Reclaiming San Francisco is an anthology of fresh appraisals of the contrarian spirit of the city-a spirit "resistant to authority or control." The official story of San Francisco is one of progress, development, and growth. But there are other, unofficial, San Francisco stories, often shrouded in myth and in danger of being forgotten, and they are told here: stories of immigrants and minorities, sailors and waterfront workers, and poets, artists, and neighborhood activists-along with the stories of speculators, land-grabbers, and the land itself that need to be told differently. Contributors include historians, geographers, poets, novelists, artists, art historians, photographers, journalists, citizen activists, an architect, and an anthropologist. Passionate about the city, they want San Francisco to be more itself and less like the city of office towers, chain stores, theme parks, and privatized public services and property that appears to be its immediate fate. San Francisco is not alone in being transformed according to the dictates of the global economy. But San Franciscans are unusual in their readiness to confront the corporate agenda for their city.

The first major study of the famous Reclaiming community of witches, founded in 1979 in San Francisco. Examines gendered and religious identites and the communal and ritual processes of Reclaiming.

Approximately 2.4 million Black youth participate in after-school programs, which offer a range of support, including academic tutoring, college preparation, political identity development, cultural and emotional support, and even a space to develop strategies and tools for organizing and activism. In Reclaiming Community, Bianca Baldridge tells the story of one such community-based program, Educational Excellence (EE), shining a light on both the invaluable role youth workers play in these spaces, and the precarious context in which such programs now exist. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, Baldridge persuasively argues that the story of EE is representative of a much larger and understudied phenomenon. With the spread of neoliberal ideology and its reliance on racism—marked by individualism, market competition, and privatization—these bastions of community support are losing the autonomy that has allowed them to embolden the minds of the youth they serve. Baldridge captures the stories of loss and resistance within this context of immense external political pressure, arguing powerfully for the damage caused when the same structural violence that Black youth experience in school, starts to occur in the places they go to escape it.

This book examines how the teaching of reading can be reclaimed from government mandates, scripted commercial programs, and high stakes tests via intensive reconsideration of learning, teaching, curriculum, language, and sociocultural contexts.

The “real” San Francisco lies below the streets, sidewalks, and buildings, hidden from view. This famous city is known for its beautiful setting of water, trees, hills, and beaches, but relatively few people know of its true natural state. Before it was built up and paved over, the earth here was a diverse ecosystem of creeks, marshes, sand dunes, estuaries, and densely forested hills. Over this landscape roamed elk, rabbit, bears, bobcat, and mountain lion, and the now-crowded bayfront teemed with mollusks, otters, dolphins, and whales, while huge flocks of birds blocked out the sun overhead. Today, only about two percent of the city's natural areas remain as they were. The “real” San Francisco lies below the streets, sidewalks, and buildings, hidden from view. This famous city is known for its beautiful setting of water, trees, hills, and beaches, but relatively few people know of its true natural state. Before it was built up and paved over, the earth here was a diverse ecosystem of creeks, marshes, sand dunes, estuaries, and densely forested hills. Over this landscape roamed elk, rabbit, bears, bobcat, and mountain lion, and the now-crowded bayfront teemed with mollusks, otters, dolphins, and whales, while huge flocks of birds blocked out the sun overhead. Today, only about two percent of the city's natural areas remain as they were.