A View From The Brink ... the beach is backwards

17-year-old Mission District teen leads protest of thousands in San Francisco

     

17-year-old Simone Jacques speaking in front of San Francisco's Mission High School at a rally and demonstration protesting the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Photo by Amy Graff. 
    

From the steps of Mission High School in San Francisco, 17-year-old Simone Jacques addressed thousands of protesters in a crowd that stretched for blocks along Dolores Avenue and spilled across Dolores Park.

Amy Graff of SFGATE.com reported that on Wednesday Jacques and her friends organized the demonstration through an Instagram group called NoJusticeNoPeaceSF that now has nearly 10,000 followers.

"My name is Simone," said Jacques, her voice booming through a microphone as she welcomed the mass of people holding signs and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Black Lives Matter."

"I'm black and proud," she went on. "I'm Afrochicana and proud."

      

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SFUSD loses first round in GWHS mural lawsuit

     

 

By Thomas K. Pendergast

      

The George Washington High School Alumni Association won the first round in its court fight with the San Francisco Unified School District over a series of murals on the life of the first president, the school’s namesake.

The alumni association is suing the district because, it alleges, the district did not follow the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when it decided to cover up the murals before going through the CEQA process, thus committing “unlawful pre-commitment.” 

The district responded by filing a “move for a judgment on the pleadings,” which could have been an early knock-out blow to end the case, on the grounds that the alumni association failed to allege sufficient facts to demonstrate any unlawful pre-commitment for removing the murals from public view in violation of CEQA.

The court sided with the alumni association this time, allowing the case to continue.

      

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San Francisco school district ignored plans to save high school murals

      

 

Story and video by Thomas K. Pendergast

New information has emerged that the San Francisco Unified School District’s (SFUSD) Board of Education broke a deal decades ago, setting the stage for the present controversy about the George Washington High School murals. A 1968 agreement indicates that a deal was reached to keep the murals in place but include plaques beneath each one explaining the history left out of the murals, which was not done.

The agreement  also included a plan to paint a new alternative mural, which was eventually commissioned and completed.

The school’s alumni association recently proposed six points to resolve the issue.

       

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Plan to Cover Washington Murals Faces Hurdles

     

Detail from Victor Arnautoff's mural series on the Life of Washington in the lobby of San Francisco's George Washington High School. 

     

Story and photo by Thomas K. Pendergast

     

Board members guiding San Francisco’s school district might consider the fate of murals on the life of first president George Washington at his namesake high school settled, but opponents of the plan to cover them are responding like Revolutionary War hero, John Paul Jones, when he said he had only begun to fight.

Two groups opposed to the San Francisco School Board’s plan to cover the murals at George Washington High School, the George Washington High School Alumni Association and the Coalition to Protect Public Art (CPPA), are firing back with volleys of a lawsuit and a ballot measure.

     

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School Board Changes Course on Washington Murals

    

 

 

Video and story by Thomas K. Pendergast

 

The San Francisco School Board’s abrupt change in its decision to cover some controversial murals with panels instead of paint has satisfied almost no one, but has also left opponents of the painting option scrambling to respond.

On Aug. 13, with a 4-3 vote, the board backed off a previous unanimous vote in June to cover the “Life of George Washington” murals with paint, thus permanently destroying the artwork. The new plan is to preserve them but cover them over with some kind of solid material.

   

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SFUSD Board Votes to Cover Washington H.S. Murals

       

The room was packed with both mural supporters and opponents at the SFUSD Board of Education meeting on June 25, 2019 when the board voted unanimously to cover up the entire Life of Washington mural series.

 

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

         

The writing is on the wall for the controversial murals on the life of President George Washington at his namesake high school now that the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) has voted to cover them over.

The only question left is whether they will be covered with paint or with solid panels.

One option before the SFUSD’s Board of Education was to cover the mural with a curtain, which will cost around $375,000.

Another option is to cover them with solid acoustic panels, at a cost of somewhere between $645,000 and $825,000.

The third option is to paint over them, at an initial estimated cost starting at $600,000. According to district staff, the painting option is likely to cost more than that. It is also estimated that the painting project might take up to three years to complete, because painting over them would make an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) necessary, plus additional legal steps might be unavoidable.

      

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Meeting on Washington High School Murals Turns Ugly

      

Julie Roberts-Phung (left) of Showing Up For Racial Justice is confronted in the ILWU Local 34 hall for disrupting a meeting on the George Washington High School murals.

     

Story and photos by Thomas K. Pendergast

      

The latest round in the fight over the George Washington High School murals took place on July 9, when a small group that want them painted over crashed a meeting of mural supporters and chaos ensued.

A panel of the murals’ supporters gathered at the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 34 Hall to announce the formation of a new political action committee and to talk about the options still available to them. The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) Board of Education voted unanimously last month to cover 13 murals at the high school that depict the life of U.S. President George Washington.

The artwork is controversial because it includes images of Afro-American slaves that he owned and pioneers walking past the corpse of a First Nation (Native American) warrior, with President Washington standing off to the left and pointing the way forward. Critics of the 83-year-old murals say these images do not belong in a high school because they traumatize some students.

       

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Mural Opponents Meet Defenders at Tour of George Washington H.S. Artwork

      

Sparks Fly Under Controversial Washington H.S. Murals

In front of a statue of President George Washington in the lobby of the school, George Washington High School Alumni Association President John Rothmann (left) listens to Amy Anderson (center) during the tour, as does Mariposa Villaluna (right). Photo by Thomas K. Pendergast.

     

By Thomas K. Pendergast

    

Opposing sides in the debate about destroying murals at George Washington High School (GWHS) squared off face to face under that same art on Saturday, May 4, in the school’s lobby, without social media or a Facebook buffer between them.

The school’s alumni association (GWHSAA) invited the general public to view the controversial murals and ask questions. Among those who showed up were the people calling for the destruction of the 83-year-old murals who wanted to make their voices heard.

The series of frescos were painted by artist Victor Arnautoff in 1936, during President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal-era. The project was funded through the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA), which created many public schools and libraries throughout San Francisco and the nation, including building this high school. The artwork depicts the life of the first U.S. president, including images of Afro-American slaves that he owned and pioneers walking past the corpse of a First Nation (Native American) warrior, with Washington standing off to the left and pointing the way forward.

     

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Murals at Washington High School Stoke Debate: Board to Decide Their Fate

      

     

By Thomas K. Pendergast

     

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.”

In 1949, when George Orwell published those words in his novel “1984,” the murals depicting the life of the first U.S. president at George Washington High School (GWHS) were already a decade old.

More than 80 years after artist Victor Arnautoff painted them, the murals now face destruction and are the focus of an intense debate about who gets to control the memory of the past and what that legacy will be in the future.

     

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Former USF radio station going back on SF Bay Area airwaves

     

Radio personalities Gage “D.J. Gage” Kenady (left) and Henry “Hank” Wimmer are volunteer radio DJs at the station studio of KXSF in San Francisco.

 

Story and photo by Thomas K. Pendergast

       

After a seven-year exile, KXSF radio will be launched back onto the airwaves at 102.5 FM, on July 10, to bring its free-format, non-commercial programming to San Francisco.

Formerly known as KUSF, the entire staff was booted from the University of San Francisco (USF) in 2011, when the Federal Communications Commission license for their spot at 90.3 FM was sold by the university to a corporation owned by the University of Southern California, which operates classical music stations. According to media reports, USF received $1 million for the license, the programming was changed and the station was rebranded KDFC.

The former KUSF launched in 1963 as a campus-only, student-run AM station. Ten years later, it was offered an FM slot on the dial and became a non-commercial educational station. In 1981, it began 24-hour programming. Over the years, it received several awards for broadcasting excellence.

Now renamed as San Francisco Community Radio (SFCR), with the new call letters KXSF, the station will operate for 12 hours of the day, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then from 10 p.m. until 4 a.m.

The organizers at the station plan to share the new frequency with the San Francisco Public Press (SFPP), a local newspaper published quarterly, but SFPP staff said they are not ready to go on the airwaves quite yet.

     

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