The San Francisco Giants once again fell to under .500 after a loss on Thursday and they now sit 6.5 games out of the Wild Card. After bringing in a new manager in Bob Melvin and giving out a lot of money in free agency, as well as a big trade, there was a lot of optimism surrounding San Francisco heading into the season.

Although there have been bright spots, such as the emergence of young players like Heliot Ramos and Tyler Fitzgerald, the season as a whole has been a disappointment. One of their big free agent acquisitions, Matt Chapman, expressed that.

“It’s not fun. We know how precious each win is and how important these games are, so this one stings. We get back to San Fran and we’ve got another important series coming up — obviously, you look at the standings, and you know, it’s not looking great for us right now, just because we need to climb back into this thing. But we do play the teams ahead of us still coming up. And I think we can still control our own destiny,” the third baseman said.

It will definitely be an uphill battle if the Giants want to have a shot at playing in the postseason. After games wrapped on Thursday, there are currently three teams ahead of them for the third Wild Card spot. The New York Mets, who are the first on the outside, have a 3.5 game lead.

“There are still 27 games left, so a lot can happen. In September, everybody’s tired. Sometimes, you’ve just got to dig deep. We do play the Padres and the Diamondbacks quite a bit. … Everybody else is playing tough games too. There’s no reason why we can’t make a run. I think we know we have the talent in this room, we just have to get things going. We’ve had bad road trips before, and it seems like when we go home, we get hot again,” the 31-year-old continued.

While he is correct in that they play two teams in their division who are ahead of them in the Wild Card, it’s still going to take a lot of work. San Francisco will have to play their best baseball over the last month of the season to make a dent.

In 2024, the team’s longest winning streak is just four games, something they will likely need to surpass if they want to make a run. The Giants will have to dig deep, to say the least, and they will need to stay healthy and rely on their pitching.

SAN FRANCISCO – Some small businesses in San Francisco are opening up and expanding, leading some residents to wonder if the city has turned a corner.

Cheers and smiles marked the grand opening of a new store on Thursday on Polk Street.

The Bi-Rite, a local grocery store chain owned by the same San Francisco family for half a century, opened its third location in Russian Hill.

“There’s always cycles. There’s always ups and downs. If anyone thinks it’s going to be otherwise, they’re fooling themselves,” said Bi-Rite owner Sam Mogannam.

Despite the rough post-pandemic recovery for San Francisco, Mogannam remains optimistic.

“There’s a lot of energy and momentum to bring this city back to life,” he said.

San Francisco resident Isabel Baer said she has noticed a significant change.

“I’ve noticed a quick comeback from COVID in the past 12 months,” Baer said.

New stores are also opening in the San Francisco Ferry Building, where 95 percent of the retail shops on the ground floor are leased out, according to their website.

“I have noticed it’s busier in the afternoons,” said Oakland resident Traci Lim.

Meanwhile, on Valencia Street, the famed Slanted Door is set to return to its original location for the first time in 20 years.

“We’ve been working with every landlord that has a vacant storefront,” said Manny Yekutiel, who owns Manny’s, an event center and café, and heads the Valencia Merchants Association, representing about 500 independent businesses in the neighborhood.

“There are four new art galleries that have opened up, that are doing gallery events in just the last six months,” Yekutiel said.

Yekutiel notes that while new businesses are opening, it doesn’t mean it’s easier to do so in San Francisco.

“It’s harder. We have fewer tourists, higher costs,” he said. “But we take chances, we take risks. We’re go-getters.”

This renewed sense of drive, hope, and hustle is echoed by Mogannam.

“I’m always optimistic about San Francisco. There’s no place more special than this,” he said.

California’s San Francisco State University has begun the process of divesting from four weapons manufacturers currently involved in Israel’s war on Gaza, in a move activists are describing as a “major victory” for Palestinian rights advocacy in the United States.

The announcement by Students for Gaza SFSU comes at a crucial time for the student movement for Palestine, as several universities across the country look to punish and deter students from restarting pro-Palestinian advocacy on campuses, and social media companies like Meta look to censor pro-Palestine activism by student groups on their platforms.

Earlier this week, New York University (NYU) included criticism of Zionism on its list of hate speech, a move that is expected to have a chilling effect on activism targeting Israel. At the University of Michigan, several students were violently arrested as they conducted a sit-in on campus.

Activists say the move to divest from Palantir Technologies, a US-based data analysis firm, arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, Leonardo, an Italian multinational defence company, as well as construction equipment manufacturer, Caterpillar – corporations described by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) as “profiting from Gaza the genocide” – came following months of protest and advocacy calling on the university to withdraw investments in portfolios that profit from harming Palestinians.

The demands were part of a nationwide student movement that called for universities to disclose and divest from companies profiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its current war on Gaza.

Noam Perry, the strategic research coordinator with the AFSC, told Middle East Eye the move was significant for a variety of reasons, none more so than “the transformative process the university went through, and the moral stance it committed to” in reaching its decision to change track on the investments.

“It’s not that the university decided to divest from these four companies. It’s that the university decided on a new ethical investment policy, and when it screened its direct investments through this new lens, these are the companies that were flagged. So the policy would make sure the university cannot directly invest in these and other similar companies in the future.

“As far as I know, this has been the most earnest process that a US university has had so far to respond to the divestment demands of its student’s encampment,” Perry said, adding the university had demonstrated it respected students’ voices on how it invests its money.

On Thursday, students at the university held a press conference and rally in the Malcolm X Plaza on campus where they announced the news to fellow students.

In a statement issued by Students For Gaza, the group behind the push for divestment, the cohort said the university had drafted new language that would institutionalise the move as part of a larger commitment to divest from other corporations that violate human rights.

The group said the new language would be added to the investment policy statement that would centre on human rights.

In April and May this year, students set up an encampment at SFSU, as part of the nationwide call for students to demand universities to divest from corporations seen as complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza.

At SFSU, the encampment organised by Students for Gaza lasted three weeks.

The university then held public negotiations with students – the first in the country to do so.

By the end of the semester, initial agreements with the administration were accepted and the student leadership, faculty, observers, and the administration joined a summer working group to examine the university’s investment policies.

The working group was also joined by community partners from AFSC, an organisation documenting corporate complicity and working on divestment campaigns. 

Max, a spokesperson with Students for Gaza, told MEE students had originally dismantled the encampments “with the goal of continuing to organise and work throughout the summer to meet our demands”.

“We were able to get our demands met, including a divestment from weapons manufacturing and a website that disclosed clear information about our investments,” Max, who offered only his first name, said.

According to AFSC, the four companies targeted are directly involved in Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now resulted in more than 40,000 Palestinians being killed since October 2024.

Perry said that whereas Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, has been supplying F16s and F35 jets to the Israeli airforce, the Italian weapons manufacturer, Leonardo, has been providing the Israeli navy with the 76mm guns that have been targeting Gaza from the sea.  

The Denver-based Palantir Technologies has been helping Israel develop “kill lists” for Israel while Caterpillar, infamous for its D9 armoured bulldozers, has been a long-time target for Palestinian activists due to its role in demolishing Palestinian homes and civilian infrastructure.

“These bulldozers have also been crucial for Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, accompanying combat troops and paving their way by clearing roads and flattening entire residential neighbourhoods,” Perry added.

Perry said, success notwithstanding, more work still needs to be done at the university.

“It’s important to note that divestment from both Palantir and Caterpillar was not due to SFSU’s commitment to divest from weapons manufacturers, but thanks to the other parts of the university’s investment policy, which now considers internationally-recognised human rights, in addition to the university’s prior commitments to racial justice and environmental issues,” Perry said.

SFSU did not immediately reply to MEE’s request for comment.