Feature Archives

On December 14th, hundreds of PG&E customers, outraged about the health damage caused by wireless 'smart' meters, ramped up protests by testifying at county government meetings and shutting down payment centers in both Santa Cruz and Marin Counties to demand an immediate halt to the program. Protesters are also angry about PG&E's attempts to cover up the growing health scandal and recently revealed espionage carried out against their customers concerned with increasing reports of nausea, headaches, and bouts of dizziness from the meters. The protesters, backed by 22 local governments and an increasing number of scientists and medical professionals, are demanding that PG&E halt any further installation of smart meters.

Martin Cotton II was living houseless and unarmed on August 9th, 2007, when he was severely abused by police, and brought to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility. At the jail, he was further attacked by guards, and left to die on the floor of a cell. On Monday, January 10th, a federal civil rights trial, brought on behalf of Martin Cotton's baby daughter, Siehna Cotton, and by Martin's father, Marty Cotton, will begin in Oakland: Siehna Cotton et al. v. Eureka Police Dept. and Humboldt County Sheriff's Dept.

During the December 7th, 2010 Oakland City Council meeting, outraged and grieving family members, friends and members of the public demanded to be allowed to speak during "Open Forum" at the beginning of the meeting. When the council refused, supporters chanted to the front and Derrick's father spoke along with several others. Later many more spoke. The council's response was to offer to agendize the topic for a future meeting.

Derrick Jones was shot and killed by the Oakland Police Dept on Monday November 8th 2010 on the 5800 block of Trask Street. On November 11th, protesters took to the streets to protest the murder of another unarmed man by the police. Family members of Jones and Oscar Grant joined a demonstration on Bancroft Way before marching to the Fruitvale BART station, the site of Grant's fatal shooting. BART shut down the station for several hours during the evening commute because of the protest.

Marc Sapir writes, "The core paid staff (representing perhaps 30-50 staff people at KPFA) essentially seized control of KPFA this morning [November 9th] to rally their listener base to resist efforts that could restore KPFA to financial solvency for the first time in 2 years, and bring it back from the brink of collapse (KPFA does not now have cash income to pay the staff regularly). What goes unstated is that the majority of staff at KPFA—over 150 programmers and producers--the people who keep the station on air 24/7 are volunteers are not represented in these antics."

UPDATE: Midnight Matt Arrested for Attempted Murder on January 28th

On the evening on October 31st, Halloween night, advocates for People's Park climbed into the trees to take a stand against the ongoing destruction of the park by UC Berkeley, with the encouragement of the Telegraph Business Association, and to protest the dwindling resources available to the city's homeless population. The tree sitters have renamed the park "Muwekma," the Ohlone word for "people."

A week before the November 2nd elections, a group of artists liberated six San Francisco billboards and sixty bus shelter ads to defeat Proposition L, a ballot measure that would ban sitting on the sidewalk. The group, calling itself the Sit/Lie Posse, replaced ads throughout the city with handmade prints rendered in the style of corporate advertising. Confronting the backers of the proposition, the posse lavished attention on sites around City Hall, the Chronicle, the Haight-Ashbury district and many other neighborhoods.