Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Saker. Today I'm in San Francisco,

the city of the Golden Gate Bridge, of dreams realized and fortunes made, from the gold rush to the

tech boom, a place where the imagination can run wild, radical ideas prosper, and anything goes.

Well, that's the image that San Francisco has projected.

The reality looks a little different.

This city has become a symbol of urban dysfunction, beset by rampant drug addiction, street crime,

and homelessness.

San Francisco is a city described by right-wing critics as the

woke capital of America. They claim radical left politics have undermined law and order,

facilitated drug use, failed the school system. My guest today is London Breed, the city's

first black woman mayor.

She was brought up by her grandmother in one of the poorest neighborhoods.

Now she's a rising star in the Democratic Party who says she can drag this city out of the mess it's in.

Well, Mayor London Breed joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you. Now, if I may, I'm going to start with a

recent headline from The Economist magazine. It describes San Francisco like this, fabulously rich

and fabulously dysfunctional. Do you recognize that description?

What family doesn't have a little bit of dysfunction? But I wouldn't completely

agree with the city being dysfunctional because we have really a lot of great programs and things

that we do that actually work very effectively. I mean, this is one of the most beautiful cities

in the world. People travel from all over to visit and to experience our rolling hills and the

excitement of San Francisco, the games, the entertainment, the nightlife, the great restaurants.

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