Feature Archives

Kwanzaa is a cultural holiday, celebrated from December 26 to January 1, that reclaims what was lost during the African holocaust, the sense of an African connection. In California's Central Valley, Kwanzaa takes on special significance in the long standing African American farming community's journey to reestablish agriculture as the foundation of culture in the farm to fork capital of America.

On December 20, Israeli settlers began creating a road through Palestinian-owned lands in the West Bank district of Bethlehem. Villagers attempted to prevent the settlers from razing their lands, but were stopped by the Israeli military. On Christmas eve, settlers stormed the area and erected a “caravan” as a prelude to a new illegal settlement outpost. Meanwhile, Christians in Gaza are regularly denied “holiday permits” to travel and celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem or elsewhere.

Headquartered in Oakland, Kaiser Permanente is the state’s largest health care provider. For five days, over 100 Kaiser clinics and hospitals were affected by strike activities as mental health care employees called for the provider to step up levels of staffing. Approximately 4,000 psychologists, therapists, social workers, psychiatric nurses and addiction medicine specialists went on strike at Kaiser facilities throughout California.

The "Green New Deal" is a proposed program for moving America quickly away from a climate catastrophe and into an ecologically sustainable future, simultaneously creating millions of new jobs and addressing economic inequality. On December 11, the Sunrise Movement of young people demonstrated at Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco office. The day before, over 100 protesters were arrested at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office had drones on the scene for many high-profile protests in Berkeley and on the University of California Berkeley campus throughout 2017, at the request of the Berkeley and UC police departments. The Contra Costa County Sheriff deployed drones over immigrant rights rallies outside the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, which houses detainees for ICE.

The polling place at the Unitarian Universalist church was eliminated in November because of a “Black Lives Matter” sign. It was moved to the Cross City evangelical Christian mega church with three huge crosses out front. The 25,000 students of CSU-Fresno do not have a polling place on campus. Two thirds of the 3,000 inmates at the Fresno County Jail have not been convicted of a crime, yet are not provided a polling booth either.

The Amah Mutsun tribe is waging an all-out campaign to stop a proposed sand and gravel quarry that would desecrate one of their most important sacred places. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band know it as Juristac. The public knows it as Sargent Ranch, 6,500 acres of nearly pristine open space at the tail end of the Santa Cruz Mountains, where the foothills slope down towards the broad agricultural fields south of Gilroy. To the Debt Acquisition Company of America (DACA), the property’s owner, it is a potential sand and gravel quarry.