Past, Present, & Precious

Can I live?

This is one of the many streams of thought spray-painted throughout Mission streets.

But everyone seems to be asking themselves the similar question.

How does a four-year-old girl with no history of asthma in her family suffer from respiratory problems? Read Bryan Gibel’s story on the high asthma rates experienced in the Mission District due to sub-standard housing.

The oldest neighborhood in the city with its many aging buildings could use some resources. And what about all that federal stimulus money? How is it trickling down and where are the puddles of money forming?

Of the $787 billion distributed by Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, approximately $2.8 million have been invested in the Mission. A little over half of that has been given to housing projects such as Casa de La Raza and Mission Plaza Apartments for new construction, rehabilitation, and loan management programs. Check out this interactive google map, compliments of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, to see what other entities have stood to benefit.

How about your $15 for a Mission Gráfica silkscreen workshop? Three decades and 4,000 historical prints later, Gráfica still offers instruction to anybody and everybody in the old school techniques of poster and silkscreen art at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts.

For a synopsis of the many to dos in the Mission this weekend, make sure to check in with Justin Juul’s weekender. Also, be on the look out for a special edition of Mission Eyes–eyes-eyes as Brooke Minters takes on the movie Precious, featuring her very own cousin, Xosha Roquemore.