The Power of "WE": How I became an SF Community Activist

My journey to becoming a San Francisco community activist began, surprisingly, while waiting at SFO for a flight to Sydney, Australia, in March of 2020.

While our gate attendant made announcements, international headlines flashed on news feeds: Australia was going into immediate COVID-19 lockdown, and all international travelers would face immediate quarantine.

I told my wife, Virginie, maybe we should think twice. She replied with some big news that she had been saving for 30,000 feet: she was pregnant with our first child, and this might be our last big trip for a while.

So we went.

Our planned two-week trip quickly became one month. One month became two. Two became four, then six.

I’d lived in San Francisco since 2012, but this was the first opportunity for us to think deeply about where to raise our child. Should we go to the south of France, where my wife was from?  Should we consider my childhood roots in the Pacific Northwest?  What about minimizing the distance to family by picking somewhere in between, like New York or Miami?

The decision was obvious once we made it: San Francisco, we believed, was not only the greatest city in the world but the greatest city in the world to raise our kids.

So we went “all in” on San Francisco: We delivered our first child, Abigail, at California Pacific Medical Center in late 2020. We gave birth to our second child, Ella, also at CPMC, in 2022 and spent one year transforming a Lone Mountain house into our forever home.

By the summer of 2023, we were so in love with San Francisco that it was especially heartbreaking to see what had become of The City regarding public safety, civic disorder, and government accountability.

We texted old friends to see who was still in town and who might be interested in joining a “friends reunion.”

70 people showed up on three days' notice.  

Along with our co-organizer Seema Sri, we observed something of great significance that hadn’t been reported elsewhere: The exodus of San Francisco residents fueled by the pandemic, work-from-anywhere policies, and frustration with city issues had a counter-balancing effect. Because those less committed to San Francisco had already left, those who remained were disproportionately passionate about The City and even more committed to getting it back on the right track.

This concentration of civic passion, it seemed, could be the fuel for a community movement.  And in a matter of weeks, we had many hundreds of people signing up for a series of neighborhood and city-wide meetups to address specific community issues.

Inspired by the words of President John F. Kennedy, could we get thousands of San Franciscans to “ask not what your city can do for you, but what you can do for your city?”

I started working less on the global marketing agency TOP, which I had founded in San Francisco a decade earlier, and more time organizing events and meetups to create community change.

A few of us started recruiting dozens of data scientists, analysts, forensic accountants, and other interested residents to audit the city budget and conduct a “People’s Census.”

I launched a brand new podcast to feature interviews with San Francisco change-makers.

The result was a new community movement simply called “WE” — with a mission to get 1% of San Francisco, a volunteer corps of 8,000 people, taking action to accelerate needed change within two years instead of 10.

When the editors at the San Francisco Examiner reached out for a story about WE and learned that I had been a syndicated columnist at The Oregonian newspaper back in the 2000s, the discussion pivoted to a new column focused on San Francisco change — with the debut piece being the one you are reading now.

So what’s next for San Francisco, you ask? I’m looking forward to exploring that question with you.

What I do know is that in addition to San Francisco’s rare combination of natural beauty, livability, inclusivity, and creative energy, The City's greatest resource is the people themselves.

So, is change possible? Absolutely.

Who is going to do it? We are.

WE ARE SAN FRANCISCO.