Feature Archives

The San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) performed Making a Killing: Building a New Iraq on September 23rd in Santa Cruz. The play follows two army newspaper reporters assigned to write a puff piece on the construction of an American funded hospital in Iraq. But, it becomes clear that there's corruption, death, music and mayhem lurking behind this benevolent-seeming humanitarian project.

On Saturday September 8th, Michael Franti and his group Spearhead – along with Guerrilla Management –presented the 9th Annual 911 Power to the Peaceful Festival at Speedway Meadow in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. This free annual music and arts festival is "dedicated to social justice, non violence, coexistence, and environmental sustainability-- and is aimed to educate, enrage, enlighten and inspire." The event was followed by an after-party at the Mezzanine, and a daytime Yoga Jam is planned for Sunday.

On Friday, August 3rd, the Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In screened the Guerilla Drive-In Subversive Shorts Festival on Pacific Ave and Cooper Street in downtown Santa Cruz. To skirt the laws regarding amplification, the sound was broadcast straight to portable radios.

The Watsonville Brown Berets presented the 7th annual Youth & Power Conference consisting of music, activism and organizing tables, art, dance, culture, speakers, free food and more. This year's conference took place at the Vet’s Hall in Watsonville on August 14th.

On June 30th, Bakers without Borders and Co-optation Watch pied Medea Benjamin at the US Social Forum. Bakers without Borders and Co-optation Watch state that they took action "to demand accountability from a self-appointed "spokesperson" whose actions further the commodification of resistance and sabotage our movement's sustainability and credibility. This person's actions benefit the NGO Industrial Complex at the expense of real democracy and solidarity."

Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" opened Friday June 29th at movie theaters around the US. The movie focuses on the problems in the US health-care system. It highlights several countries that do not have these same problems since their health systems are not based around the profit motives of insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. On opening night, raging Grannies, doctors, nurses, and patients engaged theater-goers at the Century 16 in Mountain View California, passing out over 1,000 leaflets and collecting postcards that demanded a single payer health care system for California.

On June 15th, one day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement in Calgary at Canada's largest oil conference that ExxonMobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men's spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. The provider, Broadview Networks, also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org before they'd restore the Yes Men's email service.