On Friday, November 6th, 2009, the Fresno Brown Berets and California Prison Moratorium Project organized a march and rally in protest of what they say is “Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer's corrupt and racist administration.” They called for his resignation or termination as police chief.

There have been 9 murders by police this year, 40 since Dyer took office. Every single one has been deemed justified by Dyer. He and his force consistently resist any calls for transparency or accountability. Activists say that "No matter what Dyer says, drug use and crimes of poverty do not justify a police officer implementing the death penalty."

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See Also: Fresno Police Kill 2 Unarmed Men this Week | Justice for Lonnie Graham and all Victims of Police Brutality

On November 10th, the Stanislaus County District Attorney was not interested in anything less than a misdemeanor conviction against two volunteers arrested for offering syringe exchange, and harm reduction services in the Airport District of Modesto. In an act of punishment and criminalization of public health service, the District Attorney offered the defendants a plea bargain that included jail time, three years probation, and a "Stay Away Order," requiring them to stay out of the park where they were arrested. The stay away order was added the day after defendants began conducting syringe clean-ups and public education about safe disposal in the Mono Park area.

The Mono Park 2 assert that, "the D.A. keeps sending the wrong message LOUD & CLEAR: the lives of users, residents and workers in this community are not worth protecting from accidental needle sticks, disease or injury. In the mean time, the user's worst nightmares of disease or injury, a parent's worst thought of their child getting stuck, and the risk to park and public safety workers looms over Mono Park." In addition to the public health concerns, the "stay away" order on defendants' records would appear as if they were child molesters, abusers or drug dealers -- all of which would have a variety of negative consequences in their future.

Read more | Syringe Exchange Defendants Prepare for Battle in Modesto | Busted for Handing Out Clean Needles | Interview with "Modesto Mono Park 2" | Off The Streets Project

On October 21st, Fresno State saw one of its largest mobilizations since the 1960s. The student walkout was in protest against the recent fee increase of 32% (fees go up almost every year typically by around 10%), class furloughs (pay more get less), over-crowded classrooms, faculty layoffs, staff layoffs, a corrupt administration, a corrupt Associated Students, Inc., which refuses to represent the students, and the entire California State University (CSU) system. The CSU master plan from the 60s promised free education to all, but the university is now run like a for-profit corporation.

A rally was attended by 300 students and faculty who spoke and expressed their shared rage. This was followed by a march of well over 600 students chanting things like "no cuts! no fees! education should be free!" and "hey! hey! ho! ho! [university president] Welty's gotta go!". This march went down Shaw from Maple to Cedar and around the Shaw/Cedar intersection several times before rallying in front of the school.

After the march, a group of students took a list of demands to President Welty's office on the 4th floor of the library -- during the rally there were many references to Welty's tower where he could look down on his subjects and maintain inaccessibility. The students were initially met by campus police who blocked the elevator saying they had to make sure it was okay to come up, so the delegation instead took the stairs. Once the small group made it up, it was met in the hallway by campus police who said President Welty was not there. As this dialogue was going on, students just kept coming out of the elevators, and by the end the students had moved forward nearly 30 feet and 80 students were clogging the hallway leading to the administrators' offices. Welty's assistant explained that the president was at a meeting. The students responded "fine, we'll wait" and all sat down.

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About 50 protesters, demanding police accountability, marched to the Fresno police department headquarters on Friday, October 9th. They were upset at the death of Lonnie Graham on September 23rd, which was the 8th officer involved shooting of the year in Fresno. Adriana Becerra, a member of the Brown Berets who organized the protest, said the account of Graham’s death is disputed. Becerra said “his family did say that he was shot without a warning, as soon as he stepped out of the house. He was called out of the house, he was on his cell phone, and the cops said they believed he had a gun. They shot him and they found out he didn’t have a gun, he had a cell phone."

Juan Avitia, a spokesperson for the Brown Berets, said “we want the police department to get their act together. We want them to look in the mirror and really look at tactics and options that are available to them. Shooting first is an option to them, but it is not the only option and that is what we’re saying. We want them to seriously look at their options... In this case specifically, judging from what The Fresno Bee wrote and Chief Dyer said - they shot this man, there was a cell phone, he had no gun, and under the circumstances, just judging what was said, that in itself raises a lot of questions."

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On July 26, with a brief back page article, the Sacramento Bee broke the story that Nestle Waters is coming to Sacramento. A glowing article in the Business Journal and a critical article in the News and Review followed, and then the story was mostly forgotten.

Since this initial publicity, Nestle and the city of Sacramento have worked hard to quietly fast-track this project so Nestle can open its south Sacramento bottling plant in the next few months. City staff consider this project "non-discretionary," which means if all goes as planned, there will be no public comment, no city council vote and no environmental impact report.

Nestle claims that their Sacramento plant will be a "micro-bottling plant," bottling only 50 million gallons of water. According to Nestle, approximately 30 million gallons will come from Sacramento's municipal water system and 20 million will be trucked to the plant from nearby "private springs." City staff have refused to answer questions about the springs and Nestle has provided no information about their location, other than telling the Sacramento News and Review that they are in the Sierra Nevada foothills. A search of water extraction permits issued by the State of California over the last two years reveals nothing. The only clues come from other communities struggling to keep from being robbed of their water. Read more

Stop Nestle Waters | Inside the Bottle | Baby Milk Action, Boycott Nestle | Save a child today! Stop Nestlé! | Nespressure, good life good food and serial violations of workers rights | All Bottled Up: Nestlé’s Pursuit of Community Water | Should Water Be Legislated as a Human Right? | Bottled-water scam finally feels squeeze | Nestle water plant? Not in our town, Enumclaw says

Boston Woodard, a prisoner/journalist who is a frequent contributor to Indybay, has been put in solitary confinement in retaliation for an article he wrote about conditions at Solano State Prison. Woodard, in a letter sent from Solano, stated "I was placed in Administrative Segregation ['The Hole'] on July 9, 2009. I was NOT given any disciplinary action and there is NO charges/violations leveled against me. The official 'lock-up order' (CDC-114-D) states I was being removed from the general population because I am a 'security problem' and pose a 'threat' to the safety and security of this institution, because of my writing."

Boston's article, "Rogue Prison Staff: Breaking all the Rules," published on Indybay in April, describes in detail the threats and intimidation taking place at Solano - the filing of false disciplinary charges, mail tampering, verbal threats, etc. After reading that article, representatives from the California Department of Corrections (CDC) held what Woodard described as a Kangaroo Court. According to Woodard, "CSP-Solano's warden John W. Haviland told me that I am being transferred to another prison (possibly Folsom) because of my journalistic activities. They even put that in writing."

On Monday, August 3, David Newdorf, Woodard's legal counsel, filed a lawsuit against warden John W. Haviland and those responsible for the violation of his client's free speech and civil rights. The lawsuit states that "State prisoner Robert 'Boston' Woodard, a jailhouse journalist, was placed in administrative segregation ('ad seg'), denied visitation and telephone calls, and separated from his property (including typewriter and legal papers), because California jail officials did not like what he wrote about their prison for an outside audience. Officials also retaliated against him when he filed grievances complaining about the harassment and retaliation by correctional officers for his writing."

Wednesday, August 12 update: It has now been confirmed that Boston has been transferred to the State Prison in Susanville and is no longer being held in solitary confinement. The publicity and the lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections seems to have worked.

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Other articles by Boston Woodard: A Snow Job Is No Job!: What’s in a Report? | Zip Gun II | Arts in Corrections | Zip Gun | The Shell Game | Foreign National Prisoners, Targeted For Out-Of-State Transfers | The Parole Conundrum

The Community Alliance Newspaper

Fresno County was the focus of the War on Drugs, as Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (also known as the Drug Czar), came to town. Kerlikowske and Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims held a press conference to announce operation Save our Sierra (SOS), which has now resulted in 90 arrests and approximately $1.4 billion worth of marijuana plants seized.

Mims said Mexican drug cartels are behind most of the marijuana being grown in the Sierra mountains, east of Fresno. At the time of last Wednesday's press conference, 81 of the 82 people arrested in the raids were Latinos. Speakers emphasized the damage done to the environment by marijuana growers, displaying fertilizers, pesticides, and trash left behind at the camps.

But Nancy Botwin (not her real name), a marijuana grower at the 3,000 foot elevation in eastern Fresno County with over 10 years of experience in the business, said she has never seen any sign of the Mexican Mafia in the Sierra. Botwin says she has, however, seen plenty of evidence of the SOS campaign. "They have been flying back and forth in their military helicopters for a couple of weeks now," Botwin said. "A couple of days ago they hovered over a garden a few hundred yards from here. What that did was tell the locals where the pot is at. Sure enough, a local teenager went down and harvested the pot and he was busted later in the day."

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Kettleman City is a small town in the southwestern San Joaquin Valley. The city is next to the I-5 Interstate Highway and is the site of the largest toxic waste dump in the western United States. About 200 residents held a march and rally on Saturday, July 18th, to protest a cluster of birth defects that has recently been exposed.

Maricela Mares-Alatorre is a mother and has lived in Kettleman City for 31 years. She also helped organize the march. Mares-Alatorre said "in the past we have fought a lot of issues with our local toxic land fill, which is the largest in California. Currently they are in the process of an expansion, but what we are asking for is a moratorium on all of those permits until there is an investigation as to why there are so many children being born with cleft palate. We have had a cluster here — in a 14 month period from 2007 to 2008 five children have been born with cleft palate. We just found out this morning that there is another woman who is pregnant who will also have a child with cleft palate and we believe that until that is investigated and they know why it is happening that there shouldn't be any more permits issued."

Maura Alatorre is one of the mothers whose child was born with a cleft palate. Alatorre said she was at the rally because "it is in honor of the children that were born with these deformities and thanks to the attention that everybody is putting into this rally, there will be attention put to the problem in Kettleman City and that will help."

On Friday, July 17th, Kings County health officials said they were on a fast track to investigate the high incidence of birth defects in Kettleman City. The US Environmental Protection Agency also released a statement on Friday saying that it will be working with the county and the state to determine if the incidents are related to environmental factors.

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From Death Row, San Quentin, Donald Ray Young Writes: "We had strange fruit for breakfast today...a death row prisoner committed suicide at San Quentin, in East Block. But, I can’t worry about that guy....Wait; how can I not think of the suicide in this very building - - his family...loved ones? What if he was innocent? Do I know him? How many other people on death row have contemplated killing themselves to escape this madness? I believe that when one dies - - a part of all of us all dies....

"How many innocent men will California execute because of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism & Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)? The courts Attorney Generals misuse this law (AEDPA) in order to bar newly discovered evidence and/or evidence of actual innocence.

"Donald Ray Young I AM: I am Troy Davis.. .I am Kevin Cooper.. .I am Rodney Reed.. .I am Reginald Clemons ... I am Oscar Grant III.. .I am Stanley Williams.. .I am Emmett Till. . . I am the future – present and past. I am innocent on California’s death row – don’t rush to execute me... I must prove my innocence. When will the justice system rush to justice & fairness? How many have been exonerated from death row? How many innocent people on death mu have been put through a state sponsored, premeditated, torturous murder? State sponsored, taxpayer funded, barbaric, draconian, torturous murder equates to the lethal injection process. We all see how much the system will spend on death.. .how much will the system spend on life? Life is education. Life is shelter. Life is food. Life is clothing. Life is employment. Life is clean water. Life is freedom...." Read more

Method of execution | Poems by Donald Ray Young | Community Alliance Newspaper

Legislators and hundreds of Delta advocates held a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Tuesday, July 7th, to oppose the peripheral canal -- what they call a budget-busting and environmentally destructive project that would approximate the Panama Canal in width and length.

"I'm not going to vote for a plan that builds a Panama Canal down the middle of the 15th Assembly District,” exclaimed Assemblymember Joan Buchanan to loud applause from a crowd of recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Delta farmers, farmworkers, Indian Tribal members, environmentalists and community activists. “I will do all I can to make that the Delta is protected.”

As she spoke, Delta family farmers from North Delta CARES and others held up banners proclaiming “The Peripheral Canal=Panama Canal North,” along with signs saying, “Fewer Water Exports, Not Fewer Delta Fish” and “Give the Delta a Voice!”

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See Also Right Wing Rally for Water Declares It's "Fish vs. People"

There is a massive campaign underway to “turn on the pumps” and deliver additional water to corporate agribusiness 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!

Corporate agriculture’s campaign is being run by Burson-Marsteller (B-M), the astroturfing Public Relations firm that has been hired by the California Latino Water Coalition. MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow, in a March telecast, called B-M “the PR firm from hell” and said it had been hired to improve the “image” of AIG, the company that has received $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money. B-M has also represented the private security firm Blackwater, Union Carbide in the Bhopal India incident, and Babcock & Wilcox, manufacturers of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant.

Central Valley Congress members are calling for an exclusion from the Endangered Species Act of the delta smelt (a small fish that gets killed in the pumps), more dams, a peripheral canal (which critics say will be as large as the Panama Canal), and a bond initiative in 2010 that will result in taxpayers subsidizing water for large corporate farming operations.

Read more | Peripheral Canal: Panama Canal North? | People Before Water Barons: Stop the Peripheral Canal Water Bond! | Myths, Lies and Damn Lies about Impact of Drought on San Joaquin Valley Agribusiness | Salazar Announces Aid to Valley Agribusiness, Doesn’t Endorse Canal | Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar Holds Town Hall in Fresno