In the News: SFist

State Senator Mark Leno honors composer Kathleen McGuire, one of the composers of Street Requiem, and singer Frederica con Stade, one of the performers, prior to the SF premiere of the work. Photo credit: SFist 

Street Requiem: Despite being nominally retired, Alameda resident and famed diva Frederica von Stade, aka Flicka, still shares her big talent and bigger heart for worthy causes. Last week, she brought her voice to a choir of singers recruited from the homeless ranks of San Francisco for the West Coast premiere of Street Requiem, an oratorio celebrating people who lived and died on the streets. The evening supported Singers of the Street, an organization funded in 2010 by Kathleen McGuire, who with her fellow Australian Andy Payne and Jonathon Welch, also composed the music for the requiem. Singers of the Street is a choir for homeless people, who get a sense of purpose and achievement from participating in the choir, a community to be part of, and provide a positive and human experience of homelessness to audiences. They accept donations.

We thought we should check in our cynicism at the door for a concert where the betterment of humankind is achieved by singing together. Heart-warming stories don't necessarily make great art. This was reinforced by a little welcome pitch from Rev. Megan Rohrer, whose congregation hosts the rehearsals and who asked for our leniency for the singers, and extolled their "courage to sing the wrong note." And it turns out that these guys are pretty darn good and would match any amateur choir in the city. No need for indulgence on the audience's part.

The concert was set in two halves, the first devoted to covers by Singers of the Street, and the second to the Street Requiem, with Flicka and a bunch of experienced singers. The acronym for the organization is SOS, and the first song was appropriately the Beatles' "Help"; it was followed by calls for solidarity and songs of positive affirmation, and they all took a pretty emotional color from the context. The performers of SOS literally sang their hearts out: you could hardly imagine performers giving more into a performance.

As for the Street Requiem, it is composed of ten sections, each with a different color, re-interpreting the typical Requiem format with Kyrie, Gloria, Dies Irae, Agnus Dei, etc, but updated with current texts in different languages. The opener gets Middle Eastern scales, an Irish folk song is appropriated for the ninth movement, percussive South African beats in the eighth. It is meant to be inclusive of all cultures. Some movements are of more indeterminate origins, but were always rooted in tonal harmonies. Flicka gets the most beautiful melody in the Pie Jesu. The orchestration sometimes feels a bit studious, it could be a bit more free and unpredictable; but there is a lot of generosity in the writing of the score and the energy of the Gloria is contagious. The Street Requiem has been performed in Australia, Dallas, and will be sung in Seattle, and we hope the composers keep staging it and tweaking it, it is a piece of great emotional power. And a testament that you can better the lives of people through singing.

In the News: San Mateo Daily Journal

‘Street Requiem’

September 02, 2015, 05:00 AM

Tom Jung/Daily Journal Opera superstar Frederica von Stade (third from left) takes a bow with her fellow performers at the conclusion of ‘Street Requiem,’ a multicultural, multi-faith work mourning those who have died innocent on the street as a result of poverty, war, illness, violence, hate crimes or homelessness. ‘Street Requiem’ was performed at the Congregational Church in San Mateo on Sunday, Aug. 30. From left to right are tenors Blake Quin and Mark Jackson, mezzo-soprano von Stade, didgeridoo player Stephan Davies, tenor Ilyas Iliya, and 'Street Requiem' co-composers Kathleen McGuire and Andy Payne. All proceeds from the performance benefit Singers of the Street, a San Francisco choir of singers at risk of homelessness.

In the News: SF Examiner

Increase in homelessness upsets Duboce merchants

By: Andrea Koskey | 01/30/13 7:51 PM

Mike Koozmin/The S.F. Examiner

Homeless people might be heading to the Duboce Triangle area after being pushed out of nearby gathering spaces in the Castro, according to one outreach specialist. 

 

 

Merchants in the Duboce Triangle neighborhood are concerned about what they say is an increase of homeless people in the area — enough to call for a meeting with police and elected officials.

Business owners say they worry that violence and theft are increasing in the area, too, due to the presence of people on the streets who are mentally ill or have substance-abuse problems.

“We’ve been scratching our heads trying to figure it out,” said Dennis Richards, president of the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association. “There is additional activity at 14th, Market and Belcher. The question is what’s going on and why now? I wish I had the answers, then maybe we’d be able to curb the problems.”
Richards said the neighborhood association has held meetings with police and city leaders, but if a homeless person denies services, there’s not much that can be done. Since some business owners are not pleased with the progress, they are hosting a community meeting today and have invited police and elected officials, according to the Community Leadership Alliance, which will help host the meeting.

Diego Azevedo, owner of Cybelle’s Pizza on 14th Street at Church Street, said he was in court Jan. 23 dealing with a person who had stolen a prepared salad from the store.

“He was under the influence of something,” he said. “The same guy was doing it to other businesses too.”
Azevedo said he’s had his business in the area since 2007, but the increase in homeless people was noticeable after returning from a few months of vacation in November.

“They’ve always been around, but there has definitely been more,” he said.  The owner of Golden Produce on Church Street said the population comes and goes.

One possible cause for the increase is the removal of benches in the nearby Castro district, said Megan Rohrer, executive director of Welcome Ministry, a faith-based homeless outreach organization. The ministry is partnering with St. Francis Lutheran Church, located on Church Street, to do outreach and offer services.
Rohrer said gathering places such as staircases in the Duboce neighborhood are a draw for the crowds.

“As The City concentrates on removing them from one area, it’s normal to see them migrate to another,” she said.

Richards said the empty storefronts, such as the one at the former sight of Home restaurant where Church, Market and 14th streets intersect, could be a contributing factor.
“Without the extra eyes on the street, they’re hanging out and congregating,” he said.

In the News: Bay Area Reporter

'Encampment' brings attention to homeless LGBT youth

NEWS

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Published 05/19/2011

by Matt Baume

	Homeless youth and their allies staged a "street sweep" in the Castro last Saturday to bring attention to budget cuts for social service programs. Photo: Matt Baume

The May 14 encampment was part of a nationwide demonstration to raise awareness of homelessness among a demographic known as transition-age youth. Homeless and foster youth between 16 and 24 years old can face unique housing challenges, particularly as they age out of the foster care system and learn to navigate services for adults.

"We're here to engage the community on homelessness, and specifically queer homeless youth issues," said organizer Beck, who uses only one name. "We're in kind of a state of emergency, saying, 'hey community, wake up.'"

Saturday's action started at Civic Center with games, an unveiling of protest banners, and hot meals served by Food Not Bombs. A march proceeded to Harvey Milk Plaza, where speakers read poetry and called for improved access to services to get off the street.

Their requests included housing with kitchens, rather than single room occupancy hotels with no facilities for food preparation; employment opportunities for youth who are unable to complete school; and an end to the sit-lie ordinance.

According to local organizers Trans Youth Rise Above, there are 5,700 homeless youth in San Francisco, of which at least 1,000 are queer.

Operation Shine America, which coordinated similar rallies in other cities, estimates that there are 2 million homeless youth in the country. Queers for Economic Equality Now also organized the San Francisco event.

Beck explained that organizations like the Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center and Larkin Street Youth Services' Castro Youth Housing Initiative have faced repeated budget cuts, reducing services that can prevent youth from living on the street.

Jodi Schwartz, executive director of LYRIC, agreed that times are tight. "There has been a sizable decrease in investments in LGBTQ youth services," she told the Bay Area Reporter. "Just for LYRIC, if we were to lose the last piece of dollars for transition-age youth workforce, our decrease in funding would be 72 percent over the last four years."

Larkin Street Executive Director Sherilyn Adams told the B.A.R. that the extent of cuts won't be known until Mayor Ed Lee releases a budget later this month.

"There's no proposed cuts to the Castro Youth program," she said, but added, "it does not begin to meet the need."

To address the potential consequences of such cuts, Lee recently convened a stakeholder group consisting of representatives from organizations that advocate for homeless youth. Based on feedback from that group, the mayor asked that the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families prioritize funding for LGBT and undocumented youth.

While organizations hope to turn around the recent budget cuts, local organizers are seeking ways to demonstrate how the city's rate of youth homelessness could worsen.

After Saturday's protest concluded, about three dozen homeless youth spent parts of the night camped out around the Muni station, according to organizer the Reverend Megan Rohrer, director of the Welcome Ministry, a coalition of 12 churches that seek to provide a faithful response to poverty.

Rohrer is currently working with the GLBT Historical Society to raise visibility by drawing inspiration from past struggles. She incorporated a "street sweep" into Saturday's protest, in which participants swept Castro Street sidewalks with brooms to evoke a similar 1960s-era protest.

In that action, LGBTs protested the city's negligent sanitation and police roundups by pushing brooms through the Tenderloin.

In the News: The Sacramento Bee

At Free Farm in S.F., all veggies are given away

By Katherine Seligman
The Sacramento Bee

Published: Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A

SAN FRANCISCO – There was one common reaction when the Rev. Megan Rohrer said she wanted to start a farm in a weedy, glass-strewn vacant lot a few blocks from the Civic Center.

"People told me I was crazy," Rohrer said. "They said it was the wrong kind of space, you'll never be able to weed it, no one will come to work on it."

Yet the Free Farm will celebrate its first anniversary today, a year in which it grew and gave away more than 2,500 pounds of vegetables, making it the most bountiful of six gardens planted on Lutheran church-owned space in the Bay Area.

In an age when farmers markets are sprouting in every urban California neighborhood, the Free Farm is an unusual tale of success. Its "Hecka Local" brand produce, from tomatoes and zucchini to dwarf kale, pineapple sage and watermelon radishes, is prize-worthy, but is tended by volunteers and donated, no questions asked, to anyone who wants it.

"We want to provide an example of how to live based on generosity and sharing, instead of everything being seen as a profit," said a farm manager, who calls himself Tree.

He is joined Wednesdays and Saturdays by a dozen or more willing workers who mulch, shovel, weed and eat a communal vegan lunch. The volunteers come from all corners. There are students, teachers, members of a local temple, gardening mavens, food justice activists, the unemployed and people who describe themselves as living off the economic grid.

"We have eatings instead of meetings," said volunteer Pancho Ramos, as he sat with a bowl of bean stew and rice at the farm one day recently.

Ramos, who says he lives "without traditional currency," has watched the lemon and fig trees start to bear fruit and neighbors come by to get vegetables, surprised to find they are free.

"One woman took some zucchini and came back an hour later with empanadas," he said. "That's what a church should be."

Rohrer, executive director of Welcome, a faith-based nonprofit that works on poverty issues, saw the farm as a way to bring quality produce to inner-city residents. She had worked with the chronically homeless for about a decade and saw them struggling not only to keep housing, but also to afford good fresh food.

"The city wanted community gardens, but there was all this red tape," she said. "Everything was taking years, so I started talking to different Lutheran pastors about getting space."

One of the available spots was the lot on Gough Street, one-third of an acre that had had been unoccupied since a fire destroyed St. Paulus Church in 1995. Like much of the city, it sat in close proximity to wealth and poverty, blocks from the ornate Opera House, expensive condos and public housing.

Rohrer, who grew up in South Dakota, knew backyard gardens and had learned community organizing, but she turned to local experts for farming help. Tree and Lauren Anderson, founder of Produce to the People, which harvests food from backyards and community gardens, joined her.

Together with volunteers they built a ramp from recycled Christmas trees. They scrounged for old pallets, buckets, concrete and hardware. They fertilized the sandy soil and built a labyrinth with bricks salvaged from the burned church.

Today's scheduled celebration includes a greenhouse-raising. Tree hopes to use the structure for seedlings to plant and give away.

"I want to inspire people to pay attention to where food comes from," he said.

The Free Farm continues the work he's done since the 1970s, when he first started gardening and planting avocado trees in the Mission District. He took his name because of his connection to trees, he said, but prefers not to talk about himself. ("It's not about me. It's about the work we can do," he says.)

He started the Free Food Stand in the Mission District in 2008 to give away vegetables from community gardens and surplus collected from other farmers markets. The stand, which has given away more than 12,000 pounds of produce in the past two years, now also gets vegetables from the Free Farm. "Hecka Local" always goes first.