Feature Archives

Spicing up their press conference with a Day of the Dead theme, health advocates from Fresno, Tulare, and Kern Counties rallied outside the central regional office of the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) on November 1 in Clovis. Their action was part of a continuing campaign to get DPR to urge the state to suspend agricultural use of brain-harming chlorpyrifos. Last May, the deadly pesticide was implicated in a drift incident that sickened dozens of farmworkers near Bakersfield; health advocates say that more than twenty years of research links the pesticide to neurological disorders in children.

Oakland will spend $75,000 on a study to examine the feasibility of establishing a public bank in the city. The impact on the cannabis industry would be huge, because most corporate banks do not conduct business with the cannabis trade even where their operations are legal. Without bank credit card services, business transactions must be conducted in cash. Even filing taxes with the IRS is problematic. Nearly all large corporate banks are involved in unethical practices of one kind or another. A public bank would also allow people of conscience to bank without supporting unconscionable investments.

JP Massar writes: For nine months a stable, peaceful, law-abiding community of homeless people has resided at the HERE/THERE space on the west side of the BART tracks just north of the Oakland/Berkeley border, across the street from Sweet Adeline. They have had the support of the neighborhood and have recently obtained, through community support, the ability to access a porta-potty and a handwashing station. On Saturday afternoon [October 21], BART police put up notices demanding that they remove themselves from HERE/THERE area within 72 hours and threatening to confiscate their possessions. An Eviction Resistance Party has been called for Tuesday, October 24 at 4:30pm.

About 200 people went to Fresno City Hall on September 29 to demand an end to the criminalization of the homeless, following the passing of a No Camping ordinance. The demand for house keys, not handcuffs, was met by a large contingent of police who surrounded the protesters and threatened them with arrest. A statement about the event stated that Fresno needs “a safe and legal place where homeless people can go 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Homeless people need a place to go and the same basic public services that everyone else in this city has — drinking water, a place to go to the bathroom and trash bins. In short, the homeless need to be treated with dignity and respect, because they are our brothers and sisters and in some cases our mothers, fathers or children.”

Late in the evening on October 8, the Diablo Winds blew into Santa Rosa, resulting in five fires. The rapidly spreading fires caused dozens of deaths and burned thousands of homes and other structures to the ground. Beyond those directly effected, the Santa Rosa firestorm, and other fires in the North Bay have polluted the air across the entire region. The elderly and children are at greatest health risk from the smoke of the wildfires in Sonoma, Napa, Yuba and Mendocino Counties. On October 16 a new wildfire started in unincorporated Santa Cruz County, spurring evacuations. Concerns remain about the origin of the fires; one theory being that high winds caused power lines to collapse, raising questions about PG&E's culpability.

Kaye "Nana" Griffin, an Indybay co-founder, passed on in early August. Nana was involved in the Bay Area activism scene for decades, including queer liberation, housing and many other local struggles. Nana also carried one of the first Indybay press passes. Her memorial service is on Saturday, October 21, 2:00 PM, at the Center for Sex and Culture, 1349 Mission St. in San Francisco. Keith McHenry recalls, "Kaye spent many hours volunteering with San Francisco Food Not Bombs and reported on the arrests and court cases posting on Indybay. She participated in nearly all the huge protests with her pet rat on her shoulder and I remember her insightful comments about a wide range of issues."

Declaring that blatant fascists and neo-nazis will never find a home in the Bay Area, hundreds of anti-racist activists rallied and marched through the streets of Berkeley on September 23. The Anti Police-Terror Project proactively called for people to gather on that day as a show of strength and unity against the white supremacists across the nation attempting to capitalize on the racist Trump presidency. Separately, Berkeley Patriots, the UC Berkeley student group behind "Free Speech Week," announced the day before it was supposedly set to begin that all events had been cancelled. Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to speak on September 24 but was on the UC Berkeley campus only 20 minutes before quickly leaving the scene.