A massive campaign is underway to “turn on the pumps” and deliver additional water to farms in the western Central Valley. Agribusiness interests and their allies claim environmental and water activists care more about fish than people and are demanding more water, now! Central Valley Congress members are calling for an exclusion from the Endangered Species Act of the delta smelt, more dams, a peripheral canal, and a bond initiative in 2010 that will result in taxpayers subsidizing water for large corporate farming operations.

Rose City Antifa writes: "This July, David Irving, a British neo-fascist and fraudulent historian, goes on the road in the United States, planning to hold approximately one and a half dozen speaking engagements over the course of a month. As militant anti-racists and anti-fascists, we are making a public call for resistance at each stop along the way of this tour."

On Sunday, June 28, two groups of radical queer activists demonstrated against other contingents participating in the 2009 Pride Parade in San Francisco. Members of the International Jewish Solidarity Network marched and protested Zionist presence at the Pride Parade. Another group staged a die-in in front of Gavin Newsom's float at the annual Pride Parade to protest cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention, queer youth programs, and other vital services.

On July 30, Michael Steinberg Writes:, "Today San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom hid in his office and locked the door on a crowd of tenants who came to petition him to support a package of renter relief measures. The SF Board of Supervisors passed the package earlier this month, but not by a veto proof margin, and Newsom has said he will veto it."

On Saturday, June 27, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams hosted a forum in San Francisco to address the issue: "A United Ireland, How Do We Get There?" Hundreds packed St. Anne’s Meeting Hall in San Francisco’s Sunset District to discuss how to unite the still divided island nation of Ireland. Gerry Adams said the purpose of the forum was “to kickstart yet another chapter in our struggle — the final chapter.”

For the 5th year running, the burning of American flags will take place on Friday, July 3rd at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz. Organizers say they raise the burning flag up as a sacred symbol representing their highest ideals as Americans, and that the "American Flag is so great a symbol that it represents the right to burn it."

Robert Norse comments, "Burning a flag in solidarity with the Honduran people on July 4th makes more sense to me than burning a flag as a celebration of the First Amendment. Divorcing flag-burning from its visceral ('Yanqui, go home!') content is a way of stripping the action of its force."

Several thousand people gathered in Dolores Park on June 26th to demand equality for the transgender community. Beginning at the park they formed a contingent of marchers that made their way through San Francisco's Mission district to 26th and Valencia. This year's march marked San Francisco's sixth year since the event began in 2004 when it was first established to honor Gwen Araujo, a young transgendered woman who was brutally murdered in Newark, California in November of 2002.

Live radio broadcast from Honduras
On June 28th, the Honduran military ousted the democratically elected government of Honduras, detaining and then exiling President Manuel Zelaya to Costa Rica. The head of the Honduran Joint Chiefs of Staff, Romeo Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, along with other military leaders in the country, graduated from the United States' infamous School of the Americas (SOA). On June 29, an emergency rally and press conference to denounce the coup in Honduras took place at the Honduran Consulate in San Francisco.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, June 28th, a demonstration will begin at Vandenberg Air Force Base to protest the U.S. launch of a Minuteman III nuclear missile. The target of the rocket is the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, South Pacific.

On Sunday June 28th, the first-ever Atheist Film Festival will be held at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District from 12pm to midnight. Feature-length films will be shown in the 240-seat theater, short films in the small 46-seat screening room. The festival is sponsored by San Francisco Atheists.

Gay Shame held a protest at the San Francisco LGBT Center on Thursday, June 25th. Gay Shame wrote: Does today’s mainstream LGBT movement make you feel like you’re lost in an alternate reality? Perhaps even another dimension? Do the things groups like the HRC fight for cause you to feel as if you’re going the wrong way backwards through time? Does the thought of straight ally Gavin Newsom’s ascendancy to governor give you vertigo?

On June 24, nearly five months after opening an investigation of University of California sociology professor William I. Robinson for alleged faculty misconduct, university officials abruptly announced that they have dismissed all charges and terminated the case. Robinson has been targeted by the Anti-Defamation League for forwarding images that made a historical comparison to the state violence of the Israeli military actions in Gaza with that of German Nazi Wehrmacht in Warsaw.

Nurses, doctors, and other health care advocates protested in front of the Fairmont Hotel on June 22 to voice objection to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius' visit to San Francisco. In a June 16 interview, Secretary Sebelius vowed that the health care reform legislation now being drafted in Congress would be written specifically to bar single payer, both now and in the future. She instead urged support for a so-called "public option," a government subsidized health care fund that would coexist with private insurance. Sebelius was at the Fairmont as guest speaker for a Democratic fundraiser held by Nancy Pelosi.

The demolition of the Bevatron, a.k.a. Building 51 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), is scheduled to begin in July. The demolition will include the removal of radioactive waste, trucked down University Avenue covered with tarps. According to the LBNL website, 1000-1200 truckloads of the 4700 "may contain hazardous or radioactive material." A press conference will take place on Tuesday, June 23rd at 6:30pm in front of Berkeley City Hall in order to draw attention to this blatant disregard for the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act.

On June 23rd, the Santa Cruz City Council passed a 45-day moratorium on new medical marijuana dispensaries in the city limits. Councilmembers said they needed the moratorium because they claimed there was a flood of daily inquiries to the city's Planning Department about opening medical marijuana centers. The are two pending applications for dispensaries on the Westside of Santa Cruz.

On Saturday, June 20, activists gathered at Trader Joe’s in Oakland and San Francisco to demand that the company stop carrying Israeli goods. Protesters removed Israeli products from the shelves in order to show customers which products they should not buy. They also met with the store managers and asked them to notify their headquarters that they no longer wanted to carry Israeli herbs, couscous and cheese. Similar actions were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington, and Sacramento, California. The activists were inspired by campaigns to deshelve Israeli products in Wales and France.

On June 21st, the Israeli State Prosecutor ordered police to start an investigation of Indymedia Israel. At the heart of the investigation is an article posted to the website with a picture of a soldier who, according to witnesses, murdered protest organizer Abu Rahma on April 17th. The posting with the heading “murderer“ asks for the name and any other relevant information of that soldier so that he can face murder charges.

Davey D, producer of KPFA's Hard Knock Radio, writes: "It’s interesting to hear a number of progressives who immediately jumped out the box telling people that they were being duped by supporting the protests in Tehran. Many arrogantly pointed out that we were somehow carrying the mainstream party line and what we were seeing in the streets was a CIA backed operation. In fact one person hit me up and told me I should be ashamed of myself and that I was somehow pushing the mainstream party line."

Fresno County homecare providers reported scores of incidents of voter intimidation, illegal threats, and ballot manipulation by SEIU staff in an election for workers to quit the scandal-plagued union and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). SEIU spent an estimated $10 million on attack mailings, robo-calls, TV and radio ads, but failed to win enough support from workers to win the election without breaking the law.

In the early hours of Monday, June 22, 2009, settlers from the Bat ‘Ain settlement set fire and cut down more than 125 grapevines and fruit trees. Israeli soldiers said they saw a fire in the Palestinian agricultural fields some time during the night and went to put it out, though they did nothing to collect the evidence; kerosene canisters and matches were still there the next morning when activists from the Palestine Solidarity Project accompanied the farmer’s family to survey the damage.

The Santa Cruz City Council Measure K Oversight Committee held their most recent meeting on June 15th. As directed in Santa Cruz Municipal Code Section 9.84.060, the Committee is charged with overseeing the implementation of SCMC Chapter 9.84 which makes "Adult Marijuana Criminal Offenses" the "Lowest Law Enforcement Priority."

On June 5th, Peruvian national police attacked a roadblock near the city of Bagua in northwestern Peru, killing at least sixty people. Several thousand indigenous protesters had been blocking the main road to protest measures the government has taken to sell their ancestral land to energy companies. On June 16th, over 30 people converged outside the Peruvian Consulate in San Francisco to amplify their concerns with the Peruvian and US Government's complacency in protecting indigenous rights.

Carrying on a long-standing tradition of civic contribution and combating corporate greed, the Raging Grannies made an unscheduled appearance at a national aging conference on June 15th in San Francisco. The Grannies took up the conference themes of "creative aging" and "civic engagement" in a performance that included parodies the Grannies wrote themselves. Their skit, "Fight the For-Profits" was an urgent appeal to participants to join the movement against powerful special interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and to help pass a single-payer national health care program.

On June 15th, hundreds of thousands protested in the streets of Tehran in the largest demonstration in Iran's 30-year history, and opposition candidate Mousavi made his first public appearance since the election. Clashes broke out between police and groups protesting the election results early Saturday morning. Police stormed dorms at the University of Tehran on Sunday, with several deaths and many arrests reported. Demonstrators called for the election to be canceled after it was announced that President Ahmadinejad won over 62 percent of the vote.

After print-runs for the SF and NY Anarchist Book Fairs, a magazine entitled Unfinished Acts: January Rebellions is now available on Indybay in digital format. The magazine is a collective recounting and analysis of events surrounding the shooting of the unarmed, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III by BART police officers in the early hours of 2009 on the Fruitvale station platform.

On June 5th, a sniper in the Israeli military killed 36 year old Yousef Akil Srour, shooting him in the chest with 0.22 caliber live ammunition. Srour is the 5th Palestinian to be killed by the Israeli army in Ni’lin during a demonstration against the theft of his land for the construction of the Annexation Wall. Israeli occupation forces have murdered five Ni’lin residents during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land and critically injured one international solidarity activist - Tristan Anderson.

On Wednesday, June 10th, hundreds of people who will be affected by Newsom's budget cuts took to the streets to demand that the Board of Supervisors save front-line services, and take a more balanced approach to the San Francisco budget. The demonstration followed a proposed budget, released by Mayor Newsom, that will terminate critical health and human services, while pumping up salaries for police by 25% and adding many new high paid patronage positions into his own administration.

On May 19, Melissa C. Roxas was abducted along with two Filipino companions, Juanito Carabeo and John Edward Jandoc from a house, in La Paz, Philippines. Melissa Roxas is a well known community and cultural activist and human rights advocate. She is a member of the cultural group Habi-Arts and of BAYAN-USA, the progressive alliance of Filipino organizations. Roxas and her companions were taken by suspected elements of the Philippine Armed Forces, who accused them of being members of New People's Army, the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

The Fresno police department has finally identified the officers who were captured on videotape in the February beating of a homeless man. But the department has been slow in proceeding with its promised investigation of the police beating. Their names were released in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU. Glen Beaty, meanwhile, remains in jail. He's been in jail for over three months on charges of allegedly violating parole.

Ten bus shelter billboards advertising the University of California’s “Study in Israel” campaign were remade into “Boycott Israel” ads and placed around Berkeley and San Francisco in May.