Feature Archives

In an unprecedented victory for community and environmental groups, the California State Court of Appeals has upheld the majority of findings in a lower court decision that the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the expansion of Chevron's refinery in Richmond violated state environmental law. Community members have been campaigning to fight the proposed switch to refining dirtier, heavier oil for several years, and last year, a lower court issued an injunction stopping further work on the refinery expansion.

Simón Sedillo, a community rights defense organizer and filmmaker, will be making presentations in the Monterey Bay Area on Indigenous Strategies for Hood Liberation and screening the new documentary film Xip Xop oaXaca. On Thursday, April 22nd, Sedillo will be at Cabrillo College at 1pm and at the Brown Berets Bike Shack in Watsonville at 7pm. On Friday, April 23rd, Sedillo will be presenting at UC Santa Cruz at 11:30am.

Mike Eli writes about the mine blast at Massey’s Upper Big Branch: "I have (as you can imagine) watched the coverage of Upper Big Branch closely... But if you had sat alongside me listening to those news report, you would not have known what every single miner in southern West Virginia knows: Massey was the national flagship of union breaking."

On March 14th, Greek anarchists from Athens, along with an American who has been living in Barcelona, spoke about the Greek uprising of December 2008 at the 11th annual Anarchist Theory Conference held at UC Berkeley. They addressed where the rebellion came from and where it is now. More than just presenting the story of Greece, their talk was about sharing ideas that could be useful to the social struggles in England, Barcelona, and the U.S.

Four of the nation's biggest banks — Bank of America, Citibank, Chase and Wells Fargo — are ruining the American economy, say activists who are taking to the streets this month to urge bank customers to "break up that affair with your big bank." In the San Francisco Bay Area members of the Raging Grannies launched a culture jamming action at banks in three cities to give the message some "real teeth".

February 7th marks the anniversary of Hampshire College's "divestment" from the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, the first institution of higher education to wash its hands of the systematic exploitation of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state. Following a two-year campaign by Students for Justice in Palestine, the Board of Trustees agreed in 2009 to withdraw its investments from six companies targeted by SJP because they profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

On January 27th, Howard Zinn died at the age of 87. Zinn was a historian, and professor in the Political Science Department at Boston University. He was the author of more than 20 books, including A People's History of the United States which he published in 1980.