Sad Francisco: Recent Episodes
Toshio Meronek, Caitlin Wood
Each episode, get one story from the gayest, most educated city in America, and the nation's so-called innovation and tech capitol, where there are more billionaires, more homeless people, and more empty luxury condos per square mile than anywhere else.
We’ll trauma bond, call out the villains and the liars, and explain how some of the West Coast’s most obnoxious inventions and exports came to be, so you can be prepared when they come for you.
Support the production and transcripts for the show: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Your producers, Toshio Meronek and Caitlin Wood
In 2026, dead internet theory—the idea that most of the internet is bots and AI-generated content—is more reality than theory.
Matthew Lawson co-hosts Eating For Free—a podcast critiquing American culture and politics through the lens of pop culture—with Paper Magazine editor Joan Summers. In their series "It's All Bots, Girl," they've been reporting on the corporations and politicians (Benjamin Netanyahu, for example) who are engaged in psychological warfare against the rest of us, using bots that pretend like they're real people on the internet.
Topics discussed include industry plants, fake fan accounts, and manufactured hate campaigns devised to control discourse and sell you products. And possibly to punish Chappell Roan for being a gay woman who supports Palestine and Epstein survivors.
Eating For Free
https://eatingforfree.com/
https://www.instagram.com/eatingforfree/
https://x.com/_matthewlawson
Eliza McLamb: Fake Fans
https://www.wordsfromeliza.com/p/fake-fans
Times of Israel: Netanyahu, allies using armies of bots to influence social media discourse – report
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-allies-using-armies-of-bots-to-influence-social-media-discourse-report/
Madiswan on YouTube: Is Zeus Network a CIA Psyop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-9wU2sRdpY
Buzzfeed: In the Chapell Roan controversy, 23% of posts were bots
https://www.buzzfeed.com/natashajokic1/chappell-roan-controversy-bots
Zeteo: The Fake 'Invasion' of Spain: What You Need to Know
https://zeteo.com/p/the-fake-invasion-of-spain-what-you
What did Epstein have to do with 4Chan, and Ghislane have to do with Reddit?
https://www.ms.now/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-4chan-chris-poole
Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The government is putting queers on lists and hunting undocumented people at the Home Depot parking lot. Have you ever felt so seen?
Sad Francisco Surveillance State Correspondent Ian Firstenberg returns to talk about our current dystopia, but it's not all bad news: people are destroying FLOCK cameras with abandon, protests against data centers are getting bigger, and Garry Tan is freshly single.
Ian's recent piece for 48Hills on the death of privacy culture in San Francisco: https://48hills.org/2026/07/what-happened-to-sfs-privacy-culture/
Cydney Hayes for Gazetteer: Why do these Castro gay bars have TSA-style face scanners: https://sf.gazetteer.co/why-do-these-castro-gay-bars-have-tsa-style-face-scanners
Matt Wolfinger for Working Mass: The Dungeon Over Lowell: How the Data Center Boom Divided One City's Working People: https://working-mass.com/2026/06/10/the-dungeon-over-lowell-how-the-data-center-boom-has-divided-one-citys-working-people/
ShotSpotter lobbyist's dramatic monologue at an Oakland City Hall hearing (via Jaime Omar Yassin / @hyphy_republic on X): https://x.com/hyphy_republic/status/1846598258308825144
Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner for Wired: "Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities": https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-celebrity-database-surveillance/
Andy Greenberg and Dhruv Mehrotra for Wired: "A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance": https://www.wired.com/story/sfpd-drone-video-leak-surveillance/
DeFlockSF (IG): https://www.instagram.com/deflocksf/
Have I Been Flocked?: https://haveibeenflocked.com/
Ian's last episode: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/home-sweet-state-158916825
Episode with StopAI: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/end-agi-before-127632638/
Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
THANK YOU to everyone who made it out to our biggest live show ever. The night ended up raising ~$5K for Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid, which will go directly to Gaza (Brooke shares details during the show).
The episode was recorded at The Lab in the Mission on June 25, 2026, with music from DJ Parle G and help from a ton of volunteers.
Brooke's performance focused on Cypress, a Jewish lesbian feminist who lived in the Bay. She talks more about Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid on this episode.
Mama Ganuush read from their upcoming memoir.
JB honored the late, great Leslie (Les) Feinberg.
Lavelle sat them down to get the details on their pieces.
Supergrateful to everyone who picked up some Sad Francisco dad hats, t-shirts, and tabi socks to help cover some of my bills.
Speaking of, you can support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
A lot has been happening in the lives of three of this podcast's longtime foes: District Attorney Brooke Jenkins; cafe owner and wannabe supervisor Manny Yekutiel; and the state Senator running for Nancy Pelosi's soon-to-be vacant seat in Congress, Scott Wiener.
Guests: Balto from Frisco Voices and Joshua Reyes, who's been doing court support and security for some of the people experiencing the wrath of Brooke Jenkins.
We talk about the arrests at the Trans March and Stud Alley parties during Pride; Brad Chapin coming forward as a victim of Manny Yekutiel; the Golden Gate 26 sentencing, and more.
A very local episode involving characters that help explain San Francisco's twisted political scene. There is a lot going on here; I'm very open to comments or tips about things we didn't speak on.
Frisco Voices: friscovoices.org
Frisco Voices IG: https://www.instagram.com/friscovoices/
Joshua (IG): https://www.instagram.com/joshuanlreyes/
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ADHD key to figures and organizations discussed in the episode:
A Wider Bridge: pinkwashing organization where Manny was a fellow. A Wider Bridge closed in 2025, after its director Ethan Felson stepped down following a "lewd and lascivious conduct" charge.
Baltimore PD: Brooke Jenkins declined to hold police accountable again. Discussed here: https://sfist.com/2026/05/11/sf-da-dismisses-2024-sexual-assault-case-involving-four-baltimore-police-officers/.
Banko Brown: killed by Walgreens security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/banko-brown-killing-san-francisco-crisis/.
Brad Chapin: came forward about being sexually assaulted by Manny Yekutiel.
Calle 24: the city-designated Latino cultural district in the Mission.
Chesa Boudin: DA who began prosecuting police until he was ousted in 2022, after Brooke Jenkins recalled him in a campaign funded by wealthy conservative reactionaries.
Chris Larsen: crypto billionaire whose company Ripple Labs donated office space for the SFPD's Real Time Investigation Center surveillance unit, and made the top donation to Trump's 2025 inauguration fund. Shortly after the inauguration, the $2 billion fine Ripple Labs owed the SEC for securities violations was suddenly reduced to $125 million.
THE REST OF THE KEY IS HERE: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/down-manny-scott-164023395
Previously:
Blocking the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges
The Anti-Zionist Boycott of Manny's with Deeg
The ADL is An Actual Psyop with Emmaia Gelman and Mama Ganuush
Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
May 1979: queer protesters set cop cars ablaze in San Francisco's Civic Center, in response to cop-turned-politician Dan White's relatively light sentence for the assassination of gay politician Harvey Milk and the Mayor, George Moscone.
Four people who were there describe the riots, and the related police riots where cops stormed the lesbian bar Peg's Place in the Richmond, and the Elephant Walk, a gay bar in the Castro, during a time of heavy state surveillance and repression—so not unlike today.
Event organized by Left in the Bay and PINKO magazine. Recorded live at Et Al in the Mission 6/24/2026.
Left in the Bay: leftinthebay.com
PINKO: www.pinko.online
On this episode (in speaking order):
Jen Reck, moderator: Sociology & Sexuality Studies professor at SF State who recently published a history of the Castro with Gerard Koskovich: The Castro: The Story of San Francisco's Best-Known LGBTQ+ Neighborhood.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Castro.html?id=uu2Z0QEACAAJ
Ruth Mahaney worked for years as a member of the Modern Times Bookstore Collective, and as an LGBT Studies professor at City College of SF.
Randy Alfred is a journalist who cofounded the Bay Times, edited the San Francisco Sentinel, and hosted The Gay Life radio show.
Revisiting The Gay Life, on Queer Power Hour / KALW: www.kalw.org/show/queer-power-hour/2026-06-18/revisiting-the-gay-life-e01-history-of-lgbtq-radio
Charlie Hinton: co-founded Magnus magazine and has worked on campaigns against the World Bank/IMF and to free Leonard Peltier.
Episode with Charlie on BAGL (Bay Area Gays and Lesbians): www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/gay-liberation-f-95946813
Charlie on solidarity with Haiti: www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/why-us-fears-f-98899594
Gwenn Craig worked on the Harvey Milk campaign, and against the Briggs Initiative.
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Max Blue is one of San Francisco's few remaining art critics in legacy media (see: his column in SF Examiner); he also contributes regularly to Hyperallergic.
Max gives the best brief introduction of the big art movements San Francisco is most well known for, and names names including:
- BXP, the company that benefited from the Vaillancourt fountain's removal)
- CIA Operation Mockingbird, the US government's mission to spread abstract expressionism across the globe
- KAWS's hold on the Instagram background niche
- Randall Kline, SF Jazz founder behind the upcoming low-income artists' housing on Market Street
- Sid Sijbrandij, the tech billionaire and art patron flooding public space with Burning Man installations
Max Blue: https://maxbluewriter.com
Max's Substack: https://maxblue.substack.com/
Max for the San Francisco Examiner: https://www.sfexaminer.com/culture/private-funding-of-public-art-prompts-questions-about-intent/article_89b311c0-108a-4464-b676-73548d51471f.html
Max for Hyperallergic: https://hyperallergic.com/author/max-blue/
Episodes:
Hanky Code Art NSF Trash Cans with Christen Cioffi: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/78664457
The Technofascist Plan for an Elite City in Solano County with Anna Kirsch: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/audio-planning-f-107037093
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Brutal honesty is all we have for Boots Riley's overstuffed filmic ode to shoplifters and maybe communism, I Love Boosters.
Topics discussed include:
- The Coup's early work
- Betrayal by union leaders
- Megan Ellison, the alleged black sheep of the Zionist Ellison dynasty
- Tax credits they give you to film a movie set in the Bay in Georgia
- The Leaning Tower of Millennium
- A vow for the next episode to feature a movie we would actually recommend
dee(dee) c. ardan, Jemma DeCristo, and Ralowe T. Ampu return for what turned into a roast of an episode.
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Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
A monologue revisiting a Truthout piece I wrote back in 2014 for this solo episode and stroll down memory lane featuring a Gay Shame action, crying in eviction court, and one of eviction lawyer Daniel Bornstein's boring-ass webinars where he explains the tricks of his trade.
Daniel (who runs Bornstein Law—formerly known as Bornstein & Bornstein) is a white guy who's used his adopted Black kids as a cynical marketing tool, and describes landlords as the state's "whipping boy." He counsels his clients on the best ways get around tenant laws so they can smoothly empty their properties of lower-income people, and jack up the rent till life is unaffordable for everyone except Zionist property owners like himself.
Truthout: Tutors in the Fine Art of Eviction Under Fire in San Francisco
Gay Shame documentation of a direct action at the Bornstein & Bornstein offices, then located off Polk Street
Bornstein Law's webinar: Creating Vacancy Without an At Fault Eviction
'Villain' eviction attorneys Bornstein & Bornstein break up, sue each other (Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez in SF Examiner)
Oakland landlords hold rally demanding end to eviction moratorium (CBS News)
Bay Area Legal Aid (free lawyers for tenants)
Eviction Defense Collaborative (also free lawyers for tenants)
Ian covers local oligarchs and the surveillance state for 48Hills and The Phoenix Project. We talk about FLOCK adding microphones to their camera network, state repression after the anti-cop protests of summer 2020, and how crypto oligarch Chris Larsen bought off the Trump regime.
Ian in 48Hills: "Flock keeps spying on us all, and state and local officials aren't protecting us": https://48hills.org/2026/05/flock-keeps-spying-on-us-all-and-state-and-local-officials-arent-protecting-us/ And previously: "Inside SF's private surveillance state": https://48hills.org/2025/10/sfs-private-surveillance-state/ Ian at the Phoenix Project on Chris Larsen and his billionaire friends' latest mission: to kill attempts at a billionaire tax https://www.phoenixprojectnow.com/phoenix-review/blog/special-report-the-billionaire-tax-revolt Episodes:
Erin McElroy on landlord surveillance tech: https://www.patreon.com/posts/landlord-tech-f-109663054
Jeremy Mack on The Phoenix Project's report on the rightwing rascals behind San Francisco's Doom Loop: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rise-and-fall-of-147853607
Get tickets to our live podcast show in San Francisco on 6/25: QUEERS AGAINST ZIONISM with Judith Butler, Mama Ganuush, and more (a benefit for Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid) https://buytickets.at/heritageactivistsliberationartists/2224123
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) started as a civil rights organization for Jewish people in the US. It's now a pro-Israel group that spies on Leftist organizations and defends Elon Musk when he does a white power salute. Emmaia Gelman's new book The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State details the history of the Zionist group that influences everything from the history written into American textbooks, to the way headlines are written in mainstream news. Next, Mama Ganuush returns to discuss two gay Zionists running for election in the Bay who have helped manufacture consent for genocide in Palestine who you will know well if you're a regular listener, Manny Yekutiel and Scott Wiener. 'The Anti-Defamation League and the Racial State' releases 6/16/2026, pre-order with code UCPSAVE30 at University of California Press https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-anti-defamation-league-and-the-racial-state/hardcover Emmaia's site https://emmaiagelman.com/ Past Palestine episodes https://www.patreon.com/collection/383604
Get tickets to our live podcast show on 6/25: QUEERS AGAINST ZIONISM with Judith Butler, Mama Ganuush, and more (a benefit for Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid) https://buytickets.at/heritageactivistsliberationartists/2224123
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Two Wasian Americans and one classic, everyday Asian American, all millennials, try to make sense of East Asian American discourses in the zeitgeist of the past six months. Recorded shortly before the cursed Wasian meetups in SF and NY. 1. CS graduation rates fall off a cliff. For a particular class of Asian Americans, computer science degrees were a step in the direction of the American Dream. Now that tech oligarch's true nature as warmongers who hate humanity and want to replace workers with data centers has been revealed, where will they go? See: DailyCal, "UC Berkeley CS major enrollment on pace to drop by 59% as part of nationwide trend" https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/academics/uc-berkeley-cs-major-enrollment-on-pace-to-drop-by-59-as-part-of-nationwide/article_8ceded3c-d939-4f60-8aa4-110be003c4e3.html
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Is the Laufey music video starring Alyssa Liu, Hudson Williams, a Katseye member and other Wasians of Hollywood a Wasian supremacist cultural object? See: Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/aznidentity/comments/1sodav8/wasian_obsession_in_the_western_media/
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Benjamin Champagne Song is a political prisoner convicted as part of Pam Bondi (RIP) and Andy Ngo's effort to kill dissent and funnel more money to the white power movement and DHS contractors. Fanmail to (as of May 2026): BENJAMIN HANIL SONG, #11137-512, FMC Fort Worth, FEDERAL MEDICAL CENTER, P.O. BOX 15330, FORT WORTH, TX 76119
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2025 ended with Asian (and to an extent, Black) TikTok Gen Z thru Gen X consumed by H-Martgate, which started as a joke questioning non-Asian peoples' place in Asian grocery stores. See: Madeline Qi's original TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@say_qis/video/7546343858146118926
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The birth rate in the US is now well below "replacement rate": Are Hell Joseon (South Korea) and other East Asian countries a window into our future? See: Namuwiki: https://en.namu.wiki/w/N포세대
Chris on the anti-trans, red scare Falun Gong cult (known for its Epoch Times newspaper and Shen Yun anti-communist dance troupe spectaculars): https://www.patreon.com/posts/falun-gong-and-122689473
Jasmine on the problem with Waymos being personified and racialized as Asian: https://www.patreon.com/posts/waymos-arent-lee-120643766
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
dee(dee) and Jemma return to dissect another vintage film set in the Bay.
Did Hollywood predict Sam Altman would meet his husband in Peter Thiel's hot tub? Seeking an answer in "Electric Dreams" (1984), an extremely 1980s rom-com in which a young architect working out of the Transamerica Pyramid programs an early PC into a Frankenstein-ian monster.
Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder: Together in Electric Dreams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJYBPQyFTQ Previously:
Watching "Dirty Harry" https://www.patreon.com/posts/movie-club-dirty-152490581 AI is Being Force Fed to Students and Professors with Martha Kenney https://www.patreon.com/posts/ai-force-feeding-144687776 Aesthetics of the New Rightwing Tech Intelligentsia with Jimmy Wu https://www.patreon.com/posts/aesthetics-of-wu-148707467 Stop AI https://www.patreon.com/posts/end-agi-before-127632638
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Until Land Back, there's land trusts. Kyle Smeallie from the San Francisco Community Land Trust on removing land from the speculative market and the clutches of real estate industrialists. San Francisco Community Land Trust https://sfclt.org/ Proud Stutter (Maya's podcast) https://www.proudstutter.org/ Episode: Abolish Rent with Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal https://www.patreon.com/posts/abolish-rent-and-119757781
May Day 2026, QUEER & TRANS NON/WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE for a tour of some historically significant sites in the Mission, detailed on this episode. All hookers, loiterers, shoplifters, street sellers, truants, 1099 queens, gig workers, students, time theft recidivists, hustlers, welfare fags, & SSDI dykes are encourage to attend. May 1 at 7pm, 16th BART Plaza in San Francisco Gay Shame https://gayshame.net/
Map of Technofascist Terror in the Mission
Gay Shame on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/gay.shame/
Gay Shame: The Podcast: Anti-Sex Worker Barricades at Capp Street https://gayshame.net/index.php/gay-shame-podcast-episode-9-anti-sex-worker-barricades-at-capp-street-update-and-whats-to-be-done/ Valleywag: Dropbox Dudes Tried to Kick Children Off a Soccer Field https://web.archive.org/web/20200220131518/https://valleywag.gawker.com/dropbox-douchebags-tried-to-kick-children-off-a-soccer-1644947724 Mission Local: SF teacher says she was tricked into 'I Am Not a Monster' BART campaign https://missionlocal.org/2018/01/sf-teacher-says-she-was-tricked-into-i-am-not-a-monster-bart-campaign/ By Hook or By Crook trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayvl07NwTIM Episodes: The Redstone Labor Temple f/ Rick Gerharter and Tiny Gray-Garcia https://www.patreon.com/posts/redstone-labor-f-97275952
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Prince Shakur is an anarchist political educator with a book dealing with how he was politicized (When They Tell You To Be Good), a big library of video essays on YouTube, and a Black anarchist podcasts he co-hosts called The Dugout. Prince's site https://www.princeshakur.com/ The Dugout's site https://www.thedugoutpodcast.com/ On YouTube: How To Be A (Better) Organizer in 2026 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWpoN0H2YY More episodes on anarchism https://www.patreon.com/collection/2086623
Michael Scarce worked at a now-defunct nonprofit called the Stop AIDS Project till in 2007, he blew the whistle when it began suggesting that to end AIDS, we need to "prevent sexual mixing." Michael's Substack: 'A Parable of Second-Hand Sodomy: Lessons Learned From San Francisco's Failed Attempt at Viral Apartheid in the Name of HIV Prevention' https://gettingbeyondzero.substack.com/p/a-parable-of-second-hand-sodomy-lessons Center for HIV Law and Policy's project against HIV surveillance https://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/basic
In March, viral depositions of a couple of 20-something white twinks named Justin Fox and Nathan Cavanaugh (referred to on social media as "DOGE bros") made explicit how careless and nihilistic the federal government was in cutting humanities funding last year, as part of Elon Musk's short-lived Department of Government Efficiency. Jane Ward is a Feminist Studies professor at UC Santa Barbara who wrote about recent closures of gender and women's studies departments at US colleges on her Substack, the Sapphic Cut. Co-hosting! Trung P. Nguyen, friend/recent guest who teaches Ethnic Studies at San Jose State. Jane's Substack: "This is How They Kill Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies" https://substack.com/@thesapphiccut/p-188282946 Trung's site https://tpqn.org/ Joseph Cox, 404 Media: "Judge Allows DOGE Deposition Videos Back Online" https://www.404media.co/judge-allows-doge-deposition-videos-back-online/ The Independent: DOGE deposition clips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpbGF7l-t2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXXvgZzK0Cc
Raquel Willis' resume is long: the first trans lead editor at Out magazine, a TIME 100 awardee, memoirist (The Risk It Takes To Bloom), and co-founder of the group Gender Liberation, whose direct actions at the US capitol calling for basic needs like trans healthcare reverberate far outside the DMV. We discuss the limitations of mainstream visibility in saving trans lives, and her podcast series AFTERLIVES, whose first two seasons cover the lives and passings of Layleen Polanco and Marsha P. Johnson. Raquel's site https://www.raquelwillis.com/ AFTERLIVES podcast https://www.afterlivespod.com/ Episode: Tourmaline on Marsha P. Johnson https://www.patreon.com/posts/129316368
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
SAD FRANCISCO hats and shirts have landed: https://sadfrancis.co/?post_type=product
The return of Susan Stryker! On this episode: The utopian potential of Trans SanFrisco of the 1990s, and why the new third edition of Transgender History may be her last time editing the classic tome. Transgender History https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/susan-stryker/transgender-history-third-edition/9781541605886/ When Monsters Speak https://www.dukeupress.edu/when-monsters-speak Susan's upcoming book: Changing Gender https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250453921/changinggender/ Episode: Susan on the Compton's Cafeteria riot https://www.patreon.com/posts/jail-at-comptons-79134233
Friends Stab and Trung both texted me when about a recent, very Sad Francisco-coded feature in Wired magazine. Here's a little response, inspired partially by an impromptu reading group a few friends did around the piece.
Mentioned:
Alexandr Wang
Barry's Bootcamp
Gawker.com
Melania's box office
Peter Thiel
Sam Altman
Tim Cook
TW for brief mention of Sam Altman sexually assaulting his sister, and the US war assault on Iran including the AI-assisted murder of kids there.
Zoë Bernard, Wired: Inside the Gay Tech Mafia
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-gay-tech-mafia/
Ryan Grim, The Intercept: The Death of Peter Thiel's "Kept" Romantic Partner is Being Investigated as a Suicide
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/23/peter-thiel-jeff-thomas/
Owen Thomas, Valleywag: Peter Thiel is totally gay, people
Blog post that Peter Thiel didn't really love
https://www.gawkerarchives.com/335894/peter-thiel-is-totally-gay-people
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press: documentary on Netflix following Peter Thiel's successful quest to bankrupt Gawker.com by funding a lawsuit related to a Hulk Hogan sex tape
https://www.netflix.com/title/80168227
Episode: Aesthetics of the New Rightwing Tech Intelligentsia with Jimmy Wu
https://www.patreon.com/posts/aesthetics-of-wu-148707467
First episode covering movies set in the Bay! With dee(dee) and Jemma.
Starting with: 1971's DIRTY HARRY, in which Clint Eastwood plays a vigilante cop tracking down a gay Zodiac killer clone in a San Francisco overrun with hippie scum.
Jemma on her book "The Aesthetic Character of Blackness: Sounds Like Us"
https://www.patreon.com/posts/146458351
dee(dee) on the 1970s queer zine "Gay Sunshine"
https://www.patreon.com/posts/142696453
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Uncover the lore of four masked comrades who meet up regularly to offer aid to unhoused neighbors and teach self-defense.
We talk about the discourse around wearing frog costumes to ICE protests and giving public comment at San Jose City Hall dressed as Batman (that's the clip at the beginning of the episode).
BASH Linktree https://linktr.ee/bayareasuperheroes
BASH IG https://www.instagram.com/bayareasuperheroes
Kai Kai's Linktree https://linktr.ee/kaikaibee
Absolute Batman https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C7252448
Episode with Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry https://youtu.be/d3SmXWz1L38
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon. Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Morgan Bassichis brought the 1977 queer cult fairy tale "The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions" back to print and stage a few years ago. Its messages about how to live under patriarchy feel extra prescient in 2026. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions By Larry Mitchell and Ned Asta With essays by Morgan and Tourmaline https://nightboat.org/book/the-faggots-their-friends-between-revolutions/ Morgan's website https://www.morganbassichis.com/ Can I Be Frank? - Morgan's show, coming to New York this summer https://www.canibefrank.nyc/ Morgan's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/morgankindof/ Love in a F*cked-Up World Podcast (with Morgan and friend of the pod Dean Spade) https://www.youtube.com/@Dean_Spade/podcasts Episode: "Marsha P. Johnson Beyond Stonewall with Tourmaline" https://www.patreon.com/posts/marsha-p-johnson-129316368
Mama Ganuush is back home in San Francisco after hosting the first JAHA Film Festival in December in Lisbon. The festival features all trans-focused films from the Global South, and begins screening online starting this Friday, Feb. 14.
JAHA Film Festival
https://www.jahafilmfestival.com/
Trans Liberation Film School
https://www.jahafilmfestival.com/transliberationfilmschool
Trung Nguyen teaches Asian American and ethnic studies at San Jose State. His presentation at the last American Studies Association conference covered how the interests of US empire, Airbnb.org, and refugee landlords market property ownership as a humanitarian act. Trung's site https://tpqn.org/ Iyko Day: The Yellow Plague and Romantic Anticapitalism (Monthly Review) https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-yellow-plague-and-romantic-anticapitalism/ Eric Tang: Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the New York City Hyperghetto https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3280280 BDS Movement's BDS Guide https://bdsmovement.net/Guide-to-BDS-Boycott Toshio's 2-minute explainer on Balaji Srinivasan's Network State https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8fRrpxF/ Related episodes: Urban Alchemy with Brooke Lober and Norma Azucar https://www.patreon.com/posts/urban-alchemys-f-109662919 Silicon Valley Imperialism with Erin McElroy https://www.patreon.com/posts/silicon-valley-f-103189183
"Meet the New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia" is Jimmy Wu's recent piece for Bay Area Current, a new publication covering labor, culture and politics based in East Bay. In it, Jimmy beautifully describes some of the aesthetics and icons preoccupying the tech elites and their media mouthpieces right now. "Meet the New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia" https://bayareacurrent.com/meet-the-new-right-wing-tech-intelligentsia/ Related: Soleil Ho on anti-poor influencer Michael Shellenberger https://www.patreon.com/posts/michael-thinks-f-97015564 The AI industry must be stopped, with Stop AI https://www.patreon.com/posts/end-agi-before-127632638 Garry Tan must be stopped, with Emily Mills https://www.patreon.com/posts/stop-garry-tan-90552668
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon. Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
In 2022, rightwing influencers began using the term "doom loop" to paint San Francisco as a crime- and fentanyl-ridden hellhole that whose downfall was due to too much woke progressivism. It didn't matter that the doom loop narrative wasn't based in reality: the media took it and ran with it. The narrative has since lost its resonance in San Francisco, but it's now being deployed in several other cities. Jeremy Mack is back to talk about the Phoenix Project's most recent report, "The Rise and Fall of the San Francisco Doom Loop." The Phoenix Project: Rise and Fall of the San Francisco Doom Loop https://www.phoenixprojectnow.com/doomloop-report SF Mayor Daniel Lurie celebrates Blackstone and private equity https://youtube.com/shorts/1MsExVGa5sY Andrew Cuomo's racist anti-Zohran Mamdani ad https://youtube.com/shorts/y4yqFFDD650 Related episodes: TogetherSF (RIP), with Jeremy https://www.patreon.com/posts/togethersf-wants-114226580 5 Rich Guys Trying to Buy the Bay, with Jeremy and Julie Pitta https://www.patreon.com/posts/5-rich-guys-to-f-104982980
Garry Tan, with Emily Mills
https://www.patreon.com/posts/stop-garry-tan-90552668
Jenny Chan founded Pacific Atrocities Education in San Francisco after learning about some of Japan's terror campaigns across Asia through World War II. It's history that Japanese conservatives are trying to suppress.
The Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 was the chemical and biological warfare facility that conducted experiments on about 14,000 people in China. None of those 14,000 survived, while the leaders of Unit 731 were granted immunity by the US in exchange for their "research." Pacific Atrocities Education https://www.pacificatrocities.org/ Podcast / YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/PacificFrontUntold Video: Rightwing Japanese nationalist Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi doesn't love politician Taro Yamamoto's suggestion that Japan is an American colony https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRE4Bm7EUoR/ Related episodes: Comfort Women part 1, with Judith Mirkinson from Comfort Women Justice Coalition https://www.patreon.com/posts/nationalism-vs-1-109743478 Comfort Women part 2, with Kota from Against Japanism https://www.patreon.com/posts/nationalism-vs-2-78561553 Nikkei Progressives, on how ICE detention compares to Japanese internment during WWII https://www.patreon.com/posts/internment-camps-109659819
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon. Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Jemma DeCristo RETURNS! Her new book The Aesthetic Character of Blackness is out, and covers how revolutionary Black art is co-opted by capitalists and the state, and art's limits as a revolutionary tool (and it's widespread use as a counterinsurgent one).
The Aesthetic Character of Blackness: Sounds Like Us (Duke University Press)
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-aesthetic-character-of-blackness
Support Dahnoun Mutual Aid (Direct Support for People in Gazan)
https://chuffed.org/project/115245-dahnoun-mutual-aid
Previously:
Jemma on the Transgender Cultural District
https://www.patreon.com/posts/is-transgender-f-105793639
Jemma and Ralowe on the narrowness of Leftist organizing on (the app) Signal
https://www.patreon.com/posts/against-signal-123358271
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Janetta Johnson and zen blossom speak from the home base of Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) in SF. They speak on Miss Major (who led TGIJP for years); the year Janetta turned down the SF Pride grand marshal title; and the status of the Bay Area's reputation for being a haven for trans people. TGI Justice Project https://tgijp.org Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex https://www.akpress.org/captivegenders.html Previous episodes mentioned: Rest in Peace Miss Major https://www.patreon.com/posts/rip-miss-major-142054390 Tourmaline on her biography of Marsha P. Johnson https://www.patreon.com/posts/marsha-p-johnson-129316368
Public universities are under constant threat of budget cuts, but somehow administrators find millions to toss at extractive tech, like ChatGPT Edu.
SF State professor Martha Kenney describes how administrators at the CSUs spent $17 million on a contract with OpenAI without asking students or professors if it was a good idea—subsidizing an industry built on hype and plaigiarism.
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Martha Kenney and Martha Lincoln: "Let Them Eat Large Language Models: Artificial Intelligence And Austerity In The Neoliberal University"
https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/6z5pa_v1
MIT Study
https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf
Library of Babel Listserv
https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/assembly
Episode with Stop AI
https://www.patreon.com/posts/end-agi-before-127632638
Martha Lincoln: "It's Time to Pull the Plug on ChatGPT at Cal State"
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/views/2025/11/25/chatgpt-poses-risk-student-mental-health-opinion
Martha Lincoln on BlueSky
https://bsky.app/profile/heavyredaction.bsky.social
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Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon. Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
San Francisco tried to atone for the war on drugs with a DEI program for recreational weed store owners. In the end, the real winners were rich white dudes like London Breed's old roommate, Conor Johnston. Chris Roberts—America's top cannabis journalist and historian reporting from America's number-one cannabis producing region—returns. We go deep on his recent Chronicle piece detailing how it all went wrong.
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"San Francisco's first 'equity' weed store was an epic failure. City Hall insiders may still pocket millions" sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/marijuana-weed-legal-shop-haight-21063653.php "White Weed Entrepreneurs Are Gaming Programs Meant to Help People of Color" (Chris for Vice) vice.com/en/article/white-weed-entrepreneurs-are-gaming-programs-meant-to-help-people-of-color/ Previous episode with Chris, on the radiation disaster at Hunter's Point patreon.com/posts/radiation-at-132819458
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Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon. Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
dee(dee) c. ardan is live in the studio apartment for the first episode about trans/queer media from the Bay's past, showing that indeed, this place has been trans as hell for a long, long time.
Starting with issue one of the 1970s zine GAY SUNSHINE, we deduce how the Bay gained a reputation for being the place you come to push the trans agenda and make life hell for conservatives.
Gay Sunshine's first two issues, via UC Berkeley Library
https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/121520
https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/121521
Shattered Glass reading group contact: essgeesquared@gmail
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Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon. Support the show on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The Tenderloin in 1966: One of the earliest trans/queer actions (that we know of) against police and state violence happened at Compton's Cafeteria. Today, that space (111 Taylor Street) is occupied by Geo Group—otherwise known as the corporation that is America's number-one private prison and ICE profiteer.
Zei Wilder is helping organize the local effort to get Geo Group out of San Francisco and turn the Compton's site into something that isn't evil.
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Comptons x Coalition: comptonsxcoalition.net
Demand Board of Supervisors Action Against Geo Group on November 6, 10 AM, SF City Hall Room 272: instagram.com/p/DPUQYewgdk4/
Episode with historian Susan Stryker, co-director of the Compton's documentary "Screaming Queens": patreon.com/posts/jail-at-comptons-79134233
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Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon.
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
For Major, who passed on October 13.
Truthout piece
https://truthout.org/articles/to-honor-miss-major-we-fight-for-the-trans-and-queer-spaces-she-built/
Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary
https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5592116
A more recent episode with filmmakers behind the documentary MAJOR!, StormMiguel Florez and Annalise Ophelian
https://www.patreon.com/posts/trans-film-cis-130068888
MAJOR! (documentary)
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/major
Criminal Queers
https://vimeo.com/221584005
This episode was recorded before the ceasefire deal went into effect on Oct. 10. Surprising no one, Israel has already broken its promises, continuing to kill Palestinians and withholding aid.
UC Berkeley lecturer Peyrin Kao just ended a 38-day hunger strike to keep Palestine on the minds of people on campus and to raise money during Israel's US-backed starvation campaign. A few days before we spoke, UC Berkeley notified him that he was one of 160 people it had turned over to the Trump administration as college administrators cooperate with attacks on anyone who's against the genocide. Berkeley EECS/STEM 4 Palestine Fundraiser tinyurl.com/be4pfundraiser Truthout: Peyrin interviewed by friend of the pod Brooke Lober https://truthout.org/articles/computer-science-lecturer-at-berkeley-is-on-day-36-of-his-hunger-strike-for-gaza/ Brooke's episode on Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid https://www.patreon.com/posts/112157781 Dylan Rodriguez episode: Zionists and Counterinsurgency in Stop Asian Hate https://www.patreon.com/posts/103600189
Bench Ansfield is a professor in the History department at Temple University. Their book "Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City" covers how racial capitalism, political corruption, and the insurance industry created a world where landlords can profit more by burning their own buildings down than maintaining them. They were also part of the research team on the 2019 documentary "Decade of Fire".
Bench Ansfield https://www.benchansfield.com
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/born-in-flames-bronx-arson-1970s
Decade of Fire https://decadeoffire.com
Born in Flames (the film the book was named after) https://www.criterion.com/films/30707-born-in-flames
Let the Fire Burn: documentary about MOVE's infamous eviction in Philadelphia https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/let-fire-burn
Recent episode on the fire at 22nd and Mission with Angelica https://www.patreon.com/posts/aftermath-of-at-135107521
Alexis Shotwell is a professor of gender and feminist studies and philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa. She's also an anarchist organizer particularly interested in the anarchist fantasy and science fiction author Ursula K. LeGuin. Alexis's website https://www.alexisshotwell.com/ Punch Up Collective https://www.punchupcollective.org/ Episode with Deeg on LAGAI-Queer Insurrection! https://www.patreon.com/posts/lagai-queer-w-1-104043005 October 11: Sacramento Anarchist Book Fair https://itsgoingdown.org/announcing-the-third-annual-sacramento-anarchist-bookfair/ October 18: Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair https://www.instagram.com/bayareaanarchistbookfair/ More episodes on anarchism: Edxi Betts https://www.patreon.com/posts/voting-is-scam-f-110266232 Margaret Killjoy https://www.patreon.com/posts/radical-demands-139152446
Court support has spread to Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 100 Montgomery Street, while the mayor and SFPD continue to be complicit with ICE, against the city’s sanctuary city policy. Lxspinguinxs (updates about SF anti-ICE actions on Instagram) https://www.instagram.com/lxspinguinxs Lea on Substack https://leftylea.substack.com on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/leftylea_in_sf Los Angeles Tenants Union https://latenantsunion.org/ Palestinian Youth Movement https://palestinianyouthmovement.com Tenants and Neighborhood Council https://baytanc.com/ Unión del Barrio https://uniondelbarrio.org/
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon.
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/sadfrancisco.bsky.social
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sadfrancis.co
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sadfrancisco69
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sadfranciscopodcast/
Listen on podcast platforms https://pod.link/1653309103
Boiler Room is a global event promotion company known for enlisting local DJs and promoters to produce Boiler Room-branded parties. This year, Boiler Room was acquired by a Zionist private equity firm, Superstruct/KKR. Three people who DJ and throw parties in the Bay—Daria Lourd, DJ Fridge, and Juanny—on creating culture that is removed from the Boiler Room industrial complex. 9/19 at The Stud: No Bias https://ra.co/events/2225702 9/20 at f8: Bring It Back https://ra.co/events/2224734 9/26 at Monarch: Dj Warning https://ra.co/events/2235766 Daria / No Bias on Bandcamp https://nobias.bandcamp.com/ DJ Fridge https://linktr.ee/DjFridge DJ Juanny's party/label/recording studio project Amor Digital https://linktr.ee/amordigital On Instagram Daria Lourd https://www.instagram.com/bored_lord DJ Juanny https://www.instagram.com/dj_juanny DJ Fridge https://www.instagram.com/djfridge_ HYDEFM (radio) https://www.instagram.com/hydefmradio Ravers for Palestine https://www.instagram.com/raversforpalestine/
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon.
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/sadfrancisco.bsky.social
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sadfrancis.co
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sadfrancisco69
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sadfranciscopodcast/
Listen on podcast platforms https://pod.link/1653309103
Tracey Helton Mitchell writes about living in San Francisco with an addiction in her memoir "The Big Fix" and now works in harm reduction in the city. The Big Fix: Hope After Heroin https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3207933 Tracey on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@traceyh415. Tracey on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@traceyh415 Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street - HBO documentary released in 2000, following Tracey and others around San Francisco https://archive.org/embed/blacktarherointhedarkendofthestreet Update on the cast from Black Tar Heroin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jQSpNmLVeM
Jen Snyder organizes with the Democratic Socialists of America, and recently wrote a piece for Jacobin about socialist policies like free MUNI, and taxing landlords for leaving homes empty. Things that are so popular in San Francisco, people voted to pass them. But then oligarchs and their minions defanged, reversed, or litigated them to death. San Francisco’s Ultrarich Are Blocking a Zohran-Style Agenda https://jacobin.com/2025/08/san-francisco-zohran-democratic-socialism Red Bridge https://www.redbridgewins.com/ Jen on IG https://www.instagram.com/ohjennyboy Chris Arvin's Election Map SF https://electionmapsf.com/
Discussing the word "affordable" and how it's weaponized by the real estate industry. What is Affordable Housing? zine https://gayshame.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/What_is_Affordable_Housing_2025_zine.pdf Gay Shame zine: Steal This House: Dissecting the War on Houselessness and the Housing Crisis in the SF Bay Area https://gayshame.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Steal-This-House-Chronological-Order.pdf Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) https://baytanc.com West Side Tenants Association https://sfern.org Western Regional Advocacy Project https://wraphome.org Street Sheet newspaper https://www.streetsheet.org/ Indybay https://www.indybay.org Related episodes: With members of WSTA https://www.patreon.com/posts/we-keep-each-f-102747039 Landlord Tech with Erin McElroy https://www.patreon.com/posts/109663054 Food Not Bombs with Keith McHenry https://www.patreon.com/posts/136586623 Abolish Landlords with Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis https://www.patreon.com/posts/119757781
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon.
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/sadfrancisco.bsky.social
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sadfrancis.co
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sadfrancisco69
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sadfranciscopodcast/
Listen on podcast platforms https://pod.link/1653309103
Keith McHenry co-founded Food Not Bombs in 1980, and has been arrested more than 100 times for serving free food to homeless people and protesting the US government. A history lesson on SF's Phil Burton Democratic Party machine, black bloc, and how FNB became labeled as a domestic terrorist group by the FBI. Food Not Bombs https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/ Seven Steps to Starting a Food Not Bombs https://foodnotbombs.net/seven_steps_flyer.pdf Keith on Twitter https://x.com/keith_mchenry Keith on Substack https://keithmchenry.substack.com/ Episode with Stop AI https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/M2FkNmUxNWEtM2M0NC00ZjBmLWE4NjQtYWQ2YmUxZDNhOTU5
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tyger Ligon.
Support the show and get new episodes early on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/sadfrancisco.bsky.social
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sadfrancis.co
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sadfrancisco69
Listen on podcast platforms https://pod.link/1653309103
Starting in 2021, a shoplifting panic was hatched and spread by corporate media, cops, and politicians, resulting in life-or-death consequences (see: Banko Brown).
Damena Page called from SF county jail to report on the conditions, abuse, and how reporting abuse can result in retaliation.
Amy Martyn is a journalist based in the Bay, who's been covering the shoplifting panic since the beginning of the pandemic.
Damena on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/girlyfacemena/
America's absurd war on 'organized retail crime' (Amy Martyn, Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-war-organized-retail-crime-target-cvs-victorias-secret-2024-9
Women Languish at San Francisco’s Jail for Years Without Answers—or Sunlight (Amy, The Appeal)
https://theappeal.org/women-languish-at-san-franciscos-jail-for-years-without-answers-or-sunlight/
The Killing of Banko Brown (Toshio, The Nation)
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/banko-brown-killing-san-francisco-crisis/
Sad Francisco episode: "Avenge Banko"
https://episodes.fm/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5saWJzeW4uY29tLzQ0NTgyNC9yc3M/episode/ZTI4NDgxYzQtZmVjNy00MDUxLWE1ZTEtYmQ1ODA0MmE5ZDJi
Ten years have passed since the fire that disappeared the apartments and businesses at 22nd and Mission Streets, and killed Mauricio Orellana. Many people continue to suspect landlord arson. Slumlord Hawk Ling Lou inherited the buildings in the 1990s, and owns the now-empty lot, plus about 20 other buildings in San Francisco (some under family members' names).
On May 15, 2025, despite overwhelming community dissent the Planning Commission granted Hawk Ling Lou the permission to build market-rate luxury condos on the space. If they're ever built, they'll be sold to hypothetical newcomers and investors from outside the Mission.
Alejandra Rubio grew up in the Mission and has been following the story of the block since she was a teenager. Now a fellow at Galeria de la Raza, she's archiving the memories of people living in the area through a series of art and a zine, so the history of the block doesn't vanish.
Download the zine
https://alejandrarubio.art/22nd-and-mission-series-of-events
Alejandra's website
www.alejandrarubio.art
https://www.instagram.com/alejandraaaa415/
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@alejandraaaa415
Al Jazeera article on the fire (Toshio, with Prisca Carpenter, Kentaro Kaneko, and Clio Sady)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160117083725/http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/4/2/hot-rental-market-sparks-suspicions-of-landlord-arson-in-san-francisco.html
Sad Francisco episode on 22nd and Mission, with Christen Cioffi
https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/ZWVlYTI1MWUtYzk0YS00ZmRkLTgzMjMtYTIxNmYzMTVjZWJj
Sophie Lewis's book Enemy Feminisms depicts some of Western history's most despicable women, like Alma Bridwell, a Pentecostal preacher who spread the gospel of the KKK, and May French Sheldon, an explorer and genocide apologist for Belgium during the Rubber Terror in the Congo Free State. They were also some of the most celebrated feminist figures of their time, weaponizing feminism for capitalists, authoritarians, and white supremacists.
Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2440-enemy-feminisms
Sophie's Patreon https://www.patreon.com/reproutopia
The Girlboss episode, with Krystal Farmer https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YTQwMTYyNTgtOGJiZS00YTgwLTg4MjQtZWY1MDI5YTA2MjY4
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Seasons change, fascists remain. Another one where Toshio and Tofu have a semi-incoherent discussion about things in the works at Sad Francisco HQ.
The protests that corporate media is mostly ignoring
(Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman, and Soha Hammam, Waging Nonviolence)
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/resistance-alive-well-us/
Citations Needed
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
https://fair.org/
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
In 1989, the Golden Gate Bridge was blockaded for the first time by a group of protesters going by the name Stop AIDS Now…or Else! They were sick of their friends dying in a government-facilitated genocide of queer people (the medical industrial complex and corporate media were complicit, too).
It wasn't till 2016 that another group of protesters (black.seed) blockaded the Bay Bridge, this time propelled by the Ferguson uprisings and the crisis of Black people dying, especially at the hands of police.
And then in 2023 and 2024 the Bay Bridge 78 and Golden Gate 26 blockaded for Gaza; some still face charges.
Actions to take for the Golden Gate 26: linktr.ee/gg26solidarity
Event hosted with Gay Shame (gayshame.net), HALA Collective (thehalacollective.com), and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism! (quitpalestine.org)
Emceed by Lavelle Ridley and Stab and featuring:
Deeg, Stop AIDS Now…or Else!, Gay Shame and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism!
Jemma and Ralowe, black.seed and Gay Shame
Golzar and Turner, Bay Bridge 78
(Follow Golzar for COVID-safer events: instagram.com/cutiecraftyparty/)
Jordan and Mannan, Golden Gate 26
linktr.ee/gg26solidarity
Recorded at Counterpulse on June 24, 2025.
Thanks to Ach and Eddie at Counterpulse, and Healthcare Workers for Palestine (linktr.ee/hcw4pal).
Related episodes:
Deeg on the boycott of Manny's
https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/OTExOGQwNDctNDFkOS00MzE3LTk2ZGQtNjk4NTVkMmFlZDQz
Deeg on queer Bay direct action group LAGAI-Queer Insurrection!
https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/OTIxNTJmOWUtMDAxZi00YjgxLWExZGMtZDJlMzBjN2M0OWMx
Jemma and Ralowe on hating Signal
https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/ZjhjYTc4MDktNzAyNS00NzYyLWIyZWYtNTM0MGUzNjEzOTAw
Jemma, Lavelle and Mama Ganuush: Trans Black-Palestinian Solidarities
https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NmYwYTkxYmEtYmYxNS00ZTQxLTk1OWItMzZjNDY3YWMwZDRm
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Chris Roberts is who you call to learn how the Navy’s atomic weapons tests made parts of SF toxic, and the government’s radiation experiments on people incarcerated at San Quentin, military officers stationed at Pittsburg, and the 49ers.
Read Chris’s reporting and listen to Rebecca Bowe’s companion podcast:
Exposed: The Human Radiation Experiments at Hunter's Point sfpublicpress.org/exposed
"The Naval Scientist Who Wanted To Know How Football Players Would Survive Nuclear War" (Chris for Defector) defector.com/the-naval-scientist-who-wanted-to-know-how-football-players-would-survive-nuclear-war
See Chris on July 12, 2PM at the Shipyard Gallery, Building 101, 451 Galvez Ave. Hunter's Point Shipyard Artists' "Decommissioned" is open Saturdays through August 2 shipyardartists.com/decommissioned
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Zionists are still trying to pinkwash Israel's genocide, co-opting queer and trans institutions in the service of the Netanyahu dynasty and the Christian Zionists behind Project Esther.
One way they're doing this is by attempting to de-fang the radical history of Dyke March, a march that has happened every Saturday of Pride weekend in San Francisco since the early 1990s.
With Lisa Roth of Dykes for Palestine, and Jemma and Kira from Gay Shame.
The Diametric Dyke March for a Free Palestine June 28, 2025 18th and Dolores, San Francisco Gather at 4PM March at 5PM
Gay Shame gayshame.net https://www.instagram.com/gay.shame/ Kira's Linktree https://linktr.ee/kira_is_cold A report back from the san Francisco dyke march town hall, April 2025 (Stab, in UltraViolet) https://lagaiultraviolet.wordpress.com/2025/06/15/a-report-back-from-the-san-francisco-dyke-march-town-hall-april-2025/ "No Gay Rights, Only Queer Wrongs" with Deeg, Deni and Jemma https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NjA2NTZkZDgtODQ1Mi00MzlhLTliNDEtM2EyZWVmOGM4NThi
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
This week, rewind to one of our earliest episodes on how for two years, the SFPD was uninvited to Gay Pride. In solidarity with the cops, politicians boycotted the 2022 Pride parade, and a few pro-cop LGBTs sold everyone else out.
New episode on the radical history of the Dyke March coming next week, also with Jemma!
Gay Shame's 5-0 Out of Pride video series: https://gayshame.net/index.php/five-o-out-of-pride-50
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Self abnegation is the total denial of oneself—which is how Emile Suotonye Deweaver describes what it took to get paroled by a white supremacist institution that is about reproducing power hierarchies, not repair or rehabilitation. He writes about the experience (plus notes on shibari and Dungeons & Dragons) in his new book about surviving 21 years in the California prison system, Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine.
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine https://thenewpress.org/books/ghost-in-the-criminal-justice-machine/
Emile's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/emilesuotonyedeweaver/
Previous episode with Emile on Gavin Newsom's 'Norway Model' for Prisons https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YzM1NzZmMjktNTQ5OC00NjhiLTliOTQtOGE2ZGU5ZjUxOWQxstice-machine/
Gavin Newsom's 'Norway Model' for Prisons (previous episode with Emile) https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YzM1NzZmMjktNTQ5OC00NjhiLTliOTQtOGE2ZGU5ZjUxOWQx
Annalise Ophelian directed and StormMiguel Florez co-produced MAJOR!, the beloved documentary about the beloved Miss Major. The Roxie is screening the movie for its ten year anniversary this month; its messages about community, role models and resilience are relevant as ever given our current political moment.
Annalise and StormMiguel discuss how to make a documentary without objectifying your stars, making movies in the Bay, and their more recent film projects.
MAJOR! Trailer https://vimeo.com/173777439
Tickets for June 8 at the Roxie https://ticketstripe.com/MAJOR10
The Whistle http://stormflorez.com/the-whistle.html
Looking for Leia http://lookingforleia.com
Annalise is offering free consults on navigating support letters (and pro bono appointments for getting a letter) for trans people http://www.drophelian.com
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Protest is an expression of shared anger and a way to meet and skill-build with people whose politics are aligned with you own. But how do you measure the success of a protest if you have specific material demands?
It’s an eternal question with no obvious answer that Andrew Lee deals with in their recent essay, “The end of protest,” up now on Substack.
Andrew’s “The end of protest” https://substack.com/@xandrewleex/p-161567796
Defying Displacement (AK Press) https://www.akpress.org/defying-displacement.html
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Tourmaline's work spotlighting the life of Marsha P. Johnson began with collecting a popular archive online, then a film, and now a biography that's out May 20. In the book, you learn about the notorious Black, trans heroine who moved to New York when she was thirteen, rioted at Stonewall, protected the dolls with Sylvia Rivera and their group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries/STAR, performed in and around the Village, and left the door open behind her for future queer and trans people, and everyone who believes we should be allowed to self-determine our destinies.
Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/677583/marsha-by-tourmaline/
Happy Birthday Marsha - Tourmaline and Sasha Wortzel's movie about Marsha (free with a library card on Kanopy) https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/happy-birthday-marsha
The Personal Things - animated short film Tourmaline made about Miss Major (with Micah Bazant, Pamela Chavez, and Hope Dector) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzafzVv2G2E
Even if you don't use Spotify, the streaming platform's anti-labor orientation means it's affecting musicians and thus, the music you listen to, which Liz Pelly covers in depth in her new book, "Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist." Discussed this episode: Spotify's in-house "fake"/ghost artists, how it uses a "payola-like" system to charge artists to get discovered, Walter Benjamin's "aura loss," and more.
Liz's website https://lizpelly.info
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C6719844
Critical Listening (Liz's new podcast with Max Alper) https://www.patreon.com/criticallistening
Bay Beats - SF Public Library's music streaming service https://baybeats.sfpl.org
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
CJ Trowbridge discusses his latest land project, the High Desert Institute, and a previous one that was featured on the 2023 reality show "The Garden: Commune or Cult?"--where the founding of an anticapitalist, consensus-based community was chronicled by corporate TV channel producers for a Discovery Channel audience. We also talk about the Cyberpony Express mesh network he's working on (basically, a parallel internet outside the clutches of the telecoms oligarchs like AT&T).
CJ on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@cjtrowbridge
CJ on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@CJTrowbridge
High Desert Institute https://highdesertinstitute.org
Castro Media on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@castromedia.org
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
AI is coming for our jobs, the environment, and is even starting to stand-in for human creativity. Derek Allen, Sam Kirchner and Varvara Pavlova are part of the newly formed direct action group Stop AI, which is particularly concerned about the existential threat of Artificial General Intelligence and the potential for robots to outsmart humans, which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, says is coming this year.
Stop AI https://www.stopai.info/ "Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza" (Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine) https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
Brian Merchant's book "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" covers the history of the Luddite movement https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C5986948
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Erica Meiners and Priya Kandaswamy on how prison guard unions use the valor of labor movement to reinforce the prison industrial complex.
TW: Discussion of brutality, murder, sexual assault and suicide of prisoners at the hands of prison employees.
"Prisons Are Anti-Labor Institutions. We Need an Anti-Carceral Labor Movement." (Truthout) https://truthout.org/articles/prisons-are-anti-labor-institutions-we-need-an-anti-carceral-labor-movement/
Legal Aid Society: "I'm Just Collateral Damage. The Human Cost of an Illegal Prison Strike" https://legalaidnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/LAS_PrisonersRightsProject_ClientStoriesReport_Final.pdf
Southern Poverty Law Center on white supremacy among prison guards https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hate-watch/new-york-fired-racist-prison-guard-identity-evropa-membership/
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Malcolm Harris, on how pragmatism has been monopolized by centrists who fail to take climate change seriously—the same kind of centrists who'd trust tech industrialists to save the human race. We discuss why you need a pharmacist on your apocalypse team, and Malcolm's new book, 'What's Left', which understands how our survival depends on anti-capitalist collectivity, unlike Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Libertarian-leaning Democratic Party think tank bestseller, 'Abundance.'
'What's Left' https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/whats-left/9781668646861/?lens=little-brown
"What's the Matter with Abundance?" The Baffler https://thebaffler.com/latest/whats-the-matter-with-abundance-harris
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
After last November's election, everyone from campaign consultants, to media critics, to Donald Trump himself credited alt-right media and the manosphere for making the US a more welcoming place for repressive, retrograde politics and values.
Ome (@sugarskullangelic on social media) is a sociologist and host of the podcast Liberación Army Radio, who speaks to why it's not just Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan followers who get sucked into the alt-right pipeline.
Ome's Linktree
Ome serving the public interest through analysis of the Khalil and Danisha Carter TikTok drama
Pieces mentioned:
Cheryl Harris's 'Whiteness as Property'
Olufemi O. Taiwo's 'Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)'
Silvia Federici's 'Caliban and the Witch'
Arguably Somaya on TikTok
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
A quick check-in where we look back at the longest three months in recent memory, with some notes on what’s coming up.
Thanks to all our subscribers on Patreon; please join them at patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Live from the Mission! A conversation between Deeg, Deni, Jemma and Lavelle recorded March 13, 2025 at 518 Valencia Street, steps away from the Death Star known as Manny's. A night of "tales of queer insurrection" where the audience heard the short and sweet versions of the histories of three longstanding Bay Area queer movement groups: Gay Shame, LAGAI Queer Insurrection!, and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism!
Presented in collaboration with HALA Collective and Left in the Bay; thanks also to Clean Air Network.
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Mario Riveira and Abe Woodliff's first collaborative documentary, The City of Sensitive Frauds, premieres this week. Its topic: gentrifiers and how they homogenize cities.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71eCUCI9CpM
Abe on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/realbayareamemes/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@abeisabadwriter
Twitter: https://x.com/HeLLaTaLL510
Mario on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mario0o0o0o0o0o
Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mario0o0o0o0o0o
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@mario0o0o0o0o
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Stephanie Lumsden is a scholar in Feminist and Native American Studies, currently teaching at UC Davis. She tells the story of a gang of Hupa tribe resistance fighters in 1860s California that included Curly-Headed Tom, who wreaked havoc on the area's settlers. Elsewhere in the conversation: the 'bad' vs. 'good Indian' dichotomy, and the concept of 'revenge' as anti-colonial resistance.
stephanielumsden.com=
Signal (the phone app) has become an obligatory download for every organizer on the Left in the US. But it was funded through one of the American government's propaganda agencies, and the atmosphere it creates is one of a neverending meeting permeated by paranoia. Epic conversation, care of Jemma DeCristo and Ralowe Ampu.
LAGAI—Queer Insurrection! [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/OTIxNTJmOWUtMDAxZi00YjgxLWExZGMtZDJlMzBjN2M0OWMx?view=apps&sort=popularity]
Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NDI2Y2VjYTItMjcwNi00MjQ5LWFkZTMtZmQyMjE2YjdjMjQ2?view=apps&sort=popularity]
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, scholar recently on Sad Francisco [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NjQwMzVkZGUtMzU4MC00YjdkLWI5N2MtNzk2MjdmZWM2YjJk]
SFPD racist texting scandal, 2015 edition [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/26/san-francisco-police-officers-racist-text-messages-jason-lai]
Mentioned in the introduction:
"Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine [https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3541049]
"Cloudflare Issue Can Leak Chat App Users' Broad Location" (Joseph Cox, 404 Media) [https://www.404media.co/cloudflare-issue-can-leak-chat-app-users-broad-location]
Past episodes with Jemma: "The Twitter Tax Break: How AOC West Sold Out SoMa" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MTUxODQwOGEtNDZhYy00YWQ2LWJlZjMtODdiZmNjYmE3OGM2?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Is the Transgender District a Force for Liberation or Gentrification?" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YmEyM2FiYzktYTA5OC00ODJkLWE4NjktZTY5YzA3MzlkYTAz?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Trans Black-Palestinian Solidarities" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NmYwYTkxYmEtYmYxNS00ZTQxLTk1OWItMzZjNDY3YWMwZDRm?view=apps&sort=popularity]
And Ralowe: [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MmIyMmJiYTgtYjMxZS00MGJjLWFjYTctMTYwOTU1YmQ0YmNl?view=apps&sort=popularity]
Referenced:
"Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" by Yasha Levine [https://sfpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S93C3541049] "Cloudflare Issue Can Leak Chat App Users' Broad Location" (Joseph Cox, 404 Media) [https://www.404media.co/cloudflare-issue-can-leak-chat-app-users-broad-location] Past episodes with Jemma: "The Twitter Tax Break: How AOC West Sold Out SoMa" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MTUxODQwOGEtNDZhYy00YWQ2LWJlZjMtODdiZmNjYmE3OGM2?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Is the Transgender District a Force for Liberation or Gentrification?" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YmEyM2FiYzktYTA5OC00ODJkLWE4NjktZTY5YzA3MzlkYTAz?view=apps&sort=popularity] "Trans Black-Palestinian Solidarities" [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/NmYwYTkxYmEtYmYxNS00ZTQxLTk1OWItMzZjNDY3YWMwZDRm?view=apps&sort=popularity]
And Ralowe: [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MmIyMmJiYTgtYjMxZS00MGJjLWFjYTctMTYwOTU1YmQ0YmNl?view=apps&sort=popularity]
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Chris Lee studies the emergent Asian and Asian American rightwing in the US, including forces like the Falun Gong cult. We discuss the FLG and its flagship soft power campaigns that include the Shen Yun dance company and the Epoch Times newspaper—and how it’s part of a larger effort to sow anti-communist, anti-trans sentiment in the US.
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Margaret Killjoy on coming out as an anarchist, why anarchist history is so hidden, and the importance of deescalating conflict that isn't with the enemy (and more).
Margaret's Substack [https://substack.com/@margaretkilljoy] has her essay "The Sky is Falling; We've Got This" [https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/the-sky-is-falling-weve-got-this]
Marget on BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/margaret.bsky.social] | Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/margaretkilljoy] | Twitter [https://x.com/magpiekilljoy]
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Two founders of the prison abolition movement—renowned thinkers and doers Craig and Ruth Wilson Gilmore—speak on the prison industrial complex's California roots. Also discussed: Why focusing on closing private prisons is too narrow a vision, and Gavin Newsom's campaign to put a kinder, gentler face on mass incarceration via the medicalization of imprisonment (eg. increasing conservatorship, forced rehab, and slapping the words "Rehabilitation Center" on San Quentin).
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
It started when San Jose State University's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office sponsored a visit from CSU's premier Zionist. Sang Hea Kil describes the repression she experienced as the only faculty member who joined an encampment of Muslim students in solidarity with Palestine last year at the school.
Later in the episode, G, a former worker at GLIDE Church (a San Francisco nonprofit where the head of "Social Justice" is a Zionist rabbi), speaks about explicit and implicit Zionist bias at progressive nonprofits.
Sang's piece in Radical Teacher: "Islamophobia, Dirty Water Tactics, and Student Encampments for Gaza": https://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/radicalteacher/article/view/1310
Sang on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sangheakil/
G on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gay13/
Episodes mentioned:
How South African Solidarity Encampments Worked f/ Matt Ray and Matt Wranovics (Left in the Bay): https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/YmVmZmIxY2QtYzg4Ny00OTliLWJmZGYtMjVkOTM1MjYwNWJj
Can't Hide a Genocide f/ Dylan Rodriguez and Loubna Qutami: https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/ZmVhOGRjMDYtMmVjOS00NmM4LThmZDktN2JmYjQxMTk0Yjc4
Debt is a Threat to Liberation f/ Maddy Clifford (Debt Collective): https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/MjdhNWQzNmMtNTg4My00NDkwLWIyMmItZmE4NzkwN2RkYzAx
Should Social Movement Work Be Paid? with Dean Spade: [https://episodes.fm/1653309103/episode/ZmY5YTNkMTUtOTkzNC00YTBjLTk0NDQtMzNkOTliY2EzMDdk
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
]
A crowd of people set fire to a robotaxi last Lunar New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown. Jasmine explains how Asian American influencers and corporate media outlets used the "death" of a Waymo "self-driving" vehicle to stoke fear about anti-Asian violence.
Fundraiser for Yazan in Gaza [https://chuffed.org/project/115145-yazan]
Write to Casey Goonan [https://www.abcf.net/blog/update-on-casey-goonans-legal-case]
LA Public Press Podcast: https://lapublicpress.org/the-tenant-association/
Episode referenced:
Dylan Rodriguez on Zionists and Counterinsurgency in Stop Asian Hate [https://www.patreon.com/posts/zionists-and-in-103600189]
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Churches, nonprofits and politicians have turned the anti-sex trafficking movement into a billion-dollar industry. The lives and stories of migrant sex workers get used as an excuse to hire more cops, and criminalize a form of labor that pays better than most. Chanelle and Elene, on their new book featuring the stories of migrant sex workers from across North America.
Not Your Rescue Project (Haymarket Books) [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2258-not-your-rescue-project]
Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network [https://www.butterflysw.org]
"Abolish Rent" is a new organizing bible from Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal, laying out the reasons why capitalism will never provide everyone with the basic human need of shelter. They discuss tactics from successful rent strikes, how California's COVID-19 eviction moratorium was both a success and failure of tenant activism, and the attempt by landlords to rebrand as "housing providers."
Buy Abolish Rent [https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2443-abolish-rent]
"Privatizing Public Housing: 'The Genocide of Poor People'" (Toshio in Truthout) [https://truthout.org/articles/privatizing-public-housing-the-genocide-of-poor-people/]
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Hanin, Mai and Nadina met and became friends through the Palestine solidarity movement in Tokyo a little over a year ago.
We cover some of the recent successes of the movement, including Israeli defense company Elbit Systems losing contracts, and Israel being disinvited from the yearly event in Nagasaki that memorializes the day the US dropped an atomic bomb.
They speak to some of the particularities of organizing against imperialism from inside Japan, and ways to sustain the organizing as the latest wave of genocide in Gaza continues.
Palestinians of Japan (Instagram) https://www.instagram.com/palestinejapan
Mai’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/yudetamai
Nadina’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/nadina.mp4
Nam Nam Space (Koenji, Tokyo) https://www.instagram.com/namnam_space
Support Simo in Palestine https://www.gofundme.com/f/urgent-relief-for-salamas-family-in-gaza
Mama Ganuush and Toshio bring you AIPAC Zombies: people in American culture who have been possessed by the worst Zionist brainrot.
Our first episode: California politician Scott Wiener.
More:
"Scott Wiener’s Appalling Legacy as San Francisco Supervisor" (Patrick Range McDonald, Housing is a Human Right) [https://www.housingisahumanright.org/scott-wiener-appalling-legacy-san-francisco-supervisor/] "Gay Neoliberal Candidate in San Francisco Disproves Myths About LGBT Values" (Toshio, Truthout) [https://truthout.org/articles/gay-neoliberal-candidate-in-san-francisco-disproves-myths-about-lgbt-values/]
Join Tofu and Toshio on an end of the year, stream-of-consciousness check-in.
New episode of Sad Francisco on January 3. AIPAC Zombies with Mama Ganuush premieres January 1.
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
A check-in with Mama Ganuush where we hear about their recent hunger strike, their visit with family who evacuated Gaza for Egypt, and discuss how US elections are bought and sold by AIPAC.
SF Drag Artist Leads Hunger Strike Against US Funding of Israel (Nastia Voynovskaya, KQED)
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13967427/sf-drag-artist-leads-hunger-strike-against-us-funding-of-israel
Mama Ganuush on Instagram
HALA Collective
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
[This episode went up back in September, but it felt OK to put it back on the feed for anyone who might've missed it. New episodes soon.]
As liberation movements face intense repression from CEOs, cops, landlords, politicians, and Zionists, Dean Spade and friends put together a list of questions we can all ask ourselves, so we don't reproduce the logics of the state.
Dean is author of the classics Mutual Aid and Normal Life: Administrative Violence and the Limits of the Law, and future classic Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together.
"Cultivating Solidarity in Times of Escalating Repression" (Dean, with Community Justice Exchange, Jocelyn Simonson, Pilar Weiss, Atara Rich-Shea and Zohra Ahmed: http://bit.ly/cultivatesolidarity
Our last episode with Dean: Should Social Movement Work Be Paid? https://www.patreon.com/posts/should-social-be-109620321?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
Dean's website: http://deanspade.net
Support us and watch the video version of this episode on Patreon.
Lavender Phoenix https://lavenderphoenix.org/
SF People's Budget: https://www.instagram.com/sfpeoplesbudget/
#JusticeForAkaiGurley: AAPI response to people supporting Peter Liang, the NYPD officer who killed Akai Gurley.
https://caaav.org/justiceforakaigurley-national-sign-on-letter
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
*People's Budget Coalition listed for ID purposes only.
Originally from San Francisco, Brandon Lee was working as a journalist in Ifugao in the Philippines when he survived an assassination attempt–a shooting carried out by forces close to the US-backed Duterte regime.
Brandon talks about surviving the attack, the US disinformation machine, and why the Bay goes so hard for liberation in the Philippines.
Website: Justice4BrandonLee.org
IG: Justice4BrandonLee: https://www.instagram.com/justice4brandonlee/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Justice4BrandonLee
International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines-US: https://ichrpus.wordpress.com/
BAYAN USA: https://www.bayanusa.org/
"Death Squads Hunting Environmental Defenders" (Brandon, In These Times): https://inthesetimes.com/article/brandon-lee-philippines-violence-environmental-activists
"The U.S. Is Complicit in War Crimes in the Philippines" (Brandon, Inkstick Media): https://inkstickmedia.com/the-us-is-complicit-in-war-crimes-in-the-philippines/
"The Forces That Nearly Murdered Me Are Meeting In San Francisco Today" (Brandon, The Nation): https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/apec-summit-san-francisco/
"Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic" (Chris Bing and Joel Schectman, Reuters): https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/
"SHUTDOWN: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War": documentary about the protests in response to the Iraq war in 2003 that shut down San Francisco for: https://vimeo.com/57710595
Past episodes mentioned:
Imperial War Games of RIMPAC f/ Abbey Irodistan from BAYAN USA NorCal: https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-imperial-f-108415933
SF Against APEC w/ Anakbayan CCSF: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sf-against-apec-109660245
-
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Jeremy Mack (from The Phoenix Project, which exposes dark money in Bay Area politics) is back for a discussion about upcoming elections, TogetherSF, the billionaire-funded, "pro-moderate" astroturfing group behind SF's Prop. D, and Balaji Srinivasan's plan for "The Network State," a techbro-led New World Order complete with a walled-off Hayes Valley.
The Phoenix Project: https://www.phoenixprojectnow.com/
Instagram: @phoenixprojnow | Twitter: @phoenixprojnow
Past episodes mentioned:
-Alison Collins on being recalled from SFUSD: https://www.patreon.com/posts/project-2025-in-111973369
-Anna Kirsch on the billionaire attempt to create a billionaire's compound in Solano County, "California Forever": https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-planning-f-107097104
"The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of 'Blues'" (Gil Duran, The New Republic): https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat
"SF Dems’ sexual-misconduct inquiry puts politico Jay Cheng back in the spotlight" (Joe Rivano Barros, Mission Local): https://missionlocal.org/2024/05/sf-dems-sexual-misconduct-committee-puts-allegations-against-politico-jay-cheng-back-in-spotlight/
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Mama Ganuush hosts a discussion on whether people in the US actually stand a chance under American democracy, when money rules everything around us. Guests from The Phoenix Project (exposing dark money in Bay Area politics) and Pups for Palestine (what it says :) ).
Salon HALA will return in 2025.
Salon HALA on Instagram
The Phoenix Project
Zinedogs | Instagram @zinedogssf
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
It's one year since the start of the most recent wave of Israel's US-backed genocide of Palestinians. This episode was recorded last fall with Loubna Qutami (co-founder of the Palestinian Youth Movement and a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective), and one of her mentors, and ours, Dylan Rodriguez (co-founder of Critical Resistance and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association).
Both organizers and professors, Loubna (UCLA) and Dylan (UC Riverside) discuss Zionist repression, and why we must continue to fight it.
LISTEN TO ALL 14 OF OUR PALESTINE EPISODES FROM THE PAST YEAR HERE.
"Brothers in recovery" Matt Dorsey (an ex-SFPD staffer turned politician) and Tom Wolf (the rightwing influencer who said the impending closure of a Macy's store was "San Francisco's 9/11") are examples of how conservatives are using their drug rehab journeys to prop up the war on drug users.
With enemies like Tom Wolf, rightwing lobbyist Christopher Rufo, and conservative misinformation machine PragerU, our guest, Tenderloin-based writer Lea McGeever, must be doing something right.
Lea:
Substack: https://leftylea.substack.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leftylea_in_sf/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@leftylea?lang=en
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Project 2025 soft launched in San Francisco years ago, with successful attempts to replace politicians with people who are obedient to the rightwing. Because it’s the Bay, these replacements are registered as Democrats and they virtue signal about diversity, but make no mistake, they are deeply aligned with rightwing forces like the Heritage Foundation.
This episode’s guest Alison Collins is a SFUSD teacher and former school board member who was recalled in a rightwing recall campaign in 2022.
Ali’s Patreon: www.patreon.com/justtalkspodcast
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Mutual aid and relationships with people we trust are gonna be key to surviving the political and climate apocalypses ahead.
Brooke, Lauren and Mama Ganuush on Bay2Gaza Mutual Aid, and how to sustain connections with people living through the genocide in Palestine, as the US and Israel do everything they can to repress signals of solidarity.
Bay2Gaza Benefit is 9/20 at Oakland Secret https://www.instagram.com/p/C_ggDqUyDoj/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
https://www.Bay2Gaza.org
Thank you to LoCura for this episode’s outro track “Guerriller@s (Bang Data remix)
https://www.locuramusica.org
Past Sad Francisco episodes mentioned:
Pinkwashing, with Brooke, Mama Ganuush and Deeg
https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-genocide-f-108029780
Trans Black Palestinian Solidarities with Jemma Decristo, Lavelle Ridley and Mama Ganuush
https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-trans-f-105794127
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
"Cultivating Solidarity in Times of Escalating Repression" (Dean, with Community Justice Exchange, Jocelyn Simonson, Pilar Weiss, Atara Rich-Shea and Zohra Ahmed: http://bit.ly/cultivatesolidarity
As liberation movements face intense repression from CEOs, cops, landlords, politicians, and Zionists,
https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/over-60-people-indicted-on-rico-charges-in-atlanta-allegedly-promoting-anarchist-ideas/
- Official Indictment: https://unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/atlanta-rico-indicts-doc-official.pdf
Dean Spade and friends put together a list of questions we can all ask ourselves, so we don't reproduce the logics of the state.
Dean is author of the classics Mutual Aid and Normal Life: Administrative Violence and the Limits of the Law, and future classic Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together https://www.deanspade.net/2024/08/14/new-book-out-january-pre-order-now/
Our last episode with Dean: Should Social Movement Work Be Paid? https://www.patreon.com/posts/should-social-be-109620321?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
Dean's website: http://deanspade.net
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Debt is a tool of control wielded by rich people. Maddy Clifford and Debt Collective (the union for people dealing with debt) want to wipe it out.
Maddy's Linktree https://linktr.ee/madlines
Debt Collective https://debtcollective.org/
Tenant Power Toolkit https://tenantpowertoolkit.org/
"They Want to Keep You in Debt" (Maddy at More Perfect Union) https://perfectunion.us/the-secret-student-debt-fight/
“It’s a system that’s rigged. It’s messed up, and we’re the ones that have to bear that burden." (Maddy at In These Times) https://inthesetimes.com/article/leimert-park-jubilee-debt-collective
"Debt" by David Graeber https://linkencore.iii.com/iii/encore/record/C__Rb42088729
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Hate to be that bummer podcast, but Zionism has invaded party culture, too.
Mama Ganuush discusses Adam Swig, a party promoter from the real estate empire that brought you San Francisco’s posh Fairmont and St. Francis hotels.
Next, we talk Israel’s colonization of the Playa, complete with a Nova Music Festival memorial, and a “No donations for Doctors Without Borders” policy at the queer Comfort & Joy camp.
More episodes on with Zionist culture-washing:
- “Civic Joy Brings Sorrow” with Mama Ganuush https://www.patreon.com/posts/civic-joy-brings-108848550?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
- “Zionists and Counterinsurgency in Stop Asian Hate” with Dylan Rodriguez https://www.patreon.com/posts/zionists-and-in-103600189?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
- “The Anti-Zionist Boycott of Manny’s” with Deeg https://www.patreon.com/posts/anti-zionist-of-106162019?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
- “Pinkwashing Genocide” with Brooke Lober, Deeg and Mama Ganuush https://www.patreon.com/posts/pinkwashing-f-108029935?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
- “Queers for a Free Palestine” with Kate Raphael https://www.patreon.com/posts/queers-for-free-109660043?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
“Haaretz confirms Grayzone reporting it dismissed as ‘conspiracy’ showing Israel killed own festivalgoers” (via The Grayzone) https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/21/haaretz-grayzone-conspiracy-israeli-festivalgoers/amp/
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Elections suck people's energy, money, and imagination, while legitimizing a system where a few elites cling to most power and wealth. (Not to mention the multiple genocides.) What's not to love?
Edxi's Linktree linktr.ee/bettsurevolt
I'm NOT Dreaming of a White 'Insurrection': How the Right Wing Stole Crisis https://edxithatradgworl.substack.com/p/im-not-dreaming-of-a-white-insurrection?r=327odc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Love to everyone who listens to the podcast unless you're a cop or YIMBY! Short announcement today.
BTW, if you're a member, the new Patreon-only content is up today.
Toshio Meronek and Tofu Estolas make Sad Francisco. Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Elections suck people's energy, money, and imagination, while legitimizing a system where a few elites cling to most power and wealth. (Not to mention the multiple genocides.) What's not to love?
Edxi's Linktree linktr.ee/bettsurevolt
I'm NOT Dreaming of a White 'Insurrection': How the Right Wing Stole Crisis https://edxithatradgworl.substack.com/p/im-not-dreaming-of-a-white-insurrection?r=327odc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Love to everyone who listens to the podcast. Short announcement today.
BTW, if you're a member, the new Patreon-only content is up today!
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Homelessness is becoming even more criminalized thanks to the Grant's Pass decision at the Supreme Court, plus the desire by politicians to suck up to their Nextdoor.com lurker donors. Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is one way to give people a roof over their heads without taking away their self-determination. Jordan Davis discusses living in, and fighting for, permanent supportive housing.
Check patreon.com/sadfrancisco to listen (free) to a conversation about the Supreme Court's Grant's Pass decision further criminalizing homelessness, recorded live at Salon Hala at Queer AF in the Castro on 7/26 (with Mama Ganuush, Ka-Sun Cho, and Snowflake Calvert).
Jordan Davis on Instagram: www.instagram.com/veganpaczki
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The Civic Joy Fund is an artwashing front for nefarious causes like Zionism and the Police Officers Association, helmed and funded by sociopaths like Manny Yekutiel of Manny's in the Mission, crypto bro Chris Larsen, and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie. Mama Ganuush on the boycott directed at the aforementioned rich guys and the milquetoast art they're funding.
HALA Collective - Mama Ganuush-founded artist collective (Toshio is a member)
https://www.mamaganuush.com/hala
Our episode with Deeg on the Anti-Zionist Boycott of Manny's
https://www.patreon.com/posts/anti-zionist-of-106162019?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_fan&utm_content=web_share
Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
For RIMPAC, 29 countries and so-called Israel are in Hawaii to explode some old naval ships, waste a ton of money, kill some birds and dolphins, and make local kids feel like they're under a perpetual state of siege. Abbey Irodistan is with the Filipino anti-imperialist group BAYAN USA NorCal, which is joining Hawaiians to call for an end to RIMPAC forever.
"SF Against APEC" episode with Anakbayan CCSF
BAYAN USA NorCal (Instagram)
Anakbayan USA
Gabriela USA
SF Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines Toshio Meronek and Tofu Estolas make Sad Francisco. Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Sad Francisco fam Brooke Lober (Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area), Deeg (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism), and Mama Ganuush on why Zionists started putting rainbow flags on tanks destroying Gaza, and the Bay Area roots of Brand Israel’s gay hasbara campaign.
Recorded June 27, 2024 at the Queer & Trans Artists for a Free Palestine closing at SOMArts, hosted by the BLOOM Collective.
Palestinian queer group alQaws: “Reflecting on Queerness in Times of Genocide”
Mama Ganuush on queers for Palestine, and Trans Black Palestinian Solidarities
Deeg on the Manny’s in the Mission boycott, and LAGAI - Queer Insurrection
Brooke Lober on Urban Alchemy
Toshio’s reporting on pinkwashing at Truthout, Waging Nonviolence, and Bitch magazine
Toshio Meronek and Tofu Estolas make Sad Francisco. Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Abe Woodliff on how it's impossible to actually predict when a meme will hit, writing, and the shocking lack of negatives there are to existing authentically. Plus his recent piece on who wins and loses from fake narratives around crime rates.
"Crime is Down in the Bay Area, Why Are People Pretending It's Not?" at Broke-Ass Stuart
Abe Woodliff on Substack | Instagram | Twitter | Abe's Book
@realbayareamemes on Instagram | Facebook
YIMBY billionaires are buying up thousands of acres northeast of the Bay, to build a planned community of rich tech types. To sell their East Solano Plan (f.k.a. “California Forever”) to locals, its founders launched a PR campaign complete with artwashing and more. Vallejo-based Anna Kirsch of Artists Against Billionaires is part of the resistance. Artists Against Billionaires on Instagram
Anna Kirsch (@girlonbus) on Instagram
Kevin L. Jones from Doomloop Dispatch–"the podcast about the worst parts of the San Francisco Bay Area" reached out! Him and Toshio speak on the ongoing death of traditional corporate news, plus background on the origins of Sad Francisco.
Doomloop Dispatch is on all the podcast platforms, plus Twitter and Instagram.
Toshio Meronek and Tofu Estolas are Sad Francisco. Support us and find links to our past episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Get to know the gay Zionist Burner Manny Yekutiel, of Manny's cafe in the Mission, and why groups like Gay Shame and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) have been boycotting Manny's since 2018.
HALA Collective
BAD (Bay Area Drag) Fund
"Progressive coalition boycotts ‘woke-washing’ of San Francisco event space" (Toshio at Waging Nonviolence)
"What boycott of Manny's in the Mission is about" (Margot Goldstein and Rachel Lederman at SF Chronicle)
For our first live show taping in May, Jemma DeCristo, LaVelle Ridley, and Mama Ganuush spoke brilliantly on Trans Black-Palestinian Solidarity amidst the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Naturally, given the topic, things got emotional.
Thanks to everyone who made the night possible!
Jemma Decristo currently holds the record for most appearances on Sad Francisco! Her repertoire includes the episodes "Is the Transgender District a Force for Liberation or Gentrification?" and "Hot Cop of the Castro"
This was LaVelle Ridley's debut episode; she will return!
Mama Ganuush (the episode with Mama Ganuush from earlier this year, "We're Queer, We're Trans, No Peace on Stolen Land!" is a must-listen)
LEFT IN THE BAY exposes histories of the Bay Area that explain how we got our ideological reputation. Two from the collective, Matt Ray and Matt Wranovics, speak on their recent piece covering the Bay's protests in the 1980s against South African apartheid, and some lessons to genocide in Palestine.
"They're watching you; don't let them down": the 1985 anti-apartheid occupation movement at Berkeley by Left in the Bay (at Notes from Below)
Left in the Bay on Instagram
Left in the Bay on Twitter
Julie Pitta and Jeremy Mack are part of the Phoenix Project, which is tracking the wealthy wannabe overlords of the Bay. They run down dossiers of five extremely rich dudes who want to run local politics: Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, Chris Larsen, John Kilroy, Jr., and Garry Tan.
Phoenix Project - request the Phoenix Papers: Volume 2
Episodes mentioned:
"VCs vs. SF" f/ Julie Pitta
"Michael Shellenberger Thinks He Knows Your Gender" f/ Soleil Ho
"Stop Garry Tan to Stop Asian Hate" f/ Emily Mills
Part 2 of the conversation with Deeg, with more on LAGAI-Queer Insurrection (formerly Lesbians And Gays Against Intervention), the Bay Area collective that started organizing in 1983 in response to the US war machine meddling overseas.
UltraViolet (LAGAI's zine)
"How a queer liberation collective has stayed radical for almost 40 years" (Toshio in Waging Nonviolence)
Episode with Deeg on the Boycott of Manny's in the Mission
Episode with LAGAI member Kate Raphael: Queers for a Free Palestine
Deeg is back for some oral history lessons about LAGAI-Queer Insurrection (formerly Lesbians And Gays Against Intervention), a radical collective that started organizing in 1983 in response to the US war machine meddling overseas.
Some of the same members from forty years ago continue to meet, plan direct actions, and send thousands of copies of their zine UltraViolet into prisons for free, with no 501(c)3 and next to no funding. We talk: avoiding burnout and cooptation, how to measure movement successes (and why sometimes you can't), and more.
This is Part 1 of a two-part episode.
- UltraViolet (LAGAI's zine)
- "How a queer liberation collective has stayed radical for almost 40 years" (Toshio in Waging Nonviolence)
- Episode with Deeg on the Boycott of Manny's in the Mission
- Episode with LAGAI member Kate Raphael: Queers for a Free Palestine
In the US, traditional media censorship of pro-Palestinian voices didn't start October 2023. A new report on Zionism's chilling effect on journalists is out this week, spotlighting how some reporters and editors self-censor, and corporate outlets keep Palestinian stories from being published. With Tiana Reid (@tianareid | tianareid.com ) of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project. *This episode was recorded in March. Subscribers to our Patreon got this episode early. Help support the show there.
- Red Lines: Retaliation in the media industry during the war on Gaza
-
National Writers' Union Freelance Solidarity Project
-
Writers Against the War on Gaza
- Media Against Apartheid & Displacement
- International Federation of Journalists, War in Gaza death count
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas.
Dylan Rodriguez is back to talk about his new piece: "How the Stop Asian Hate Movement Became Entwined with Zionism, Policing, and Counterinsurgency."
Launching off the murders of Asian sex workers in Atlanta in 2021, The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) raised over $1 billion in six months. How was the rage over those deaths transformed into liberal, reformist solutions to violence, plus a TAAF board appointment for the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt?
Dylan's "How the Stop Asian Hate Movement Became Entwined with Zionism, Policing, and Counterinsurgency" (Critical Ethnic Studies Journal)
"Astroturf Antisemitism Watchdogs" (Emmaia Gelman, Jadaliyya)
18 Million Rising: Drop the ADL
Erin McElroy is back to talk about fresh release "Silicon Valley Imperialism." Starting in the 2010s, the post-socialist Romanian government created special visas to attract tech corporations and digital nomads. They hoped to create a mini-San Francisco; the book looks at how that materialized.
- Silicon Valley Imperialism (Duke)
- Anti-Eviction Lab
- Previous Erin episode: Landlord Tech Watch
- Silicon Holler episode f/ Tom Sexton
Nonprofits could never: Three members of the autonomous West Side Tenants Association/WSTA discuss the evergreen problem of charity; what movements gain by putting collectivism before individualism; how knowing your neighbors is the most effective and meaningful survival tactic; and the inspiration we all get from past solidarity work in the Bay, like the thousands of people who came together around the I Hotel in the 1970s.
- West Side Tenants Association (also on Instagram)
- The Worst Evictors of San Francisco and Oakland
- Past episodes mentioned:
Should Social Movement Work Be Paid? f/ Dean Spade
How City College Got Free f/ James Tracy
Landlord Tech Watch f/ Erin McElroy
Politics have turned COVID into a dirty word, but Jillian Crochet, a Senior and Disability Action member, is working to get the San Francisco Department of Public Health to keep masking requirements in medical facilities and jails beyond April 30, when they're set to expire.
- Letter to SFDPH to keep masks in healthcare
- April 16 Action (IndyBay)
- Senior and Disability Action (Instagram | Twitter)
- Disability Visibility Project #N95s4UCSF
Well-known drag artists have been using their platforms to combat the genocide in Gaza since last October. In part two, Lady Bunny takes on virtue signaling politicians, and describes her suspicions around the viral photo with her name written on an IDF missile.
Check part one for Nicki Jizz, host of locally beloved drag night Reparations, who explains how politics and drag mix.
And our recent episode with Bay Area-based Palestinian drag artist Mama Ganuush.
"Meet the Drag Artists Using Their Platforms to Combat the Genocide in Gaza" (Truthout)
Lady Bunny on Instagram and Twitter
Nicki Jizz (and Reparations) on Instagram and Twitter
Well-known drag artists have been using their platforms to combat the genocide in Gaza since last October. In this first part, Nicki Jizz, host of locally beloved drag night Reparations, explains how politics and drag mix.
Check part two for Lady Bunny, who talks about virtue signaling politicians, and describes her suspicions around the viral photo with her name written on an IDF missile.
And our recent episode with Bay Area-based Palestinian drag artist Mama Ganuush.
"Meet the Drag Artists Using Their Platforms to Combat the Genocide in Gaza" (Truthout)
Nicki Jizz (and Reparations) on Instagram and Twitter
Lady Bunny on Instagram and Twitter
Instead of demanding free housing or health care, some people think the answer to homelessness is to build "mental health" jails and forced "rehab" centers to stow unhoused people, indefinitely. With Clio/Thatcher Sady and Tory Becker, from Gay Shame.
- "Cities Across the US Are Stripping Homeless People of Their Autonomy," by Tory and Toshio, for Truthout
In other news:
- April 5 at Bluestockings in New York City: Come hang out with Shuli Branson, Zuri Arman, and Toshio, around the anthology "Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies"
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek; this episode was edited by Caitlin Wood. Support the show and find links to all of our past episodes on Patreon.
On February 15, eight artists altered their works at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in solidarity with Palestine. Ralowe Ampu is on to talk about the YBCA's neoliberal nothingspeak response to the artists' - and now many staffmembers' - demands of a museum that claims to be centered on diversity and community. **The museum remains closed as of March 7.
- Love Letter to Gaza, Open Letter from the Artists
- Boycott YBCA Artists' Statement
- Open Letter from YBCA Employees in Support of Palestine and BAN9 Artists
- Artists Alter Their Own Work at YBCA in Pro-Palestinian Protest (Nastia Voynovskaya, KQED)
- Welcome to Airspace: How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world (Kyle Chayka, The Verge)
- Screen Grabs: What did we learn from the fight for the Castro Theatre?
- Brooklyn Museum and PEN America Accused of “Silence” on Gaza Ceasefire (Maya Pontone, Hyperallergic)
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Please support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Pierre Labossiere and Charlie Hinton (Haiti Action Committee) speak on common threads between Haiti and Palestine, and how US-enabled death squads are creating chaos in the first country to come out of a successful slave uprising.
- Haiti Action Committee
- HAC: Haiti Ten Years After the Earthquake
- HAC: 'From Haiti to Palestine: One Struggle/One Fight' on Antoine and Georges Izméry, Palestinian-Haitian brothers assassinated by US-backed death squads
- Randall Robinson: An Unbroken Agony (book)
- Graham Greene: The Comedians (book)
- The Comedians (1967 movie)
- Haiti Ransom Project (NY Times)
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
GrowSF, TogetherSF and other benign-sounding local political organizations are more rightwing innovations from rich tech barons like David Sacks and Michael Moritz. Julie Pitta, a journalist previously at the LA Times, Forbes, and the SF Richmond Review, talks about the newly launched Phoenix Project, which looks at how dark money flows in California politics.
(FYI: The conversation with Julie was recorded in early February, shortly after Garry "Die Slow" Tan's drunken appropriation of Tupac lyrics calling for the death of a bunch of local politicians, and just before a rightwing trolling campaign convinced the Richmond Review's publisher to abruptly end Julie's column there.)
- The Phoenix Project
- 'Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics' (Julie Pitta in the Richmond Review)
- 'The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco' (Gil Duran in the New Republic)
- Our Garry Tan episode (f/ Emily Mills)
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Please support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Chris Vargas, on the Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art (MOTHA), a project with no real estate that is "forever under construction," and its Bay Area connections.
- MOTHA
- Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects
- Our episode with Susan Stryker (director of Screaming Queens), on the Tenderloin's Compton's Cafeteria
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
In 2021, Lakeside Investment Company bought the Redstone Labor Temple in the Mission. Poor Magazine's tiny gray-garcia (aka povertyskola), and Rick Gerharter, a movement photographer who's had an office in the Redstone for decades, talk about the significance of the building, as the new landlord drops a gentrification bomb in the form of massive rent increases.
- Poor Magazine
- Rick Gerharter
Sad Francisco is produced by Toshio Meronek and edited by Tofu Estolas. Please support the show and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Soleil Ho is an opinion editor at the San Francisco Chronicle who recently covered the Berkeley-based writer and wannabe California governor Michael Shellenberger. In Shellenberger's last book, San Fransicko, he says rising homelessness rates in West Coast cities comes from us "loving victims" too much. Shellenberger's latest escapade: positioning himself as an expert on trans people. Soleil breaks it down.
- Soleil's SF Chronicle column on Michael Shellenberger
- Stop Garry Tan to Stop Asian Hate - our episode on Garry Tan, a Shellenberger ally based in SF (f/ Emily Mills)
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Mama Ganuush is an African Palestinian American drag artist living in San Francisco. Right now, they're combining direct action, performances, and Bay solidarity to combat Israel's campaign of cultural erasure and colonization - a campaign led locally by gay Israel subs Matt Dorsey, Rafael Mandelman, and Scott Wiener.
- Mama Ganuush on Instagram
- Heritage Anti-Racist Liberation Artists (HALA) - their new artists' collective!
- Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism
- Gay Shame
- BDS Movement
- BBC News: "McDonald's hit by Israel-Gaza 'misinformation'"
Recent episodes on Palestine:
- Can't Hide a Genocide f/ Dylan Rodriguez and Loubna Qutami
- Queers for a Free Palestine f/ Kate Raphael
- Manny's is Your Local Zionist Gentrification Cafe f/ Deeg
Edited by Tofu Estolas (IG: @terabyte_tofu).
New intro is from the soundtrack to 'Criminal Queers' f/ assists from Christen and Ralowe.
Support Sad Francisco and find links to more past episodes on Patreon.
BAGL (Bay Area Gay Liberation) was a major force in 1970s San Francisco labor activism on many fronts, supporting farm workers and gay teachers, and thwarting the Coors beer dynasty's polygraph tests to weed out gays. The group gave BAGL member Charlie Hinton purpose; he describes its ascent and eventual dissolution that resulted over plans to host a gay air force officer.
Read more about queer history from 1970s SF in Christina Hanhardt's 'Safe Space' and Emily Hobson's 'Lavender and Red'.
Edited by Tofu Estolas (IG: @terabyte_tofu).
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Offensively bland art results from the tyrrany of homeowners with too much time on their hands. Two recent cases where Nextdoor.com creeps and gentrifiers at community benefits district meetings made decisions that censored murals and the like, discussed with Christen Cioffi.
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Politicians always warn that there's never enough funding to pay for the basic things people need to live. Reporting from Northwest Arkansas, Gracie Fuhrman (Arkansas Justice Reform Coalition) and (Sad Francisco's editor) Caitlin Wood describe how politicians wasted federal COVID relief on cops and jails.
Sad Francisco is one year old. Listed in no particular order, our five most downloaded episodes:
- Queers for a free Palestine, with Kate Raphael
- Should social movement work be paid? with Dean Spade
- Is the transgender district a force for gentrification or liberation? with Jemma DeCristo
- APEC: SF bends over for Asian dictators and Biden, with CCSF Anakbayan
- Urban Alchemy: a new layer of police in the Tenderloin, with Brooke Lober and Norma Azucar
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon. 'Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary' is available at most libraries and bookstores (if not, request it!)
Gavin Newsom is soft-launching his presidential campaign with his "California model" of prisons as a centerpiece. Emile Suotonye DeWeaver on how Newsom's attempt to mimic the "Norway model" of imprisonment will affect the biggest single prison system in the world.
- Re:Frame | Emile Suotonye DeWeaver
- Gavin Newsom's Prison Reform Isn't Progress - It's a 'Near Enemy' (The Appeal)
- Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) Prison Closure Roadmap
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Gaslighting and double-standards are all over the media and at schools, where Zionists often get put on pedestals, while pro-Palestinian voices get silenced. A discussion of how censorship works on and off college campuses, featuring:
Dylan Rodriguez, co-founder of Critical Resistance and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, and professor of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside
Loubna Qutami, co-founder of the Palestinian Feminist Collective and the Palestinian Youth Movement, and assistant professor in Asian American Studies at UCLA
Shownotes:
- Palestine Legal: 'Distorted Definition: Redefining Antisemitism to Silence Advocacy for Palestinian Rights'
- 'Professor 'un-hiring' fuels battle for academic freedom' (Toshio Meronek, Waging Nonviolence)
- 'Students fight smears as universities back Israel’s genocidal attacks' (Nora Barrows-Friedman, Electronic Intifada)
- A Communique on Sabotaging Zionist Infrastructure: Shutting Down Friends of the IDF (IndyBay)
- 'The Lobby' (Al Jazeera documentary on the Israel lobby, featuring UC Davis)
- Dylan on Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
- Loubna on Academia.edu | Twitter
- Past episodes on Palestine: Queers for a Free Palestine with Kate Raphael; the Antizionist Boycott of Manny's with Deeg
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
If you are in the Bay this weekend:
THIS SATURDAY, 12/2/23 Palestine solidarity action c/o QUIT! and Gay Shame, 1 p.m. at Market and Castro
THIS SUNDAY, 12/3/23 Howard Zinn Book Fair
Ahead of 'Giving Tuesday,' it's our episode from the archives featuring Dean Spade, on the nonprofit industrial complex.
Next week: a brand-new episode with Dylan Rodriguez and Loubna Qutami, on the Zionist censorship campaign.
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Jan Tokumaru and Kimi Maru (Nikkei Progressives) describe mutual aid projects that connect Japanese American internment camps to today's ICE detention centers.
- Nikkei Progressives
- Nikkei Resisters
- Shut Down Adelanto
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
Kate Raphael co-founded Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) in the Bay back in 2001. She talks about getting arrested in Israel for taping IDF harassment of Palestinians, why Palestinian liberation is a queer issue, and how Israel hired an SF-based PR firm to pinkwash Israel’s genocide.
Also check the archives for the recent episode with another QUIT! Member, Deeg, who speaks on the anti-Zionist boycott of Manny’s in the Mission.
- Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!)
- Kate Raphael
- 'Major News Networks Sideline Palestinian Analysts' (Mari Cohen in Jewish Currents)
- Budrus (documentary by Julia Bacha)
- Pinkwashing Exposed (documentary by Dean Spade and Amy Mahardy)
Biden, Bongbong Marcos and dozens of billionaires will be shaking hands and making deals at the APEC conference downtown in November. Malaya and Mara (Anakbayan CCSF) explain how a locked-down meeting of free trade-loving elites from Asia and North America will hurt the working class, and why protesters might want to ruin their party.
- no2apec
- Anakbayan CCSF
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
A GAY SHAME podcast.
Emmanuel Yekutiel is a marketing associate for conservative causes and Israel who in 2018, opened a gentrification cafe in the Mission that he named after himself.
Since then, Manny's has been a safe space for neoliberal figures to gather, including Dr. Jill Biden, Matt Yglesias, Nancy Pelosi, Sam Bankman-Fried, SFPD chief Bill Scott, and the trio of local politicians Manny dubbed the "Power Gays."
Deeg from Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!) speaks on the boycott of Manny's, and the tradition of queers organizing against Israel's genocide of Palestinians.
- Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!)
- BDS Movement
- "Alive in Limbo" documentary
- "Pinkwashing Exposed" documentary
- Queer Cinema for Palestine
- "Progressive Coalition boycotts 'woke-washing' of San Francisco event space"
- "Mark Zuckerberg's Immigration Hustle"
Kansas City, Olympia, and parts of Boston and DC now have fare-free public transportation. Yet BART and MUNI fares keep going up. Aditya, of the copwatching project Unfare SF, on moving the Bay toward no-ticket public transit.
- Unfare SF on Mastodon
- Unfare SF on Twitter
- Bikehopper
- Segregation by Design
- The Bay Area's Lost Streetcars (Chris Arvin)
- Shaping SF: The Freeway Revolt (Chris Carlsson)
Support Sad Francisco and find links to our past episodes on Patreon.
In 2017, City College of SF became one of only a few colleges in the US with free tuition for locals.
One of the organizers behind Free City was James Tracy, an author, organizer and teacher at City College in the Department of Labor and Community Studies. He describes the organizing strategy behind a successful campaign where the Left went on the offensive.
'Free City' by Marcy Rein, Mickey Ellinger and Vicki Legion: pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1141
Two of James's many books about organizing on the Left you should read:
Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes From San Francisco's Housing Wars: akpress.org/dispatchesagainstdisplacement.html
Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Interracial Solidarity in 1960s-70s New Left Organizing (with Amy Sonnie): mhpbooks.com/books/hillbilly-nationalists-urban-race-rebels-and-black-power-updated-and-revised
More Sad Francisco: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The self-appointed voice of techbros and “effective accelerationism,” Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan is a prime example of a common archetype in Bay Area tech - a libertarian who wants socialism, but only for corporations.
Emily Mills (@sf_mills on Twitter/X) does the undervalued job of keeping track of some of the richest people in the Bay, and which politicians and campaigns they're spending their money on, including Garry.
Taping of an evening with Garry Tan, featuring Martin Shkreli, hosted by techbro hype house AGI House: youtube.com/watch?v=xMRlKPqNMT4
Latest puff piece on Gary, from venture capitalist Michael Moritz’s SF Standard (Josh Koehn): sfstandard.com/2023/09/27/garry-tan-y-combinator-declares-war-san-francisco-politics-progressives-elon-musk/
"Pro-recall committees have raised 46 times more money than the anti-recall campaign, according to Ethics Commission data" (Will Jarrett, Mission Local): missionlocal.org/2022/01/who-is-funding-the-school-board-recall
"Internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologizes for funding a group tied to disinformation in Alabama race" (Tony Romm, Craig Timberg and Aaron C. Davis, Washington Post): washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/26/internet-billionaire-reid-hoffman-apologizes-funding-group-behind-disinformation-alabama-race
“Immigrant Rights Activists Renew Push Against Palantir to Cancel ICE Contract” (Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof/Truthout): truthout.org/articles/immigrant-rights-activists-renew-push-against-palantir-to-cancel-ice-contract
More Sad Francisco: sadfrancis.co
Nestor Castillo lays out the recent racist media tropes around Honduras, and why they're especially dangerous for immigrants. Nestor's El Tecolote column, "Dear SF Chronicle: No, Hondurans aren’t responsible for the City’s fentanyl crisis": eltecolote.org/content/en/dear-sf-chronicle-no-hondurans-arent-responsible-for-the-citys-fentanyl-crisis/ Nestor on Twitter: twitter.com/ProfeNessC "The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations" (George Washington University's National Security Archive): nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/index.html "Defensores exigen investigación por crimen de ambientalista del Valle de Siria" (Defensores En Linea): defensoresenlinea.com/defensores-exigen-investigacion-por-crimen-de-ambientalista-del-valle-de-siria/ | Google translation: www-defensoresenlinea-com.translate.goog/defensores-exigen-investigacion-por-crimen-de-ambientalista-del-valle-de-siria/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp "Honduras Defense Official and U.S. Drug War Ally Tied to Narco-Trafficker, Notorious Mercenary Firm" (Jared Olson and John Washington at The Intercept): theintercept.com/2023/08/25/honduras-military-elias-melgar/ "Honduran Ex-President Extradited to U.S. to Face Narcotrafficking Charges" (Democracy Now): democracynow.org/2022/4/22/headlines/honduran_ex_president_extradited_to_us_to_face_narcotrafficking_charges "Gold giant faces Honduras inquiry into alleged heavy metal pollution" (Rory Carroll, The Guardian): theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/31/goldcorp-honduras-pollution-allegations More Sad Francisco: sadfrancis.co
Silicon Valley scions tried to sell Appalachia on how crypto would bring every out-of-work coal miner a job. Locals got nothing, but the scheme worked for a few tech entrepreneurs, who were showered with government subsidies and tax breaks. With Tom Sexton of the Trillbilly Workers' Party.
Trillbilly Workers' Party: soundcloud.com/user-972848621-463073718/tracks
City College of San Francisco is one of the only remaining public colleges in the US where the tuition is free for locals. CCSF professor and AFT 2121 member Adele Failes-Carpenter talks about why City College presents a threat to the forces that want to completely privatize higher education, and ongoing battles over one of the remaining free spaces where people can still come together, in-person, across difference.
'Free City' by Marcy Rein, Mickey Ellinger and Vicki Legion: pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1141
CCSF Collective: youtube.com/@ccsfcollective6130/videos
AFT 2121: aft2121.org
Thanks to Gracie Quinn and Leslie Simon.
More Sad Francisco: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The War on Drugs doesn't save lives, but it brings in huge profits for anyone who works for the police, in all of policing's forms.
While rich people can microdose LSD at the office or Burning Man without any worries of getting arrested, the War on Drugs is fought against poor, often nonwhite queer and trans people, in what local media loves to call 'open-air drug markets'.
Sara Shortt (@Shorttyshorttt) is on to talk about harm reduction and the city's strategy of throwing money at policing in response to rising overdose statistics.
GLIDE: glide.org; Gubbio Project: thegubbioproject.org; Safer Inside: saferinside.org; National Harm Reduction Coalition: harmreduction.org; Drug Policy Alliance: drugpolicy.org;
Support the show: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
"This land is too valuable to let poor people park on it," said SF Redevelopment Agency head Justin Herman, about Asian and Black people living in Central San Francisco. Today many politicians are acting like it's the 1950s all over again. Niccolo Calderaro, professor of anthropology at SF State, speaks on resistance then and now.
Niccolo Calderaro's article in Progressive City: "Community Mobilization against Eviction in 1970s San Francisco & the contribution of Chester Hartman": progressivecity.net/single-post/community-mobilization-against-eviction-in-1970s-san-francisco-the-contribution-of-chester-hartman
Niccolo's book, "An Ethnography of the Goodman Building: The Longest Rent Strike": link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-12285-0
John Fossum, California Law Review, "Rent withholding and the improvement of substandard housing": sci-hub.ru/10.2307/3479098
"Oakland-Based Government Finance Director Pleads Guilty To Embezzling Public Funds": justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/oakland-based-government-finance-director-pleads-guilty-embezzling-public-funds
Curtis Choy's "Fall of the I-Hotel" (trailer): youtube.com/watch?v=lzrWwvI8JpI
Chris Carlsson's essay "The Freeway Revolt," at FoundSF: foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Freeway_Revolt
Bay Area Tenant and Neighborhood Councils: baytanc.com
patreon.com/sadfrancisco
The local politics around kink culture, and how the same bureaucracy put in place to preserve it is helping to undermine that culture. With Cole Clark.
Previous episode mentioned: "Is the Transgender District a force for gentrification or liberation?" w/ Jemma DeCristo: sites.libsyn.com/445824/is-the-transgender-district-a-force-for-gentrification-or-liberation-w-jemma-decristo
"How Gentrification Is Eroding San Francisco's Historic Leather Scene" by Toshio Meronek and Cole Clark for them: them.us/story/san-francisco-leather-gentrification
Homeless Exclusion Districts, via Western Regional Advocacy Project: wraphome.org/homeless-exclusion-districs/
For the photo of London Breed and other politicians in hard hats, see: "Cultural Districts in San Francisco Exacerbate Issues of Displacement and Affordability" by Stasha Lampert and Toshio Meronek, in Progressive City: progressivecity.net/single-post/cultural-districts-in-san-francisco-exacerbate-issues-of-displacement-and-affordability
patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Urban Alchemy is the proto-policing nonprofit incubated in SF, and exported to Austin, Los Angeles and Portland. Norma Azucar and Brooke Lober talk about harm reduction in the midst of the Tenderloin's overdose crisis, and how the city is funneling millions in the resource-suck known as Urban Alchemy.
"#SweepThePolice" by Brooke Lober: stjamesinfirmary.org/wordpress/?p=5738 | Tenderloin Peoples' Congress: tlpeoplesplan.org/tenderloin-peoples-congress | St. James Infirmary: stjamesinfirmary.org/wordpress/?page_id=5821 | Hope Center: cityhopesf.org/programs-410661.html | GLIDE: glide.org/programs/walk-in-center | "The Confounding Life of the Woman Seeking To Heal San Francisco's Wounds" by Matt Smith for SF Standard: sfstandard.com/2023/02/06/the-confounding-life-of-the-woman-seeking-to-heal-san-franciscos-wounds | London Breed Speaks at Dalda's Community Market via @jenset: twitter.com/thejenset/status/1470933700279881728 | patreon.com/sadfrancisco
How are landlords using tech to refine evictions, surveillance, and speculation? Erin McElroy of The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project tracks the new brainchildren of the real estate and tech industries.
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project: antievictionmap.com | Landlord Tech Watch: antievictionmappingproject.github.io/landlordtech | Anti-Eviction Lab: antievictionlab.org | Counterpoints: A San Francisco Bay Area Atlas of Displacement & Resistance: pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1140 | "Prison Tech Comes Home" by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber for Public Books: publicbooks.org/prison-tech-comes-home | "Access Denied: Faulty Automated Background Checks Freeze Out Renters" by Lauren Kirchner and Matthew Goldstein for The Markup: themarkup.org/locked-out/2020/05/28/access-denied-faulty-automated-background-checks-freeze-out-renters | "Why Zillow Couldn't Make Algorithmic House Pricing Work" by Chris Stokel-Walker for Wired: wired.com/story/zillow-ibuyer-real-estate | www.sadfrancis.co
What politicians say in public usually doesn't line up with what they text friends from their work phones. Hazel (Twitter: @dizz_h) pores over public records that give insight into what politicians really think.
Also see: Stolen Belonging: stolenbelonging.org | For more Sad Francisco: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
A book club episode with Scott Branson, co-editor of the new anthology "Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies," and author of "Practical Anarchism."
Scott: sjbranson.com | Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies: pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1296 | Practical Anarchism: plutobooks.com/9780745344928/practical-anarchism | Remembering Jen Angel, 1975-2023 (The Agency): anarchistagency.com/commentary/remembering-jen-angel-1975-2023 | SF Food Not Bombs: sffnb.org | "Times Square Red, Times Square Blue" by Samuel Delany: massivebookshop.com/products/9781479827770 | More Sad Francisco: patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Kazani Finao remembers Banko Brown, and speaks on fighting the forces that caused Banko’s death.
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People’s Mission Coalition Statement:
https://eltecolote.org/content/en/guest-commentary-we-must-fight-poverty-not-the-poor/ | People’s Mission Coalition: thepeoplesmissioncoalition.com | The Killing of Banko Brown and SF’s Crisis (The Nation): https://www.thenation.com/article/society/banko-brown-killing-san-francisco-crisis/
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We’ll drop links and info on actions we get word about at twitter.com/sadfrancisco69
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sadfrancisco@riseup.net | www.sadfrancis.co
Andrew Szeto makes food and zines. His most recent zine is “Heartbeat of Struggle," part of Kearny Street Workshop's "Dreaming People's History" (www.kearnystreet.org/dreaming-peoples-history).
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project: antievictionmap.com | Andrew at Truthout: truthout.org/authors/andrew-szeto | "Fall of the I-Hotel" by Curtis Choy: youtube.com/watch?v=lzrWwvI8JpI | “San Francisco’s International Hotel” by Estella Habal: tupress.temple.edu/books/san-francisco-s-international-hotel-2 | “The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy” by Linda Evans and Eve Goldberg: www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Prison_Labor/510.prison.complex.global.economy.1998.pdf
'Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary' is out this week, wherever you get books. patreon.com/toshiom has upcoming book events.
Nice things people have said about the book:
I’m so thrilled everyone gets to see what I see every day in Miss Major Speaks. Miss Major has shaped the world in countless ways from Stonewall to today, by being her unruly, fabulous self, leading communities, making time, and caring for and keeping her girls going. Lucky us to live in a moment where she is radiantly shining her light unto us all through this book! – Tourmaline
The extraordinary insights in this book, always punctuated by Miss Major’s razor-sharp wit, allow us to understand how liberation movements for trans, queer and other routinely marginalized people can hold the most emancipatory potential for all. – Angela Davis
Miss Major Speaks is the rarests of gifts, like sitting at the feet of a wise, no-fucks-given elder, listening to her testimony, and being fortified by her brilliance. This book is a monument to the life’s work of Miss Major and the liberation movements she’s shaped. It reminds us that we are all we got and that is plenty. – Janet Mock
A Gay Shame (gayshame.net) podcast.
Gentrifying neighbors, politician Hilary Ronen, the SFPD, and the media conspired to shut down parts of Capp Street in the Mission using concrete barricades. While they continue to sink millions into a fire hazard that makes sex workers less safe, Gay Shame talked to Celestina Pearl (St. James Infirmary | stjamesinfirmary.org), Dilara Yarbrough (scholars.org/scholar/dilara-yarbrough), Cesar Espinoza Perez (instagram.com/juliuscaesarsf/), and Ivy Anderson (co-editor of ‘Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute’ | voicesfromtheunderworld.com) on the history of sex work in the Bay; why decriminalization is better than legalization; and how to help sex workers under attack by the City. | Mission DeFence: instagram.com/missiondefence_sf | Rad Mission Neighbors: radmissionneighbors.org | People’s Mission Coalition: thepeoplesmissioncoalition.com | patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Historian Susan Schweik, on the Ugly Laws - a San Francisco policy invention that criminalized people for appearing poor, disabled, and/or fat in public. Show Notes: 'The Ugly Laws' by Susan Schweik: https://bookshop.org/a/82838/9780814783610 | Stacey Milbern's 'Notes on Access Washing' via the Disability Justice Network of Ontario: https://www.djno.ca/post/notes-on-access-washing | 'Crip Camp' (dir. Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht): https://cripcamp.com/ | Previous Sad Francisco episode 'New 'Mental Health Jails': We #FreedBritney. Who's Next?': https://sadfrancis.co/new-mental-health-jails-we-freedbritney-whos-next/ | Support the show at patreon.com/sadfrancisco.
Jemma DeCristo (@jemmaisOKeh) returns to explain the ways that the Transgender Cultural District is a container for gentrification and police.
Support the show at patreon.com/sadfrancisco.
"San Francisco May Soon Have the World's First Transgender Cultural District" by Toshio Meronek, for Vice: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xyvapd/san-francisco-may-soon-have-the-worlds-first-transgender-cultural-district | Christina Hanhardt’s “Safe Space”: https://bookshop.org/a/82838/9780822354703 | “Improvements for Whom? Business Improvement Districts and Their Impact on Communities” report by Spencer Bowen, Emily Estus, Vanessa Quintana, and Maiya Zwerling with Paul Boden at WRAP (wraphome.org): https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Goldman-School-BIDS-Report-May-2019.pdf | Tamar Jacoby, “McGeorge Bundy: How the Establishment’s Man Tackled America’s Problem with Race”: https://web.archive.org/web/20221129211941/http://aliciapatterson.org/stories/mcgeorge-bundy-how-establishments-man-tackled-americas-problem-race | Mandi Issacs Jackson, Model City Blues: Urban Space and Organized Resistance in New Haven
New-in-town techies fundraise for the installation of boulders to stop homeless people from using public sidewalks. What could go wrong? With Christen Cioffi (http://www.chzaz.com/).
Show notes: "The Boulders of Clinton Park: Sisyphus Retold" by Quiver Watts in Street Sheet: http://www.streetsheet.org/the-boulders-of-clinton-park-sisyphus-retold/?fbclid=IwAR0aEem9j9godxuOS-mN9WrcMVM9pSa8j2URjimtS6i8-Dy-XiknmDPG0oM
Support the podcast: http://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
"Should social movement work be paid?" is a question that a lot of nonprofit workers take personally. In Dean Spade's first visit, we talk about why 15 years after 'The Revolution Will Not Be Funded,' we still have to ask it. "Should Social Movement Work Be Paid?" at BCRW: http://www.deanspade.net/2023/01/06/video-should-social-movement-work-be-paid-lecture | BCRW Mutual Aid (the book): http://www.deanspade.net/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next/ | Normal Life: http://www.deanspade.net/books/normal-life/ | "Fragments Against Reparations: Thoughts on Anti-Blackness and Black Liberation": https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-fragments-against-reparation | “Transgender Activists Speak Out Against Campaign to End Trans Military Ban” at Truthout: https://truthout.org/articles/transgender-activists-speak-out-against-campaign-to-end-trans-military-ban/ | “Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South” by Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford: https://tinyurl.com/ujf2pfa5 | “In Defense of Looting” by Vicky Osterweil: https://tinyurl.com/4ec8859a | Support the podcast: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco
California Governor Gavin Newsom and ex-Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot owe their political lives to gay wealth. A conversation with cultural critic Yasmin Nair (yasminnair.com) on politicians who never fail to disappoint. | Show Notes: “How Gay Money Became Gay Wealth: A Fable” by Yasmin Nair: https://yasminnair.com/how-gay-money-became-gay-wealth-a-fable | "American Gay: Pete Buttigieg and the Politics of Forgetting" also by Yasmin Nair: https://yasminnair.com/american-gay-pete-buttigieg-and-the-politics-of-forgetting | Support the show at patreon.com/sadfrancisco | twitter.com/sadfrancisco69 | instagram.com/sadfrancis.co | tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
During quarantine, plans to close 24 public schools in Oakland were announced by the politicians atop the very corrupt Oakland Unified School District. Oakland teacher Chelsea Carl and student Daniel were two of hundreds of people who occupied Parker Elementary School and ran a school under the constant threat of eviction by the city and police. Show Notes: “As a Teacher Who Dreams of Liberatory Education, This Is What Gives Me Hope” by Chelsea Carl, Truthout: https://truthout.org/articles/as-a-teacher-who-dreams-of-liberatory-education-this-is-what-gives-me-hope/ | Daniel’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dani.el51o/ | Support the show at patreon.com/sadfrancisco | twitter.com/sadfrancisco69 | instagram.com/sadfrancis.co | tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Susan Stryker is an historian who uncovered one of the first modern rebellions against police violence by trans/queer people. In 1967, the Tenderloin's Compton's Cafeteria was a site of resistance against state violence, but today its space arm of the prison industrial complex owned by one of the largest private prison corporations in the world, Geo Group.
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At the Crossroads of Turk and Taylor: Resisting Carceral Power in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, by Susan Stryker for Places Journal: https://placesjournal.org/article/transgender-resistance-and-prison-abolitionism-san-francisco-tenderloin
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Screaming Queens (Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WASW9dRBU
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Forever's Gonna Start Tonight (Vicki Marlane film by Michelle Lawler, produced by Kim Klausner and Susan Stryker): https://vimeo.com/80952090
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Cyrus J. O’Brien’s “’A Prison in Your Community’: Halfway Houses and the Melding of Treatment and Control” in the Journal of American History
Japanese politicians want to erase the history of the 200,000 women who were forced by the Japanese military into sexual slavery. Statues around the world remember the "comfort women" from places including China, Korea, the Phillipines, and Japan itself, but it's been a battle.
Kota from Against Japanism joins us in the treaty capitol of the world.
Part 1 is here, with guest Judith Mirkinson from the Comfort Women Justice Coalition.
- Support the show, get bonus episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco -
Against Japanism podcast
Against Japanism interview with May Shigenobu (journalist, daughter of Fusako Shigenobu, Palestinian freedom fighter recently released after spending 20 years in prison for solidarity actions)
Against Japanism, "Nikkei Organizing w/ Miya Sommers, J-Town Action & Solidarity, and Nikkei Uprising"
Comfort Women Justice Coalition
Building the San Francisco Memorial: Why the Issue of the ‘Comfort Women’ is Still Relevant Today by Judith Mirkinson Listen to the Voices of the Women (Judith Mirkinson) “Guilt by Association”: Japanese Canadians and the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day by Jane Komori, in Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus SOMA Pilipinas / Gabriela Call Her Ganda, documentary about Jennifer Laude by PJ Raval
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twitter.com/sadfrancisco69 instagram.com/sadfrancis.co tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Japanese politicians want to erase the history of the 200,000 women who were forced by the Japanese military into sexual slavery. Statues around the world remember the "comfort women" from places including China, Korea, the Phillipines, and Japan itself, but it's been a battle.
Guest: Judith Mirkinson from the Comfort Women Justice Coalition.
Part 2, with Kota from Against Japanism is coming later this week.
- Support the show, get bonus episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco -
Comfort Women Justice Coalition
Building the San Francisco Memorial: Why the Issue of the ‘Comfort Women’ is Still Relevant Today by Judith Mirkinson Listen to the Voices of the Women (Judith Mirkinson) Against Japanism podcast
Against Japanism, "Nikkei Organizing w/ Miya Sommers, J-Town Action & Solidarity, and Nikkei Uprising"
Call Her Ganda, documentary about Jennifer Laude by PJ Raval
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twitter.com/sadfrancisco69 instagram.com/sadfrancis.co tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Rich liberals don't love to be reminded of poverty that they've created. Instead of pushing for more access to housing or health care, they call their politician friends and tell them to hire more police and build more psychiatric/"mental health" jails to hold houseless people. Clio/Thatcher Sady and Tory Becker join us from a paddleboard amidst the Sad Francisco floods.
- Support the show, get bonus episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco - Shownotes:
Gay Shame, the podcast: "#FreeBritney, Free Them All"
Gay Shame's most recent tent giveaway (Instagram)
"Cities Across US Are Stripping Homeless People of Their Autonomy," Tory Becker and Toshio Meronek for Truthout
"Amid Fears of Crime and Mental Illness, States Move to Expand Forced Treatment," by Caleb Brennan for The Appeal
"Eric Adams's New Homeless Policy: More Policing," by Lexi McMenamin for Teen Vogue
- twitter.com/sadfrancisco69 instagram.com/sadfrancis.co tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
Eight years after a fatal fire in the Mission District, there's still a blank space where dozens of people, a Latinx market, and a Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen once existed. We follow up on what many people at the time suggested was "the perfect crime." On assignment in the Silicon Desert, Christen Cioffi (Twitter: @jfchrist_) declares landlords unfit for human habitation decisions. - Support the show, get bonus episodes: patreon.com/sadfrancisco - Shownotes: twitter.com/sadfrancisco69 instagram.com/sadfrancis.co tiktok.com/@sadfrancisco
What exactly is a "techbro"? Meet five Silicon Valley megalomaniacs who helped hone the genre, and whose actions made them briefly famous beyond the Bay. Which ones failed up? Who was (possibly) canceled?
Jemma DeCristo (Twitter: @jemmaisOKeh) helps shine a light on anti-tech hate crime survivors from behind the liberal front.
- Support the show, get bonus episodes:
patreon.com/sadfrancisco
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Shownotes:
The archives of Valleywag (RIP)
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twitter.com/sadfrancisco69
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The legacy of America's former "hottest Korean American politician" Jane Kim, the wannabe mayor who gave away millions to tech CEOs who promised jobs and "community reinvestment" in central San Francisco. And you'll never believe what happened next.
Guest host Jemma DeCristo (Twitter: @jemmaisOKeh) practices her New York accent from behind the liberal front.
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Meet the YIMBYs: Fake-grassroots, "pro-housing activists" who swear that building more luxury condos will trickle down to the rest of us, and solve the housing unaffordability crisis. Backed by tech titans, corporate landlords, and Barack Obama, YIMBYs are trying so hard to make over the real estate industry's predatory image. And a lot of people are buying what they're selling. Culturally critical visitor Christen Cioffi (Instagram | Twitter) states facts from a backyard somewhere behind the liberal front.
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Show notes
The Techies Hawking Free Market “Solutions” to the Nation’s Housing Crisis, Toshio Meronek in In These Times
YIMBYs: the Alt-Right Darlings of the Real Estate Industry, Toshio and Andrew Szeto in Truthout
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To some, it was a memoir, a miniseries, and a movement: #GIRLBOSS founder Sophia Amuroso is the self-proclaimed ex-socialist and dumpster-diver who departed her own failing fast-fashion startup with expert timing.
Through her company Nasty Gal (like Uber, but for clothes), “serial entrepreneur" Amuroso was briefly taken seriously in sexist Silicon Valley circles, because for some, to fail is to succeed.
Krystal Farmer, co-host of Two Cents Plus Tax with Sad Francisco producers Caitlin and Toshio, joins this week’s look behind the liberal front of the hometown of #Girlboss™, Inc.
- Support the show and get bonus episodes:
patreon.com/sadfrancisco - Show notes
Sophia Amoruso’s Memoir #GIRLBOSS (with Gaby Dunn) - Celebrity Book Club with Chelsea Devantez
For two years, the San Francisco police department was uninvited to Gay Pride. In solidarity, bureaucrats boycotted the 2022 Pride parade.
Jemma DeCristo returns to report from behind the liberal front of a city whose highest-paid employee is a sheriff's deputy.
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Shownotes
- Miss Major's Gay Shame '5-0 Out of Pride' video; SF Pride board meeting interrupted (Gay Shame)
- ‘Wild animals’: Racist texts sent by San Francisco police officer, documents show (Scott Glover and Dan Simon in CNN)
- The strange and terrible saga of Mohammed Nuru turns the page (Joe Eskenazi and Carolyn Stein in Mission Local)
- This Damning New Report Shows Just How Badly The U.S. Criminal Justice System Fails Trans People (Toshio Meronek in Huffington Post)
An empty tourist hotel in Japantown is an obvious choice for almost 200 houseless people to call home, until the plans are killed by landlords and realtors using scare tactics and a disingenous "Anti-Asian Hate" campaign. Miya Sommers of Nikkei Resisters (Instagram here) visits Sad Francisco, where as always, we report to you from behind the liberal front of America’s so-called capitol of innovation.
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Support the show (and get upcoming bonus episodes):
Patreon.com/sadfrancisco
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Shownotes
- Nikkei Resisters (Bay Area)
- J-TOWN Action と Solidarity (LA)
- "Sale of Buchanan Hotel Is a Sell-Out of Japantown Community" in Rafu Shimpo
SFPD officer Christopher Kohrs was a sex object among Castro gays and a copaganda tool for the police, until his fame came crashing to a halt.
Jemma DeCristo (on Twitter @jemmaisOKeh) is our special guest this week in Sad Francisco, where we report to you from behind the liberal front of America’s so-called capitol of progress.
Go to sadfrancis.co to support the show and get future bonus episodes.
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Patreon.com/sadfrancisco
Instagram @sadfrancis.co
Twitter @sadfrancisco69
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Shownote
Blade & Blue model and SFPD officer Christopher Kohrs, before the crash
Arriving November 18 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all the rest. UNTIL SOON
Toshio + Producer Caitlin