San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/2011/09/)
As “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations entered their 12th day in New York and economic justice rallies spread across the country, several hundred San Franciscans took to the streets Thursday to “make the banks pay,” as the protests signs put it. Snaking through the Financial District, the crowd rallied outside the offices of Goldman Sachs, CitiBank, Charles Schwab and then Chase Bank, where six demonstrators sat in and were arrested. » Read more
The California Public Utilities Commission and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are working on an agreement to settle the commission’s allegations that the transit agency violated several safety regulations on its light-rail system.
In February, the commission released a scathing report on Muni’s Metro system, which included safety issues with worn-out tracks and Muni’s automated train control system.
Officials from the transit agency fired back with claims that the system was safe and that the agency had been communicating with the commission on a biweekly basis.
According to Terrie Proposer, commission spokesman, both parties met on Thursday in a pre-hearing in front of an administrative law judge to get a status report on the dispute. Proposer said both parties could reach a settlement by the end of November.
Listen to reporter T.J. Johnston’s brief summary of Tuesday’s developments on KQED Public Radio
San Francisco is preparing for the October release of state prisoners to the custody of local governments by forming a commission to prevent them from re-offending. » Read more
For Andrea Carla Michaels, who has been crafting crossword puzzles for about thirty years, a good puzzle is “the same thing that makes you laugh — you don’t know quite what it’s going to be, but it’s something unexpected and it’s something that resonates deep inside.”
Michaels, who creates crossword puzzles for the quarterly print edition to the San Francisco Public Press, is a regular puzzle contributor to The New York Times. She is featured in a charming new short documentary “Life in Black and White” by San Francisco filmmaker, Regina Rivard. The film sheds light on four Bay Area residents whose lives center on black and white — a crossword puzzle-maker, an aquatic biologist who works with penguins, a piano tuner and a Domino club founder. Watch the interview with Michaels here:
Film credits:
Producer/Director/Editor: Regina Rivard
DP: Josh Hittleman, Rob Fitzgerald, Bevan Bell
Audio Tech/Post: Ben Morse
Music: Andy Greenwood
“Aggressive panhandling” made Page One of the San Francisco Chronicle again recently. But the report, like so many others before it in newspapers, magazines, TV and websites, left readers with more questions than answers about whether the trend indicated by the paper really existed. » Read more
Preserving art matters to Michael Johnstone, a San Francisco-based painter, costume designer and photographer, who has been living with HIV since 1982. Johnstone moved to San Francisco in 1979, a few years before the AIDS epidemic seeped through the city.
“I took care of a lot of people, a number of people that were passing away were artists, and their work ended up in thrift stores,” Johnstone said. » Read more
A South San Francisco nonprofit drug development organization, OneWorld Health, is shattering the conventional profit-generating model of pharmaceutical companies by using a social enterprise approach to global health problems.
The nonprofit, founded by physicians Victoria Hale and Ahvie Herskowitz in 2000, has been working with for-profit biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to develop and distribute drugs to improve the conditions of patients suffering from diseases such as kala-azar — a fatal disease transmitted by the sand fly, diarrheal disease, malaria and hookworm. » Read more
By Jerrold Chinn, SF Public Press
Youth advocates, parents and San Francisco Supervisor David Campos are calling for free Muni fast passes for youth between the ages of 5 to 17. Currently they have to pay 75 cents for a single fare and $21 for a monthly pass. Campos said free passes would help San Francisco families struggling during this tough economy. “We’ve heard from many parents the difficulties they are facing in paying for a monthly pass for Muni for their children,” said Campos at Tuesday’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting. Campos introduced a resolution to explore the possibility of giving out free fast passes to all youth.
Interview by: Michael Krasny, edited by Jaena Rae Cabrera
The following is a condensed transcript from “Oakland’s Black Flight,” a KQED “Forum” episode hosted by Michael Krasny. On July 7, he interviewed Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink; Allen Fernandez Smith, president and CEO of Urban Habitat; Malo Hutson, assistant professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley; and Margaret Gordon, Oakland Port commissioner, co-director of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, about this decline and what it means for Oakland. » Read more
If there was ever a “Golden Age of Newspapers,” it was long before my half century in journalism and if there was, “golden” referred to advertising revenue when newspapers were the primary means of getting out a commercial or personal message. » Read more