Feature Archives

Despite objections from environmental groups such as The Campaign for Sensible Transportation, there is a new push to widen Highway One in Santa Cruz County. The Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC), in cooperation with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), has prepared a draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Assessment for the new highway widening proposals.

The Freedom Sleepers held a protest in front of the Palomar Inn in downtown Santa Cruz on December 8, where the city council was eating a celebratory dinner in honor of the appointment of the new mayor, Cynthia Matthews. A small group of protesters also entered the Inn's banquet room during the council’s meal with a sign reading “A Ban on Sleep is a Ban on Life.”

Direct Action Monterey Network (DAMN) organized its eleventh sit-in protest in downtown Monterey on December 4. Since February, community members have been gathering monthly on the sidewalk of Alvarado Street to defy the city's sit-lie ordinance, which has been in effect for just over a year now.

San Francisco police murdered another African American man in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood on December 2. At least five police officers surrounded Woods on a sidewalk and proceeded to shoot him over fifteen times. Three different videos of the killing, taken with cellphone cameras, were made public. The videos spread widely, triggering protests and a fiery town hall meeting. A federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Mario's family. Another protest has been called for December 18 downtown.

In September 2003, Lakota Sioux Richard Iron Cloud and Armando Black Bear, novice swimmers from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near the Badlands of South Dakota, swam from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco shore in the first PATHSTAR Alcatraz swim. That tradition continued on Oct. 19, 2015, when Native Americans made the crossing from the “Rock” to San Francisco to conclude this year’s annual PATHSTAR Alcatraz Swim Week.

Before dawn on November 15th, about 700 cars showed up to an “LA to the Bay” sideshow in East Oakland. An OPD patrol car was smashed as those gathered chanted, "Fuck the Police!" Later that same day, responding to another sideshow just after dark at about 5:30pm, Oakland police were in the process of impounding several motorcycles when they killed Richard Perkins near 90th and Bancroft Avenues in East Oakland. The killing has been protested with a student walk-out and march from Fruitvale BART.

The ACLU of Northern California and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office have reached a settlement agreement that will ensure that women are able to choose whether they receive pregnancy testing in the county’s jails. The agreement is the result of a lawsuit, Harman v. Ahern, which argued the policy was a violation of the California Constitution, the U.S. Constitution and state statutory law.