Feature Archives

The Rock n' Roll On the Knoll Benefit Concert scheduled to occur on the UC Santa Cruz campus on Sunday, May 17th has been canceled. This was announced with very short notice on the afternoon of May 14th. Apparently, UCSC had to export some of it's police force to a graduation ceremony at UC Merced where Mrs. Obama will be speaking.

On Monday, May 11, Students for Justice in Palestine will screen the documentary Slingshot Hip Hop at UC Berkeley. The film braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover Hip Hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.

On Saturday, May 2nd, Crafts Not Carbon gathered at Embarcadero Center to provide a safe space that fosters creativity and realistic conversation about climate politics. The event was held at 2PM, near the farmer's market and lasted till 5:30PM. While the group met in San Francisco for this event, its future intentions are to reach all regions of the bay area, as well as use the forum for strategic occupation.

Each year on April 20th, at 4:20pm, people celebrate and smoke cannabis together. One of the biggest gathering spots in California, perhaps the biggest, is Porter Meadow at UC Santa Cruz. It's a large event for the whole community - a place where thousands of people can have a picnic, play with musical instruments, frisbees, kites and just have fun. It's in a safe and relatively secluded location and problems are rare.

Thursday, April 23rd is opening night for the 11 day Reel Work Film Festival, taking place in the counties of Santa Cruz, Monterey and Santa Clara. Reel Work presents cultural events, bringing together award-winning documentary film producers, workers, activists, students, and the public with the goal of increasing community awareness of the central role of work in our lives, to discuss economic and global justice issues, and to bring alive the history and culture of the labor movement in the US and abroad.

Wednesday, April 1st was the second week in a row that fences were not erected in parking lot #4 next to the Santa Cruz Community Farmer's Market. For the past six months, mesh fencing has been used to deter people from gathering and drumming below the magnolia trees. Brent, a longtime and well-known drummer, reports that an experimental agreement has been reached between himself and Santa Cruz Police Department Sergeant Mike Harms.

On Tuesday March 10th, the “Activism Right There (A.R.T.) Festival” was held at Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley. The festival, part of a week of events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the third world Liberation Front (twLF) strikes, featured a variety of radical performances.