San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2023/)
A lawsuit against San Francisco Superior Court over its routine failure to uphold defendants’ right to a speedy trial is in the hands of California’s Supreme Court.
San Francisco has more than 1,100 cases past statutory time limits, and 115 of those defendants are languishing in jail without a conviction. » Read more
Berkeley is accelerating plans to more humanely deal with homelessness in the wake of a San Francisco Public Press report on a chaotic encampment raid in October, and city staffers say they will start collaborating with unhoused people and homeless advocates when planning to clean or clear large encampments. » Read more
Just over a week after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions, San Francisco took a major step in the other direction by advancing a plan to repair historical harms by the government against Black people.
After dozens of meetings over two years, the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee released its final recommendations to the Board of Supervisors and Mayor London Breed on Friday. » Read more
When we report a story, it can involve numerous interviews, sources speaking on background or deep dives into government or corporate records. But sometimes it’s amazing what a small object can reveal.
Like the rubber stamp recently discovered by Liana Wilcox, producer of the San Francisco Public Press’ podcast “Civic,” when she was helping her mother clear a storage area. » Read more
Climate change is expected to increase the severity and frequency of wildfires and other environmental disasters in California and beyond. Wildfires, like the recent blazes in Canada that brought smoke to the Midwest and Northeast regions of the United States, pose threats to the physical health of older adults, especially those in marginalized communities. Emerging » Read more
For a journalist covering reparations for Black people in San Francisco, June is big. The city’s highly anticipated reparations plan is scheduled to be released at the end of the month. And we are just a few days from Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas learned that the Union had won the Civil War, and that they were free — 2 1/2 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. » Read more
More than a year after emergency maintenance work was to have been completed at a Western Addition public housing site, dozens of units were still in need of “moderate to extensive repairs,” according to a May report submitted to the city by the owner. » Read more
This article is adapted from a bonus episode of our podcast “Civic.” Click the audio player below to hear the full story.
It has been seven months since Maya Laing and her brother Sebastian, who were 15 and 11 at the time, were violently taken from their grandmother’s Santa Cruz home by court order. » Read more
Sylvie Sturm appeared on KALW’s “Your Call” with host Rose Aguilar for last week’s Media Roundtable to talk about her reporting on San Francisco’s opioid crisis and recent rise in deaths, what the city and nonprofits are doing to address it, and how initiatives might be funded. » Read more
This article is adapted from an episode of our podcast “Civic.” Click the audio player below to hear the full story.
After 2½ years of meetings, community discussions, historical deep dives and policy generation, a panel tasked with proposing how San Francisco might atone for decades of discrimination against Black residents is ready to ask the city to step up and support equity rhetoric with action. » Read more