OPINION This November, California voters will decide on a question that affects us all: Do we have the right to know what's in the food we're eating and feeding our families?

This high-stakes food fight has become the most expensive issue of the upcoming election. Pesticide and junk-food corporations have already poured $25 million into an effort to defeat Proposition 37, a simple labeling measure that would inform California consumers about whether our food has been genetically engineered.

What is it that these corporations don't want us to know?Read more »

OPINION The California State Democratic Party and Senator Barbara Boxer have let the sex workers of California down. They need to be taken to task for endorsing Proposition 35 without ever hearing the opposition. No more bragging rights to that big-tent democracy.Read more »

OPINION As a retired police officer, I believe deeply in safety and justice. As a father and a person who has devoted more than 30 years to working with young people, I know what our kids need to become positive members of our communities. I've seen the positive changes that come from resources, attention and education. I've seen it as a precinct service officer in East Harlem, New York, as a police officer and lieutenant in the Oakland Unified School District.Read more »

By Jon Golinger

OPINION Thursday, July 19, 2012 was an especially gorgeous day in San Francisco. On that warm and sunny summer afternoon, a colorful collection of more than 100 citizens from every corner of the city gathered together on the steps of City Hall to announce they had done something political insiders and powerbrokers had just weeks earlier dismissed as "impossible."Read more »

By Alisa Messer

OPINION City College is a beacon for all San Franciscans, from immigrants and displaced workers to cash-strapped families seeking educational opportunities for their children. The largest community and junior college in America with more than 90,000 students, City College touches everyone in San Francisco. Read more »

By Chris Jackson

Although a recent accreditation report levels a long list of criticisms of City College, some of them legitimate issues that need to be addressed, the real problem is the state's defunding of public education and its disinvestment in our community-college system.

There's no question that everyone is going to work to keep City College open and serving our communities.Read more »

By Sasha Cuttler

OPINION San Francisco Unified School District teachers and Department of Public Health nurses are going through difficult times. Despite years of service reductions, layoffs, and ceaseless budget pressures, teachers continue to educate San Francisco's young people while nurses care for the sick and injured.Read more »

By Morgan Fitzgibbons

OPINION When Mayor Ed Lee announced in February 2011 that he understood both the critical importance and the severe dangers inherent in the current bicycle infrastructure along the dual three-block stretches of Fell and Oak between Scott and Baker, a shot went through the community of people who had worked for so long to bring awareness to this troubled path.Read more »

OPINION La Raza Centro Legal, an organization central to the empowerment of San Francisco's low-wage immigrant workers, finds common cause with the Occupy movement during a time when our programs combining legal services and worker organizing are in jeopardy. Our hour of need falls within a window of tough times, but heightened political awareness, and we are calling out to the community to join us in solidarity as members of the 99 percent.Read more »

Editors note: We received two interesting commentaries on our Hetch Hetchy cover story ("Damn the Dam," 8/10/2011). They appear below, offering very different perspectives on the issue.

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