Lucia Kanter St. Amour reflects all the unnamed people who helped improve the quality of life for everyone.
We love to celebrate San Francisco’s bold revolutions — the Gold Rush, the counterculture and the startups. But the hidden revolutionaries? They moved furtively. The women who disguised themselves as men to stake mining claims. The immigrants who rebuilt the city after the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The caregivers who held entire neighborhoods together without pay, without fanfare, without being written into history. Today we argue over who belongs, whose work matters and whose voices deserve airtime. But these arguments aren’t new. They’re just echoes of older battles — quieter ones fought with worn hands, heavy aprons and homemade signs. When I walk Market Street, I wonder: How many untold stories are buried under the glass towers and tech buses? Whose footsteps pressed into the mud before the concrete was poured? Who remembers the women who bought property before they had the right to vote?
Or the indigenous families who survived displacement — and still survive it? Or the single mothers who juggled three jobs and fed their neighbors, too? Their names aren’t carved into the skyline. But their labor is. Their resilience is. History isn’t just the battles that made the news. It’s the quiet rebellions — the caregiving, the solidarity, the stubborn refusal to vanish — that shape everything we think of as progress. We didn’t just inherit a city. We inherited unfinished work. Work that isn’t glamorous. Work that isn’t often seen.
If we only honor the loud victories, we erase the quieter ones that teach us what intrepid endurance, hope and courage looks like. Maybe the real question today isn’t: Whose stories do we tell? Maybe it’s: Whose stories are we still brave enough to find? The revolution wasn’t just panned gold and IPO’d unicorns. It was the grit and grace of the work no one bothered to name. In an age of raucous personal truths and digital shouting, I still believe in quiet power. With a Perspective, I’m S. Lucia Kanter St. Amour.