Feature Archives

On November 11, the Korea Peace Walk traveled 20 blocks along Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, pausing to rally at historic sites of the labor movement and Black Panther Party activism. The celebrated date activists chose originated as Armistice Day on November 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I. About 70 people marched for over two hours from from 23rd to 44th Street. At the final rally at Koryo Place, the center of a district of small Korean family owned businesses, pungmul (풍물) drummers pounded furiously. Pungmul drumming and dancing is rooted in Korea’s collective farming culture and has long been actively used in political protest there.

For over fifteen days, tents, couches, tables of food, and dozens of students have decked the halls of Eliot Hall, Reed College’s administration building in Portland, Oregon. Students are occupying the building in protest of the college's financial ties to Wells Fargo. Demonstrators say the college holds around $300,000 in the bank on a daily basis. Wells Fargo is an American international banking and financial services holding company well known to be one of the primary investors in private prisons, immigration detention, the Dakota Access Pipeline, police foundations and the Israeli Apartheid, among other oppressive institutions.

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.

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.

The State of Wisconsin has violated the treaty rights of the Anishinaabe by allowing the Enbridge corporation to destroy wetlands, animal habitat, and their sacred rice lakes for a pipeline that the Minnesota Department of Commerce has deemed unnecessary and hazardous. In Cloquet, Minnesota, a growing front line camp of water protectors has become a base for launching nonviolent direct actions intended to shutdown construction on Enbridge's Line 3 pipeline. Every hour protesters stop work costs Enbridge thousands of dollars. This tactic of non-violent direct action is a last resort because the courts and regulatory processes have failed the people and mother earth.

The NLG-SF writes: Rather than using these critical times as an opportunity to have a larger conversation with Berkeley’s people of color, LGBTQIA, Jews, Muslims and other communities who are being targeted by white nationalists/neo-Nazis/white supremacists — the City has instead utilized this as an opportunity to target peaceful protests and repress resistance. The APTP further explains who will face the brunt of this new police weapon: According to the resolution, police are not allowed to use it on crowds but they can target individuals in crowds whom they deem “violent." If both recent and past history teaches us anything — it is that those of us who pose the most risk to the State and its agenda that get categorized as violent.