“Rally” is a film about San Francisco political figure, Rose Pak. Her life was extraordinary and the role she has played in our city’s development since the days of Moscone and Milk is perhaps not fully understood or acknowledged. Rooth Tang’s excellent film, which I hope will reach a wider release this year, debuted at the San Francisco Film Festival in April. The photograph above pictures Pak in the ’70s when she was the first ever Asian American reporter hired by the San Francisco Chronicle. Tang, an Angeleno, traveled to the center of Pak’s story in the way that perhaps only a Chinatown and San Francisco outsider could, but he had plenty of local insider assistance. As personal, political and documentaries of time and place go, Tang’s film is essential.
Kasey Rios is one of those freethinking and spirited San Franciscans that is the embodiment of our sanctuary city at its best. Serving residents of the Tenderloin and SoMa with a vision of greener and self-sustaining neighborhoods and fair wages for all seems a reasonable part of the solution toward improving our civic direction — a plan that includes all people, not just the wealthiest ones. Rios makes a case for less law enforcement and authority and more autonomy for residents, while paying folks to beautify and clean public spaces one neighborhood at a time. It’s a bottom up rather than a top down system and it is working in places like Mexico City and Paris, so why not here? Building the workforce is key: But such ideas can’t take if workers cannot afford to live here and we perpetuate a cycle of displacement and profits over people.
Like the city itself, the local media continues to experience loss, change and reorganization: Like everywhere, there has been a real drain of alternative news outlets here in recent years, and a co-opting and misunderstanding of what journalism is and can be. But there remains hope: Independent news organizations and reporting are the present and future of the form. As a new contributor to Bay City News Foundation, a local wire service and network of regional news outlets including Local News Matters, I’m happy to continue to do my work delivering under-reported stories to a wider public, as well as through the monthly live stream project, SFLives/Live Talks.
This Sunday, our guest is Malia Spanyol, a small business owner with an eye on keeping safe spaces alive for women and queer folks in the Mission District, a neighborhood that remains in persistent risk of over-gentrification. Next month on June 11, we will be in discussion with the aforementioned Kasey Rios at 10 am. SFLives livestreams on the Bird and Becket Books channel. Please join us and keep your eyes open for more on-the-ground coverage from San Francisco — from myself and other dedicated reporters from our city. We’re still here.
Filed under: Arts and Culture, gentrification, San Francisco News, Women's issues, San Francisco
Denise Sullivan 