Incarcerated Insights: Health and Harm Reduction on the Inside

by Nicole Sheree Rowland

If only I had access to the actual statistics; however, from my living experience, an enormous percentage of people come to prison and find out they caught some kind of communicable disease. OK, the prison is now obligated to treat them, that’s all. One would believe treatment to entail education, ha ha!

So how many people are in and out of jail being told what diseases they have contracted,

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Woman’s Death After Jailing in Marin Questioned; Her Family Sues

By Kalevi Kaukonen

Tammy Manzanilla. Courtesy photo via Facebook.

On April 8, 2026, Tammy Manzanilla was arrested for public intoxication and transported to the Marin County Jail. Three days later, after Manzanilla was transferred to a county-owned hospital, she died as a result of medical neglect while she was in custody, her family alleged in a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit last month.  

At around 1:30 p.m.,

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Parks Belong to Everyone

by Shakema Straker

The following is an excerpt from “We Belong Here,” a newly released report from the Coalition on Homelessness. The full report can be found on cohsf.org.

San Francisco’s parks belong to everyone. That is not just an aspiration, it is the explicit mission of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department (SFRPD): “to provide enriching recreational activities, maintain beautiful parks and open spaces,

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The Breaking Point: Behind the Walls, Part II

by Malik Washington

Disclosure: I have had prior professional contact with William Palmer through his former radio program, Cafe Revolution on KPOO 89.5 FM, and I attended Sheriff’s Department oversight hearings referenced in this article. I also spent time incarcerated inside San Francisco County Jail facilities, including San Bruno. That history informs this reporting but does not alter the documented public record on which this investigation is based.

Part I asked where the people went.

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The Breaking Point

by Malik Washington

How San Francisco reduced visible homelessness while more people are driven into a jail system in crisis

San Francisco wants credit for reducing visible homelessness.

Its own records suggest the city may also need blame for helping fill a jail system now described by a Civil Grand Jury as overcrowded, understaffed, deteriorating, and near a “breaking point.”  That is the contradiction at the heart of the city’s current public-safety narrative.

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Advocates Call for End to War on Homeless People at San Francisco City Hall

photos by Zach Bollinger

On the same day that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office announced “record-low number of tent encampments and large vehicles on San Francisco streets,” advocates for homeless people gathered on the steps of City Hall to demand more services and an end to criminalization.

Three organizations, including the Coalition on Homelessness (COH), which publishes Street Sheet, hosted the rally on June 9 to protest what they call a futile and cruel response to homelessness. 

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Like a Good Neighbor? City Asks Service Providers to Police Clients. 

by Lukas Illa

In May, the Mayor’s Office announced a new “Citywide Good Neighbor Policy” that aims to punish homeless and public health nonprofit providers for inadequately responding to neighborhood complaints about streets conditions around their sites.

This new policy applies to all “shelters, transitional housing programs, access points, drop-in centers, permanent supportive housing sites, and (Department of Public Health) client-serving programs.” For providers contracted to run these sites,

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America, the New Banana Republic

by Paul Boden/Western Regional Advocacy Project

Let’s be real about what’s happening. The U.S. Government is endeavoring to solidify its long time quest of a fascist dictatorship rule. It’s moving incredibly fast because the structures needed to pull this off have been getting implemented piecemeal and with purpose since the Reagan Revolution in 1980. So now they are ready to rock and roll.

Dictatorships always rely on a militarized police force to rain hell on a scapegoated minority that are “blamed” as the cause of whatever the authorities decide is going to put fear into their base and use that fear to stoke division and prejudice amongst people.

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Fighting Sweeps by Building Community

by the Western Regional Advocacy Project

Everyone is familiar with a sweep, be it by definition, bearing witness to somebody being displaced or even coming across a familiar place and noticing people who used to live there are suddenly gone. Sweeps happen every day in our communities. Yet despite new policies, rhetoric and media portrayals of sweeps and city government’s asinine excuses for doing them (i.e. health or drug issues),

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