Brightline Defense monitors air pollution in San Francisco neighborhoods, helps young people prepare for construction careers and pushes for environmental policies that connect the two. The SoMa-based environmental justice nonprofit has eleven staff, and its work takes executive director Eddie Ahn, an attorney, from tenant meetings in the Tenderloin to testimony before Congress.
Tracking neighborhood air pollution
Brightline runs 19 air quality sensors in SoMa, the Tenderloin, Chinatown and Bayview-Hunters Point. They measure fine particulates and nitrogen dioxide every hour, and the readings go onto an open map and into quarterly reports. One sensor is placed next to a Bay Area Air Quality Management District station in Potrero Hill so the numbers can be checked against the official ones.
Regional monitors are sparse in the neighborhoods where people live closest to freeways and in single-room-occupancy hotels without filtration. Brightline's partners on the project, the Central City SRO Collaborative, La Voz Latina and the Community Youth Center of San Francisco, review the data with tenant leaders who use it to press landlords and the city for cleaner air.
Preparing young people for the trades
Construction On Ramp is Brightline's free job-readiness course for San Francisco residents ages 17 to 24. It introduces the trades, includes hands-on training and panels with industry professionals, and connects graduates to CityBuild Academy, the city's pre-apprenticeship program. The program is on at least its eighth cycle. Brightline also helped write San Francisco's local hiring policy for public construction projects, which creates the jobs the course prepares people for.
Making neighborhoods count in state funding
CalEnviroScreen is the state's tool for identifying disadvantaged communities, and it helps determine eligibility for a range of state housing, transit and energy funding. The draft of its fifth version left out SoMa, the Mission, Chinatown and parts of the Tenderloin and Bayview-Hunters Point. In 2026 Brightline organized a campaign to fix it backed by more than 100 organizations and 2,500 community members, with supporters including Mayor Daniel Lurie and Chinatown Community Development Center CEO Malcolm Yeung.
Brightline's policy work also reaches offshore wind, which it has long supported for the clean power and the jobs. In May, Ahn testified before a House Natural Resources subcommittee on federal settlements with offshore wind leaseholders.
Ahn wrote and illustrated the graphic memoir Advocate, published in 2024, about his upbringing, public-service work and experience building Brightline.
How to get involved
Policy fellowships: Brightline takes a cohort of policy fellows each semester. The fall 2026 cohort is in place, and the application for spring and summer 2027 opens in December on the careers page.
Legal Corps: attorneys and law students can apply to work on environmental justice matters through the organization's Legal Corps.
Volunteering: a volunteer form on the site asks for your availability, resume and the areas you want to help with.
Brightline's data, reports and news are at brightlinedefense.org.
