Before They Haul Your Home: Stories of Ending Poverty Tows

by Stella Kunkat

Towing practices have always been a particular plague for poor and homeless people, especially in San Francisco – the city with the nation’s highest towing fees, averaging $574 in the current fiscal year. However, when the current shelter-in-place order was issued, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) stopped what advocates call “poverty tows.” Normally, poverty tows occur when vehicles accrue five or more unpaid parking tickets, a vehicle’s registration has been expired for more than six months;

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Beware the Budget Cuts, Cameras and Civilians: On the Future of Policing in San Francisco

by Madeleine Matz

Near the seven-hour mark of the July 8 meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Appropriations Committee on the San Francisco Police Department budget for the next fiscal year, I realized I simply could not go on. After two long presentations, dozens of questions from supervisors and almost five hours of public comment, the end was not in sight. I was exhausted.

This was, for some organizers, the goal. Many of the over 400 callers used a script,

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Crisis Response: A Shelter Client Advocate Reflects

by Meghan "Roadkill" Johnson

As San Francisco starts to slowly emerge back into a false sense of normality, I wonder where that will leave the homeless population staying in “shelter In place“ hotels and shelters scattered throughout the city. Before I cover that, I must recollect what events took place to get us here today. 

Back in March, everyone was on the fence about just how serious COVID-19 would be. No one could fully grasp then just how long we all would be under shelter in place,

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Defunding the Police: On the road to abolishing oppressive policing

by Western Regional Advocacy Project

Black Lives Matter and other abolitionist groups are leading communities across the country to recognize that the criminal justice system is a powerhouse of violence and white supremacy. Policing was racist at birth, with its origins in scalping Indigenous people and kidnapping Black people escaping slavery. It has a long history of keeping non-white, non-property owning people “under foot” and disempowered. From Reconstruction to Jim Crow and up to the present, police budgets across the country have continued to grow,

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Detention Pandemic

by JMR, Detention Digest

I have been in I.C.E. detention for 32 months now, and let me tell you it does not get any easier. In the 32 months I have been in 3 detention facilities in California, and Yuba County Jail is by far the worst! When I think about it, it makes sense why it remains in business. 6.5 million dollars a year for the I.C.E. contract, yet we can’t get adequate hygiene, decent clothes, a clean housing area,

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