Just because COVID sick pay exists doesn't necessarily mean employees always feel comfortable using it. Between Americans’ unhealthy relationship with work and a sense that the world is opening back up again, employers have a lot to gain from the lack of widespread knowledge of COVID sick pay benefits in California. But if you work in California and get infected with COVID, you may be able to claim up to 80 hours of paid leave. And now that the Bay Area isin another COVID surge because of the om...
May 20, 2022•22 min
The threat of domestic extremist violence is all over the country. Just last weekend, an 18-year old white man drove to a predominantly Black part of Buffalo, New York, and shot 13 people at a grocery store. 10 have died. The Bay Area is not immune to this threat. Last year, two men who worked at an auto shop in Napa were arrested and accused of plotting to blow up the California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento. Guests: Julie Small and Alex Hall, KQED reporters This episode was produ...
May 18, 2022•26 min
California’s new 8th Congressional district, which includes Vallejo, Fairfield, Richmond, Pittsburg, and part of Antioch, is the most diverse in the region. It’s the only district in the entire state with at least 15% white, Latino, Black, and Asian populations. That’s no coincidence. Grassroots activists in Contra Costa and Solano counties pushed for these communities to be included in the same district — and succeeded. Now, there’s an election coming. And in the race to represent this district...
May 16, 2022•23 min
Lots of high-profile jobs in San Francisco have opened up lately — whether it’s because of a recall, a corruption scandal, or a simple job promotion. And as a result, Mayor London Breed has been able to appoint a lot of people. Most recently, Breed was tasked with filling the District 6 Board of Supervisors seat left vacant by the election of Matt Haney to the state Assembly. She picked Matt Dorsey, an openly gay, longtime political insider who most recently served as a spokesperson for the SFPD...
May 13, 2022•21 min
Currently, the Bay Area is California’s COVID hot spot. The good news? Fewer people are being hospitalized or dying from COVID, thanks to the vaccine and the increased availability of treatments. This wave might also be a window into what life will look like going forward, without the public health mandates we saw at the pandemic’s peak. Guest: Lesley McClurg, KQED health correspondent Episode transcript This episode was produced by Maria Esquinca and Alan Montecillo, and hosted by Ericka Cruz G...
May 11, 2022•16 min
It’s election season again. On June 7, Californians have some big decisions to make in elections both locally and statewide. In San Francisco, voters will decide whether or not District Attorney Chesa Boudin will keep his job. Boudin was a public defender who grew up with parents in prison. And when he was elected in 2019, he promised progressive reforms around prosecution and police accountability. Now, he faces a recall election. The people who want him out of office say he hasn’t been tough e...
May 09, 2022•1 hr
At West County High School in Sebastopol, there are way fewer students of color compared with schools in many Bay Area cities. And the students there have been fighting racist bullying for years. In 2016, the federal government investigated the West Sonoma County Union High School District for how it handled racist bullying at its schools. Over the past month, this issue has gotten a ton of attention from the community again — and students of color say not much has changed. Guest: Julia McEvoy, ...
May 06, 2022•25 min
A majority of the Supreme Court plans to strike down Roe v. Wade, according to leaked documents obtained by Politico. In California, most public officials have pledged to double down on our state’s protections for abortion rights. But that doesn’t mean getting access to an abortion is always easy. An estimated 40% of mostly rural counties in California — home to hundreds of thousands of people in the state — have no clinics that provide abortions. Guest: Katie Orr, former KQED politics and gover...
May 04, 2022•19 min
Growing up, Katrina Ramos White helped her immigrant parents run a toy stand at the Berryessa Flea Market in San Jose. A few years ago, with hopes of buying her own home in SIlicon Valley, she took over the family business on top of her tech job. But big change is on the horizon for La Pulga, which sits on privately-owned land and is now slated for redevelopment. For Katrina and her family, saying goodbye to La Pulga could mean saying goodbye to the Bay Area altogether. Guests: Adhiti Bandlamudi...
May 02, 2022•19 min
Now a derelict building, the 16th street train station in West Oakland was once a thriving center of transportation during the golden age of rail travel in the 1900s when trains were the only way to get around. The station expanded the working-class Black community in Oakland, who migrated to live and work close to the station. It also played a crucial role in the creation and development of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — the first Black union in the country. This Bay Curious episode take...
Apr 29, 2022•22 min
Tell me memories mean something and I will carve your face on a tree. Never cut it down. Guarded with what slaps and surprises sage and old E-40 cassettes from an OG’s trunk. Can we love in a city lost? Can we touch in a city gone? – An excerpt from “Love Me Before The City Disappears” April is National Poetry Month! And before it ends, we want to celebrate contemporary poetry inspired by life in the Bay Area. Producer Maria Esquinca interviews writer and director Nijla Mu’min about her poetry, ...
Apr 27, 2022•24 min
For many families waiting decades for the right to live and work permanently in the U.S. through the crazy, byzantine rules of America’s immigration system, a special nightmare occurs when a child turns 21—they age out of their parent’s work visas and are at risk for deportation. In California, there are over 40,000 ‘Documented Dreamers' aging out and labeled foreign nationals, with few options for permanent residency. And in Silicon Valley, where tech companies run on immigrant labor, this cris...
Apr 25, 2022•24 min
A federal judge in Florida ruled on Monday that the federal mask mandate was unlawful. Hours later, the Transportation Security Administration lifted mask rules inside airports, airplanes and on public transportation. Transportation agencies around the Bay soon followed suit, raising concerns among disability rights and medically vulnerable communities. In light of the recent changes to public mask mandates, we revisit an episode we aired in January. Two years into the pandemic, as restrictions ...
Apr 22, 2022•23 min
On Tuesday afternoon, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance that would limit how police store and use DNA profiles obtained from evidence and kept in their labs. The changes happened after the district attorney’s office found the San Francisco Police Department had used DNA from a survivor’s rape kit to link her to an unrelated crime years later. It’s hard to know just how many people’s DNA was used in this way, raising concerns about what power law enforcement yields with...
Apr 20, 2022•20 min
When a student makes an allegation of sexual assault, their options for redress are often unsatisfying. Few cases end up in the legal system, and rarely do schools get sued for how they respond to those allegations. In one rare, recent case, one student’s allegations did end up in a courtroom — and in front of a jury. The student sued the East Side Union High School District alleging administrators didn’t do enough to protect her from further abuse after an alleged explicit video of her circulat...
Apr 18, 2022•25 min
Redistricting is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to redraw a city’s political map. It’s an important yet arcane process that should ultimately lead to fair, equitable representation in local government — and it’s really hard to do. In San Francisco, the process hasn’t just been hard; it's been chaotic, confusing, heated — and as Mission Local columnist Joe Eskenazi writes, "indefensible." Ultimately, the commission did not meet its legal deadline of April 15 to complete its maps, leaving the futu...
Apr 15, 2022•24 min
The rise of Uber in San Francisco a decade ago marked the beginning of the end for much of the taxi industry. Taxi companies went bankrupt and drivers struggled to pay off their medallions, pushing many of them into debt. But now, Uber sees an opportunity in the same industry it nearly destroyed. Uber has struck a deal with taxi hailing apps in San Francisco and New York that will allow riders to hail taxis through Uber’s app. Some taxi drivers see an opportunity to boost their pay; others are s...
Apr 13, 2022•17 min
In 2020 call outs for mutual aid donations flooded social media, and people responded with an abundance of money, food and time. Two years later, interest and support has waned while the needs have not gone away. As government aid like the child tax credit and stimulus checks expire, organizers across the Bay look at filling in the gaps. Guest: Carlos Cabrera-Lomelí, community engagement reporter for KQED Episode transcript Recommended listening: What Mutual Aid Means — And Why It's Worth Protec...
Apr 11, 2022•20 min
It may feel a little far from the Bay Area, but Sacramento is home to our state Capitol. And just a stone’s throw away from that building, in the downtown area, is where the city experienced its deadliest mass shooting ever on Sunday. 6 people have been killed, and at least 12 have been injured. Guest: Saul Gonzalez, host of KQED's The California Report This episode was produced by Maria Esquinca and Alan Montecillo, and hosted Ericka Cruz Guevarra, Recommended listening: Let's Talk About Race a...
Apr 08, 2022•21 min
The rainy season is over. But it didn’t feel like much of a rainy season at all. And now, California is in another year of drought. In the Bay Area, the North and South Bay are getting hit the hardest. Being asked to save water isn’t new to Californians. So what other solutions are on the table for how we can adapt to drier winters and shrinking dams? Guest: Ezra David Romero, climate reporter for KQED Recommended listening: Our Fire Conversation Needs to Change This episode was produced by Alan...
Apr 06, 2022•21 min
Before the Emeryville shoreline was a shopping center and commercial area, it was the site of a sacred burial site belonging to the Ohlone people, natives of the San Francisco Bay Area. There were once more than 425 of these shellmounds across the Bay Area. And today, native people are still working to protect what’s left of them. Bay Curious explores the history of these shellmounds, and what happened to them. Episode transcript This episode of Bay Curious originally aired Nov. 8, 2018. Since t...
Apr 04, 2022•18 min
When it comes to basketball in the Bay Area, there’s no team that’s done more winning than Stanford’s women’s team. Since 1990, the Cardinal have won 15 conference championships, 3 national championships, and have made the Final Four 15 times. Now, they're two wins away from back-to-back national titles, with a semifinal matchup against the UConn Huskies tonight at 6:30 pm PT. And under the helm of longtime head coach Tara VanDerveer, the winningest coach in women's college basketball history, S...
Apr 01, 2022•21 min
It’s been a weird month for BART’s Board of Directors. In the span of just 2 weeks, the agency removed — and then reinstated — Director Lateefah Simon. A Black, legally blind, regular BART rider, Director Simon was initially removed over a mix-up with her home address, which is barely 300 feet outside her district. But this abrupt decision sparked a huge outcry from constituents, who suddenly couldn’t reach the person they elected. Now Director Simon is back on the board, but there are still lot...
Mar 30, 2022•24 min
Landing in a new country is never easy, even if you’re landing in a place like the Bay Area, which is already home to so many immigrants, refugees, and people who’ve sought asylum. And between Russia's invasion of Ukraine, chaos in Afghanistan, and the ongoing crisis at the US-Mexico border, this topic has been on our minds a lot. On Wednesday, March 23, KQED Live held an event called Finding Asylum in California. It included visual art by Caleb Duarte, and a discussion moderated by KQED Newsroo...
Mar 28, 2022•30 min
In April 2020, Vallejo became one of the first cities to opt into the state’s Project Roomkey, a program designed to provide hotel rooms for medically vulnerable people without homes during the pandemic. The program was touted as a success by city leaders. But reporting from The Vallejo Sun found at least 5 people who participated in the program died in their hotel rooms, including 3 who weren’t found for days. So how did this happen? Guest: Scott Morris, investigative journalist for The Vallejo...
Mar 25, 2022•31 min
About 500 operators and technicians at Chevron’s Richmond refinery went on strike starting Monday. It’s the first labor strike at the plant in more than 40 years. The union representing these workers says that Chevron hasn’t offered enough in the way of pay increases, benefit contributions, and worker safety. Chevron claims the union has asked for too much, and in the meantime has promised to keep the refinery running using non-union workers. This strike is also laying bare the tensions within t...
Mar 23, 2022•19 min
It’s no fun getting gas these days. The average price in many Bay Area counties reached $5.80 a gallon. And that's making it tough for people who drive for gig companies like Uber and Lyft, or who are taxi drivers. Guest: Azul Dahlstrom-Eckman, KQED reporter and producer This episode was produced by Alan Montecillo and Maria Esquinca, and hosted by Devin Katayama. Episode transcript Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 21, 2022•15 min
From Monday to Thursday, a group of teachers staged a sit-in at the SF Unified School District building to protest the fact the district mishandled their paychecks. Some even went months without receiving the money that they're owed for their work. The district says it is working to resolve this, and blamed the problems mainly on its new payroll system. But teachers and union members say the issues run much deeper. Guest: Julia McEvoy, KQED senior editor This episode was produced by Alan Monteci...
Mar 18, 2022•17 min
For the last 2 years California’s unemployment system has been completely overwhelmed. One of the biggest issues: The lack of language access for people who don’t speak English or Spanish. Now, the Employment Development Department — the agency that runs this system — is finally turning a corner. Late last month, EDD committed to adding critical multilingual support. But it wouldn't have happened without constant pressure from advocates, who point out that the agency has always been legally obli...
Mar 16, 2022•21 min
This week marks one year since a gunman killed 8 people in Atlanta, Georgia in a targeted attack against Asian massage parlors. 6 of those killed were Asian women. Since that time, the fear and violence hasn’t gone away. A new study by the National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum found that 74% of Asian American and Pacific Islander women reported having personally experienced racism or discrimination in the last 12 months. One year ago, Devin Katayama talked with local activist and organizer Hyejin...
Mar 14, 2022•19 min
