Feature Archives

Hundreds of people from more than two dozen groupings responded to the Anti Police-Terror Project’s (APTP) call to come together for 96 hours of direct action over the Martin Luther King Day weekend, January 15-18, in San Francisco and Oakland. Mayors and police chiefs were targeted for protest. The weekend’s events culminated in a Reclaiming King’s Radical Legacy March and a surprise shutdown of the Bay Bridge on January 18.

Black Lives Matter Bay Area held a local demonstration in solidarity with Black Xmas actions across the country on December 23. Nine activists blocked the San Francisco International Airport exit at Highway 101 until they were arrested by the California Highway Patrol. All of those arrested were released from jail later that evening. Black Lives Matter writes, "Whether cisgendered, trans, or queer; women or men, elders or children – our Black families refuse to live trapped between poverty and police state violence."

On October 22, Sacramento County sheriff’s deputies shot and killed Adriene Ludd. Now, over two months later, the Sheriff refuses to release the incident report and the dash-cam footage and the community is demanding answers. Micaela Davis of the ACLU of Northern California writes, "Friends, family, and neighbors of Mr. Ludd deserve the full story on this tragedy."

On January 1, family and friends marked the seventh anniversary of the police murder of Oscar Grant at the Oakland BART station where his death sparked a justice movement that has caught fire nationally in recent years. About 125 people attended the afternoon vigil at Fruitvale BART Station to hear words from family, faith leaders and activists, and poetry and song in memory of Grant and Black youth lost to violence.

On Black Friday 2014, following the grand jury announcement it would not recommend indicting police officer Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, fourteen Black activists chained themselves together on a BART transit platform “to prevent trains from moving at the West Oakland station, in response to the seemingly unending war against Black communities.” District Attorney Nancy O'Malley and BART pursued criminal charges and originally $70,000 in restitution. Now, after a year-long campaign by the Black Friday 14 and a broad coalition of allies, the DA has dropped all the charges.

San Francisco police murdered another African American man in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood on December 2. At least five police officers surrounded Woods on a sidewalk and proceeded to shoot him over fifteen times. Three different videos of the killing, taken with cellphone cameras, were made public. The videos spread widely, triggering protests and a fiery town hall meeting. A federal civil rights lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Mario's family. Another protest has been called for December 18 downtown.

In September 2003, Lakota Sioux Richard Iron Cloud and Armando Black Bear, novice swimmers from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near the Badlands of South Dakota, swam from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco shore in the first PATHSTAR Alcatraz swim. That tradition continued on Oct. 19, 2015, when Native Americans made the crossing from the “Rock” to San Francisco to conclude this year’s annual PATHSTAR Alcatraz Swim Week.