Feature Archives

On November 15, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved legislation prohibiting new fossil fuel leases on city-owned property in an effort to combat climate change. The legislation by Supervisor John Avalos originated with 350 Bay Area analyst Jed Holtzman, who discovered the city was leasing to Chevron an 800-acre property that it inherited in Kern County. City finance officials say converting the property to a solar array could generate more revenue than current oil operations, which net the city about $320,000 annually.

The first anti-Trump protests began almost immediately, shortly after election results were announced. By the evening of November 9, protesters poured into the streets across the country. The Northern California cities of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Palo Alto, San José, Santa Cruz, Salinas, Hollister, Santa Rosa, and Fresno have stood up against Trump, the rallying cries being "Not My President" and "Fuck Trump!" Demonstrations continue on a daily or near-daily basis all over. There is no end in sight. Calls have gone out to disrupt inaugural events on January 20 and for a Women's March on Washington on January 21.

A protest was held at the corporate headquarters of Well Fargo bank in San Francisco on October 26 calling for jailing the executives and managers who oversaw the illegal opening of two million accounts in customers' names without their knowledge as well as setting up credit card accounts. The Obama administration refuses to press criminal charges. Speakers at the protest called for the jailing of Wells Fargo bankers for criminal fraud and for the expropriation of the bank and for it's transformation into a public bank for the people.

Since August 26, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began to sit and then kneel during the playing of the national anthem to protest racist police violence, at least dozens of more Black people have been murdered by the police. What is also intensifying is that more and more athletes are taking a visible stand against police brutality. Students at the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) have been particularly vocal about their opposition to a lack of police accountability and the unfair treatment of Black and Brown people at the hands of law enforcement.

Nathan Damigo is a Social Studies major at CSU Stanislaus — and he’s been building up a white supremacist group called Identity Evropa (IE) across Northern California. Identity Evropa focuses on recruitment by plastering college campuses with propaganda that promotes the creation of an all-white, fascist, authoritarian political power. On October 4, anti-fascists put up 300 posters at CSU Stanislaus detailing Damigo’s hidden past as a convicted felon in a violent hate crime, as well as his involvement in a string of hate groups before attempting to rebrand himself with Identity Evropa.

Mothers and fathers whose children have been killed by police spoke out at the San Francisco Hall of Justice and District Attorney's office on October 7 to demand an end to the murders and executions of Blacks and Latinos in Northern California. They demanded that DA George Gascon file murder charges against the police officers that have killed young people with impunity. Some of those who spoke were Gwen Woods, mother of Oscar Woods; Wanda Johnson, mother of Oscar Grant; Elivra and Refugio Nieto, parents of Alex Nieto; Cristina Gutierrez, mother of Equipto Gutierrez; and Denika Chatman, the mother of Kenneth Harding Jr.

The Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy has thus far created three timelines mapping state violence in the Bay Area, one for Hayward, one for San Francisco, one for Stockton. The timelines were generated as part of a larger ongoing convivial research effort to expose low intensity war across the Bay Area and state. The CCRA writes: The timeline is a tool that remembers, counts, mourns and honors our dead. It is a collaborative effort of documentation over time that makes visible the many resistances that have refused erasure. This refusal itself is a confrontation against state violence.