Feature Archives

On Saturday, June 20, activists gathered at Trader Joe’s in Oakland and San Francisco to demand that the company stop carrying Israeli goods. Protesters removed Israeli products from the shelves in order to show customers which products they should not buy. They also met with the store managers and asked them to notify their headquarters that they no longer wanted to carry Israeli herbs, couscous and cheese. Similar actions were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington, and Sacramento, California. The activists were inspired by campaigns to deshelve Israeli products in Wales and France.

The demolition of the Bevatron, a.k.a. Building 51 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), is scheduled to begin in July. The demolition will include the removal of radioactive waste, trucked down University Avenue covered with tarps. According to the LBNL website, 1000-1200 truckloads of the 4700 "may contain hazardous or radioactive material." A press conference will take place on Tuesday, June 23rd at 6:30pm in front of Berkeley City Hall in order to draw attention to this blatant disregard for the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act.

After print-runs for the SF and NY Anarchist Book Fairs, a magazine entitled Unfinished Acts: January Rebellions is now available on Indybay in digital format. The magazine is a collective recounting and analysis of events surrounding the shooting of the unarmed, 22-year-old Oscar Grant III by BART police officers in the early hours of 2009 on the Fruitvale station platform.

On May 27th, mayor of Richmond Gayle McLaughlin attended the Chevron Shareholder's meeting, along with delegates representing Nigeria, Burma, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Philippines, and Canada. The delegates introduced to the meeting this year's alternative Chevron annual report: The True Cost of Chevron. The annual report documents the ecological and human damage caused by mismanagement of infrastructure, laborers, and the environment.

The preliminary hearing in the trial of Johannes Mehserle for the murder of Oscar Grant III began on May 18th. Indybay has reports from inside the court room during the entire hearing. Outside the court house, demonstrators have gathered to press for an effective prosecution of Johannes Mehserle. The hearing concluded on June 4th when Judge Clay declared that Mehserle will stand trial for murder. The family of Oscar Grant gratefully acknowledged community activists and supporters who rallied at the court house.

On May 21st, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Civil Liberties Defense Center joined in a defense attorneys’ motion in the San Jose district court to dismiss U.S.A. v. Buddenberg, a federal prosecution of four animal rights activists in California for alleged conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism. The four have been charged with First Amendment protected activities such as protesting, chalking the sidewalk, chanting and leafleting. The motion asks the Court to strike down the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) as unconstitutional.

At the May 16th ceremony for UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school graduates, World Can't Wait protested against Boalt Hall Law Professor and author of U.S. torture memos, John Yoo. The protest against torture called on graduates to demand that the UC law school not tolerate torture and those who are apologists for torture policies.