Activism

Is there such a thing as "green" fracking?

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Michael Klein is an unlikely oil industry executive. He’s also an unlikely environmental activist. For many years, the affluent San Franciscan was a major donor and chair of the board of the Rainforest Action Network, an environmental organization famous for its aggressive agitation targeting timber giants, coal companies, air polluters, and the dirty energy financiers of Wall Street.

But he's stepped down from that role, and has since helped form a company called Hydrozonix, which might be called a “green” fracking enterprise.Read more »

All the rage

25 years ago, queer activist network ACT UP redefined AIDS, changed politics, and saved lives. Can the rebooted ACT UP/SF mobilize a new generation?

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marke@sfbg.com

AIDS is so hot right now.Read more »

On the Om Front: In the name of love

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It’s February—feeling a little love in your heart? Srutih Asher Colbert’s been feeling the love all year long. She’s a Bay Area yoga teacher (and hairdresser) who raised $24,000 in one year through grassroots fundraising to fight sex trafficking in India, where she’ll be going next week to volunteer her time to the cause.

Om Front talked to her about how, and why, she undertook the challenge.

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'United in Anger' reveals ACT-UP's surprising intricacies

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In the end, it was the women who saved us -- and we, in turn, helped save them.

As a gay man, this was one of the lessons I took from Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman's brilliant, sometimes harrowing film, United in Anger: A History of ACT-UP, which I caught yesterday at the GLBT History Museum in the Castro, and which screens again tonight Fri/1 at 6pm at the San Francisco Art Institute. The 93-minute movie, bristling with mindblowing archival footage, swiftly but effectively traces the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power movement from its rambunctious beginnings in 1987 in New York, through its major actions like the die-in inside St. Patrick's Cathedral and the storming of the NIH headquarters in Maryland, to its eventual, sad dissipation under the weight of endless death in the mid-1990s. There is a lot of great retro fashion in this, btw.

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Fierce, forceful, amazing: remembering Robyn Few

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Robyn Few, innovative sex worker revolutionary and a part of the soul of San Francisco, passed away Sept. 13. 

Robyn was a mother, a grandmother, and a wife. She was a leader. She died in her hometown of Paducah, KY after a long battle with cancer.Read more »

Sure cure for election burnout? Watch this video of activist kids summer camp

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So what if the most popular adjective to describe this week's election was "adorable"? By all accounts, we have a generation on the up with the vigor and verve to right all the atrocities ours has committed in regards to social justice, sustainable food systems, fossil fuel dependence, etc. At least, such is the impression given by the promo video sent to us by Youth Empowered Action Camps, a project started by activist Nora Kramer in the hopes of providing a safe, fun place for kids to find their cause. Wanna see hope, encapsulated? Keep going for the video and more info on raddest summer camp ever. Read more »

'Reclaiming Jewish Activism': easier said than done

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This article has been updated

A panel in which three local activists will talk about how their Jewish ancestors inform their present-day work seemed harmless enough. But in the Bay Area’s friction-prone Jewish community, its cancellation has led the organizers to write a letter in protest and accusations that one of the area’s biggest funders of Jewish events, the Jewish Community Federation (JCF), is participating in McCarthy-style censorship. Read more »

This is our country, too: Fred Korematsu's daughter on her father's civil rights legacy

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“One never knows after someone dies what happens to their legacy. Sometimes it becomes a part of history and sometimes it grows,” Karen Korematsu -remarked in a phone interview with the Guardian this week. Her father, civil rights activist Fred Korematsu, will be honored statewide with his own official day on Mon/30. You can celebrate his legacy locally at the Oakland Museum of California’s Lunar New Year event on Sun/29, where Karen will be speaking about her dad’s contribution to our cultural heritage. Read more »

Where were you?

New San Francisco AIDS doc We Were Here is an act of emotional archeology, digging up often astonishing tidbits about life during the onset of the epidemic 

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marke@sfbg.com

FILM Amid the worshipful bromides that attended the 100th birthday of zombie Ronald Reagan on Feb. 6, gay blogger Joe.My.God. helped bring back to light a transcript of a 1982 press briefing Q&A session between Reagan administration spokesman Larry Speakes and journalist Lester Kinsolving. It's the first known time that AIDS was brought up at the White House.Read more »