Feature Archives

On Wednesday, May 23, while the San Francisco Board of Supervisors reviewed the implementation plan of Community Choice Energy (CCE), the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash staged a street theater performance outside City Hall. The performance included caricatures of Mayor Newsom and PiG&E being caught "in bed" by woman dressed as a giant windmill. Material distributed by the protesters highlighted Newsom's relationship with PG&E, including indirect campaign contributions totaling over $30,000 and his recent history of blowing off CCE events while publicly praising PG&E for their token "green" publicity events. CCE is the plan to run San Francisco on 51 percent renewable energies by 2017. It achieves this goal by dismantling PG&E's monopoly and allowing the city of San Francisco to bulk buy energy from independent producers.

After a brief press conference on May 22nd in front of San Francisco’s City Hall, three students embarked on a "March for Peace” yesterday with the intent of walking every step of over 3,000 miles across North America. If all goes to plan, they will arrive in Washington DC in late August.

A hunger strike initiated by 44 UC students, several alumni and a professor has passed its 1-week mark. The hunger strikers are demanding that the UC Board of Regents withdraw from their contracts to operate Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories based on, “the grounds that the Reliable Replacement Warhead program and Los Alamos Labs’ ongoing preparations to conduct plutonium pit manufacturing both clearly violate Article VI of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.” The UC has been identified by the hunger strikers as a site of strategic importance in the campaign against new nuclear weapons.

The Circus of (Im)Migration is touring the west coast from April 30th through May 13th. The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) made their first stop in the Bay Area on May 7th at UC Berkeley. The trip continued on May 8th with a San Francisco evening show at Station 40, before a workshop and performance in Santa Cruz on May 9th and 10th.

On Thursday, May 17th, oral arguments were heard in federal court in Philadelphia on what could be the last appeal of death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is known as the "Voice of the Voiceless." Bay Area supporters of Mumia held rallies in San Francisco and San Jose. Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row in Pennsylvania for 25 years.

May 1, 2007 was the first anniversary of the Great Boycott of 2006, in which immigrants led walkouts, boycotts, and protests all over the US. Reports are in that thousands marched in Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco. In Los Angeles, police shot projectiles at a rally tens of thousands strong. Protests were also held in Berkeley, Mountain View, Davis, Fresno, Modesto, Sacramento, Salinas, Santa Cruz, and Watsonville. The ILWU reportedly stopped work in 6 west coast ports, and May 1st was also a day of nationwide student walkouts.

On April 26th, students from San Francisco State walked out of classrooms to protest higher fees in education and the privatization of public education. Students first met at Malcolm X plaza and then marched towards the center of campus. More students began to file out of class and join the crowd. Later, the students went inside different buildings to encourage even more students to walk out. At the highest point of the protest there were about a thousand students marching.