Mary Catherine O'Connor
News ProducerOriginally from Chicago, I’ve lived in San Francisco for the past 20 years and am a veteran reporter and communicator. I was most recently editorial director for Activate, a nonprofit that empowers science entrepreneurs to bring their research to market. Prior to that I spent a dozen years as an independent reporter whose beats included climate, energy, microplastics, technology, and recreation. I’ve written for Outside, The Guardian, Al Jazeera America, and many other publications, and in 2014 co-founded a reader-supported experiment in journalism, called Climate Confidential. I had a brief stint in radio during college and can’t wait to learn the craft of audio storytelling.
-
Fixit Clinics are all about empowering people and spreading an ethos of repair-ability.
-
Christopher McDaniels, superintendent of the Bureau of Street Environmental Services in San Francisco’s Department of Public Works, talks about littering, illegal dumping, and how the agency is responding to the crisis.
-
Each week, volunteers converge at Manny’s, a cafe and event space in SF’s Mission District, to clean up the neighborhood’s litter-clogged streets.
-
After picking up a trash-picking-up habit during COVID lock-downs, Vincent Yeun launched Refuse Refuse. Now, he and thousands of other volunteers have collected more than 23,000 bags of garbage.
-
Meet Bayview residents who are using some very low and high technology to clean up the litter and illegal dumping that's plaguing their streets.
-
Back in 2019, Berkeley became the first city in the nation to ban the use of natural gas in new buildings. But a successful lawsuit by a restaurant trade group led a panel of federal judges to reverse the ban – saying the city overstepped its authority to regulate energy use. Last week, Berkeley petitioned the court to reconsider.
-
Following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, California assembled a task force to recommend how to address racist policies that harmed Black Californians over generations. The task force has finalized its report, which includes recommendations for direct payments, an apology, and policy changes.
-
Valencia Street is home to some of San Francisco’s most popular eateries, bars, and shops. It’s also a hot spot for collisions between motorists and cyclists. The city began construction Monday on a year-long pilot project in an attempt to make it safer.
-
The Bay Area LGBTQ+ community paid tribute to the drag icon Heklina at local events over the weekend. The 55-year-old, whose birth name was Stefan Grygelko, was found dead in London a week ago.
-
San Francisco's Bayview has some of the most polluted air in the city. Making it greener could improve residents’ health, while making the Bayview more resilient to climate change. But cultivating an urban forest can be complicated.