Feature Archives

Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1 FM, a pirate radio station celebrating 16 years of unlicensed broadcasting, was recently shutdown by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on August 12th when agents served a “notice of unlicensed radio operation” to the owner of the house from which the station had been broadcasting from for the last year. The commercial-free, community station continues to air on the internet 24/7 at freakradio.org while programmers search for a new home to host the transmitter and antennae.

In this eleventh installment in the series “Hidden in Plain Sight” Peter M writes about Maureen Gosling. Gosling is a documentary filmmaker who worked for many years with Les Blank of Flower Films. On her own she made the award-winning film Blossoms of Fire, which deals with a community in the Mexican Isthmus were women play a special role. She is currently working on a film about fabric hand-dyed by women in Mali that is becoming a cultural phenomenon.

Elizabeth Gonzalez is the subject of the tenth profile in this series by Indybay contributor Peter M. Gonzalez is a veteran of the innovative magazine and community service organization called Silicon Valley Debug. She now works with New America Media as a marketer to Spanish-speaking communities, promoting health and social welfare. She talks about changes she has been through over the years.

On February 22nd, Indybay reporter Mark Burdett filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court in a federal civil rights lawsuit stemming from his 2004 arrest for "jaywalking" while covering an antiwar protest in San Francisco. In October of 2010 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Burdett was lawfully arrested. The story was featured in a lighthearted manner on the February 23rd episode of The Colbert Report.

Geoffrey King is the subject of this ninth profile in a series by Peter M. King grew up in Vallejo, went to community college, then to Berkeley, and then to Stanford Law School. He is now a public interest attorney serving the community of media workers. He is also a self-taught professional photographer of social protest. He talks about representing a wronged Indybay reporter, and a night he spent photographing an Oscar Grant demonstration.

Narus, a company with Israeli connections now owned by Boeing, calls itself the global leader in real-time traffic intelligence for the protection and management of large IP networks. On February 2nd, internet freedom activists sponsored a demonstration in front of Narus' headquarters in Sunnyvale. The protesters said that the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology made by Narus is helping Egypt's leaders monitor the activities of Egyptian dissidents.

On January 20th, a meeting on the USF campus was held in protest of the sudden and unannounced shutdown of 34-year-old college station KUSF the day before. The station's FCC license was sold for $3.75 million on January 18th, in a secret deal of which almost nobody at the station had prior knowledge. Shocked and outraged station personnel, supporters, students, a media studies professor, and other media made up close to 500 people who rallied outside the packed auditorium. Supporters plan to attend the Board of Supervisors meeting January 25th at City Hall.