A US History teacher's walking tour trek through San Francisco's past and present

Come along on a free walking tour surveying SF social movement history, led by a middle and high school history teacher. We'll tackle housing, race, and wage issues through the lenses of dominance-resistant groups such as the Black Panthers, the Diggers, the Mormons (!), the American Indian Movement, and many others.

September 2's the birthday of San Francisco's boldest social thinker to date, Henry George, who argued for socializing all land values so that no one would have to pay any private party for use of the Earth. In short, the ultimate psychic and economic "belonging" public policy.

In that mind we add a timely poem below.

In the heat o’ the sun in San Francisco, on a neighborhood village street, after the first day teaching US History


On a day like this the Samoyed and mixed Husky crave shade,
Certainly water, and even, perhaps, a popsicle;
On a day like today all the men, including St. Kevin’s priest, wish they’d worn shorts;
On a day like today the toddler speaks her first word, “Hat”—in an urgent tone;
On a day like this, you knew the moon must come up full;
On a day like this only the plants stay put with heads uncovered.


And just like that, driven by the sun,
Thomas Jefferson, in 1785 full of the future, wrote Madison
—as though Paine coursed his venous system—,
“The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on,”
Then found shade in the cool for 41 years a scoundrel slaver.

On a day like this, unpleasant, blinding, reminiscent of Confederate lands in near swelter,
San Francisco steels itself, bound for cool shade or, might it be, a world turned upside down.