Happy New Year! Mission Local's Staff Picks Its Favorite Stories Of 2021.

San Francisco CA

31 December, 2021

2:17 PM

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By Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local December 31, 2021 Annika Hom, Reporter As my formidable bosses repeatedly remind us, the best pieces dig deep and pull apart complex, difficult questions. Few pieces demonstrate that better than Joe Eskenazi's column on Alison Collins, in which I felt he hit all the marks: his standard and sharp political analysis, inclusion of the affected community's voices, and most importantly, courageous dissection of the complications with her Tweets. Unlike almost every other piece that simplified this scandal, Eskenazi spelled out the racism both the Black and Asian communities face with much-needed context and nuance. Doing so requires courage; something disappointingly absent from other journalists and media outlets who dared not broach the story at all. Fortunately, that courage and critical thinking isn't exclusive to Eskenazi. I loved Lydia Chávez's hyper-attention to the city's Covid-19 response, showing time and again how the community often served its people better than city officials espousing success. Importantly, Eleni Balakrishnan wrote about the rape allegations levied against a Mission leader and how the neighborhood's nonprofits addressed these. To read the full article, click here. Mission Local covers San Francisco from the vantage point of the Mission, a neighborhood with all of the promise and problems of a major city. You can support Mission Local here.