Feature Archives

Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her home by Louisville, Kentucky, Metro Police Department officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove on March 13. A Grand Jury returned an indictment for one officer with three counts of wanton endangerment for shooting into neighboring apartments — and no charges directly related to the murder. Announcement of the Grand Jury's decision on September 23 sparked protests across Northern California.

At vigils recalling Ruth Bader Ginsburg's groundbreaking life, speakers said that many civil rights, particularly abortion rights, could be rolled back. Raising candles, many demonstrators observed silence in her honor, while others voiced serious concern about what her death would mean to the composition of the US Supreme Court and ultimately what it could mean for justice and equality for women and all historically oppressed people.

Facebook blocked hundreds of accounts days before a September 21 online event targeting the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The pipeline is set to cut through sovereign Wet’suwet’en land, defiantly ignoring hereditary chiefs of their rights, title, and consent for the project. The project would lock in decades of increased fracked gas and the impacts to climate, air, water and the risks posed to Indigenous camps built along the route.

President Trump has said little about the wildfires raging in California, Oregon and Washington for weeks, other than to suggest poor forest management was primarily to blame. “These are climate fires,” says Timothy Ingalsbee, an Oregon-based wildland fire ecologist and former wildland firefighter. “Though some scientists hesitate to attribute a single event to climate change, these are exactly the conditions predicted by climatologists.”

On September 4, five young activists from the city of Antioch and a former resident of the Mission District of San Francisco began a hunger strike with demands for local authorities to end racial injustice and police brutality. Despite ongoing protests, a petition signed by thousands, hundreds of public comments at City Council meetings, protests and an occupation of City Hall by several dozen activists, the Mayor, the Chief of Antioch Police, and council members have neither acknowledged nor taken action on protesters’ demands.

Citing a pattern of consistent stonewalling, investigative journalists have taken the Oakland Police Department to court to force it to comply with state public records laws. Two petitions brought in Alameda County Superior Court claim the department routinely ignores public records requests, professing a commitment to transparency even as thousands of open Public Records Act requests languish in their system. One petition claims the department offers only an automatic response to thousands of requests — if it replies at all.

On September 3, several hundred students gathered in front of the entrance to Mission High School for a "Defund the San Francisco Police" action. They showed up to demand that resources currently allocated to police be distributed back to the community for better schools and better mental health care services. Speakers honored survivors of police violence by calling for a recitation of names and said that that the Board of Supervisors needs to make more drastic cuts to the police budget than the relatively small measures currently proposed.