Food lines at the Alabama Street Hub. Screen grab from video by Josue Contreras

Hello Readers:

Feeding the hungry became a yearlong endeavor during the pandemic, writes Annika Hom. And, even with falling case numbers, it will persist as residents struggle to get back on their feet.

In other news:

Stay safe and enjoy the weather,

— Lydia

Stories

Covid Tracker: 34,805 cases, 451 deaths

Though new cases, hospitalizations and postivity rates remain low, estimates for the R Number strongly suggest we may have problems ahead.

A year in: As Covid-19 food insecurity soared, the Mission fed thousands

“It was a baptism by fire,” Melba Maldonado, the then executive director of La Raza Community Resource Center said. “We had to figure everything out by ourselves.” 

Civic interviews two docs who say public health would do well to follow the community’s lead (SF Public Press)

Looking back on a year of responding to the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Kim Rhoads and Dr. Carina Marquez talk about what they have learned.

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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.