Feature Archives

On Tuesday November 4th, Barack Obama beat John McCain to become the first African-American President of the United States of America. Obama won many traditionally Republican states, including Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Indiana and North Carolina. As Obama's win became clear, celebrations broke out around the Bay Area.

On Friday, October 10th, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, hundreds of Filipino American students, youth and veterans and supporters held rallies in front of the Federal Building in the both cities to demand Filipino veterans rights. Justice for Filipino American Veterans calls on all Filipino American organization and mainstream allies to push for recognition, justice and equity for 18,000 remaining veterans, their widows and relatives.

On August 29th, more than two-hundred Bay Area residents demonstrated outside of developer Lennar Corp.'s Headquarters in San Francisco and then headed to Oakland to rally in front of the Oakland Police Department (OPD). The local chapter of the Right to the City Alliance, a national coalition of more than 35 social justice organizations, along with allies and supporters, aimed to bring attention to rogue developers, gentrification and criminalization of communities of color from the Bay Area to New Orleans.

As part of a week of international conference of anti-Zionist Jews, Reuven Abarjel, a Mizrahi anti-Zionist Jew, visited the Bay Area. Reoven is one of the founders of the Israeli Black Panthers, an anti-Zionist, and a social activist. Abergel participated in several meetings and panels and spoke about Zionism, racism, and colonialism and ways to resist them. Abergel also spoke about his personal experience as one of the ringworm children, a group of thousands of children from Jewish-Arab background that the state of Israel did radioactive experiments on without their knowledge or family consent.

The San Francisco Bay View newspaper has been forced to stop printing its weekly paper due to financial strain. The last printed copy went out on July 2nd, marking the 697th issue the Ratcliffs have published since starting the paper in 1992.

At a public meeting held July 15th in San Francisco, Bayview residents and supporters accused the San Francisco Department of Public Health of turning a blind eye to Lennar Corp's toxic construction in the Hunter's Point Shipyard. Bayview community members said Lennar Corp, a housing redevelopment corporation based out of Miami, has been digging into asbestos-rich serpentine rock sending plumes of cancer-causing dust into nearby homes, recreation centers and elementary schools. Last November, The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) voted to fine Lennar for not accurately monitoring toxicity levels during construction.

Seventy years ago this month, Mussolini's government published a "Manifesto of Race", which lead to racial laws persecuting Jews, Roma and members of other ethnic minorities groups. Now, the country's rightwing government has again stepped up special measures against an entire ethnic group. In late June, the Italian Interior Minister announced that a file is to be drawn up containing a DNA data base with digital fingerprints and photos of every Roma in Italy, irregardless of their citizenship. One popular Italian magazine, Famiglia Cristiana, denounced the move as "an indecent and racist proposal" reminiscent of "when Jewish children were identified with a yellow star on their sleeves".