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

Tired of the constant barrage of the corporate media? Have you been disappointed by the TV and print coverage of local issues you find important? Are you sick of the constant right-wing slant and the racist framing of important issues? Do you want to do something about it?

On Sunday, February 1st there will be an Indybay orientation at 4:20pm at La Peña in Berkeley. La Peña is located at 3105 Shattuck Avenue, several blocks east of the Ashby BART station. We will be meeting in a room on the south side of the building (not the main entrance) and there should be a sign on the door to help you find it. Volunteers will demonstrate how to publish text, photos, audio and video, and much more, including how stories get made into center column features. Read More

Indybay.org is part of the global Indymedia network with sites across the United States and around the world. Indymedia is a community project in need of your perspective, voice, pictures and/or audio so that a variety of people are heard in our communities. We are seeking more people to get involved and would love to meet you!

The brand new documentary "Terrorizing Dissent: Election Cut" will be screened on the evening of Saturday, November 8th at the Resource Center for Nonviolence. Independent media activists from Twin Cities Indymedia and other groups have released a new film which chronicles the events at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. The documentary shows exclusive footage of the criminalization of dissent in St. Paul, interviews organizers now charged as terrorists under the Minnesota PATRIOT Act, and uncovers who ordered the violence against demonstrators.

Featuring first-person accounts and footage from more than forty cameras on the streets, "Terrorizing Dissent" focuses on the story of dissent suppressed. All donations given at the event will benefit the RNC 8 and general RNC legal support. Read More

Trailer and Press Release | TerrorizingDissent.org

The San Francisco Bay View newspaper has been forced to stop printing its weekly paper due to financial strain. The last printed copy went out on July 2nd, marking the 697th issue the Ratcliffs have published since starting the paper in 1992.

One of the only Black-owned radical publications in the U.S., the SF Bay View newspaper has provided a public platform of communication and solidarity between U.S., African, Latin American, and Caribbean activists and incarcerated people who are challenging imperialism throughout the world and from both sides of prison walls. On its last run, the paper was printed and delivered to thousands of homes in Bay View Hunter's Point and Oakland, dozens of locally owned businesses in the Mission District of San Francisco, and hundreds of people in prison.

The Bay View has maintained itself as an individually-funded free paper through a trickle of advertising revenue, national prisoner and resident subscriptions, and a small pool of donors, which has included the staff itself. Its printed, weekly format has been key to bridging the ‘digital divide’ in more ways than one, as many of its subscribers have no or very little access to the internet and few sources of trusted, current, community and activist-oriented news.

Read more | The end of an era, the dawn of a new day | Interview with Willie Ratliff | Aug. 9: Community Forum & Party

SF Bay View website

For ten months Bay Area News Group (BANG) executives threatened journalists with pay freezes and cuts in benefits if they organized a unit for collective bargaining on pay, benefits and work conditions. Despite an anti-union campaign by management, non-supervisory news workers voted in June to form a unit of the Northern California Media Workers Guild.

Less than one month later, at least 20 journalists who had been visibly supportive of organizing a union were summarily terminated.

Last week the Guild filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, calling the firings retaliatory and citing other anti-union actions against the newly formed unit.

The 230-member Bay Area News Group East Bay (BANG-EB) bargaining unit includes the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers, as well as the San Mateo County Times on the peninsula. Among those terminated was Sara Steffens, newly elected chair of the unit and one of the main Guild organizers.

"I think they wanted me out of the newsroom," Steffans said. "They wanted to keep me from continuing to engage co-workers as we push for our first contract and they hoped this would send a message to scare people away from further union activity. But they made a big mistake -- so far it's only made our newsroom understand why it's important to have a contract to protect us."

Read More | Bay Area Guild Unit Files NLRB Charge Over Layoffs | One Big Bang (Union Website)