Feature Archives

Justice for Oscar Grant activists returned to East Bay BART trains and stations on September 4th to inform riders about BART's intransigence toward holding anyone accountable for their police officers' behavior on New Year's Day. Later the same day, it was learned that BART's attempt to pass AB1586 would fail in this legislative session, meaning that there would be no new police oversight of any kind established before the end of the year.

On September 21st, J.R. Valrey stood for trial in Oakland on felony arson charges, after he was arrested while reporting on the Oscar Grant Rebellion on January 7, 2009. Valrey is a producer at KPFA radio, associate editor and multimedia director of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, and runs the Block Report Radio website. His trial was postponed until late October. Supporters are asked to show they stand with J.R. by attending upcoming court dates.

On September 11th, Johannes Mehserle's attorney Michael Rains filed his long-expected motion for a change of venue. Mehserle and his defense team appear to be hoping for the murder trial to be moved out of Alameda County as their last best chance for him to avoid a conviction for the murder of Oscar Grant III on January 1st, 2009. In the motion, Rains accuses activist groups and Indybay of spreading "disinformation" about the case and unfairly amplifying political pressure to prosecute.

Alex Sanchez’s family migrated from El Salvador in the 1970s. He was a former gang member who turned his life around becoming an internationally recognized peacemaker and co-founding Homies Unidos in Los Angeles in 1998. On June 24th, 2009, Alex was arrested and named in a federal indictment based on weak evidence, charging him among a group of twenty-three others as an active gang member. On Friday, September 25th, there will be a fundraiser for Alex at Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos with live hip-hop music and the film Hijos de la Guerra.

Jesse James Forrey, 27, was arrested at the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul, MN. After little and conflicting evidence from the prosecutor, a Minnesota jury convicted him on August 7th, 2009 of a felony charge of damage to property in the first degree. Jesse maintains his innocence. On September 17th, Judge Flynn sentenced Jesse to 120 days in jail.

Author J. Patrick O'Connor was recently interviewed in San Francisco about his research into the case of San Quentin death row prisoner Kevin Cooper, whose appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court was recently denied, with Judge William Fletcher writing a stinging dissent, declaring that the "State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.” This fall, Cooper will be appealing to the US Supreme Court, which is last chance to avoid execution.

The Shock Doctrine is the latest documentary from acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom, co-directed by Mat Whitecross. Based on Naomi Klein's bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine argues that America's 'free market' policies have come to dominate the world through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.