Feature Archives

Receiving scant attention from marijuana legalization advocates and just about zero attention in the national media, voters in Ohio will be deciding on a controversial marijuana legalization initiative this November that “Grants a monopoly for the commercial production and sale of marijuana." It is a cautionary tale to which the backers of California’s multiple marijuana legalization initiatives might want to pay close attention.

Activists in Santa Cruz are moving in to their 13th week of sleep protests held at city hall organized to protest the criminalization of people experiencing homelessness, and to work toward the repeal of the local camping and sleeping bans. Dozens of "Freedom Sleepers", as many of them call themselves, have held their ground and stayed the night at city hall despite regular visits by officers with the Santa Cruz police department, as well as First Alarm security guards hired by the city, who have made arrests and issued protesters dozens of citations.

Small cascades of pristine water rush out of the hillside at Big Springs, the headwaters of the Sacramento River, as they converge in a shallow pool located in the Mount Shasta City Park. On September 26, Caleen Sisk, Chief and Spiritual Leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, and hundreds of environmentalists and activists from all over California and Oregon held a rally, the “Water Every Drop Sacred” event, in the scenic park. After the rally ended, Sisk and tribal members led a march and protest of 160 people to the water bottling plant.

In the classic movie Chinatown the villain and the head of the water district played by the late John Huston says, "Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water". In a scenario eerily reminiscent of a scene in the film, when the LA Department of Power and Water buys up land in the Owens Valley in order to seize Owens River water, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is considering purchasing land in the imperiled Delta to "bring L.A. to the water".

On September 12, about 60 people showed up outside Uncle Sam's Liquors in Richmond to remember Pedie Perez who was shot dead at that location on September 14, 2014 by Richmond police officer Wallace Jensen. Although Jensen claims that Pedie had tried to take his gun, witnesses dispute this and the store's surveillance video shows that after a struggle on the ground Jensen got up and backed away with his gun still holstered. He then shot Pedie from about six feet away.

Dan Rush, a former union organizer for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, was recently named in a federal arrest warrant that alleges he engaged in bad-faith negotiations with cannabis dispensary owners while acting in his capacity as a union official. Rush is also accused of holding a private financial interest in a medical cannabis company seeking a dispensary permit in Oakland in 2010.

For three Fridays in a row, boisterous members and allies of the Mountain View Tenants Coalition marched passed City Hall to the busy intersection at El Camino Real to push for a moratorium on rent increases. Inspired by the recent success of the East Bay city of Richmond, Mountain View residents are hoping to gain some legal protection for renters in one of the Bay Area's most costly cities, home to hi tech giants including Google.