With about two dozen people present, a coalition of activists from the Mission district held a last-minute press conference at the 24th Street BART station to condemn plans by mayoral candidate Angela Alioto to repeal the city’s blanket sanctuary status for immigrants. The gathering happened on Friday afternoon, a day after Alioto made the plans public. As reported in the...
“London, Mayor Deblasio # is [REDACTED]. Bill, London’s # is [REDACTED],” reads e-mail from VC and mega donor Ron Conway earlier this month told the Chronicle he’s just too busy to get involved in this year’s mayoral election “I agree that the mayor’s race in San Francisco is important,” the tech titan explained to the paper of record, “but there...
Mexican presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador made an appearance in the Mission District Monday evening, drawing a crowd of more than 200 supporters who welcomed him to the Grand Theater, now Gray Area, on Mission Street with cheers, chants, and signs. “Es un honor luchar con Obrador,” they chanted, or, “It’s an honor to fight with Obrador.” With two...
In response to an executive order stripping sanctuary cities of federal funding signed Wednesday morning by President Donald Trump, immigrants, nonprofit organizers and city legislators rallied in front of City Hall to publicly commit to maintaining protections for immigrants and to reassure one another. “Your local government is with you,” said District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen. “We’re going to protect...
At the StoreFrontLab on Shotwell Street Friday, the floor was strewn with protest posters and banners, and neighbors sat together at long tables creating still more of them. The community space has a history of planning events centered on social justice and activism. Jacob Palmer, a curator there, said the space had hosted several sign-making events in preparation for protests...
Workers at San Francisco General Hospital protested the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act in front of their workplace Friday, saying rolling back the program would impact both patients and workers’ ability to care for them. On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised repeatedly to overturn the health care program enacted by his predecessor, and on Friday, he...
Frustrations over San Francisco’s homeless encampments became palpable on November 8 when voters overwhelmingly supported Proposition Q, a ballot measure that allows city workers to clear the city’s sidewalks of tents with a 24-hour notice. The measure dictates that encampment residents forced to relocate are connected with shelter and storage for their personal property. But with not nearly enough housing or shelter...
When it comes to doing business, Leaf isn’t discrete. The friendly 25-year-old saunters around Dolores Park in San Francisco with a big teddy bear on his shoulder and a ring of plastic marijuana leaves around his neck. You can’t miss him. Selling cannabis is his trade, one he won’t quit anytime soon. Yes, recreational marijuana was just legalized in California...
Hillary Ronen, a former immigrant rights attorney in the Mission District and the legislative aide of Supervisor David Campos, will become his replacement in January when she’s sworn into office after handedly winning her supervisor’s race. On election night, she was a mixture of ecstatic and horrified — she beat her main opponent, Joshua Arce, 57 to 30 percent, but...
Traduccion en español aquí. San Francisco progressives and free speech advocates have begun bracing for the worst from the incoming Trump administration by developing legal strategies and plans for political mobilization. Members of the National Lawyers’ Guild’s San Francisco chapter set the tone for a Mission District panel discussion at 518 Valencia, the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics,...
The array of sticky notes full of positive, inclusive, hopeful messages written by passerby at 16th and Mission streets will be taken down and preserved on Friday evening, artists who organized the public participatory art installation say. Though they originally planned to remove the notes the same day, the “Dumbledore’s Army Guerillas” have kept the wall open to messages all week. To protect...
Amidst the morning rush, commuters are stopping at the 16th and Mission BART plaza to leave messages of empathy and mutual support for each other in the wake of a turbulent election season that saw Donald Trump clinch the presidency. Muriel MacDonald is one of the organizers of the “Wall of Empathy,” a participatory art project at 16th Street, 24th...
Two occasional reporters for Mission Local spent Election Day in northern California where thousands of small growers will be affected by the legalization of marijuana, this is one of their reports. Part 1 is here. In Humboldt County, California they say that the last hippy died when marijuana began to fetch more than a $1,000 a pound. If that is true, Tuesday’s...
Two occasional writers for Mission Local offer us a break from bad election news. They spent Election Day in the Emerald Triangle and filed this report. Humboldt County Reacts to Prop 64 from Alan Toth on Vimeo.
For the third time in three days, San Francisco protesters took to the streets and rallied against the president-elect, Donald Trump, this time in a student-led march that went from the Mission District to City Hall. It was the second student protest this week, following a city-wide walk-out on Thursday that saw thousands flock to the streets. Teens and twenty-somethings from San Francisco high...
