San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/author/laura-wenus/page/4/)
I host and report for “Civic,” a San Francisco public affairs radio show and podcast from the Public Press. I've been a multimedia reporter and producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've reported on housing, health, immigration and homelessness for local news site Mission Local and produced conversations about local, regional and national current affairs for “Your Call,” a live call-in program on KALW-FM public radio.
Landlords may proceed with evictions against tenants for unpaid rent beginning Oct. 1 as a statewide moratorium on such evictions expires. Tenant, legal and public health advocates are urging tenants to apply for rent relief money, and want municipalities to approve additional protections, citing loss of housing as a public health concern.
As public transportation advocates and officials mark Transit Month in San Francisco and encourage riders to return to buses and trains, they are grappling with the reality that Muni needs, and has long needed, additional robust and long-term funding to meet the city’s transit demands.
After the Taliban took over the Afghan government, a massive evacuation effort began, but thousands are still waiting at the airport in Kabul. Tyler Solorio, an Army veteran deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and a policy analyst for the veterans nonprofit Swords to Plowshares, said the U.S. government has made it dangerously complicated for Afghans to get out.
Thousands are fleeing Afghanistan in fear of violent reprisals from the Taliban, which captured the nation in a matter of days after the U.S. began withdrawing its troops. Farhad Yousafzai said refugees are arriving in the Bay Area from Afghanistan in dire need of everything — a place to stay, a shower, health care, a change of clothes for the first time in 10 days.
Distance learning and hybrid schedules were taking their toll on students, teachers and parents. Now, nearly everyone is back, though school looks a little different with pandemic precautions like universal indoor masking in place. School social worker Yajaira Cuapio and kindergarten teacher Cathy Sullivan shared their experiences with the return to classrooms.
Marg Gruberg, a San Francisco taxi driver since 1983 and a board member of the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance, talked with “Civic” about what this has meant for cab drivers and how he and others have stayed busy with advocacy even if they haven’t been driving in the pandemic.
A report on the waste picked up by cleanup crews working along the nation’s beaches and shorelines from the Surfrider Foundation showed almost 90% of the more than 80,000 pounds of trash collected in 2020 was plastic.
Rick Wilson, a senior engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey and manager of its tsunami program, joined “Civic” to outline some tsunami basics and explained how and why these maps are made and updated.
In an interview with “Civic,” Evangelina Peña, co-manager of the outreach division at the San Francisco Department of Elections, walked voters through the steps, from ensuring they receive a ballot to filling it out to tracking its processing status online.
A new documentary, “Homeroom,” shows how Oakland High School’s Class of 2020 faced a year of pandemic uncertainty with resilience and perseverance, amplifying calls to end policing in schools even as those schools shut down and their personal milestones were relegated to virtual spaces.
