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On May Day 2013, the fight for a $15 "Livable Wage" came to Oakland. New York City led the way with two walkouts by low-wage workers in the fast-food industry, the first in November 2012, and the second on April 4, 2013. In November, about 200 New York fast-food workers at 30 stores went on strike for a $15 hourly wage. Then nearly 400 workers walked out. Next up was Chicago on April 24, 2013. Hundreds of fast food and retail employees in Chicago began a mass walkout, calling for the city’s minimum wage to be raised to $15 an hour. Then it was Oakland's turn. Organized by the Livable Wage Assembly, an outgrowth of Occupy Oakland's Labor Solidarity Committee (the group which organized the December 12, 2011 shutdown of the Port of Oakland), their first action was a rally at Oscar Grant Plaza and noise demonstration through the streets of Oakland on May 1 to raise awareness of the campaign. Organizers sought to enable the struggle of low-wage workers to challenge their bosses for a livable wage. The City of Oakland's minimum wage is just $8.00/hr, the same as California's, making life difficult for many as housing costs continue to rise. The noise demo focused on companies like McDonalds, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, Taco Bell and a host of other chains in the downtown area. The noise march in Oakland followed a Sin Fronteras march from Fruitvale BART station earlier in the day.
Immigrant rights and labor actions took place in many Bay Area and Northern California cities on May Day including San Francisco, San Jose, Salinas, Watsonville, and Santa Cruz. On May 3, protests continued at the La Playa hotel in Carmel.
San Francisco:
 Marchers Speak Out For Justice |
 Anti-Capitalist March and Occupations, 12pm |
LaborFest Screening of "Dreamwork China" At ILWU Local 34, 7pm
Oakland:
A Perfect Day for a March. A Perfect Beginning For The Fight For $15 |
 May Day march for immigrant rights |
Oakland Sin Fronteras Fruitvale march and rally, 3pm |
Autonomous/Anarchist People of Color Contingent, 3pm |
May Day: Fight for $15! , 5pm
Mountain View:
March for Immigrant Rights
San Jose:
May Day March - International Workers' Day, 3pm
Fresno:
May Day march for Immigrant Rights
Salinas:
May Day Rally for Immigration Reform, 12pm
Watsonville:
May Day Rally for Immigration Reform, 6:30pm
Santa Cruz:
Rallying for Immigration Reform on May Day in Santa Cruz |
May Day Rally for Immigration Reform, 5:30pm
Read More:
May Day: The Fight for $15 Comes to Oakland |
Call to improve wages and working conditions for restaurant workers! |
May Day (May 3rd) Rally at La Playa Carmel |
Fightfor15Oakland.org
Previous Related Indybay Features:
Nationwide May Day General Strike Looms Large Locally with Diverse Actions Across Bay Area (2012) |
May Day in Santa Cruz: Creating an Ongoing Network of Solidarity
(2012)
UPDATE 8/7: Ankah was bonded out of jail just before 6pm. Her friends report that she will still need continued support.
Anna Karewicz, who is known to her friends as Ankah, is a puppeteer, artist, and avid community gardener who lives in Oakland. On Thursday, August 2nd, the group with which she was bicycle touring in Northern California mistakenly rode on the wrong side of the street on a city block in Arcata. The group was stopped by police. The other riders received traffic infraction citations and were allowed to go on their way. Ankah, however, was subjected to questioning as if the officer was an agent of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), as the only identification that she presented was a student id card. The officer asked questions such as, "When did your visa expire? Are you illegal? When did you become illegal? When did your student visa expire?" Ankah was taken into custody with an ICE hold, and she could be deported at any time.
Ankah's friends are calling for her release, as they believe that the local police were out of their jurisdiction in asking questions about her immigration status. They are requesting that people sign an online petition requesting her release, and contact the Humboldt County Sheriff's department and other officials to demand that Anna Karewicz be set free. Additionally, donations are needed to cover Ankah's legal expenses.
Read More
The third annual Festival del Nopal took place in downtown Santa Cruz on Sunday July 22. The festival featured many local food vendors using nopal, or prickly pear cactus, in a variety of cuisine such as pupusas, huraches, salad, tlayudas, baked potatoes, fries, and tacos. The event, founded and coordinated by City Councilmember Tony Madrigal, celebrates the significance of the nopal in Mexican cuisine and showcases the plant's versatility and healing properties.
On Saturday, June 23rd, the Springfield Grange in Pájaro hosted the Festival of Tamales, a benefit for the Grange and Center for Farmworker Families. The menu featured delicious sweet and savory tamales, made with GMO-free masa from El Aguila Foods, including turkey and chile verde, sweet corn, and ollalieberry pecan praline. The tamales were made by local community members using recipes from El Salvador, Mexico, Texas, and the Monterey Bay Area.
Occupy Wall Street in New York called for a nationwide May Day General Strike. Cities and towns across the United States are heeding the call. Workers will be striking, students will be leaving classes, and banks and other large corporations will be forced to close for the day across the nation. May 1st, 2012, promises to be the largest American May Day since the Immigrant Rights May Day in 2006 and probably the most widespread and furthest reaching in decades.
On May 10th, the Santa Cruz City Council defeated a resolution supporting AB 1081, The Trust Act. The resolution would have supported opting out of the "Secure Communities" (S-Comm) program in Santa Cruz County. S-Comm is a federal program that requires local law enforcement agencies to share the fingerprints of all people arrested to immigration enforcement and target those suspected of immigration violations for detention and deportation. This mandated sharing occurs regardless of the type of crime and even if the charges are dropped.
This federal program, forced on local jurisdictions, has been responsible for the mass deportation of innocent people from Santa Cruz County while destroying families and violating their basic human rights.
On May 25th, over 50 activists entered Coonerty's lecture class at UC Santa Cruz to make his support of "Secure Communities" more publicly known, and point out the contradictions in his "progressive" ideals.
Read more with video and photos | Santa Cruz City Council Votes for ICE and "Secure Communities" (S-Comm) | previous coverage: While Mayor Coonerty Hammers Away at Civil Liberties, the ACLU Awards Him
The California coast, from Davenport south through Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Castroville, is Brussels sprouts country. Most of this vegetable in North America comes from these fields, although a growing harvest now takes place in Baja California, in northern Mexico. In both California and Baja California, the vast majority of the people who harvest Brussels sprouts, like those who pick other crops, are Mexican.
Hundreds of students and community activists held a rally at CSU-Fresno in support of the Dream Act. The rally was prompted by media reports that Associated Student president at CSUF, Pedro Ramirez, was undocumented. The news about Ramirez's immigration status was first reported earlier this week in the CSUF Collegian newspaper and later on MSNBC, the BBC, and other national and international media outlets.
The rally in the free speech area was disrupted by Tea Party activists who tried to gain media attention by reading a statement, just before the rally was to begin. The media at the event swarmed around the Tea Party members, but soon the crowd began chanting and reporters lost interest in the impromptu press conference. The 10-15 Tea Party members were far outnumbered by the 100's of Dream Act supporters.
Speakers at the rally were mostly undocumented students who gave their personal stories about how their immigration status has affected them. Also included as a speaker was CSUF president John Welty who said "it's time to pass the Dream Act."
Organizers of the event skillfully turned revelations about Pedro Ramirez into an opportunity to mobilize students in support of the Dream Act at a time when it is being discussed in Congress. They urged rally participants to contact their Congressional representatives to pass the Dream Act, which will give undocumented students the ability to complete their education.
Read more and view photos
The California Nurses Association (CNA) held a press conference Thursday, August 19th accusing Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), which operates St. Luke's Hospital, of discriminating against Filipino nurses. The union filed a class action grievance on behalf of Filipino applicants denied jobs at the hospital and, along with Filipino community groups, filed a complaint asking the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to investigate the discrimination claims.
At the press conference, the union provided sworn declarations made by three former managers at CPMC. The declarations claimed that the hospital had instituted a policy against hiring Filipino and foreign-graduate nurses. One former manager reported that a CPMC executive repeatedly instructed him not to hire Filipinos, telling him, "The Filipinos are always related, or know each other and that's not good. You're not to hire them."
Union and community leaders suggested that the decline in the hiring of Filipino registered nurses is connected to their activism. The union presented data showing that Filipinos made up 66 percent of the nurses at St. Luke's when CPMC took over the hospital in 2007. But beginning in 2008, after nurses, including many Filipinos, successfully campaigned against CPMC's planned closure of St. Luke's, the number of Filipino new hires dropped to 10 percent.
Read More
Fuck ICE writes: "On Friday evening, August 6, we gathered outside the Santa Cruz County Jail to demonstrate our solidarity with the people locked up inside and express our hatred of imprisonment. About 30-40 of us stood in the middle of Blaine Street, next to both the main County Jail (where 336 people are locked up) and the Women’s Facility (21 people). We banged on drums made from 55-gallon barrels with the intention of creating as much noise as possible to breach the prison walls. Our portable sound system blasted insurgent hip-hop, including N.W.A’s 'Fuck the Police' and the Geto Boys’ 'G-Code.' We carried two banners stating, 'Free All Prisoners' and 'Chinga la Migra/Fuck I.C.E.'
"Chants included 'We Are All Illegal, Todos Somos Ilegales,' 'Chinga la Migra, Y La Policia,' and 'Revolt on the Outside, Revolt on the Inside!' We also told jokes at the expense of cops and jail guards. At one point, as the jail guards stood on the roof of the jail watching us, people started chanting 'Jump! Jump! Jump!' We also used a megaphone to attempt to speak directly to the prisoners and let them know that they are not forgotten and that they have support from the outside."
Read more |  On ICE, Imprisonment, and White Supremacy | What is the "Secure Communities" Program?
Protests took place on July 29th throughout Arizona, and around the U.S. and Mexico, against attacks on immigrants. These protests happened the day that Arizona's anti-immigrant law, SB1070, went into effect. Three hundred people demonstrated and spoke out at 24th and Mission in San Francisco. There were also actions in the Fruitvale district in Oakland and other cities throughout the Bay Area and beyond.
The day before, a federal judge blocked many of the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law from taking effect, delivering what many see as a last-minute victory to opponents of the crackdown.
In response to the partial injunction, Carlos Garcia of the Puente Movement stated, "There is no partial solution to hatred. We reject unconstitutional laws and racist immigration practices that profile U.S citizens, separate families, terrorize communities, and rob us of our basic humanity."
SF Photos |
 Audio |
Santa Cruz Responds to SB 1070 |
US Judge Blocks Controversial Parts of Arizona's SB1070
July 29th Action Announcements:
Napa |
Downtown Oakland |
Fruitvale in Oakland |
Santa Cruz |
San Francisco |
Petaluma
On July 29th, a diverse showing of Santa Cruz residents rallied at Depot Park and marched up Pacific Avenue to the town clock in protest of Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, a legislative act that is said to be the broadest and strictest anti-immigrant measure in decades. The demonstrators proclaimed solidarity with all communities resisting SB 1070, a law they say scapegoats migrants, and also voiced outrage to local police and sheriffs working with the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within Santa Cruz County neighborhoods and jails.
Demonstrators carried homemade signs with statements including, "Blame Wall Street, Not Immigrants" and "Destroy Every Border, Solidarity to Detainees & Prisoners, Free Them All!"
Photos | Reportback from Immigrants Rights March | Saying No to 1070 on the Day It Took Effect | Arizona Indymedia
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