by Bill Snyder

The pain of immigration during a pandemic as well as violent encounters between police and the cognitively disabled were two of the long-form stories written by Bay News Rising interns during the summer of 2021. Other stories included the shame of Bay Area cities that fail to provide restrooms for the homeless and a look at how gig workers organized against California’s anti-labor Proposition 22.

Bay News Rising is our local’s 12-week internship program for journalism students. Supported wholly by our members’ dues, the program offers aspiring journalists a chance to partner with experienced reporters, editors, and photographers to produce publishable stories. Admission to the program is competitive, with applicants pitching their ideas of long-form stories focused on labor and social justice. Upon completion, the students receive a $1000 stipend.

Bay News Rising’s staff includes Annie Sciacca of the East Bay Times, who is now the director of the program, and Guild Freelancers members, David Bacon, Richard Knee, Derek Moore, and Bill Snyder. Executive Officer Michael Applegate provides administrative support.

Ande Richards, a grad student at UC Berkeley, wrote about encounters between police and people with cognitive disabilities that all too often turn violent, resulting in injuries and even deaths. The story included a dramatic recounting of an encounter between Richmond police and Kim Randall, a social worker, and her disabled passengers.

Randall wrote: “I just saw about 10 police officers coming out of nowhere, boom, boom, boom, boom [the sound of car doors slamming],” Randall said. “And they opened the doors and pulled out their guns, pointing them at me and telling me to lower my window and to do it slowly. And I’m, like, what is going on?” Randall said.

Laney College student Menal Raach told the story of immigrants from Columbia, Tunisia, and Iran. All would have faced difficulties under the best of circumstances, but coming to the Bay Area in the midst of the pandemic made their lives all the harder.

Raach wrote: “For Escobar and many immigrants across the Bay Area and the United States, the pandemic has heightened long-standing feelings of disconnection and trauma. Their ongoing struggle to assimilate and thrive in their adopted land has been met with fresh worry for loved ones they left behind, often in countries where the pandemic is made exponentially worse by poverty, political instability, and violence. The greatest heartbreak: losing a loved one and not being able to return home to comfort and grieve.”

Eliza Partika, a grad student at UC Berkeley, examined the efforts of three Bay Area cities to provide restrooms for people experiencing homelessness. Those efforts fall far short of the need, Partika concluded.

Partika wrote: “Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, have struggled with the issue of providing toilets for the unhoused. Costs -- a single toilet like the green metal structures in some San Francisco neighborhoods can cost as much as $600,000 – and opposition from merchants and residents who fear the toilets will bring an influx of homeless to their neighborhoods has slowed deployment.”

Luke Wrin Piper, a student at Laney College, explored the struggles of gig workers as they organized against Prop. 22. Although the courts later overturned the measure, Piper’s piece illustrated the rising militancy of workers who have been under-represented and unorganized.

Piper wrote: “July 21 saw gig workers across the country strike, demanding what they see as the bare essentials of working life that gig giants Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and others have denied them. ‘I think that it’s the most successful the Bay Area has seen in a coordinated strike action. ‘It was great!’ said Erica Mighetto of Rideshare Drivers United, an independent association created by workers in San Francisco.”

— Bill Snyder is a Guild Freelancer, former Director of Bay News Rising, and presently Freelance Delegate to the Guild’s Representative Assembly.