San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) could take a historic step by giving preference to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) contractors in bidding.

The public transit system's board will vote Sept. 14 to give qualified LGBT contractors a five percent bid preference over small business prime contractors through a change to its small business program.

BART said LGBT businesses still face barriers in the market – particularly in the construction industry – and hoped to welcome LGBT businesses as part of the effort to rebuild the system.

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BART Board Chair Rebecca Saltzman said, “BART has a track record of prioritizing local, small, disadvantaged and women-owned businesses and this change will be a natural extension of those efforts.”

“As an agency, we want to do everything we can to make commissioning more inclusive.”

To qualify for the proposed new policy, an LGBT contractor would need to be certified as a small business by either the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce or the California Public Utilities Commission, as well as the California Department of General Services.

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Employees said management declined to voluntarily recognize their membership in the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29 during a tense town hall on Friday. According to workers who spoke with KQED, Kisch told staff that a letter with a list of names was not sufficient to show unionizing was not an “actual, uncoerced decision on the part of each employee listed.”

Even without that recognition, workers will soon move forward with a ballot election.

“Most of us can’t afford to live in the city where we help people find housing,” said Juliana Dunn, who works with kids at Compass Clara House, a transitional housing program. “And we want to have a voice in that. We want to have a seat at the negotiation table. We don’t want to be dismissed.”

In a written statement to KQED, Kisch said that she respected the right of staff to decide whether to bring in a labor organization to represent them in collective bargaining.

“For more than 100 years Compass Family Services has been devoted to serving the homeless families in our community, including new arrivals,” she wrote in the statement. “If a majority of our staff decide that is in their best interest, we will honor that decision.”

Dunn said employees began talking about the need to improve working conditions around the fall of 2021. They were worried at the time that hybrid work options were ending, and staff would need to return to work in person five days a week.

Jobs at Compass can be both fast-paced and high stress, with workers having difficult conversations over the phone, sometimes in multiple languages ​​at once. That can make working in the office uncomfortable, and can place an unnecessary burden on Compass staff already struggling to balance child care on top of the secondary trauma of working with families experiencing homelessness. Staff at Compass are also overwhelmingly people of color.

Dunn said that when staff attempted to share their concerns about equity, workers felt dismissed. They said the work environment became even more uncomfortable because of microaggressions, like glares on the job or suggestions that they were replaceable. After that, workers began researching what union membership could look like.

Compass is not the only city nonprofit to see labor strife recently. Employees at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, another San Francisco transitional housing provider, went on strike over the summer for the first time in history and ratified a contract for higher wages earlier this month. Staff at Hotel Whitcomb, one of the city’s hotels housing vulnerable residents under the state’s Project Roomkey program, have described the mental health toll on the job of regularly responding to drug overdoses.

Melani Gomez is currently a case manager at Compass. She previously was a client for about seven years. She relied on services through SF HOME, a program with Compass that provides rental subsidies and case management. Gomez said she went through about seven case managers during the years she used their services.

“You have to tell your story again and again and again. And sometimes you get tired,” Gomez said, adding that now she understands why so many of her case managers left. “Being a client really helped me grow and be where I am right now. But seeing the other side of that coin, they’re not very supportive of their own families who are working for them.”

Alex Arauz works at Compass’ Central City Access Point, one of the first points of contact for families experiencing homelessness. His official job title is “problem solver.” He said that without Compass, many families would be lost, calling every agency to see where they could receive help.

Before he worked at Compass, he worked at a union shop, Catholic Charities, but was looking for somewhere more progressive that embraced harm-reduction services. When he started in August, he said he heard murmurs of unionizing and workers who were scared.

“I have never experienced a workplace where every single worker was scared of what administration could do. And it shook me,” he said. “To be scared of this agency that said, ‘We’re all a family, we’re all here.’ That’s not something that I want to feel from an agency that says they have my back, and I thought we were all moving towards the same goals.”

The post ‘We Do not Wish to Be Dismissed’: Employees at Compass Household Companies in San Francisco Plan Vote to Unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Employees said management declined to voluntarily recognize their membership in the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29 during a tense town hall on Friday. According to workers who spoke with KQED, Kisch told staff that a letter with a list of names was not sufficient to show unionizing was not an “actual, uncoerced decision on the part of each employee listed.”

Even without that recognition, workers will soon move forward with a ballot election.

“Most of us can’t afford to live in the city where we help people find housing,” said Juliana Dunn, who works with kids at Compass Clara House, a transitional housing program. “And we want to have a voice in that. We want to have a seat at the negotiation table. We don’t want to be dismissed.”

In a written statement to KQED, Kisch said that she respected the right of staff to decide whether to bring in a labor organization to represent them in collective bargaining.

“For more than 100 years Compass Family Services has been devoted to serving the homeless families in our community, including new arrivals,” she wrote in the statement. “If a majority of our staff decide that is in their best interest, we will honor that decision.”

Dunn said employees began talking about the need to improve working conditions around the fall of 2021. They were worried at the time that hybrid work options were ending, and staff would need to return to work in person five days a week.

Jobs at Compass can be both fast-paced and high stress, with workers having difficult conversations over the phone, sometimes in multiple languages ​​at once. That can make working in the office uncomfortable, and can place an unnecessary burden on Compass staff already struggling to balance child care on top of the secondary trauma of working with families experiencing homelessness. Staff at Compass are also overwhelmingly people of color.

Dunn said that when staff attempted to share their concerns about equity, workers felt dismissed. They said the work environment became even more uncomfortable because of microaggressions, like glares on the job or suggestions that they were replaceable. After that, workers began researching what union membership could look like.

Compass is not the only city nonprofit to see labor strife recently. Employees at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, another San Francisco transitional housing provider, went on strike over the summer for the first time in history and ratified a contract for higher wages earlier this month. Staff at Hotel Whitcomb, one of the city’s hotels housing vulnerable residents under the state’s Project Roomkey program, have described the mental health toll on the job of regularly responding to drug overdoses.

Melani Gomez is currently a case manager at Compass. She previously was a client for about seven years. She relied on services through SF HOME, a program with Compass that provides rental subsidies and case management. Gomez said she went through about seven case managers during the years she used their services.

“You have to tell your story again and again and again. And sometimes you get tired,” Gomez said, adding that now she understands why so many of her case managers left. “Being a client really helped me grow and be where I am right now. But seeing the other side of that coin, they’re not very supportive of their own families who are working for them.”

Alex Arauz works at Compass’ Central City Access Point, one of the first points of contact for families experiencing homelessness. His official job title is “problem solver.” He said that without Compass, many families would be lost, calling every agency to see where they could receive help.

Before he worked at Compass, he worked at a union shop, Catholic Charities, but was looking for somewhere more progressive that embraced harm-reduction services. When he started in August, he said he heard murmurs of unionizing and workers who were scared.

“I have never experienced a workplace where every single worker was scared of what administration could do. And it shook me,” he said. “To be scared of this agency that said, ‘We’re all a family, we’re all here.’ That’s not something that I want to feel from an agency that says they have my back, and I thought we were all moving towards the same goals.”

The post ‘We Do not Wish to Be Dismissed’: Employees at Compass Household Companies in San Francisco Plan Vote to Unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

On Tuesday afternoon, with the National Labor Relations Board tallying the votes, workers at the Castro Starbucks (4098 18th St.) voted 7-2 in favor of forming a union (there were 15 eligible voters; 9 cast ballots). The Castro store join hundreds of other Starbucks locations around the country that have taken similar steps this year.

“We’re very proud of the results today,” said James Kreiss, a worker at the Castro location. “We hope this win encourages our San Francisco sister stores to seek a union too. Staff and customers have gone through the ringer this past year with inconsistent staffing and store availability — we appreciate the support our community has shown us and the continued support as we begin the long process of negotiations with Starbucks.”

The Castro Starbucks, affectionately known as Bearbucks, was closed for about four months, from mid-December until April 18. A Starbucks spokesperson categorized the closure to Hoodline as a “facilities issue,” declining to comment further. Multiple workers at the Castro location tell SFGATE the store dealt for years with a plumbing issue — specifically, a rotten sewage smell — that they believe caused the shutdown and repairs. (Starbucks did not respond to a request for comment.)

Public records confirm a 2019 complaint about a “sewage smell,” though there aren’t more recent complaints on file. Permits show that multiple sinks were replaced earlier in 2022 and a “final plumbing inspection” took place March 1.

Workers at the Castro location discussed the possibility of unionizing ever since the first Starbucks union was established in Buffalo in early December of 2021, but those conversations didn’t pick up in earnest until early May of 2022, when their store was fully open again, Kreiss said. During the four-month closure, Castro workers had their hours drop off, sometimes dramatically, as they searched for other Bay Area locations where they could pick up temporary shifts. That, multiple workers said, is one of many reasons they wanted to proceed with a vote to unionize.

Starbucks has five days to challenge the results of the vote. Otherwise, in one week, the results will be certified, according to the NLRB.

San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who represents the Castro, offered the following statement to SFGATE: “Many congratulations to the Castro Starbucks employees on their historic vote to become San Francisco’s first unionized Starbucks store. In an era of growing income inequality, successful efforts to organize low-wage private sector workers to remind us that there is still power in a union and San Francisco is still a union town.”

Supervisor Dean Preston, who recently authored a resolution in support of Starbucks’ workers right to organize, also sent a statement to SFGATE:

“It takes tremendous courage and determination to form a union, especially in a climate where too often big corporations engage in blatant union busting activity. I’m proud of Starbucks employees here and across the country who are unionizing their workplaces.”

The Bay Area may soon add another unionized Starbucks location: Workers at the Starbucks at 2224 Shattuck Ave. at Berkeley are scheduled to have their ballots counted by the NLRB next Monday, Aug. 22.

The post Castro Starbucks first in San Francisco to vote to unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, elected on a platform of reducing incarceration, faces a recall election driven by a pandemic in which brutal attacks against Asian seniors and viral footage of smash-and-grab robberies tested residents’ famously liberal political bent.

Recall proponents say Chesa Boudin is inexperienced and ideologically inflexible, often seeking to avoid charging criminals and siding with offenders over victims. His prosecutors are not permitted to seek cash bail, try juveniles as adults or seek longer sentences for perpetrators with gang affiliations.

The June 7 recall has pitted Democrat against Democrat in this city of not quite 900,000 people where reports of burglary and motor theft are up from 2017, but overall reported crime is down. Recall proponents have raised more than $7 million — double what his supporters have collected — with funding from the real estate industry and a conservative billionaire.

Boudin’s supporters say his platform is in line with voters who approved measures to reduce sentences. They say conservative interests have exploited high-profile tragedies to make everything Boudin’s fault when crime rates are much higher in districts with traditional law-and-order prosecutors.

Political experts, and Boudin himself, say he’s bearing the brunt of general angst.

San Francisco residents have long accepted a middling public school system, homeless encampments and open drug dealing as part of city life. But the pandemic amped up dissatisfaction as schools remained closed to in-person instruction while city and police officials appeared indifferent to graffiti and vandalism.

“Part of it is a tremendous amount of understandable frustration and anxiety that people have felt in the context of COVID, uncertainty about the direction our country’s headed, anger at the Trump administration and misinformation that administration fueled on everything from public safety to vaccines,” Boudin told The Associated Press.

The vote also comes at a time when recalls are increasingly being used in California, said Joshua Spivak, a recall expert who is with the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York City.

gov. Gavin Newsom easily survived a recall in September, but three members of the San Francisco school board were ousted in February.

“Boudin was elected in a very, very close race,” Spivak said. “He’s somebody who was kind of a perfect target for a recall challenge.”

Boudin’s office has been locked in open battle with San Francisco police, which accused his office of withholding evidence in a case against an officer. Boudin says police often fail to bring thorough cases to the DA’s office for prosecution, making arrests in just 5% of cases. He made headlines when he disclosed that police had used DNA collected from a rape to arrest the victim in an unrelated property crime.

He is backed by the San Francisco Democratic Party and most of the 11-member Board of Supervisors. Mayor London Breed, however, has declined to take a position on the recall, highlighting political divisions in a democratic city where leaders embrace immigrant and gay rights but have fought over police accountability and cracking down on drug dealing.

Boudin, 41, had never worked as a prosecutor when in November 2019, he eked out a 51% win over the more moderate candidate backed by the mayor.

Many were captivated by his personal story. Boudin was a baby when his parents, left-wing Weather Underground radicals, served as drivers in a botched 1981 robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. They were sentenced to decades in prison.

On the campaign trail, he spoke of the pain of stepping through metal detectors to hug his parents and vowed to reform a system that tears apart families. Kathy Boudin was released on parole in 2003 and died of cancer in May. David Gilbert was granted parole in October.

The honeymoon period in office was short-lived.

An allegedly intoxicated parolee driving a stolen car hit and killed two pedestrians on the final day of 2020. Critics say the driver had been arrested multiple times that year and should have been in jail, but Boudin’s office had declined to press charges for burglary, drug possession and car theft. Instead they referred him to state agents who didn’t revoke his parole.

Boudin spokesperson Rachel Marshall said the case prompted the DA’s office “to begin charging parole violations ourselves rather than relying on parole to do it.”

Former prosecutor and recall supporter Brooke Jenkins said the office under the previous district attorney was progressive. But unlike Boudin, she said, George Gascón gave prosecutors discretion and allowed them to insist on onerous treatment programs as conditions of avoiding jail time.

“We are conditioning people to believe they can do whatever they want in San Francisco with no consequences,” Jenkins said. “I think San Francisco sees the need for a little bit more balance to social justice and criminal justice issues.”

Leanna Louie, a Democrat campaigning for the recall, said she was outraged at Boudin’s office released to home treat a young man who viciously kicked an elderly Chinese man sitting on a walker, severely injuring him.

“I think everybody could do better. But this, this is the worst,” Louie said. “Chesa is probably the least helpful person in this whole process.”

Marshall said the defendant was jailed for about seven months at the request of the DA’s office. His attorney then requested he be transferred to mental health diversion, which the judge granted, she said.

It’s unfair to single out Boudin in a complicated system that relies on judges, police and social services to do their parts, his supporters say.

Rico Hamilton, a longtime advocate for ending street violence who was shot last year, was among Black, Asian American and Latino leaders at a recent news conference against the recall.

“We are the leaders of change,” Hamilton said. “And us saying that we don’t want Chesa is saying that we don’t want to change the system.”

At a former tanning salon in the city’s gay-friendly Castro neighborhood that is Boudin’s campaign headquarters, the district attorney expressed pride in what his office has achieved while in a pandemic that drastically cut access to treatment, counseling and courtrooms.

His office filed charges in 62% of arrests brought by San Francisco police in 2021, up from a low of 45% his first year and on par with years dating back to 2016, according to the office’s annual report. Reported crimes include burglary, robbery, vandalism and theft but not homicides, sexual assaults and domestic violence.

At the same time, his office expanded the percentage of defendants who successfully completed diversion programs, some of which are mandated by the state, to avoid incarceration. In May, he announced a new Asian American Pacific Islander victim services unit.

Last year, Boudin south manufacturers and shippers of ghost guns, weapons popular with criminals made from parts bought online. His office pursued assault and battery charges against an on-duty San Francisco police officer, although a jury acquitted him. While opponents have cited high turnover in his office, Boudin said he has no problem filling vacancies.

“There’s a playbook that Republicans and police unions across the country are using to attack criminal justice reform. They exploit tragedies to suggest that those tragedies are a result of reforms,” Boudin said. “They don’t do that in tough-on-crime jurisdictions where the exact same tragedies occur, with more frequency.”

The post San Francisco might vote out progressive DA in heated recall appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, elected on a platform of reducing incarceration, faces a recall election driven by a pandemic in which brutal attacks against Asian seniors and viral footage of smash-and-grab robberies tested residents’ famously liberal political bent.

Recall proponents say Boudin is inexperienced and ideologically inflexible, often seeking to avoid charging criminals and siding with offenders over victims. His prosecutors are not permitted to seek cash bail, try juveniles as adults or seek longer sentences for perpetrators with gang affiliations.

The June 7 recall has pitted Democrat against Democrat in this city of not quite 900,000 people where reports of burglary and motor theft are up from 2017, but overall reported crime is down. Recall proponents have raised more than $7 million — double what his supporters have collected — with funding from the real estate industry and a conservative billionaire.

Boudin’s supporters say his platform is in line with voters who approved measures to reduce sentences. They say conservative interests have exploited high-profile tragedies to make everything Boudin’s fault when crime rates are much higher in districts with traditional law-and-order prosecutors.

Political experts, and Boudin himself, say he’s bearing the brunt of general angst.

San Francisco residents have long accepted a middling public school system, homeless encampments and open drug dealing as part of city life. But the pandemic amped up dissatisfaction as schools remained closed to in-person instruction while city and police officials appeared indifferent to graffiti and vandalism.

“Part of it is a tremendous amount of understandable frustration and anxiety that people have felt in the context of COVID, uncertainty about the direction our country’s headed, anger at the Trump administration and misinformation that administration fueled on everything from public safety to vaccines,” Boudin told The Associated Press.

The vote also comes at a time when recalls are increasingly being used in California, said Joshua Spivak, a recall expert who is with the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York City.

gov. Gavin Newsom easily survived a recall in September, but three members of the San Francisco school board were ousted in February.

“Boudin was elected in a very, very close race,” Spivak said. “He’s somebody who was kind of a perfect target for a recall challenge.”

Boudin’s office has been locked in open battle with San Francisco police, which accused his office of withholding evidence in a case against an officer. Boudin says police often fail to bring thorough cases to the DA’s office for prosecution, making arrests in just 5% of cases. He made headlines when he disclosed that police had used DNA collected from a rape to arrest the victim in an unrelated property crime.

He is backed by the San Francisco Democratic Party and most of the 11-member Board of Supervisors. Mayor London Breed, however, has declined to take a position on the recall, highlighting political divisions in a democratic city where leaders embrace immigrant and gay rights but have fought over police accountability and cracking down on drug dealing.

Boudin, 41, had never worked as a prosecutor when in November 2019, he eked out a 51% win over the more moderate candidate backed by the mayor.

Many were captivated by his personal story. Boudin was a baby when his parents, left-wing Weather Underground radicals, served as drivers in a botched 1981 robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. They were sentenced to decades in prison.

On the campaign trail, he spoke of the pain of stepping through metal detectors to hug his parents and vowed to reform a system that tears apart families. Kathy Boudin was released on parole in 2003 and died of cancer in May. David Gilbert was granted parole in October.

The honeymoon period in office was short-lived.

An allegedly intoxicated parolee driving a stolen car hit and killed two pedestrians on the final day of 2020. Critics say the driver had been arrested multiple times that year and should have been in jail, but Boudin’s office had declined to press charges for burglary, drug possession and car theft. Instead they referred him to state agents who didn’t revoke his parole.

Boudin spokesperson Rachel Marshall said the case prompted the DA’s office “to begin charging parole violations ourselves rather than relying on parole to do it.”

Former prosecutor and recall supporter Brooke Jenkins said the office under the previous district attorney was progressive. But unlike Boudin, she said, George Gascón gave prosecutors discretion and allowed them to insist on onerous treatment programs as conditions of avoiding jail time.

“We are conditioning people to believe they can do whatever they want in San Francisco with no consequences,” Jenkins said. “I think San Francisco sees the need for a little bit more balance to social justice and criminal justice issues.”

Leanna Louie, a Democrat campaigning for the recall, said she was outraged at Boudin’s office released to home treat a young man who viciously kicked an elderly Chinese man sitting on a walker, severely injuring him.

“I think everybody could do better. But this, this is the worst,” Louie said. “Chesa is probably the least helpful person in this whole process.”

Marshall said the defendant was jailed for about seven months at the request of the DA’s office. His attorney then requested he be transferred to mental health diversion, which the judge granted, she said.

It’s unfair to single out Boudin in a complicated system that relies on judges, police and social services to do their parts, his supporters say.

Rico Hamilton, a longtime advocate for ending street violence who was shot last year, was among Black, Asian American and Latino leaders at a recent news conference against the recall.

“We are the leaders of change,” Hamilton said. “And us saying that we don’t want Chesa is saying that we don’t want to change the system.”

At a former tanning salon in the city’s gay-friendly Castro neighborhood that is Boudin’s campaign headquarters, the district attorney expressed pride in what his office has achieved while in a pandemic that drastically cut access to treatment, counseling and courtrooms.

His office filed charges in 62% of arrests brought by San Francisco police in 2021, up from a low of 45% his first year and on par with years dating back to 2016, according to the office’s annual report. Reported crimes include burglary, robbery, vandalism and theft but not homicides, sexual assaults and domestic violence.

At the same time, his office expanded the percentage of defendants who successfully completed diversion programs, some of which are mandated by the state, to avoid incarceration. In May, he announced a new Asian American Pacific Islander victim services unit.

Last year, Boudin south manufacturers and shippers of ghost guns, weapons popular with criminals made from parts bought online. His office pursued assault and battery charges against an on-duty San Francisco police officer, although a jury acquitted him. While opponents have cited high turnover in his office, Boudin said he has no problem filling vacancies.

“There’s a playbook that Republicans and police unions across the country are using to attack criminal justice reform. They exploit tragedies to suggest that those tragedies are a result of reforms,” Boudin said. “They don’t do that in tough-on-crime jurisdictions where the exact same tragedies occur, with more frequency.”

The post San Francisco might vote out progressive DA in heated recall appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Amazon said Tuesday it will pause work on a proposed last-mile warehouse in San Francisco’s Showplace Square after the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed legislation that placed an 18-month moratorium on all new parcel delivery services in the city.

In a statement a company spokesman said, “We will continue to evaluate our long-term use of the site, and in the short-term we will work with our neighbors to look at ways to use the location to serve the community.”

The company’s announcement came after the board voted 10-0 to back the moratorium, which was crafted in part as a response to Amazon’s plan to build a 725,000 square foot warehouse at 900 7th St.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin recused himself from the vote because he owns stock in Amazon.

While the board didn’t discuss the legislation at Tuesday’s meeting, the vote was preceded by a fiery rally in front of City Hall at which organized labor, environmental watchdogs, and residents of San Francisco’s southeast neighborhoods denounced Amazon’s expansion plans.

With an 18-wheeler emblazoned with a “Teamster” banner as a backdrop, Jason Rabinowitz, president of Teamsters Joint Council 7, said “the type of jobs we don’t need to have are the Amazon style poverty jobs that are underpaid, unsafe , include no rights at work.”

“Good jobs uplift our community,” he said. “Amazon style poverty jobs drag us all down.”

Folks attend a press conference at Civic Center Plaza that urged passage of temporary moratorium legislation on Amazon and other parcel delivery service facilities in San Francisco.

Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle

Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton, who represents the neighborhood where the logistics center would be located, said that if Amazon wants to build in the district it will have to negotiate a community benefits package similar to deals struck with major waterfront developers.

“You can go and ask Pier 70. You can ask the (Potrero) Power Station. If you are going to come into our neighborhoods you are going to talk to the people in the neighborhood. You are going to provide them with community benefits,” he said.

The legislation passage is a big win for a broad coalition of organized labor, including the Teamsters, the United Commercial Food Workers, Service Employees International Union and the Building Trades Council.

Jim Araby, strategic campaign director with the United Food & Commercial Workers, said the legislation would “Create the process necessary to hold large corporations like Amazon accountable to the community, the workers and the elected officials.”

“This legislation is the first step to make sure there is an actual process, that you can’t just plop down a 700,000 square foot in the middle of a community and say we are going to buy you off with five dollars and an ice tea ,” he said.

JK Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen

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Trustees at the City College of San Francisco (CCSF) voted unanimously on Thursday to save its endangered Cantonese program, bringing a sense of relief to the students and more than 20 Asian organizations that supported its continuation.

The program was almost canceled in the fall of 2021 due to budget cuts. The college must prioritize classes that contribute to a degree or certificate, according to administrators, and Cantonese does not.

City College trustee Alan Wong led efforts to salvage the program. He announced a proposal in partnership with over 20 Asian organizations.

“Saving the Cantonese program is not just about protecting Chinese culture, language and history. It’s also about the very practical need to ensure our very large Cantonese-speaking Chinese community has access to public safety, health care and social services,” Wong said in a statement provided to NextShark. “Reducing the program would mean wiping out an entire population in need of bilingual services.”

Wong was motivated to save the program after encountering a Chinese grandmother who was the victim of an unprovoked anti-Asian incident. Due to language barriers, the victim was unable to communicate with either the police or the hospital staff.

“She had a large purple bump on her eye. She told me that earlier in the day, when she took the number 15 bus, she was slapped in the eye for no reason and then pushed out of the bus door,” Wong said. “Perpetrators prey on victims who face language barriers and who may not be able to get the help they need!”

But apart from Wong’s personal experiences, the data also shows that San Francisco needs Cantonese. In 2019 is the U.S. Census Bureau listed it as a required language in the city as it is the one along with Mandarin most common non-English language spoken by the population.

Of the city’s 659,184 limited English language customer interactions in 2021, 43.6% (287,474) were in Cantonese. It’s unclear if some of these were reports anti-Asian incidents, which have risen sharply across the country since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his proposal, Wong sought to include Cantonese classes in degree and certificate programs. Transfer agreements with four-year institutions—such as the University of California (UC) system—must also be in place for such courses to count towards a degree or certificate.

The proposal also calls for City College to develop a certificate with Cantonese classes. The whole measure is tax neutral and will not cause any further costs to the college.

Wong thanked the organizations and student leaders who supported the proposal after it passed on Thursday. He said the move is long overdue but efforts continue.

“Going forward, we must redouble our efforts to support equal access and ensure our large Chinese community receives the language and culturally competent public safety, health and social services they need,” Wong continued Twitter.

He added, “This is just the beginning, our movement must continue and ensure the college develops a curriculum for certificates and transfer agreements with UCs.”

Featured image via Alan Wong

The story goes on

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By the end of 2022, San Jose voters could postpone the city’s future mayoral elections to presidential years and potentially give non-citizens living in the city the right to vote in upcoming elections.

By a 10-to-1 vote Tuesday night, the San Jose City Council voted to move forward with a measure in the June 7, 2022 vote asking voters to move the city’s mayoral elections from mid-election years to presidential election years beginning in 2024. The move, which has been in the works for years, will help increase voter turnout and improve representation in the city’s mayoral elections, according to supporters.

“It was a long time coming,” said City Councilor Maya Esparza. “Our current system was designed to suppress votes – it was designed to suppress certain types of votes and allow other votes.”

City leaders also agreed to explore possible additional voting measures for November’s election, including a controversial proposal that the city extend voting rights for local races to non-citizens, such as B. Undocumented immigrants and legal non-citizens who are green card holders or have the right to study or work in the United States

Councilwoman Dev Davis voted against both postponing the mayoral election and considering extending voting rights to non-citizens, saying she didn’t think it was “fair or right.”

If the June 2022 voting measure is approved, the next San Jose mayor elected this year would serve an initial two-year term and then have the option to serve two additional four-year terms in 2024 and 2028 to run for a potential of up to 10 years in office.

Tuesday night’s City Council decisions follow months of work and protracted public meetings by the city’s Charter Review Commission, which was made up of a group of 23 residents appointed by City Council to make recommendations on potential changes to the city’s charter. The commission was formed after Mayor Sam Liccardo endorsed — and then abruptly gave up — a “strong mayor” measure that could potentially have given him significantly more power and an extra two years in office.

The commission’s final report, released Tuesday night, made 17 recommendations, ranging from increasing the number of city council seats from 10 to 14 wards to removing citizenship requirements for board and commission members and public safety reforms such as creating a police rich commission and gave the city’s independent police examiner subpoena powers and full access to unedited records.

The commission did not recommend that the city adopt a “strong mayor” style of government. They did not discuss the proposal to extend voting rights to non-citizens living in San Jose.

The council will hold two study sessions in the coming months to narrow down what recommendations any future election action will make. One meeting will focus on the Charter Review Commission’s recommendations, and another will focus on extending voting rights to non-citizens – a proposal put forward by councilors Magdalena Carrasco and Sylvia Arenas after the commission’s work was completed.

In the United States, more than a dozen municipalities currently allow noncitizens to vote in municipal elections. New York City earlier this month became the nation’s largest municipality allowing legal noncitizen residents to vote in all local elections, provided they are green card holders or have the right to work in the United States. San Francisco voters approved a measure in 2016 that would give parents without citizenship the right to vote in school board elections.

Councilors Carrasco and Arenas, who are campaigning for San Jose to join these other cities, say it would give a voice to those who have long been excluded from participating in the democratic process but play an important role in the community, including business owners, essential workers and consumers.

“Some of these people have been here longer than our own council members,” Carrasco said. “… It is a fantastic thing to give our citizens the opportunity to have a say in their democratic process.”

Santa Clara County is home to nearly 366,600 non-citizens, most of whom are lawful residents but not citizens such as

Dozens of residents who called in support of expanding the city’s voting rights Tuesday night said it would create a “more democratic,” “more inclusive,” and “racially just” city, arguing it was unfair for immigrants to have to pay taxes but local politics could not falter.

“Immigrants here have helped build our city’s infrastructure and prosperity, but we’ve left so many of them without the right to vote in local decisions that directly affect their lives,” said resident Nicholas Hurley.

However, other residents strongly opposed the last-minute proposal, calling it “ridiculous” and arguing that immigrants should be required to go through the relevant citizenship process before acquiring the right to vote.

“I think it’s an attempt to let foreigners take over our city,” said a resident named Brenda. “This is America — if you become a citizen, you get the right to vote.”

During their discussion, several council members expressed that the article “brought out the worst in people” and noted that their inboxes were flooded with “appalling” and racist emails about immigrants.

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SFG / AP) – An emergency ordinance from Mayor London Breed aimed at addressing drug trafficking and overdosing in San Francisco’s tenderloin neighborhood has been heavily criticized ahead of its board of directors to vote on Thursday.

The public health declaration of a state of emergency enables the emergency management department to forego licensing, zoning and contracting rules in order to speed up hiring street cleaners and security services and building a new temporary center where people can be treated and counseled, Breed said.

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The order has nothing to do with a police operation, but critics are calling on the board of directors to reject the statement amid Breed’s broader plan to flood the area with officials and jail drug users if they refuse to accept treatment.

“Threatening people to arrest doesn’t work to bring addicts into treatment,” said San Francisco supervisor Dean Preston, who wants the mayor to spend money on expanding mental health services, alternatives to the police and hotel rooms for the homeless.

“We can do this, but only if we learn from past mistakes instead of repeating them,” he said on social media.

The tenderloin includes museums, the main public library and government offices, including the town hall. But it is also teeming with people who are homeless or in marginal homes, with a high concentration of drug dealers and drug users.

Breed said last week it was time to “be less tolerant of all the bull – that destroyed our city”. She said it wasn’t fair that residents couldn’t use their parks or leave their homes.

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“If someone openly uses drugs on the street, we give them the opportunity to take advantage of the services and treatments we offer. But if they refuse, we won’t allow them to continue consuming on the streets, ”she said on social media this week. “The families in the neighborhood deserve better.”

The number of overdose-related deaths in San Francisco has increased more than 200% since 2018, and over 700 people died from drug overdoses in the city last year, more than the number who died from COVID -19 died, according to the proclamation.

Nearly 600 people died of drug overdoses this year through November, with nearly half of the deaths occurring in the Tenderloin and neighboring South of Market District, the proclamation said. These areas make up 7% of the population of San Francisco.

Politically liberal cities in the US are grappling with crime following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, when their elected leaders pledged ways to reduce friction between police and vulnerable color communities, especially African-Americans like Floyd.

San Francisco Prosecutor Chesa Boudin joined the city’s public defender earlier this week in denouncing the mayor’s plan, saying that detaining people struggling with addiction, mental health problems and homelessness would not work .

They want her to use the money to build additional treatment beds, shelter, professional training, and other social services.

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