Global Justice & Anti-Capitalism News

May Day actions are being organized this year with particular urgency in solidarity with the Palestinian people, heeding the call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions to stand with Gaza. Marches and rallies will fill the streets across Northern California on May 1, and there will be no business as usual at the Port of Oakland as working people from all across the Bay Area will be converging to shut it down.

Even as a case awaits a California Supreme Court decision regarding student housing UC Berkeley intends to build on the land, the university went in for the kill on People's Park shortly before midnight on January 3, sending in hundreds of police to clear the park and to make way for a wall of shipping containers. Protesters were ready for the raid, but police closed nearby streets to prevent more from coming to defend the park. Several demonstrators were arrested.

Protesters in Northern California have engaged in direct actions aimed at disrupting business as usual and raising the profile of the call to free Palestine. Activists shut down the Bay Bridge. A US military vessel destined to deliver weaponry to Israel was blocked from leaving the Port of Oakland. A defense contractor's office was locked down. Communiqués posted on Indybay claim sabotage of train lines, as well as a water main at a pro-IDF fundraiser.

As billionaires and politicians met behind ten-foot-high metal walls, tens of thousands of demonstrators protested outside. Member nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit claim to have "Inclusive, Collaborative Solutions for Just Transitions," but opponents call this greenwashing and maintain that years of corporate neoliberalism are responsible for economic inequality, oppression, the climate crisis, and war.

More than a decade ago, artists and musicians created a vibrant hub for the arts in an abandoned shopping mall in Porto, Portugal. City officials long sought to close the DIY space and finally moved on the Stop Shopping Center in late July. For over 10 days, more than 500 musicians were forcibly evicted from their workspace by police and city authorities, with over 100 rehearsal rooms and workplaces closed down. Thousands came out to protest the eviction.

On July 14, climate activists demanded a stop to Wells Fargo's reckless funding of fossil fuels. The action was part of a "block party" by local climate action groups that included loud chanting, carnival style games, music, street painting and dancing. Protesters said they timed their event to keep the pressure on the bank as it released its quarterly earnings report. Six protesters locked themselves down to block the entrance and were arrested.

In response to anti-government protests after police murdered a seventeen-year-old boy of Algerian descent, the French government has taken a number of repressive anti-democratic actions. Several hundred protesters were tried, convicted, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms within just forty-eight hours. One teenager with no prior record was sent to prison for a year and a month for allegedly throwing an empty soda can at a group of police.

In a pseudonymous communiqué published on Indybay on May 21, "some vandals" write: Under the cover of night, with the Frisco fog as our accomplice, a crew of friends vandalized over 10 of the right-wing, pro-police “Fentalyfe” street poster installations.... These disturbing posters are part of a $300k campaign, by reactionary group Together SF, that is shaming drug and Narcan users, and calling for the racist criminalization of poor people.