Feature Archives

On Friday, June 8th, five of the Santa Cruz Eleven had preliminary hearing dates set by visiting Judge Stephen Sillman. Additionally, Brent Adams now has a new public defender, attorney Lisa K. McCamey. Charges have been refiled against Franklin Alcantara and Cameron Laurendeau, and they have a new preliminary hearing scheduled for July 23rd. Gabriella Ripley-Phipps and Becky Johnson will be going into their preliminary hearing on Monday, June 25th.

In a courtroom packed full of supporters at the Yolo County Courthouse in Woodland, California, all twelve defendants, known as both the "Davis Dozen" and the "Banker's Dozen", pleaded not guilty at their arraignment on May 10th. They also rejected a plea deal offered by the Assistant District, calling the charges against them "a sham." On Friday, June 1st, the Davis Dozen returned to the Yolo County Courthouse for a pre-trial conference. A June 1st pre-trial conference was brief, and a date was set for another pre-trial conference to file motions on Friday, June 22nd.

The students of Quebec have taken a struggle against tuition hikes and mobilized hundreds of thousands against austerity and state repression. What began as a one-week university student strike has widened into an anti-capitalist revolt against universities, banks and police in what many are calling a general and indefinite social strike. In the face of state repression, the students of Montreal have returned to the streets night after night for over 100 days. On June 1st, an evening march was held in Oakland to show solidarity with the student struggle to the north.

May Day in downtown Santa Cruz this year saw a wide variety of community members coming together and rallying to honor the global struggles of the worker. On the morning of May 1st, students at UC Santa Cruz supported AFSCME local 3299 union members at the university, and then later in the day marched downtown where a group of community members, populated largely with people active with Occupy Santa Cruz, met them on Mission Street after themselves marching up Pacific Avenue.

Robert Norse reports: Seven defendants (two were recharged) now face an upcoming Preliminary Hearing sometime in June thanks to Santa Cruz County District Attorneys Bob Lee and Rebekah Young. The seven are activists and reporters selected out of hundreds who passed through the vacant Wells Fargo bank building (now surrounded with a fence and barbed wire) in downtown Santa Cruz. The next pretrial court hearing is on Friday, June 1st at 8:15 AM in Dept. 6.

On May 18th, supporters of the Santa Cruz Eleven held banners on the Soquel Avenue overpass, to be seen by passing drivers on Highway 1, in support of the eleven people charged in association with the 2011 occupation of a vacant bank building in Santa Cruz. So far six of the eleven defendants have had charges against them dismissed by Santa Cruz County judge Paul Burdick, and the remaining five, Brent Adams, Desiree Foster, Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, Becky Johnson, and Robert Norse (Kahn), are still in the middle of pre-trial hearings.

On May 14th, all charges against Indybay photojournalists Bradley Stuart Allen and Alex Darocy were dismissed by Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Paul Burdick. The Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office had argued, without any evidence, that Allen and Darocy were "the media arm of the organization, the group’s propagandists" for the occupation of the vacant Wells Fargo bank building at 75 River Street in late November, thereby validating Shmuel Thaler, a Santa Cruz Sentinel photographer, as having been at the occupation as a bona fide journalist. Judge Burdick questioned the inconsistencies in the DA's argument and dismissed all charges.