This isn’t the first time Vallejo has experienced a cluster of high profile police shootings and incidents that have caused residents to demand changes. The current pleas and fight for police accountability from activists is reminiscent of 2012, when there was a spike in deadly police shootings. But it's not just police shootings people are concerned about. It’s also everyday run-ins with Vallejo officers that for years have added to a sense of mistrust that’s blowing up in City Hall. Vallejo is...
Aug 23, 2019•27 min
The recent wave of protests for police accountability in Vallejo started back in 2017. That’s when Angel Ramos, 21, was fatally shot by an officer who thought he was stabbing another person during a fight. But no knife was found near him. Since then, his sister Alicia Saddler has been trying to change the narrative about what happened, which has largely been controlled by law enforcement and the city. Now, new activists and more families who’ve lost loved ones to police shootings are joining in ...
Aug 21, 2019•33 min
Willie McCoy had a hard childhood, but his dreams of making music professionally kept him alive until he was shot 55 times by Vallejo police in February after he was found unconscious his car. His death and the subsequent release of body-cam video of the police shooting has sparked protests at Vallejo City Hall, a new round of outrage different from the protests over police killings in 2012. Activists, the media and ordinary Vallejo residents are paying attention this time. With their help, Davi...
Aug 19, 2019•27 min
In February, Vallejo police officers shot a young black man 55 times after he was found unconscious in his car. Another was killed last year after an officer tried to stop him for riding a bike without a safety light. Fatal police shootings of Black and Latino men are drawing attention to the small, diversely-populated suburb of Vallejo, which has been largely ignored by most media and activists, until recently. There are protests and lawsuits; there are calls for investigations and resignations...
Aug 16, 2019•4 min
A San Francisco native was shot in the Philippines earlier this month in what friends and family believe was an attempted extrajudicial assassination by the Philippine government. Brandon Lee became an activist through San Francisco State University's League of Filipino Students. Lee moved to the Philippines in 2010 to work as a paralegal and human rights advocate for indigenous communities in the Ifugao province in northern Philippines. San Francisco has been the epicenter of activism for decad...
Aug 14, 2019•15 min
More than 34,000 people are homeless in the Bay Area. There's not enough housing or resources to help them all. Some have friends or family who have been searching for their loved ones to bring them home, but finding someone who is homeless is very challenging. They're always on the move. They don't often have access to a phone. And even after finding that person, they might not be ready to go home. In this podcast episode of The Bay, we'll hear from a woman who, through her long search for her ...
Aug 12, 2019•16 min
Latinos this week have expressed fear, anger and unity after a gunman shot and killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. The suspect wrote a racist manifesto blaming immigrants and Hispanics for economic changes in the U.S. The massacre in Texas followed the Bay Area’s own mass shooting last month in Gilroy, a city that is majority Hispanic. Since then, many Latinx people have shared how these shootings have changed their lives, including two KQED reporters, both from Texas. Guest: Vianey...
Aug 09, 2019•20 min
The three victims from the Gilroy Garlic Festival were young -- ages 6, 13 and 25. Many of the victims from the shootings in El Paso and Dayton were also young. And it was children, teenagers and young adults who joined the debate for gun control, notably after the Parkland, Florida school shooting in 2018 where 17 students and staff members were killed. Here in the Bay Area, high school students channeled their outrage into a regional activist group they formed to lobby for gun control legislat...
Aug 07, 2019•16 min
After the shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival on July 28, a local newspaper photographer criticized how media quickly descended on the small city in south Santa Clara County in ways we've seen too many times: cameras, lights satellite trucks, neatly-dressed journalists. To Robert Eliason, it felt cold, transaction and distanced. "I'm press, but I'm not really press," he wrote on his Facebook page. In an era when, shootings and other deadly assaults on the public happen often, how should the m...
Aug 05, 2019•14 min
Google pledged $1 billion earlier this month to help ease Silicon Valley's housing crisis. That crisis is playing out in Google's home city of Mountain View, where city leaders want to ban RVs from parking overnight on city streets. RV dwellers say they have nowhere else to go. But some Mountain View residents say they're concerned about waste, parking availability and public health. The city plans to give some vehicles a safe place to park, but not all. Guest: Rachael Myrow, Acting Silicon Vall...
Jun 28, 2019•17 min
A San Francisco nurse named Bobbi Campbell was the first person to publicly announce he had a cancer associated with AIDS in 1981. Around this time, he convinced a Castro drugstore to display pictures of his lesions to educate other gay men in the city. This was the beginning of an activist-led campaign to alert the gay community of a new disease that has since affected millions around the world. And while initially federal officials were turning a blind eye, local activists were shaping San Fra...
Jun 26, 2019•17 min
Can an artist’s original intentions withstand the test of time and modern sentiment? A mural at George Washington High School in San Francisco that intended to depict America's founding father in true light and criticize the country's racist past has sparked debate for decades. Some have described the mural as degrading; others have called it historic. After years of contention, the S.F. school board plans to obscure the school campus mural from public view. The question is how, and will it be p...
Jun 24, 2019•16 min
President Trump on Monday announced that federal immigration officers were gearing up for deportations next week. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf responded by urging her community to be prepared. It’s unclear whether the federal government is even capable of widespread raids or deportations, and who exactly they're targeting. Trump administration officials have said their immigration policies are meant to deter migrants, many traveling from Central American countries, from coming to the U.S. Today, w...
Jun 21, 2019•21 min
San Francisco's Juneteenth, a commemoration of the end of slavery, is one of the largest gatherings of African Americans in California every year. This year's Juneteenth parade was named in honor of Rachel Townsend, a leader in San Francisco's black community who died of sudden illness in 2018. Townsend was active in San Francisco and Oakland politics and fought to keep Juneteenth in San Francisco despite the city's shrinking black population. At its peak in the 1970s, 13 percent of the city was...
Jun 19, 2019•14 min
Environmental activists in San Francisco have long called for the city to have its own public power system. The idea never took off until PG&E went bankrupt, again, in January. The private utility company owns most of the power grid that delivers the city's power, but S.F. leaders worry PG&E will raise rates and prioritize profits over reliable, safe power. Now city leaders are looking at buying PG&E lines, and are considering what it would take if San Francisco ran power on its own ...
Jun 17, 2019•15 min
Formerly incarcerated people who can’t find work after prison face a 50 percent chance of returning to prison. Those who do find work have a better chance of staying out. San Quentin State Prison, California’s oldest prison, has several programs such as arts, continuing education and electronics training to help inmates prepare for life outside its walls. One of these programs, Quentin Cooks, helps inmates learn kitchen skills and get certified to work in the food service industry after they get...
Jun 14, 2019•16 min
The cost of going to prison is both personal and financial. That’s exacerbated by the price of phone calls from the inside. In San Francisco, a 15-minute phone call can cost $2.10. Other jails charge about $5. And it's often the family and friends of incarcerated people who pay these fees; often they are women of color and low-income people. So, San Francisco plans to eliminate fees for phone calls from jails, and will stop marking up the cost of items such as toiletries and food at the commissa...
Jun 12, 2019•13 min
"Surreal" is the word Paradise High School seniors used over and over again to describe their graduation months after the deadly Camp Fire that leveled most of the town. Most of the students lost homes in the fire, the most deadly and destructive fire in recorded California history. Last week's ceremony was the first time most students had set foot on campus since they were forced to evacuate. We hear from students whose sense of normalcy was restored, at least for an evening. Guest: Jeremy Sieg...
Jun 10, 2019•20 min
The teachers strike at the New Haven School District in Union City and South Hayward has been going on for two weeks now. Unlike more recent teachers strikes around the Bay Area, New Haven’s comes at the end of the school year when students are supposed to take final exams and graduate. So if there’s no agreement, what does that mean for students? Guest: Joseph Geha, reporter for the East Bay Times and Mercury News Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 07, 2019•13 min
It’s hard enough to live, work and survive in the Bay Area. But people whose work is their passion often make additional sacrifices to do what they love. Many of you shared stories of “passion exploitation” after KQED Arts published an article in March about how San Francisco’s Apple store paid in-store performers with merchandise instead of cash. It turns out there’s research that shows creative people can be vulnerable to passion exploitation. Guest: Nastia Voynovskaya, music editor with KQED ...
Jun 05, 2019•14 min
It's not uncommon to see people struggling with mental health in San Francisco. People experiencing the trauma of homelessness often have their worst days unfold on city streets. San Francisco supervisors plan to introduce a November ballot proposal this week to let voters decide whether to offer universal mental health care for all residents. It would make San Francisco one of the first cities in the nation to do this. The city's homeless are top of mind, but so are everyday San Franciscans who...
Jun 03, 2019•13 min
A series of police shootings in Vallejo over the last few years has mobilized residents to city hall in protest. This week, the families of Angel Ramos, Willie McCoy, and Ronnell Foster -- three men of color shot and killed by Vallejo police -- demanded truth, justice and accountability from the department. Vallejo, a city of about about 120,000 people and one of the most racially-diverse cities in America, is right across the Bay from the politically-active cities of Oakland and San Francisco. ...
May 31, 2019•18 min
When Bay Area cities clear homeless encampments, proponents of such plans often say they're trying to fix a public health issue, or that encampments have become too unsafe or unhealthy. But some are making the case that treating housing as an issue of public health is more effective. Dr. Joshua Bamberger says it doesn't matter what medicines he prescribes -- they won't help if his patient doesn't have a home. Guest: Dr. Joshua Bamberger, associate clinical professor of family and community medic...
May 29, 2019•18 min
When Tonya Mosley thinks about conversations she's had with friends and family about race, she's usually asking for advice. Now, there's a podcast for that -- and Tonya is hosting it. Truth Be Told is a show about race created for people of color, by people of color. The episodes tackle topics like colonized desire and well-meaning white folks. It also taps into the expertise of 'wise ones,' people of color with a wealth of knowledge from lived experience. But why an advice podcast -- and why no...
May 24, 2019•17 min
San Jose has undergone dramatic change since the Sharks first came to the city in 1993. The population has spiked to more than 1 million, the median home price is $1 million, and the SAP Center (Shark Tank) isn't the only development getting attention anymore. The region's identity has become intertwined with the tech boom that's changing San Jose. But at least one thing has remained the same: the city's love for its professional ice hockey team. Guest: Brian Watt, host of KQED's Morning Edition...
May 22, 2019•10 min
When you get your check at a restaurant, there’s a good chance your server is white. There’s an even better chance that the cooks and dishwashers in the back of the house are POC who get considerably less money, according to a new study that evaluated Bay Area restaurants for racial equity. That’s why some Oakland city leaders want to offer incentives to restaurants that diversify their staff. But why should the city have to coax (and pay) restaurants to do this? Guest: Kate Wolffe, reporter for...
May 20, 2019•13 min
It's confirmed: A PG&E transmission line sparked the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history last November in Butte County. Cal Fire announced Wednesday the result of its investigation into the Camp Fire that killed 85 people and destroyed nearly 14,000 homes. Now it's up to the Butte County District Attorney to determine if PG&E will face criminal charges for it's role in the fire. Either way, some say Cal Fire's determination helps victims of the fire understand they ...
May 17, 2019•19 min
We use facial recognition technology to unlock our cell phones, doors, and find friends on social media apps. But there's a real fear about how tech companies and government is recording our faces and tracking our movements. That’s one reason why the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ban city agencies, including the police department, from using this type of technology. The ordinance is part of a larger policy package that is supposed to give the city control over what surveill...
May 15, 2019•13 min
Driving through downtown San Francisco has always been hell (good luck getting across Market Street). Traffic has gotten worse with job growth and the advent of ride-hailing apps like Lyft and Uber. Could congestion pricing help? San Francisco is studying whether to charge people who drive through some of the busiest parts of the city. New York City decided it will introduce congestion pricing in 2021. Could San Francisco be next? It’ll be a hard sell since we love our cars. But desperate times ...
May 13, 2019•16 min
The legacy of Rose Pak returns to San Francisco. A proposal to name a future Muni rail station after the late Chinatown activist provoked a protest at City Hall this week, and debates over how to recognize her achievements for Chinatown. Although she never held elected office, Pak was a major player in city politics and projects. Her rough, unapologetic style rubbed some people the wrong way, while others say she did whatever she needed to for her community. Guests: Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local M...
May 10, 2019•17 min
