Feature Archives

A march and rally was held in Kettleman City on July 18th, to protest a cluster of birth defects that participants say is probably connected to pesticide used on nearby farms or a toxic dump site located just outside of town. Five children out of twenty born in Kettleman City in the last 18 months had birth defects. Three of them died.

From Death Row at San Quentin, Donald Ray Young writes: "We had strange fruit for breakfast today...a death row prisoner committed suicide at San Quentin, in East Block. But, I can’t worry about that guy....Wait; how can I not think of the suicide in this very building - - his family...loved ones? What if he was innocent? Do I know him? How many other people on death row have contemplated killing themselves to escape this madness? I believe that when one dies - - a part of all of us all dies...."

Legislators and hundreds of Delta advocates held a rally at the State Capitol in Sacramento on Tuesday, July 7th, to oppose the peripheral canal -- what they call a budget-busting and environmentally destructive project that would approximate the Panama Canal in width and length. "I'm not going to vote for a plan that builds a Panama Canal down the middle of the 15th Assembly District,” exclaimed Assemblymember Joan Buchanan to loud applause.

A massive campaign is underway to “turn on the pumps” and deliver additional water to farms in the western Central Valley. Agribusiness interests and their allies claim environmental and water activists care more about fish than people and are demanding more water, now! Central Valley Congress members are calling for an exclusion from the Endangered Species Act of the delta smelt, more dams, a peripheral canal, and a bond initiative in 2010 that will result in taxpayers subsidizing water for large corporate farming operations.

Rose City Antifa writes: "This July, David Irving, a British neo-fascist and fraudulent historian, goes on the road in the United States, planning to hold approximately one and a half dozen speaking engagements over the course of a month. As militant anti-racists and anti-fascists, we are making a public call for resistance at each stop along the way of this tour."

Fresno County homecare providers reported scores of incidents of voter intimidation, illegal threats, and ballot manipulation by SEIU staff in an election for workers to quit the scandal-plagued union and join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW). SEIU spent an estimated $10 million on attack mailings, robo-calls, TV and radio ads, but failed to win enough support from workers to win the election without breaking the law.

The Fresno police department has finally identified the officers who were captured on videotape in the February beating of a homeless man. But the department has been slow in proceeding with its promised investigation of the police beating. Their names were released in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU. Glen Beaty, meanwhile, remains in jail. He's been in jail for over three months on charges of allegedly violating parole.