A hectic election cycle has come and gone in San Francisco. The dust is settling as Mark Leno is making a concession speech and London Breed is preparing to take office, and San Franciscans are grappling with the implications of propositions passing or failing. Proposition F passed this cycle, meaning that the city will now provide legal representation for tenants facing eviction, while Propositions D and H were defeated, which would have respectively taxed the lease of commercial properties for low- and medium-income housing and homeless services and permitted SFPD to develop a policy governing Taser use without the established oversight of the Police Commission.

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I heard too many times from people struggling  with addiction about their challenges getting any help, including even medical services. Nobody is taking their needs seriously. As we know from the American mental health manuals, junkies “always complain and they always lie”.

Recently though several authors came forward with a completely different approach, protesting the dehumanization of those who are self-medicating to the point of losing control over substances which initially helped them to tolerate otherwise unbearable challenges of life.  

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At the Christopher Street Pride Parade in 1973, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera marched with their group, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), and were invited to speak as leaders of gay liberation. However when Sylvia Rivera was introduced to speak, she was met with protest that left her with only one choice – yell over their outcry. “Y’all better quiet down. I’ve been tryin’ to get up here all day, for your gay brothers,

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Dear Board of Supervisors and concerned citizens,

I am writing you as a concerned disabled resident of San Francisco in regards to the new $1.2 million proposal to “improve” the MUNI/BART Elevators at Powell and Civic Center Stations.  This item proposal was presented by Tim Chan yesterday (5/18/18) at the Mayor’s Office on Disability meeting at City Hall, which I attended remotely. I am specifically concerned that this project has absolutely nothing to do with helping the disabled and everything to do with further prosecuting and criminalizing the poor and communities of color in the Tenderloin area for fare evasion.

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I woke up on a bed of rice

Don’t know how I got there but it was nice

Though I soon figured out that I was doomed

To be somebody’s dinner that afternoon

So I tried to jump up and say catch you later

But I was pinned down by a baked potater

With two pieces of garlic bread

Like pillows underneath my head

Then I asked myself what kind of chef

Would have made an entreé of my death

And why I’d never thought about the cost

‘Til I was being complemented by applesauce

Food is murder.

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International Workers Day kicked off in Santa Rosa behind the Dollar Tree store which had been home to 140 homeless campers until a massive eviction hit two weeks prior. The camp had originally been a sanctioned campsite, but had swelled since horrific fires forced many from their homes and former camps.

Several hundred demonstrators gathered to show their solidarity with homeless campers before marching to the Hilton Hotel where the unionized hotel workers were demonstrating.

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Many of us honored our mothers this past mother’s day by acknowledging the sacrifices they made raising us, how much work they put in to ensure that their children had the best lives possible. Mothers of homeless children feel a special pain worrying that their children will not flourish. In the daily struggle to survive, motherhood requires strength and bravery that those who live inside cannot begin to imagine.

In light of an astonishing upswing in the number of homeless children experiencing homelessness,

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In the age of such movements as “MeToo” and “Times Up,” we have seen a shift in the national discourse around sexual violence.  However, even with the forward progress of these movements there is still one population that has been largely ignored and distanced from the mainstream narrative.  Homeless individuals, particularly homeless women, are one of the most vulnerable populations when it comes to sexual harm, yet their stories are largely ignored. It is important that as a society we start to center these stories and take a look at the prevalence of violence experienced by individuals who are homeless.

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