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Public Talks

Free! All Talks are at 518 Valencia (near 16th Street, one block from 16th Street BART) and begin at 7:30 pm  unless otherwise noted.


Our Public Talks are partly underwritten by the City Lights Foundation and Rainbow Grocery Cooperative.




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Archive of past talks

All our Talks have been integrated into our digital archive at Foundsf.org, and may be easier to access there.

Topic areas of our audio recordings of public talks going back to 2006:

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4-Masted schooner being unloaded at Pope and Talbot lumber yard, 3rd and Berry Streets, c. 1880s. Photo courtesy San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park

Wed., March 11, 7:30pm

City of Redwood

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

James Michael Buckley’s 2024 City of Wood: San Francisco and the Architecture of the Redwood Lumber Industry reconnects us to the built environment from San Francisco all the way up to Eureka in the far north of California, past and present. David Schmidt’s brand new majesterial San Francisco Bay Area: An Environmental History contains a close look at the historic forests of the Bay Area and how they were cut down to help build the region. Together these speakers will help us see how profoundly the iconic trees of the west coast literally undergird our everyday lives even today.

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Photo by Chris Carlsson

Thursday, April 16, 7:30pm

San Francisco: A Liberal Oligarchy?

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

New tech oligarchs have thrown their money around to shape city politics for the past decade. We now have a billionaire bluejeans heir for mayor. We explore how organized money and corporate power managed to steer San Francisco going back through the post-WWII cold war, the long decline of Catholic morality, and the explosion of social movements and the sexual revolution the city is known for. Join historian Lincoln Mitchell, former supervisor and Mayoral candidate Tom Ammiano, and neighborhood activist and writer Romalyn Schmaltz for a spirited romp through the tangled and conflicted histories of the past few decades.

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Photo by Chris Carlsson

Wed., May 27, 7:30pm

AI and Empire Building

Public Talk at 518 Valencia

We bring together several sharp critics of the hype machine that has long characterized the internet and our successive tech booms, currently blowing up in the AI bubble. Lost in the hand wringing over the more exaggerated claims of boosters and doomers is the ongoing reproduction of a colonial seizure of what should be our common wealth. This process has long historic roots and in some ways it is thanks to our amnesiac culture that the current crop of billionaire investors and tech bros have gotten away with doing it all again. Wendy Liu, Alex Hanna and others TBA.

We welcome donations. Donate now!