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In the pre-dawn hours of Monday, January 30, a small group of activists hung a banner from the La Fonda HWY 1 overpass by Harbor High. The banner read "WIDENING WASTE$". The approximately one-mile widening project will cost almost $20 million, to be funded by the State Transportation Bond and State Transportation Improvement Program funds. There are a number of other projects competing for those millions of dollars that may now not be funded because of the high cost of the widening project.
The Save the Peaks Coalition is fighting the United States Forest Service in a legal battle to protect children from hazardous endocrine disruptors and to protect the San Francisco Peaks sacred site in Arizona from desecration. On Monday, January 9th, The Save the Peaks Coalition et al v. the United States Forest Service will be heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, CA. at 9:30am. The case argues that under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, the Forest Service failed to adequately consider the impacts associated with ingestion of snow made from reclaimed sewer water in its Environmental Impact Statement. Organizers are calling for a strong turn-out for a march and rally before the court hearing, and a welcoming reception will be held the previous day on Sunday, January 8th.
The Forest Service approved reclaimed sewer water for the use of snowmaking at a local Northern Arizona ski resort in 2004. The reclaimed sewer water in question is from Flagstaff's Rio de Flag Sewage Plant that has proven to contain harmful bacteria, and endocrine disruptors such as pharmaceuticals and hormones amongst other known toxins. Environmental justice groups are specifically asked to come aboard to educate their followers about the grave impacts of this situation.
 Schedule of Events | Indigenous Caravan Travels to San Francisco from Arizona to Stop Snow Made with Reclaimed Sewer Water |  See also: Solidarity Demonstration at Forest Service Office in Vallejo on August 25th, 2011
On December 8th, the California Coastal Commission voted 10-1 to approve the controversial $5 million Arana Gulch Master Plan. The vote was expected to resolve a fifteen year long battle between cycling advocacy groups and environmental groups that oppose a bike path through the Santa Cruz greenbelt. But in a move that has some long time Sierra Club members crying foul, cycling advocacy groups are running a slate of three candidates for the board of the Santa Cruz County Group of the Sierra Club in the December election. This would be the second cyclist-sponsored candidate slate in two years, and is expected to decide control of the Santa Cruz Group Executive Committee.
The candidates have no prior history of volunteering for the Sierra Club, but do have extensive ties to local cycling advocacy groups. Tawn Kennedy is coordinator of Green Ways to School, a K-12 education project that is funded by a grant through People Power and the Hub for Sustainable Transportation. Greg McPheeters is the immediate past Chair of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition, and Mary Odegaard joined People Power in advocating for the King Street bike boulevard. The trio are attempting to unseat the current Santa Cruz Group Executive Committee Chair, Kevin Collins, a long time Sierra Club forestry activist, as well as the Forestry Committee Chair, Dennis Davie, and the Secretary / Treasurer, Mark Sullivan, a local environmental attorney.
A mailer to Sierra Club members touts the experience of Kennedy, McPheeters, and Odegaard in youth outreach, solar energy, and organic farming. But long time Sierra Club activists are concerned about the lack of experience in core Sierra Club conservation activities, which they feel are essential to the Sierra Club mission. The Sierra Club has been active for half a century in Santa Cruz County on forest and watershed conservation, native species protection, coastal advocacy, and zoning and land use, as well as evaluating public and private projects for conformance to local, state, and national environmental laws. The Executive Committee Chair, Kevin Collins, explains that the Sierra Club is one of the few local environmental organizations that does not receive money from City or County and so is free to take positions on politically charged land use and development issues.
Read more | Final Battle in 15 Year Long Arana Gulch Saga? | Friends of the Pogonip | Friends of Arana Gulch
A community park was established in downtown Santa Cruz on December 3rd when volunteer gardeners gathered at dawn to build raised concrete flower beds, plant shrubs and fruit trees, and build benches. By early afternoon they hung a sign to welcome people to the new community park. "This is an ongoing process of creation," said one of the gardeners, "We'll be planting through the winter. As these new sprouts take root it will be beautiful!"
Santa Cruz, Calif. — Just as PG&E enters the final phase of its deployment of wireless “smart” meters in California, the largest of the state’s Investor Owned Utilities (IOU’s) has reversed course, quietly beginning to replace the ‘smart’ meters of those reporting health impacts with the old analog version. Consumer rights and health groups immediately seized on the news, demanding that millions of Californians unhappy with their new wireless meters get their analogs returned immediately at no cost.
Alex Darocy writes: Public officials from the past and present filed into the Museum of Art and History Monday night [September 19] as Mike Rotkin and Cynthia Mathews, describing themselves as part of "the Sustainable Water Coalition," hosted a private, invite-only informational meeting in support of the proposed desalination plant project. The desal project, which so far has cost $6 million dollars to be studied, has been aggressively promoted by officials, and this private meeting has brought up issues of governmental transparency. This meeting punctuates a new era of suspicion concerning local politicians: during the planning of the desal project there have been conflicts of interest, including the selection of the URS Corporation to author the EIR [Environmental Impact Report], as well as recent ethics violations on the part of city officials.
It has been over a month since KB Home contractors unearthed the skeletal remains of a young Ohlone child at the Branciforte Creek construction site in Santa Cruz. On August 25th, 75 people marched in downtown Santa Cruz to the City Council meeting in an action organized by the Save the Knoll Coalition. One person maintained an indigenous chant throughout the march, many people carried signs and banners, and several distributed educational flyers.
Joshua Hart, Director of Stop Smart Meters! was arrested on June 21st after blocking the entrance to the Capitola PG&E payment center in protest of PG&E’s illegal “smart” meter installations in the County. The County of Santa Cruz, as well as the Cities of Capitola and Watsonville, have adopted urgency ordinances prohibiting the installation of wireless “smart” meters within their jurisdictions. Forty-three local governments throughout the state have formally demanded a halt to the program because of concerns about health, privacy, accuracy, and fire safety.
After six months of organizing rallies and actions behind the "redwood curtain" protesting CalTrans' plan to expand Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park, Richardson Grove Action Now (RGAN) took the fight to the state capital in Sacramento, where they carried out a flash mob action. The highway expansion plan threatens some of the last 2% remaining ancient redwoods on Earth.
RGAN activists rode on the White Rose bus to Oakland, Sacramento, and Glen Cove, Vallejo to mobilize resistance to the highway expansion, demonstrate at the Capitol, and connect with an ongoing spiritual encampment established to stave off development on a sacred indigenous burial shellmound site in Glen Cove. RGAN's Verbena Lea says, “Worldwide, people are opposed to harming or cutting ancient redwood forests, which CalTrans plans to do; ancient redwoods have all but been wiped off the face of the earth and, like the people at Glen Cove, we are saying to developers, government and corporations, 'You have already desecrated and taken too much — We're stopping you here.'”
The road widening would mutilate an ancient grove in order to facilitate trans-national corporations, nuclear materials, development, and military having greater access to the Humboldt Bay region, which has been relatively protected by forest bottlenecks and winding roads. Highways 199, 299, and 36, entering the region from the east, are next in line for highway expansion.
 Read More | previous coverage: Protest as Caltrans Prepares to Widen US-101 Thru Richardson Grove
UPDATE 6/7/11: Bay Trail and Association of Bay Area Governments Suspends $200,000 Grant to GVRD!
On the morning of May 31st, supporters of the Glen Cove native encampment converged outside the offices of the Bay Trail project in downtown Oakland to demand that Bay Trail divest from the Greater Vallejo Recreation District's (GVRD) desecration of the Sogorea Te sacred burial ground.
Over 65 people gathered in front of the Bay Trail offices and vowed to pursue further action if the $200,000 is not immediately pulled from GVRD's plans to bulldoze the burial grounds and build bathrooms, a parking lot, and paved trails on top of it.
Spirits at the demonstration were high despite the rain — protesters were determined to get the message across to Bay Trail. After an hour and a half of picketing, demonstrators entered the lobby of the office building en masse to deliver a demand letter to Bay Trail.
Within 30 minutes, the executive director of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), which oversees the Bay Trail Project, had requested a meeting with the Protect Glen Cove Committee for the following day. Members of local tribes and their supporters have been camping out at Glen Cove for a month and a half defending the site.
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Short film: The Spiritual Encampment to Protect Glen Cove |
The Glen Cove saga
Previous Related Indybay Feature:
Sogorea Te (Glen Cove) Under Threat of Imminent Development
Activists in the Bay Area are marking the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with rallies, speakers, street theater, and educational events. Calling the Ukraine catastrophe "the most significant nuclear reactor failure in the history of nuclear power", anti-nuke enthusiasts say they want the world to remember that April 26, 1986 was the day when one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, killing plant employees instantly and leading to a projected increase in cancer deaths in the hundreds of thousands.
Tri-Valley CARES, Plutonium-Free Future and other groups concerned about the proliferation of nuclear power sponsored a panel discussion on April 10 in Oakland called "A Quarter Century of Chernobyl". The panel featured Russian women activists with first-hand experience in that nuclear reactor disaster.
In Menlo Park, a community demonstration at the busy downtown intersection spilled over to a nearby outdoor cafe where lunchtime patrons became the audience for street theater with an anti-nuke message.
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In San Francisco, the AA Clearinghouse and allied organizations held a speak-out and open mic at the Federal Building on April 26th. The origins of AA Clearinghouse lie in the Abalone Alliance that was formed in 1977 as a nonviolent civil disobedience group to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County. That nuclear power plant is seeking recertification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today. Some of the participants in Tuesday's demonstration took part in the blockades and occupations at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant site during the years between 1977 and 1982.
The Abalone Alliance itself was closed in 1985 with the Clearinghouse taking on the responsibility of holding onto the history and resources of the Alliance in the Bay Area.
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On May 4th, the Fellowship of Humanity will screen the movie Battle for Chernobyl in Oakland. This documentary reveals that a narrowly prevented second explosion at the time would have wiped out more than half of Europe, a secret kept for twenty years by the Soviets and the West alike.
AA Clearinghouse | Tri-Valley CARES | Plutonium Free Future
Livermore Lab was founded to develop the hydrogen bomb, and new weapons of mass destruction are still designed there. For more than 25 years, people of faith and others concerned about the proliferation of nuclear weapons have gathered on Good Friday outside the Livermore Laboratory. This year Good Friday and Earth Day coincided.
To protest the continued development of nuclear weapons in the Bay Area and the United States, a demonstration called "For the Beauty of the Earth: Good Friday, Earth Day & The Bomb, The Cross in the Midst of Creation" was held at Livermore Nuclear Lab in Livermore on April 22nd. At dawn, an interfaith prayer service was followed by Stations of the Cross. The demonstration ended at the front gate with the mass arrest of approximately two dozen protesters who refused to stop blocking the entrance when ordered to by police.
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4/24 updates: Committee to Protect Sogorea Te Responds to Vallejo Times Herald Op-Ed | Day 10: Hundreds attend community gathering at Glen Cove4/22 update: Photos from Day 8 of the Glen Cove Spiritual Encampment4/21 update: Indigenous Peoples Earth Day and Interfaith Gathering on April 234/20 update: Spiritual Vigil at Glen Cove Continues as State Senator Tours Sacred Site4/19 update: Temporary Agreement Allows Glen Cove Spiritual Gathering for 24 Hours4/18 update: GVRD Threatens Removal of Spiritual Encampment at Glen Cove4/17 update: Sogorea Te (Glen Cove) Occupation Continues, Visitors Welcome4/16 update: Photos from the occupation at Glen Cove4/15 update: Around 40 people camped at Glen Cove overnight. 4/12 update: Native Americans to file civil rights complaint to stop desecration of Glen Cove
Despite efforts by Sacred Sites Protection and Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSP&RIT) to negotiate a preservation agreement, the Greater Vallejo Recreation District has so far refused to abandon efforts to develop Glen Cove, a sacred Native American burial site also known as Sogorea Te in the Ohlone language. With bulldozing slated to get under way as soon as Friday, April 15th, SSP&RIT has called for an assembly to gather at 5pm on April 14th at Glen Cove, in preparation for a ceremony to honor the ancestors buried at the site at 8am the following morning. Event details: Thursday evening | Friday morning
Sogorea Te is a sacred gathering place and burial ground that has been utilized by numerous Native American tribes since at least 1,500 BC. Today, Sogorea Te continues to be spiritually important to local Native communities. It is located just south of Vallejo, California along the Carquinez Strait, a natural channel that connects the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to the San Francisco Bay. A large abandoned building known as the Stremmel Mansion dominates the middle of the site. The Stremmel Mansion is literally built on top of grave sites, and intact shellmounds lie just adjacent to the main building.
The Greater Vallejo Recreational District (GVRD) and the City of Vallejo claim that their plans to develop a park on the site take the Native community into consideration and will "protect" Glen Cove's "sensitive cultural resources." SSP&RIT, however, says that no real effort has been made to involve the local native community in decision-making. Despite years of phone calls, letters, and even demonstrations ending at GVRD headquarters to deliver stacks of petitions, the agency claims that the wishes of Native Americans regarding Glen Cove are "unclear." SSP&RIT asserts that the local Native community should rightfully be the lead decision-makers who hold authority in matters related to Sogorea Te, one of the few surviving remnants of native history in the Bay Area, so much of which has already been destroyed or paved over.
Stop the desecration of the Sogorea Te shellmound in Glen Cove | "Sacred," a poem by Dee Allen | Defend Glen Cove/Sogorea Te: Action alert | ProtectGlenCove.org
On April 16th, over 300 people gathered for a protest at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County. They called for the closure of nearby Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant and insisted that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must halt PG&E's relicensing application process for the structure.
The group Mothers for Peace was behind the fight to stop the construction of the nuclear power plant in the 1970s and was the organizer of Saturday's rally as well. Jane Swanson, speaking on behalf of the anti-nuclear organization, said that her group spearheaded the rally in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. She commented from the podium, "Mothers for Peace said in 1973 a workable evacuation plan is not possible at Diablo Canyon and in 2011 this is still true. It is time to shut it down". The crowd raised their voices in agreement, shouting "Shut it Down!" over and over.
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Video | see also: San Diego: Ghost Town for 10,000 Years?
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