$15.00 donated in past month
|
Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother from Oakland, CA, is facing up to a year in military prison for refusing to leave her son in Georgia foster care while being deployed to Afghanistan. Military objector support group Courage to Resist is raising funds for Hutchinson's defense and circulating a petition on its website to demand that charges be dropped.
On Friday, January 1st, two events took place in Oakland to commemorate the murder of Oscar Grant by BART police on New Year's Day 2009. The first was a vigil at the Fruitvale BART station organized by Oscar Grant's family. In the evening, the community gathered at the Humanist Hall in Oakland for an artistic and cultural night dedicated to networking and education. In Los Angeles, community activists are planning for a strong presence at the court house on January 8th. It will be the first hearing for Johannes Mehserle since his murder trial was moved out of Alameda County.
On December 17th, 2009, KPFA Flashpoints producers Nora Barrows-Friedman, Miguel Gavilan Molina and Dennis Bernstein gave a report to a rally in front of the Berkeley-based Pacifica station about management's violation of the union contract and efforts to eliminate the show.
Students at UC Berkeley re-grouped Friday evening to protest an early morning raid on the Open University at occupied Wheeler Hall. A rally at Wheeler was followed by a concert and a march on the north side of campus. Police dispersed the march and arrested eight people who face multiple felony charges. Among the eight was an Indybay photographer covering the event.
Chevron employees arriving to work in the early this morning of December 7th were met by nearly 100 people who gathered in protest of Chevron’s global destruction of communities, the environment and the global climate. Protesters interrupted business as usual at Chevron headquarters in San Ramon, blocking several entrances. 31 people were arrested.
On December 4th, 1969, the FBI, working with the Chicago police department, assassinated the Chicago Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton in his bed as he slept. Along with the murder of Mark Clark in the same apartment that night, the "raid" was one in a long line of illegal actions taken by the FBI as part of its COINTELPRO war against the social justice and anti-war movements. Fred Hampton Jr. embarked on a speaking tour to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the assassination of his father.
On Thursday, Novemember 19th, Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson ordered that Johannes Mehserle's trial for the murder of Oscar Grant be moved to Los Angeles County. In the hearing to decide if the venue should be held in San Diego County or Los Angeles County, the determining factors were: pretrial publicity, relative hardship to parties, conservation of judicial resources and public funds, and demographics.
On November 15th, Andrea Lewis died in an apparent heart attack at her San Francisco home. Andrea came to KPFA in 1999 as a co-host of the Morning Show and later became the host of the Sunday Sedition and the Evening News Co-Anchor.
On Friday, November 27th at 11am, a protest at Emeryville's Bay Street Mall will call on people to boycott the mall and to respect the sacred Ohlone site. The Bay Street Mall was built on top of an ancient Ohlone burial site after years of protest actions by the local Native American community. The construction of the mall unearthed thousands of human remains, many of which were taken away to a landfill in the name of consumerism, and others are kept in a library at UC Berkeley.
In anticipation of fee hikes, students planned a series of occupations and strikes across the state for November 18th through 20th. On Thursday, November 19th, the University of California Regents approved a 32% increase in undergraduate fees, pushing fees to over $10,000 a year for the first time. Protests, sit-ins and occupations took place at UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, CSU Fresno, San Francisco State and San Francisco City College. Students occupied Campbell Hall at UCLA, Kresge Town Hall and Kerr Hall at UC Santa Cruz, Mrak Hall at UC Davis, Wheeler Hall at UCB, and the library at CSU Fresno.
On Sunday November 22nd, a vigil in honor of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado will be held at the intersection of MacArthur Blvd., Lakeshore, and Grand Ave. in Oakland. Mercado, a very well known person in the gay community, was found dead on November 14th, in Cayey, Puerto Rico. Mercado was partially burned, decapitated, and dismembered. The police investigator handling the case said in public televised statement that "people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen."
This is the first of a series of profiles of alternative and activist media workers in the Bay Area, written and photographed by Indybay contributor Peter M. Featured in the first profile is Tracy Rosenberg, the Executive Director of Media Alliance. The story of Media Alliance is key to the history of media activism in the Bay Area.
A memorial mural of Gary King Jr was painted on a support column underneath the BART tracks on Martin Luther King Boulevard after Oakland police officer Patrick Gonzales shot and killed Gary King Jr at the spot in 2007. On September 24th, 2009, the mural was removed by BART employees. The new mural also includes images of Anita Gay, Andrew Moppin, Casper Banjo, and Oscar Grant — all murdered by police in Oakland and Berkeley.
Otis writes:,"The rally and march against police brutality on Thursday, October 22nd, in Oakland at 14th and Broadway at 12pm, must be a powerful political expression of our anger and determination to stop a system which sets the police on the people, and then defends them from punishment. First the police murder Oscar Grant in Cold Blood! Now, the the judge has agreed with the murderer's attorney, that killer-cop Johannes Mehserle cannot get a fair trial in Oakland. A screaming irony, considering the "fair trial" that Oscar received at the hands of judge-jury-executioner Mehserle." Actions will also be happening in Arcata, Eureka, and Santa Rosa.
On October 16th, Superior Court Judge Jacobson ordered Johannes Mehserle's trial be moved outside of Alameda County. Judge Jacobson attempted to distance himself from the racism in Mehserle's change of venue motion, but by granting the move, he has in effect given credence to defense attorney Michael Rains' assertions that due to news coverage and protester's actions the citizens of Alameda are not qualified to be impartial jurors. A final venue will be chosen within about two weeks.
On Tuesday, October 13th, Shlomo Zand will be speaking about his newly translated book The Invention of the Jewish People, at 4pm in UC Berkeley's Dwinelle Hall. In this new book, Zand shows that the Israeli national myth has its origins in the nineteenth century, rather than in biblical times — when Jewish historians, like scholars in many other cultures, reconstituted an imagined people in order to model a future nation.
Feeling conservatives had been winning the limelight in the debate over health care reform through a serious of high profile stunts and remarks, advocates of reform decided to steal back some of the media's attention, forming a flash mob September 26th in an Oakland Whole Foods in response to the CEO's recent Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he opposed reform.
On Tuesday, September 29th, Max Blumenthal will discuss his new book Republican Gomorrah at First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Republican Gomorrah is an exposé of the dysfunction, scandal, and crime from the heart of the Religious Right; the fringe movement that has come to define the Republican Party.
On April 9th, after numerous community activists spoke during a BART Board meeting takeover, Gabe Meyers independently threw a small amount of red paint onto BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger and Assistant General Manager Marcia deVaughn. On September 4th, Gabe Meyers accepted a plea bargain that was offered to him by the judge in his case, who described the action as civil disobedience in the tradition of earlier civil rights and Vietnam-era anti-war protests.
On September 21st, J.R. Valrey stood for trial in Oakland on felony arson charges, after he was arrested while reporting on the Oscar Grant Rebellion on January 7, 2009. Valrey is a producer at KPFA radio, associate editor and multimedia director of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and runs the Block Report Radio website. His trial was postponed until late October. Supporters are asked to show they stand with J.R. by attending upcoming court dates.
On September 11th, Johannes Mehserle's attorney Michael Rains filed his long-expected motion for a change of venue. Mehserle and his defense team appear to be hoping for the murder trial to be moved out of Alameda County as their last best chance for him to avoid a conviction for the murder of Oscar Grant III on January 1st, 2009. In the motion, Rains accuses activist groups and Indybay of spreading "disinformation" about the case and unfairly amplifying political pressure to prosecute.
On Wednesday, September 16, Maya Wind and Netta Mishly from the refusenik group "Shministim" spoke at the MLK, Jr. Building at UC Berkeley. Maya Wind and Netta Mishly both signed the 2008 Shministim Letter: a declaration by Israeli high school students that they would not enlist in the IDF to occupy Palestinian territories and rule over Palestinian life. Since military service is mandatory for Israeli Jews upon completing high school, Maya, Netta, and many of the dozens of teenagers who signed the letter have been sentenced to military prison, sometimes for multiple terms.
Mark Hawthorne writes: Animal Place, an education center and sanctuary for farmed animals, is pleased to announce that in addition to our new location in Grass Valley, we will retain our current property in Vacaville, California.... Animal Place will keep our 60-acre location, transforming it into Rescue Ranch.... The Ranch will be dedicated to finding loving homes for easily adoptable animals, such as chickens, sheep, and goats.
Justice for Oscar Grant activists returned to East Bay BART trains and stations on September 4th to inform riders about BART's intransigence toward holding anyone accountable for their police officers' behavior on New Year's Day. Later the same day, it was learned that BART's attempt to pass AB1586 would fail in this legislative session, meaning that there would be no new police oversight of any kind established before the end of the year.
On August 16th people gathered on the sidewalk in front of Whole Foods in Berkeley to let customers know that its founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board, John Mackey, is working to prevent public funding of health care. In an August 11th opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (it is also available on the Whole Foods website), Mackey wrote in a piece entitled "The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare" that the "last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement."
On August 15th, hundreds rallied at the Richmond BART and then marched to the Chevron oil refinery. The protesters called attention to Chevron’s polluting oil refinery in Richmond and to its oil industry expansions - killing people and the planet for profit. A critical mass bike bloc also meet at the Richmond BART and followed the main march to the Chevron refinery. At the end of the march there was non-violent civil disobedience action against the refinery.
Michael and Stephanie Williams report that they were brutalized by the Albany police department on June 5th in front of their children. Michael was tasered multiple times and Stephanie was searched under her clothing by a male officer. A rally was held at the Albany City Council meeting on August 5th in support of the family. Michael Williams has a preliminary hearing on Monday, August 10th, for charges related to the Albany police claim that he threatened them.
On Saturday, August 1st, an Oakland police officer shot and killed carpenter and handyman Brownie Polk at a liquor store in East Oakland. Police claim he was threatening people, but employees and other witnesses have contradicted the police account and say they didn’t call the police.
“He was not some drunk that was wielding an ax, walking around threatening people,” Tiffany Townsend told KTVU. “He didn't do that. He carried tools with him all the time. Your car would be broke on the side of the road and my uncle would see you and help you.”
A store employee also told KTVU that
“You could see her charging her gun at Brownie telling him to put his ax down while he was at the store,” said Tolin’s store employee Riad Elhai. “[The ax] was in his hand facing the floor... She was telling him to put his ax down. He would just tell her, ‘For what? I didn't do nothing'. And when he was trying to walk out the store… that's when she started to shoot the gun at him.”
Polk's 16-year-old son is now left without either parent since his mother died three months ago from cancer.
 Photos of Vigil | Serial Killers of the Oakland Police Department Strike Again
Other recent police shootings and homicides in Oakland:
Parnell Smith
|
Lovelle Mixon
|
Oscar Grant
|
Gary King
|
Jerry Andrew Amaro
On Sunday, August 2, the documentary William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe will screen in Berkeley as part of the Jewish Film Festival. The late civil rights attorney William Kunstler was one of the most famous and controversial lawyers of the 20th century. He represented civil rights and anti-war activists, as well as accused terrorists and murderers.
On Monday, July 20th, Oakland's Street Level Health Project held a community rally and press conference in response to the burglary and vandalism of the center that took place the night before. The perpetrators of the attack broke equipment, destroyed wall paintings and files, and stole three computers.The break-in took place while the security cameras were down due to repairs. This has forced SLHP to close down for a week and turn away people seeking health services.
The community rally on Monday brought together an amazing level of local support for Street Level Health Project / Proyecto de Salud para Todos. The staff, volunteers, board members, partner organizations and community members of Street Level gathered to speak out against the acts of vandalism and attack, and bring together the community. The rally focused on moving forward with strength, hope and unity to continue and expand Street Level's work in the community. As Jane Garcia, CEO of La Clinica de La Raza, stated, "in the long run this is a small thing, nothing more than a mosquito bite. The important thing is to move forward together." Laura Perez, director of SLHP, expressed during the rally that "when my staff began to trickle in one-by-one on the night of the attack, I felt like my family was coming back to our home, and something back inside me to have the strength to go onward." Everyone who spoke at the rally expressed their pleasure at seeing so many supporters from so many different communities and organizations, all coming together to build a stronger sense of community in the wake of this attack.
Street Level Health Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of under-served urban immigrant communities in the Bay Area. The organization is an entry point to the health care system for those most often overlooked and neglected, namely the uninsured, under-insured, and recently arrived. Read more
Oakland's Street Level Health Project offices broken into and vandalized | Press release: Oakland's Street Level Health Project Burglarized
Related story: Closing of Women’s Choice Clinic Mourned by Community Members
8:30PM Friday Feb 12
the underground
11AM Saturday Feb 13
KPFA LSB Meeting
|
|
