Good afternoon readers:

We have another pandemic memory for you. This one from Rani Gill, who writes about the year “as a blur with one day like the next.”

“What I remember most clearly is the Black Lives Matter protest at Dolores Park in June — that stood out as a watershed moment. The feeling of the crowd and the possibility of change was incredible.”

On Church Street. Photo by Rani Gill

I remember that day as well. I was out in the park covering it with two other Mission Localers. Later, I watched from my window as the marchers walked east on 16th Street and it was moving. As Gill wrote, it felt like a procession of possibility.

Other memories? Reply here or send to info@missionlocal.com

— Lydia

Our stories for today

A UCSF medical assistant manages life and working through Covid

Nothing could prepare Karin Paredes, a medical assistant at UCSF, for the unique and peculiar challenges of performing her job in covid times.

“ I tell you, I sometimes feel like I have to be an FBI agent.”

Local organizations call for overhaul of state’s rent relief application

Some of the issues with the applications “are so elementary that it’s a little shocking to have to be in a press event  to flag that this is a problem,” said Shaw San Liu, the executive director of the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco. “Too often we’ve seen that these programs have been exclusive or difficult to access for the people most impacted.”

Covid Tracker: 35,634 cases, 507 deaths

Though still relatively high, slightly better news on the R Number front today.  Covid-19 R Estimation lowered its estimate of the San Francisco R  Number to 1.12, and its California estimate to 1.09. 

Just a snap. At Everett Middle School

Practicing

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.