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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On this month’s edition of The Bay’s news roundup, we introduce you to the Bay Area’s first women’s sports bar, discuss Stanford’s scaling back of gender-related surgical procedures for minors, and the secret sauce of the San Francisco malls defying the ‘doom loop’ narrative.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2905167660\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13977457/rikkis-first-womens-sports-bar-bay-area-open-castro-sf-valkyries\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay Area’s First Women’s Sports Bar Is Open for Business\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1997491/stanford-scales-back-trans-care-for-minors-amid-federal-crackdown\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stanford Scales Back Trans Care for Minors Amid Federal Crackdown\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13977860/asian-food-bay-area-malls-jagalchi-serramonte-stonestown-westfield-valley-fair\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Asian Food Is Coming to Save a Mall Near You\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">SF Chronicle:\u003c/span> \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/japantown-stonestown-galleria-mall-20331459.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These S.F. malls are experiencing a ‘renaissance’ that defies the doom loop. Here’s their secret\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:04] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted and welcome to The Bay’s June News Roundup where I sit down with the rest of The Bay team to talk about some of the other stories that we have been following this month. I’m joined today by our producer Jessica Kariisa and our beloved intern Mel Velasquez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:32] I mean, I can’t believe it’s already halfway through the year here, which is really crazy. We’ve got a lot of news going on around the world and also around the Bay, but also we’ve got some big news from our team this month, which I’ll get to shortly, but just a quick look back at some of the stories that we’ve done this month. I mean obviously immigration has really been the big story. Nationally and at the local level, we talked about the role that local soccer leagues have been playing for immigrant youth coming here to Alameda County in particular. We talked about Berkeley’s approach to probably one of the more challenging forms of homelessness in the Bay area, folks living in RVs, and this really successful program they’ve been running there, offering money to people living in RVs to get them on the path to more permanent housing. We talked about Suisun City’s effort to potentially grow by nine times its current size, and we also talked about local theater in a free fall here in the Bay Area. So as always, quite the range from us at the Bay, but there’s really been a lot going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:01:52] Yeah, I mean, it’s been a really crazy month. You know, there were a lot of protests, spontaneous protests that happened all across the country, especially here in the Bay Area. And there was obviously the huge, you know, King’s protest. We’re all in different parts of the Bay, but we were texting each other that day, like, oh, wow, like in every corner of the Bay, something is going on. Alan was in Chicago and there was obviously a lot going on there too. So it’s definitely been an active month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:21] Also just a lot kind of going on for us here on the Bay team. This month is our intern Mel Velasquez’s last month with us on the show. Mel has been a really, really huge part of the team. You all don’t get to see it, but for us in the background, Mel brings this really just fun energy and so much light to the team. It really, I think, helped us get through these last couple of weeks in the news cycle. Honestly, Mel, how are you feeling? How are you thinking about the last couple of months working with us on the show?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:02:59] It’s been incredible. I mean, you guys are like the best team I’ve worked with. Everyone has just been so helpful and I look forward to coming here and like working with you all. I’ve had some great experiences like when we went to Six Flags for the thousandth episode that was so much fun. And then actually the more recent one that I had a lot of fun with was going to Aurora Theater in Berkeley for that episode. That was also really fun. It’s been nice to work with you all and I’m very sad that this will be my last episode. I’ve had such a just a really incredible time. I can’t emphasize that enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:03:49] I mean, I can’t believe that the six months is already up. Like, I can’t wrap my head around that. But I also want to point out that Mel also produced her own episode for us on Central American students at Berkeley, pushing for a department. And to see you work through that process of, you know, getting the idea and really pushing through and getting to produce such a great episode was just like a joy to watch and I hope that everyone who hasn’t already listened to it goes and listens to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:20] Yes, definitely listen to it if you haven’t already. That’s also another one of the stories that we covered on the show this month. I should also mention that in addition to Mel leaving us, we are preparing to take our July break from producing new episodes. We’ll be spending that time just kind of regrouping and reflecting and cooking up some other things that we want to make for you all when we get back. So we will be taking a break from making episodes. We’ll be back in August. But more news on that later. But in the meantime, Mel, this episode is definitely a love letter to you. We appreciate you so much. And we really enjoyed working with you. Thanks for everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:05:12] Aw, thank you guys for everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:19] Well Mel, before we let you go, we want to start off with you and the story that you’ve been following this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:05:26] Well, I feel like I’ve been following this for a lot longer than June, but the first women’s sports bar in the Bay Area opened on June 11th, right in time for Pride Month, and it’s called Rikki’s, and I mean, it’s been getting a lot of attention right now, but yeah, I got to go, and it was really fun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:51] Yeah, I mean I feel like their timing is, I mean, is perfect. It’s Pride Month. We’ve also been covering on this show, you know, the Bay Area getting a pro women’s basketball team. We talked about Bay FC and I know you talked with the actual owners of Rikki’s. What did they tell you about, like, why they wanted to open this bar?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:13] Yeah, so I got to talk to one of the co-founders of Rikki’s, Sarah Yergovich, and the other co-founder, her name is Danielle Tho, but they just wanted a place where they could watch women’s sports. I know that for a lot of like women’s-sports fans, and in particular, my partner has had this experience often. Where they go to a sports bar, they wanna watch a game, whether that be the WNBA championships or just an important game, like a Bay FC game. It was hard for them to find a place where they could go into a bar, sit down, and have the game on the TV. And if they do let you change the TV to a women’s sports game, oftentimes the volume isn’t gonna be on, so you’re kind of just watching a muted game. And sometimes they just won’t play it. This is like a place exclusively for women’s sports and also just a place that everyone can feel welcome and safe and I know that women’s sport is a huge part of like the LGBTQ community here and they really want to emphasize that inclusivity part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:07:31] Definitely heard about Rikki’s. I haven’t had the chance to go. I’m actually going to my first Valkyries game on Sunday. I’m really excited about that. But I’m curious about your experience at Rikki’s, what was it like when you went there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:07:44] It was crazy because there actually wasn’t like a game from like a Bay Area team on any of the TVs, but there were like a lot of people. I went last Sunday. There’s tons of like sports memorabilia from Bay FC and the Valkyries. A lot of people had this like combo of like Bay FC hat and Valkyrie’s shirt. I feel like that was a pattern that I saw a lot. But yeah, there is a full bar. I had like this roasted cabbage dish. It was kind of fancy for a sports bar, but it was like really good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:08:24] That’s really cool, and I’m also curious, why is it called Rikki’s? Is it named after somebody?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:08:30] Yeah, so it’s named after Rikki Streicher, who was an LGBTQ activist, and she opened up a lot of lesbian bars in San Francisco, and was just like a huge advocate for equal rights before same-sex couples were able to get married.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:49] Well, I’m sure there will be lots to see at Rikki’s in the coming months and years to come. Mel, thanks so much for bringing this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:09:01] Of course, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:27] And welcome back to the Bay’s June news roundup where I sit down with the rest of the Bay team to talk about some of the other stories that we have been following this month. Producer Jessica Kariisa, I wanna turn to you first. What story have you been following?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:09:41] I’m following a story down in Palo Alto specifically around Stanford Medicine and trans care and basically effective June 2nd in response to increased scrutiny at the federal level on gender affirming care, Stanford Medicine decided to pause gender related surgical procedures for patients under 19 years old as a way to avoid legal action and potential loss of funding. I should mention that I’m referring to reporting that was done by KQD’s Lesley McClurg and The Chronicle’s Catherine Ho.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:22] Yeah, I mean, what does this mean exactly? What kind of procedures are we talking about?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:10:30] Surgeries for minors are on hold, but Stanford’s LGBTQ health program will continue to offer other services, including hormone therapy, behavioral health support, voice training, and primary care. But surgeries in particular, for people under 19 years old, that’s what’s going be on hold for now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:10:56] So how did we get here in the first place? How did we to this decision?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:11:03] Basically, back in January, President Trump signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to, quote, not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support so-called transition of a child from one sex to another. And this was going to affect hospitals and medical schools that receive federal grants. The order was blocked by a federal judge in March. But then in May, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, sent a letter to hospitals asking about, you know, how they treat gender dysphoria, asking about their protocols around consent and outcome tracking and financial data. And so I think a lot of medical centers figure that they might need to be proactive to avoid retaliation from the federal government. And it should be mentioned that, you, know, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have said that, like, gender-affirming care, including surgery in some cases, is medically necessary and life-saving. And generally, surgery is not recommended for minors and it’s reserved for older teens with extreme gender dysphoria. The Chronicle reported, they said experts in transgender care have estimated that it’s really not that many surgeries that are actually happening every year. It’s just become a lightning rod issue, especially for the Trump administration, and so it’s unfortunately led to this decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:36] Where does this leave people seeking this care? I mean, do they have any other options here in the Bay Area absent Stanford?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:12:48] Yeah, so UCSF actually is one of the few places that is still offering gender-affirming surgeries to teenagers under the age of 19. And it should be noted that, you know, in February, the attorney general of the state of California, Rob Bonta, did warn hospitals that like denying or pausing care for trans youth could potentially violate state law. Back in 2022, California passed a sanctuary law protecting families who travel to California for gender affirming care. So, you know, I think that it remains to be seen, but there are some things happening at the state level to try and protect trans youth who are seeking care. So we’ll just have to see how it all plays out with the friction with the federal level, but there a few options.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:44] Well, definitely something to follow as this story continues to develop. Jessica, thank you so much. And we are going to shift the tone a little bit with my story here. I have been thinking a lot lately about malls. I don’t know about you all and your hometown malls, but mine is just really not what it once was. I think this is really part of a national trend of retailers that have been really struggling with the rise of Amazon and COVID. And I think downtown San Francisco and the malls in downtown San Fransisco are probably one of the biggest representations of that. Union Square and San Francisco Center are really not doing very well, but I have been following this story from the San Francisco Chronicle about these San Francisco malls that are actually experiencing a renaissance that, in their words, really defies the doom loop narrative of San Francisco right now, and the really interesting story of their secret sauce, which is, they write, rising Asian cultural power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:15:03] I feel like, especially in my hometown, back in North Carolina, it’s just kind of sad to see empty malls. And over here, I’ve definitely seen a lot of them. But tell us more about this secret sauce. What exactly is happening in these malls?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:20] As far as successful malls experiencing a renaissance right now. Stonestown in San Francisco and also the Japan Town shopping center are doing amazing. Stonestown which is near SF State, a bunch of high schools, you know, it’s really concentrated around a lot of students. That mall has experienced a record high traffic last year. It’s up by 6% in just the last 12 months. And sales per square foot at that mall are up by 20% since 2019. Japantown similarly has been experiencing record high foot traffic. That mall’s parking garage has also become the agency’s busiest last year. So those are just some of the numbers that show just how successful they’ve been. And the secret sauce is really this new wave of Asian retailers. At these malls, at Stone’s Town in particular, you’ve seen the rise of Pop Mart, where you could get blind boxes. There’s a Miniso there now, a Daiso. And then, I mean, not even to mention the food, there’s Supreme Dumpling, there’s Hot Pot, there’s Vietnamese food. And a lot of the folks who are running these mall are saying that even the legacy businesses at some of these mall have been really following suit and trying to appeal to Gen Z, which is really the folks who are really coming out and supporting these malls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:57] We used to be a proper country and we used to have flourishing malls where we could walk around and browse. I love to browse, personally. Um, so, like, why are these other malls struggling?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:14] You know, when we think about Union Square and the San Francisco Center, which are both located downtown, I think these are both areas that used to attract a lot of foot traffic and just aren’t doing that anymore. You know we’ve been talking a lot about, over the last couple of years, about San Francisco’s downtown really struggling to come back. And you could really see that at the San Fransisco Center. I mean, over half of that mall is now empty. It’s lost dozens of retailers in recent years, including some pretty big ones like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. Another thing I’d say too is the role of perception and how the perception of downtown San Francisco as being unsafe and BART being unsafe has played a big role in why people aren’t coming to downtown. And I’d say that the reason why I think a lot of people are going to Stonestown and Japantown, according to the article, is this perception of safety. I think a lot of people feel Stonestown and Japan Town are located in sort of safer areas. You know, Stonestown has a pretty robust parking lot, which is also a huge appeal. Whether or not the perception of safety around downtown is true or not, just that feeling, as we’ve talked about on this show a ton is strong enough to either get people to show up or get people not to show up. So I think the story of Stonestown and Japantown are really representative of that.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On this month’s edition of The Bay’s news roundup, we introduce you to the Bay Area’s first women’s sports bar, discuss Stanford’s scaling back of gender-related surgical procedures for minors, and the secret sauce of the San Francisco malls defying the ‘doom loop’ narrative.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2905167660\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13977457/rikkis-first-womens-sports-bar-bay-area-open-castro-sf-valkyries\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay Area’s First Women’s Sports Bar Is Open for Business\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1997491/stanford-scales-back-trans-care-for-minors-amid-federal-crackdown\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stanford Scales Back Trans Care for Minors Amid Federal Crackdown\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13977860/asian-food-bay-area-malls-jagalchi-serramonte-stonestown-westfield-valley-fair\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Asian Food Is Coming to Save a Mall Near You\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">SF Chronicle:\u003c/span> \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/japantown-stonestown-galleria-mall-20331459.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These S.F. malls are experiencing a ‘renaissance’ that defies the doom loop. Here’s their secret\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:04] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted and welcome to The Bay’s June News Roundup where I sit down with the rest of The Bay team to talk about some of the other stories that we have been following this month. I’m joined today by our producer Jessica Kariisa and our beloved intern Mel Velasquez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:32] I mean, I can’t believe it’s already halfway through the year here, which is really crazy. We’ve got a lot of news going on around the world and also around the Bay, but also we’ve got some big news from our team this month, which I’ll get to shortly, but just a quick look back at some of the stories that we’ve done this month. I mean obviously immigration has really been the big story. Nationally and at the local level, we talked about the role that local soccer leagues have been playing for immigrant youth coming here to Alameda County in particular. We talked about Berkeley’s approach to probably one of the more challenging forms of homelessness in the Bay area, folks living in RVs, and this really successful program they’ve been running there, offering money to people living in RVs to get them on the path to more permanent housing. We talked about Suisun City’s effort to potentially grow by nine times its current size, and we also talked about local theater in a free fall here in the Bay Area. So as always, quite the range from us at the Bay, but there’s really been a lot going on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:01:52] Yeah, I mean, it’s been a really crazy month. You know, there were a lot of protests, spontaneous protests that happened all across the country, especially here in the Bay Area. And there was obviously the huge, you know, King’s protest. We’re all in different parts of the Bay, but we were texting each other that day, like, oh, wow, like in every corner of the Bay, something is going on. Alan was in Chicago and there was obviously a lot going on there too. So it’s definitely been an active month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:21] Also just a lot kind of going on for us here on the Bay team. This month is our intern Mel Velasquez’s last month with us on the show. Mel has been a really, really huge part of the team. You all don’t get to see it, but for us in the background, Mel brings this really just fun energy and so much light to the team. It really, I think, helped us get through these last couple of weeks in the news cycle. Honestly, Mel, how are you feeling? How are you thinking about the last couple of months working with us on the show?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:02:59] It’s been incredible. I mean, you guys are like the best team I’ve worked with. Everyone has just been so helpful and I look forward to coming here and like working with you all. I’ve had some great experiences like when we went to Six Flags for the thousandth episode that was so much fun. And then actually the more recent one that I had a lot of fun with was going to Aurora Theater in Berkeley for that episode. That was also really fun. It’s been nice to work with you all and I’m very sad that this will be my last episode. I’ve had such a just a really incredible time. I can’t emphasize that enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:03:49] I mean, I can’t believe that the six months is already up. Like, I can’t wrap my head around that. But I also want to point out that Mel also produced her own episode for us on Central American students at Berkeley, pushing for a department. And to see you work through that process of, you know, getting the idea and really pushing through and getting to produce such a great episode was just like a joy to watch and I hope that everyone who hasn’t already listened to it goes and listens to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:20] Yes, definitely listen to it if you haven’t already. That’s also another one of the stories that we covered on the show this month. I should also mention that in addition to Mel leaving us, we are preparing to take our July break from producing new episodes. We’ll be spending that time just kind of regrouping and reflecting and cooking up some other things that we want to make for you all when we get back. So we will be taking a break from making episodes. We’ll be back in August. But more news on that later. But in the meantime, Mel, this episode is definitely a love letter to you. We appreciate you so much. And we really enjoyed working with you. Thanks for everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:05:12] Aw, thank you guys for everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:19] Well Mel, before we let you go, we want to start off with you and the story that you’ve been following this month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:05:26] Well, I feel like I’ve been following this for a lot longer than June, but the first women’s sports bar in the Bay Area opened on June 11th, right in time for Pride Month, and it’s called Rikki’s, and I mean, it’s been getting a lot of attention right now, but yeah, I got to go, and it was really fun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:51] Yeah, I mean I feel like their timing is, I mean, is perfect. It’s Pride Month. We’ve also been covering on this show, you know, the Bay Area getting a pro women’s basketball team. We talked about Bay FC and I know you talked with the actual owners of Rikki’s. What did they tell you about, like, why they wanted to open this bar?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:13] Yeah, so I got to talk to one of the co-founders of Rikki’s, Sarah Yergovich, and the other co-founder, her name is Danielle Tho, but they just wanted a place where they could watch women’s sports. I know that for a lot of like women’s-sports fans, and in particular, my partner has had this experience often. Where they go to a sports bar, they wanna watch a game, whether that be the WNBA championships or just an important game, like a Bay FC game. It was hard for them to find a place where they could go into a bar, sit down, and have the game on the TV. And if they do let you change the TV to a women’s sports game, oftentimes the volume isn’t gonna be on, so you’re kind of just watching a muted game. And sometimes they just won’t play it. This is like a place exclusively for women’s sports and also just a place that everyone can feel welcome and safe and I know that women’s sport is a huge part of like the LGBTQ community here and they really want to emphasize that inclusivity part.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:07:31] Definitely heard about Rikki’s. I haven’t had the chance to go. I’m actually going to my first Valkyries game on Sunday. I’m really excited about that. But I’m curious about your experience at Rikki’s, what was it like when you went there?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:07:44] It was crazy because there actually wasn’t like a game from like a Bay Area team on any of the TVs, but there were like a lot of people. I went last Sunday. There’s tons of like sports memorabilia from Bay FC and the Valkyries. A lot of people had this like combo of like Bay FC hat and Valkyrie’s shirt. I feel like that was a pattern that I saw a lot. But yeah, there is a full bar. I had like this roasted cabbage dish. It was kind of fancy for a sports bar, but it was like really good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:08:24] That’s really cool, and I’m also curious, why is it called Rikki’s? Is it named after somebody?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:08:30] Yeah, so it’s named after Rikki Streicher, who was an LGBTQ activist, and she opened up a lot of lesbian bars in San Francisco, and was just like a huge advocate for equal rights before same-sex couples were able to get married.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:49] Well, I’m sure there will be lots to see at Rikki’s in the coming months and years to come. Mel, thanks so much for bringing this story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:09:01] Of course, thank you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:27] And welcome back to the Bay’s June news roundup where I sit down with the rest of the Bay team to talk about some of the other stories that we have been following this month. Producer Jessica Kariisa, I wanna turn to you first. What story have you been following?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:09:41] I’m following a story down in Palo Alto specifically around Stanford Medicine and trans care and basically effective June 2nd in response to increased scrutiny at the federal level on gender affirming care, Stanford Medicine decided to pause gender related surgical procedures for patients under 19 years old as a way to avoid legal action and potential loss of funding. I should mention that I’m referring to reporting that was done by KQD’s Lesley McClurg and The Chronicle’s Catherine Ho.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:22] Yeah, I mean, what does this mean exactly? What kind of procedures are we talking about?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:10:30] Surgeries for minors are on hold, but Stanford’s LGBTQ health program will continue to offer other services, including hormone therapy, behavioral health support, voice training, and primary care. But surgeries in particular, for people under 19 years old, that’s what’s going be on hold for now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:10:56] So how did we get here in the first place? How did we to this decision?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:11:03] Basically, back in January, President Trump signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to, quote, not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support so-called transition of a child from one sex to another. And this was going to affect hospitals and medical schools that receive federal grants. The order was blocked by a federal judge in March. But then in May, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, sent a letter to hospitals asking about, you know, how they treat gender dysphoria, asking about their protocols around consent and outcome tracking and financial data. And so I think a lot of medical centers figure that they might need to be proactive to avoid retaliation from the federal government. And it should be mentioned that, you, know, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have said that, like, gender-affirming care, including surgery in some cases, is medically necessary and life-saving. And generally, surgery is not recommended for minors and it’s reserved for older teens with extreme gender dysphoria. The Chronicle reported, they said experts in transgender care have estimated that it’s really not that many surgeries that are actually happening every year. It’s just become a lightning rod issue, especially for the Trump administration, and so it’s unfortunately led to this decision.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:36] Where does this leave people seeking this care? I mean, do they have any other options here in the Bay Area absent Stanford?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:12:48] Yeah, so UCSF actually is one of the few places that is still offering gender-affirming surgeries to teenagers under the age of 19. And it should be noted that, you know, in February, the attorney general of the state of California, Rob Bonta, did warn hospitals that like denying or pausing care for trans youth could potentially violate state law. Back in 2022, California passed a sanctuary law protecting families who travel to California for gender affirming care. So, you know, I think that it remains to be seen, but there are some things happening at the state level to try and protect trans youth who are seeking care. So we’ll just have to see how it all plays out with the friction with the federal level, but there a few options.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:44] Well, definitely something to follow as this story continues to develop. Jessica, thank you so much. And we are going to shift the tone a little bit with my story here. I have been thinking a lot lately about malls. I don’t know about you all and your hometown malls, but mine is just really not what it once was. I think this is really part of a national trend of retailers that have been really struggling with the rise of Amazon and COVID. And I think downtown San Francisco and the malls in downtown San Fransisco are probably one of the biggest representations of that. Union Square and San Francisco Center are really not doing very well, but I have been following this story from the San Francisco Chronicle about these San Francisco malls that are actually experiencing a renaissance that, in their words, really defies the doom loop narrative of San Francisco right now, and the really interesting story of their secret sauce, which is, they write, rising Asian cultural power.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jessica Kariisa \u003c/strong>[00:15:03] I feel like, especially in my hometown, back in North Carolina, it’s just kind of sad to see empty malls. And over here, I’ve definitely seen a lot of them. But tell us more about this secret sauce. What exactly is happening in these malls?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:20] As far as successful malls experiencing a renaissance right now. Stonestown in San Francisco and also the Japan Town shopping center are doing amazing. Stonestown which is near SF State, a bunch of high schools, you know, it’s really concentrated around a lot of students. That mall has experienced a record high traffic last year. It’s up by 6% in just the last 12 months. And sales per square foot at that mall are up by 20% since 2019. Japantown similarly has been experiencing record high foot traffic. That mall’s parking garage has also become the agency’s busiest last year. So those are just some of the numbers that show just how successful they’ve been. And the secret sauce is really this new wave of Asian retailers. At these malls, at Stone’s Town in particular, you’ve seen the rise of Pop Mart, where you could get blind boxes. There’s a Miniso there now, a Daiso. And then, I mean, not even to mention the food, there’s Supreme Dumpling, there’s Hot Pot, there’s Vietnamese food. And a lot of the folks who are running these mall are saying that even the legacy businesses at some of these mall have been really following suit and trying to appeal to Gen Z, which is really the folks who are really coming out and supporting these malls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:57] We used to be a proper country and we used to have flourishing malls where we could walk around and browse. I love to browse, personally. Um, so, like, why are these other malls struggling?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:14] You know, when we think about Union Square and the San Francisco Center, which are both located downtown, I think these are both areas that used to attract a lot of foot traffic and just aren’t doing that anymore. You know we’ve been talking a lot about, over the last couple of years, about San Francisco’s downtown really struggling to come back. And you could really see that at the San Fransisco Center. I mean, over half of that mall is now empty. It’s lost dozens of retailers in recent years, including some pretty big ones like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. Another thing I’d say too is the role of perception and how the perception of downtown San Francisco as being unsafe and BART being unsafe has played a big role in why people aren’t coming to downtown. And I’d say that the reason why I think a lot of people are going to Stonestown and Japantown, according to the article, is this perception of safety. I think a lot of people feel Stonestown and Japan Town are located in sort of safer areas. You know, Stonestown has a pretty robust parking lot, which is also a huge appeal. Whether or not the perception of safety around downtown is true or not, just that feeling, as we’ve talked about on this show a ton is strong enough to either get people to show up or get people not to show up. So I think the story of Stonestown and Japantown are really representative of that.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Berkeley Offered Cash to People Living in RVs. Did It Work?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After the city of Berkeley ordered the clearing of RV encampments on Second Street, the city began offering cash to people living in their RVs in addition to a room at a motel shelter. Most accepted the offer, and city leaders are hopeful that this approach can expand.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7936715503&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:42] Your story focused on this concentration of RVs on Second Street in Berkeley. Tell me a little bit more about this area and why it was such an area of interest for the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:01:55] Yeah, this is an industrial area on the western edge of the city. It attracted people living in RVs over the past few years, but eventually got to the point where there were RVs, cars, broken down busses, tents and structures that people built just for blocks and blocks along Second Street and some of the cross streets there. Trash started piling up. There were problems with rats. There was rotting food. There was feces. The data I saw was that in 2023, police were called to the area about 250 times. And there were 20 fires reported to the fire department. Eventually city officials declared this area an imminent health hazard and the city council actually directed staff to focus on cleaning up this area and another large RV encampment nearby that’s on Harrison Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:06] I know you met some people who were living on Second Street before the city decided that they wanted to clear it. Who did you meet and how did they describe life on Second street?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:03:19] I met Fannie Hall when I was down there early this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fannie Hall \u003c/strong>[00:03:24] Yeah, all these little guys. Plus I got my daughter’s dog. He’s a little smaller. So I got 11, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:03:31] She was poking her head out of this vintage blue and white RV that she has. She shares it with her adult daughter and granddaughter and so many Chihuahuas, nine puppies and two adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:45] Oh, my goodness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:03:47] Her son was also living across the street in another camper that she has. She said that she’d been there about six years and the family ended up there. After this house they were renting in San Pablo got red tagged for code violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fannie Hall \u003c/strong>[00:04:04] My landlord was one of those landlords that tried to do everything cheaply and it cost me my home and I had to move out with them. They came on a Monday, I had to be out by Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:04:18] She claims that they were some of the first people down on Second Street, that it was quiet at first, and she tried to keep the area where she was clean and keep a low profile. She works three days a week as a home health aide, and she has a car, so she said she would use that to haul garbage to a dumpster down the street. But over time, more and more people moved in, trash started piling up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fannie Hall \u003c/strong>[00:04:47] Rats became a problem. I’ve had my camper chewed on and I’ve killed multiple rats up in my camper and I keep a clean camper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:04:54] So it became increasingly difficult, but she seemed to like the independence and she’d been there for quite some time, you know, so while it was certainly not ideal and she talked about wanting housing, I think she had figured out a fairly manageable life for herself and her family under really hard circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:22] Yeah, and I imagine her family unit, it’s very important for her to keep them all together and that they were, it sounds like they were really able to do that. And then I know you met someone who moved to Second Street a little bit more recently. Tell me about Elvia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:05:38] Elvia Guzman told me that she and her husband ended up on Second Street last year after bouncing around a couple different RV encampments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:05:48] Second Street was a place where there was a lot of RVs and a little community there, so we just came down here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:05:56] Briefly been around Harrison Street in that big encampment in Berkeley, recently got swept. Before that, they were in Richmond, where she had lived for a long time. And they ended up in an RV there until the area, the encampments they were living in there got cleared. Then she came to Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:06:19] Police wasn’t moving us as much and they weren’t really bothering us over here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:06:30] In general, she made it sound like she never felt fully safe or comfortable living in an RV. She talked about how they always had to park in sort of sketchy areas. She also talked about ways in which life was just hard in an RV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:06:49] Everything is like ten times harder. Sometimes you don’t have water. Sometimes, you know, it’s too cold or too hot not enough space and I Think it’s frustrating a little bit for like it was frustrating a lot a little it for me because I get anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:07:06] She seemed much less comfortable than Fannie living in an RV, although she was really grateful for the shelter it provided and the security, you know? To the extent that it provided security, she was very grateful for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:28] How long was Elvia living in an RV on Second Street?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:07:32] Elvia and her husband moved to 2nd Street around six months before the city started moving in earnest to close down this encampment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:45] I want to talk more about the city’s effort to close down this encampment. Tell me about what the city began offering to people living in these RVs on Second Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:07:59] So what they did is offer people cash for their RVs. So if participants agreed to move indoors into this motel shelter they were offering, they would get $175 per linear foot of RV. That pencils out to about $6,000 for a 35-foot RV. And the way it would work is that people would get some of that money when they first moved into the motel. Then they do this trial period. To see if they felt comfortable at the shelter, if they wanted to stay. And if they decided they wanted to stay, they’d get their RV towed. And at that point, they got the rest of the money. If they decided to leave, they would keep the initial 15% of the payout that they’d already gotten, and they got to keep their RV. RV encampments are hard to deal with because people are reluctant to leave their RV for shelter. And that had been the case on Second Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:09:00] And so, we’re just giving folks another choice in their choice set, right? About how to navigate this reality that we had to close this encampment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:09:08] Peter Radu, who oversees the city’s homeless response team, told me that he saw it as a way to build trust with people and overcome some of that reluctance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:09:24] Anything interim or anything time-limited, I think they were very rationally and rightly afraid that if they moved in and that didn’t work out, they would be back out on the street, but this time without their largest remaining asset, which is their vehicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:09:38] They were out there for about three months, hearing them out about their concerns and trying to find ways to accommodate their individual needs, right? So some people, initially, I was told the motel was gonna only accept one dog per room. It quickly became clear that that wasn’t gonna work because so many people had. Dogs. So they found ways to accommodate more dogs. They found ways to place people together in rooms, not just couples, but friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:16] And I mean, that’s pretty unique, Vanessa, I feel like you don’t often hear of efforts like this that feel and sound very individual. Usually it feels like a one-size-fit-all sort of solution, just throw folks into shelters, but it seems like there was a real effort here to accommodate people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:10:36] That’s right, but I think Peter Radu would say that they’ve known for a long time that a low barrier model, right, which is what they would call this shelter, is crucial. But what really made the difference in this case was really the buyback program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:10:57] The hypothesis, I suppose, in wanting to pilot this is what if we could liquefy that asset for them? What if we can buy it for them, would that change their decision-making, and would that changed their willingness to engage with us in the homeless system?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:11:15] I think it’s more than just an incentive, I think that it’s building trust by promising these people a bit of a safety net. People are very distrustful that they will actually end up getting permanent housing. So if they give up their RV but they at least have a few thousand dollars in their pocket, that’s a big difference, right? I mean, I talked to multiple people who told me that. That gave them a bit of reassurance and made them feel more comfortable taking the city up on this shelter offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:01] It sounds like a really big decision to make for many of the folks living on Second Street. How many people were offered this buyout program and how many took it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:12:21] So Radu told me that outreach workers encountered 32 vehicles out there during the closure process. In all, 36 people and 26 dogs ended up moving into this motel. Of those 32 vehicles they encountered, only three of them are still on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:51] The housing market is not great. That’s the reason why I’m still where I’m at, because who can afford the high cost of living?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:12:58] Fannie’s two RVs, hers and her sons, are among those three.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:03] I’m one of the people that can go in, but I don’t want to go in. I’d rather stay where I’m safe and I’m familiar with, and I want to do the RV buyback, but I think they could come up with a little bit better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:13:18] Fannie told me she was worried about the unknowns at the shelter, so would she feel safe there? Who would be there? She worried about restrictions, not being able to cook in her motel room, not be able to have guests. She knew that however accommodating they were going to be, she was never going to to take 11 dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:41] You know, there were criteria that they require for you to move in. They want to get into too much in your personal business. You know that doesn’t require them to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:13:49] They ultimately did not take the offer and they ended up moving to the Oakland-Emeryville border. She’s working with outreach workers and says she is in the process of trying to get housing. It sounds like if that doesn’t happen in the next couple of years, she’s seriously considering moving out of state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:12] So it sounds like Fannie Hall decided not to take the offer because there was a sense of stability in her current situation, and giving up her RV felt like a huge risk. But the vast majority of people did actually take the offer to sell their RVs, including Elvia Guzman. What did she tell you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:14:38] Elvia, though she was really ready to get out of an RV and into permanent housing, she was so scared to give up this shelter and security that had caught her when she’d lost everything else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:14:56] The RV was like our everything, like I was just nervous about the whole thing because that’s where we lived and that’s all we had. I want to say we almost got about $3,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:15:07] And I did not seem like it would work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:15:10] It seemed, I think it was more than enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:15:15] When I met her, she was at the motel shelter on a busy street in Berkeley, and she said that it was going pretty well so far.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:15:25] It’s safer here and it’s just way better to be in a real place, like have a real roof over your head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:15:35] Said she was working with staff there to get all of her paperwork in order so that she could apply for housing. She seemed to be feeling, you know, at least somewhat optimistic and just reiterated how ready she was to be off the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:15:58] Hoping to just you know end up with our housing like we’ve been wanting for so many years now and be stable. I just want an boring normal regular life, you know? That’s all. I’ll be happy with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:17] Right, because this is ultimately not a permanent living situation, being in these motels. So I’m curious for Peter and the city, was this a success?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:16:33] He sees this as a resounding success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:16:37] We had almost four in five, I believe 79% of the people that we encountered moved in indoors. And we didn’t have to do a big enforcement operation at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:16:50] Like I said, of those 32 vehicles, there are just three that are still on the streets. None of them are on Second Street. Compared to past efforts to close encampments like this, Radu said that they had a much higher success rate. And so this is something that he says they’d like to try to build upon going forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:13] And also, we’re just talking about people who are living in RVs, but what do you think there is to learn from this when it comes to addressing all forms of homelessness in the Bay Area?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:17:27] Well, we don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be, right? Some of these folks at the motel are already getting housing placements. Other folks are probably going to be there for many months. And some of those folks could end up getting kicked out of the shelter, leaving the shelter by choice. Before they get permanent housing, they could end up getting permanent housing and losing it for whatever reason and ending up on the streets. So we don’t know what the ultimate outcome is going to be. By all accounts, approaching this encampment resolution so intentionally showed some early successes. When you put the resources and the thought and the time into closing encampments intentionally, you’ve got a much better shot of really resolving them and permanently ending those folks’ homelessness than if you’re simply sweeping people and dispersing them to other parts of the city.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">After the city of Berkeley ordered the clearing of RV encampments on Second Street, the city began offering cash to people living in their RVs in addition to a room at a motel shelter. Most accepted the offer, and city leaders are hopeful that this approach can expand.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC7936715503&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:42] Your story focused on this concentration of RVs on Second Street in Berkeley. Tell me a little bit more about this area and why it was such an area of interest for the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:01:55] Yeah, this is an industrial area on the western edge of the city. It attracted people living in RVs over the past few years, but eventually got to the point where there were RVs, cars, broken down busses, tents and structures that people built just for blocks and blocks along Second Street and some of the cross streets there. Trash started piling up. There were problems with rats. There was rotting food. There was feces. The data I saw was that in 2023, police were called to the area about 250 times. And there were 20 fires reported to the fire department. Eventually city officials declared this area an imminent health hazard and the city council actually directed staff to focus on cleaning up this area and another large RV encampment nearby that’s on Harrison Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:06] I know you met some people who were living on Second Street before the city decided that they wanted to clear it. Who did you meet and how did they describe life on Second street?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:03:19] I met Fannie Hall when I was down there early this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fannie Hall \u003c/strong>[00:03:24] Yeah, all these little guys. Plus I got my daughter’s dog. He’s a little smaller. So I got 11, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:03:31] She was poking her head out of this vintage blue and white RV that she has. She shares it with her adult daughter and granddaughter and so many Chihuahuas, nine puppies and two adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:45] Oh, my goodness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:03:47] Her son was also living across the street in another camper that she has. She said that she’d been there about six years and the family ended up there. After this house they were renting in San Pablo got red tagged for code violations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fannie Hall \u003c/strong>[00:04:04] My landlord was one of those landlords that tried to do everything cheaply and it cost me my home and I had to move out with them. They came on a Monday, I had to be out by Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:04:18] She claims that they were some of the first people down on Second Street, that it was quiet at first, and she tried to keep the area where she was clean and keep a low profile. She works three days a week as a home health aide, and she has a car, so she said she would use that to haul garbage to a dumpster down the street. But over time, more and more people moved in, trash started piling up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Fannie Hall \u003c/strong>[00:04:47] Rats became a problem. I’ve had my camper chewed on and I’ve killed multiple rats up in my camper and I keep a clean camper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:04:54] So it became increasingly difficult, but she seemed to like the independence and she’d been there for quite some time, you know, so while it was certainly not ideal and she talked about wanting housing, I think she had figured out a fairly manageable life for herself and her family under really hard circumstances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:22] Yeah, and I imagine her family unit, it’s very important for her to keep them all together and that they were, it sounds like they were really able to do that. And then I know you met someone who moved to Second Street a little bit more recently. Tell me about Elvia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:05:38] Elvia Guzman told me that she and her husband ended up on Second Street last year after bouncing around a couple different RV encampments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:05:48] Second Street was a place where there was a lot of RVs and a little community there, so we just came down here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:05:56] Briefly been around Harrison Street in that big encampment in Berkeley, recently got swept. Before that, they were in Richmond, where she had lived for a long time. And they ended up in an RV there until the area, the encampments they were living in there got cleared. Then she came to Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:06:19] Police wasn’t moving us as much and they weren’t really bothering us over here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:06:30] In general, she made it sound like she never felt fully safe or comfortable living in an RV. She talked about how they always had to park in sort of sketchy areas. She also talked about ways in which life was just hard in an RV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:06:49] Everything is like ten times harder. Sometimes you don’t have water. Sometimes, you know, it’s too cold or too hot not enough space and I Think it’s frustrating a little bit for like it was frustrating a lot a little it for me because I get anxiety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:07:06] She seemed much less comfortable than Fannie living in an RV, although she was really grateful for the shelter it provided and the security, you know? To the extent that it provided security, she was very grateful for that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:28] How long was Elvia living in an RV on Second Street?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:07:32] Elvia and her husband moved to 2nd Street around six months before the city started moving in earnest to close down this encampment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:45] I want to talk more about the city’s effort to close down this encampment. Tell me about what the city began offering to people living in these RVs on Second Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:07:59] So what they did is offer people cash for their RVs. So if participants agreed to move indoors into this motel shelter they were offering, they would get $175 per linear foot of RV. That pencils out to about $6,000 for a 35-foot RV. And the way it would work is that people would get some of that money when they first moved into the motel. Then they do this trial period. To see if they felt comfortable at the shelter, if they wanted to stay. And if they decided they wanted to stay, they’d get their RV towed. And at that point, they got the rest of the money. If they decided to leave, they would keep the initial 15% of the payout that they’d already gotten, and they got to keep their RV. RV encampments are hard to deal with because people are reluctant to leave their RV for shelter. And that had been the case on Second Street.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:09:00] And so, we’re just giving folks another choice in their choice set, right? About how to navigate this reality that we had to close this encampment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:09:08] Peter Radu, who oversees the city’s homeless response team, told me that he saw it as a way to build trust with people and overcome some of that reluctance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:09:24] Anything interim or anything time-limited, I think they were very rationally and rightly afraid that if they moved in and that didn’t work out, they would be back out on the street, but this time without their largest remaining asset, which is their vehicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:09:38] They were out there for about three months, hearing them out about their concerns and trying to find ways to accommodate their individual needs, right? So some people, initially, I was told the motel was gonna only accept one dog per room. It quickly became clear that that wasn’t gonna work because so many people had. Dogs. So they found ways to accommodate more dogs. They found ways to place people together in rooms, not just couples, but friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:16] And I mean, that’s pretty unique, Vanessa, I feel like you don’t often hear of efforts like this that feel and sound very individual. Usually it feels like a one-size-fit-all sort of solution, just throw folks into shelters, but it seems like there was a real effort here to accommodate people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:10:36] That’s right, but I think Peter Radu would say that they’ve known for a long time that a low barrier model, right, which is what they would call this shelter, is crucial. But what really made the difference in this case was really the buyback program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:10:57] The hypothesis, I suppose, in wanting to pilot this is what if we could liquefy that asset for them? What if we can buy it for them, would that change their decision-making, and would that changed their willingness to engage with us in the homeless system?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:11:15] I think it’s more than just an incentive, I think that it’s building trust by promising these people a bit of a safety net. People are very distrustful that they will actually end up getting permanent housing. So if they give up their RV but they at least have a few thousand dollars in their pocket, that’s a big difference, right? I mean, I talked to multiple people who told me that. That gave them a bit of reassurance and made them feel more comfortable taking the city up on this shelter offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:01] It sounds like a really big decision to make for many of the folks living on Second Street. How many people were offered this buyout program and how many took it?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:12:21] So Radu told me that outreach workers encountered 32 vehicles out there during the closure process. In all, 36 people and 26 dogs ended up moving into this motel. Of those 32 vehicles they encountered, only three of them are still on the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:51] The housing market is not great. That’s the reason why I’m still where I’m at, because who can afford the high cost of living?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:12:58] Fannie’s two RVs, hers and her sons, are among those three.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:03] I’m one of the people that can go in, but I don’t want to go in. I’d rather stay where I’m safe and I’m familiar with, and I want to do the RV buyback, but I think they could come up with a little bit better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:13:18] Fannie told me she was worried about the unknowns at the shelter, so would she feel safe there? Who would be there? She worried about restrictions, not being able to cook in her motel room, not be able to have guests. She knew that however accommodating they were going to be, she was never going to to take 11 dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:41] You know, there were criteria that they require for you to move in. They want to get into too much in your personal business. You know that doesn’t require them to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:13:49] They ultimately did not take the offer and they ended up moving to the Oakland-Emeryville border. She’s working with outreach workers and says she is in the process of trying to get housing. It sounds like if that doesn’t happen in the next couple of years, she’s seriously considering moving out of state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:12] So it sounds like Fannie Hall decided not to take the offer because there was a sense of stability in her current situation, and giving up her RV felt like a huge risk. But the vast majority of people did actually take the offer to sell their RVs, including Elvia Guzman. What did she tell you?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:14:38] Elvia, though she was really ready to get out of an RV and into permanent housing, she was so scared to give up this shelter and security that had caught her when she’d lost everything else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:14:56] The RV was like our everything, like I was just nervous about the whole thing because that’s where we lived and that’s all we had. I want to say we almost got about $3,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:15:07] And I did not seem like it would work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:15:10] It seemed, I think it was more than enough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:15:15] When I met her, she was at the motel shelter on a busy street in Berkeley, and she said that it was going pretty well so far.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:15:25] It’s safer here and it’s just way better to be in a real place, like have a real roof over your head.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:15:35] Said she was working with staff there to get all of her paperwork in order so that she could apply for housing. She seemed to be feeling, you know, at least somewhat optimistic and just reiterated how ready she was to be off the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elvia Guzman \u003c/strong>[00:15:58] Hoping to just you know end up with our housing like we’ve been wanting for so many years now and be stable. I just want an boring normal regular life, you know? That’s all. I’ll be happy with that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:17] Right, because this is ultimately not a permanent living situation, being in these motels. So I’m curious for Peter and the city, was this a success?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:16:33] He sees this as a resounding success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Peter Radu \u003c/strong>[00:16:37] We had almost four in five, I believe 79% of the people that we encountered moved in indoors. And we didn’t have to do a big enforcement operation at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:16:50] Like I said, of those 32 vehicles, there are just three that are still on the streets. None of them are on Second Street. Compared to past efforts to close encampments like this, Radu said that they had a much higher success rate. And so this is something that he says they’d like to try to build upon going forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:13] And also, we’re just talking about people who are living in RVs, but what do you think there is to learn from this when it comes to addressing all forms of homelessness in the Bay Area?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Vanessa Rancaño \u003c/strong>[00:17:27] Well, we don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be, right? Some of these folks at the motel are already getting housing placements. Other folks are probably going to be there for many months. And some of those folks could end up getting kicked out of the shelter, leaving the shelter by choice. Before they get permanent housing, they could end up getting permanent housing and losing it for whatever reason and ending up on the streets. So we don’t know what the ultimate outcome is going to be. By all accounts, approaching this encampment resolution so intentionally showed some early successes. When you put the resources and the thought and the time into closing encampments intentionally, you’ve got a much better shot of really resolving them and permanently ending those folks’ homelessness than if you’re simply sweeping people and dispersing them to other parts of the city.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Suisun City Could Grow by 9 Times Its Current Size",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Suisun City in Solano County will begin studying annexing land owned by California Forever, the billionaire-backed group that bought up thousands of acres of land with plans to build a brand new city from scratch in Solano County. KQED’s Adhiti Bandlamudi joins us to discuss the implications of this decision and why it has divided the local community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2281823459\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:01:43] Right now, Suisun City is the smallest city in Solano County, geographically speaking. Because it’s the smallest city in Solano County, what the city manager says is that it’s unable to grow a lot and it’s tax-based then is like very small. So, Suisun City has faced a budget crisis for years. They’re currently using reserves to kind of sustain certain city services. But if it were to annex this area, which is almost nine times its current size, it would become one of the biggest cities in the county. And it could be good for the city’s long-term budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:35] Yeah, I mean, since I was a kid, I feel like Suisun City has pretty much stayed and looked exactly the same as it always has been, but now it’s considering, as you were just saying, to expand outward in size. How exactly do they plan to do this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:02:57] The city has been talking about annexation for a long time, basically since the beginning of this year. We didn’t really know how much land it was going to annex or where exactly it was gonna annex this land, but Suisun is kind of surrounded by Fairfield and land that is predominantly owned by California Forever. California Forever, the billionaire backed company that you might remember last year, they kind of introduced this plan to like build a city from scratch. They own a lot of land near Suisun City and they had this grand plan for all of this land, which was to build a city from scratch. It was gonna be walkable and there were gonna be jobs and manufacturing sites. And basically it was going to solve Solano County’s problems of not having enough jobs where people live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:03:56] So if a developer wants to build something out there, they have to get voter approval first. But a couple months before the election, they pulled their initiative from the ballot because a lot of people were asking for environmental reports and information about these jobs and where they would come from and how the company could basically ensure that the promises that they made along the campaign trail could actually be realized. So the company said, got it. We’re not going to bring this to the voters this November. Instead, we’re gonna wait until 2026 and then we’ll bring it back once we have all these studies done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:04:37] In January, Suisun City says, Hey, we’re facing budgetary issues. We need to talk about annexation. And so if Suisun City wants to annex, it kind of has to talk with California Forever. And what the city is proposing to do is to annex almost 23,000 acres of land located pretty much in the same place that California Forever wanted to build its new city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:05] So how would annexation actually work, Adhiti? Would Suisun City basically be paying California Forever for this land?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:15] Really what annexation means is that basically, the landowner, California Forever, will still own that land. So the company will pay for all the consultants and the people who will conduct environmental and fiscal studies and basically a team of people who will start compiling a series of reports that will answer some of these big questions. Then the city can figure out whether this makes sense for them in the long run. Suisun City then becomes the jurisdiction, so it controls what happens on that land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:54] Why would both Suisun City and California Forever want to do this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:59] So right now, there’s a lot of questions ahead. Will there be really big environmental impacts? Will it be fiscally good for the city if it kind of expands its borders and tries to develop there? What this opportunity gives Suisun is the ability to hopefully get to the bottom of those questions. What California Forever hopes to get is basically California Forever, it seems, could realize its vision for its new city by working with a city like Suisun or Rio Vista, which is also interested in annexing some of their land. But if their land gets annexed into an existing city, it doesn’t require a countywide vote. It’s up to the officials there to kind of work out the logistics of getting this big development built. So it could be a smoother path to get their vision realized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:07] I want to talk about the reaction and the response to this idea because there was a public meeting in Suisun last week where council members voted on this proposal to start exploring the idea of annexation. What was your sense of how the public is feeling about this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:07:40] The opinions are really split. And you know, these mixed emotions and also the level of passion that people feel one side or another was really on display during public comment on Tuesday’s meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public comment \u003c/strong>[00:07:54] This is universal change in a positive way for this county and for this region so that apprentices like these folks who are here in the room can learn their trade over here and work within half an hour of where they went to school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>[00:08:10] Oakland lost the A’s and they lost the Raiders because of a missed opportunity. This is an opportunity for us and I would highly recommend that you take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:08:21] Some people really like the plan because they feel like it could bring opportunity and jobs and housing. You know, there are people who I’ve spoken to who were kind of, you know, pushed out of Oakland and San Francisco into Solano County because of the cost of living. And now the cost of living is starting to increase in Solano and people are really worried about getting pushed out again. And so the hope that they feel is that California Forever will provide them the housing and the jobs needed to stay in Solano and make a life there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public comment \u003c/strong>[00:08:59] I think the only responsible thing to do is explore. You have other cities in our county that have decided for decades to have no growth. And now they’re staring at financial crisis if one of their biggest employers leaves their city. And heaven forbid, you would ever have to face that as well. So please continue this, go down this road and create more opportunities for our men and women to work. Thank you for your time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:09:25] But there are other people who are really opposed to California Forever. They don’t trust the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public comment \u003c/strong>[00:09:32] These are profiteers, and they know they can make a hundred times more money than they can in the stock market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:09:39] I have grandchildren who are in their preteens. I live in a neighborhood that has so many kids. They and their parents will be the ones to face the consequences of orderly or disorderly growth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:09:54] There is a lot to lose and I’m not talking about your money. I’m actually talking about this incredible amount of biological diversity that exists in basically in Suisun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:08] You know, the company, when it was buying up all of that land, it sued farmers. And they also don’t like the fact that the company didn’t have a lot of questions answered when they pitched this plan. So there’s a lot distrust and mixed emotions about this company and anything related to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:29] And what about city officials in Suisun? How are they feeling about this idea?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:36] Most of the city council itself is kind of open to seeing what this means.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bret Prebula \u003c/strong>[00:10:42] For too long, Suisun City has been treated like an afterthought, boxed in and bypassed, and left out of the prosperity that has lifted other communities around us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:53] The city manager, Bret Prebula, is very excited about this opportunity. He spoke at a city council meeting recently, basically saying that like, this is an opportunity for the city to potentially grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bret Prebula \u003c/strong>[00:11:07] We are looking at expansion in Suisun City because we know we have to. We know we can take more responsibility for the delivery of regional services if we do. And we know this is the right decision to explore for our community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:11:22] And Bret has talked about the fact that, like, the city has been in this position before and chose not to grow, and it didn’t help their budget. Back in the 1960s, you know, there was a piece of land that Suisun had the opportunity to annex and it later became home to a Budweiser Brewery and the Jelly Belly Factory. And Fairfield, Suisun’s neighbor, annexed that land instead and it helped their city budget. And now Suisun is in this position again. And I think there’s an element of like FOMO here of like we missed out once, we don’t wanna miss out again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bret Prebula \u003c/strong>[00:12:01] We miss 100% of the shots we don’t take. That’s a Wayne Gretzky quote. That’s where we are, ready to take our shot and on the edge of something bigger than ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Princess Washington \u003c/strong>[00:12:19] I’m no fool up here, I’m gonna be the only no vote, I’m well aware of that. But I just wanna express my concerns as to why I’m voting this way in respect to my council who I do know are acting in the best interest of the city along with staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] Council member Princess Washington also spoke at the meeting and she has consistently voted against annexation because she has major hesitations about the project and the city just taking on a bunch of land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Princess Washington \u003c/strong>[00:12:47] I think that this is a large undertaking and quite frankly, a large headache. And will it really yield the benefit that we want? I haven’t heard with certainty that it will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:58] She feels like it’s gonna just take a lot of time and effort to answer the questions that are involved and it could just be a distraction from what the city needs to solve like its housing crisis and other issues that she feels are kind of more front of front of mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Princess Washington \u003c/strong>[00:13:17] There’s some agility in being small. And I think that this idea that being huge, it will solve all our problems is a fallacy. Because if that were the case, no other city would have deficits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:28] What about California Forever? What are they saying about this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:13:32] California Forever hasn’t really offered a lot of public comment, at least not the way that they were last year. They have offered statements time and time again, basically saying that they’re interested in working with cities that want to talk about annexation. They’re interested in trying to figure out what’s right for everyone and working with various stakeholders. Members of the company have come out during city council meetings to speak during public comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jennifer Hernandez \u003c/strong>[00:14:01] It has to be a net gain for the the citizens of Suisun to pass muster, to pass muster but you can’t know that until you study it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:13] Jennifer Hernandez, for example, she is the lawyer representing California Forever. She spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, basically saying, like, let us study this. Like, nothing is set in stone. We’re just trying to get some answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jennifer Hernandez \u003c/strong>[00:14:27] You have a team already in place that is set up to make sure everything’s right for you. Let us study this with you and let’s make sure it’s at no cost to the city or its taxpayers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:48] I mean, all that said, Adhiti, how ultimately did Suisun City vote on the idea of studying annexing California Forever’s land?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:57] The city council voted almost unanimously. Council member Washington voted against it. And so now what we’re looking at is the city will spend the next few months hiring consultants and basically a team of people who will start compiling a series of reports that will answer some of these big questions. One question that they’re going to have to answer is, how will this affect the environment? How is it managing the services, you know, water, sewage, police department, fire department? How is managing all of that within its existing borders? And how will it manage that land that it wants to annex?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:49] These are really big questions, and as we know, it takes a lot of time and effort to even build in California. But I do have to ask, I mean, what is in it for California Forever here? I mean is this basically their way of getting around voters to move forward with its vision of a new city?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:16] What this process means is that yes, there will not be an opportunity for this kind of like direct democracy angle where people will get to kind of say, yes, I want this in my county, or no, I don’t want it in my county. You know, California Forever’s most vocal and I would argue largest opponent group, which is called Solano Together, they are very adamant that they want a vote in this. They want a say in whether this happens or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:16:47] This is the Suisun City’s way of saying we’re all in on California Forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:54] Alex Schafran, he’s a land use expert and someone who has raised serious questions about California Forever’s project. And he kind of had a different take, which is that annexation could be a less bad way of getting this project built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:17:11] The ballot measure they wrote was such a terrible document for democracy, this 90-page, endless document that people are supposedly voting on. It was an absolute travesty of how they were going to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:17:23] Even if they pass that up-down vote, let’s just say that they got voter approval, we actually don’t know what happens after that. We don’t what legal bearing California Forever has over that land and what gets developed there if the voters approve something like that, if the voter’s don’t approve it, like, like we, you know, we don’t no.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:17:41] We have a system that is designed to do governance and that now it is in that system and that’s where it should be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:17:49] But annexation is a process that already exists, and we kind of know the steps along the way. Annexation also involves a lot of negotiation. It’s a lot like talking with public agencies and private entities and elected officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:18:05] At least this gives them some voice and some control. They will be able to negotiate some benefit out of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:18:16] I guess what questions do you have about what this could all mean for Suisun City? Because again, I mean, we’re talking about a city expanding by nine times, and that would be huge, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:18:34] As a housing reporter, the question that is front of mind right now is, is this actually sustainable for Suisun? Will this actually be good for the city or is this just a way for California Forever to realize its vision? Now that we’re getting into this very public process, it will also be interesting. To see how the company influences the elected officials who are now in charge of these decisions. So we’ll be watching.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"headline": "Suisun City Could Grow by 9 Times Its Current Size",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Suisun City in Solano County will begin studying annexing land owned by California Forever, the billionaire-backed group that bought up thousands of acres of land with plans to build a brand new city from scratch in Solano County. KQED’s Adhiti Bandlamudi joins us to discuss the implications of this decision and why it has divided the local community. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC2281823459\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:01:43] Right now, Suisun City is the smallest city in Solano County, geographically speaking. Because it’s the smallest city in Solano County, what the city manager says is that it’s unable to grow a lot and it’s tax-based then is like very small. So, Suisun City has faced a budget crisis for years. They’re currently using reserves to kind of sustain certain city services. But if it were to annex this area, which is almost nine times its current size, it would become one of the biggest cities in the county. And it could be good for the city’s long-term budget.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:35] Yeah, I mean, since I was a kid, I feel like Suisun City has pretty much stayed and looked exactly the same as it always has been, but now it’s considering, as you were just saying, to expand outward in size. How exactly do they plan to do this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:02:57] The city has been talking about annexation for a long time, basically since the beginning of this year. We didn’t really know how much land it was going to annex or where exactly it was gonna annex this land, but Suisun is kind of surrounded by Fairfield and land that is predominantly owned by California Forever. California Forever, the billionaire backed company that you might remember last year, they kind of introduced this plan to like build a city from scratch. They own a lot of land near Suisun City and they had this grand plan for all of this land, which was to build a city from scratch. It was gonna be walkable and there were gonna be jobs and manufacturing sites. And basically it was going to solve Solano County’s problems of not having enough jobs where people live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:03:56] So if a developer wants to build something out there, they have to get voter approval first. But a couple months before the election, they pulled their initiative from the ballot because a lot of people were asking for environmental reports and information about these jobs and where they would come from and how the company could basically ensure that the promises that they made along the campaign trail could actually be realized. So the company said, got it. We’re not going to bring this to the voters this November. Instead, we’re gonna wait until 2026 and then we’ll bring it back once we have all these studies done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:04:37] In January, Suisun City says, Hey, we’re facing budgetary issues. We need to talk about annexation. And so if Suisun City wants to annex, it kind of has to talk with California Forever. And what the city is proposing to do is to annex almost 23,000 acres of land located pretty much in the same place that California Forever wanted to build its new city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:05] So how would annexation actually work, Adhiti? Would Suisun City basically be paying California Forever for this land?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:15] Really what annexation means is that basically, the landowner, California Forever, will still own that land. So the company will pay for all the consultants and the people who will conduct environmental and fiscal studies and basically a team of people who will start compiling a series of reports that will answer some of these big questions. Then the city can figure out whether this makes sense for them in the long run. Suisun City then becomes the jurisdiction, so it controls what happens on that land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:54] Why would both Suisun City and California Forever want to do this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:05:59] So right now, there’s a lot of questions ahead. Will there be really big environmental impacts? Will it be fiscally good for the city if it kind of expands its borders and tries to develop there? What this opportunity gives Suisun is the ability to hopefully get to the bottom of those questions. What California Forever hopes to get is basically California Forever, it seems, could realize its vision for its new city by working with a city like Suisun or Rio Vista, which is also interested in annexing some of their land. But if their land gets annexed into an existing city, it doesn’t require a countywide vote. It’s up to the officials there to kind of work out the logistics of getting this big development built. So it could be a smoother path to get their vision realized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:07] I want to talk about the reaction and the response to this idea because there was a public meeting in Suisun last week where council members voted on this proposal to start exploring the idea of annexation. What was your sense of how the public is feeling about this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:07:40] The opinions are really split. And you know, these mixed emotions and also the level of passion that people feel one side or another was really on display during public comment on Tuesday’s meeting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public comment \u003c/strong>[00:07:54] This is universal change in a positive way for this county and for this region so that apprentices like these folks who are here in the room can learn their trade over here and work within half an hour of where they went to school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>[00:08:10] Oakland lost the A’s and they lost the Raiders because of a missed opportunity. This is an opportunity for us and I would highly recommend that you take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:08:21] Some people really like the plan because they feel like it could bring opportunity and jobs and housing. You know, there are people who I’ve spoken to who were kind of, you know, pushed out of Oakland and San Francisco into Solano County because of the cost of living. And now the cost of living is starting to increase in Solano and people are really worried about getting pushed out again. And so the hope that they feel is that California Forever will provide them the housing and the jobs needed to stay in Solano and make a life there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public comment \u003c/strong>[00:08:59] I think the only responsible thing to do is explore. You have other cities in our county that have decided for decades to have no growth. And now they’re staring at financial crisis if one of their biggest employers leaves their city. And heaven forbid, you would ever have to face that as well. So please continue this, go down this road and create more opportunities for our men and women to work. Thank you for your time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:09:25] But there are other people who are really opposed to California Forever. They don’t trust the company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Public comment \u003c/strong>[00:09:32] These are profiteers, and they know they can make a hundred times more money than they can in the stock market.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:09:39] I have grandchildren who are in their preteens. I live in a neighborhood that has so many kids. They and their parents will be the ones to face the consequences of orderly or disorderly growth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[00:09:54] There is a lot to lose and I’m not talking about your money. I’m actually talking about this incredible amount of biological diversity that exists in basically in Suisun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:08] You know, the company, when it was buying up all of that land, it sued farmers. And they also don’t like the fact that the company didn’t have a lot of questions answered when they pitched this plan. So there’s a lot distrust and mixed emotions about this company and anything related to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:29] And what about city officials in Suisun? How are they feeling about this idea?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:36] Most of the city council itself is kind of open to seeing what this means.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bret Prebula \u003c/strong>[00:10:42] For too long, Suisun City has been treated like an afterthought, boxed in and bypassed, and left out of the prosperity that has lifted other communities around us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:10:53] The city manager, Bret Prebula, is very excited about this opportunity. He spoke at a city council meeting recently, basically saying that like, this is an opportunity for the city to potentially grow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bret Prebula \u003c/strong>[00:11:07] We are looking at expansion in Suisun City because we know we have to. We know we can take more responsibility for the delivery of regional services if we do. And we know this is the right decision to explore for our community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:11:22] And Bret has talked about the fact that, like, the city has been in this position before and chose not to grow, and it didn’t help their budget. Back in the 1960s, you know, there was a piece of land that Suisun had the opportunity to annex and it later became home to a Budweiser Brewery and the Jelly Belly Factory. And Fairfield, Suisun’s neighbor, annexed that land instead and it helped their city budget. And now Suisun is in this position again. And I think there’s an element of like FOMO here of like we missed out once, we don’t wanna miss out again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bret Prebula \u003c/strong>[00:12:01] We miss 100% of the shots we don’t take. That’s a Wayne Gretzky quote. That’s where we are, ready to take our shot and on the edge of something bigger than ourselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Princess Washington \u003c/strong>[00:12:19] I’m no fool up here, I’m gonna be the only no vote, I’m well aware of that. But I just wanna express my concerns as to why I’m voting this way in respect to my council who I do know are acting in the best interest of the city along with staff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] Council member Princess Washington also spoke at the meeting and she has consistently voted against annexation because she has major hesitations about the project and the city just taking on a bunch of land.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Princess Washington \u003c/strong>[00:12:47] I think that this is a large undertaking and quite frankly, a large headache. And will it really yield the benefit that we want? I haven’t heard with certainty that it will.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:12:58] She feels like it’s gonna just take a lot of time and effort to answer the questions that are involved and it could just be a distraction from what the city needs to solve like its housing crisis and other issues that she feels are kind of more front of front of mind.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Princess Washington \u003c/strong>[00:13:17] There’s some agility in being small. And I think that this idea that being huge, it will solve all our problems is a fallacy. Because if that were the case, no other city would have deficits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:28] What about California Forever? What are they saying about this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:13:32] California Forever hasn’t really offered a lot of public comment, at least not the way that they were last year. They have offered statements time and time again, basically saying that they’re interested in working with cities that want to talk about annexation. They’re interested in trying to figure out what’s right for everyone and working with various stakeholders. Members of the company have come out during city council meetings to speak during public comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jennifer Hernandez \u003c/strong>[00:14:01] It has to be a net gain for the the citizens of Suisun to pass muster, to pass muster but you can’t know that until you study it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:13] Jennifer Hernandez, for example, she is the lawyer representing California Forever. She spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, basically saying, like, let us study this. Like, nothing is set in stone. We’re just trying to get some answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jennifer Hernandez \u003c/strong>[00:14:27] You have a team already in place that is set up to make sure everything’s right for you. Let us study this with you and let’s make sure it’s at no cost to the city or its taxpayers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:48] I mean, all that said, Adhiti, how ultimately did Suisun City vote on the idea of studying annexing California Forever’s land?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:14:57] The city council voted almost unanimously. Council member Washington voted against it. And so now what we’re looking at is the city will spend the next few months hiring consultants and basically a team of people who will start compiling a series of reports that will answer some of these big questions. One question that they’re going to have to answer is, how will this affect the environment? How is it managing the services, you know, water, sewage, police department, fire department? How is managing all of that within its existing borders? And how will it manage that land that it wants to annex?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:49] These are really big questions, and as we know, it takes a lot of time and effort to even build in California. But I do have to ask, I mean, what is in it for California Forever here? I mean is this basically their way of getting around voters to move forward with its vision of a new city?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:16] What this process means is that yes, there will not be an opportunity for this kind of like direct democracy angle where people will get to kind of say, yes, I want this in my county, or no, I don’t want it in my county. You know, California Forever’s most vocal and I would argue largest opponent group, which is called Solano Together, they are very adamant that they want a vote in this. They want a say in whether this happens or not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:16:47] This is the Suisun City’s way of saying we’re all in on California Forever.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:16:54] Alex Schafran, he’s a land use expert and someone who has raised serious questions about California Forever’s project. And he kind of had a different take, which is that annexation could be a less bad way of getting this project built.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:17:11] The ballot measure they wrote was such a terrible document for democracy, this 90-page, endless document that people are supposedly voting on. It was an absolute travesty of how they were going to do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:17:23] Even if they pass that up-down vote, let’s just say that they got voter approval, we actually don’t know what happens after that. We don’t what legal bearing California Forever has over that land and what gets developed there if the voters approve something like that, if the voter’s don’t approve it, like, like we, you know, we don’t no.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:17:41] We have a system that is designed to do governance and that now it is in that system and that’s where it should be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:17:49] But annexation is a process that already exists, and we kind of know the steps along the way. Annexation also involves a lot of negotiation. It’s a lot like talking with public agencies and private entities and elected officials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alex Schafran \u003c/strong>[00:18:05] At least this gives them some voice and some control. They will be able to negotiate some benefit out of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:18:16] I guess what questions do you have about what this could all mean for Suisun City? Because again, I mean, we’re talking about a city expanding by nine times, and that would be huge, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Adhiti Bandlamudi \u003c/strong>[00:18:34] As a housing reporter, the question that is front of mind right now is, is this actually sustainable for Suisun? Will this actually be good for the city or is this just a way for California Forever to realize its vision? Now that we’re getting into this very public process, it will also be interesting. To see how the company influences the elected officials who are now in charge of these decisions. So we’ll be watching.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The UC Berkeley Students Who Want a Central American Studies Department",
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"content": "\u003cp>Since Donald Trump’s first term in office, a UC Berkeley student group called Central Americans for Empowerment (CAFE) has been pushing for a Central American Studies department. For them, it would help raise visibility of Central Americans whose specific stories often get lost in broader conversations about Latinos and immigration in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC4135996503&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:09] Early in Donald Trump’s first term as president, caravans of Central Americans seeking asylum were arriving to Tijuana at the border with San Diego. Many groups here in the U.S. Made their way there to provide direct aid to the newly arrived migrants. One of them was a group of Central American students from UC Berkeley who’d started meeting as a way to build community and visibility around issues affecting Central Americans. On campus, they also had their own dreams of starting a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:01:54] There was just a lot around immigration and there was a lot around Central American migration and like the way Central Americans were being described in the public that really came to the forefront. And so I think it was very much perfect timing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:13] Cal students with roots in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica wanted a closer study of their cultural backgrounds. For them, their specific stories often got lost in broader conversations about Latinos and even immigration in the U.S. And establishing a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley was one answer to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:02:42] Being Central American, we’re always seen as less than, just because our countries aren’t known as much. Being Salvadoran, everyone always assumed that, oh, you’re either affiliated with gang violence or they just assume a lot about the Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:59] Today, the students fighting for a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:03:18] According to the Census, the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area has a population of around 145,000 immigrants from Central America. So that’s also like not including like first gens like me who were born here, but our parents are from Central America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:43] Mel Velasquez is the production intern for The Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:03:48] Here in California, there’s a large population of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. They make up a majority of the Latine community, which is natural, there are more people in Mexico than in Central America. But what these other sources I’ve talked to and other people I’ve talk to have spoken about is just how a lot of the conversations are very Mexico-centric. It’s very like common for people to just be like, oh yeah, okay, so you’re Latino, so, you’re Mexican. That’s something I’ve gotten like my entire life. I actually didn’t even know I was Central American until like kindergarten. I always thought I was Mexican because other kids would be like yeah. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:39] Yeah, but like, as you were saying, there’s many people from these countries have their own histories. And for, I guess, people who don’t know what are some big moments that led Central Americans to come here to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:04:53] The second half of the 20th century, there were the civil wars in Central America, which led a lot of folks from these countries to flee here, into the Mission District in particular. In Honduras, there was the presidential coup in 2009 that also led a lot of people here. And also the civil wars that happened from around like the 60s to the 90s. They were Cold War fears from the United States that like, oh, we’re gonna have communist regime like in our backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ronald Reagan \u003c/strong>[00:05:34] Central America is America. It’s at our doorstep, and it’s become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:52] Well, I know you met someone whose family is from Central America to talk about some of these just sort of shared histories that you’re talking about. Tell me about Arlette Jacomé. Who is she and what’s her background?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:07] I spoke with Arlette Jacomé and she was a student at UC Berkeley from around 2012 to 2017 and she’s Guatemalan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:06:19] Specifically tried to take Spanish classes and Latin American studies classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:24] I wanted to talk to Arlette because she was the co-founder of CAFE, which is Central Americans for Empowerment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:34] How does Arlette describe her first years at Cal?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:38] So she felt like she was really alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:06:42] I could spot Central Americans pretty easily and I was like you’re gonna be my friend but in terms of like structure or like organizationally or systemically speaking I was lonely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:54] She was a first gen college student and she was looking for a group to be a part of that reflected her identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:07:04] But I always wanted more. I always want more Central American community. And in my heart of hearts, since probably freshman year, I was like, if we had a Central American group, I would join and I wish I could do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:07:17] And there’s like other clubs, Latine affinity groups like MECHA, which is like a nationwide organization. And then there’s smaller clubs here and there that have specific needs for Latino students, but that she didn’t really identify with. And so she wanted to start CAFE, which is Central Americans for Empowerment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:42] I mean, this is 2016, 2017. What is the context around this time and what was happening in the news around immigration in particular as Arlette and other students were forming CAFE?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:07:56] Yeah, so around this time was the first Trump administration. So this was the beginning of the anti-immigration rhetoric about building a border wall and a lot of racist comments about Mexicans in general and also, like, Central Americans lumped in there as well. So, there was a lot of Central Americans coming into the United States during this time as well and more specifically the Honduran caravans that were coming here. And they were at the San Diego-Tijuana border, the U.S.-Mexico border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CNN reporter \u003c/strong>[00:08:42] I want to show you exactly what’s happening behind me. You can see on this side, there are quite a few of people from the caravan that has arrived here to the US-Mexico border. They sort of have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:08:55] So the cafe wasn’t built around that, those issues specifically, but it just happened to be that this was the political climate that CAFE was started in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] At the time, the media was just disparaging Central Americans and the caravans. There weren’t a lot of spaces for Central Americans in general to really like talk about that in a way that was like personal. Cause for us, it’s personal, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:09:25] They did a lot of direct aid for the Honduran caravan at the border. Some students collected like clothes and money and toiletries and things that anybody can need. They went down south to Tijuana and they were talking to the women of the caravan and just giving them grooming services and helping them just feel normal, feel like a person. Another big goal of theirs was to create a Central American Studies Department. It doesn’t exist at Berkeley. Actually, no university in the Bay Area has a Central American Studies department. They have classes, but the first program for Central American Studies was created at Cal State Northridge. In the beginning, it was just like an idea. It was a dream. They didn’t actually think like when they were there that it would happen because… It’s a long process to create a department at a university. Other ethnicities and races have their own departments as well. And they have like the faculty and staff to educate other folks about things like Chicanx studies, and which is a very popular and nationwide program and that a lot of different universities have. So these students are like, okay, well, this exists somewhere. It exists at Cal State Northridge. Why can’t we have it over here? They want academics to teach Central American history, which is what they feel is very intertwined with U.S. History. The folks I talked to, they told me that they didn’t learn any of this when they were in school, and they were very interested in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:11:25] Central American studies is more than just students who are Central American, who wanna identify within this higher ed space. It’s about understanding a history that is very American because the U.S. Has done so much with their imperialistic endeavors that has impacted Central Americans to where we’re here and now we have this interconnected history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:52] Coming up, how CAFE students today are trying to move the needle on a Central American Studies Department. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:09] So CAFE started around the beginning of President Trump’s first term. It’s now 2025. How has it grown? Or changed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:13:18] So it’s definitely gone through some ebbs and flows throughout the years, and especially during COVID. But now, in 2025, there’s more students who are active in organizing around a Central American Studies department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:13:35] We’re fighting for a department that’s just very important to us, but then also to the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:13:43] I talked to Lesly Reyes Reyes. She’s going to be a sophomore at Berkeley. She’s a pre-med major. She was really ambitious right at orientation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:13:55] And I see that they posted, oh, we’re having a board application. So I was like, should I just go for it? I was, like, I might regret if I don’t. So I went ahead and like applied for board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:14:06] Now, she is working on a class about Central American migration and identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:14:14] We’re going to start with a timeline from the 1930s all the way to the present. And then later on, we’re focusing on identifying the different murals that are related to Central American diaspora in the Mission District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:14:27] There’s this thing at Berkeley called DeCal. So it’s basically a student-led class and there’s a faculty advisor, but it’s everything that a traditional class has, a syllabus, coursework, readings, lectures, and you can get units for them. She already made the syllabus. Now she’s working on the lectures and the homework and the readings. And so she told me that she wants this. Class to like encourage people of all backgrounds to join, not just Central American students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:15:05] Someone that’s not Central American. I would just want them to feel more educated and kind of feel like, not pity that’s definitely not something I want someone to feel not pity for us, but kind of more like whoa like you guys are strong like you did that and like y’all are still fighting for your identities here in like the US\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:29] Why is doing this an important piece of the puzzle to eventually establishing a Central American Studies Department?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:15:38] I talked to Professor Enrique Lima. He is a continuing lecturer at Berkeley and he teaches two of the Central American classes at Berkeley. He was telling me that the university cares about enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enrique Lima \u003c/strong>[00:15:55] My main concern for them was the university cares about numbers. The university is at some level an institution that cares about money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:08] And if the students can prove that they have the numbers in this class, so if they’re consistent with teaching the DeCal, maybe if that has demand, there can be another one, and hopefully it’ll snowball into something like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:28] What does Professor Lima think about CAFE’s goal of establishing a Central American Studies Department?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:37] Yeah, he’s excited about the idea, but he’s also a little skeptical about it as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enrique Lima \u003c/strong>[00:16:45] It’s a lot of work. It’s not just where would it be housed, all the staff that would it would require.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:53] It’s really hard being a college student, first of all, and then a lot of them being first gen college students and also having to support their parents and their family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enrique Lima \u003c/strong>[00:17:05] It would require immense planning. So it would be a multi-year process, I would imagine, even after the approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:17:13] The new class he started teaching this past semester, he told me that it took a lot to just even make one class that’s like approved by the university. And from start to finish, it took over a year for him to get the syllabus approved and the coursework approved. So he’s like, this is not gonna happen for a few years at least.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:40] And not to mention students graduating and moving on. And are people like Lesly feeling hopeful that they can actually make this happen?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:17:51] Lesly told me that she’s just really passionate about Central American history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:17:57] For me as a student that’s teaching the class, I hope to feel like I did something more. We’re all like planting our seed to hopefully get the fruit, which is the Central American Studies Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:18:09] There’s no exact timeline for like, this department could be created. It’s more about proving to the university that there is a demand for a program and a department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:18:27] Well, Mel, this all started back in 2017, but what do the students you talk with say about how they’re thinking about the importance of CAFE and even the Central American Studies Department in this particular moment that we’re in now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:18:44] The students that I spoke to and the former students as well, were telling me that it’s important to know the context, especially right now with the ICE raids that are happening. It’s important for people to be educated around why Central Americans are immigrating here anyways. The students I spoke too were telling me that there are conditions in Central America that are, they’re there because the United States had influence in it in a way, so that led them to immigrating over here so they could flee violence. They could flee political repression. So they want people to know that there’s a reason why Central Americans are here. And there’s also a reason why we should protect them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:19:38] Yeah, I mean, what’s your takeaway from your reporting, Mel? I know this came from a very personal place for you, and now that you’ve finished all your reporting. I mean what, what are you walking away with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:19:51] Um, I’m feeling very proud of my community, actually. I hope that people can also see that we’re beyond just immigration and drug violence and crime that’s happening. Even here in the Bay Area, that rhetoric has been going on for a long time, especially when it comes to drug trafficking. We’re more than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:20:23] Well, Mel Velasquez, The Bay’s intern, thank you so much for joining me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:20:28] It’s always a pleasure, Ericka.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:20:37] That was Mel Velasquez, The Bay’s beloved production intern. This 38-minute conversation with Mel was cut down and edited by Alan Montecillo. Mel produced this episode, scored it, and added all the tape. Extra production support by me and Jessica Kariisa.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Since Donald Trump’s first term in office, a UC Berkeley student group called Central Americans for Empowerment (CAFE) has been pushing for a Central American Studies department. For them, it would help raise visibility of Central Americans whose specific stories often get lost in broader conversations about Latinos and immigration in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC4135996503&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:09] Early in Donald Trump’s first term as president, caravans of Central Americans seeking asylum were arriving to Tijuana at the border with San Diego. Many groups here in the U.S. Made their way there to provide direct aid to the newly arrived migrants. One of them was a group of Central American students from UC Berkeley who’d started meeting as a way to build community and visibility around issues affecting Central Americans. On campus, they also had their own dreams of starting a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:01:54] There was just a lot around immigration and there was a lot around Central American migration and like the way Central Americans were being described in the public that really came to the forefront. And so I think it was very much perfect timing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:13] Cal students with roots in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Costa Rica wanted a closer study of their cultural backgrounds. For them, their specific stories often got lost in broader conversations about Latinos and even immigration in the U.S. And establishing a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley was one answer to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:02:42] Being Central American, we’re always seen as less than, just because our countries aren’t known as much. Being Salvadoran, everyone always assumed that, oh, you’re either affiliated with gang violence or they just assume a lot about the Civil War.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:59] Today, the students fighting for a Central American Studies Department at UC Berkeley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:03:18] According to the Census, the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area has a population of around 145,000 immigrants from Central America. So that’s also like not including like first gens like me who were born here, but our parents are from Central America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:43] Mel Velasquez is the production intern for The Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:03:48] Here in California, there’s a large population of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. They make up a majority of the Latine community, which is natural, there are more people in Mexico than in Central America. But what these other sources I’ve talked to and other people I’ve talk to have spoken about is just how a lot of the conversations are very Mexico-centric. It’s very like common for people to just be like, oh yeah, okay, so you’re Latino, so, you’re Mexican. That’s something I’ve gotten like my entire life. I actually didn’t even know I was Central American until like kindergarten. I always thought I was Mexican because other kids would be like yeah. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:39] Yeah, but like, as you were saying, there’s many people from these countries have their own histories. And for, I guess, people who don’t know what are some big moments that led Central Americans to come here to the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:04:53] The second half of the 20th century, there were the civil wars in Central America, which led a lot of folks from these countries to flee here, into the Mission District in particular. In Honduras, there was the presidential coup in 2009 that also led a lot of people here. And also the civil wars that happened from around like the 60s to the 90s. They were Cold War fears from the United States that like, oh, we’re gonna have communist regime like in our backyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ronald Reagan \u003c/strong>[00:05:34] Central America is America. It’s at our doorstep, and it’s become the stage for a bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua to install communism by force throughout the hemisphere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:52] Well, I know you met someone whose family is from Central America to talk about some of these just sort of shared histories that you’re talking about. Tell me about Arlette Jacomé. Who is she and what’s her background?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:07] I spoke with Arlette Jacomé and she was a student at UC Berkeley from around 2012 to 2017 and she’s Guatemalan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:06:19] Specifically tried to take Spanish classes and Latin American studies classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:24] I wanted to talk to Arlette because she was the co-founder of CAFE, which is Central Americans for Empowerment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:34] How does Arlette describe her first years at Cal?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:38] So she felt like she was really alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:06:42] I could spot Central Americans pretty easily and I was like you’re gonna be my friend but in terms of like structure or like organizationally or systemically speaking I was lonely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:06:54] She was a first gen college student and she was looking for a group to be a part of that reflected her identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:07:04] But I always wanted more. I always want more Central American community. And in my heart of hearts, since probably freshman year, I was like, if we had a Central American group, I would join and I wish I could do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:07:17] And there’s like other clubs, Latine affinity groups like MECHA, which is like a nationwide organization. And then there’s smaller clubs here and there that have specific needs for Latino students, but that she didn’t really identify with. And so she wanted to start CAFE, which is Central Americans for Empowerment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:42] I mean, this is 2016, 2017. What is the context around this time and what was happening in the news around immigration in particular as Arlette and other students were forming CAFE?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:07:56] Yeah, so around this time was the first Trump administration. So this was the beginning of the anti-immigration rhetoric about building a border wall and a lot of racist comments about Mexicans in general and also, like, Central Americans lumped in there as well. So, there was a lot of Central Americans coming into the United States during this time as well and more specifically the Honduran caravans that were coming here. And they were at the San Diego-Tijuana border, the U.S.-Mexico border.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CNN reporter \u003c/strong>[00:08:42] I want to show you exactly what’s happening behind me. You can see on this side, there are quite a few of people from the caravan that has arrived here to the US-Mexico border. They sort of have.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:08:55] So the cafe wasn’t built around that, those issues specifically, but it just happened to be that this was the political climate that CAFE was started in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] At the time, the media was just disparaging Central Americans and the caravans. There weren’t a lot of spaces for Central Americans in general to really like talk about that in a way that was like personal. Cause for us, it’s personal, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:09:25] They did a lot of direct aid for the Honduran caravan at the border. Some students collected like clothes and money and toiletries and things that anybody can need. They went down south to Tijuana and they were talking to the women of the caravan and just giving them grooming services and helping them just feel normal, feel like a person. Another big goal of theirs was to create a Central American Studies Department. It doesn’t exist at Berkeley. Actually, no university in the Bay Area has a Central American Studies department. They have classes, but the first program for Central American Studies was created at Cal State Northridge. In the beginning, it was just like an idea. It was a dream. They didn’t actually think like when they were there that it would happen because… It’s a long process to create a department at a university. Other ethnicities and races have their own departments as well. And they have like the faculty and staff to educate other folks about things like Chicanx studies, and which is a very popular and nationwide program and that a lot of different universities have. So these students are like, okay, well, this exists somewhere. It exists at Cal State Northridge. Why can’t we have it over here? They want academics to teach Central American history, which is what they feel is very intertwined with U.S. History. The folks I talked to, they told me that they didn’t learn any of this when they were in school, and they were very interested in it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Arlette Jacomé \u003c/strong>[00:11:25] Central American studies is more than just students who are Central American, who wanna identify within this higher ed space. It’s about understanding a history that is very American because the U.S. Has done so much with their imperialistic endeavors that has impacted Central Americans to where we’re here and now we have this interconnected history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:52] Coming up, how CAFE students today are trying to move the needle on a Central American Studies Department. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:09] So CAFE started around the beginning of President Trump’s first term. It’s now 2025. How has it grown? Or changed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:13:18] So it’s definitely gone through some ebbs and flows throughout the years, and especially during COVID. But now, in 2025, there’s more students who are active in organizing around a Central American Studies department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:13:35] We’re fighting for a department that’s just very important to us, but then also to the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:13:43] I talked to Lesly Reyes Reyes. She’s going to be a sophomore at Berkeley. She’s a pre-med major. She was really ambitious right at orientation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:13:55] And I see that they posted, oh, we’re having a board application. So I was like, should I just go for it? I was, like, I might regret if I don’t. So I went ahead and like applied for board.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:14:06] Now, she is working on a class about Central American migration and identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:14:14] We’re going to start with a timeline from the 1930s all the way to the present. And then later on, we’re focusing on identifying the different murals that are related to Central American diaspora in the Mission District.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:14:27] There’s this thing at Berkeley called DeCal. So it’s basically a student-led class and there’s a faculty advisor, but it’s everything that a traditional class has, a syllabus, coursework, readings, lectures, and you can get units for them. She already made the syllabus. Now she’s working on the lectures and the homework and the readings. And so she told me that she wants this. Class to like encourage people of all backgrounds to join, not just Central American students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:15:05] Someone that’s not Central American. I would just want them to feel more educated and kind of feel like, not pity that’s definitely not something I want someone to feel not pity for us, but kind of more like whoa like you guys are strong like you did that and like y’all are still fighting for your identities here in like the US\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:29] Why is doing this an important piece of the puzzle to eventually establishing a Central American Studies Department?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:15:38] I talked to Professor Enrique Lima. He is a continuing lecturer at Berkeley and he teaches two of the Central American classes at Berkeley. He was telling me that the university cares about enrollment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enrique Lima \u003c/strong>[00:15:55] My main concern for them was the university cares about numbers. The university is at some level an institution that cares about money.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:08] And if the students can prove that they have the numbers in this class, so if they’re consistent with teaching the DeCal, maybe if that has demand, there can be another one, and hopefully it’ll snowball into something like that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:28] What does Professor Lima think about CAFE’s goal of establishing a Central American Studies Department?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:37] Yeah, he’s excited about the idea, but he’s also a little skeptical about it as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enrique Lima \u003c/strong>[00:16:45] It’s a lot of work. It’s not just where would it be housed, all the staff that would it would require.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:16:53] It’s really hard being a college student, first of all, and then a lot of them being first gen college students and also having to support their parents and their family.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Enrique Lima \u003c/strong>[00:17:05] It would require immense planning. So it would be a multi-year process, I would imagine, even after the approval.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:17:13] The new class he started teaching this past semester, he told me that it took a lot to just even make one class that’s like approved by the university. And from start to finish, it took over a year for him to get the syllabus approved and the coursework approved. So he’s like, this is not gonna happen for a few years at least.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:40] And not to mention students graduating and moving on. And are people like Lesly feeling hopeful that they can actually make this happen?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:17:51] Lesly told me that she’s just really passionate about Central American history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesly Reyes Reyes \u003c/strong>[00:17:57] For me as a student that’s teaching the class, I hope to feel like I did something more. We’re all like planting our seed to hopefully get the fruit, which is the Central American Studies Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:18:09] There’s no exact timeline for like, this department could be created. It’s more about proving to the university that there is a demand for a program and a department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:18:27] Well, Mel, this all started back in 2017, but what do the students you talk with say about how they’re thinking about the importance of CAFE and even the Central American Studies Department in this particular moment that we’re in now?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:18:44] The students that I spoke to and the former students as well, were telling me that it’s important to know the context, especially right now with the ICE raids that are happening. It’s important for people to be educated around why Central Americans are immigrating here anyways. The students I spoke too were telling me that there are conditions in Central America that are, they’re there because the United States had influence in it in a way, so that led them to immigrating over here so they could flee violence. They could flee political repression. So they want people to know that there’s a reason why Central Americans are here. And there’s also a reason why we should protect them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:19:38] Yeah, I mean, what’s your takeaway from your reporting, Mel? I know this came from a very personal place for you, and now that you’ve finished all your reporting. I mean what, what are you walking away with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:19:51] Um, I’m feeling very proud of my community, actually. I hope that people can also see that we’re beyond just immigration and drug violence and crime that’s happening. Even here in the Bay Area, that rhetoric has been going on for a long time, especially when it comes to drug trafficking. We’re more than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:20:23] Well, Mel Velasquez, The Bay’s intern, thank you so much for joining me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Mel Velasquez \u003c/strong>[00:20:28] It’s always a pleasure, Ericka.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:20:37] That was Mel Velasquez, The Bay’s beloved production intern. This 38-minute conversation with Mel was cut down and edited by Alan Montecillo. Mel produced this episode, scored it, and added all the tape. Extra production support by me and Jessica Kariisa.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "for-immigrant-youth-local-soccer-leagues-are-a-rare-safe-space",
"title": "For Immigrant Youth, Local Soccer Leagues Are a Rare Safe Space",
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"headTitle": "For Immigrant Youth, Local Soccer Leagues Are a Rare Safe Space | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown has left few safe spaces for immigrants. But in the East Bay, local soccer leagues have provided a rare sense of psychological safety for immigrant newcomers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1325111478&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:22] \u003c/em>Truly safe places for immigrants are hard to come by these days. Even places once considered safe, like schools or churches or hospitals, aren’t off limits anymore for immigration and customs enforcement. But one rare place of solace for immigrant youth and newcomers to the Bay are local soccer leagues\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:49] \u003c/em>this ethos of soccer as a sort of global language and this really emotionally safe space is really core to how they operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:58] \u003c/em>Today, how immigrant youth are finding solace in soccer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:06] \u003c/em>Obviously, immigration’s probably the biggest story right now. You’re an immigration reporter. I imagine you’ve been really busy. But why did you want to focus on immigrant youth and young newcomers in particular?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:22] \u003c/em>I really wanted to look at how this population was experiencing the first few months of the Trump administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:32] \u003c/em>Erika Hellerstein is a senior immigration reporter for El Timpano, a Spanish language news organization covering issues affecting Latino and Mayan immigrant communities in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:46] \u003c/em>Alameda County has the second largest population of unaccompanied minors in California, which some people also refer to as newcomers. So these are children who came to the U.S. On their own, and they’re often placed in households with a sponsor, and that sponsor tends to be a family member or somebody maybe who their parents knew back at home. So there’s a lot of young immigrant children who are resettling in the Bay Area. Oakland Unified School District in particular has a lot of not just unaccompanied minors, but children maybe who did come with their family members as well within the school district. And so as the Trump administration issued a policy revoking sort of longstanding guidance that said basically immigration enforcement can’t conduct ICE raids at schools. I really wanted to focus on the emotional journey of newcomers as they experience the Trump administration and the federal immigration policies that are coming down the pipeline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:58] \u003c/em>Well, I know you talked with a young person who recently immigrated to Alameda County. Tell me about Adelaida. Who is she and what’s her story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:07] \u003c/em>So Adelaida came to California when she was 12. She came from a pretty rural part of northern Guatemala. Adelaide asked us just to use her first name because she’s an immigrant and wanted to maintain her safety and security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:23] \u003c/em>And when did you arrive in the United States?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:26] \u003c/em>I arrived in 2019, at the beginning of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:30] \u003c/em>She arrived in the U.S. When she was 12. It was the winter of 2019. And so just as she was kind of beginning this process of trying to acclimate to her new home, the pandemic happened and was completely disruptive, which we all remember, obviously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:48] \u003c/em>When you arrived, were you in a virtual school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:53] \u003c/em>Yes, we were in a school, but it was virtual. But it’s not the same. Communicating with people is such a vital thing in this life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:01] \u003c/em>You know, school shut down, and so just kind of all of the, like, places that a teenager or a soon-to-be teenager would try to, you know acclimate to a new place and make friends and just build relationships, immediately kind of shut down and she was just shut down at home. And she, you know, she was… Trying to learn English. So it was also just really hard to keep up with school. She described it as sort of a series of two shocks at once, coming here and then experiencing the shock of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:31] \u003c/em>And during the pandemic, we couldn’t do anything. When we left the pandemic it was difficult to adapt to the situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:38] \u003c/em>And that sense of isolation really persisted for her over the years. She kind of struggled to rebound from the pandemic and just never really feeling like she found her community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:54] \u003c/em>Tell me about the first time she came across a soccer team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:59] \u003c/em>Walking home from school one day, a bit over a year ago, and saw a group of girls like outside at a high school soccer field, messing around. She just felt immediately intrigued by this group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:15] \u003c/em>They were laughing, having fun, playing so freely, and I said, I want that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:26] \u003c/em>The way that she saw them playing, she just saw so much freedom. So those are the words that she used. They just felt very free to her. They felt like they were having fun, messing around, joking. And that was exactly what she had been looking for. And then she learned that they were part of a team that was overseen by a nonprofit called Soccer Without Borders that basically staffs soccer teams largely made up of refugee and immigrant youth in the Bay Area, but also in other parts of the country. And she approached the coach and was like, how do I join? Sign me up. She became a really, really committed player and member of this squad, the majority of whom are girls from Central America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:17] \u003c/em>So these are people just like Adelaida who share, I imagine, many of the same experiences of immigrating here and looking for community. And I know you actually went to one of these matches. What was it like?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girls at soccer game: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:31] \u003c/em>Get up, get up, you’re good, you good. You got it, you got it!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:35] \u003c/em>Yeah, so I went to a few games during the team’s spring season and I went to one in April. And it was a really vibrant environment. There was the team’s family members that were there and cheering them on. And it was really like intense competitive game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maddie Boston: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:54] \u003c/em>Remember what is the best shape to pass in it’s a triangle the reason why I do this\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:00] \u003c/em>Maddie Boston is a program manager at Soccer Without Borders. And so when I went to the games, she was coaching a team. And her role is to just basically be relentlessly enthusiastic. And I was just kind of blown away by her energy level that she was able to sustain the entire game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maddie Boston: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:21] \u003c/em>Keep it up, girls! Keep trying! Come on, come on, Come on!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:23] \u003c/em>But also, I think what Maddie kind of embodies is just that it was a very fun-loving league. The girls are really goofy, joking around, having a lot of fun, and I think expressing themselves fully in a way that maybe is difficult to do in other spheres of their lives\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girls at soccer game: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:42] \u003c/em>Thank you, I’m so proud of you! Look how good your English is! Oh, it’s beautiful, girls! Okay, get your team over there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:49] \u003c/em>A lot of them did describe it as we’re like, we’re creating this one kind of safe space that these children have, especially as the administration is, you know, coming after immigrant communities. Schools are no longer necessarily feeling safe. Churches are no long necessarily feeling save. Immigration policy is changing every five minutes, so spaces that maybe felt okay, like immigration court, now aren’t because there’s detentions. So… They’re trying to create, I think at the very least, a sense of emotional safety and security in these fields and spaces. And I think that is something that I saw, just a level of trust between the players internally with each other, but also the coaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:40] \u003c/em>Coming up, what immigrant youth say about the importance of soccer. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:51] \u003c/em>I mean, talk a little bit more about this organization, Soccer Without Borders. It seems like it’s specifically made for immigrant youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:01] \u003c/em>It is, and that’s who’s playing on these teams. Places have used, and organizations have used soccer as a integration tool for children to feel more comfortable. I knew about the work of Soccer Without Borders, and it just seemed like a really natural place to start speaking to people because they work exclusively really with refugee and immigrant youth. And I think they, this ethos of soccer is this sort of global language and this really emotionally safe space is really core to how they operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie Annand: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:36] \u003c/em>I would say that soccer is a very common and excited response for many of my clients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:43] \u003c/em>Katie Annand is an immigration attorney at Immigrant Legal Defense. She basically said that soccer provides a sense of freedom and emotional security for newcomers that’s very distinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie Annand: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:56] \u003c/em>I remember working on a declaration with a client and talking about, again, things that bring this client joy. And we’re talking about soccer. And I asked him how he feels when he plays soccer. And there was no hesitation. His first words were, I feel free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:15] \u003c/em>And that was interesting to me because that’s something Adelaida told me as well. And so there is this through line. I think something about soccer allows children to feel unburdened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:26] \u003c/em>Yeah, tell me a little bit more about Adelaida. I want to come back to her. I mean, what does she tell you about how soccer has helped her through some of the challenges that she’s experienced as a newcomer in the Bay Area?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:40] \u003c/em>She really pinpointed soccer as the starting point for her of beginning to consider Oakland her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:54] \u003c/em>It has helped me to feel more integrated to this country, to them, to the school, more part of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:03] \u003c/em>By the end of the conversation that we had, we started, she came here, it was a pandemic. Everything shut down, she was completely isolated. That was 2019. Now it’s 2025. She told me, Oakland’s my home. I consider this place 100% my home, so to have that kind of trajectory was interesting and she told me that’s, yeah, that’s because of soccer. That’s because the people that I met, people who have played on team sports. Maybe can relate to that, that you just develop relationships with other players on your team or the members of your team. And she kind of all of a sudden had this built-in network of people who could not, who not only shared her experience because they were also newcomers and spoke the language that she speaks, Spanish, but could give her advice on like, maybe if, you know, some people were a little bit older and had, or had been here a little longer. Had a little more experience and would just give her tips on like, here’s how you deal with this thing at school. Or, you know, just kind of insider info that I think she was feeling like she didn’t have before when she was just cooped up at home and then searching for like her friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:19] \u003c/em>And I mean, you talked earlier about there being just so much fear right now, even in schools and in courthouses and churches, places that were traditionally considered safe places. I mean did you get the sense that folks who are part of this league are feeling safe playing soccer outside with a bunch of other immigrants or do they worry about being a target even on the field?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:45] \u003c/em>I think the stories that they shared with me were that they feel safe. But I think it’s emotionally safe. And that’s maybe different from the realities of, yeah, this is a time when we’re all seeing what happened in LA, and there’s protests, and people are getting picked up at courthouses and at Home Depots. And so it’s a constantly ever-shifting environment of, where are you actually safe? But what I heard from them was at the very least a sense of psychological safety, which when you consider how much of the intent of the administration is also to, I think, create fear. Psychological safety for a lot of people is also really important. Some kids, yeah, they come to practice and they want to talk about what’s going on. Some kids really, really don’t. Some of the coaches said, you know, if it comes up, it comes up, but like our job is not to facilitate a discussion every practice about the administration if that’s not where kids are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:50] \u003c/em>Yeah, and as you say that, it just makes me think about how amazing it is that just thinking about and looking at the photos of those girls on the field, how much it took all of them to get to that field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:18:04] \u003c/em>Yeah, it’s sort of a process that it’s generative. Like, they help each other. Adelaida, what I thought was so interesting was she said, you know, I kind of want to start a league of soccer players myself. Like, I’m going to go away to college. Maybe I can do, like, Soccer Without Borders 2.0 somewhere, right? At one of the games, I actually saw alumni from the program who were in their 20s come back just to watch, you know? And they’re having conversations. They’re seeing the younger players. Maybe they’re seeing themselves in a lot of the younger player, but then the younger look to them is like, oh my God, look at how cool and funny they are. And they really seem like they know their way around this new state and city. So I think. They find each other and then they also inspire each other.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown has left few safe spaces for immigrants. But in the East Bay, local soccer leagues have provided a rare sense of psychological safety for immigrant newcomers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1325111478&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003cb>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:22] \u003c/em>Truly safe places for immigrants are hard to come by these days. Even places once considered safe, like schools or churches or hospitals, aren’t off limits anymore for immigration and customs enforcement. But one rare place of solace for immigrant youth and newcomers to the Bay are local soccer leagues\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:49] \u003c/em>this ethos of soccer as a sort of global language and this really emotionally safe space is really core to how they operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:58] \u003c/em>Today, how immigrant youth are finding solace in soccer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:06] \u003c/em>Obviously, immigration’s probably the biggest story right now. You’re an immigration reporter. I imagine you’ve been really busy. But why did you want to focus on immigrant youth and young newcomers in particular?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:22] \u003c/em>I really wanted to look at how this population was experiencing the first few months of the Trump administration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:32] \u003c/em>Erika Hellerstein is a senior immigration reporter for El Timpano, a Spanish language news organization covering issues affecting Latino and Mayan immigrant communities in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:46] \u003c/em>Alameda County has the second largest population of unaccompanied minors in California, which some people also refer to as newcomers. So these are children who came to the U.S. On their own, and they’re often placed in households with a sponsor, and that sponsor tends to be a family member or somebody maybe who their parents knew back at home. So there’s a lot of young immigrant children who are resettling in the Bay Area. Oakland Unified School District in particular has a lot of not just unaccompanied minors, but children maybe who did come with their family members as well within the school district. And so as the Trump administration issued a policy revoking sort of longstanding guidance that said basically immigration enforcement can’t conduct ICE raids at schools. I really wanted to focus on the emotional journey of newcomers as they experience the Trump administration and the federal immigration policies that are coming down the pipeline.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:58] \u003c/em>Well, I know you talked with a young person who recently immigrated to Alameda County. Tell me about Adelaida. Who is she and what’s her story?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:07] \u003c/em>So Adelaida came to California when she was 12. She came from a pretty rural part of northern Guatemala. Adelaide asked us just to use her first name because she’s an immigrant and wanted to maintain her safety and security.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:23] \u003c/em>And when did you arrive in the United States?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:26] \u003c/em>I arrived in 2019, at the beginning of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:30] \u003c/em>She arrived in the U.S. When she was 12. It was the winter of 2019. And so just as she was kind of beginning this process of trying to acclimate to her new home, the pandemic happened and was completely disruptive, which we all remember, obviously.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:48] \u003c/em>When you arrived, were you in a virtual school?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:53] \u003c/em>Yes, we were in a school, but it was virtual. But it’s not the same. Communicating with people is such a vital thing in this life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:01] \u003c/em>You know, school shut down, and so just kind of all of the, like, places that a teenager or a soon-to-be teenager would try to, you know acclimate to a new place and make friends and just build relationships, immediately kind of shut down and she was just shut down at home. And she, you know, she was… Trying to learn English. So it was also just really hard to keep up with school. She described it as sort of a series of two shocks at once, coming here and then experiencing the shock of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:31] \u003c/em>And during the pandemic, we couldn’t do anything. When we left the pandemic it was difficult to adapt to the situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:38] \u003c/em>And that sense of isolation really persisted for her over the years. She kind of struggled to rebound from the pandemic and just never really feeling like she found her community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:54] \u003c/em>Tell me about the first time she came across a soccer team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:59] \u003c/em>Walking home from school one day, a bit over a year ago, and saw a group of girls like outside at a high school soccer field, messing around. She just felt immediately intrigued by this group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:15] \u003c/em>They were laughing, having fun, playing so freely, and I said, I want that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:26] \u003c/em>The way that she saw them playing, she just saw so much freedom. So those are the words that she used. They just felt very free to her. They felt like they were having fun, messing around, joking. And that was exactly what she had been looking for. And then she learned that they were part of a team that was overseen by a nonprofit called Soccer Without Borders that basically staffs soccer teams largely made up of refugee and immigrant youth in the Bay Area, but also in other parts of the country. And she approached the coach and was like, how do I join? Sign me up. She became a really, really committed player and member of this squad, the majority of whom are girls from Central America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:17] \u003c/em>So these are people just like Adelaida who share, I imagine, many of the same experiences of immigrating here and looking for community. And I know you actually went to one of these matches. What was it like?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girls at soccer game: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:31] \u003c/em>Get up, get up, you’re good, you good. You got it, you got it!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:35] \u003c/em>Yeah, so I went to a few games during the team’s spring season and I went to one in April. And it was a really vibrant environment. There was the team’s family members that were there and cheering them on. And it was really like intense competitive game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maddie Boston: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:54] \u003c/em>Remember what is the best shape to pass in it’s a triangle the reason why I do this\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:00] \u003c/em>Maddie Boston is a program manager at Soccer Without Borders. And so when I went to the games, she was coaching a team. And her role is to just basically be relentlessly enthusiastic. And I was just kind of blown away by her energy level that she was able to sustain the entire game.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Maddie Boston: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:21] \u003c/em>Keep it up, girls! Keep trying! Come on, come on, Come on!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:23] \u003c/em>But also, I think what Maddie kind of embodies is just that it was a very fun-loving league. The girls are really goofy, joking around, having a lot of fun, and I think expressing themselves fully in a way that maybe is difficult to do in other spheres of their lives\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Girls at soccer game: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:42] \u003c/em>Thank you, I’m so proud of you! Look how good your English is! Oh, it’s beautiful, girls! Okay, get your team over there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:49] \u003c/em>A lot of them did describe it as we’re like, we’re creating this one kind of safe space that these children have, especially as the administration is, you know, coming after immigrant communities. Schools are no longer necessarily feeling safe. Churches are no long necessarily feeling save. Immigration policy is changing every five minutes, so spaces that maybe felt okay, like immigration court, now aren’t because there’s detentions. So… They’re trying to create, I think at the very least, a sense of emotional safety and security in these fields and spaces. And I think that is something that I saw, just a level of trust between the players internally with each other, but also the coaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:40] \u003c/em>Coming up, what immigrant youth say about the importance of soccer. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:51] \u003c/em>I mean, talk a little bit more about this organization, Soccer Without Borders. It seems like it’s specifically made for immigrant youth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:01] \u003c/em>It is, and that’s who’s playing on these teams. Places have used, and organizations have used soccer as a integration tool for children to feel more comfortable. I knew about the work of Soccer Without Borders, and it just seemed like a really natural place to start speaking to people because they work exclusively really with refugee and immigrant youth. And I think they, this ethos of soccer is this sort of global language and this really emotionally safe space is really core to how they operate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie Annand: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:36] \u003c/em>I would say that soccer is a very common and excited response for many of my clients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:43] \u003c/em>Katie Annand is an immigration attorney at Immigrant Legal Defense. She basically said that soccer provides a sense of freedom and emotional security for newcomers that’s very distinct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Katie Annand: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:13:56] \u003c/em>I remember working on a declaration with a client and talking about, again, things that bring this client joy. And we’re talking about soccer. And I asked him how he feels when he plays soccer. And there was no hesitation. His first words were, I feel free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:15] \u003c/em>And that was interesting to me because that’s something Adelaida told me as well. And so there is this through line. I think something about soccer allows children to feel unburdened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:26] \u003c/em>Yeah, tell me a little bit more about Adelaida. I want to come back to her. I mean, what does she tell you about how soccer has helped her through some of the challenges that she’s experienced as a newcomer in the Bay Area?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:40] \u003c/em>She really pinpointed soccer as the starting point for her of beginning to consider Oakland her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Adelaida: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:54] \u003c/em>It has helped me to feel more integrated to this country, to them, to the school, more part of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:03] \u003c/em>By the end of the conversation that we had, we started, she came here, it was a pandemic. Everything shut down, she was completely isolated. That was 2019. Now it’s 2025. She told me, Oakland’s my home. I consider this place 100% my home, so to have that kind of trajectory was interesting and she told me that’s, yeah, that’s because of soccer. That’s because the people that I met, people who have played on team sports. Maybe can relate to that, that you just develop relationships with other players on your team or the members of your team. And she kind of all of a sudden had this built-in network of people who could not, who not only shared her experience because they were also newcomers and spoke the language that she speaks, Spanish, but could give her advice on like, maybe if, you know, some people were a little bit older and had, or had been here a little longer. Had a little more experience and would just give her tips on like, here’s how you deal with this thing at school. Or, you know, just kind of insider info that I think she was feeling like she didn’t have before when she was just cooped up at home and then searching for like her friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:19] \u003c/em>And I mean, you talked earlier about there being just so much fear right now, even in schools and in courthouses and churches, places that were traditionally considered safe places. I mean did you get the sense that folks who are part of this league are feeling safe playing soccer outside with a bunch of other immigrants or do they worry about being a target even on the field?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:45] \u003c/em>I think the stories that they shared with me were that they feel safe. But I think it’s emotionally safe. And that’s maybe different from the realities of, yeah, this is a time when we’re all seeing what happened in LA, and there’s protests, and people are getting picked up at courthouses and at Home Depots. And so it’s a constantly ever-shifting environment of, where are you actually safe? But what I heard from them was at the very least a sense of psychological safety, which when you consider how much of the intent of the administration is also to, I think, create fear. Psychological safety for a lot of people is also really important. Some kids, yeah, they come to practice and they want to talk about what’s going on. Some kids really, really don’t. Some of the coaches said, you know, if it comes up, it comes up, but like our job is not to facilitate a discussion every practice about the administration if that’s not where kids are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:50] \u003c/em>Yeah, and as you say that, it just makes me think about how amazing it is that just thinking about and looking at the photos of those girls on the field, how much it took all of them to get to that field.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Erica Hellerstein: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:18:04] \u003c/em>Yeah, it’s sort of a process that it’s generative. Like, they help each other. Adelaida, what I thought was so interesting was she said, you know, I kind of want to start a league of soccer players myself. Like, I’m going to go away to college. Maybe I can do, like, Soccer Without Borders 2.0 somewhere, right? At one of the games, I actually saw alumni from the program who were in their 20s come back just to watch, you know? And they’re having conversations. They’re seeing the younger players. Maybe they’re seeing themselves in a lot of the younger player, but then the younger look to them is like, oh my God, look at how cool and funny they are. And they really seem like they know their way around this new state and city. So I think. They find each other and then they also inspire each other.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "How RFK Jr.’s Message Took Root in a Small Marin Town | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fairfax is a small, predominantly white town of about 7,500 people, nestled up against the Mt. Tam watershed in Marin. Wellness and a distrust of authority have long been part of the town’s culture. But since the pandemic, it also became a place where supporters of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine message grew louder and louder.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1997008/the-marin-town-where-rfk-jr-s-message-took-root\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Marin Town Where RFK Jr.’s Message Took Root\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1284838524&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:53] I wonder if you can start, Lesley, by telling me a little bit about Fairfax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:01:57] It’s a really adorable little town. About an hour from San Francisco out in West Marin. It’s kind of known for its beauty. It’s a really beautiful town. There’s a ton of mountain biking trails. It’s got an adorable downtown, kind of old fashioned downtown. So you’ve got all these shops, these kind of eclectic shops you can go and you can get your crystals and your hemp clothing. And on Wednesdays, there’s this incredible farmers market where people go and get their fresh local honey and their heirloom tomatoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:36] Yeah, when did you, I guess, first start to notice something else sort of brewing underneath here in Fairfax?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:02:43] Yeah, I mean, as I was following the pandemic as a health reporter, you began to see, I used to call it, like the Venn diagram is getting very strange, where you’ve got kind of wellness culture intersecting with more conservative viewpoints, especially around vaccines. And you’ve got wellness culture sort of questioning, has always questioned, mainstream medicine, kind of anti-pharma, more all-natural. And then as we saw, conservatives didn’t like the sort of mandates during the pandemic to protect people from the virus, but you had to change your life. And conservatives didn’t like that lack of independence. And so you saw these communities begin to intersect. And I began to really see that in my reporting. And then I just happened to have quite a large community out in Fairfax and began to overhear these conversations in personal ways, in social circles. And that’s kind of only gotten louder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:48] This has a lot to do with also the rise of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What exactly have you seen people in Fairfax embracing more in this moment?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] Right around when RFK started to run for president last year, the RFKers set up right at the entrance of the farmers market. And they had all their MAHA, make America healthy again, swag. And so the vibe began to shift a little bit more publicly there. And then those voices began to get quite a bit louder. The vaccine rates were quite high, or were quite high in Marin during the pandemic. That’s not really the historical trend in Marin. You know, 10 years ago, I think Marin had some of the lowest vaccine rates in California. And there’s always been kind of a questioning of putting something foreign that was created by a pharmaceutical company into your body. That ethos, I don’t think has ever died. But when the vaccine mandates came on and you couldn’t go into restaurants and hospital workers, et cetera, couldn’t go to their jobs without getting their vaccines, those ripples, you know, in certain communities started to ignite. And I think they were even more fueled by RFK’s messages, you know Kennedy’s messages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lex Fridman \u003c/strong>[00:05:06] Difficult question. Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>RFK Jr. \u003c/strong>[00:05:10] I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:05:25] He has an organization that he founded called Children’s Health Defense. And I’ve gotten those emails and their press releases for years. And there is a pretty deep skepticism of vaccine science. There’s a thought that vaccines cause autism, which scientifically there’s not proof at all for that. But there is conspiratorial thinking around vaccines that RFK ignited. And that only became louder during the pandemic. And I think a lot of people turned to their social media for information during the pandemic and RFK was there with a lot of messaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:02] And I know you talked with some people in Fairfax who, on paper, I mean, don’t love Donald Trump, actually identify as more lefty type people, but who sort of have really began to embrace this ideology that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really represents. Can you tell me about some of the people you spoke with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:06:30] I spoke to a man named Nathaniel Lepp and he is a doctor and addiction specialist in Fairfax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:06:36] I see him as part of the anti-establishment or anti-authority type of movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:06:45] He would have called himself, I think, very left historically. And yet he wanted the Democratic Party to push harder and, I think, be a little bit more left, I would say. And he was very disappointed with the kind of more mainstream pull of the Democratic party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:07:01] I officially unregistered myself from the Democratic Party because I was just so fed up with the sort of establishment Democrats’ refusal to allow passionate, more left, populist candidates to get through and win the nomination. I supported Howard Dean, I supported Bernie Sanders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:07:25] And he also, I think in his medical career, questioned what he was being taught. He witnessed the opioid crisis during his residency and he saw doctors prescribing pain medications that led to deep addictions and horrible lives. And he blamed the medical institution for that and he now works as an addiction specialist to wean people off of psychiatric medications that he believes are causing more harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:07:51] The crisis of opioid overdose related deaths in America was fueled by the medical system, by doctors and pharmacies and not only that, like major institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:08:08] I think that has led him to a place where he is interested in a candidate who is willing to question the institutions that we have in place. And RFK Jr. is kind of famous for questioning the CDC and the FDA and these organizations that have historically, you know, been kind of our protectors of health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:08:25] I don’t hold any politician to, like, a high level of precision, like in their words. I think it’s like, you know, I think that he’s directionally correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:51] How widespread does this, it seems like dissatisfaction with government, this sort of anti-vax, pro-RFK junior politics that Nathaniel seems to share, how widespread does that seem to be in Fairfax?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:09:19] It’s a great question. I don’t think there’s hard data. I would love to see hard data and be able to really put this into perspective by how people are voting, et cetera. We can’t do that because RFK was no longer a candidate for president. And I would say, if you go to Fairfax, I wouldn’t say that you get this overwhelming sense of RFK loyalty. What I gathered was that this small, very fringe, four people at a rally, anti-vax voice has gotten quite loud on a civic level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:09:49] I didn’t realize the degree to which misinformation was taking hold in my community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:09:54] Even talking to public officials like Matt Willis, he’s the former public health official in Marin County. He says that that contingent of folks used to be small and fringe that he kind of dismissed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:10:08] It moved from what was a visibly kind of older community of a few people who would show up repeatedly, kind of a known cast of characters at supervisor meetings, et cetera. And then you started seeing more families. There were moms because of their concerns about vaccines for their kids. And then by the time RFK started running for office, the float at the Fairfax parade was intergenerational.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:10:38] This is a group that called for his removal from office. And even last summer, there was a Fairfax parade and there was an RFK Jr. float.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:10:49] A lot of the folks that I recognized from board meetings who were really accusing me of harming people directly and had hung signs over Highway 101 to have me locked up. I was there with my family and I just thought maybe we should protect them from whatever might happen if we’re recognized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:11:07] He says now that he underestimated that group of people and that they’re much louder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:11:12] Now as the RFK and the MAHA movement has become more broad, we’re seeing a lot more engagement from people across the community, including families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:27] How does this anger about the vaccine and this loud support for RFK Jr. trickle down into other parts of politics in Fairfax?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] I think that anti-vax seeded a questioning of the government’s influence in individual lives that then seeds a questioning of the governments influence in renter controls, in DEI policy, in LGBTQ protections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:11:57] There is just a really weird sort of energy that has come as a outcropping of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:12:06] And I talked to Chance Cutrano, who is the former mayor in Fairfax. And he really outlined that sentiment. He said, you know, it started as kind of an anti-vax voice. And then he felt that during the meetings, it then took on more of the anti-science, anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ. And this really struck him. You know, historically, Fairfax is quite environmental, but even to anti-climate policies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] So you’re anti-housing and anti-homelessness. And then not only that, but anti-electric vehicle. And now, oh my gosh, it’s the same people are coming back and they’re not only electric vehicles, they’re anti-battery powered landscape equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:12:46] Now, how much of that is tied directly to RFK supporters or a wave of more Trumpian thought? It’s difficult to dissect. But I think, as we can see nationally, those forces are intersecting. The RFK followers are tipping in a more Trumpien direction. And so we’re beginning to see that unfold in small towns, even in very blue parts of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:13:11] I mean, it’s all like in the spirit of this libertarian, like, don’t tread on me. I mean there are a lot of Don’t Tread On Me stickers in Fairfax, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:13:19] He last year, you know, received a death threat and a call for a public lynching. This was on a local political website and he just, you know, was kind of thrown for a loop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:13:32] Now I’m just in therapy because I am no longer in office. So I’m trying to just process the horror of serving in this strange time, especially as a young person that believed in civic life and public service and just seeing a lot of maybe truths that I took for granted being tested, but also just decency and decorum in general being tested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:05] Yeah, I mean, Lesley, this, I guess, phenomenon that you’re describing happening in Fairfax does seem like a sort of smaller reflection of something that we’re seeing happening on a national level, this sort of mainstreaming even of these sort of anti-vax, anti-establishment policies. I mean this isn’t unique to Fairfax, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:14:30] No, I think and that’s one reason why I placed it in Fairfax. It would be one thing if I was, you know, two or three hours north of here in quite conservative country telling this story. But this is, you know a community that again kind of has that intersection. I talked to this woman from Petaluma. Her name is Zadie Dressler and she’s a nurse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zadie Dressler \u003c/strong>[00:14:50] I’ve never really cared as much about this stuff until RFK started talking about it honestly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:14:57] Zadie said politics weren’t really on her radar at all, but during the pandemic, she didn’t want to get the vaccine and decided she had to get it to continue working at her hospital. And she said she a few months after the vaccine, she started to have some health problems that she links back to the to the vaccine, and started to question the vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zadie Dressler \u003c/strong>[00:15:16] I called Kaiser and I was like, I needed an EKG and a chest x-ray because I am having tachycardia and like chest pain. And they gave me those two things but then just kind of treated me like a psych patient. And it was months after my second vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:15:30] She gets a lot of our information from social media and she started to see some of the messages questioning the vaccine and what it’s doing and kind of write for RFK’s message.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zadie Dressler \u003c/strong>[00:15:40] You have all these things that are just on TV or however you get the information, they’re just blatant lies. And then you’re supposed to be like, ‘Oh, I trust the president’ or ‘Oh, I trust this scientist who’s telling everyone to get these shots.’ So the whole thing it’s, it’s got so many tentacles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:59] I mean, what do you think these people want ultimately? I mean if you are on the RFK Jr. train, does that mean that you are also on the Trump train? Like is Trump’s politics and Trump’s message more broadly also really resonating with this group of people?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:16:17] My overall sense is that the gateway for entering potentially more conservative thinking is health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:16:25] Marin County has always had, you know, a fringe element around health and well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:16:32] And Matt Willis talks about this. Maybe they don’t want the chemical colors in their food, and they don’t want pesticides in the ground, and they want drugs to be poured on them by the medical system. And so you already kind of believe in a more natural life. Like that’s potentially your gateway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:16:49] Unfortunately, that got linked, I think, to a charismatic leader, you know, RFK, who himself carries many of those beliefs and has similar kind of libertarian ideology and freedom of choice and anti-government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:17:04] And they really resonate with the message of disruption. And you’ve got someone like RFK who’s saying, you know, the CDC and the FDA are our enemies and we’ve got to take them down and let’s fire all these workers and start over and do this differently. And I think that level of disruption and the willingness to question authority is really resonating with this particular set.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:34] What’s your biggest takeaway from this story, Lesley?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:17:39] As a health reporter, this isn’t really just about public health issues. This is really more about trust. And we’re seeing this shift from, you know, fringe beliefs are no longer confined to just the margins. These are the ideas that were, you now, once dismissed, sort of vaccine skepticism or, you, know, deep distrust in institutions. They’re now shaping our national discourse and even, you know, our federal policy. And I think that erosion of trust… Is going to make it harder for our policymakers to respond to, you know, if we had another pandemic right now, I think it’d be really tough to get public to follow mandates of any kind. It’s very clear to me that it’s not one thing that usually tips someone, but it’s a series of events of messaging that unfolds slowly and it takes some time, and then people can drift in very, very surprising ways.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fairfax is a small, predominantly white town of about 7,500 people, nestled up against the Mt. Tam watershed in Marin. Wellness and a distrust of authority have long been part of the town’s culture. But since the pandemic, it also became a place where supporters of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine message grew louder and louder.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1997008/the-marin-town-where-rfk-jr-s-message-took-root\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Marin Town Where RFK Jr.’s Message Took Root\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1284838524&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:53] I wonder if you can start, Lesley, by telling me a little bit about Fairfax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:01:57] It’s a really adorable little town. About an hour from San Francisco out in West Marin. It’s kind of known for its beauty. It’s a really beautiful town. There’s a ton of mountain biking trails. It’s got an adorable downtown, kind of old fashioned downtown. So you’ve got all these shops, these kind of eclectic shops you can go and you can get your crystals and your hemp clothing. And on Wednesdays, there’s this incredible farmers market where people go and get their fresh local honey and their heirloom tomatoes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:36] Yeah, when did you, I guess, first start to notice something else sort of brewing underneath here in Fairfax?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:02:43] Yeah, I mean, as I was following the pandemic as a health reporter, you began to see, I used to call it, like the Venn diagram is getting very strange, where you’ve got kind of wellness culture intersecting with more conservative viewpoints, especially around vaccines. And you’ve got wellness culture sort of questioning, has always questioned, mainstream medicine, kind of anti-pharma, more all-natural. And then as we saw, conservatives didn’t like the sort of mandates during the pandemic to protect people from the virus, but you had to change your life. And conservatives didn’t like that lack of independence. And so you saw these communities begin to intersect. And I began to really see that in my reporting. And then I just happened to have quite a large community out in Fairfax and began to overhear these conversations in personal ways, in social circles. And that’s kind of only gotten louder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:48] This has a lot to do with also the rise of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What exactly have you seen people in Fairfax embracing more in this moment?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:04:03] Right around when RFK started to run for president last year, the RFKers set up right at the entrance of the farmers market. And they had all their MAHA, make America healthy again, swag. And so the vibe began to shift a little bit more publicly there. And then those voices began to get quite a bit louder. The vaccine rates were quite high, or were quite high in Marin during the pandemic. That’s not really the historical trend in Marin. You know, 10 years ago, I think Marin had some of the lowest vaccine rates in California. And there’s always been kind of a questioning of putting something foreign that was created by a pharmaceutical company into your body. That ethos, I don’t think has ever died. But when the vaccine mandates came on and you couldn’t go into restaurants and hospital workers, et cetera, couldn’t go to their jobs without getting their vaccines, those ripples, you know, in certain communities started to ignite. And I think they were even more fueled by RFK’s messages, you know Kennedy’s messages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lex Fridman \u003c/strong>[00:05:06] Difficult question. Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>RFK Jr. \u003c/strong>[00:05:10] I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:05:25] He has an organization that he founded called Children’s Health Defense. And I’ve gotten those emails and their press releases for years. And there is a pretty deep skepticism of vaccine science. There’s a thought that vaccines cause autism, which scientifically there’s not proof at all for that. But there is conspiratorial thinking around vaccines that RFK ignited. And that only became louder during the pandemic. And I think a lot of people turned to their social media for information during the pandemic and RFK was there with a lot of messaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:06:02] And I know you talked with some people in Fairfax who, on paper, I mean, don’t love Donald Trump, actually identify as more lefty type people, but who sort of have really began to embrace this ideology that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. really represents. Can you tell me about some of the people you spoke with?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:06:30] I spoke to a man named Nathaniel Lepp and he is a doctor and addiction specialist in Fairfax.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:06:36] I see him as part of the anti-establishment or anti-authority type of movement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:06:45] He would have called himself, I think, very left historically. And yet he wanted the Democratic Party to push harder and, I think, be a little bit more left, I would say. And he was very disappointed with the kind of more mainstream pull of the Democratic party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:07:01] I officially unregistered myself from the Democratic Party because I was just so fed up with the sort of establishment Democrats’ refusal to allow passionate, more left, populist candidates to get through and win the nomination. I supported Howard Dean, I supported Bernie Sanders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:07:25] And he also, I think in his medical career, questioned what he was being taught. He witnessed the opioid crisis during his residency and he saw doctors prescribing pain medications that led to deep addictions and horrible lives. And he blamed the medical institution for that and he now works as an addiction specialist to wean people off of psychiatric medications that he believes are causing more harm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:07:51] The crisis of opioid overdose related deaths in America was fueled by the medical system, by doctors and pharmacies and not only that, like major institutions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:08:08] I think that has led him to a place where he is interested in a candidate who is willing to question the institutions that we have in place. And RFK Jr. is kind of famous for questioning the CDC and the FDA and these organizations that have historically, you know, been kind of our protectors of health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Nathaniel Lepp \u003c/strong>[00:08:25] I don’t hold any politician to, like, a high level of precision, like in their words. I think it’s like, you know, I think that he’s directionally correct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:51] How widespread does this, it seems like dissatisfaction with government, this sort of anti-vax, pro-RFK junior politics that Nathaniel seems to share, how widespread does that seem to be in Fairfax?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:09:19] It’s a great question. I don’t think there’s hard data. I would love to see hard data and be able to really put this into perspective by how people are voting, et cetera. We can’t do that because RFK was no longer a candidate for president. And I would say, if you go to Fairfax, I wouldn’t say that you get this overwhelming sense of RFK loyalty. What I gathered was that this small, very fringe, four people at a rally, anti-vax voice has gotten quite loud on a civic level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:09:49] I didn’t realize the degree to which misinformation was taking hold in my community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:09:54] Even talking to public officials like Matt Willis, he’s the former public health official in Marin County. He says that that contingent of folks used to be small and fringe that he kind of dismissed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:10:08] It moved from what was a visibly kind of older community of a few people who would show up repeatedly, kind of a known cast of characters at supervisor meetings, et cetera. And then you started seeing more families. There were moms because of their concerns about vaccines for their kids. And then by the time RFK started running for office, the float at the Fairfax parade was intergenerational.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:10:38] This is a group that called for his removal from office. And even last summer, there was a Fairfax parade and there was an RFK Jr. float.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:10:49] A lot of the folks that I recognized from board meetings who were really accusing me of harming people directly and had hung signs over Highway 101 to have me locked up. I was there with my family and I just thought maybe we should protect them from whatever might happen if we’re recognized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:11:07] He says now that he underestimated that group of people and that they’re much louder.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:11:12] Now as the RFK and the MAHA movement has become more broad, we’re seeing a lot more engagement from people across the community, including families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:11:27] How does this anger about the vaccine and this loud support for RFK Jr. trickle down into other parts of politics in Fairfax?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:11:39] I think that anti-vax seeded a questioning of the government’s influence in individual lives that then seeds a questioning of the governments influence in renter controls, in DEI policy, in LGBTQ protections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:11:57] There is just a really weird sort of energy that has come as a outcropping of the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:12:06] And I talked to Chance Cutrano, who is the former mayor in Fairfax. And he really outlined that sentiment. He said, you know, it started as kind of an anti-vax voice. And then he felt that during the meetings, it then took on more of the anti-science, anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ. And this really struck him. You know, historically, Fairfax is quite environmental, but even to anti-climate policies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:12:32] So you’re anti-housing and anti-homelessness. And then not only that, but anti-electric vehicle. And now, oh my gosh, it’s the same people are coming back and they’re not only electric vehicles, they’re anti-battery powered landscape equipment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:12:46] Now, how much of that is tied directly to RFK supporters or a wave of more Trumpian thought? It’s difficult to dissect. But I think, as we can see nationally, those forces are intersecting. The RFK followers are tipping in a more Trumpien direction. And so we’re beginning to see that unfold in small towns, even in very blue parts of California.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:13:11] I mean, it’s all like in the spirit of this libertarian, like, don’t tread on me. I mean there are a lot of Don’t Tread On Me stickers in Fairfax, you know?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:13:19] He last year, you know, received a death threat and a call for a public lynching. This was on a local political website and he just, you know, was kind of thrown for a loop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Chase Cutrano \u003c/strong>[00:13:32] Now I’m just in therapy because I am no longer in office. So I’m trying to just process the horror of serving in this strange time, especially as a young person that believed in civic life and public service and just seeing a lot of maybe truths that I took for granted being tested, but also just decency and decorum in general being tested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:14:05] Yeah, I mean, Lesley, this, I guess, phenomenon that you’re describing happening in Fairfax does seem like a sort of smaller reflection of something that we’re seeing happening on a national level, this sort of mainstreaming even of these sort of anti-vax, anti-establishment policies. I mean this isn’t unique to Fairfax, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:14:30] No, I think and that’s one reason why I placed it in Fairfax. It would be one thing if I was, you know, two or three hours north of here in quite conservative country telling this story. But this is, you know a community that again kind of has that intersection. I talked to this woman from Petaluma. Her name is Zadie Dressler and she’s a nurse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zadie Dressler \u003c/strong>[00:14:50] I’ve never really cared as much about this stuff until RFK started talking about it honestly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:14:57] Zadie said politics weren’t really on her radar at all, but during the pandemic, she didn’t want to get the vaccine and decided she had to get it to continue working at her hospital. And she said she a few months after the vaccine, she started to have some health problems that she links back to the to the vaccine, and started to question the vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zadie Dressler \u003c/strong>[00:15:16] I called Kaiser and I was like, I needed an EKG and a chest x-ray because I am having tachycardia and like chest pain. And they gave me those two things but then just kind of treated me like a psych patient. And it was months after my second vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:15:30] She gets a lot of our information from social media and she started to see some of the messages questioning the vaccine and what it’s doing and kind of write for RFK’s message.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Zadie Dressler \u003c/strong>[00:15:40] You have all these things that are just on TV or however you get the information, they’re just blatant lies. And then you’re supposed to be like, ‘Oh, I trust the president’ or ‘Oh, I trust this scientist who’s telling everyone to get these shots.’ So the whole thing it’s, it’s got so many tentacles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:59] I mean, what do you think these people want ultimately? I mean if you are on the RFK Jr. train, does that mean that you are also on the Trump train? Like is Trump’s politics and Trump’s message more broadly also really resonating with this group of people?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:16:17] My overall sense is that the gateway for entering potentially more conservative thinking is health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:16:25] Marin County has always had, you know, a fringe element around health and well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:16:32] And Matt Willis talks about this. Maybe they don’t want the chemical colors in their food, and they don’t want pesticides in the ground, and they want drugs to be poured on them by the medical system. And so you already kind of believe in a more natural life. Like that’s potentially your gateway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Matt Willis \u003c/strong>[00:16:49] Unfortunately, that got linked, I think, to a charismatic leader, you know, RFK, who himself carries many of those beliefs and has similar kind of libertarian ideology and freedom of choice and anti-government.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:17:04] And they really resonate with the message of disruption. And you’ve got someone like RFK who’s saying, you know, the CDC and the FDA are our enemies and we’ve got to take them down and let’s fire all these workers and start over and do this differently. And I think that level of disruption and the willingness to question authority is really resonating with this particular set.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:17:34] What’s your biggest takeaway from this story, Lesley?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Lesley McClurg \u003c/strong>[00:17:39] As a health reporter, this isn’t really just about public health issues. This is really more about trust. And we’re seeing this shift from, you know, fringe beliefs are no longer confined to just the margins. These are the ideas that were, you now, once dismissed, sort of vaccine skepticism or, you, know, deep distrust in institutions. They’re now shaping our national discourse and even, you know, our federal policy. And I think that erosion of trust… Is going to make it harder for our policymakers to respond to, you know, if we had another pandemic right now, I think it’d be really tough to get public to follow mandates of any kind. It’s very clear to me that it’s not one thing that usually tips someone, but it’s a series of events of messaging that unfolds slowly and it takes some time, and then people can drift in very, very surprising ways.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "are-californias-ai-rules-in-jeopardy-plus-new-data-on-oaklands-non-police-response-and-the-bay-areas-ruby-ibarra-wins-nprs-tiny-desk-contest",
"title": "Are California’s AI Rules in Jeopardy? Plus, New Data on Oakland’s Non-Police Response, and the Bay Area’s Ruby Ibarra Wins NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest",
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"headTitle": "Are California’s AI Rules in Jeopardy? Plus, New Data on Oakland’s Non-Police Response, and the Bay Area’s Ruby Ibarra Wins NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>On this month’s edition of The Bay’s news roundup, we talk about a proposed 10-year ban on state AI regulations that the House of Representatives passed as part of President Trump’s budget bill. Plus, Oakland’s MACRO program – a non-emergency alternative to police – releases new data, and the Bay Area’s very own Ruby Ibarra wins NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli class=\"entry-title \">\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/05/state-ai-regulation-ban/\">Californians would lose AI protections under bill advancing in Congress\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/oaklands-macro-touts-improvements-despite-criticism-needs-4m-year-survive\">Oakland’s MACRO touts improvements despite criticism; needs $4M a year to survive\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/05/29/g-s1-69049/ruby-ibarra-tiny-desk-concert\">Ruby Ibarra: NPR Tiny Desk Concert\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5175160153&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:54] \u003c/em>I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. And welcome to the Bay’s May news roundup where I sit down with the rest of the Bay team to talk about some of the other Bay Area stories that we’ve been following this month. I’m joined by our producer, Jessica Carissa. Hey Jessica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:12] \u003c/em>Hey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:14] \u003c/em>And senior editor, Alan Montesilio. What’s up, Alan?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:17] \u003c/em>Hello.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:18] \u003c/em>And also our intern, Mel Velasquez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mel Velasquez: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:21] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:22] \u003c/em>Well, first I wanna take a quick look back at some of the stories that we did cover on this show this month. This May we marked 50 years since the fall of Saigon and talked about how that moment in history really shaped Santa Clara County and San Jose as we know it today. We discussed the Trump administration’s cancelation of federal arts funds and what that is going to mean for the local art scene here in the Bay Area. And we talked about the Golden State Valkyries who began their first season here in the Bay area and also they recently had their first win. And Mel, I wanna turn to you for a second because you actually went out to a pre-season game party in the Mission to get a sense of the vibes, the excitement around the Valkyrys for our show. And you also went to the home opener. How was that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mel Velasquez: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:22] \u003c/em>It was really fun, it was really packed. I went to Standard Deviant, which is in the mission, and it was hosted by Ricky’s, which will be the new women’s sports bar that’s coming to the Castro soon. There were a lot of people who were excited for the Valkyries, and it just a pre-season game. Um, but then when I went to the home opener, it was completely sold out. I mean, the energy was insane. They had pyrotechnics inside the Chase Center. It was a sea of purple. People were screaming and then they had like the segment where they were showing like the first Valkyries fan that entered the Chase Center at their first game. There was just like a lot of celebration, yeah it was just a really good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:17] \u003c/em>And if you listen to the show, you probably know that our senior editor, Alan Montecilio, is a basketball head. Alan, how have you been feeling about the Valkyries starting their season here in the Bay? I mean, you already have a Valkry’s sweater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:35] \u003c/em>Oh yeah, I have a Valkyries hoodie. Got a lot of compliments on it. Thank you for asking. As Mel was saying, they really leaned into the first theme. The t-shirts around the stands had the words first of a lifetime on them. And actually we have two wins as of this taping. The Valkyrys are two and two. You know, expectations for a lot of wins are not super high, but it’s more about getting excited for the team, getting to know the players. So yeah, it’s cool to just walk around and see people wearing the gear and watching Chase Center. Get really loud. I mean the Warriors season is over too so you know for the next four to five months the Valkyries will be the only pro basketball team in the Bay Area playing at Chase Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:16] \u003c/em>That’s true, I didn’t even think about that. And yeah, I really have been seeing more and more gear out there. Last weekend we went and visited Jessica in San Jose, where she lives, and I feel like I was even seeing Valkyrie’s gear out in the wild over there. Are you excited about the Valkyrys, Jessica? Are you planning to watch?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:41] \u003c/em>Oh yeah, definitely. I think, you know, I’m just really excited for women’s sports period in the Bay Area. I think being down in San Jose, I’m pretty close to where Bay FC plays. And so that’s also a top of my list as a summer activity. And when we covered the Valkyries, I was looking up a lot of sports content. And so now my YouTube algorithm is just purely basketball. So that’s, also dragged me into the NBA playoffs too. I’m generally just really excited about sports this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:13] \u003c/em>Yes, join us. The algorithm is roping you in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:20] \u003c/em>Well, Mel, thank you so much for joining us for this first part of our news roundup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mel Velasquez: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:27] \u003c/em>It’s always a pleasure, Ericka. And when we come back, we’ll dig into some of the other stories that we’ve been following this month. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:44] \u003c/em>And welcome back to the Bays Monthly News Roundup where we talk about some of the other stories that we’ve been following this month and Alan will dive right in with your story. What have you been following?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:55] \u003c/em>Well, obviously, at the federal level, one of the biggest pieces of news is President Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill, a.k.a. The big budget reconciliation bill that is making its way through Congress recently past the House. There are many different aspects to it that are getting attention, including potential cuts to the safety net, things like Medicaid, Medicare, potential tax breaks for the rich. But one. Element of this bill that has also gotten attention here in California has to do with artificial intelligence. Most of the reporting I read to prep for this segment, uh, comes from Kari Johnson from CalMatters. So the bill that passed the house recently that’s being considered in the Senate includes a moratorium, essentially a ban on state regulations of AI for 10 years, you know, that has obviously caused considerable alarm here in California. Which is not only home to many, many AI companies, including OpenAI, but also home to many state-level regulations of\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:55] \u003c/em>Wow, I mean, living in Silicon Valley and being a journalist, I can definitely understand the concerns, you know, articles have been used to train AI, and that’s been a big issue. But I guess what’s the argument behind this ban?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:12] \u003c/em>One argument that House Republicans have made is that we essentially have a patchwork of regulations right now when it comes to AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep. Jay Obernolte: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:19] \u003c/em>What we absolutely cannot have is a situation where the rules on the governance of AI change every time the winds of political fortune shift one way or another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:29] \u003c/em>Representative Jay Obernolte, who is a Republican and represents parts of LA, Kern County, San Bernardino counties, at a committee hearing earlier this month, basically argued that this patchwork of regulations that we have across states, so it’s different in each state, is bad for U.S. Competitiveness. It’s bad for entrepreneurs who will sort of have to navigate different sets of rules across states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep. Jay Obernolte: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:54] \u003c/em>Innovators and investors that are making billion-dollar decisions on R&D and procurement, and they need regulatory certainty to do that, and the only way that that happens is if we provide that leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:04] \u003c/em>Some Republicans have argued that this moratorium would pave the way for a more comprehensive federal approach to AI. But I think big picture, President Trump and his administration have signaled an interest in deregulation more broadly, whether it’s AI, whether its the environment, whether it’s financial institutions. So there’s sort of different arguments in that vein, but those are some of the reasons why there’s this 10-year ban on regulations of AI in this bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:35] \u003c/em>So I mean, how would this even work exactly, Alan? I mean aren’t we talking about laws that have already been passed by the California State Legislature and signed into law? And then isn’t California also currently considering a bunch of AI regulations now? I mean what would this ban do exactly? How would it work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:01] \u003c/em>Well, I mean, it would make it unlawful to enforce many of our laws regarding AI here in California, and it would potentially preempt the nearly 30 bills that are currently being considered in the California state legislature. Now last year, the legislature passed around 20 laws related to AI. Some advocates wanted the state to get going even stronger on regulations, but there For many that did pass, including things like… Um, requiring political campaigns to disclose when AI is being used in advertising measures that protect children, you know, requiring companies to provide free AI detection tools to the public. This 10 year ban would render many of these measures unlawful to enforce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:43] \u003c/em>What have the reactions been?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:45] \u003c/em>You know, some Democrats in Congress have expressed concern, although they don’t really have any power to stop it since they’re in the minority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep Kevin Mullen: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:51] \u003c/em>The idea that we have to pick between innovation and safeguards just doesn’t hold up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:55] \u003c/em>Representative Kevin Mullen, who represents the peninsula, sat in an energy committee hearing that he thinks this sort of blanket deregulation, as he called it, isn’t the right approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep Kevin Mullen: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:05] \u003c/em>The real threat to U.S. Leadership in AI isn’t regulation, it’s inaction. If we allow AI systems operate without guardrails, we risk eroding public trust. So when we talk about AI regulation and American leadership, the real question isn’t whether to regulate. It’s where and how.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:23] \u003c/em>The California Privacy Protection Agency sent a letter to Congress saying that this moratorium could, quote, rob millions of Americans of rights they already enjoy. So certainly from, you know, many Democrats here in California and privacy advocates, This is pretty alarming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:39] \u003c/em>I mean, will this ban on AI regulations actually happen or not? Like how likely is it that this will in fact move forward?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:52] \u003c/em>It’s unclear, and it’s a little wheezy, but the reason it’s unclear is because the so-called big, beautiful bill of President Trump’s is what’s called a budget reconciliation bill, which is to say that this sweeping bill needs to include measures that are related to fiscal matters in order for it to pass, and in order to only need 51 senators for it pass. One privacy advocate who spoke to Kari Johnson from CalMatters… Pointed out that a 10 year moratorium on AI regulations, is that a fiscal matter? I mean, probably not. But these advocates are still concerned because it sort of puts a marker down for how House Republicans are thinking about this issue. And maybe even if it doesn’t make it into this giant budget bill, it may get attached to a different bill related to AI later down the line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:38] \u003c/em>Well, definitely something to watch in the coming months. Alan, thank you so much. And next we have my story that I’ve been following this month, which is an update on an alternative to police that was established in Oakland after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. If you all remember, Oakland really became the epicenter nationally of efforts to find an alternative to policing. They really went ahead with a program really try to do that and now there’s new data on how that alternative has been working in the last few years. Oakland’s civilian response team also known as the mobile assistance community responders of Oakland you probably know it more or hear it more so referred to as MACRO has responded to more than 6 000 incidents last year according to a report released to the city council this week. And it was able to divert hundreds of calls away from law enforcement and emergency services according to this data, which the folks behind MACRO really see as a success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:02] \u003c/em>You mentioned that they responded to over 6,000 incidents, and those were instances that people avoided calling the police. So what kinds of non-emergency incidents were they responding to?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:15] \u003c/em>Yeah, so MACRO was really looking at the kind of situations that have too often led to violence only after police show up. You know, a mental health crisis that escalates, a man sleeping in a car, for example, and they really stress that their focus is these non-violent incidents. Anything that involves violence is really, in their minds, a police matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:42] \u003c/em>So what else can you tell us about this data? And I’m curious, are there any areas of improvements, places where macro could do better?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:50] \u003c/em>Yeah, so the data shows that most of the incidents that they responded to occurred downtown and on city streets. So really, this shows that they’re dealing mostly with the city’s unhoused population. And the most common incident was actually a wellness check that made up 54% of the calls that they received. That was followed by sleeping checks and also behavioral concerns. Most notably, Macro says that its dispatched responses diverted 34% of calls away from law enforcement and away from emergency services. Almost 100% of these incidents were resolved on site without requiring police or EMS intervention. Elliot Jones, who’s the program manager for Macro, delivered some of this data to Oakland City Council earlier this week in. He shared this example of the kind of stuff that they’re responding to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elliot Jones: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:52] \u003c/em>Couple days ago, we get a call about an elderly individual on a porch on the North Oakland Berkeley border. We get there, this man had wandered out of his home. He was having memory issues, but MACRO was able to respond and make the connection. And while it doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet, and the news report didn’t include us, it did say, update, he’s been found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:13] \u003c/em>That said, there was criticism at the city council meeting around macro. Some say that the team is just too limited in the things that it could actually do to help the problems going on in Oakland. Some say that too few 911 calls are being even routed to macro. Others said that, you know, this money could be used for the Oakland fire department, which has had to close fire stations around the city. And others say that not enough people know that macro is even a service that’s available to people in the community. There’s also this question around independent auditing of macro. These numbers that were shared at the city council meeting were mostly just numbers that macro itself was keeping track of. And Jones agrees with critics that there should be some sort of independent oversight. And monitoring of how exactly Macro is doing to help him make the case that this is a program actually worth keeping around if it could get the resources it needs to do what I think many Oaklanders have really demanded after the death of George Floyd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:33] \u003c/em>So, I mean, what happens next? I mean I know Oakland’s in the middle of a major budget crisis. So, you know, is macro gonna be able to stick around? Do we know anything?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:45] \u003c/em>Yeah, I think Elliot Jones, Macros program manager, is very aware of Oakland’s budget issues. He told KTVU that a state grant of $10 million that they’ve been using to really run this program ends next year, at the end of 2026, and that it’s gonna take about $4 million annually to keep this program running. And Joan says that he is working with the city and also really looking for grants to make sure that this kind of program can stay afloat in Oakland. All right, and that is it for the story I’ve been following this month. Jessica Kariisa, we will end it off with you and a fun story\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:18:40] \u003c/em>Yeah, this is more maybe an announcement than story per se, but the Bay Area’s very own Ruby Ibarra won NPR’s 2025 Tiny Desk Contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:18:52] \u003c/em>Hello America, break your backs for dollars they don’t carry ya Seven thousand miles away from home with language barriers Land of opportunity, tell me is it good to ya But six feet deep on stolen land is where they bury ya November 1991\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:04] \u003c/em>She was chosen as the winner from over 7,000 submissions of independent artists from across the country. It’s a really huge deal. It’s really huge platform. Most people have heard of Tiny Desk. She’s joining the ranks of lots of great artists, including Fantastic Negrito, who also was based in the Bay Area, and Tank and the Bangas, and so many other great artists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:29] \u003c/em>They always feed in a slice Made to believe I don’t exist unless I wear a disguise Cause I’ve been constantly lying Too broken to die till I cry Till I no longer recognize the person that was inside Until we fail like the sun\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:40] \u003c/em>This is super exciting for the Bay Area. Ruby Ibarra is someone who, you know, I’ve been aware of for a while because she’s Filipina. ECG as well. But Jessica, can you tell us a bit more about her background in the Bay area and the kind of music she performs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:56] \u003c/em>For sure, yeah. So Ruby, she was born in the Philippines. She immigrated to the U.S. As a young child. She grew up in San Lorenzo, shout out to the East Bay. And, you know, she’s been making music for a while. I mean, her debut mixtape came out in 2012. Her immigrant experience has been a huge part of her music, dating back to her debut album, Circa 91. You know, her raps in multiple languages. She raps English and also multiple Filipino languages, including Tagalog and her native Waray. You know, she’s someone I heard about when I first moved to the Bay Area and was looking into the music scene. She’s really just been a staple in the Bay area as an independent artist for so long. So this really feels like a victory lap and a culmination of all her really hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:43] \u003c/em>One thing I really love about Ruby Ibara, I feel like she’s one of those artists who shares in her success. Like she lifts up others as she’s also coming up. I got a chance to interview her at a Filipino arts event that we did at KQED in 2023. And one of the things that she did during her performance was like, have a young up and coming Filipino American artists perform with her. And I feel like. She also really highlights other people in the community in the winning song that she performed. Can you talk a little bit more about the tiny desk that she preformed and that actually ended up winning?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:25] \u003c/em>Yeah, so the song is called Bakunawa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:28] \u003c/em>I need a Samaria combined into one I’ve been blue like the ocean, we all grew When we moved one of you like our red Till I’m white, that’s the bluest Blue like the moon, like the eyes in the brew\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:38] \u003c/em>and it’s a reference to a dragon-like serpent in Philippine mythology who swallows the moon and is believed to cause eclipses, earthquakes, and you know other weather-related events. Basically like a disruptive force that typically people want to banish but she told KQED that she wanted to flip the story and embody the Bakunawa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Singing: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:00] \u003c/em>Hoi hoi hoiii\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:08] \u003c/em>and that she interpreted the story as a metaphor for resistance and a battle cry against erasure. And the performance video is really cool. She had an all-Filipina band. She was pregnant with her first child while she made the song and while she recorded the video. And so she’s talked about how her daughter and being pregnant has also played a big part in it. And also the song is just great. It’s really funky. There’s a spoken word portion. There’s the rap portion. Like I said before, it’s in multiple languages. And it’s just a really, really beautiful, powerful video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Singing: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:45] \u003c/em>If I don’t know me, what is my past? If I dont know me what is…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:58] \u003c/em>So winning Tiny Desk. Huge deal. So what happens now that she’s won the contest?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:03] \u003c/em>She submitted her video, she won, and the next step was to record an actual Tiny Desk at the Tiny Desks in D.C. And that just dropped on YouTube, so you can go watch that. And that performance is expanded. It’s three songs, so, you get to listen to a bit more of her catalog. And she’s also going to headline a 10-city Tiny Desktour this summer. You can buy tickets to that already at tinydeskcontest.npr.org. There’ll be a stop in the Bay Area and Petaluma. And yeah, I mean, like you were saying, it’s a huge, huge platform. So, you know, she’s already collected new fans. She’ll keep collecting more new fans and it’s really gonna be just a huge leveling up of her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:47] \u003c/em>The sun touched my skin in hopes that I’d win Hands etched with sorrows deeper than the ocean’s depths History rooted in my people’s death This breath been enveloped, consumed, swallowed whole On nights where one moon seems fleeting so Even seven moons don’t illuminate like my soul My rage spoon-feeder, moon eater, truth keeper Naabay kahadlukan wala diri Bisaya ni ang dilahait kaayotan awa ni Gigaun ang bulan revolution in me Naan na ang bakunawa Rebirth the new moon\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:26] \u003c/em>It’s so exciting to see Ruby Ibarra up there on that tiny desk and representing the Bay Area and Bay Area Pin Eyes. Thanks for sharing this one, Jessica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:37] \u003c/em>Yeah, absolutely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:45] \u003c/em>Well, that’s it for the Bays monthly news roundup. Jessica Kariisa, producer, and Alan Montecillo, thank you both so much for joining me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On this month’s edition of The Bay’s news roundup, we talk about a proposed 10-year ban on state AI regulations that the House of Representatives passed as part of President Trump’s budget bill. Plus, Oakland’s MACRO program – a non-emergency alternative to police – releases new data, and the Bay Area’s very own Ruby Ibarra wins NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Links:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli class=\"entry-title \">\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/05/state-ai-regulation-ban/\">Californians would lose AI protections under bill advancing in Congress\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/oaklands-macro-touts-improvements-despite-criticism-needs-4m-year-survive\">Oakland’s MACRO touts improvements despite criticism; needs $4M a year to survive\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2025/05/29/g-s1-69049/ruby-ibarra-tiny-desk-concert\">Ruby Ibarra: NPR Tiny Desk Concert\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5175160153&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:00:54] \u003c/em>I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. And welcome to the Bay’s May news roundup where I sit down with the rest of the Bay team to talk about some of the other Bay Area stories that we’ve been following this month. I’m joined by our producer, Jessica Carissa. Hey Jessica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:12] \u003c/em>Hey.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:14] \u003c/em>And senior editor, Alan Montesilio. What’s up, Alan?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:17] \u003c/em>Hello.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:18] \u003c/em>And also our intern, Mel Velasquez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mel Velasquez: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:21] \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:01:22] \u003c/em>Well, first I wanna take a quick look back at some of the stories that we did cover on this show this month. This May we marked 50 years since the fall of Saigon and talked about how that moment in history really shaped Santa Clara County and San Jose as we know it today. We discussed the Trump administration’s cancelation of federal arts funds and what that is going to mean for the local art scene here in the Bay Area. And we talked about the Golden State Valkyries who began their first season here in the Bay area and also they recently had their first win. And Mel, I wanna turn to you for a second because you actually went out to a pre-season game party in the Mission to get a sense of the vibes, the excitement around the Valkyrys for our show. And you also went to the home opener. How was that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mel Velasquez: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:02:22] \u003c/em>It was really fun, it was really packed. I went to Standard Deviant, which is in the mission, and it was hosted by Ricky’s, which will be the new women’s sports bar that’s coming to the Castro soon. There were a lot of people who were excited for the Valkyries, and it just a pre-season game. Um, but then when I went to the home opener, it was completely sold out. I mean, the energy was insane. They had pyrotechnics inside the Chase Center. It was a sea of purple. People were screaming and then they had like the segment where they were showing like the first Valkyries fan that entered the Chase Center at their first game. There was just like a lot of celebration, yeah it was just a really good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:17] \u003c/em>And if you listen to the show, you probably know that our senior editor, Alan Montecilio, is a basketball head. Alan, how have you been feeling about the Valkyries starting their season here in the Bay? I mean, you already have a Valkry’s sweater.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:03:35] \u003c/em>Oh yeah, I have a Valkyries hoodie. Got a lot of compliments on it. Thank you for asking. As Mel was saying, they really leaned into the first theme. The t-shirts around the stands had the words first of a lifetime on them. And actually we have two wins as of this taping. The Valkyrys are two and two. You know, expectations for a lot of wins are not super high, but it’s more about getting excited for the team, getting to know the players. So yeah, it’s cool to just walk around and see people wearing the gear and watching Chase Center. Get really loud. I mean the Warriors season is over too so you know for the next four to five months the Valkyries will be the only pro basketball team in the Bay Area playing at Chase Center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:16] \u003c/em>That’s true, I didn’t even think about that. And yeah, I really have been seeing more and more gear out there. Last weekend we went and visited Jessica in San Jose, where she lives, and I feel like I was even seeing Valkyrie’s gear out in the wild over there. Are you excited about the Valkyrys, Jessica? Are you planning to watch?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:04:41] \u003c/em>Oh yeah, definitely. I think, you know, I’m just really excited for women’s sports period in the Bay Area. I think being down in San Jose, I’m pretty close to where Bay FC plays. And so that’s also a top of my list as a summer activity. And when we covered the Valkyries, I was looking up a lot of sports content. And so now my YouTube algorithm is just purely basketball. So that’s, also dragged me into the NBA playoffs too. I’m generally just really excited about sports this summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:13] \u003c/em>Yes, join us. The algorithm is roping you in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:20] \u003c/em>Well, Mel, thank you so much for joining us for this first part of our news roundup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mel Velasquez: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:05:27] \u003c/em>It’s always a pleasure, Ericka. And when we come back, we’ll dig into some of the other stories that we’ve been following this month. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:44] \u003c/em>And welcome back to the Bays Monthly News Roundup where we talk about some of the other stories that we’ve been following this month and Alan will dive right in with your story. What have you been following?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:06:55] \u003c/em>Well, obviously, at the federal level, one of the biggest pieces of news is President Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill, a.k.a. The big budget reconciliation bill that is making its way through Congress recently past the House. There are many different aspects to it that are getting attention, including potential cuts to the safety net, things like Medicaid, Medicare, potential tax breaks for the rich. But one. Element of this bill that has also gotten attention here in California has to do with artificial intelligence. Most of the reporting I read to prep for this segment, uh, comes from Kari Johnson from CalMatters. So the bill that passed the house recently that’s being considered in the Senate includes a moratorium, essentially a ban on state regulations of AI for 10 years, you know, that has obviously caused considerable alarm here in California. Which is not only home to many, many AI companies, including OpenAI, but also home to many state-level regulations of\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:07:55] \u003c/em>Wow, I mean, living in Silicon Valley and being a journalist, I can definitely understand the concerns, you know, articles have been used to train AI, and that’s been a big issue. But I guess what’s the argument behind this ban?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:12] \u003c/em>One argument that House Republicans have made is that we essentially have a patchwork of regulations right now when it comes to AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep. Jay Obernolte: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:19] \u003c/em>What we absolutely cannot have is a situation where the rules on the governance of AI change every time the winds of political fortune shift one way or another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:29] \u003c/em>Representative Jay Obernolte, who is a Republican and represents parts of LA, Kern County, San Bernardino counties, at a committee hearing earlier this month, basically argued that this patchwork of regulations that we have across states, so it’s different in each state, is bad for U.S. Competitiveness. It’s bad for entrepreneurs who will sort of have to navigate different sets of rules across states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep. Jay Obernolte: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:08:54] \u003c/em>Innovators and investors that are making billion-dollar decisions on R&D and procurement, and they need regulatory certainty to do that, and the only way that that happens is if we provide that leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:04] \u003c/em>Some Republicans have argued that this moratorium would pave the way for a more comprehensive federal approach to AI. But I think big picture, President Trump and his administration have signaled an interest in deregulation more broadly, whether it’s AI, whether its the environment, whether it’s financial institutions. So there’s sort of different arguments in that vein, but those are some of the reasons why there’s this 10-year ban on regulations of AI in this bill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:09:35] \u003c/em>So I mean, how would this even work exactly, Alan? I mean aren’t we talking about laws that have already been passed by the California State Legislature and signed into law? And then isn’t California also currently considering a bunch of AI regulations now? I mean what would this ban do exactly? How would it work?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:01] \u003c/em>Well, I mean, it would make it unlawful to enforce many of our laws regarding AI here in California, and it would potentially preempt the nearly 30 bills that are currently being considered in the California state legislature. Now last year, the legislature passed around 20 laws related to AI. Some advocates wanted the state to get going even stronger on regulations, but there For many that did pass, including things like… Um, requiring political campaigns to disclose when AI is being used in advertising measures that protect children, you know, requiring companies to provide free AI detection tools to the public. This 10 year ban would render many of these measures unlawful to enforce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:43] \u003c/em>What have the reactions been?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:45] \u003c/em>You know, some Democrats in Congress have expressed concern, although they don’t really have any power to stop it since they’re in the minority.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep Kevin Mullen: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:51] \u003c/em>The idea that we have to pick between innovation and safeguards just doesn’t hold up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:10:55] \u003c/em>Representative Kevin Mullen, who represents the peninsula, sat in an energy committee hearing that he thinks this sort of blanket deregulation, as he called it, isn’t the right approach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Rep Kevin Mullen: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:05] \u003c/em>The real threat to U.S. Leadership in AI isn’t regulation, it’s inaction. If we allow AI systems operate without guardrails, we risk eroding public trust. So when we talk about AI regulation and American leadership, the real question isn’t whether to regulate. It’s where and how.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:23] \u003c/em>The California Privacy Protection Agency sent a letter to Congress saying that this moratorium could, quote, rob millions of Americans of rights they already enjoy. So certainly from, you know, many Democrats here in California and privacy advocates, This is pretty alarming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:39] \u003c/em>I mean, will this ban on AI regulations actually happen or not? Like how likely is it that this will in fact move forward?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:11:52] \u003c/em>It’s unclear, and it’s a little wheezy, but the reason it’s unclear is because the so-called big, beautiful bill of President Trump’s is what’s called a budget reconciliation bill, which is to say that this sweeping bill needs to include measures that are related to fiscal matters in order for it to pass, and in order to only need 51 senators for it pass. One privacy advocate who spoke to Kari Johnson from CalMatters… Pointed out that a 10 year moratorium on AI regulations, is that a fiscal matter? I mean, probably not. But these advocates are still concerned because it sort of puts a marker down for how House Republicans are thinking about this issue. And maybe even if it doesn’t make it into this giant budget bill, it may get attached to a different bill related to AI later down the line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:12:38] \u003c/em>Well, definitely something to watch in the coming months. Alan, thank you so much. And next we have my story that I’ve been following this month, which is an update on an alternative to police that was established in Oakland after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. If you all remember, Oakland really became the epicenter nationally of efforts to find an alternative to policing. They really went ahead with a program really try to do that and now there’s new data on how that alternative has been working in the last few years. Oakland’s civilian response team also known as the mobile assistance community responders of Oakland you probably know it more or hear it more so referred to as MACRO has responded to more than 6 000 incidents last year according to a report released to the city council this week. And it was able to divert hundreds of calls away from law enforcement and emergency services according to this data, which the folks behind MACRO really see as a success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:02] \u003c/em>You mentioned that they responded to over 6,000 incidents, and those were instances that people avoided calling the police. So what kinds of non-emergency incidents were they responding to?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:15] \u003c/em>Yeah, so MACRO was really looking at the kind of situations that have too often led to violence only after police show up. You know, a mental health crisis that escalates, a man sleeping in a car, for example, and they really stress that their focus is these non-violent incidents. Anything that involves violence is really, in their minds, a police matter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:42] \u003c/em>So what else can you tell us about this data? And I’m curious, are there any areas of improvements, places where macro could do better?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:14:50] \u003c/em>Yeah, so the data shows that most of the incidents that they responded to occurred downtown and on city streets. So really, this shows that they’re dealing mostly with the city’s unhoused population. And the most common incident was actually a wellness check that made up 54% of the calls that they received. That was followed by sleeping checks and also behavioral concerns. Most notably, Macro says that its dispatched responses diverted 34% of calls away from law enforcement and away from emergency services. Almost 100% of these incidents were resolved on site without requiring police or EMS intervention. Elliot Jones, who’s the program manager for Macro, delivered some of this data to Oakland City Council earlier this week in. He shared this example of the kind of stuff that they’re responding to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Elliot Jones: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:15:52] \u003c/em>Couple days ago, we get a call about an elderly individual on a porch on the North Oakland Berkeley border. We get there, this man had wandered out of his home. He was having memory issues, but MACRO was able to respond and make the connection. And while it doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet, and the news report didn’t include us, it did say, update, he’s been found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:16:13] \u003c/em>That said, there was criticism at the city council meeting around macro. Some say that the team is just too limited in the things that it could actually do to help the problems going on in Oakland. Some say that too few 911 calls are being even routed to macro. Others said that, you know, this money could be used for the Oakland fire department, which has had to close fire stations around the city. And others say that not enough people know that macro is even a service that’s available to people in the community. There’s also this question around independent auditing of macro. These numbers that were shared at the city council meeting were mostly just numbers that macro itself was keeping track of. And Jones agrees with critics that there should be some sort of independent oversight. And monitoring of how exactly Macro is doing to help him make the case that this is a program actually worth keeping around if it could get the resources it needs to do what I think many Oaklanders have really demanded after the death of George Floyd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:33] \u003c/em>So, I mean, what happens next? I mean I know Oakland’s in the middle of a major budget crisis. So, you know, is macro gonna be able to stick around? Do we know anything?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:17:45] \u003c/em>Yeah, I think Elliot Jones, Macros program manager, is very aware of Oakland’s budget issues. He told KTVU that a state grant of $10 million that they’ve been using to really run this program ends next year, at the end of 2026, and that it’s gonna take about $4 million annually to keep this program running. And Joan says that he is working with the city and also really looking for grants to make sure that this kind of program can stay afloat in Oakland. All right, and that is it for the story I’ve been following this month. Jessica Kariisa, we will end it off with you and a fun story\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:18:40] \u003c/em>Yeah, this is more maybe an announcement than story per se, but the Bay Area’s very own Ruby Ibarra won NPR’s 2025 Tiny Desk Contest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:18:52] \u003c/em>Hello America, break your backs for dollars they don’t carry ya Seven thousand miles away from home with language barriers Land of opportunity, tell me is it good to ya But six feet deep on stolen land is where they bury ya November 1991\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:04] \u003c/em>She was chosen as the winner from over 7,000 submissions of independent artists from across the country. It’s a really huge deal. It’s really huge platform. Most people have heard of Tiny Desk. She’s joining the ranks of lots of great artists, including Fantastic Negrito, who also was based in the Bay Area, and Tank and the Bangas, and so many other great artists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:29] \u003c/em>They always feed in a slice Made to believe I don’t exist unless I wear a disguise Cause I’ve been constantly lying Too broken to die till I cry Till I no longer recognize the person that was inside Until we fail like the sun\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:40] \u003c/em>This is super exciting for the Bay Area. Ruby Ibarra is someone who, you know, I’ve been aware of for a while because she’s Filipina. ECG as well. But Jessica, can you tell us a bit more about her background in the Bay area and the kind of music she performs?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:19:56] \u003c/em>For sure, yeah. So Ruby, she was born in the Philippines. She immigrated to the U.S. As a young child. She grew up in San Lorenzo, shout out to the East Bay. And, you know, she’s been making music for a while. I mean, her debut mixtape came out in 2012. Her immigrant experience has been a huge part of her music, dating back to her debut album, Circa 91. You know, her raps in multiple languages. She raps English and also multiple Filipino languages, including Tagalog and her native Waray. You know, she’s someone I heard about when I first moved to the Bay Area and was looking into the music scene. She’s really just been a staple in the Bay area as an independent artist for so long. So this really feels like a victory lap and a culmination of all her really hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:20:43] \u003c/em>One thing I really love about Ruby Ibara, I feel like she’s one of those artists who shares in her success. Like she lifts up others as she’s also coming up. I got a chance to interview her at a Filipino arts event that we did at KQED in 2023. And one of the things that she did during her performance was like, have a young up and coming Filipino American artists perform with her. And I feel like. She also really highlights other people in the community in the winning song that she performed. Can you talk a little bit more about the tiny desk that she preformed and that actually ended up winning?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:25] \u003c/em>Yeah, so the song is called Bakunawa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:28] \u003c/em>I need a Samaria combined into one I’ve been blue like the ocean, we all grew When we moved one of you like our red Till I’m white, that’s the bluest Blue like the moon, like the eyes in the brew\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:21:38] \u003c/em>and it’s a reference to a dragon-like serpent in Philippine mythology who swallows the moon and is believed to cause eclipses, earthquakes, and you know other weather-related events. Basically like a disruptive force that typically people want to banish but she told KQED that she wanted to flip the story and embody the Bakunawa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Singing: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:00] \u003c/em>Hoi hoi hoiii\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:08] \u003c/em>and that she interpreted the story as a metaphor for resistance and a battle cry against erasure. And the performance video is really cool. She had an all-Filipina band. She was pregnant with her first child while she made the song and while she recorded the video. And so she’s talked about how her daughter and being pregnant has also played a big part in it. And also the song is just great. It’s really funky. There’s a spoken word portion. There’s the rap portion. Like I said before, it’s in multiple languages. And it’s just a really, really beautiful, powerful video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Singing: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:45] \u003c/em>If I don’t know me, what is my past? If I dont know me what is…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Montecillo: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:22:58] \u003c/em>So winning Tiny Desk. Huge deal. So what happens now that she’s won the contest?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:03] \u003c/em>She submitted her video, she won, and the next step was to record an actual Tiny Desk at the Tiny Desks in D.C. And that just dropped on YouTube, so you can go watch that. And that performance is expanded. It’s three songs, so, you get to listen to a bit more of her catalog. And she’s also going to headline a 10-city Tiny Desktour this summer. You can buy tickets to that already at tinydeskcontest.npr.org. There’ll be a stop in the Bay Area and Petaluma. And yeah, I mean, like you were saying, it’s a huge, huge platform. So, you know, she’s already collected new fans. She’ll keep collecting more new fans and it’s really gonna be just a huge leveling up of her career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ruby Ibarra (rapping): \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:23:47] \u003c/em>The sun touched my skin in hopes that I’d win Hands etched with sorrows deeper than the ocean’s depths History rooted in my people’s death This breath been enveloped, consumed, swallowed whole On nights where one moon seems fleeting so Even seven moons don’t illuminate like my soul My rage spoon-feeder, moon eater, truth keeper Naabay kahadlukan wala diri Bisaya ni ang dilahait kaayotan awa ni Gigaun ang bulan revolution in me Naan na ang bakunawa Rebirth the new moon\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:26] \u003c/em>It’s so exciting to see Ruby Ibarra up there on that tiny desk and representing the Bay Area and Bay Area Pin Eyes. Thanks for sharing this one, Jessica.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jessica Kariisa: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:37] \u003c/em>Yeah, absolutely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Ericka Cruz Guevarra: \u003c/b>\u003cem>[00:24:45] \u003c/em>Well, that’s it for the Bays monthly news roundup. Jessica Kariisa, producer, and Alan Montecillo, thank you both so much for joining me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has tapped some of the city’s richest people to run a new nonprofit aimed at raising money to revitalize the city’s downtown, and also recently announced a fund that will use private dollars to help address homelessness. But how much power should the city’s ultrarich have over the city’s comeback?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1859134600\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:23] Bringing back downtown was one of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s priorities when he was campaigning for mayor. How would you describe his approach to that so far?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:01:35] A few different things come to mind. He’s definitely trying to balance, at least publicly, both changing this whole, you know, the city is in a doom loop narrative, while being honest about issues that he sees like street homelessness and outdoor drug use. Behind the camera, though, you know, he’s really promoting the private sector enormously as part of this downtown revitalization. As you’ll probably recall, Ericka, we’ve talked about before, Lurie is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, and he started a major philanthropy organization called the Tipping Point Community. And it’s no secret, actually an explicit part of his transition plan, to make public-private partnerships and business alliances help restore trust and fill vacant storefronts downtown and to fund things like shelter beds that the city needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:42] And recently, Lurie announced the Downtown Development Corporation or DDC, what is that set up to do exactly?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:02:50] Yeah, the DDC is a private nonprofit group and their main north star is to raise money from wealthy people to revitalize the city’s central business core. Members of the group include Meg Whitman, who’s the former CEO of eBay and Hewlett-Packard. Crypto billionaire Chris Larson, also Bob Fisher of the Gap Retail Company. And so this group is focused on raising large amounts of money for anything from beautification, you know, restaurant outdoor seating, planting trees, to potentially even housing projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:36] And it’s not just downtown revitalization being funded in this sort of way, right, Sydney?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:03:47] Just last week, Lurie announced a new fund as part of his, quote, “Breaking the Cycle” program, which is targeting largely street homelessness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daniel Lurie \u003c/strong>[00:03:57] Today I am proud to launch the Breaking the Cycle Fund. A novel public-private partnership that will help us accelerate the work of expanding interim housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:04:09] So this is a public fund that the city can use to raise private dollars for things like building shelter to get people off the street quicker. Even though this Breaking the Cycle fund is not part of the DDC, there are some similar goals, you know, in terms of wanting to have sort of the optics of homelessness change really fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daniel Lurie \u003c/strong>[00:04:34] The people of this city have given us a clear mandate. To create a safe, clean and thriving San Francisco. That begins with clean and safe streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:04:47] So when Lurie announced the Breaking the Cycle fund, he said that the group had already raised more than $37 million, and that came from groups like the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation. A group called Crankstart, which was founded by Michael Moritz, who you’ll recall is a billionaire who’s very much involved in San Francisco politics. Also, Lurie’s own nonprofit, the Tipping Point Community contributed $11 million to that fund. That was the largest donation in this initial kind of announcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:20] What does Lurie say about why he is doing this this way, like what is the rationale behind tapping san Francisco’s super wealthy elite?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:05:31] Lurie is staring down a massive budget deficit that could balloon even larger if federal funds are withheld from San Francisco as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daniel Lurie \u003c/strong>[00:05:43] We can no longer invest in the same solutions and expect different outcomes. Our system and services must become more effective. And the opportunity to invest in private resources for public good must deliver tangible results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:06:02] Supporters of this model say, you know, the city desperately needs money injected into these kinds of efforts and services and that the business community should step up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Stiepleman \u003c/strong>[00:06:17] The DDC is going to be a helper. It’s going to raise money in order to supplement those plans and go and execute those plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:06:26] I spoke with David Stiepelman, who is the chief organizer behind the DDC. He’s also co-president of Sixth Street, which is an investment firm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Stiepleman \u003c/strong>[00:06:37] We’ll plant trees, we’ll do some greening, we will help restaurants with outdoor seating and figuring that out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:06:44] He said that this is really going to be used to quickly get some things moving. And I think that there, as we saw in this last election cycle, was frustration from a lot of voters over, you know, this sluggish recovery downtown. So folks like Stiepleman are saying that, you know, they can raise some of these monies and actually start to make some changes that voters will see in their day-to-day commutes and walks to school and whatever it may be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Stiepleman \u003c/strong>[00:07:16] If we’ve done our job correctly, this becomes a sustained generational kind of effort. And I think eventually that has to be something that’s generated from public funds, but in the meantime we’re gonna get a going with the substantial private capital base to make sure that downtown is vibrant and resilient and is you know, re-imagined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:47] What is new about this approach? Is this a unique way of addressing the city’s problems?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:07:54] Yeah, I think that’s a great question because it’s not like private money has never been a part of politics. It certainly has and it certainly has here in San Francisco. What is new is that we have a mayor who ra the most expensive mayoral campaign in the city’s history, largely funded through his own wealth. And we’re seeing his connections to the business class, to philanthropy, to technology really come with him to City Hall in some very direct relationship building and direct fundraising from his connections in tech and business and real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:53] What kind of authority do the people in charge of these funds actually have? Are they deciding how this money is then used to beautify downtown?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] It’s a little vague, and that’s partly because some of the actual projects and things that they’re going to be doing are somewhat vague still. We don’t know. You know, so it depends, like if there’s, you know, potential housing or shelter project that they’re funding, that is something that would need to go through City Hall you know, likely pass certain approvals. There are still some guardrails. But it is somewhat vague also when you consider that people who are putting a lot of money towards these things are probably gonna care where it goes to, so even if there’s not a memo attached to the check you know, it’s likely that there’s some sort of conversation and there’s convincing that needs to be done to get people to open up their pockets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:51] Yeah, I mean, it sounds like this public-private approach is normal, but perhaps the scale of it and the embrace of it is what is maybe different. I mean, is anyone concerned about this approach of of tapping san Francisco’s wealthy elite to solve these problems?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:10:13] Absolutely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sean McMorris \u003c/strong>[00:10:15] It’s not that it’s not a worthy cause, but it always raises the issue of purchasing Influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:10:21] I spoke with Sean McMorris, who follows money in politics for a nonprofit called Common Cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sean McMorris \u003c/strong>[00:10:28] I’m sure the people who are going to, he’s going to be soliciting, are probably pretty well healed and probably have their own interests within the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:10:38] We are definitely seeing a real close alliance between the mayor and the city’s wealthy elite class. And that alone, I think, concerns plenty of people. Sean McMorris also talked about this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sean McMorris \u003c/strong>[00:10:55] It’s kind of this game that gets played where the politicians know the people who have the special interests and they reach out to those people. And in return, those people understand that, I do a good thing here, I’m going to be putting myself in good stead with the mayor you know when certain issues come before us or those people are looking for contracts or they’re looking for zone tax change amendments or they’re just looking for certain things that might benefit them individually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:11:28] Another concern that I’ve heard from folks across the political spectrum is you know, what happens when private investment dries up? Or when private donors are not as generous, are not willing to give? Even if you agree and understand that the city needs money right now to function and pay its employees and provide the services that it does, the question of sustainability comes up if that’s not coming through tax revenues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:04] And I mean, do we know anything about whether some of the people that Lurie is tapping to fund the Downtown Redevelopment Fund, or this homelessness fund, if they do, in fact, have any sort of political agendas ?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:12:21] One that gets mentioned a lot in the media is Chris Larson. He was the founder of Ripple, which is a major cryptocurrency company. And he, for a long time, has been very involved in the city’s politics, has put a lot of money into different candidates and ballot measures. And yeah, I think that it’s fair to say that folks who are, you know, using their money in order to get certain ballot measures passed or get certain candidates elected have interests that go beyond just goodwill of the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:01] Well, Sydney, what is, I guess, the timeline here with these funds? What’s next, and when will we actually see these funds, I guess, turning into actual action like, are changes to downtown or are shelters being built?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:13:18] Yeah, for the DDC. In particular, it’s a little vague still. In terms of the Breaking the Cycle Fund, some of that money is already being put to use. Like I mentioned before, the Tipping Point’s, $11 million donation is being used for family homelessness prevention. The city announced that it is going to open over 70 new behavioral healthcare beds and so that is slowly starting to take shape already as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:54] And I guess what are you going to be watching for moving forward with these two funds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:14:00] Yeah, I mean I will of course be trying to keep an eye on what these funds are actually, you know, producing. The neighborhoods that they are focusing on. Even block by block, I think it’s fascinating here in San Francisco since you can see just such a range. I’m waiting to see what the big picture is. You know, I think that a lot of these solutions are in some ways band-aids to bigger societal structural problems that the city is facing, like wealth inequality. Building more shelter beds as much as the city needs them does not address that. And so I think I’m curious to see if that’s something that the city is taking seriously, how to actually make it more affordable to live here. And not just how to make it. You know, a more beautiful city for those who can’t afford to live here.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has tapped some of the city’s richest people to run a new nonprofit aimed at raising money to revitalize the city’s downtown, and also recently announced a fund that will use private dollars to help address homelessness. But how much power should the city’s ultrarich have over the city’s comeback?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC1859134600\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:23] Bringing back downtown was one of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s priorities when he was campaigning for mayor. How would you describe his approach to that so far?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:01:35] A few different things come to mind. He’s definitely trying to balance, at least publicly, both changing this whole, you know, the city is in a doom loop narrative, while being honest about issues that he sees like street homelessness and outdoor drug use. Behind the camera, though, you know, he’s really promoting the private sector enormously as part of this downtown revitalization. As you’ll probably recall, Ericka, we’ve talked about before, Lurie is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, and he started a major philanthropy organization called the Tipping Point Community. And it’s no secret, actually an explicit part of his transition plan, to make public-private partnerships and business alliances help restore trust and fill vacant storefronts downtown and to fund things like shelter beds that the city needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:42] And recently, Lurie announced the Downtown Development Corporation or DDC, what is that set up to do exactly?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:02:50] Yeah, the DDC is a private nonprofit group and their main north star is to raise money from wealthy people to revitalize the city’s central business core. Members of the group include Meg Whitman, who’s the former CEO of eBay and Hewlett-Packard. Crypto billionaire Chris Larson, also Bob Fisher of the Gap Retail Company. And so this group is focused on raising large amounts of money for anything from beautification, you know, restaurant outdoor seating, planting trees, to potentially even housing projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:03:36] And it’s not just downtown revitalization being funded in this sort of way, right, Sydney?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:03:47] Just last week, Lurie announced a new fund as part of his, quote, “Breaking the Cycle” program, which is targeting largely street homelessness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daniel Lurie \u003c/strong>[00:03:57] Today I am proud to launch the Breaking the Cycle Fund. A novel public-private partnership that will help us accelerate the work of expanding interim housing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:04:09] So this is a public fund that the city can use to raise private dollars for things like building shelter to get people off the street quicker. Even though this Breaking the Cycle fund is not part of the DDC, there are some similar goals, you know, in terms of wanting to have sort of the optics of homelessness change really fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daniel Lurie \u003c/strong>[00:04:34] The people of this city have given us a clear mandate. To create a safe, clean and thriving San Francisco. That begins with clean and safe streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:04:47] So when Lurie announced the Breaking the Cycle fund, he said that the group had already raised more than $37 million, and that came from groups like the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation. A group called Crankstart, which was founded by Michael Moritz, who you’ll recall is a billionaire who’s very much involved in San Francisco politics. Also, Lurie’s own nonprofit, the Tipping Point Community contributed $11 million to that fund. That was the largest donation in this initial kind of announcement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:20] What does Lurie say about why he is doing this this way, like what is the rationale behind tapping san Francisco’s super wealthy elite?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:05:31] Lurie is staring down a massive budget deficit that could balloon even larger if federal funds are withheld from San Francisco as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Daniel Lurie \u003c/strong>[00:05:43] We can no longer invest in the same solutions and expect different outcomes. Our system and services must become more effective. And the opportunity to invest in private resources for public good must deliver tangible results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:06:02] Supporters of this model say, you know, the city desperately needs money injected into these kinds of efforts and services and that the business community should step up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Stiepleman \u003c/strong>[00:06:17] The DDC is going to be a helper. It’s going to raise money in order to supplement those plans and go and execute those plans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:06:26] I spoke with David Stiepelman, who is the chief organizer behind the DDC. He’s also co-president of Sixth Street, which is an investment firm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Stiepleman \u003c/strong>[00:06:37] We’ll plant trees, we’ll do some greening, we will help restaurants with outdoor seating and figuring that out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:06:44] He said that this is really going to be used to quickly get some things moving. And I think that there, as we saw in this last election cycle, was frustration from a lot of voters over, you know, this sluggish recovery downtown. So folks like Stiepleman are saying that, you know, they can raise some of these monies and actually start to make some changes that voters will see in their day-to-day commutes and walks to school and whatever it may be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>David Stiepleman \u003c/strong>[00:07:16] If we’ve done our job correctly, this becomes a sustained generational kind of effort. And I think eventually that has to be something that’s generated from public funds, but in the meantime we’re gonna get a going with the substantial private capital base to make sure that downtown is vibrant and resilient and is you know, re-imagined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:07:47] What is new about this approach? Is this a unique way of addressing the city’s problems?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:07:54] Yeah, I think that’s a great question because it’s not like private money has never been a part of politics. It certainly has and it certainly has here in San Francisco. What is new is that we have a mayor who ra the most expensive mayoral campaign in the city’s history, largely funded through his own wealth. And we’re seeing his connections to the business class, to philanthropy, to technology really come with him to City Hall in some very direct relationship building and direct fundraising from his connections in tech and business and real estate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:08:53] What kind of authority do the people in charge of these funds actually have? Are they deciding how this money is then used to beautify downtown?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] It’s a little vague, and that’s partly because some of the actual projects and things that they’re going to be doing are somewhat vague still. We don’t know. You know, so it depends, like if there’s, you know, potential housing or shelter project that they’re funding, that is something that would need to go through City Hall you know, likely pass certain approvals. There are still some guardrails. But it is somewhat vague also when you consider that people who are putting a lot of money towards these things are probably gonna care where it goes to, so even if there’s not a memo attached to the check you know, it’s likely that there’s some sort of conversation and there’s convincing that needs to be done to get people to open up their pockets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:51] Yeah, I mean, it sounds like this public-private approach is normal, but perhaps the scale of it and the embrace of it is what is maybe different. I mean, is anyone concerned about this approach of of tapping san Francisco’s wealthy elite to solve these problems?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:10:13] Absolutely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sean McMorris \u003c/strong>[00:10:15] It’s not that it’s not a worthy cause, but it always raises the issue of purchasing Influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:10:21] I spoke with Sean McMorris, who follows money in politics for a nonprofit called Common Cause.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sean McMorris \u003c/strong>[00:10:28] I’m sure the people who are going to, he’s going to be soliciting, are probably pretty well healed and probably have their own interests within the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:10:38] We are definitely seeing a real close alliance between the mayor and the city’s wealthy elite class. And that alone, I think, concerns plenty of people. Sean McMorris also talked about this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sean McMorris \u003c/strong>[00:10:55] It’s kind of this game that gets played where the politicians know the people who have the special interests and they reach out to those people. And in return, those people understand that, I do a good thing here, I’m going to be putting myself in good stead with the mayor you know when certain issues come before us or those people are looking for contracts or they’re looking for zone tax change amendments or they’re just looking for certain things that might benefit them individually.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:11:28] Another concern that I’ve heard from folks across the political spectrum is you know, what happens when private investment dries up? Or when private donors are not as generous, are not willing to give? Even if you agree and understand that the city needs money right now to function and pay its employees and provide the services that it does, the question of sustainability comes up if that’s not coming through tax revenues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:04] And I mean, do we know anything about whether some of the people that Lurie is tapping to fund the Downtown Redevelopment Fund, or this homelessness fund, if they do, in fact, have any sort of political agendas ?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:12:21] One that gets mentioned a lot in the media is Chris Larson. He was the founder of Ripple, which is a major cryptocurrency company. And he, for a long time, has been very involved in the city’s politics, has put a lot of money into different candidates and ballot measures. And yeah, I think that it’s fair to say that folks who are, you know, using their money in order to get certain ballot measures passed or get certain candidates elected have interests that go beyond just goodwill of the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:01] Well, Sydney, what is, I guess, the timeline here with these funds? What’s next, and when will we actually see these funds, I guess, turning into actual action like, are changes to downtown or are shelters being built?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:13:18] Yeah, for the DDC. In particular, it’s a little vague still. In terms of the Breaking the Cycle Fund, some of that money is already being put to use. Like I mentioned before, the Tipping Point’s, $11 million donation is being used for family homelessness prevention. The city announced that it is going to open over 70 new behavioral healthcare beds and so that is slowly starting to take shape already as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:54] And I guess what are you going to be watching for moving forward with these two funds?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sydney Johnson \u003c/strong>[00:14:00] Yeah, I mean I will of course be trying to keep an eye on what these funds are actually, you know, producing. The neighborhoods that they are focusing on. Even block by block, I think it’s fascinating here in San Francisco since you can see just such a range. I’m waiting to see what the big picture is. You know, I think that a lot of these solutions are in some ways band-aids to bigger societal structural problems that the city is facing, like wealth inequality. Building more shelter beds as much as the city needs them does not address that. And so I think I’m curious to see if that’s something that the city is taking seriously, how to actually make it more affordable to live here. And not just how to make it. You know, a more beautiful city for those who can’t afford to live here.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"perspectives": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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