Last year, renowned writer and San Francisco Poet Laureate, Tongo Eisen-Martin, told us that it's not enough to simply be a poet. "The poet needs to just come on down to the trenches," he said, explaining that quality writing comes from the lived experience of participating in community activism. In direct application of his own philosophy, Tongo has been involved with the occupation of Parker Elementary School, where organizers are fighting against the latest round of school closures in Oakland...
Aug 12, 2022•12 min
This week on Rightnowish, we're passing the microphone to the team at The Stoop podcast. In this episode, hosts Leila Day and Hana Baba introduce us to folks practicing healthy alternatives to monogamy, including author and educator Kevin Patterson, who describes his polyamory as "relationship anarchy." "Every person that I meet, our relationship just sort of forms naturally," he says. "I don't try to put anybody in one box or another if that's not what suits this person." Writer Crystal Byrd Fa...
Aug 05, 2022•42 min
San Francisco lyricist and graffiti writer Dregs One is making sure Bay Area hip-hop culture is properly documented, and at the same time he's becoming a recognized historian. In a series of videos he simply calls "History of The Bay," Dregs is using TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to highlight aspects of Bay Area culture that are often overlooked. In one video he dives into the use of local slang, noting that music "slaps" and food doesn't. Dregs has multiple videos honoring the work of...
Jul 29, 2022•22 min
In Indigenous protocol, we're beginning this week's episode honoring the original stewards of this land that many of us in Frisco now occupy — the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone. Now, let's take a trip down Valencia Street to La Misión. The neighborhood is home to not one, but two rich cultural districts. Calle 24 Latino Cultural District was first established in 1999. More recently, in 2020, it was joined by the American Indian Cultural District — a home base for the Urban Native co...
Jul 22, 2022•28 min
Joshua Neal is a viral sensation, using social media platforms to share his acting talents and social commentary with the world, and simultaneously launching his career. Multiple times a week, Neal posts short comedic videos where he plays all the roles, writes all the scripts, and produces all the stories. He can be seen smoking fake cigarettes as a bad guy or wearing a towel on his head as he takes on the role of an angry girlfriend—all in service of telling humorous stories that resonate with...
Jul 15, 2022•19 min
Maya Cueva makes documentary films that cover the heavy topics: immigration, reproductive justice and xenophobia. Her latest, On The Divide, follows the stories of three Latinx people whose lives interconnect through the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021, and is available to stream free of charge through July 18, 2022 at POV. Cueva says her journey into professional storytelling began after covering current events at Youth Rad...
Jul 01, 2022•19 min
Nenna Joiner owns Feelmore, a queer-friendly sex toy shop with locations in Berkeley and Oakland. Noticing the lack of Black queer spaces beyond the monthly “RnB nights” at many local clubs, they decided to open the Feelmore Social Club in Downtown Oakland, a bar slated to open in 2022. “This energy that they feel in Feelmore is akin to the energy that they're going to feel here,” Joiner assures, “We want to be open a long time.” Joiner speaks about re-imagining the Black queer space, and the ro...
Jun 24, 2022•21 min
The rich LGBT history of the Tenderloin goes back farther than any bricks thrown at Stonewall, and Transgender Cultural District President and Chief Strategist Aria Sa’id makes it her job to preserve that history. Her work in securing tenant protections, workforce development, arts and cultural heritage preservation, and cultural competency for the residents of the historic Tenderloin neighborhood has taken the idea of ‘safe space’ beyond the bars and into our daily lives. Sa’id speaks with us a...
Jun 17, 2022•22 min
When Rodney Barnette first moved to San Francisco in 1969, he noticed that “it wasn’t all rah rah gay capital of the world.” His experiences with racism in San Francisco’s historic gay community led him to open the New Eagle Creek Saloon, the city’s first Black-owned gay bar, in 1990. Over 30 years later, Barnette speaks about why Black-affirming queer spaces are still needed, and what he took away from his experience operating one. This series was produced and reported by Corey Antonio Rose. Fo...
Jun 10, 2022•25 min
Friendships can be hard for anyone. As an adult you need to navigate staying in contact with old friends, getting past the awkward early stage of new friends, and deciding if certain friendships are healthy or unhealthy. This doesn't even touch on time constraints, and the difficulty of hangs since the beginning of the pandemic. But maybe we make friendships harder than they have to be? This week on Rightnowish, we're making new friends! This is a special crossover episode with YR Media's Adult ...
Jun 03, 2022•26 min
I met Mu'min years ago through creative Bay Area circles, now I count her as a friend, and she's flourished in her craft. From her film, Jinn, winning the SXSW Special Jury Recognition Award for Writing to writing for acclaimed shows, Queen Sugar, the Blindspotting series, Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and Insecure. But way before all of that, Nijla attended UC Berkeley, where her experiences in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program left an indelible mark. She still writes poetry to this day....
May 20, 2022•24 min
Babette Thomas is searching for artistic Black utopias. Thomas is the host of the latest season of SFMOMA's Raw Material podcast. In their series, "Visions of Black Futurity," they look at representation, identity and different historical through-lines in Black Art. Woven into the podcast is the story of curator Evangeline "EJ" Montgomery, a major player in the Black Arts scene. And EJ began her storied career in the 60s, right here in California, creating influential exhibits in the East Bay. T...
May 13, 2022•44 min
Mission District-based muralist Josué Rojas and his mother, Esther García are a dynamic duo. Josué has painted murals across San Francisco and beyond, often using images that celebrate culture and community. Esther picked up painting during the pandemic, but she's been leaving her mark on the neighborhood for decades. As she sold small goods on the street, Esther built a reputation for her sage-like presence around the way. Josué remembers times when she'd be asked to pray over people, and she'd...
May 06, 2022•22 min
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Apr 29, 2022•16 min
Terisa's poetry emerges from climate change and its impact on marginalized communities. She also writes poems from the perspective of her hyphenated identity: raised in San Francisco with deep Samoan roots. In our conversation, Terisa looks back at January's underwater eruption that caused massive tsunamis in Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and other nations in Oceania. Initially, the disaster made headlines and relief efforts filled social media feeds, but Terisa questions what sustained care looks like for...
Apr 22, 2022•22 min
It's a sunny afternoon in McLaren Park in San Francisco's Excelsior District. Throngs of people are gathered on either side of a roadway that snakes down a steep hill. As they watch, a person riding what looks like a giant black Converse sneaker whooshes past. Coming up close behind it, a cast-iron bathtub whizzes by on what could’ve been the frame of a lawn mower. Then another driver — this one clinging for dear life onto what looks like a torpedo — hurtles by, inches off the ground. This was t...
Apr 08, 2022•17 min
Over punchy-uptempo beats with stupid-heavy bass lines, Pallaví AKA Fijiana turns social tropes on their heads. Her evocative visuals mix sexuality with tradition while her lyrics address appropriation and diaspora. Fijiana says her Indo-Fijian heritage, her Richmond upbringing and rap influences like Lil Kim and Ladybug Mecca of Digable Planets, helped create the artist and person she is today. In making music that pushes social norms, she's encountered backlash with a heavy dose of sexism. Fij...
Apr 01, 2022•22 min
For some young folks, there comes a time when they age out of child-serving social services. Their safety nets get thinner and they can struggle to find their footing with limited resources or experience. These sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds are called "transitional age youth" or TAY. This is the crowd that Desire Johnson-Forte helps. She cares because she was once one of them. Desire is currently the Executive Director of The BIZ (Black Intergenerational Zeal) Stoop. The organization has thre...
Mar 18, 2022•15 min
A storm's been brewing over legal cannabis in Oakland. And Chaney Turner thinks it has the potential to wash away small business owners-- especially People of Color. Chaney Turner, current Chair of the Oakland Cannabis Commission, has seen robberies reach new heights as organized heists hit cannabis supply chains, from grow operations to retailers. It was especially intense during the summer of 2020, but this past fall, another string of caravan burglaries shook the industry, and resulted in dis...
Mar 11, 2022•19 min
Just imagine: you're a poet whose starting out on the scene and you've spent weeks working up the courage to share your work. You get to the venue there’s a raucous crowd of OG poets, they're cheering, but they're also waiting to see what's up with each person as the step to the mic. If the OG poets think your poem is a cheap knockoff of someone else's work, they'll throw peanut shells against the bar's aluminum walls. That sound will stay with you. This might sound chaotic and harsh (and don't ...
Mar 04, 2022•23 min
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Feb 25, 2022•22 min
Krea Gomez has seen tough love play out in many ways. As a young adult, she was kicked out of her home for “being bad,” now she’s practicing tough love in her own way. In her work with young adults – and her own children – she sets boundaries and goals while teaching independence with care. Krea is also the Director of Local Initiatives at the Young Women’s Freedom Center and has been a loud voice trying to close juvenile justice halls and get kids out of the system. Learn more about your ad cho...
Feb 18, 2022•21 min
In the Bay Area, “showing love” is something we toss around all the time. One man who embodies this is the tie-dye wearing, weed smoking, big smiling man named Oopz. He and his crew are known for throwing fun-loving parties at the Shmop House where the air grows thick with cannabis smoke. In this episode, he tells us his journey to becoming an extrovert, and the time his community love was tested when someone was shot at the Shmop House. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho...
Feb 11, 2022•15 min
AB Banks, defines love as "doing the right thing with a passion." That means taking care of themselves and their folks, because self-love can be communal and revolutionary. Day-to-day AB works with the People’s Programs in Oakland, supporting their unhoused neighbors through clinics and food donations. Outside of that, AB is deep in the practice of meditation. After setting out on a personal journey to learn the art of meditation, which included a trip abroad to study with renowned practitioners...
Feb 04, 2022•20 min
You don't have to look very long to find tributes to Frida Kahlo in San Francisco. Frida inspired murals cover walls throughout the Mission, street vendors near the Embarcadero sell clothes and earrings with her likeness, and there's a street named after her in the Ingleside neighborhood. This devotion to Frida makes perfect sense because Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived in San Francisco, not once, but twice. During their last stay in TK YEAR, Diego Rivera painted a 74-foot long, 30-ton fresco...
Jan 28, 2022•24 min
As a cancer survivor, Caroline Chung tells me expressing herself through music has been healing. But it's not always smooth sailing. Chung says she's been overlooked for gigs simply because of her identity-- an Asian woman who plays the upright bass. "Hey, I'm a female jazz bassist," says Chung. "It's like nobody really cares, because it's the ‘boys club’." Despite this, Chung has found collaborators in people poets and other jazz musicians. After releasing two(FC) projects last year, Chung is g...
Jan 21, 2022•16 min
Erena Shimoda takes photos underwater. She creates majestic images of people in pools. Her subjects can be seen posing in wheelchairs, dancing with tulle, adorned in mermaid attire, or wrapped in Shibari ropes. Some of her models are people who've lived through physical or mental trauma. Erena helps them slip into water, release their experiences, and hopefully reemerge anew. It's a nod to religious practices around water, like baptisms in Catholicism, the holy dips in India's Ganges River and t...
Jan 14, 2022•16 min
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Jan 07, 2022•16 min
This country is extremely divided, always has been. When you combine the issues of racism, sexism and other isms that have plagued us for ages and mix in the division that's risen over this drawn out pandemic, you could see why some people might feel comfortable and complacent in their silos. But let's do something about it. I'm asking you to get out of that comfort zone, reach out and connect with another person or group. It's a simple ask: build a bridge. This week, for the final Rightnowish e...
Dec 17, 2021•14 min
This past Independence Day, Oakland's Marty Aranaydo found himself a long way from the town. Marty had joined up with the NDN Collective to scale a 100-foot grain silo in Rapid City, South Dakota. Atop it, the group unfurled a massive inverted American flag with the words, "LANDBACK" across it. The direct action called for more than the transfer of territory back to indigenous tribes, on the bottom corner of the flag they also wrote "1505," to represent the growing number of indigenous children'...
Dec 10, 2021•15 min
