Feature Archives

Even as a case awaits a California Supreme Court decision regarding student housing UC Berkeley intends to build on the land, the university went in for the kill on People's Park shortly before midnight on January 3, sending in hundreds of police to clear the park and to make way for a wall of shipping containers. Protesters were ready for the raid, but police closed nearby streets to prevent more from coming to defend the park. Several demonstrators were arrested.

The city of San Pablo plans on building a new police headquarters and training facility. The Stop Cop Campus Coalition intends to prevent the new facility from being constructed, arguing such huge amounts of money would be better spent meeting the needs of city residents rather than policing them. On September 30, their second protest was held with a march down the middle of San Pablo Avenue to the site of the proposed "Cop Campus."

More than a decade ago, artists and musicians created a vibrant hub for the arts in an abandoned shopping mall in Porto, Portugal. City officials long sought to close the DIY space and finally moved on the Stop Shopping Center in late July. For over 10 days, more than 500 musicians were forcibly evicted from their workspace by police and city authorities, with over 100 rehearsal rooms and workplaces closed down. Thousands came out to protest the eviction.

From the solidarity website: "Peppy and Krystal are exceptional and caring humans. For decades they have been active participants in solidarity with oppressed and marginalized people. Their tireless advocacy and community building has put them in the crosshairs of state repression. They will both undoubtedly face a long and arduous court process in the months, if not years, ahead.... Today they need our support."

In response to anti-government protests after police murdered a seventeen-year-old boy of Algerian descent, the French government has taken a number of repressive anti-democratic actions. Several hundred protesters were tried, convicted, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms within just forty-eight hours. One teenager with no prior record was sent to prison for a year and a month for allegedly throwing an empty soda can at a group of police.

Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst-turned-peace activist who revealed that the U.S. government had been lying about its war on Vietnam, died on June 16. He was best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers to news outlets in 1971. He became a vocal anti-war campaigner. In a 2019 interview, Ellsberg said, "an act of truth-telling, of exposing the realities about which the public had been misled, can indeed help end an unnecessary, deadly conflict."

In a pseudonymous communiqué published on Indybay on May 21, "some vandals" write: Under the cover of night, with the Frisco fog as our accomplice, a crew of friends vandalized over 10 of the right-wing, pro-police “Fentalyfe” street poster installations.... These disturbing posters are part of a $300k campaign, by reactionary group Together SF, that is shaming drug and Narcan users, and calling for the racist criminalization of poor people.