A medley of people wait for the San Francisco Public Library to open in the morning. Students on a deadline. People who really need a library book. Retired folks. And people checking email. As the doors open, patrons stream into the atrium at the main branch near the Civic Center in downtown San Francisco. Some head to their favorite reading nook; others to computers to start surfing the Web.
Yearly Archives: 2012
Posted inNews
Muni aims to improve performance on 44-O’Shaughnessy bus route, other lines
Muni’s ongoing quest to improve service is now targeting the 44-O’Shaughnessy bus line that travels from the Richmond District to Evans Avenue and Third Street in the Bayview. The route is approximately eight miles long with over 60 stops in one direction. The buses have trouble keeping on schedule because of traffic problems on Ninth […]
Posted inLabor
Domestic workers organizing march to end abuse
Matilda Vasquez’s mother worked more than 10 years for a family that provided her no insurance or vacation time and “no rest,” she said. “That kind of abuse has to stop. We pay taxes like everybody else,” said Vasquez at a meeting on Wednesday at the Women’s Building in San Francisco to organize for a Jan. 24 march on Sacramento in support of the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, AB889.
Posted inEducation, Labor
Amid criticism, CSU tweaks presidential salary comparisons
Responding to criticism from the Legislative Analyst’s Office and others, California State University officials have revised a proposed list of peer universities they plan to use to help set pay for campus executives. The new list, provided to California Watch, no longer considers Temple University in Pennsylvania a peer of San Diego State University because Temple has a medical school – a feature that tends to drive up the cost and complexity of university operations. Temple paid its president $536,000 in base pay in 2009-10.
Posted inNews
Film screening: ‘Enforcing The Silence’
Tony Nguyen’s documentary “Enforcing the Silence” chronicles the life and violent death of a young community organizer. Lam Trong Duong was 23 when he founded The Vietnamese Youth Development Center in the Tenderloin district in 1978. With bachelor’s degrees in both math and philosophy and frustrated by the lack of services available to the influx […]
Posted inBay Area, Environment, Health, Land use
Bay Area’s urban planning must address public health, says study
For nearly four years, Cassandra Martin lived in West Oakland, a few blocks from two freeways and the city’s port. This has made her an accidental expert on air pollution. “I used to wonder what that black stuff was on the windowsill,” said Martin, who was diagnosed with asthma in 2009. “I would constantly wipe the walls and windowsills, but it would get so caked with soot. That’s a reason I was wondering about particulate matter.”
Posted inFrom the Newsroom, News
Examining local universal care: How San Francisco took an independent — and expensive — approach to covering the uninsured
This is a repost of a blog item for Reporting on Health, the website of the USC Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships, which supported the Public Press’ Healthy San Francisco reporting project this winter. In 2007, San Francisco embarked on a rare and bold experiment, resolving to provide universal […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Public Safety, Social Justice
Advocates launch campaign to get anti-trafficking bill on state ballot
A campaign to get a new measure on the November ballot that would increase penalties against human traffickers in California launched Wednesday in San Francisco. The campaign, announced on National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, requires 800,000 signatures to make it into the state ballot. The California Against Sexual Exploitation (CASE) Act would increase prison terms and fines for human traffickers (up to $1.5 million, which would go to fund victim services), remove barriers to prosecute child sex traffickers, require convicted sex traffickers to register as sex offenders and disclose their Internet accounts, mandate training for law enforcement officers, and prohibit the use of the sexual history of trafficked victims in court.
Posted inNews
Walgreens and Rx company disagreement leaves pharmacy customers in the lurch
By Jon Brooks, KQED News Fix I get all my prescriptions at Walgreens. When late last year it started slipping in with my meds these little notices urging me to call Anthem Blue Cross because of some pricing dispute, along with sending me warning letters that I’d better switch all my prescriptions to a non-Walgreens […]
Posted inNews
Ed Lee promises to be mayor for ‘the 100%’
By Vivian Po and Summer Chiang, New America Media Ed Lee’s inauguration Sunday morning marked a historic moment for San Francisco, which now has its first-ever elected Chinese American mayor. But unlike when he was first appointed a year ago by then-outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sunday’s ceremony saw an affable Lee downplaying his background in […]