Feature Archives

UPDATE: Dionne Choyce is currently appealing the decision on fees. Written arguments have been filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Parties are awaiting a response.

On November 3, United States District Judge Jon S. Tigar awarded legal fees of over $87,000 to the open-publishing news website Indybay and internet service provider Layer42 after dismissing an "objectively baseless" lawsuit filed by Bay Area attorney Dionne Choyce. Indybay is represented pro bono by Roger R. Myers, Leila C. Knox and Jessica Mar of Bryan Cave LLP, who will be redistributing any and all fee payment made by Dionne Choyce to 501(c)(3) organizations.

For several years, Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) activists in Northern California and across the globe have pressured retailers to stop selling SodaStream products in their stores. On October 29, amid ongoing boycott pressure from the international community, Israeli beverage firm SodaStream announced that it was closing a controversial factory located in an occupied West Bank settlement. SodaStream said that it would relocate the factory by the end of 2015.

Conservation groups notified the National Marine Fisheries Service of their intent to sue the agency for delaying Endangered Species Act protection for the pinto abalone, an approximately six-inch snail with an iridescent inner shell that was once common in rocky, intertidal coasts from Alaska to Baja California.

Members of the Kurdish diaspora in the Bay Area joined local anarchists on October 11 for a demonstration in solidarity with the Rojava Revolution and the Kurdish resistance in Kobane. Over 50 people took over Powell and Market in San Francisco withbanners and thousands of leaflets throughout the afternoon. Kurdish fighters part of the YPG and the all women YPJ units have managed to hold their own during a month-long siege despite suffering heavy casualties and fighting with outdated weapons compared with the advanced US-made weapons used by ISIS.

On October 18, Eviction Free San Francisco and community advocates marched to the home of Mayor Ed Lee in Glenn Park, and demanded that he intervene in the eviction crisis in San Francisco. As long-term tenants, communities of color, seniors and disabled people are displaced at a rapid rate, new luxury condominiums pop up on every corner, making the city even less affordable and motivating speculators to continue to evict for a profit.

April Negrette and Kimball Bighorse have filed tort claims against the City and County of San Francisco for police brutality that occurred when the Giants called in SFPD to eject Negrette and Bighorse from its June 23, 2014, “Native American Heritage Night” event and game. Ms. Negrette and Mr. Bighorse had peacefully confronted a group of inebriated men who were inappropriately and disrespectfully wearing a plastic counterfeit Native American-themed headdress. The Giants ordered the San Francisco Police to eject Negrette and Bighorse from the stadium, but not the drunken men, most of whom were white.

Claudia Tirado, a third grade teacher and tenant being evicted by Google's head of eDiscovery, Jack Halprin, queered her fight to remain in her home at the Folsom Street Fair on September 21. With other activists from Eviction Free San Francisco, Tirado handed out condoms for "eviction protection" at the annual kink and sex-positive SoMa fair. Eviction Free SF reported that many fair attendees agreed that housing is a queer issue and that it is unconscionable for Halprin to evict residents so that he can have a private mansion just three blocks from the Google bus stop at 18th and Dolores.