Manny’s: The Future of San Francisco Freeways – State and Local Perspectives.

As we enter 2023, there are emerging discussions in San Francisco centered on freeway removal. The Central Freeway, in particular, has been highlighted as a good candidate for removal, as many locals view it as a longtime source of urban blight. This overpass carves up several neighborhoods and causes significant local pollution that affects nearby residents. According to recent studies, four of the ten most dangerous intersections in San Francisco are part of or underneath the Central Freeway.

It’s long been City policy to explore alternatives to the Central Freeway, and many people believe the removal would lead to benefits, such as desperately needed new housing, an expansion of public transit, and new parks within an SF neighborhood that is afforded the least amount of green space in the entire city. However, do San Franciscans have the appetite for freeway removal right now? What would the redevelopment plan look like once the freeway is removed? How can we ensure that our most disadvantaged communities are fully supported through any kind of freeway removal and redevelopment process? What happens to the traffic?

Join us at Manny’s for a panel discussion on freeway removal, and what it would mean for San Francisco.

Manny’s never turns away folks due to lack of funds. If you need a complementary ticket, please email the word “grapefruit” and the title of the event to angelina@welcometomannys.com

Want to support community members? By purchasing a “Pay It Forward” ticket you will allow us to provide free tickets to those who may not be able to afford entry otherwise and ensure we can create a diverse socio-economic audience that represents San Francisco.

About Our Panel

About Sam Moss:

Sam Moss is the Executive Director at Mission Housing, where he oversees the administration of all of Mission Housing’s assets. Sam ensures the organization’s consistent mission and financial objectives by performing the following duties personally or through subordinate managers.

He finds working in affordable housing very rewarding. He is thankful for his role and the employees that represent Mission Housing in the community while interacting and supporting residents in the Mission. Under Sam’s leadership, Mission Housing is currently building more than 1,000 affordable housing units in San Francisco.

About Emily Nguyen:

Emily Nguyen is a senior at Lick Wilmerding High School. She is the Chair and District 11 appointee of the San Francisco Youth Commission. On the Youth Commission, Emily authored a resolution highlighting the harmful impacts of freeways, past successful SF freeway removals, why the Central Freeway should come down, and next steps for the City to study the removal of the Central Freeway, which passed unanimously. As a Youth Commissioner, Emily has also advocated for funding Free Muni for all Youth, funding for the Department of Environment’s Climate Action Plan, car-free recreational spaces, and more. Outside of the Youth Commission, she is the Executive Director of San Francisco Ignite Leadership in Youth (SFILY), sits on the California State Superintendent’s Youth Advisory Council, and on the SFCTA Ocean Avenue Mobility Task Force.

About Raffaella Falchi Macias:

Raffaella Falchi Macias is the Executive Director of Youth Art Exchange, taking the reins in 2020 after more than 13 years as a faculty artist, director of programs, and most recently deputy director. She is an educator, designer and choreographer and holds a B.A. in psychology from UC Berkeley and a Masters in Architecture from California College of the Arts. She is an architectural designer with an emphasis on social design. She received a fellowship from CCA and worked with the Manguinhos favela community in Rio de Janeiro under the Brazilian architect Jorge Mario Jauregui and his Favela/Barrio project. She has spent over a decade working at the intersection of arts and youth development as an educator teaching architecture and dance to public high school students. She is also the founder and artistic director of Sambaxé dance company, and is a world dance faculty member for almost 2 decades at ODC in San Francisco. She is trilingual in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

About Senator Scott Weiner

Elected in November 2016, Senator Scott Wiener represents District 11 in the California State Senate. District 11 includes all of San Francisco, Broadmoor, Colma, and Daly City, as well as portions of South San Francisco.

In the Senate, Senator Wiener works to make housing more affordable, invest in our transportation systems, increase access to healthcare, support working families, meaningfully address climate change and the impacts of wildfires, reform our criminal justice system, reduce gun violence, reduce California’s high poverty rate, and safeguard and expand the rights of all communities, including immigrants and the LGBTQ community.

Senator Wiener has authored 42 bills that have been signed into law. Among them are SB 35, a landmark law to streamline housing approvals in cities not meeting their housing goals; SB 855, which makes California the national leader in mental health and addiction care access by requiring insurance companies to cover all medically necessary mental health and substance use disorder treatments; SB 822, which enacts the strongest net neutrality protections in the nation; SB 1045 and SB 40, which expand and strengthen California’s conservatorship laws to help individuals who are living on our streets with severe mental health and substance use disorders; SB 700, the largest investment in clean energy storage in California history; SB 923, which modernizes California’s eyewitness identification standards to ensure innocent people are not sent to prison; SB 136, which reduces mass incarceration by repealing California’s most commonly used sentence enhancement; SB 219, which protects LGBTQ seniors in long-term care facilities.

Senator Wiener is the immediate past chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, and serves as the Chair of the Senate Mental Health Caucus. He also serves as Chair of the Senate Housing Committee and the Senate Committee on Legislative Ethics, and is a member of the Public Safety Committee, Judiciary Committee, Governance and Finance Committee, Health Committee and Select Committee on Mental Health. He serves as Vice Chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and as the Senate’s Assistant Majority Whip. He is immediate past Chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus.

Before his election to the Senate, Senator Wiener served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing the district previously represented by Supervisor Harvey Milk. During his time on the Board of Supervisors, Senator Wiener authored a number of first-in-the-nation laws, including mandating fully paid parental leave for all working parents, requiring water recycling and solar power in new developments, and banning public spending in states with LGBTQ hate laws. He focused extensively on housing and public transportation, authoring laws to streamline approvals of affordable housing, to legalize new in-law units, and to tie public transportation funding to population growth.

Before his election to the Board of Supervisors, Senator Wiener spent 15 years practicing law: as a Deputy City Attorney in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, in private practice at Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe, and as a law clerk for Justice Alan Handler on the New Jersey Supreme Court. Senator Wiener co-chaired the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club, BALIF (the Bay Area’s LGBTQ bar association), and the San Francisco LGBTQ Community Center, as well as serving on the national board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization.