Category: History
Posted inArts & Culture, Community, History, Neighborhoods

New Parade Dragon Carries on Local Legacy Dating Back Nearly 175 Years

Avatar photo by Zhe Wu

There will be a brand new dragon in this year’s Chinese New Year Parade finale, celebrating the Year of the Dragon.

The Chinese New Year Parade, the festival’s pinnacle event, is scheduled this Saturday. Until then, the new dragon is on display at Three Embarcadero Center.

The parade’s organizer, the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce, has announced the roster of floats and entertainers who will participate, including a 289-feet golden dragon that debuted in public on Lunar New Year’s Day, Feb. 10, for a Taoist “awakening” ceremony.

Posted inCommunity, History, Immigration, Neighborhoods

Volunteers Race to Preserve Culturally Significant Records in Chinatown

Avatar photo by Zhe Wu

A volunteer group led by community historian David Lei and University of California, Berkeley lecturer Anna Eng is working on a week-long project to scan boxes of documents — memos, letters, photos and other archived items.

The scanning project is a collaborative effort between historians striving to increase access to alternative historical sources and community organizations wanting the history to be restored and told.

Posted in“Civic” Podcast, City Hall, Health, History, Homelessness, Overdose Crisis, Social Services

San Francisco’s Fatal Overdose Crisis Was Decades in the Making

Avatar photo by Sylvie Sturm

As San Francisco continues to search for solutions, our team at “Civic” is exploring the origins of the city’s opioid overdose crisis, what has been done to help and what might be making things worse. After six months of research involving hundreds of studies, reports and archival news clippings, and three dozen interviews with people with lived experience and professional expertise in homelessness, addiction, medicine, criminal justice, housing, social work, street outreach, business, education, harm reduction, policymaking and advocacy, we’re launching the series, “San Francisco and the Overdose Crisis.”

Over six episodes, the series will explore what influenced rampant opioid addiction and its connection to homelessness, the 150-year history of policing and prosecuting drugs in San Francisco, the long battle to open a safe consumption site in the city, and grassroots efforts to stem the tide of drug-related fatalities. 

Posted in“Civic” Podcast, City Hall, Community, History, Land use, Neighborhoods, Reparations, Social Justice

SF Reparations Plan Nears Submission, but Funding Not Yet Secure

Avatar photo by Madison Alvarado

After 2½ years of meetings, community discussions, historical deep dives and policy generation, a panel tasked with proposing how San Francisco might atone for decades of discrimination against Black residents is ready to ask the city to step up and support equity rhetoric with action.

San Francisco’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee is aiming to submit its final recommendations to the city by June 30, according to Brittni Chicuata, director of economic rights at the city’s Human Rights Commission. In the meantime, the city’s annual budget process is in full swing, which may affect funding and the timeline for whatever reparations policies the board decides to pursue.

Posted inCity Hall, Community, History, Housing, Land use, Reparations, Social Justice

Housing Program to Redress Urban Renewal Could Get Boost From SF Reparations Plan

Avatar photo by Madison Alvarado

Urban renewal was a publicly and privately funded effort across the U.S. wherein local governments acquired land in areas deemed “blighted” — often using a racially biased lens — through eminent domain, forcibly displacing residents and demolishing existing buildings with promises to rebuild. In San Francisco, urban renewal targeted Black cultural centers and neighborhoods, uprooting thousands of families and destroying lively, well-established communities.

Now, San Francisco is giving renewed attention to a program that aims to bring displaced residents and their descendants back to the city as the Board of Supervisors prepares to review a draft Reparations Plan to address historic harms against Black San Franciscans at a meeting March 14.

Posted in“Civic” Podcast, California, Community, Government & Politics, History, News

California Indian Tribes Denied Resources for Decades as Federal Acknowledgement Lags

by Yesica Prado

In the last 13 years, the U.S. Department of Interior has actively reviewed applications for acknowledgement of only 18 tribes, even as hundreds remain in line. The Public Press has identified more than 400 tribes seeking federal recognition and is working to confirm that 200 others with publicly listed applications are genuine.

Many have been waiting for decades. The Death Valley TimbiSha Shoshone Band is the only California tribe that has been recognized in the 44 years since the federal acknowledgement process was established.

Posted in“Civic” Podcast, Health, History, HIV & AIDS, LGBTQ+

After SF Visit, AIDS Quilt Heads to South to Raise Awareness

Avatar photo by Mel Baker

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. 

Posted in“Civic” Podcast, California, Environment, History, Land use, Parks & Open Space, Social Justice

John Muir, Racial Politics and the Restoration of Indigenous Lands in Yosemite

Avatar photo by Mel Baker

John 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 a nuanced statement in 2020 acknowledging some racist language in his early writings, some have come to believe that Muir’s legacy should be diminished, despite his contributions to the preservation of wilderness and later writings praising native tribes. 

Posted in“Civic” Podcast, Economy & Business, History, Social Justice

Tax Cuts and Eroding Worker Protections Made Wealth Gap More Extreme

Avatar photo by Sylvie Sturm

When we examine the massive wealth gap between the rich and poor in this country, what stands out most is how differently it affects the country’s white and Black populations.

According to data from the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the typical Black family has $24,000 in wealth. That is less than 13% of the $190,000 in wealth held by the typical white family.

Gift this article