Talks: 2020 Videos

Primary Source

Shaping San Francisco hosts Public Talks on a variety of topics on Wednesday nights, about 18 times a year. Our topic themes vary, but we've grouped them over time into these categories: Art & Politics, Ecology, Historical Perspectives, Literary, and Social Movements.

Here are videos of the Talks we held at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics at 518 Valencia Street in Spring 2020.


March 11, 2020

Hidden San Francisco: Book Release and Birthday!

Shaping San Francisco’s Chris Carlsson, on his 63rd birthday, presents his new book, Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories. After a quarter century of curating the digital archive at foundsf.org, and conducting bike and walking tours, this book captures the unique and serendipitous connections that course through Shaping San Francisco’s ongoing work.

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February 26, 2020

Art & Politics: Miranda Bergman

Miranda Bergman, a Mission District resident for many decades and local icon, has been painting public murals since the 1970s when she started as a member of the Haight Ashbury muralists. Her involvement in Central America, Palestine, and women’s politics has shaped her participation in epic works such as Maestrapeace, a Placa mural in Balmy Alley, and many others around the Bay Area and the world.

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January 29, 2020

Money for AIDS, Not For War!
Enola Gay Faggot Affinity Group

The Enola Gay Faggot Affinity Group emerged in 1983 during direct action protests against nuclear weapons at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. About a year later they were the very first group to publicly engage in nonviolent direct action to dramatize the AIDS crisis.

The "Money for AIDS, Not for War" ritual/protest was held on September 23, 1984, by Enola Gay, a self proclaimed faggot affinity group, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 50 miles east of San Francisco.

Veterans of that moment return to discuss direct action in the depths of the Reagan counter-revolution, the connections between war spending and social crises, the long resistance from below to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the vibrant queer left tradition of resistance still alive in San Francisco, with Jack Davis, Robert Glück, and Richard Bell.

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