Feature Archives

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit on June 19 against the California Department of Parks and Recreation for its failure to protect an endangered seabird, the Marbled Murrelet, under the new management plan for Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. The suit, filed in California Superior Court in Santa Cruz county, challenges the department’s plans to expand visitor facilities in or near essential nesting habitat.

Protests in Turkey began May 28 at Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park, against plans to turn the loved and historic city park into a shopping mall. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan brutally attacked the peaceful demonstrators. As daily anti-government protests rocked Istanbul, demonstrators in the Bay Area showed solidarity against Turkish state repression with protests in Berkeley, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, and Oakland, in addition to the establishment of Gezi Gardens in San Francisco.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's new political action group has spent big money on ads to advocate for the Keystone XL pipeline and Bay Area environmentalists are riled. Activists rallied near the CEO's San Francisco home on June 1st. Members of the Keystone XL Action Council previously spearheaded an action on May 1st at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park.

Protesters mobilized to greet President Barack Obama who was in town for a series of fundraisers in San Francisco and Atherton on April 3 and 4. Approximately 1,000 demonstrators opposing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would extend from Canada to Texas, gathered outside the mansion of Ann and Gordon Getty in San Francisco the evening of April 3. The next day about 100 environmentalists lay in wait along the President's route after a fundraiser in Atherton.

On February 22, rally participants in Palo Alto's Lytton Plaza gathered to demand that measures proposed in Congress to ban semi-automatic and military-style firearms be debated and votes taken. They said that unfortunately supporters of the National Rifle Association's position will oppose reasonable legislation.

Justin Herman Plaza was the site of several feminist actions on Saturday, January 26th, as this week marks 40 years since the passage of Roe v. Wade. A Celebration of Women, Life and Liberty began at 10 am with speakers including the famously Limbaugh-bashed birth control champion Sandra Fluke and a myriad of children's activities.

On January 10th, demonstrators protested in Menlo Park in front of a $4.1 million Dream House that is being raffled off to benefit the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. They explained their objection to the Dream House model of fundraising saying that arts organizations should receive public funds from taxes paid by corporations instead of a raffle that is essentially "a tax on the people".