Feature Archives

On February 12th, the Berkeley City Council voted 7-to-2 to "clarify" an anti-recruitment resolution it had passed on January 29th. The original resolution stated that the U.S. Marine Recruiting Station near Berkeley High School "is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders." The new resolution states that the military recruiters have the legal right to stay and that while the city opposes the war and military recruitment, it supports the troops. Members of Code Pink say they now intend to place a resolution against the recruitment center on the local ballot.

Protesters had camped out overnight Monday to oppose changes to the Council's anti-recruitment stand. Several pro-war groups organized members to confront protesters in Berkeley on Tuesday. During afternoon protests, three high school students were arrested by the Berkeley police. No one on the pro-war side was arrested.

Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) organized protests for Tuesday, February 5th, the day California voters went to the polls for the 2008 presidential primary, to demand that Democratic presidential candidates take stronger anti-war positions. DASW called into question the "anti-war" credentials of candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Protesters gathered at 5pm in San Francisco's U.N. Plaza and in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza for marches to Clinton's and Obama's campaign headquarters in SF and Oakland.

On January 29th, the Berkeley City Council voted 6 to 3 that the U.S. Marine Recruiting Station on Shattuck Avenue "is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders." Protests have been taking place in front of the recruitment station for the past few months. On January 30th, Code Pink staged a mock debate against the recruitment station. Conservative radio talk show host Melanie Morgan was originally scheduled to participate, but she backed out at the last minute.

In the week leading up to the January 11th national day of action against torture, student organizers with World Can't Wait and the Bay Area Revolution Club spoke in classes and distributed orange armbands at several Bay Area high schools. Larry Everest was invited by students at Leadership High to give a presentation about the abuses that are taking place at Guantanamo Bay. After the presentation, the Administration sent a letter home to all parents of students who attended the event-- stating the school's intention to teach the "other side" of torture, which one of the teachers described as the "Bush Administration's point of view." In addition, school administrators threatened to take students' orange bandanas.

On January 20th, Retired Army Col. and US diplomat Ann Wright spoke in Santa Cruz to an audience of about 70 people about her new book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience". The book profiles government officials whose loyalty to the Constitution and the American people ultimately transcended partisan politics. The afternoon opened with songs from the Raging Grannies, and an introduction by Santa Cruz County Supervisor Neal Coonerty and Diane Rejman of the GI Rights Hotline.

On Friday, January 25th at 12pm, Bay Area military veterans, peace and justice activists, Raging Grannies, and military families convened outside the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco (580 California Street) for a vigil and press conference leading up to a 1pm delegation. The delegation presented consulate officials with thousands of letters signed by people in United States in support of sanctuary for U.S. war resisters in Canada as part of Courage to Resist's "Dear Canada: Let Them Stay" campaign. Similar delegations took place Friday at consulates in Washington DC, LA, NYC, Dallas, Seattle, and Minneapolis.

Emergency protests across the US against the strangulation of Gaza were called for Friday January 25th. A San Francisco protest took place on at the Israeli Consulate from 4-5 PM.

On January 23rd, masked militants destroyed around two-thirds of the wall separating the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Tens of thousands of Palestinians flooded across the border to buy food and supplies. On January 25, Egyptian border guards formed human chains along the border, but were unable to stop hundreds of Palestinians from rushing into Egypt after a bulldozer wrecked another section of fence.