Feature Archives

On the morning of June 22, Palestinian, international and Israeli activists marched to the Israeli occupation military checkpoint blocking the West Bank from Jerusalem. There they were stopped by soldiers who violently prevented them from passing through. In reaction, the Palestinian activists prayed at the checkpoint, demonstrating their right to both freedom of movement within their own land and freedom to worship in Jerusalem.

At this year's Fourth of July anti-war demonstration in Santa Cruz, community members called for the release of all political prisoners, including Bradley Manning, Lynne Stewart, and Edward Snowden. The event is held annually at the corner of Ocean and Water Street, and the throng of holiday traffic rolling by slowly, bumper to bumper, was greeted this year with protest signs bearing messages of opposition to the expansion of security culture in the United Sates.

On July 4th, about 100 people marched from Oscar Grant Plaza to the Glenn Dyer Alameda County Jail. Marchers were acting in solidarity with hunger strikers in the SHU (Special Housing Units), "prisons within prisons," where inmates are kept in solitary confinement for years and even decades.On July 8th, California prisoners will begin a hunger strike and work stoppage in order to insist upon five core demands that the governor and the Department of Corrections have refused to implement since negotiations surrounding the previous hunger strikes of 2011. Solidarity events took place in Oakland and at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City on July 8th, and a statewide mobilization and march to Corcoran State Prison is planned for July 13.

Since early November 2012, foreclosure defense activists have worked to protect Jodie Randolph from being evicted by Morgan-Stanley, keeping Jodie in her Alameda house by maintaining a vigil on the premises and demonstrating at Morgan-Stanley's San Francisco offices. The Occupy Oakland Foreclosure Defense Group writes: Our member and friend, Jodie Randolph has won one battle and lost another. As many of you know, Jodie was not only fighting for her home but fighting against cancer. Early Saturday morning that fight ended when Jodie passed away... But in these last months, she knew though that together we had won the fight for her home.

Twelve people injured by the Oakland police department during Occupy Oakland demonstrations have settled a federal civil rights lawsuit with the city of Oakland for a total of $1.17 million. The injuries came as a result of OPD's violent response to Occupy Oakland on October 25 and November 2, 2011. Injured plaintiffs include long-time Indybay journalist David Morse. OPD has agreed to allow the federal court to enforce its compliance with its own crowd control policy, which prohibits police from shooting "less lethal" impact munitions or tossing explosive teargas grenades into crowds, and prohibits mass arrests without warning or opportunity to disperse.

US Supreme Court decisions making gay marriage legal in California and striking down the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act came just days before Pride weekend in San Francisco. On June 28th, anarchists participating in the annual Trans March hoisted a banner with the slogan "No Pride in Assimilation/No Future in Capitalism". Two days later a Bradley Manning contingent marched at Pride Sunday then encircled a National Guard booth in protest of military recruiting.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit on June 19 against the California Department of Parks and Recreation for its failure to protect an endangered seabird, the Marbled Murrelet, under the new management plan for Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. The suit, filed in California Superior Court in Santa Cruz county, challenges the department’s plans to expand visitor facilities in or near essential nesting habitat.