Excelsior District. Throngs of people are gathered on either side of a roadway that snakes down a steep hill. As they watch, a person riding what looks like a giant black Converse sneaker whooshes past. Coming up close behind it, a cast-iron bathtub whizzes by on what could’ve been the frame of a lawn mower. Then another driver — this one clinging for dear life onto what looks like a torpedo — hurtles by, inches off the ground.

This was the first Artists' Soapbox Derby held by the San Francisco Museum of Art — what we now know as SFMOMA — on May 18, 1975. It was a race for homemade cars. No engines! You just needed to be able to roll, steer and stop.

On April 10, SFMOMA is reviving its Soapbox Derby in McLaren Park. Homemade cars that can coast under the power of their own gravity will have their turn in the spotlight, careening down an 800-foot hill. It’s free and open to the public.

This week, we’re airing an episode from KQED’s Bay Curious that takes us back to the first Soapbox Derby in 1975 and it’s surprising twists in the road. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over punchy-uptempo beats with stupid-heavy bass lines, Pallaví AKA Fijiana turns social tropes on their heads. Her evocative visuals mix sexuality with tradition while her lyrics address appropriation and diaspora.

Fijiana says her Indo-Fijian heritage, her Richmond upbringing and rap influences like Lil Kim and Ladybug Mecca of Digable Planets, helped create the artist and person she is today.

In making music that pushes social norms, she's encountered backlash with a heavy dose of sexism. Fijiana says a guiding light has been conversations with her father and his acceptance of her work.

This week Fijiana talks to us about all of that, and her latest album Thirst.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For some young folks, there comes a time when they age out of child-serving social services. Their safety nets get thinner and they can struggle to find their footing with limited resources or experience. These sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds are called "transitional age youth" or TAY.

This is the crowd that Desire Johnson-Forte helps. She cares because she was once one of them.

Desire is currently the Executive Director of The BIZ (Black Intergenerational Zeal) Stoop. The organization has three main goals: First, to increase Black life expectancy through group conversations addressing fatalism. Second, helping young folks from the east bay tell their stories and shifting public narratives about them. Third, the Biz Stoop helps young people earn a living wage and build businesses through coaching, economic education and financial support.

Desire has been doing thins kind of work since she was a young person transitioning into adulthood, dealing with all that life threw at her.

This week Desire shares a bit of her story, why her work is important right now, and how she grew from a place where she needed assistance to being the person who provides.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A storm's been brewing over legal cannabis in Oakland. And Chaney Turner thinks it has the potential to wash away small business owners-- especially People of Color.

Chaney Turner,  current Chair of the Oakland Cannabis Commission, has seen robberies reach new heights as organized heists hit cannabis supply chains, from grow operations to retailers. It was especially intense during the summer of 2020, but this past fall, another string of caravan burglaries shook the industry, and resulted in distressed workers and millions in lost inventory.

Turner says the Oakland Police Department's response to the burglaries was disappointing and frustrating to business owners. Turner heard retailers experienced slow response times and poor communication from OPD. Some operators were also told to take matters into their own hands by arming themselves. While they have seen some improvement in communication from the police, for cannabis operators in Oakland paying sky high taxes, the approach still leaves something to be desired.

On this week's show Turner talks about the state of legalized marijuana and how it intersects with these robberies, banking, equity, community safety, and how Turner understand why some would hesitate to leave the illicit market.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just imagine: you're a poet whose starting out on the scene and you've spent weeks working up the courage to share your work. You get to the venue there’s a raucous crowd of OG poets, they're cheering, but they're also waiting to see what's up with each person as the step to the mic. If the OG poets think your poem is a cheap knockoff of someone else's work, they'll throw peanut shells against the bar's aluminum walls. That sound will stay with you.

This might sound chaotic and harsh (and don't worry this is not how open mics in the bay roll these days) but it was the environment where Spanglish speaking pocho poet Josiah Luis Alderete sharpened his performance chops. In the mid '80s and '90s, Thursday nights at Cafe Babar in the Mission District was an epicenter for San Francisco's poetry scene.

Cafe Babar was the spot. Josiah remembers poets would show up from the East Bay, the Fillmore, even New York. Sitting on wooden benches, you could hear the words of Julia Vinograd, Juan Felipe Herrera, David Lerner, David West and Jack Micheline.

"Babar really opened my eyes and my heart to what poetry was. I remember leaving that place like leaving the church after you get saved... This is flor y canto! This is poesía! That fucking fire coming out of mouth! That truth." 

In our conversation, poet Josiah shares some literary history of the Mission, why Axolotl's show up in his work, and how co-owing Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery is helping keep the Mission's poetry scene alive.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices