Episode 1: A Preservationist Spirit

The podcasts for "Voices for the Environment: A Century of Bay Area Activism" are part of a Bancroft Library Gallery exhibition at UC Berkeley. This exhibit charts the twentieth-century evolution of environmentalism in the San Francisco Bay Area through the voices of activists who galvanized public opinion to advance their causes—from wilderness preservation, to economic regulation, to environmental justice. The "Voices for the Environment" exhibition was curated by UC Berkeley's Oral History Center and is free and open to the public from Oct. 6, 2023 to Nov. 15, 2024, in The Bancroft Library Gallery, located just inside the east entrance of The Bancroft Library. You can visit the "Voices for the Environment" exhibit website at ucberk.li/VoicesExhibit (case sensitive)
 
Episode 1: A Preservationist Spirit. This podcast episode accompanies a section of the 'Voices for the Environment" exhibition that explores how, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, demands to rebuild San Francisco targeted the state’s ancient and fire-resistant redwood trees, while desires for a reliable water supply called for damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley within Yosemite National Park. In the decades that followed, an outpouring of activism shaped the ensuing conflict between economic development and environmental protection, and fueled a preservationist spirit in the Bay Area that would only grow over the century.
 
This podcast episode features historic interviews from the Oral History Center archives in The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, including segments from the "Growing Up in the Cities" collection recorded in the late 1970s by Frederick M. Wirt, as well as oral history interviews with Carolyn Merchant recorded in 2022, with Ansel Adams recorded in the mid-1970s, and with David Brower recorded in the mid-1970s. The oral history of William E. Colby from 1953 was voiced by Anders Hauge, and the oral history of Francis Farquhar from 1958 was voiced by Ross Bradford. This episode also features audio from the film Two Yosemites, directed and narrated by David Brower in 1955. This episode was narrated by Sasha Khokha of KQED Public Radio and The California Report Magazine.

This podcast was produced by Todd Holmes and Roger Eardley-Pryor of the Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, with help from Sasha Khokha of KQED. The album and episode images were designed by Gordon Chun.
 
A written version of this podcast is available at
https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/2023/10/03/podcast-episode-1-a-preservationist-spirit-in-the-bancroft-gallery-exhibit-voices-for-the-environment-a-century-of-bay-area-activism/
 
Visit the Oral History Center at ucblib.link/OralHistoryCenter (case sensitive)

Voices for the Environment - Episode 1: A Preservationist Spirit

This episode takes a look at the medical community’s first encounter with AIDS in San Francisco. As reports began to circulate of a mysterious disease affecting gay men, fear spread even faster than the virus itself. Here medical researchers and healthcare professionals discuss how the health community grappled with this fear of the unknown: from medical institutions and staff refusing to treat patients, to the internal conflict of the health practitioners themselves as they faced the reality that their pursuit to save lives could very well risk their own. Ultimately, the management of fear—among patients, the public, and the health community itself—proved to be one of the first steps in the city’s medical response to AIDS.

Ep 2: The Virus of Fear

This episode charts the uphill battle medical researchers faced in securing the needed resources and funding to combat the AIDS epidemic. The discovery of the epidemic coincided with the rise of fiscal and social conservatism in national politics with the election of Ronald Reagan. Public health budgets were slashed and there was little sympathy or support to fight a disease affecting gay men. In this episode, medical researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and University of California San Francisco’s KS Clinic reveal how they had to improvise in this context to piece together the crucial resources needed to make headway against the epidemic.

Ep 5: The Fight For Resources

Our final episode looks at how the collaboration between community members and health officials ultimately came to redefine care for AIDS. We hear medical staff and community members describe the multi-pronged approach developed at San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 5b, which  combined care, research, social work, and community involvement. Together, health officials and community members pioneered a new way of treating epidemic disease and human suffering—a new way that became known as the San Francisco Model.

EP 6: Ward 5b, or The San Francisco Model

The Oral History Center preserves voices of people from all walks of life, with varying political perspectives, national origins, and ethnic backgrounds. Our podcast, The Berkeley Remix, delves into pressing issues, making our vast archive accessible to scholars and the public. The UC Berkeley Oral History Center, a division of The Bancroft Library, was founded in 1953 and produces carefully researched, audio/video-recorded, and transcribed oral histories and interpretative historical materials for the widest possible use.

Voices for the Environment - Episode 1: A Preservationist Spirit

The Berkeley Remix

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