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.

“I was with my mom going through some of her keepsakes and found a stamp that read ‘Lesbian Money.’ My mom told me that she found it in our old church’s basement,” Wilcox said, adding that she feared the rubber stamp had a sinister connotation.

“I immediately thought it was some sort of exclusionary practice, but that didn’t feel right considering the church we went to, the First Congregational Church of San Francisco, called themselves ‘open and affirming,’” she said.

Wilcox mentioned the stamp during one of our staff meetings, and I said “Oh, no that was a way we tried to raise awareness about the LGBT community back in the old days.” 

As a young gay activist and budding journalist in Salt Lake City in the early 1980s, I vaguely remembered stamps like that one. I reached out to a dear friend to see if she remembered lesbian money. 

Becky Moss is a longtime LGBTQ+ community organizer in Salt Lake City. She and I co-hosted the radio show “Concerning Gays and Lesbians” in Utah in the early ’80s. Moss said activists around the U.S. were stamping bills to show the financial power and size of the greater queer community back in the late 1970s. 

“Separatist lesbian communes would stamp all of their bills before coming into town for supplies,” she said. “But I remember it being more widespread than that, it was really a nationwide thing.” 

A number of sources trace the first “Gay$$” and “Lesbian Money” stamps — sometimes marked with a pink triangle — as having originated in San Francisco in the mid 1970s. The pink triangle was used by the Nazis in Germany to identify gay men in concentration camps and was co-opted as the symbol of the early gay movement before the rainbow flag mostly supplanted it. 

Wherever the money stamping started, by 1986 it had drawn the ire of the Reagan Administration. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois issued a cease-and-desist order to lesbian and gay bar owners in Chicago who were stamping all the bills coming through their businesses to the tune of $5 million a year. Government officials said the campaign violated federal law against defacing currency. But the legal action foundered at least in part because it was nearly impossible to determine who was responsible — anyone could stamp bills, anywhere. The Treasury Department also determined that most of the bills were still “fit for circulation.”  

Money stamping campaigns grew quickly to the point that finding some kind of queer stamp on currency was fairly common in the 1980s. It made an impact in an era when LGBTQ+ representation in film, television and the press were rare. 

Campaign Against Discrimination

Money stamping campaigns were also used to counter discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s. One campaign out of Utah unfolded when Moss visited a restaurant in a suburb of Salt Lake City in the late 1980s. 

“My sister, who had AIDS, and I were at a restaurant in Bountiful, Utah,” she said. “After the meal, the staff threw our plates in the garbage.”

The Salt Lake City branch of ACT-UP, the AIDS activist organization, decided to use an “AIDS Money” stamp to fight such blatant discrimination against those perceived to be infected with HIV.

“They all went to the restaurant and bought things like pie or french fries and then paid for them with the stamped money,” Moss said. “The activists made the point that the owner would now have to throw away all the plates used to serve them or stop the practice.” 

“AIDS Money” stamps remained part of the nationwide effort to raise awareness through the 1980s and ’90s. 

Becky’s sister Peggy Moss Tingey died of complications from AIDS in March 1995, just nine months after her young son Chase died from the virus. Both passed away just before the HIV protease drug cocktail was starting to become available. 

Other Stamping Activism

Recent money stamping campaigns included “I grew hemp” stamps, promoting marijuana legalization, placed on $1 bills near George Washington’s portrait. The idea was taken up by groups advocating for the Second Amendment — “gun owners money” — and even campaign finance reform, with the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation organizing “stamp money out of politics” stamps in 2012.

A campaign in 2016 used large stamps to place Harriet Tubman’s face over the $20 bill portrait of Andrew Jackson, after the Trump Administration overruled the Treasury Department’s plan to replace Jackson with Tubman by 2020.

While the LGBTQ+ movement used stamping to great effect, it was by no means the first to spread the word by customizing currency.

Before World War I, British suffragettes stamped pennies with the words, “Votes for Women.” Only a handful of the coins still exist. But just as the U.S. Treasury Department declined to withdraw bills with “Lesbian Money,” the British banking system declined to take the low-value marked pennies out of circulation.  

Without suffragettes breaking the first chain of patriarchal thinking by winning the right to vote, there would have been no LGBTQ+ rights movement. Discrimination against women — sexism — is the basis of hatred of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

Both the British women who had to strike each penny 13 times — engraving their words letter by letter — and those who inked rubber stamps over and over again used their spending power to wear down conspiracies of silence, one tiny message at a time.

The post Reporter’s Notebook: The Rebellious Legacy of ‘Lesbian Money’ appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Rains this winter and early spring ended the drought in the Bay Area and brought a kind of weather whiplash that put San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management to the test. 
 
Early in the storm cycle, the department faced challenges communicating with the public, especially with people experiencing homelessness. Internal confusion over the forecast delayed the opening of its Emergency Operations Center until a major storm was under way. In at least one instance, flood barriers were deployed too late to prevent homes and businesses from being inundated. 
 
Despite those missteps, the city rallied a coordinated response from its Emergency Operations Center, where multiple city agencies, along with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. representatives, gathered to discuss and act on emerging issues in real time. 
 
It has been years since California faced this kind of barrage. The National Weather Service said that at least 14 powerful atmospheric rivers have slammed into California since October, triggering flooding and downing trees that have killed at least 22 people statewide, including two who were struck by falling trees in San Francisco.
 
And there could be more trouble to come: The Sierra snowpack is at a staggering 225% of normal, and while it will fill reservoirs, a fast spring melt could cause even more flooding. 
 
In a new “Civic” episode, we examine how the city responded to the first big deluge of the season and what it learned from that harried experience to improve response to subsequent storms. 

The biggest rainstorm hit San Francisco with 5.5 inches of rain on New Year’s Eve, when many city employees were away on vacation. Adrienne Bechelli, deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said city departments were able to mount a full response despite being short staffed. 
 
“The city tasks that were the most urgent priority were, of course, flood mitigation and clearing catch basins ensuring that all of our storm drains were clear,” she said. 

Emergency response teams also helped drivers whose vehicles were stranded in floodwaters and worked to get people living on the streets into emergency shelters, she said.  
 
Despite those efforts, some residents and businesses in the Mission District said the city was slow in providing information and failed to put up additional flood gates as it has done before previous storms. 

Blame game

On Jan. 3, Mayor London Breed began a news conference saying the city didn’t expect so much rain. 
 
“We were under the impression and notified by our National Weather Service that we could anticipate not even an inch of rain,” she said. Less than one inch of rain is not considered a threat according to the city’s winter storm and flood plan. 
 
Mary Ellen Carroll, the executive director of the Department of Emergency Management, echoed the mayor’s claims and said the city scrambled to increase its response on New Year’s Eve: “Our city employees rallied and we activated our Emergency Operations Center late morning when we realized what was actually happening was a little different than the actual forecast.”
 
Brian Garcia, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in the Bay Area, disputed those claims. He said the forecast showed a strong system hitting San Francisco days before it arrived. 
 
“We started messaging that on the 26th and 27th, when we started putting out information for the New Year’s Eve system,” he said. “We issued a flood watch on December 28. So, we definitely saw something coming in.” 

The weather service issues flood watches when the risk of a hazardous weather or flood event increases significantly.
 
San Francisco’s own response protocol lays out an elaborate system to prepare for major storms. The city activated its emergency response on Dec. 28, after the National Weather Service issued its flood watch 96 hours ahead of the storm. 

Garcia said city leaders’ forecast concerns seemed to center on whether the New Year’s Eve fireworks show — which had been cancelled during the first two years of the pandemic — could proceed as planned over the bay near the Embarcadero. 
 
“There was a focus for all of us to see if the rain was going to clear out by then, on the briefing that we provided on December 28,” Garcia said. “We were talking about the wind and the rain across our entire area, including the city, and how nasty it was going to be. The fireworks were definitely a bit of a focus.” 
 
The city seemed to have moved past the “one inch of rain” forecast claim in late February, when Bechelli said the forecast didn’t hamper the city’s efforts. 
 
“We were full out in terms of our operational response,” she said, shifting the focus to the city’s storm water capacity. “The built infrastructure of San Francisco is not built to handle five and a half inches of rain in a 24-hour period — we’re going to see inevitable flooding.” 
 
Garcia is ready to move on. “You’re always learning how to communicate better,” he said. “We continue to look forward to many years of a strong partnership with the great city of San Francisco.”
 
A representative from the Department of Emergency Management wrote in an email that the city hopes to bring National Weather Service representatives into the Emergency Operations Center during future storms. 

Seeking shelter

Following the New Year’s Eve storm, San Francisco Public Press reporters Yesica Prado and Madison Alvarado visited eight San Francisco neighborhoods over three days to talk to homeless people out in the rain. 
 
Prado said that access to shelters varies a lot by neighborhood.
 
“Some places, like in the Bayview, people are able to be more settled down versus being in the Civic Center or being in Japantown, where people are constantly on the move, and they will have to seek shelter if they want accommodations for the night,” she said.

Alvarado said nonprofits were scrambling to find spots for people and, in some cases, sent them across the city where there were beds available.  
 
“We were visiting a shelter and dining room down in the Bayview. We actually heard that at the end of the day the St. Anthony Foundation bused people down to Mother Brown’s in the Bayview, because they knew that there were shelter options down there,” she said. 

San Francisco added more beds to all its shelters in anticipation of a demand surge and worked with nonprofits and churches to add more, but Alvarado said finding information about where beds are available can be difficult for people without access to the internet. 
 
“If you don’t have a phone, you don’t know where you can go because you don’t know where they are,” she said. “Maybe you know of another shelter, but you don’t know how to get there.” 
 
During their reporting, they came across a man shivering on the sidewalk. 
 
“We noticed that nobody had actually approached him,” Prado said. “We didn’t ask for an interview. We went to ask ‘do you need any help?’ And then all he could muster is that, yeah, like he was cold. So we went back to our car, and we got some supplies for him, some dry clothes. But once we came back, he wasn’t really responsive. And that’s when we thought, he really needs some other kind of help.”
 
Prado and Alvarado said they looked online to see whom they should call. The Healthy Streets Operation Center website indicated that calls from concerned citizens would not be returned. Prado and Alvarado were reluctant to call 911, which they said they thought might bring a police response to a medical issue. So, they ended up calling 311, and a team designated to help homeless people showed up a few minutes later. 
 
Confusion over whom to call was understandable. During the Jan. 3 news conference, San Francisco Fire Chief Janine Nicholson discouraged people from using 911 for anything less than an emergency. 
 
“I can’t stress it enough,” she said. “Call 911 for life threatening emergencies only. We still have to run all of our critical 911 calls, whether it’s a cardiac arrest or a car accident or a fire.” 
 
But Bechelli said that calling 911 is the right choice: “Our 911 dispatchers are trained to send the right resource for that particular problem. If there is a medical emergency, they will send a medical response in order to help that person.”

Encampment sweeps continued 

Representatives from the Department of Emergency Management said that they reached out to people in encampments to offer them shelter ahead of and during the rain storms, and in some cases, to warn them that the place they were in was prone to flooding or other dangers. Meanwhile, the Department of Public Works continued to dismantle tent encampments during the inclement weather, as witnessed by our reporters. 
 
Alvarado spoke with a man named Duane who said he had been camping on 19th Street near Harrison Street for about a month, and that city workers kept asking him and other people nearby to move. 
 
“They were making us move every week, every week, back and forth, back and forth. No matter if it was raining,” he said. 
 
Our reporters said the city was offering temporary shelter stays to people in the two encampments they visited, but few of the people they spoke to said they were taking the offers. 
 
Duane said he thought congregate shelters and even navigation centers, which allow groups of friends to stay together, were too dangerous. “You got to deal with a bunch of crazy people. They pick fights with literally no reason,” he said. “It’s like, yeah, they offer you housing. But you gotta jump through hoops to get in.”

Mitigating floodwaters

The city has long known where flooding is most likely to happen and has some plans to mitigate it. After the December and January storms, residents and businesses affected by flooding were asked to fill out questionnaires to help the city track damage and potentially help San Franciscans get federal relief. 
 
Bechelli said 117 people submitted responses about flooding affecting their homes and 17 submitted responses about their businesses. Many responses came from people in the Marina, Mission, Bernal Heights, Glen Park, Castro, Potrero Hill and Dolores Heights neighborhoods, she said. 
 
Most had flood damage, but few had flood insurance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency declined to offer emergency grants to those affected, but will offer Small Business Administration Disaster Loan assistance. Applicants must apply in person at the War Memorial building on Van Ness Avenue. 
 
The city has plans to address some areas prone to flooding. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has allocated $632 million for three large drainage projects in low-lying areas. 

• The Wawona Street Stormwater Project in West Portal will be under construction until 2024.
• The Lower Alemany Area Rainwater Improvements Project in Bernal Heights will improve stormwater management near the Alemany Farmer’s Market, and the Interstate 280 and U.S. 101 interchange in Bernal Heights. Construction isn’t expected to begin before 2025 with completion in 2028.
• The Folsom Area Stormwater Improvement Project would cover multiple streets in the Mission to reduce flooding in one of the neighborhoods hardest hit in even moderate storms. The project is in the planning phase with no date set for construction to begin. 

In a more modest effort, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has distributed $2.5 million in grants to schools and nonprofits to fund rain gardens, green roofs and other green infrastructure projects to help slow down and redirect floodwaters.

Weather response report card

So, how did the city respond to our wild and wet winter? 
 
There were communication problems. 
 
It’s unclear why city officials and the national weather service got into an argument over the New Year’s Eve forecast. Confusion over the forecast delayed the opening of the city’s Emergency Operations Center.
 
Given conflicting instructions, San Franciscans may have been confused about when to call 911, especially around helping homeless people. 
 
Finding information about shelter locations generally requires access to a smartphone or the internet. Direct outreach to the homeless is limited by staffing constraints and the fact that those needing the information move around a lot. 
 
Overall, the city’s response to protecting people in need was hampered by the same factors that have led to so many people living on the streets: a lack of long-term housing and a focus on temporary shelters, which are often considered by the homeless to be worse than staying outside. 
 
The city knows where the most problematic flood areas are and has plans to mitigate many of them, but those infrastructure projects are years from completion. 

The New Year’s Eve storm was the city’s second wettest on record, only surpassed by a Nov. 11, 1994, storm that brought 5.54 inches of rain to San Francisco. It is too early to know whether California will break its previous record set in 1952-53 for wettest season based on snowfall. The total snowpack results are usually measured and reported April 1. 

Inconsistent weather patterns

For the last few years California has been experiencing a series of La Niña weather patterns, which normally mean drier than usual conditions. An El Niño pattern usually means a wetter than average winter. But within those two major patterns are lesser intra-seasonal oscillations that can change from month to month. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains that variations in tropical rainfall can shift the wintertime jet stream and atmospheric circulation over the North Pacific and western North America, thereby overriding the dominant seasonal weather pattern.
 
The weather service’s Garcia explains that if the intra-seasonal oscillations “all come together in the right way, they can override a strong entrenched signal. We can have El Niño years that are extremely dry. And conversely, we can have La Niña years that are extremely wet. It’s not unheard of, it’s just not the norm.” 
 
The La Niña pattern officially ended March 9. It’s unclear whether we’ll see an El Niño pattern by next fall or a neutral pattern.
 
“In California, we typically end major droughts with major floods,” Garcia said. “This has happened multiple times throughout California’s history. So, is this related to climate change at all? The way that it’s related to climate change are the extremes at which we’re seeing those higher heights and lower lows. It’s not happening any more frequently than historically, it’s just getting deeper and higher at the same time.”

CLARIFICATION 4/10/23: The Department of Emergency Management responded to this story to characterize the changing activation status of its Emergency Operations Center. Though only described as “open” during specified times, it is otherwise continuously in standby mode and monitoring events.

The post Intense Weather Stress-Tested SF’s Emergency Response appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition N would give the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department control of the Music Concourse Garage in Golden Gate Park. The 800-space parking garage is managed by a nonprofit created by a ballot measure in 1998 that raised private donations to help finance the facility. Supporters of Proposition N cite a series of financial scandals and mismanagement of the garage and say the parking lot is underutilized because parking rates are set too high. They want to amend the earlier ballot measure to give control of the facility to Rec and Park.

This measure requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

Proposition N would overturn part of a ballot measure (then-Proposition J) passed by voters in June 1998 that placed construction of the Music Concourse Garage in Golden Gate Park in the hands of a nonprofit called the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority.

The authority took over management of the garage from the Music Concourse Community Partnership, another nonprofit created to raise tax deductible donations to build the 800-space garage. Organizers raised $36 million of the $55 million needed to build the garage. Ongoing profits from the garage were supposed to pay off loans taken out to cover the balance.

The original measure also called for any excess parking funds to be returned to the operation, maintenance, improvement or enhancement of Golden Gate Park. No such funds have been distributed.

In 2008, a $4 million embezzlement scandal by a former chief financial officer rocked the original fundraising nonprofit. Since then, the concourse authority has struggled to pay rent to the city.

Critics of the nonprofit said that the parking spaces are overpriced, with many of the 800 parking spaces often going unused. They also criticize the authority for not providing discounts to park employees who work in the De Young Museum, California Academy of Sciences and other attractions near the garage.

No opponents to the measure have placed a counter argument for maintaining the current system in the official ballot pamphlet.

Mayor London Breed issued the “Official Proponent Argument.” She said that the passage of Proposition N would allow the city “to spend public dollars on the garage, which creates flexibility over the management and parking rates.” She said the change would make it possible for the city to offer discounts to low-income and disabled visitors who drive to the park. The mayor said that “flexible pricing” will also allow the city to pay down the debt incurred from building the garage. 

The post Proposition N — Golden Gate Park Underground Parking Facility; Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition J is primarily designed to counter another measure on the ballot — Proposition I — which would overturn a Board of Supervisors ordinance passed in April 2022 closing off John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to motorized vehicles. It requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

Proposition J would add those changes to the park code. The goal is to shift park access away from car traffic and toward pedestrian and bicycle use.

The measure would also protect the weekend closure of the Great Highway along Ocean Beach and plans to turn part of that roadway between Sloat and Skyline boulevards into nature trails and parking. City planners say that erosion from sea level rise makes the maintenance of the entire Great Highway unfeasible in the long term. Changes to the Great Highway and wastewater treatment facilities are outlined in the Ocean Beach Climate Adaptation Project.

The Yes on J campaign claims that public use of the park has increased by 35% since the closure of JFK and the Great Highway and that 70% of people surveyed support the closure. No details were given on how the survey was conducted. They also cite traffic data that found JFK Drive was among the top 13% of most dangerous San Francisco streets when it was open to car traffic. The campaign also said that the city has added 29 new ADA parking spaces behind the Music Bandshell, exceeding the number of spaces that were eliminated when JFK Drive was turned into the JFK Promenade.

A paid ballot statement from the Prop. J Hurts Seniors campaign asserts that “without access to JFK Drive, it is impossible for many seniors to visit Golden Gate Park, its museums and attractions,” and adding that “many seniors do not have access to reliable public transit and cannot walk long distances and rely on cars to get around.”

Proposition J would pass on a simple majority vote. The Board of Supervisors can amend the ordinance by a majority vote. If Proposition J passes with more votes than Proposition I. then the latter would have no legal effect.

The post Proposition J — Recreational Use of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition I would overturn an ordinance that has closed John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park to most private motor vehicles seven days a week and closed the Great Highway along Ocean Beach to such traffic on weekends and holidays. The city would be forbidden from proceeding with plans to eventually close the Great Highway between Sloat and Skyline boulevards — a stretch that is subject to coastal erosion. This measure requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

This ballot measure would amend the park code to override a Board of Supervisors decision from May 2022 that turned JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park into the JFK Promenade and closed the Great Highway on weekends.

JFK Drive between Kezar Drive and the Great Highway was closed to motor vehicles seven days a week in April 2020. The then-temporary plan was to create “social distancing” space for people to walk, run, jog or bicycle during the COVID-19 pandemic. A similar section of the Great Highway at Ocean Beach was closed for the same purposes on weekends and holidays.

Under Proposition I, JFK Drive would be completely open on weekdays, but still closed to private cars on weekends from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. between April and September and on holidays. The Great Highway would be open to vehicle traffic seven days a week, except for special city approved events.

Proposition I would also forbid the city from moving forward with a plan to eventually close the Great Highway between Sloat Boulevard and Skyline Boulevard to private vehicles. Under the current plan, traffic would be diverted to the other side of the San Francisco Zoo along Skyline and Sloat boulevards. The change is part of a larger effort called the Ocean Beach Climate Adaptation Project. Work could begin as soon as late 2023 and last four years. 

The Great Highway is subject to erosion due to sea level rise, and city planners believe it is only a matter of time before it will be impossible to maintain the entire roadway for use by motor vehicles. Instead, the area would be turned into a series of nature paths and a parking lot.

The idea is similar to what was done with a dangerous and erosion-prone section of Highway 1 in San Mateo County called the Devil’s Side, which was closed upon completion of the Tom Lantos Tunnel, which routes traffic through San Bruno Mountain. The Devil’s Slide section remains open to pedestrians and bicycles, but no major repair work is done on the roadbed, which is eventually expected to fall into the ocean.

The San Francisco Controller’s Office estimates that maintaining the entire Great Highway would cost at least $80 million over the next 20 years.

Proposition I would also take JFK Drive and the Great Highway out of the jurisdiction of the Recreation and Parks Department and place the roadways under the purview of the Department of Public Works, which manages most of the city’s roadways.

Supporters of Proposition I, including disability rights advocate Howard Chabner, argued that closing JFK Drive and the Great Highway “hurts people with disabilities, seniors and families” by limiting their access to areas in the park. Supporters also contend that Proposition I will “move cars back to major roadways and off local streets that aren’t designed for high volume traffic.”

In a paid ballot argument, the group Seniors for Inclusion said that nearly 1,000 free parking spaces and a dozen ADA parking spaces near major attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, DeYoung Museum and California Academy of Sciences can no longer be accessed. 

Opponents of Proposition I include Supervisors Matt Dorsey, Gordon Mar, Merna Melgar, Dean Preson and Hilary Ronen. Supervisor Ronen said the decision to close JFK Drive was “a consensus introduced by Mayor London Breed and passed by seven board members.” She believes it provides “a protected, safe open space for recreational use.” Ronen is especially critical of the section of Proposition I that would disrupt the Ocean Beach Climate Adaptation Project, which includes the eventual closure of part of the Great Highway, but she said it would also force a halt to plans to “protect the Westside’s Sewage Treatment facilities that are at risk of falling into the sea.”  

Proposition I prompted some members of the Board of Supervisors to put Proposition J on the ballot, which would make the changes a permanent part of the park code.

If Proposition I passes, the board may later amend the ordinance by a two-thirds vote, but only if the amendments are either consistent with the measure’s purposes or required by a court. If Proposition I passes with more votes than Proposition J, then Proposition J would have no legal effect.

The post Proposition I — Vehicles on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Foghorns sounding on the Golden Gate Bridge signal that San Francisco’s “natural air conditioning” is rolling in, keeping San Francisco cool. During summer, the fog prevents triple-digit heat in the East Bay from roasting the city’s homes and businesses.

That pattern is changing. Since the 1970s, San Francisco’s average temperature has increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, city leaders are developing new strategies to keep people safe, with infrastructure designed for much cooler weather. The question is whether San Francisco is ready for the next deadly heat wave.

During the summer, chilly waters off the Northern California coast create a cool marine layer that is pulled inland like a blanket by the warmer air in the East Bay. On the other side of that weather pattern, an upper ridge of high pressure usually indicates where temperatures will be hottest.

On Labor Day 2017, the cool marine layer never reached San Francisco, and temperatures predicted to be in the upper 80s, soared to a record-breaking 106.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Brian Garcia said his agency didn’t see it coming — prediction models were off.

“It looked like the peak of that ridge was going to set up over the East Bay,” he said. “We were looking at temperatures upwards of 115 for Livermore.”

The ridge ended up 30 miles to the west — right on top of San Francisco. Any possible ocean breezes were blocked by a wall of high-pressure air.

The extreme heat took the lives of three elderly San Franciscans and three more people on the Peninsula. Most died alone in overheated buildings. None of them had called 911. Dozens of other people in San Francisco were taken to hospitals with serious heat-related illnesses, overwhelming local emergency medical services.

Threat Starts at Lower Temperature in SF

Most San Franciscans live without air conditioning. The 2020 Census found that in the metro area that includes San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, only 47% of households had air conditioning. That percentage is certainly lower in San Francisco, which is typically cooler than the East Bay. 

Adrienne Bechelli, deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said people in the city are at higher risk with even moderate heat.

“Our thresholds in San Francisco are much lower than in other comparable cities nationwide, or even in other neighboring counties, because a lot of homes don’t have air conditioning in our work or commercial spaces,” she said. “So, our spectrum starts with pre-planning — depending on the incident — in the high 70s, but usually low 80s.”

Bechelli said setting heat protocols in motion starts with the forecast.

“A couple of days out, when we get that spot report from the National Weather Service, we will hold various levels of meetings with our key city partners, as well as other community stakeholders,” she said. “That would include policy-level meetings, as well as operational coordination meetings.”

Agencies participating in such meetings include the Department of Public Health, the Human Services Agency, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Recreation and Parks Department, as well as the police, fire and sheriff’s departments. Elected leaders and representatives from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the San Francisco Unified School District would also take part.

While the Department of Emergency Management coordinates the effort, no one person in San Francisco makes the decision as to which level of response is appropriate.

On average, San Francisco has three days a year over 90 degrees. By comparison, San Jose sees 16.

San Jose Deputy City Manager Kip Harkness is the person who makes decisions about heat emergencies when San Jose’s Emergency Operations Center is activated during an extended heat wave.

“We believe that it’s important to have the authority to act at the appropriate and lowest level possible,” he said.

In most situations, San Jose agencies independently decide to do things like open cooling centers, Harkness said.

“Now, it’s just standard protocol,” he said. “If it got longer or larger, we’d pull everybody together. And we’d work through what additional resources were needed to support the people in the field.”

San Francisco’s response system can’t be set in motion by one official, Bechelli said.

“We do so much pre-planning, where we have all of these specific thresholds and triggers where all the city departments responsible during extreme heat know what that threshold or trigger is,” she said. “The Department of Emergency Management holds that authority to ask other city departments to activate their extreme heat operations protocols at a lower threshold.”

Keeping Track of Heat

When San Francisco officials found themselves scrambling on Labor Day in 2017 to deal with an unexpected, deadly heatwave, many were asking why the forecast was off by 20 degrees.

Garcia, the National Weather Service meteorologist, said the problem was one of scale.

“When we look at models, typically they are in 3-kilometer, 12-kilometer or larger grid boxes,” he said. “And around here, in 3 kilometers, you can go from sea level to 5,000 feet up Mount Tam, and it’s a completely different climate regime.”

Garcia said the system has improved over the last five years, and now the models are based less on a precise forecast and more on probabilities.

“So, instead of saying, hey, it’s going to be 85 degrees in the city, we’ll be able to say the probability of it being 85 degrees in the city is 90%. The probability of it being 105 in the city is 5%,” he said.

Since 2017, the National Weather Service office in Monterey has been reaching out proactively to local municipalities as soon as it sees the threat of rising heat.

Cooling Near You

In the past, San Francisco would open cooling centers and encourage people to travel to them to get out of the heat. That proved a challenge for some seniors, disabled people and families who had to leave their neighborhoods to find a place to cool down. 

Bechelli said the city now offers three categories of weather relief centers.

“The first are overall public locations, things like shopping malls, museums, local parks, local swimming pools, locations that are accessible year-round to the public,” she said. The second category includes city-operated facilities, such as libraries and community buildings. The third category includes sites that people use in their neighborhoods, such as YMCAs, senior and community centers and homeless shelters. The Department of Emergency Management coordinates with all those groups and tries to get the word out to people who need to use them.

When heat and wildfire smoke came to the city during the COVID-19 pandemic, some people avoided leaving hot houses to go to weather relief centers. Bechelli said that fears about COVID-19 and smoke could put people with underlying health risks in serious danger.

“Extreme heat is much more serious than extreme smoke for most people,” she said.

That’s also true when sheltering at home. Opening a window to bring in cooler, but smoky air is less dangerous than being shut up in a hot room for long periods of time.

Bechelli said she is confident the city is focused on managing increasing numbers of heat waves as the climate warms.

“As emergency managers, we do everything in our power to try to stay out ahead of the hazards that impact our communities,” she said. “We always have areas for improvement, we always are looking for specific corrective actions that we can implement to make our citywide response even better. But I definitely feel confident that we are better established to respond to an extreme heat event now than we were in 2017.”

Heat Safety How to stay safe in the heat: Stay somewhere cool Drink plenty of water Wear light clothing and hats Take a shower Close blinds during the day, open blinds at night Avoid: • Being outside between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (when it is the hottest) • Strenuous activity • Eating or drinking sugar, alcohol, caffeine and high-protein foods Drink water and cool down right away if you: Feel tired, weak or dizzy Have a headache or muscle cramps Are sweating heavily Faint Look pale You may be experiencing heat exhaustion, which can become heat stroke if not addressed promptly. Get immediate medical attention if someone: Has difficulty breathing, a headache or nausea Has a fever (body temperature of 103 F or higher) Has red, hot, dry skin without sweating Is confused, delirious or hallucinating Is dizzy, unconscious or unresponsive They may be experiencing heat stroke, which can be deadly. Call 911 if someone is having a medical emergency. From SF72.org

The post Cool San Francisco Could Get Walloped by Next Heat Wave, but City Says It’s Ready appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt was unfurled recently in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for its largest display in a decade, marking the start of a campaign to educate the public about a disease that, since 1981, has infected 1.2 million people nationwide. 

While new HIV infections in the United States have been in decline, the disease continues to take a disproportionate toll on racial and ethnic minorities, men who identify as gay or bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. The highest rates of new infections and numbers of untreated people are found in the South. 

Organizers estimated that 20,000 people visited the San Francisco quilt display June 11 and 12. This fall, sections of the quilt will be taken on a tour of the South for “large displays in city centers, as well as smaller displays in rural, non-metro areas,” said Dafina Ward, executive director of the Southern AIDS Coalition. New names will be added to the 35-year-old quilt during the tour, she said.

“There will be panel-making workshops all over the south,” she said. “It’ll be an opportunity to display quilts that feature members of the communities where we’re touring, particularly Black and brown folks who we know are not as strongly represented in the quilt as we would like for them to be.”

She believes the southern tour could provide healing for those dealing with all kinds of trauma. 

“I think the quilt can even hold a different type of significance for people as we’re dealing with COVID and all the other things that we are really fighting through together,” she said. “So, I think it’ll be a space for grieving and I’m hoping it’ll also be a space for healing.”

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Explore images by clicking through the viewer above. All photos by Yesica Prado/San Francisco Public Press.

Need for resources in wake of pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic forced health care providers across the country to focus on battling that disease, shifting resources away from other public health priorities such as HIV care. 

A recent “Civic” episode — “While SF Fought COVID, HIV Prevention Stalled” — explored how the need for directing public health attention to COVID over the last two years has led to a rise in new and untreated HIV infections in San Francisco. 

The decline in HIV care and prevention was especially pronounced in the South, where Ward said HIV testing fell by half during the pandemic. 

“We surveyed over 100 community-based organizations in the South that are serving sexual and gender minorities, or folks living with HIV, and 96% of them reported that their service delivery was impacted by COVID,” she said. 

The organizations also saw huge increases in need for mental health care and food services, Ward said. 

“Wherever a person comes and knocks on the door for help, they should be able to get access to everything that they need,” she said. “And that approach is called the ‘no wrong door’ approach. I think that has to be the standard and best practice for us in HIV.”

During opening remarks at the unfurling in San Francisco, Ward spoke about how the quilt brought the unacknowledged HIV crisis to Washington D.C. in 1987, and how it can play a role in bringing attention to HIV and AIDS again today. 

“So, what we hope to do in the South, to bring our dead to the statehouse lawns — where they continue to violate the rights of communities, to ignore the injustice by refusing to expand Medicaid, criminalizing people for living with HIV, punishing educators for saying the word gay,” Ward said. 

She invited people from across the country to join the effort. “The Southern AIDS Coalition is regionally based, but we are nationally needed,” she said. “We will not end the HIV epidemic in this country if we don’t end the southern HIV epidemic.”

Harold Phillips, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, applauded plans to take the quilt to the places it’s most needed. He told “Civic” that the Biden administration is committed to funding HIV programs, including PrEP — the commonly used term for pre-exposure prophylaxis — to reduce new infections. 

“President Biden, in the fiscal year ’23 budget request, has called for a national PrEP program, especially for those uninsured and underinsured,” he said. (Learn more about the administration’s AIDS policy plans in our Q-and-A with Phillips.)

Adding the last panel

Cleve Jones, one of the AIDS quilt project founders, spoke about the anger and rage he felt in the 1980s, and why it was so important to bring the quilt to Washington in 1987 during the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. 

“My heart was full of anger, hate, fear and despair,” he said. “All my friends were dying. The government did nothing. Our churches kicked us out. Our families abandoned us. It seemed that the world was totally unwilling to look at what was going to happen.” 

Jones said the quilt helped change attitudes, and the idealism that inspired it saved his life. 

“When I was dying of AIDS, ACT UP stormed the NIH, confronted the FDA and got the medications released that saved my life,” he said. “So, when I tell you that the movement saved my life, that’s not rhetoric. It’s not hyperbole, it’s the truth. It saved my life. It can save your life. It can save this country. It can save this planet.”

The quilt was born in a storefront in San Francisco’s Castro District in 1986 and was moved to a warehouse in Atlanta in 2000, before returning to the Bay Area in 2020. Learn more about the quilt’s history and its new home in San Leandro in the “Civic” episode “Pandemic and Protest,” from June 2020.

Kevin Herglotz, CEO of the AIDS Memorial Grove, which manages the quilt, said the plan is to build a home for the quilt as part of a center for health and social justice in San Francisco, possibly near the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. 

“This quilt has to be protected,” he said. “It has to be conserved and preserved and made available to the public.”

The quilt is made up of more than 50,000 panels — each a personal tribute to someone who died of AIDS — with hundreds more added every year. 

“We want to see a day when there’s no more quilt being made,” Herglotz said. “When we have the last one, there’s a panel that’s been made that hangs in the warehouse that says ‘the last one.’ We want to put that one in the quilt. When it’s the last one.”

The post After SF Visit, AIDS Quilt Heads to South to Raise Awareness appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The response is led by Harold Phillips, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, who is a long-term survivor of the virus — defined as someone infected before the HIV drug cocktail deployed in the mid 1990s made it possible for most people to live with HIV as a chronic disease.

The San Francisco Public Press spoke with Phillips this month when he came to San Francisco to participate in events tied to the display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Golden Gate Park.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

Mel Baker: In San Francisco during the COVID pandemic, we backed off on our HIV care, both prevention and services for those with HIV. (Learn more from this recent “Civic” episode: “While SF Fought COVID, HIV Prevention Stalled.”) Is that something that the administration is noticing around the country? And is there a policy plan to deal with that? 

Harold Phillips: Yes, we’ve noticed that a lot. Some, because of our already strained public health system, during the pandemic. So, they stopped some of the HIV work. We’ve seen decreases in the number of HIV tests conducted across the United States. We also saw people fall out of HIV care, including some of our long-term survivors. With social distancing, a lot of services had to move to telehealth, which didn’t necessarily work for everybody. If you’re in a rural area where you got poor internet service, that didn’t work too well either. 

One of the things that President Biden has done is called for us to accelerate our HIV efforts. He released a new national HIV/AIDS strategy on World AIDS Day last year.

We are also linking to our prevention options, which — we’ve got a number of them — including long-acting injectables, and PrEP for those who are at risk, but not HIV positive. (Editor’s note: PrEP stands for “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” in which an HIV drug used for treating the virus is given to someone who isn’t infected to prevent them from becoming HIV positive. With no effective vaccine against HIV infection, PrEP is the most effective way to prevent new infections, especially when combined with safer sex practices.) 

We’re hoping to refocus the conversation and our efforts around HIV. COVID is here for a while. So, we’re learning to live with it, and living with it means we’ve got to also focus on HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Baker: Regarding injectables: They’re very expensive. Is there an administration policy to make sure that things like Medicare pay for these drugs and an effort to push states to make sure their Medicaid programs cover them, especially for people that have difficulty maintaining a daily pill regimen? (Editor’s note: Injectables are new HIV drugs that can be injected into a person’s muscle tissue, which allows them to be slowly released into the bloodstream over a matter of weeks, eliminating the need for daily pills.)

Phillips: Absolutely. Working with Medicaid, Medicare, as well as working with private insurance covering the cost of long acting injectables, and changing our policies. President Biden, in the fiscal year ’23 budget request, has called for a national PrEP program, especially for those uninsured and underinsured. We will not only be covering the medications, including injectables, but also covering services for those that need to access PrEP, need to become more aware of PrEP, and also reminders, patient navigators to help keep people on PrEP, transportation services for those who need help and assistance getting to the clinic. 

This July we acknowledge 10 years of having PrEP as an HIV prevention tool. And we’re still working on programs that help people really become aware of PrEP, and maintain access to the medications.

Baker: What about programs for research and such? You know, we’ve always heard that we’re “just 10 years away from a cure” for three decades now. Is there any extra money being put into research that might cure those infected? 

Phillips: Yes. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) is continuing to do work on a cure and a vaccine. I think it’s been at least documented and well known that our ability to find the COVID-19 vaccine is a result of decades of HIV research toward a vaccine. So, now that we’ve sort of got COVID-19 vaccines under way, our research scientists involved in vaccine research for HIV have also learned a lot from that sort of effort. And now they’re turning their attention and refocusing our efforts for an HIV vaccine and also a vaccine cure. 

Dr. Fauci talks about this as well. It’s still hopeful that we can get there, we’re learning so much. Our medications are much better than they were 35 years ago as we sort of commemorate the anniversary of the quilt today. We’ve come so far. And they’re continuing to work with a lot of the AIDS research that’s going on as well. And there are additional investments on the federal government’s part in that too. (Editor’s note: Dr. Anthony Fauci, who prominently guided national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has long been a key figure in HIV and AIDS policymaking as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — a position he has held since 1984.)

Baker: One of the most difficult things to get out of Congress is federal funding to help other countries with HIV care and prevention. How has the Biden Administration continued that effort that began during George W. Bush’s administration? (Editor’s note: According to HIV.gov, in 2020, there were 20.6 million people with HIV in Eastern and Southern Africa, 5.7 million in Asia and the Pacific, 4.7 million in Western and Central Africa, and 2.2 million in Western and Central Europe and North America.)

Phillips: Absolutely. President Biden has pledged his continued support for our PEPFAR program — the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Our first lady, just about a month ago, announced the historic investment in HIV care, treatment and prevention for the country of Panama. Our new global AIDS ambassador has just started work. So, we’re really excited to have him on board, that will also continue to work. 

Currently, under PEPFAR, we’ve got 21 countries across the world — some in Africa, some in Asia — that have reached epidemic control. And that means that 90% of the people with diagnosed HIV in those countries are virally suppressed — meaning they can’t pass it on to their sexual partners. So, with 21 countries already around the world who have reached epidemic control — here in the United States we’re at 67%, so we’ve got a lot of work to do. But I think the lessons learned from some of those other countries is that we can do it. It can be done. It’s achievable. And I’m very hopeful that the United States will get there.

Baker: It seems the injectables will be the next stage in trying to do that, since people can go as much as two months between an injection.

Phillips: Yeah. And the pharmaceutical companies as well as our researchers are looking at, how do you extend that? So, right now we’re at sort of four to six weeks, they’re looking at even longer, including once a year. So, that’s going to be another tool that helps us get there, both for those living with HIV and those that are at risk of infection.

Baker: The majority of HIV patients in the United States are 50 years and older. Is there enough funding to make sure that people that didn’t have enough resources to prepare for retirement are going to be able to get a little extra care?

Phillips: So, this is something that we’re looking at. Our new national strategy talks about those who are over 50, as well as elderly living with HIV. I think we’re still figuring out what that all means, and what sort of services will individuals need that are different. And how do we do that?

It’s going to take a “whole of government” effort to look at this. Luckily, the Administration for Community Living, which handles senior services in America, are on board and have mandated that people living with HIV be included in state aging plans. So, that’s the first step to really look at and better understand: What are the resources that are needed at the community level, for people who are aging with HIV? We’re also looking at quality of life for people living with HIV. And we know the definition of quality-of-life changes as one ages. So, things like social isolation, housing status, employment status, physical abilities. Also, how do we measure all of that, in addition to clinical and medical well-being, which we’ve been doing for a while. 

It’s a point in the history of the epidemic in our country that I don’t think we really thought about 40 years ago. I think we’ve got a lot of work to do, including training our medical professionals on how to take care of people living with HIV who are over 50 — things like bone density frailty assessments. Also, in services so that we can still be our authentic selves as we age and maybe go into a senior living facility. Something to celebrate living with HIV and reaching these milestones. 

Baker: Why did you come out to see the AIDS quilt? Why was it important to have a representative of the administration here?

Phillips: The AIDS quilt plays an important part in our history of HIV for this country. It is a symbol of both those that we have lost and loved. But it’s also a symbol of hope. And it’s got an incredible power to unite us and bring us together to hear the stories of those we’ve lost. And to remember them is important, because it also helps to break down stigma. Part of what President Biden has called for is that we addressed HIV stigma and HIV criminalization, which still exists in a number of states. So, it was really important to be here to represent Washington D.C., represent the Executive Office of the President, and also people living with HIV.

The post Biden Administration Refocuses National HIV Response appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer inspired the reexamination of many historical figures, including John Muir, the man often called “the father of the national parks.” 

Even the Sierra Club, which Muir founded, issued a statement in June 2020 acknowledging some racist language in his early writings. It read, in part: “Muir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement. He made derogatory comments about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life.”  

Muir has been honored extensively, with his name on many sites and institutions, including 28 schools, a college, a number of mountains, several trails, a glacier, a forest, a beach, a medical center, a highway and Muir Woods National Monument, one of the most visited destinations in the Bay Area. But in the time since the Sierra Club issued its nuanced statement, some have come to believe that Muir’s legacy should be diminished because of his racist statements, despite his contributions to the preservation of wilderness and later writings praising native tribes. 

John Muir is such a touchstone and cultural icon for Californians that “Civic” decided to take a look again at his legacy by traveling to Yosemite National Park in Mariposa County. 

Choosing which stories to tell

Lee Stetson has studied John Muir and performed as Muir in six one-man shows he wrote about the 19th- and early 20th-century naturalist. Stetson has thought long and hard about Muir’s legacy and the disparaging statements he made about impoverished people he encountered in his early journeys. 

“Context is the question,” Stetson said. “We have to consider the comments from a young man who was first encountering the Black people in the South as he walked down to the Florida keys from Kentucky.” Muir’s comments on the Indian cultures that he met related to what Stetson called the “shattered cultures,” or tribes decimated by displacement. 

Muir called the handful of Miwuk living in Yosemite who had survived a racial genocide “dirty.” But his later writings show that his attitude shifted over time.

“When he arrived in Alaska” in 1899, Stetson said, “he was accompanied by and guided by Indians. He became incredibly fond of them. He was engaged with Indian cultures that were fully intact. His understanding of their loyalties, their families, their culture in general, was certainly very positive in every way.”

Regardless of whether one agrees with the argument for putting John Muir in historical context, when it comes to national parks, we often forget the people for the trees. But some of the Miwuk — people who still call Yosemite and the land surrounding it home — say the credit given to Muir for his stewardship and preservation efforts are overstated. 

“We were the first stewards of the land to be there,” said Sandra Roan Chapman, chairperson of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. “They say John Muir found Eden. He didn’t find Eden. It was always there.” 

“Everything you read about in Yosemite is about John Muir,” she said, adding that members of other tribes have told her they feel the way she does, wondering why Muir’s name is on so many sites that are significant to Indigenous people. “Why do we always have to have John Muir on our sites? So, to me, it’s like, if it wasn’t him, it would have been somebody else.” 

She said that when Muir entered Yosemite, he knew nothing about the impoverished people in the region who survived by working for mostly white tourists. 

One might argue that debating John Muir’s legacy centers the focus on one man, rather than sharing the history of displacement, violence and inequity faced by native tribes.  

The members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation have more pressing things to contemplate than John Muir’s legacy. They are fighting for federal recognition, acquiring resources for their community and keeping their culture alive. They recently reached an agreement with the National Park Service giving them control of the site of a former native village in Yosemite Valley that was demolished by the park service in the 1960s. Construction on the site is under way to give the tribes a cultural and educational center in the heart of Yosemite. (The Public Press will share stories about those developments in future reporting.)

Rather than dwell on the negative things Muir said, Chapman said she prefers to focus on the possibilities for her tribe and others.

“They banished us out of Yosemite, but we’re still here,” she said. “And because we have our laughter, and we have our ceremonies, and we stay positive with everything that we’ve gone through, all the hardships and everything that we’ve had, we still stay positive. And that’s what you have to do.” 

Fighting for nature

San Francisco prides itself on being green, but much of those bragging rights come from the clean hydro power from the O’Shaughnessy Dam at the mouth of Hetch Hetchy Valley. Since the completion of the system carrying water from Yosemite in the early 1930s, it has given San Franciscans pristine water to drink and with which to flush their toilets. 

Muir spent the later years of his life fighting the construction of the dam, taking a major role in a national campaign to defeat the project. Despite his efforts, the trees in the valley were cut for lumber and the sacred sites of the Miwuk were drowned when dam construction began in 1916. 

In addition to his work as an actor and playwright, Stetson served on the Mariposa County Board of Supervisors from 2011 to 2015 and has strong feelings about the lost valley.  

“To drown it to a depth of 400 feet was to essentially obliterate a great national treasure,” he said. “They could very easily have stored that water downstream. We could do that today. There would be some loss of electrical power that is currently generated, but that can be replaced.”

Stetson is a supporter of the Restore Hetch Hetchy movement that wants to remove the dam and store the water downstream. 

“You could easily blow a hole in it — most of that sand would pour out that has built up at the bottom of it,” Stetson said. 

“In a few generations, we could have that valley back to us to a significant degree,” he said. “It would have a bathtub ring around it for a number of centuries. But hey, the planet can handle a couple of centuries.”

Echoing Muir

In our interview with Stetson, we had him take on the role of Muir, something he has done in his plays and at live events the world over, using his deep knowledge of the man’s writings and experiences. 

In the most important political moment of his life, John Muir convinced President Teddy Roosevelt to spend three days camping with him in Yosemite in May of 1903. Muir influenced the nature-loving president to expand Yosemite and create more national parks and monuments, setting a significant precedent for land conservation. 

I asked Stetson, speaking as Muir, where he would take political leaders today. 

“The Hetch Hetchy Reservoir,” he said. “I think one could find a great deal of instruction in it. And then, take them to Yosemite Valley and to show them what the Hetch Hetchy could look like. To preserve it is to preserve the loving process of creation. It is an enormously important thing to be doing.”

Stetson as Muir answered our final question: What would you tell the average person about why we still need wilderness?

“To go to it,” he said. “Go, because everybody needs to be kind, at least to themselves. And go because everybody needs beauty as well as bread, in places to pray and then play, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.

The post John Muir, Racial Politics and the Restoration of Indigenous Lands in Yosemite appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Dr. Robin Cooper, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, told “Civic” that the constant wildfires and air pollution in California have caused some of her patients to become overwrought with grief.

“I’ve seen moms who have been in complete breakdown, distraught, weeping as they confront a feeling of helplessness, of being unable to protect their children. I’ve also had patients say to me, ‘I’m not going to think about that at all. Because if I do, I can’t take care of my children and work.’”

Cooper said while it’s important that we remain in touch with those powerful feelings, they can also prove too much for some.

“We’re in trouble when the feelings are so overwhelming and create a kind of apathy or withdrawal. I think it’s really important to be in an in-between state, tolerating the upset feelings, but not falling into despair, which creates the helplessness, because we’ve got to act now.”  

Acting now is what Lily Cohen, a youth organizer with 350 Bay Area, an international organization addressing the climate crisis, is doing. For her, the climate change threat — now becoming reality — is spurring greater action. 

“It was a huge awakening when I think these multiple crises just came hitting all at once,” she said. “Of course COVID, the wildfires and a multitude of other climate justice issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement and many others. But I think, in general, taking action is what helps me to get through this.”

That isn’t a universal response among young people. Cohen cited an April 2020 poll commissioned by Seventh Generation, a company that sells eco-friendly products to finance environmental activism, which found that 71% of Millennials and 67% of Generation Z respondents reported their mental health has been impacted by climate change.

The magnitude of the climate change threat and the scale of action needed by governments and institutions is unprecedented, but Cooper said there are lessons from earlier generations that rose up to organize against an existential threat.  

“I had that exact same experience when I learned about the potential for nuclear destruction. I think they’re comparable,” she said. “Historically, that was a time of awakening and putting myself into an activist mode to address the issues of nuclear destruction, just as I think it’s important at this point, as we face climate destruction.”

The threat of nuclear war hasn’t ended, but the massive nuclear arsenals on hair-trigger alerts have been drawn down from their heights during the Reagan administration. President Reagan entered office with an aggressive posture to the Soviet Union which included a massive buildup of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

That posture changed amid greater public awareness of the consequences of a nuclear war with tens of thousands of warheads, many of them more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   

The model of activism from below, changing the course of governments, is one that Cohen is betting her future on. 

“What inspires me most is the perseverance of the activists from the past,” she said. “The fact that these activists didn’t give up, even though they were the toughest situations that they could possibly be in, was a real factor in what’s pushing us today, and also just inspiring us to continue going, no matter how bad they seem to get.”

Cooper said every generation has learned that there is really only one way to overcome feelings of despair.

“Despair is a permission to disengage,” she said. “As much as it may feel awful, it is a protection from actually grappling with solutions. And so put aside the despair, find the areas that you can engage in. Taking action is one of the ways to make a real contribution and also to manage those horrific uncomfortable feelings.”

The post Battling Despair Over a New Climate Change Reality appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.