Feature Archives

On Saturday, December 15th, nearly 100 people held a candle light vigil in front of a new mural designed and painted by local artist Paul Barron and Gary King Sr. at the spot where his son Gary King Jr. was brutally killed by Oakland Police Officer Patrick Gonzalez on September 20. Family and friends had turned the spot of the murder into a shrine with candles, but messages of love and anger were repeatedly torn down by the City of Oakland. It was only after family and friends launched a struggle that the city approved the creation of a permanent mural.

On Monday, December 10th, Supervisor Chris Daly hosted a hearing on the controversial San Francisco gang injunctions. Community members criticized the proposal, calling it racist and ineffective. They called on the city to address the root causes of violence not the symptoms.

Eric McDavid told his supporters on November 23rd that he had ended his two-week long hunger strike. Eric is still requesting vegan food and medical care from the jail, and supporters are still calling the jail in an effort to convince them to give in to these demands. Eric decided last week that he will finish the commissary food he has left in his cell, but will no longer be ordering items from commissary. The food that the jail gives him is insufficient to meet his dietary needs, and he has suffered weight loss in addition to attacks of pericarditis during his recent hunger strike.

Ichinkhorloo Bayarsaikhan, a 15 year old who immigrated to the United States from Mongolia, was murdered in a park in Alameda on Halloween night. The Asian Pacific Islander community has been troubled by police harassment and inadequate coverage of the investigation by local corporate media outlets throughout November. A rally and press conference to demand police accountability will took place on November 27th in front of the City of Alameda Police Department.

On November 14, a routine CIA information and recruitment session was suddenly disrupted on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara when a small group of student protesters walked in and lead a man with bound hands to the front of the room, where he was laid on a table and (voluntarily*) tortured with a CIA-approved technique used to simulate drowning, known as water-boarding. The CIA speakers were struggling to speak over the "torture victim's" coughs and cries for help, while potential CIA recruits looked on with bewilderment at the grotesquely real portrayal of torture.

On November 8th, Michael Mukasey was confirmed as attorney general by the full US Senate in a 53 to 40 vote. The Democrats who voted in support of Mukasey were Feinstein, Schumer, Bayh, Carper, Landrieu and Nelson. All four Democratic senators who are running for president did not vote. Before Feinstein came out for Mukasey, he appeared to be unable to get enough votes to get out of committee due to his refusal to declare water-boarding a form of torture. Several protests against Mukasey have taken place in San Francisco.

On October 22nd, Riva Love of the Watsonville Brown Berets interviewed Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald, the longest incarcerated Black Panther Party member. Chip discusses his early days in the streets, how he came to join the Black Panther party, and his words for young people oppressed by the current power structure. Currently housed at Imperial Valley State Prison in Southern California, he has had two parole hearings scheduled in the past six months, but neither have taken place.