Feature Archives

Gentrification is a growing issue in neighborhoods across the Bay Area. Many areas in San Francisco, Oakland, and other cities look completely different now than even ten years ago, and the process appears to be accelerating. The East Bay Solidarity Network has produced a 79-page pamphlet entitled Evict This! which breaks down the history of displacement in Oakland and the resources available to fight the ongoing gentrification.

Independent truckers staged a job action that slowed work at the Port of Oakland on November 27. It was the truckers' third job action since August. The Port of Oakland Truckers Association (POTA) said the strike was “in protest of unsafe working conditions and unfair labor practices by terminal owners and Port of Oakland management.“ About a hundred independent truckers were joined by at least that many community and labor supporters at the entrances to the SSA terminal. Five people were arrested and at least two were injured by cars crossing the picket lines.

In March of 2013, the city of Oakland signed a contract with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for design and construction of the first of two phases of a city-wide surveillance system called the Domain Awareness Center, or DAC. Recently, however, the Oakland city council learned that its prime contractor for the project is involved in the U.S. nuclear weapons program, a fact that violates Measure T, a city voter proposition that makes Oakland a nuclear free zone. Despite a second round of public comment against the DAC at the November 19 Oakland City Council meeting, as well as the ongoing controversy with finding non-nuclear contractors, council members voted yet again to continue with the city-wide surveillance project.

Sacred Sites Protection & Rights of Indigenous Tribes (SSP&RIT) advised the Vallejo City Unified School District Board of Education on November 20 to remove its mascot as it is offensive to Native Americans. SSP&RIT stated, “Native mascots perpetuate the myth that Native America is purely historical and devoid of any contemporary relevance”. After hearing SSP&RIT's appeal, the school board voted unanimously to abandon the high school's racist Apache mascot.

Oakland Port Truckers have formed the Port of Oakland Truckers Association (POTA) to organize for better conditions and compensation. On October 21, hundreds of independent truckers and over a hundred supporters turned out at 5am at the Port of Oakland in protest of escalating costs for truckers and deteriorating work conditions at the Port. The two largest terminals were shut down, and multiple smaller terminals were disrupted or shut down. Alameda County Sheriff's Deputies attacked picket lines, injuring at least two, and forced many picketers onto the sidewalk. Longshoremen refused to cross the picket line and went home for the day, despite losing pay after an unfavorable ruling from labor arbitrators. Port Truckers returned to the Port at 5:30pm to shut down the evening shift, and they continue to ask the public for support.

On the morning of October 22nd, supporters and members of some 50 families of those executed by California police will converge on Sacramento as part of the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. They will demand proper investigations into their loved ones' deaths — not whitewashes by police and District Attorneys refusing to thoroughly investigate. After the rally In Sacramento, there will be two more rallies in Oakland along with events held in Fresno, Hayward, Redding, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other cities in California and across the United States.

The National Lawyers Guild and Prison Radio will present two films on repression and resistance on Saturday, October 19 at the The New Parkway Theater in Oakland. The Battle for Oscar Grant Plaza is a short documentary about how the City of Oakland and its police tried to shut down the budding "Occupy Wall Street" movement, turning downtown Oakland into a teargas-filled war zone and injuring numerous people. Manufacturing Guilt takes on Abu-Jamal's contentious case, distilling a mountain of evidence and years of oft-repeated falsehoods which illustrate a clear and conscious effort to frame Mumia Abu-Jamal for murder.