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On January 27th, Howard Zinn died at the age of 87. Zinn was a historian, and professor in the Political Science Department at Boston University. He was the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States which he published in 1980.
This is the third in a series of profiles of activist and alternative media workers in the Bay Area by Indybay contributor Peter M. Featured in this profile is Bill Hackwell, a photographer/activist who lives in Oakland. His career spans four decades.
"In 1968 Bill Hackwell was in Viet Nam, assigned to Air Force intelligence as a photographer. His year there was the formation of what would be a life in photography and activism. 'I had a political awakening there,' he said. 'I consider myself an anti-imperialist and that’s where it began. I couldn’t express myself at the time, but I just … I felt lied to. All those things they told us that we were doing— it was the exact opposite.'”
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Chapter 1: Tracy Rosenberg of Media Alliance
Chapter 2: Bradley of Santa Cruz Indymedia
On December 17th, 2009, dozens of supporters of the KPFA-Pacifica show Flashpoints, which is also carried around the country, went to the station to hear a report on the layoffs and attacks on the show by the KPFA management. After Manager Lemlem Rijio vacated the building to avoid answering questions, Amelia Gonzalez, the assistant manager, told the rally that the station had violated the union contract and laid off staff disregarding the seniority list. She said they were in discussion with CWA 9415 on how they could have layoffs without regard to the station wide seniority list.
The first victim of this new cutback campaign was Eric Klein, Flashpoints' technical producer and engineer, whose half-time position was eliminated with no advance notice on December 7; Dennis Bernstein, the show's host, wasn't informed until he went looking for Klein an hour before airtime. After co-host Nora Barrows-Friedman emailed station manager Lemlem Rijio seeking an explanation and making the case that the show requires a technical producer, Rijio invited her to "share her concerns" in person. When they met on December 9, Barrows-Friedman argued that it was "unreasonable" to expect her to absorb Klein's work on top of her other responsibilities, whereupon Rijio "casually" informed her that her hours were being cut in half, from 40 to 20 per week, effective immediately.
Photos: 1 | 2 |  Videos: 1 | 2 | 3
Cuts to KPFA's Flashpoints Spark Outrage | Award Winning Flashpoints Radio Show Under Threat by KPFA Management | KPFA Lemlem's Ambush Of Flashpoints Producer Nora-Barrows-Friedman | KPFA's Manager Lemlem Rijio Shuts Down Flashpoints Without Notice For Fund Drive? | Robert Knight and the Knight report axed by KPFA management-KPFA CL Management Seeking To Shut Down Flashpoints | Letter from KPFA General Manager to Our Listening Community | Open Letter to KPFA General Manager, Lemlem Rijio and the KPFA community | Flashpoints receives Top 20 Media recognition
For reasons unknown, Cannabis Culture Magazine's Facebook page has been disabled by the popular social networking site. The page, which had over 25,000 fans, disappeared on December 23, 2009. Shortly afterward, administrators of the page received an email notification stating that the page violated Facebook's terms of use. According to Cheryl Shuman, Executive Director of Beverly Hills NORML 90210, her Facebook account was removed the same day.
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.
This is the second in a series of profiles of activist and alternative media workers in the Bay Area by Indybay contributor Peter M. Featured in this profile is Bradley, who works with Santa Cruz Indymedia. Bradley spoke about his life as a student, his work, and his connection to Mexico.
"I met with Bradley in his modest Santa Cruz apartment, where he sat for an interview under a poster of Ricardo Flores Magón, an anarchist figure from the Mexican Revolution. Bradley has worked with the Santa Cruz Indymedia website since 2001, and has been one of the key people in its development."
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Chaper 1: Tracy Rosenberg of Media Alliance
On November 15, 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.
KPFA eulogizes that, "Andrea was a true Renaissance woman with an interest in politics, world affairs, sports, science, music and the arts. She was dedicated to discussing on and off the air the issues of social justice, especially in regards to racial and gender equity. Andrea wrote for the Progressive Magazine, sang with the S.F. Symphony Chorus, and was a former Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University."
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Andrea Lewis, A Beautiful Voice | A Beautiful, Powerful Voice is Silenced | Remembering Andrea Lewis
A police fishing expedition has been fought successfully over the course of the past year by one of the Indymedia.us system administrators and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), largely in secret due to dodgy gag orders. Earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us sysadmin Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. EFF argued that the overly broad demand for Internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.
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.
"Media Alliance exists in a cramped fifth floor office in downtown Oakland, where I found Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg busy with two volunteers. Adbusters magazine stuck out from a jam-packed periodical bin, and the walls were adorned with various images from Media Alliance’s past. We went downstairs to an empty conference room, where she told me about herself and the thirty-three year history of her organization. It is in a way key to the history of media activism in the Bay Area."
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On September 24th, San Francisco-based Twitter.com shut down an account that was monitoring the movement of police and military through the city of Pittsburgh during protests against the G-20 summit on September 24th and 25th. The Pennsylvania State Police also arrested Elliot Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger and accused them of "criminal use of communication facility" and other charges. On October 1st, the FBI raided Elliot's home in Queens.
Disorientation Guide Collective writes, "So you've gotten to the University of California at Santa Cruz. Congratulations! What now? The ideas the University produces about itself construct an ideal image of what awaits you here: an image of fulfillment and understanding, a picture of the life you might build for yourself after you get your degree. So how couldn't you be idealistic and excited? After all, you’ve arrived at one of the most beautiful places in the world and prepared yourself for the journey of a lifetime."
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.
Informativo Pacifica, a half hour national and international newscast produced in Spanish by volunteers at Pacifica's KPFK radio station in Los Angeles, has been cut and rescheduled without warning. Instead of broadcasting Monday through Friday at 5:30am, the show was rescheduled to 9:00pm and only four days a week, Monday through Thursday.
Boston Woodard, a frequent contributor to Indybay, is in solitary confinement because of an article he wrote, which displeased the staff and warden at Solano State Prison. 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.
In Greece, a period of widespread state repression and brutality has followed the rebellion of December 2008. During and after the rebellion, the extreme right wing political party LAOS (Popular Orthodox Party Alert) and the Greek state investigated the IMCs of Athens and Patras, Greece, on the grounds that they were used as centers for the "coordination of rebellion." Indymedia participants say that rebellions are not conducted via the Internet, and that Indymedia contributed vital counter-information to state- and corporate-controlled media.
Since early January, dozens and dozens of posts related to justice for Oscar Grant have been published to Indybay — video, audio, photos, and reports such as first hand accounts of protests, court hearings, and more. In order to consolidate the history and latest developments in the movement for justice for Oscar Grant, this feature was created. It centralizes the multitude of related stories and has its own unique web address: www.indybay.org/oscargrant.
On June 21st, the Israeli State Prosecutor ordered police to start an investigation of Indymedia Israel. At the heart of the investigation is an article posted to the website with a picture of a soldier who, according to witnesses, murdered protest organizer Abu Rahma on April 17th. The posting with the heading “murderer“ asks for the name and any other relevant information of that soldier so that he can face murder charges.
Public service announcement by the SF Bay Area IMC collective: While anonymous posting may seem anonymous, it is easy for the federal government to monitor web traffic even when it is said to be secure by web browsers. Posting from public computers is one way to remain anonymous, but many of those facilities can be monitored and themselves face serious risks if threats or illegal posts are traced back to them.
The Project is a newspaper created by an open collective of UCSC students and allies to document and inspire strategic radical actions that are relevant to local, regional, and global socioeconomic justice. The Project collective has published their second issue since being resurrected in the Fall.
Kiilu Nyasha, former member of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, was recently interviewed on a wide variety of topics. Kiilu Nyasha quotes George Jackson from a passage in his book Blood In My Eye: “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”
The "Israel Truth Campaign" announced its first ad on March 30th in Berkeley in observance of “Land Day." The new satirical campaign make fun of pro-Israel PR efforts in the Bay Area. For example, the press release for the ads explains that the "campaign features a picture of Palestinian terrorists disguised as schoolchildren" and notes that the ad "commemorates attacks on Israeli forces by unarmed children."
On March 13th, 2009, Tristan Anderson, an Indymedia journalist from Oakland, California, was critically wounded in the village of Ni'lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a high-powered tear-gas canister. Tristan is a dedicated activist and reporter who has long been committed to social and environmental justice in the U.S. and abroad in places such as Oaxaca, Iraq, and Palestine. Tristan has posted his reports to Indybay since 2001. Tristan's family reported Sunday that he has moved his fingers in response to a request from a doctor.
The Project is an open collective of UCSC students working together to produce a monthly(ish) newspaper with a focus on radical politics and activism. The Project Media Collective believe independent media is crucial for organizing and documenting direct action for social transformation.
If you are interested in contributing, meetings are held at 5:00 p.m. on Fridays at SubRosa (Pacific and Spruce), and articles/opinion/art/poetry can be submitted to theproject [at] riseup.net  Read The Project
Teachers for Class War is back on the air at 101.1 FM, and have uploaded their most recent two shows. On January 26th the Maestr@s, hosts of 'Teachers For Class War,' interviewed Genevieve Siegel-Hawley of the Civil Rights Project about school segregation in the 21st Century. On February 2nd they spoke with George Ciccariello-Maher about the police murders of Gary King Jr. and Oscar Grant, and the community response in the East Bay.
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