Life Out Here is Not Easy

by Michael
A rooster stands atop a skull wearing a hat that reads "ICE", with handcuffs lying beside it. The image is framed by cacti and a scorpion.

Content warning: The stories throughout this issue may be especially activating for some readers. Many of these pieces involve descriptions of traumatic experiences including sexual violence, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, queer/transphobic violence, in addition to the violence of states and false borders.

I came to America as part of an LGBTQ group seminar 3 years ago. Coming from Africa, this was the best moment of my life. Filled with excitement, we began the journey and on getting here I wasn’t disappointed at all.

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Looking for Greener Pastures

by Sofia Henry
A rooster stands atop a skull wearing a hat that reads "ICE", with handcuffs lying beside it. The image is framed by cacti and a scorpion.

Content warning: The stories throughout this issue may be especially activating for some readers. Many of these pieces involve descriptions of traumatic experiences including sexual violence, domestic violence, sexual exploitation, queer/transphobic violence, in addition to the violence of states and false borders.

Africa is a beautiful land full of resources, tourist attractions and diverse culture, but still many of us leave it to visit the U.S. and look for greener pastures.

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More SIPs to Close and Shelters Reopen as COVID-19 Variant Intensifies

by TJ Johnston

 As a state of emergency takes effect in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, the City has scheduled to close four more hotels sheltering unhoused people from the coronavirus pandemic in the next two months — even as the omicron variant surges in congregate shelters.

These shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels will shut down by the end of March. The SIPs – the Adante Hotel, Executive Hotel Vintage Court, Nob Hill Inn and Best Western Red Coach Inn – comprise almost 200 rooms among them and spread within a 50-square block area from the Tenderloin to Lower Nob Hill to Union Square. 

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Impact of Polluted Air on SF Unhoused Community Left Uncharted on CalEnviroScreen Map

by Hanisha Harjani

The CalEnviroScreen map is a pollution tracking tool developed to more clearly identify California communities with high environmental burdens and better focus where state and federal funding should go. However, when LaDonna Williams looks at this map, she notices the environmental hazards that the cartographers missed.

“Some of these communities have several exposures,” Williams says. Some are simultaneously situated next to raw sewage plants, refineries and highways. But when this data is translated through the CalEnviroScreen scoring system,

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Let’s Build a City that Values Lives Over Handbags

by Katharine S. Walter

Early in the evening on Friday, Dec. 3, a small group gathered in South of Market, on the corner of Fifth and Folsom streets, to honor Ajmal Amani’s life. The group stood in front of the site where the San Francisco Police Department murdered Amani only days before—inside Amani’s home, a residential hotel.

The danzantes from Oakland’s POOR Magazine led a prayer for Amani. They turned to face the four directions,

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Georgia Marie

by Jason Albertson

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual individuals, alive or dead, is coincidental.

Case counts were down; I told the folks delivering vaccinations that I could help. We set up Mobile Outreach Vaccine Events to find homeless people to vaccinate. We gave people twenty bucks worth of gift cards for vaccinating, and offered flu vaccines, booster shots, Johnson and Johnson one-shot-gets-you-done vaccines, and completion doses for Moderna and Pfizer.

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The Tenderloin Needs Help, Not Harm

by Quiver Watts

An abridged Statement from Coalition on Homelessness in Response to Mayor Breed’s State of Emergency December

Mayor London Breed is exploiting the concerns of a vulnerable community in order to promote a “law and order” agenda meant to benefit political and financial interests. This unjustified, and in some cases, illegal maneuver is cause for alarm. On Tuesday, December 14, after a misleading flood of media hysteria around crime in San Francisco and just days after meeting with a group of residents brought together by the business group Tenderloin Community Benefits District,

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Poetry Spotlight

by Quiver Watts

Valentine Love

By Lawrence Hollins

Love is: Sharing and caring, giving and forgiving

Love is: Loving and being loved, walking hand in hand, talking heart to heart

Love is: Seeing through each others eyes, laughing together, weeping together, praying together, moreso staying together

Love is: your best friend, your king or queen, your dream, your everything…

Love is God: and that’s what you are,

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Mousey’s Story: Homelessness and Mental Illness

by Johanna Elattar

It’s a frigid day in New York as I step outside to check the mail. A snow storm has covered  everything in glistening white, and I’m only dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. It only takes a minute to check the mail, but I’m already freezing. I open the mailbox and there’s no mail. I’ve forgotten that it’s Martin Luther King Day. I stand on the porch for a second to look at the snow,

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