On the heels of May Day marches for immigrant rights around the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted raids targeting El Balazo Taqueria chain in the Bay Area on May 2. ICE officers stormed 11 different chain locations in at least six cities. A forum took place on August 7th at the Beach Flats Community Center in Santa Cruz to hear El Balazo workers and movement activists talk about the impact of the raids and the progress of the defense campaign, and to discuss the way forward in the struggle for immigrant rights.
On July 19th, a monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was spray painted with the words “Viva Durruti Y Orwell.” The graffiti was in reference to Buenaventura Durruti and George Orwell, who opposed the Republican army that the Lincoln brigade was part of. In a statement posted on Indybay, the Worker Memorial Project wrote that the artwork was vandalized because “[t]he revolutionary movement in Spain was defeated by the Stalinist Soviet Union and its global puppets and public relations hacks.” Some supporters and opponents of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade have condemned the attack on a public artwork and called for different tactics to express political differences.
The Fair Rent Now Coalition held a petition drive on Saturday, July 26th, to protest rent increases at apartments owned by Page Mill Properties. The increases affect about 1,300 of the private investment firm's 1,650 units in East Palo Alto.
A class action suit was filed by residents on July 15, and the city of East Palo Alto has taken legal action against the private investment firm.
Palo Alto residents and San Francisco Peninsula bike commuters are challenging Santa Clara County's plan to widen Middlefield Rd. near Oregon Expressway. Proposed alterations to the road call for removing the trees and resident-created green strip gardens between the sidewalk and traffic lanes. This will eliminate the buffer between cars and pedestrians now enjoyed by neighborhood walkers and students commuting to Jordan Middle School.
In at least five separate incidents during July alone, U.S.-led NATO forces have killed as many as 132 civilians in Afghanistan. The worst of the five attacks took place in the Deh Bala district of the Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, where a U.S. air strike killed 47 civilians on July 6th. Another air strike killed up to 22 Afghani civilians on July 4th when missiles from U.S. helicopters struck civilians in Kunarn. Nine more Afghani civilians were killed in the province of Farah on July 15th. In a fourth attack, up to 50 civilians died and at least seven more were wounded in the western province of Herat. The fifth and most recent attack occurred on July 20th, when at least four Afghani civilians were killed.
The Sprockettes, Portland's all female mini-bike dance team, rolled their veggie oil powered bus into Santa Cruz to give two free performances at the Bike Church on July 22nd. Operation Bike Nation 2008, stopping in bike-friendly towns from Santa Cruz to Seattle, features sex-positive club music while The Sprockettes dance in hot pink and black clothing and do tricks on mini-bikes.
anonymous writes, "On July 21st all four ATMs were smashed at the River St Wells Fargo in Santa Cruz California. This minor act of sabotage was committed in solidarity with all those kidnapped, detained, and deported in the United States. Wells Fargo is one of the top five shareholders in the GEO Group, a private prison corporation that runs the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma Washington, where nearly 1000 people are imprisoned every day for the crime of being undocumented."
