EVENTS
You’re invited! The events below are open to everyone (not just physicians).
- For action events such as rallies and marches, please visit our Action Alert page.
- Missed an event? WATCH archived events!
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HIGHLIGHTS!
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SF Bay PSR’s 2024 Virtual Gala will be on Wednesday, September 25, 6:30pm PT!
VISIT our GALA page HERE!
MORE EVENTS!
9/14: Contra Costa County Electrification Fair
9/16: No Money for Nuclear Weapons Week of Actions
9/19: The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It
9/25: From Bhopal to the Bay! Survivor Activists of the 1984 Corporate Chemical Disaster
9/28 & 9/29: Life’s Better Electric Fair & Home Tours—San Francisco
9/28: Roots & Watts Family Climate Day—Half Moon Bay
10/3: Silent Fallout: A film screening and discussion, organized by our fab interns!
WATCH ONLINE!
Indoor Air Quality in Homes: An Educational Series
ECHO Series: Global Nuclear and Environmental Threats Critical to Climate Change and Human Health
Book Discussion: Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in SF
Building Electrification: New Studies, Advocacy, and How to Electrify Your Home, recording coming soon.
Movie Nights: Films that share the horrors left out of Oppenheimer—First We Bombed New Mexico; Dark Circle; and Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island, and more!
Committee Meeting Dates
Wednesday, September 11: Environmental Health committee
Thursday, October 10: Nuclear Weapons Abolition committee
Contra Costa County Electrification Fair
Saturday, September 14, noon-4pm PT
Calicraft Brewing Company, 2700 Mitchell Drive Walnut Creek
SF Bay PSR health professionals will be there sharing information about the health harms of air pollution caused by home gas appliances and the health benefits of electric homes! Find us at our table!
With a whirlwind of info on electrifying homes, new appliances hitting the market, and heaps of tax credits and rebates up for grabs, it’s easy to feel lost in the shuffle. But fear not! Swing by the fair and score everything you need to zap your home into electrified bliss, all under one roof. Catch snappy presentations, or mingle with vendors at their buzzing booths. No matter where you stand on the electrification journey, find all the info and resources aplenty.
No Money for Nuclear Weapons Week of Action
Hosted by ICAN
September 16 -22, 2024
Ways to Take Action
Get the Facts
SF Bay PSR’s interns are working on a list of what we could do in the Bay Area with the amount of money we pay in taxes toward the nuclear weapons industry. We are looking forward to sharing this with you during the week of action!
Nuclear weapons programs divert public funds from health care, education, disaster relief and other vital services. The nuclear-armed countries spend more than $173,000 per minute on their nuclear bombs, over $90 billion each year. Meanwhile, the companies producing these weapons of mass destruction and their investors make billions in profit each year.
For example, one year of nuclear weapons spending could….
- Convert more than 16.5 million homes to solar power
- Secure a year of clean water & sanitation for 1.2 billion people
- Hire 1.5 million high school science teachers
- Pay for ⅓ of the costs for climate change adaptation in developing countries
The Language of Climate Politics:
Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It
A Conversation with author Genevieve Guenther
Hosted by City Lights Bookstore and Foundation in conjunction with SF Bay PSR
Thursday, September 19, 7pm PT
In-Person at City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave., San Francisco
To join online: REGISTER HERE
MORE INFO
The Language of Climate Politics dismantles fossil-fuel propaganda and offers new strategies for climate communication. It argues that partisans on the right and the left often repeat the same fossil-fuel talking points and that this repetition produces a centrist consensus upholding the status quo. The book uncovers the falsehoods of this centrist consensus using rhetorical and ideological analyses of the terms that dominate current climate-change discourse. It provides a new vocabulary for climate activism and offers guidance on initiating conversations about the climate crisis that can move people to take climate action.
From Bhopal to the Bay!
Survivor Activists of the 1984 Corporate Chemical Disaster
Wednesday, September 25, 6pm, PT
Downtown Oakland, location shared after ticket purchase
Buy Tickets here from $5-$50
Forty years ago, Bhopal, India, experienced the world’s worst-ever corporation-caused disaster, resulting in the deaths and disabling of hundreds of thousands of marginalized people over multiple generations. How can we disrupt this corporation-enriching global extractive system that results in widespread injustice, poverty, hunger, climate change, and irreversible environmental destruction? Join changemakers from Bhopal and the Bay, representing around 30 organizations and diverse perspectives, including environmentalists, labor organizers, community/ indigenous leaders, housing experts, artists, lawyers, activists, agroecologists, scientists, and other knowledge-holders.
Life’s Better Electric Fair & Electric House Tours in San Francisco
Hosted by SF Environment
With presentations by SF Bay PSR Health Professionals
Electrification Fair
Saturday, September 28, 10am-2pm, PT
The Women’s Building, 3543 18th St #8, San Francisco
FREE! REGISTER HERE
Electric Home Tours
Sunday, September 29, 1-4pm, PT
REGISTER HERE to receive list of homes!
MORE INFO
Join SF Bay PSR health professionals and community members to learn about the health harms of air pollution caused by home gas appliances and the health benefits of all electric appliances! Learn how to electrify your home. We hope to see you there!
Most San Francisco homes use natural gas for heating, water heating, clothes drying and/or cooking, which creates indoor air pollution and contributes to climate change. That‘s why the Bay Area is starting to phase out gas appliances in favor of electric alternatives starting in 2027. Luckily, modern electric appliances perform better than their gas counterparts, eliminate the health and climate impacts of natural gas, and lead to a more comfortable and resilient home. Take your first steps to electrification by visiting San Francisco’s electrification fair and home tours on September 28-29th!
Roots and Watts: Cultivating a Brighter Future Climate Fair
Sponsored by 350 Silicon Valley, The HEAL Project, SF Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility, Peninsula Clean Energy, Acterra, Coastside Farmers’ Markets, Menlo Spark, and Sustainable San Mateo County
Saturday, September 28, 10am-12pm
The HEAL Project Farm, 374-464 Bridgeport Drive, Half Moon Bay
REGISTER and MORE INFO
You are invited to this family-friendly event where kids and parents will explore how to create a brighter future for our planet through activity stations that inspire discovery and creativity. Attendees will also tour the beautiful coastside farm at the HEAL Project. Organized by 350 Silicon Valley.
Silent FallOut: My Body is My Proof
A Film Screening and Discussion
Hosted by SF Bay PSR Interns Kelly Lin and Navreet Purewal
Thursday, October 3, 6-8pm, PT, online
Film screening and panel discussion
REGISTER HERE
We are thrilled to invite you to our exclusive virtual screening of Silent Fallout organized by SF Bay PSR interns Navreet Purewal and Kelly Lin. This award-winning documentary from 2003 delves into the devastating impacts of radioactive fallout in the U.S., stemming from 101 above-ground nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. government. Narrated by Alec Baldwin, this film is essential viewing for those looking to explore beyond Oppenheimer the film and uncover a dark chapter in history with lingering effects to this day.
Following the screening, join us for a panel discussion featuring Silent Fallout director Hideaki Ito, and Mayela Gillan, a PhD student researching radiation exposure from mining in the Navajo Nation. We invite you to be part of this critical conversation.
Indoor Air Quality in Homes:
An Educational Series for Nurses and the Public
Hosted by California Nurses for Environmental Health & Justice
We recommend the entire series but particularly want to highlight this session:
Improving Indoor Air Quality
With SF Bay PSR/ANHE Fellow Crystal Loucel, RN, and Barbara Sattler, DN, DrPH
WATCH HERE and MORE INFO
This webinar expands on the Introduction to Indoor Air Pollutants in Homes webinar. This session will equip nurses with practical actions they can implement at home to improve indoor air quality. Additionally, an indoor air quality home assessment tool designed for use in patient’s homes will be shared. This tool is especially relevant for nursing specialties such as public health, home health, case management and other roles where nurses commonly enter the patients living space.
Global Nuclear and Environmental Threats Critical to Climate Change and Human Health
Hosted by Climate Change and Human Health ECHO Program, University of New Mexico (UNM)
Given the decades-long global threats of nuclear weapons and power, environmental health exposures from chemical solvents and superfund sites, and resulting environmental injustice, these sessions are a primer for health professionals, public health officers, first responders, and community-based educators interested in learning from nationally and internationally known experts.
WATCH RECORDINGS, click on the titles below:
1. The Global Nuclear Threat and Nuclear Landscapes in the United States: the first session with Dr. Robert Gould.
It is outstanding!
2. Health Impacts of Radiation with Dan Hirsch (The talk starts 6 minutes into the video.)
3. Environmental Justice and Nuclear Harms Panel, with Tina Cordova, MSC, BSC; Doug Brugge, PhD, MS; Marylia Kelley; Ryan Edgington, PhD; Jacqueline Cabasso
4. Environmental Exposures: Environmental Risk in Your Neighborhood, with Michelle Hunter—and Nuclear Superfund Sites in New Mexico, with Myrriah Gomez
5. Identifying the Source of Chemical Solvents and Their Health-Related Impacts, with Michelle Hunter—and Microplastics are Here with Matthew Campen—recording coming soon.
6. Environmental Justice and Toxicities Panel—recording coming soon.
Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco
Hosted by City Lights Bookstore in conjunction with SF Bay PSR
Did you miss this event?
WATCH the RECORDING HERE
Lindsey Dillon discussed her new book!
With comments by Karen Pierce of the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, SF’s oldest environmental justice nonprofit.
Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco
Published by University of California Press
Toxic City presents a novel critique of postindustrial green gentrification through a study of Bayview Hunters Point, a historically Black neighborhood in San Francisco. As cities across the United States clean up and transform contaminated waterfronts and abandoned factories into inviting spaces of urban nature and green living, working-class residents—who previously lived with the effects of state abandonment, corporate divestment, and industrial pollution—are threatened with displacement at the very moment these neighborhoods are cleaned, greened, and revitalized. Lindsey Dillon details how residents of Bayview Hunters Point have fought for years for toxic cleanup and urban redevelopment to be a reparative process and how their efforts are linked to long-standing struggles for Black community control and self-determination. She argues that environmental racism is part of a long history of harm linked to slavery and its afterlives and concludes that environmental justice can be conceived within a larger project of reparations.
Building Electrification: New Studies, Advocacy, and How to Electrify Your Home
Ask experts questions about electrifying your home to make it healthier and more climate-friendly!
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Recording coming soon!
Learn about new research, upcoming regulations on new water and space heaters, how to protect your family, electrify your home, and advocate for a just transition to all-electric homes in CA and beyond.
After industry and transportation, buildings are a top emitter of greenhouse gases. In California, 25% of greenhouse gas emissions are from buildings and 15% are from homes. Electrification of buildings is a critical step toward decarbonization, improved health, and health equity.
Fossil Fuel (“natural” gas) appliances and heaters are proven to increase indoor air pollution and exacerbate conditions such as asthma. The health harms from indoor pollution are compounded by the high outdoor air pollution levels in California, per the American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2023 report. Also, while 98% of Californians live in counties with a failing grade for at least one air pollution measurement, a person of color is three times more likely to live in a county with failing grades in all measurements.
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- Dr. Bret Andrews, SF Bay PSR board member, will share the latest health and scientific studies on indoor air pollution that is caused by burning fossil fuels in our homes and info about local and state air quality regulatory agencies plans to electrify home appliances.
- Nurse Crystal Loucel, SF Bay PSR/Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments fellow will review how environmental justice communities are overburdened by air pollution and how building electrification can improve health equity, and she will provide a healthy home checklist.
- QuitCarbon will answer all your questions about how to transition your home to a healthier, climate-friendly, electric home. QuitCarbon offers free home electrification plans and support to save you time and money.
- We will also cover our recent advocacy efforts and how you can help to promote an equitable and just transition to electric buildings in California.
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Dr. Bret Andrews is a former Associate Chief of Neurology at Kaiser Permanente, Oakland and now works part time there. He focuses primarily on advocacy for climate health policy and presents to physicians and policy leaders on climate health. He is a co-founder of NICHe, Neurologists Interested in Climate and Health, and a board member of San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility.
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For over a decade Crystal Loucel has served as a bilingual and bicultural Public Health Nurse for the Latinx community within the San Francisco Bay Area. Born and raised in Southern California to Mexican immigrants, she obtained her Master in Public Health from Loma Linda University in 2009 and a Master of Science from UCSF’s School of Nursing in 2014. She has been a Certified Diabetes Care & Education Specialist and a Health & Wellness Nurse Coach since 2019. Crystal currently serves on the National Board of Directors of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses and Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee. In 2023, she was awarded year-long fellowships with SF Bay PSR through the Alliance of Nurses for a Healthy Environment as well as an Emerging Diversity Leaders through AcademyHealth. In her current role, she works as a UCSF Clinical Research Nurse for a study of co-transplantation of parathyroid and islet cells for insulin independence of patients with Type 1 diabetes.
QuitCarbon’s free, expert guidance makes it simple and affordable to get fossil fuels out of our homes. We’ve helped thousands of homeowners with planning, installation, and rebates on upgrades like heat pumps, mini-splits, induction cooking, and EV chargers. QuitCarbon is the only ENERGY STAR® partner providing free assistance with clean energy upgrades.
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Cooper Marcus is the Chief Quitter and CEO at QuitCarbon. QuitCarbon helps homeowners gain the confidence and clarity they need to electrify their homes – and helps contractors grow their businesses by being part of the clean energy transition. He believes that society’s move away from fossil fuel presents an incredible opportunity to respond to the climate crisis while improving the quality of life for homeowners, renters, and the small businesses that help maintain their homes. Cooper has led high-impact projects and products at high-growth startups and large enterprises. He recently spent 2.5 years at PG&E, guiding the development of an industry-leading wildfire risk machine learning model that is used to prioritize over $1B in annual spending on risk reduction.
MOVIE NIGHT!!!
At the Oscars in March, the star of Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy, dedicated his award to “peacemakers everywhere.” That is US! You and SF Bay PSR, and all our affiliated partners in the peace movement!
Here are resources for you to host your own Movie Night and discussion about nuclear weapons abolition! Check out the three movies below that so eloquently tell the horror stories that were left out of Oppenheimer.
For your discussion:
Oppenheimer the film!
Watch at your local movie theater or eventually, online at streaming services.
Oppenheimer is focused on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American physicist who was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb. It debuts just one week after the 78th anniversary of the Trinity explosion, the first-ever detonation of a nuclear bomb over Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The film provides a valuable opportunity to educate the public about the dangers nuclear weapons pose to health and humanity, from the environmental health impacts of nuclear weapons production and testing to the growing threat of nuclear war.
What horrors did Oppenheimer leave out? Watch these award-winning movies!
First We Bombed New Mexico
An award-winning, anti-nuclear film by Lois Lipman, featuring PSR Awardee Tina Cordova, Leader Tularosa Basin Downwinders
WATCH the TRAILER HERE
LEARN MORE and FIND a SCREENING HERE
First We Bombed New Mexico is the untold story of Trinity, the world’s first nuclear bomb detonated in New Mexico one month before the bombing of Hiroshima.
It is a story of government betrayal with tragic consequences.
Thousands of New Mexicans – mostly Hispanic and Native American – were exposed to catastrophic levels of radioactive fallout, never warned, never acknowledged and never helped afterwards. Generations of cancers followed.
Inspiring New Mexico Hispanic cancer survivor, Tina Cordova has catalyzed a movement seeking compensation for families – mostly Hispanic and Native – who suffer multigenerational cancers tied to that bomb – and who continue to be ignored.
This documentary is witness to the people’s narrative for voices not heard.
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Dark Circle
An award-winning, anti-nuclear film by SF Bay PSR member Judy Irving, and Christopher Beaver and Ruth Landy
WATCH HERE
READ MORE
MORE STREAMING OPTIONS HERE
It’s been 75 years since the start of the Atomic Age, with the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, but its trail of destruction has never ended.
Dark Circle covers both the period’s beginnings and its aftermath, providing a scientific primer on the catastrophic power of nuclear energy while also relating tragic human stories detailing the devastating toll radioactive toxicity has taken on people and livestock—focusing in large part on Rocky Flats, Colorado, whose plutonium processing facility infamously contaminated the surrounding area.
Documentary Grand Prize winner at Sundance, Academy shortlisted for Best Documentary, and Emmy winner, Dark Circle is no less potent today than it was 40 years ago. The new 2K HD Restoration done at FotoKem was assisted by AMPAS and supervised by co-director Judy Irving.
“Dark Circle is one of the most horrifying films I’ve seen, and also sometimes one of the funniest (if you can laugh at the same things in real life that you found amusing in Dr. Strangelove). Using powers granted by the Freedom of Information Act, and sleuthing that turned up government film the government didn’t even know it had, the producers of this film have created a mosaic of the Atomic Age. It is a tribute to the power of the material, and to the relentless digging of the filmmakers, that the movie is completely riveting. Four Stars!” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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Silent Fallout
LEARN MORE
SCREENING SCHEDULE
This award-winning film by accredited Japanese director Hideaki Ito tells the untold stories of the victims of nuclear testing in America—and the account of one mother who risked her career to expose the dangers of radiation poisoning.
Silent Fallout is more than a film. Our team is working hard to spread the word about radiation poisoning and nuclear contamination in the US and beyond—and we need your help to do so.
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In the Dark of the Valley
A film featuring PSR-LA’s Dr. Bob Dodge and Denise Duffield!
SCREENED on MSNBC
LEARN MORE at In the Dark of the Valley WEBSITE
READ MORE at MSNBC
In the Dark of the Valley is the first feature film to focus on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a former nuclear and rocket-engine testing site near Los Angeles. The film is an exploration into the site’s long history of cover-ups and negligence by site owners Boeing, NASA, and the Department of Energy. It also tells the harrowing story of how a community of mothers have dealt with the struggles of childhood cancer and their new found life of environmental advocacy.
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Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island
Another award-winning, anti-nuclear film!
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Starting March 12, 2024
Available to stream on Apple+ and Amazon
READ MORE and WATCH TRAILER
March 28, 2024, marks the 45th Anniversary of the Three Mile Island meltdown—the worst commercial nuclear power accident in U.S. history.
A resonant story about a battle of wills, hubris, and energy – atomic, maternal, moral, and feminist. At the prompting of an ecofeminism professor turned visual journalist, the four original “concerned” mothers, a two-woman legal team and a reporter, now all much older, wiser, and bolder, break open years of corporate silencing and nuclear industry doublespeak, and tell their stories about the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident, the worst commercial nuclear reactor meltdown in U.S. history. And though this disaster took place in 1979, the life and death implications continue in the spiritual, physical, and political DNA of the community, its residents, and their descendants.
Save-Our-Climate Movies!
YOUTH v. GOV
An independent, award-winning documentary about Juliana v. United States
WATCH on Netflix
Climate Psychiatry Alliance co-founder, Lise Van Susteren has been the forensic psychiatric consultant on this historically significant, groundbreaking constitutional CLIMATE case brought by 21 youth plaintiffs.
For over 10 years, Our Children’s Trust’s legal actions seek systemic, science-based climate mitigation actions by governments, demanding that our leaders tackle the roots of the climate crisis rather than just the branches of its impacts.
OCT has represented and supported youth plaintiffs in climate litigation around the globe–including Juliana v. United States, Held v. Montana, & La Rose v. Her Majesty the Queen–as they advocate for their right to a stable climate.
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Big Oil’s Last Lifeline
A 3-part docuseries sounding the alarm on the petrochemical industry’s impact on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.
WATCH HERE
Everyday, the oil, gas and petrochemical industry writes off Black, Brown and Indigenous communities as “sacrifice zones.” The industry violates laws with impunity and rationalizes the unconscionable – they dump cancer-causing pollution into communities of color and try to cover it up.
Big Oil’s Last Lifeline takes us to the frontlines of the U.S.’s epicenters for petrochemical production: West Virginia, Houston, and along the Mississippi River in Louisiana.
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The Power of Big Oil, a PBS Frontline Special
WATCH on KQED HERE
We highly recommend PBS’s Frontline show, “The Power of Big Oil.” This in-depth, three-part series examines the fossil fuel industry’s history of casting doubt and delaying action on climate change. It traces decades of missed opportunities and the ongoing attempts to hold Big Oil to account.
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Racial Equity Reading Group Discussions
You’re invited to learn more about issues of racial equity, particularly as they relate to the fields of public health and medicine. The discussions are open to anyone (not just health professionals) seeking to deepen their personal understanding of issues related to systemic racism and strengthen their commitment toward creating a more just, equitable, and healthy world.
Our hearts go out to all those who have lost loved ones by gun and police violence. This discussion series is also part of our ongoing commitment to address the public health emergencies of gun and police violence, particularly toward African-Americans who are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people.
NEXT DISCUSSION & READINGS, TBA
SF Bay PSR Committee Meetings
Environmental Health Committee
NEXT meeting will be on Wednesday, September 11, 2024. (No meeting in May.)
7:00 pm, via Zoom
Meetings are held on Wednesdays, every other month.
EHC members continue to work energetically during the pandemic on wide-ranging collaborative efforts to engage health professional students and institutions to address the unceasing threats of our climate to our health. READ MORE.
Divestment/Investment Task Force
Next meeting: email intern@sfbaypsr.org to receive meeting info
7:00pm, via Zoom
Meeting are usually held on the fourth Monday, every other month
Meeting ID: 864 2653 3538
Passcode: 410416
SF Bay PSR has joined forces with other NGOs and institutions to support a broad movement pushing for individual and institutional divestment from the fossil-fuel industry and investment in the alternative energy sector. READ MORE.
Nuclear Weapons Abolition Committee
Next meeting will be on Thursday, October 10, 2024.
7:00 pm PT, via Zoom
Meetings are held on the second Thursday, every other month.
NWAC is composed of health professionals and others working locally to influence public awareness, civic engagement, and national policy to build a nuclear weapons free world. Toward the latter, we frame our work through our Back from the Brink campaign and its policy platforms. READ MORE.
