Socialized medicine and mental health care. Social safety nets. Meaningful jobs programs. Less policing and more community resources. Reforms on how prescription drugs that lead to addiction problems are prescribed. Free care, at the expense of pharmaceutical companies, for human beings who have had their lives ruined due to inadequate care from the medical community who have been misled by the pharma industry. Accountability for our leadership that has been bought and sold by corporate interests.
The list goes on. There's a lot that can be done. Increasing policing and cracking down on drugs have both proven to be damaging, but it's the only thing the uncompassionate and out-of-touch know how to do in response to problems they refuse to address.
Regardless of the difficulty, an attempt should be made towards all or at least some of these ideas. Just speculating that it's too difficult and not even trying shouldn't be acceptable.
That said, I think plenty of this is realistic and achievable - just not with the voters we currently have. Maybe the next generation will be more compassionate and in my old age I can see the beginning of progress.
Cities can do more than you might think. IIRC some cities plan to cover universal community college, and I know some have universal pre-K. Large cities have health systems.
SF already has free community College. It also has free public Healthcare for the poor (or at least did). Last time I was aware, they changed it so that only illegal immigrants were eligible for coverage.
Like most US community colleges, it was already extremely cheap, ~$2,500/year for a full time student, but this can still be a barrier for some people.
The list goes on. There's a lot that can be done. Increasing policing and cracking down on drugs have both proven to be damaging, but it's the only thing the uncompassionate and out-of-touch know how to do in response to problems they refuse to address.