The “No on P” signs, which have blanketed Sonoma County in October, hit Joe Munson where it hurt: in his moral compass. Arrested about 50 times you’d expect Oaky Joe to be in favor of defunding the police, which Measure P has called for, along with more transparency and civilian oversight. But don’t judge the […]
“Tension between the need for urban progress and the ways that progress can crush vulnerable communities is evident all around.” – Brahinsky and Tarr on the city of San Francisco Alexander Tarr explains in the acknowledges at the back of A People’s Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area, which he co-authored with Rachel Brahinsky, […]
Do all world historical facts and personage occur twice? The first time as tragedy, the second as farce? Marx apparently thought so. His often quoted comment on that subject appears in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. It’s the best part of that book, though there’s also a terrific description of Parisian bohemia and bohemians. […]
Election Day this November rightly occupies the minds and hearts of American citizens, no matter what their political affiliations. The future of the republic itself is at stake. But the U.S. isn’t the only country in the world with an upcoming election, and where the system of government is at issue. Chile, the South American […]
If you’re still wondering if you’ll vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in November—that is, if Trump doesn’t sabotage the party before than—you might watch the Netflix series, Babylon Berlin, which is set in Weimar Germany in the late 1920s. Based on the novels of German author Volker Kutscher, it was originally broadcast on […]
I took a stand the other day by taking a knee and kept it for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the same amount of time that Derek Chauvin
Only time will tell whether Chesa Boudin, the current San Francisco DA, walks in the footsteps of S.F. DA Terence Hallinan, whose life and times Fred Gardner has so ably chronicled. But after six months in office—he took over in January 2020—Boudin is off to a good start. Hallinan, who died on January 17, 2020, […]
Meat is the enemy! That’s the mantra I hear these days from nearly all sides of the political spectrum. In The New York Times author, Jonathan Safran Foer, recently wrote, “We cannot protect our environment while continuing to eat meat regularly.” He added, “We cannot protect against pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly.” In the latest […]
These days, citizen journalists are almost everywhere reporting on the ebb and flow of the virus, from Seattle and San Francisco to Chicago and New York
Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, And The Stoning Of San Francisco by Alia Volz Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 435 pages; April 20, 2020; $27 Poet George Sterling called San Francisco “the cool grey city of love.” Journalist Gary Kamiya borrowed Sterling’s phrase for his book about San Francisco titled Cool Gray City of Love, which offers 49 views […]
Last January, before all hell broke loose, Seven Stories Press republished Upton Sinclair’s 891-page anthology, The Cry for Justice, subtitled An Anthology of Social Protest with the original introduction by Jack London and a new introduction by Chris Hedges. The book says as much if not more about Sinclair than it does about social protest movements and prompts […]