Feature Archives

Maybe, but only because they got the federal government to declare that California could not make them sell off their billions in out-of-state assets to cover their debts. PG&E is laying off lower-level employees while the power company CEO's "earn" millions per year.   | Listen to an audio expose

Deregulation allowed private, for-profit, out-of-state corporations (Duke, Enron, etc.) to corner the market on electricity and drive up prices by 10 times in the past year.   More factors: bad planning, mismanagement, and greed.
Listen to interview with energy activist Harvey Wasserman. | For the $2 billion spent in the first quarter of 2001, we could have bought all the plants that the utilities sold to private companies that are now gouging us. | Deregulation price tag: $40 billion

2/24/01 Rally in SF: Medea Benjamin | Brian Belknap | George Vouros
2/11/01 Teach-In: Teatro Campesino video Off tha Grid, audio Tim Redmond of SFBG
2/9/01: Governor Davis' solution: Environmental Destruction

10/11/01 Approximately 2,500 people attended the People Have the Power rally 1 | 2 in San Francisco. Speakers from a variety of organizations spoke in favor of the creation of a Municipal Utility District.

Both Propositions F (creating a city-run water & power agency) and Prop I (creating a municipal utility district) lost amidst questions about the ballot-counting process and serious election fraud concerns. Absentee and provisional ballots were engulfed in murky late-night happenings . On election night, "Anthrax" scares created confusion and ballot boxes were moved around without supervision. The SF Bay Guardian reports that "Jim Stearns ... told us that he went over to the building and saw two people leaving, with boxes that looked like ballot boxes. They headed away from City Hall. He asked them if they were carrying ballot boxes, and they said, 'what are ballots?'" San Francisco is no stranger to backdoor deals and voting mysteries, ( see current mayor ).

Pacific Gas & Electric, your friendly, neighborhood energy corporation, spent $1.5 million trying to scare San Franciscans into thinking the measures would be too "costly" and "risky." MUD advocates, however, point to LA and Sacramento as two of the many cities with democratic public power protecting the interests of citizens, not corporate ones. See photos from Nov 2 protest at PG&E.

But San Francisco did vote to produce its own solar and wind power. San Francisco voters went to the polls on November 6th and overwhelmingly approved a measure that gives the City of San Francisco the authority to issue up to $100,000,000 in bonds to finance solar energy facilities for use by city agencies and departments. Voters' "yes" to Proposition B and Proposition H will nearly double the number of grid connected solar systems. Read more: 1 | 2

Governor Davis' bailout is now disguised as the $7 billion purchase of the transmission system which has a book value of only $3.8 billion. We should pay less than book value; these utilities say they're near bankruptcy (though their parent corporations are fat with assets they bought with our last bailout)." --Medea Benjamin, February 24, 2001. Meanwhile, California legislators have been dismantling the state's pollution-control regulations in order to build cheap energy plants.

Power Companies Have Perpetrated a Monumental Rip-Off.
The Recourse: PUBLIC/SOLAR POWER MEASURES ON SF BALLOT Nov. 6: YES on B, F, H & I