The Untethered Telegram #3
San Francisco News Highlights: Tenderloin Displacement, Transgender Gov, Treasure Island Food Desert, ICE, Golden Gate Bridge, Sex Trafficking, Scott Wiener POA, Teacher's Strike, Art
San Francisco
S.F. landlord may sell belongings of Tenderloin residents displaced in fire
Some of the dozens of residents displaced in a Dec. 12 building fire in the Tenderloin were told on Sunday that if they do not claim their items within the next two weeks, the company may sell off anything of value.
In a Lea exclusive, D5’s Supervisor Bilal Mahmood replied to my comment on Mission Local’s IG post on this story.
I’m no longer into giving people thanks for doing the right thing when they’re in positions of power and service to the public. Mahmood is different from the other Moderate Democrats (though I believe he describes himself as progressive) who are pushing policing and pretty much everything else Mayor Lurie/Mod Dems/ SF Conservatives are into. However, he’s also a brown Muslim and I do see him acting differently than other other (very often white) Mod Dems toward neglected Black and brown communities. I believe he genuinely cares for these communities and is going beyond what any other white Mod Dem, or simply white, supervisor would do for these communities. I just believe the Mod Dem agenda is racist and classist, therefore undercutting the help he’s giving to Black and brown communities.
San Francisco is disempowering and defunding the Office of Transgender Initiatives. Mind you, we are called a Transgender Sanctuary City (via resolution) and live in a Transgender Sanctuary State. Trans kids and adults are fleeing other states to HERE. The LGBT Asylum Project said in an Immigrant Rights Commission hearing that these Americans are reaching out to them, fleeing their state, and that has never happened before. So San Francisco gov and California gov’s underwhelming support for trans people is showing.
Among these are “the planned loss of a dedicated physical office space in the SF LGBT Center due to the cancellation of the rental lease, reduced operational and discretionary funding once the office was moved from ADM [city administrator] to HRC [human rights commission]. No fiscal autonomy. Elimination of key positions, including an office manager role,” the letter stated. “Ongoing delays in refilling the communications position. A pending leadership demotion of the OTI director that will reduce authority and compensation (as indicated in the June 26, 2025 presentation given by Director [Mawuli] Tugbenyoh to the Human Rights Commission). OTI’s Gender Inclusion e-module for City employees being removed from required training.”
“…Choosing to further reduce investment in OTI at this moment would amount to a decision to provide less protection, less care, and fewer resources to transgender people seeking refuge and stability in San Francisco. The Office of Transgender Initiatives has demonstrated measurable impact when it is properly resourced. Continued cuts – whether direct or indirect – threaten to undo years of progress and weaken a nationally significant model for transgender equity.”
Despite the mayor’s anti-trans actions, trans folks are making progress on fully landmarking the site of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. I was there in the landmarking meeting, and it was a relief seeing how supportive the Historical Preservation Commission was on this. It was even more heartening to see and hear our trans community show up and speak up for our history.
The hearing to consider expanding the local landmark for 101-121 Taylor Street was the first step to initiate the process. There are several more steps before the landmark designation becomes official. Ultimately, it will be up to the city’s supervisors and mayor to grant local landmark status to the site.
The landmarking proposal was brought by the Compton’s x Coalition , which has been working to reclaim the site, currently the location of a prison reentry facility run by GEO Group. Last year, the coalition was unsuccessful in getting the zoning changed for the property.
“Expanding the landmark is a meaningful way for the city to acknowledge that history, accurately and publicly,” Andrea Horne, a historian and Black trans woman, told the commissioners.
I’m so grateful that SF Public Press hired Cami Dominguez who has been writing about Treasure Island. Full Disclosure: I know Cami and think she’s an amazing person and journalist.
More than two decades after Nasser first searched for a grocery store site, his remains the only one on the island.
While tens of thousands of people are expected to move there in coming decades, current inhabitants lack key resources. Ten percent of the island’s population suffers from food insecurity, according to a 2021 survey by One Treasure Island, a nonprofit social service organization. But food isn’t the only shortfall. The U.S. Census shows that 38% of residents there live below the poverty line.
To Vasquez, the garden goes beyond food security. It’s a way for residents to provide for themselves.
“We mix all the science, and also the tradition of science, together to respond to the challenges in the urban areas,” Vasquez said. “The way that we work is by empowering the community. You can see people stop and ask about the food, about the recipes. Empower them to eating healthy. Empower them to grow their own food and for them to be part of the community process.”
This article by Black Lives Matter Grassroots explains some essential understanding to resistance, solidarity and humanity. This was also written before Alex Pretti was executed by ICE.
On New Year’s Eve, as the world thirsted for celebration, Black father, son, neighbor and community member #KeithPorter stepped outside his front door to celebrate. Like many around the nation, he fired his gun in the air to celebrate the coming of 2026. An ICE agent who lived in the same complex moved as if Keith was no more than a target in a game. He went inside his own unit, put on his tactical gear, grabbed his ICE-issued firearm, stepped back outside, and shot this Black man dead in front of his own home.
The only reports of Keith’s killing hailed the murderer as a “hero” and painted Keith as a “suspect” instead of the victim. Nowhere is it written that he was his mother’s only child and called to check in on her every single morning.
Both of these murders were committed by an agency that was chartered to advance white-supremacist colonial imperialist fascism.
And as we mourn and rage for them, we must also remember that ICE’s murderous presence has been levied on migrant communities since the inception of the agency.
Some good news. A net is all it took to save so many lives.
According to data from the bridge district, it’s delivering on both fronts. Four people died last year, an 87% drop from the 30 counted in a typical year before the net was built. There were no deaths from June through December. Following that period of respite, district leaders counted one suicide in January.
While General Manager Denis Mulligan cautions that no barrier is 100% effective, he’s satisfied with this one’s success. Notably, he said, security patrols have had to intervene in fewer suicide attempts. They counted 94 last year. That’s less than half of the 245 interventions that staff documented in 2017, the highest year on record.
This is just fucking disturbing and a reminder there’s so much going on unseen to the public. I’ve walked by these luxury apartment complexes many, many times. Supervisors have been speaking up against sex trafficking and I’ve been hearing how events like the Super Bowl bring an increase in sex trafficking. Tie this with the whole disturbing, disgusting Epstein files shit, and SF doesn’t seem so different from DC.
Lawyers for a woman who said she was sex trafficked as a minor have accused employees of two luxury San Francisco apartment complexes of turning a blind eye to the crime ring operating under their own roofs, with some allegedly accepting cash payments from traffickers in exchange for their silence.
A.V. initially lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the South Beach Marina, a sprawling waterfront complex in SoMa with a tennis court, pool, sauna and panoramic views of the bay. The lawsuit alleges that Roe’s victims were intentionally placed in high-end apartments in order to attract wealthy clientele.
Scott Wiener is a pro-policing, piece of shit, and I wanna memorialize that right here. Also why do 30 cops get to directly ask Wiener questions whereas at townhalls we have to submit our questions ahead of time in the hope it get picked? Why do cops get this special privilege with a congressional candidate but we don’t?
As Wiener stood inside the POA headquarters at 800 Bryant St. and pitched his candidacy to the board of the organization, which represents more than 2,000 officers, roughly 30 cops peppered him with questions about his past, at times reading directly from news articles they’d found on their phones.
At the meeting last week, Wiener said he had never backed the movement to defund the police and blamed distorted coverage for tying him to negative statements about cops.
The union didn’t endorse a candidate between 2020 and 2024, but it has regained some political influence as public opinion has shifted back toward tough-on-crime policing.
All I have to say is it’s about damn time. It’s extremely hard to understand how the city allowed SFUSD to get so bad. The last few years has seen teachers not receiving their paycheck for months on end, attempts at school closures and extremely low pay. I know there’s more, and those three things alone should have been enough to call a strike. I hope the teachers get everything they want.
San Francisco public school teachers could be on strike as early as next week after negotiations between their union and the school district have stalled. It would be the first teachers strike in the city in 47 years.
Union officials say the likelihood of such a strike is high, saying they are too far apart on pay raises, healthcare for dependents and various proposals for students including inserting “sanctuary” district policies in a union contract.
Art
Rodriguez is one of 15 Asian and Latino immigrant women participating in Bay Windows, a public art exhibition featuring sculptural lanterns designed to bridge San Francisco’s Chinese and Latino communities.
The City’s first and only gallery dedicated to contemporary Pan-African Art will open next month.
Gallerist Craig Mark and artist Clint Strydom will open the Art of Contemporary Africa Feb. 12 at Dogpatch’s Minnesota Street Project. Curators say the space will feature works by ceramicists, painters, photographers, sculptors and other talents from across the African continent.